I’m doing some reading about Grant’s military operations in the western sector and it made me wonder about how detailed and self critical staffs were at conducting after battle analysis, something which appears to be rigorously performed by today’s modern militaries.
If my perceptions are correct, what was the policy curve like? One thing that struck me about the Grant campaigns was how politically connected so many high ranking officers were and how difficult that made it for stringent self assessment.
My knowledge is cursory and I’m interested in learning more.
I know it was a procedure in World War II. Statisticians would conduct studies after battles and determine what had or had not been effective in the battle.
I don’t know if this was something new in World War II or if it had been done in earlier wars.
Maybe I should start by asking how modern after action analyses are performed. Do they begin at the unit level with actual participants? At what point are third party observers involved?
The TLDR (it is 230 pages, after all) is that this field started in WWII. I’ve been interested in the field because of my study of the Pacific War, and how much better the US military was in this than the Japanese. While the Japanese did study their efforts and examine the US forces, it was never as systematical or as extensive was was conducted by the US.
Hugh Ambrose’s companion book to the HBO series “The Pacific” includes records of pointed criticism of one of the officers about his actions during a particular battle. Which were discussed with the officer in question.
To me it felt like a negative performance review, the kind of thing a corporation rolls out when they’re setting up a justification to fire you. And frankly, I’d not heard of this kind of evaluation before WWII, at least not in this form. (Of course, removing an officer with justification is not a new thing.)
I think it was formalized during WWII, but it’s hard to imagine that at least some basic analysis wasn’t done during WWI or earlier. Can you imagine a huge battle engagement and the generals of both sides not wondering how they could have done it better? If for no other reason than to show their leadership they want to improve their fighting capability in the future.
I feel that happens quite a bit. Before a war, military leaders will have developed a doctrine on how they expect events will occur. And then during the war, they watch for what they expected. It’s rare for a commander in the midst of a war to reject his pre-conceived beliefs and form a new doctrine.
Look at World War I. The generals expected a quick war that would be decided by maneuver. They quickly ended up with a system of virtually impenetrable trenches. But the generals did not develop a new doctrine in the face of this new reality. They just kept throwing troops against the enemy lines. Several years into the war, Haig was still making plans for a break in the lines so he could send in the cavalry troops.
My experience in the field as a low level officer in the 1980s is that we started right down at the level of the grunts with rifles and worked our way up to the O-6 in command of our Army brigade or USAF Wing. So I and my peers enjoyed the “fun” of extracting the info from the troops we led two levels down, and in turn being grilled by our grand-bosses or great-grand-bosses about it.
Once it got above that level I wasn’t involved, but these reviews went well up the chain of command if the operation was big enough to matter at those rarified levels.
If you look at any field of analysis, such as various aspects of marketing, for example, there have always been people looking at how to do things better. But that’s different from a systematic approach which tends to catch more things.
Good generals and admirals have always studied tactics, weapons and strategies and improved on them, but the methodical approach came out of WWII.
This thread reminded me of a document I have from my dad’s time in the navy in WWII called “A History of U.D.T 11”. It consists of two parts, an informal diary-like section of what they did from the teams formation until being released at the end of the war, and a more terse and formal blow-by-blow of each operation. I suspect it would be the latter that was useful for OR.
An example of the former:
“During our stay every night held plenty of excitement in store for us.
Kamikaze attacks seemed to be the Nips favorite sport in those days. One morning
one of their planes came rather close, in fact every man aboard was ready to cash
in the chips. Luckily after coming through flak from BB’s CA’s and DD’s a forty
MM shell from our ship tore his wing off and he plunged into the sea a few yards
from us.”
An example of the latter:
“Thirteen reserve swimmers in the charge of an officer were embarked in
Boat No. 4 to act as UDT#11 reserve. The crew of Boat No. 4 consisted of seven
men in the charge of a first class P.O. and included a PhM1c. An area reserve
boat (Boat No. 5) in the charge of an officer with two lifesavers and crew of
six men was assigned to stand by the U.S.S. GILMER (APD-11) during the operation.
Before operations commenced Boat No. 4 went out of commission due to motor
trouble. Boat No. 5 was recalled from the U.S.S. GILMER and the reserve swimmers
in Boat No. 4 were transferred to Boat No. 5. Boat No. 5 then operated as UDT
reserve boat. Subsequently Boat No. 4 was taken in tow by the U.S.S. KLINE and
eventually was got back in the davits.”
Start with the Romans… the Legions mutated from hoplitic warfare with lines of spear-armed militia infantry to multi lines of pilum-throwing sword-armed professionals to bow-spear mixed cavalry, appropriating the weapons and the armors of their foes and writing on the best way to fight them, modifying their tactics after each battle.