Weapons 01/03/20 How long lived tanks in battle in the great Patriotic
Around exploding explosions of shells, bullets and shrapnel. Tanks rush forward, behind them, hiding behind the armor, there comes the infantry, and in the sky beats of the air force. During the battle, the life expectancy on the battlefield is measured in minutes and seconds, is all about the case of someone still alive, having passed through the fire and flames, and someone dies from a stray shot.
However, the constant military conflicts has shown that a certain regularity in war there are losses during the assault differed from the losses in defense. In the course of the battle is strongly influenced by the armed soldiers, their training, fighting spirit. Reports from the field is carefully studied, processed and analyzed.
Calculator life money
it lasted more than a century, until the end of the XIX century, the Russian banker and businessman Ivan Blioh not to release the book “Future war and its economic consequences”, in which he combined and analyzed the military experience of all the leading European powers of the time. And while the main purpose of the book was to show the incredible extravagance, cruelty and uselessness of war, it became required for all military leaders.
Blioh was a businessman and went to war not so much from the tactics or the strategy, but the economy. He considered what funds are spent on the armed soldiers, the cost of training, transport and maintenance. And then make calculations based on data from target practice, and modeled a variety of combat situations.
For example, consider the situation of an attack on a trench held by hundreds of shooters. It turned out that if the soldiers start to attack the frontier from a distance of 500 meters, 100 people needed to conventionally fight already in position, get to her just in case, if the initial number of attacking would be almost 650 people – i.e. almost seven times more than the number of the defenders! And these indicators fell in the late nineteenth century, when it was about guns with manual reload, but the situation did not expect the support of artillery and other reinforcements.
According to the author, the book was a universal calculator where it seemed awful, was the translation of human lives into money. Blioh hoped that these arguments will force politicians to abandon the war, as inefficient way to solve problems, but instead he gave them a convenient tool for a more accurate calculation.
every minute counts
In a modern war, much has changed – the weapons became more powerful and fast. Artillery support a more mobile, there was even a manual samples. Equipment is better protected and stronger armed. But still the calculations for the execution of combat tasks are conducted on the basis of the theory of Blika.
for Example, during the great Patriotic war calculations on the breach came from the following: take the number of the enemy’s guns located on the site of the attack, calculated the rate of fire, armor penetration and percentage of blunders, and to this was added the average speed of tanks and thickness of the armor. Based on these figures to make calculations. It turned out that the average time of the tank in combat during the attack was 7 minutes and defence 15 minutes.
the Infantry was even harder – in a battle they were not covered by armor plating and a powerful fire large-caliber guns. Therefore, the life of one soldier was calculated from the moment of arrival on front. However, during combat the unit took the unit. The famous sniper Vasily Zaytsev in his memoirs “Beyond the Volga land for us no” mentions that arrived in Stalingrad infantryman lived about a day. And a company of infantry (about 100 people) in the attack lived about half an hour.
aviation business is different – there the duration of life is measured not by time but by number of departures. It all depends on the aircraft type. For example, bombers when combined arms combat live in one flight, attack – 1.5 flight , and fighter – 2,5 departure.
However, we must understand that all these figures are abstract and reality have rather mediocre relation. Life time does not necessarily mean death if a soldier is wounded and cannot continue to fight, then he, too, is recorded in losses.
besides, there are many examples when the soldiers had passed through the war from first to the last day. The concept of “average lifetime in battle” was introduced to calculate the forces necessary for combat missions, but in reality the fulfillment of the order is affected by much more factors.
Vasily Khodarev
Source:
© Russian Seven
Featured articles Share: Comments Comments on the article “How long lived tanks in battle in the great Patriotic war” Please log in to leave a comment! br>
Share on Tumblr
