Logistics and the Coming Year

Ok, I'm kinda breaking this off from another thread and starting the thought as a new thread. This initial post may be a long one. My apologies, but I think you'll understand why.

Imagine that in the next few months of the war, Dohlar either becomes a Chaisan ally or at least becomes unavailable to the CoGA. Imagine further that Silkiah and its canal system also become available to Charis and are denied to the Church and its armies (see the later posts in Merlin's Upcoming Conversation with Thirsk for ideas on how these things might happen).

Charis' logistical situation becomes vastly improved. It has access to the Gulf of Dohlar through shorter sea routes. It has an absolutely wonderful port and distribution center in Gorath. Those are wonderful things.

From Charis' point of view, though, the logistical implications for the Church of God Awaiting are even more wonderful.

Charis now would have full access to the Gulf of Dohlar. It presumably would have access to the ships of the Dohlaran Navy. It can patrol the Gulf of Dohlar much more effectively, and it can interdict shipping from South Harchong and Desnair much more effectively.

It won't be able to eliminate that shipping completely, as the Gulf actually is huge. But it can reduce the flow of goods, equipment and men from the Howard subcontinent to a trickle. Further, the Church would be denied the logistical hub of Gorath as well - a hub it has relied on for virtually all activities in the southern part of East Haven. It's only decent logistical route to the east from temple lands will be the Bedard and Holy Langhorne Canals.

To the east of the Temple Lands, the Church will control only the Border States, which are facing famine due to the logistical demands of the armies marching through them. They also would be able to witness first-hand the depredations and suffering being visited upon the imprisoned people in the Concentration Camps.

To the west, they have the resources of the northern Harchong Empire. Things have improved there, in terms of production capacity. But how much have they improved?

Two million of its citizens are no longer a part of that production. Rather, they are now a drain on resources, because they are in the army marching to the east. Graft has been reduced, but not eliminated. And the production from all the factories Ducharin built up in South Harchong will be effectively lost to him.

I expect there to be widespread famine in Church controlled lands this winter, and it will have a huge impact on the war.

In our history, so many wars have turned on logistical issues.

World War I Germany surrendered largely due to internal strife and mutinies, resulting in part from food shortages. And, all issues of trench warfare aside, the allies in that war won it through a deliberate campaign to cut Germany off from supplies and resources.

That was the strategy used against the Confederacy during the Civil War, as well. It worked.

In World War II, Japan started with a huge navy, and the best trained and equipped air force in the world. But the training took too long, and Japan did not do as the United States did, by sending its most successful pilots back to help train new ones. No, those pilots kept flying and dying until they were all used up.

Similarly, both Japan and Germany depended on oil for their armies' mobility and logistics. That's why Germany wss pushing so hard for the Caucuses (and one reason there were a lot of armies around Stalingrad). Hitler failed, and used up his armies and his tanks in the process.

Japan depended on the oil fields of Singapore for its fuel. The U.S. was aware of it, and that's why the vast majority of its submarines were sent west to interdict the shipping routs between the oil fields and Japan. And they would have been more successful early on if they'd had torpedoes that actually worked (that's a story in itself). In the end, Japan had no oil for its ships, no men to man its planes, and its plane supply was also dwindling fast.

The U.S. hasn't fought a war using a sound overall logistical strategy since World War II, and we haven't really been successful since then in any major conflict.

So, I'm looking forward to seeing Charis' logistical strategies starting to pay off big time, starting sometime this coming winter.

All the best,
X

Yes. I saw a quote somewhere to the effect that old generals studied strategy, but modern generals study logistics.
.

Nice analyses. Once the Gulf of Dohlar is secured, Howard is completely cut off from the war. Once that happen the bulk of resourses, both human and material, will shift against the church. All that will be left to the church apart from the Temple Lands will be Harchong and the borderlands.

I suspect that dealing with those big Harchongese armies will at least in part involve slipping in behind them to cut off their supply lines.

Don

-

I was thinking about the logistics of the Charisian army recently and I have NO idea how they support thier food requirements and ammo expenditures. They are burning through resources like they are fighting WW1 but have a logistics train that can charitably be called napoleonic or at best Crimean.

How they are getting the material from the riverheads to the front line troops given the dearth of pack beasts is beyond me. Most of the Charisian armies should be trying to survive on a shoestring of supplies.

I have seen numbers from the Chatanooga campaign in the ACW that an army of 30,000 needed over 400,000 pounds of supplies per day just to feed the men and horses. So how they are transporting the materials for the high intensity battles we have seen recently is beyond me. They are deploying large armies of 50-70 thousand men in terrain that lacks suitable lateral canals and are either unconsecrated land or already denuded of local supplies and expending ammo profligately and clearly at a much much higher rate than seen even in ACW battles but without the benefit of rail lines to take supplies most of the way there. Many of these battles are taking place hundreds of miles from functiong canal staging posts because of damage and operating at right angles to the rivers and mountains. For example the campaign ending in the battle of kepligar most of the natural lines of water borne communication run north-south but Eastshire is advancing mainly east-west. realistically he would be looking at a logistaical requrement of moving close to 1 million pounds of freight each day in food, forage, ammo, spares etc.

A single 6" gun firing a shell/cartridge of 140lb combined firing 30 rounds in an engagement represents 4200 pounds of freight. A six gun battery needs 25,000 pounds of ammo to resupply after one good engagement. Said battery will also have approximately Lets also give this battery a conservative 10 men and 6 horses per gun +10 men and 20 horses in command staff and spares for a total of 56 horses and 70 men. Each horse needs about 25 pounds of forage and the men need about 5 pounds of food and spares per day each. Therefore to run the battery for 1 day you need to transport just under 2000 poounds of supplies every day. This is an entire civil war era transport wagon EVERY DAY just for this one battery. If you are 100 miles from your bridgehead you are looking at a minimum of 4 days travel time each way so you need a minumum of 8 wagons just to keep this one battery of less than 100 men supplied.

Basically given the logistical infrastructure of the area the wonderful battles that Weber describes are pretty much impossible. I know that he has given his draft dragons much higher carrying capacity than horses have had historically but a movement like that of Duke Eastshires 70000 men and at least 16000 horses should have required a logistical tail of several thousand wagons to keep it supplied even minimally given the distance they are from thier supply bases or unloading points. (Needless to say similar numbers are required for the temple loyalist armies.)

If you want more I suggest "The Sinews of war: Army Logistics 1775 to 1953" https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Y8p ... frontcover

In here we have an example hypothetical civil war army of 100,000 infantry and 1600 horses. Using the standard 2000lb army wagon (drawn by 6 mules) they stated to need:

2 days from base - 2000 wagons drawn by 12,000 animals
3 days from base - 3760 wagons drawn by 22,000 wagons

these calculations were made originally by the Comte de Paris in his 4 volume history of the american civil war.

n7axw wrote:Nice analyses. Once the Gulf of Dohlar is secured, Howard is completely cut off from the war. Once that happen the bulk of resourses, both human and material, will shift against the church. All that will be left to the church apart from the Temple Lands will be Harchong and the borderlands.

I suspect that dealing with those big Harchongese armies will at least in part involve slipping in behind them to cut off their supply lines.

Don

-

Cutting off the entire Mighty Host means getting up the Sabana River or up the river in Tanshar and cutting off the Bedard Canal. That force would then be trapped between the additional 2 million troops coming in from Harchong and the Mighty Host.

That would require the Allies taking Dairnyth and ensuring the Dairnyth-Aleksberg Canal remains operable. Supplying those forces taking and keeping the Sabana River/Tanshar will need the supply chain through Dairnyth. It will also require Dohlar be out of the fight. I just don't see how the Allies can take and hold the Sabana River/Tanshar AND subdue to resistant Dohlar.

To keep the rest of the Mighty Host honest, Eastshare and Green Valley need to pose a credible threat to go North along the Passage to Zion or push into the Border Kingdoms. Those threats will keep the MH largely deployed along the Boarder Kingdoms.

Making a deep strike like that will be risky. Personally, I can see making the attempt and having it fail. Yet in failing the attempt incites the Vicars to whack Clyntahn. Those Vicars would be threatened directly if the Allies punch into the Temple Lands even temporarily.

All in all this line of reasoning suggests where the newest ICA formations are heading, eh Don?

Silverwall wrote:I was thinking about the logistics of the Charisian army recently and I have NO idea how they support thier food requirements and ammo expenditures. They are burning through resources like they are fighting WW1 but have a logistics train that can charitably be called napoleonic or at best Crimean.

snip

I recall RFC stating that the dragons could pull large enough wagons to approximate WWII trucks. The speed was slower, but in most other measures the two were comparable. Considering the logistics using WWII Allied freight capacity and the story works just fine.

PeterZ wrote:

n7axw wrote:Nice analyses. Once the Gulf of Dohlar is secured, Howard is completely cut off from the war. Once that happen the bulk of resourses, both human and material, will shift against the church. All that will be left to the church apart from the Temple Lands will be Harchong and the borderlands.

I suspect that dealing with those big Harchongese armies will at least in part involve slipping in behind them to cut off their supply lines.

Don

-

Cutting off the entire Mighty Host means getting up the Sabana River or up the river in Tanshar and cutting off the Bedard Canal. That force would then be trapped between the additional 2 million troops coming in from Harchong and the Mighty Host.

That would require the Allies taking Dairnyth and ensuring the Dairnyth-Aleksberg Canal remains operable. Supplying those forces taking and keeping the Sabana River/Tanshar will need the supply chain through Dairnyth. It will also require Dohlar be out of the fight. I just don't see how the Allies can take and hold the Sabana River/Tanshar AND subdue to resistant Dohlar.

To keep the rest of the Mighty Host honest, Eastshare and Green Valley need to pose a credible threat to go North along the Passage to Zion or push into the Border Kingdoms. Those threats will keep the MH largely deployed along the Boarder Kingdoms.

Making a deep strike like that will be risky. Personally, I can see making the attempt and having it fail. Yet in failing the attempt incites the Vicars to whack Clyntahn. Those Vicars would be threatened directly if the Allies punch into the Temple Lands even temporarily.

All in all this line of reasoning suggests where the newest ICA formations are heading, eh Don?

I Don't know. I suspect that the secret to dealing with the MH is going to be the superior mobility of the allied armies. I keep looking at the Langhorne with the MH strung out like beads on a string.

As for Dohlar, I doubt there will be much "subduing" involved. Rychtyr is barely holding out against Hanth now and the steamclads will soon arrive in the Gulf in force. Then too, we are not actually talking about conquering and occupying Dohlar-- only forcing a treaty that gets Dohlar out of the war.

Don

-

n7axw wrote:I Don't know. I suspect that the secret to dealing with the MH is going to be the superior mobility of the allied armies. I keep looking at the Langhorne with the MH strung out like beads on a string.

As for Dohlar, I doubt there will be much "subduing" involved. Rychtyr is barely holding out against Hanth now and the steamclads will soon arrive in the Gulf in force. Then too, we are not actually talking about conquering and occupying Dohlar-- only forcing a treaty that gets Dohlar out of the war.

Don -

OK, getting Dohlar out of the war and encouraging them to stay out.

I am pretty confident that some element in getting Silkiah on the side of the angels will involve a bribe for the use of their canals. Might Dohlar be similarly tempted?

Supplying a force striking deep into the Border Kingdoms or Temple Lands will take significant effort. Purchasing provisions from Dohlar strikes me as worthwhile. Heck, I wonder if trying the same thing with the South Harchong merchants will work.

Perhaps dust off an old stratagem and funnel supplies through Dohlar. Establish the working fiction that Dohlar is simply a defeated loyalist nation needing South Harchong's aid to rebuild after the devastation wrought by Charis.

Let's not forget the financial disparity between the two sides. While the CoGA is effectively bankrupt, Charis just hit the first of several huge silver deposits that Nahrmahn found on Shan-Wei's maps.

Despite Duchairn's best efforts, which include raising the tithe dramatically, drafting the members of monasteries and cloisters to help build weapons, selling Church bonds, printing a mountain of paper IOUs, introducing church scrip which isn't backed by anything, and selling off church property, including that within the EoC, (good luck collecting suckers!) he doesn't believe he can keep the war going for more than a couple of years.

He's wrong...

The church has already lost Desnair completely. Keep in mind that the soldiers in the Desnairan cavalry are drawn mostly from the noble classes, since they can afford to provide their own horse, uniform, kit, etc., and they do it because serving in the cavalry is considered prestigious - and probably impresses the ladies. A huge percentage of its nobility just died in the South March Lands, so at the moment it's too busy sorting out who's going to inherit what, who gets the titles and the power, and trying to absorb the shock of losing an entire generation or two of its upper crust to turn its thoughts to sticking its fingers back into the whirling blades of the blender that fighting the allies has become.

There won't be another army coming from Desnair to aid the CoGA. It's unlikely that Desnair will even be able to pay its tithes, since there won't be a viable way to ship them northward to where they're needed. The allies control the isthmus that connects Howard to Haven, so there isn't a land route. The ICN will soon be running rampant through the Gulf of Dohlar, wrecking ports and sinking or capturing CoGA shipping, so there isn't a sea route. Duchairn is going to have to write off one of the only two countries in CoGA controlled territory that paid more tithes than it consumed.

Unfortunately for him, the other country paying a surplus is Dohlar, and clearly it won't be paying all its tithes either. It has an invasion force pressing it from the east, and a fleet of Cities and KH VIIs will arrive soon, determined to destroy its ports and capable of shelling its cities and their manufacturies several miles inland. If Dohlar doesn't pull out of the war quickly, Siddarmark may add a few new western provinces and gain some ports on the Gulf of Dohlar. (Gorath will be a wreck, but hey, nice harbor!)

I'm sure that the ICN will get some nice naval and military bases as part of the concessions when Dohlar officially concedes, and King Ronald is either going to lose his head or flee to Zion for refuge. Clyntahn won't be glad to see him...

So Duchairn now has only the Border states, the Temple Lands, and North Harchong to support the jihad. He's emptied the treasury, and it won't be long before merchants stop accepting Church scrip, which will lead to a crackdown by the Inquisition, riots, and a a veritable civil war in many of the cities where the Church is manufacturing steel and desperately needed weapons.

Then there's the problem of feeding the troops. In an agrarian society, even one as productive as Safehold which has multiple growing seasons and super productive grain thanks to Shan-wei's tinkering with its DNA, only a small percentage of the population can do something other than farming or the entire population will starve. On Safehold farmers are limited to late 1800s planting and harvesting techniques at best. The transportation technology is even older - not everyone owns a dragon to pull wagonloads of grain to market, and the roads are dirt and impassible when it rains. North Harchong's transportation network is a dream at best, and slaves aren't particularly productive.

It's quite possible that only the southern part of North Harchong has multiple growing seasons. The Border States and the Temple Lands certainly don't. The CoGA has been counting on South Harchong and Desnair to provide a large portion of the troop's food, and those sources are about to disappear. Stripping food from North Harchong, the Temple Lands, and the Border States may result in widespread starvation, which means the best thing that could happen to the million-strong army of Harchongese poised to invade Siddarmark is for it to be killed as quickly as possible!

Duchairn was wrong. Once the Gulf of Dohlar falls to the ICN, he has only the current summer's campaign season to win the war, and that isn't going to happen. After that the Church can't pay its bills, people won't accept its scrip, its hundreds of millions of members will experience starvation, and the popularity of the jihad will evaporate. Funny how the support for a far-off war disappears when the average man in the street suddenly suffers because of it... (I could make some comparisons to current events on Earth, but I'll refrain.)

When the KH VIIs sail into Temple Bay next year and the transports dock at Port Harbor and unload the troops, the war will end and most of Safehold will applaud. When the treaties are signed, Charis will be in an even stronger position as the planet's primary manufacturer and exporter, and one of its primary exports will be the CoC...

Then comes the Great Reveal. Don't ask me how!

You're using 19th century horse/mule numbers; I'm using 24th century Safeholdian dragons. I believe it's in MT&T that I give you the raw numbers on what a dragon can haul and I don't have my notes in front of me but think of this as roughly horse-speed traction capable of hauling a 30-ton trailer and you've got a typical Safeholdian logistics trail. I promise I factored that into my thinking. Now, whether or not my dragons are actually possible (and they should be; they're basically up-scaled elephants with considerably more efficient digestion) is one thing; given their existence on Safehold, however, my logistics work. Oh, and don't forget that in addition to the canals, they have the high roads, which are superior to just about anything that was available anywhere on Earth in the 19th century. Once you get off the high roads/canals, things get a lot more difficult . . . which is, in fact, a problem Hanth is experiencing At This Very Minute as the first paragraph of the next chapter (cunningly inserted at the end of Snippet #1) suggests.

Silverwall wrote:I was thinking about the logistics of the Charisian army recently and I have NO idea how they support thier food requirements and ammo expenditures. They are burning through resources like they are fighting WW1 but have a logistics train that can charitably be called napoleonic or at best Crimean.

How they are getting the material from the riverheads to the front line troops given the dearth of pack beasts is beyond me. Most of the Charisian armies should be trying to survive on a shoestring of supplies.

I have seen numbers from the Chatanooga campaign in the ACW that an army of 30,000 needed over 400,000 pounds of supplies per day just to feed the men and horses. So how they are transporting the materials for the high intensity battles we have seen recently is beyond me. They are deploying large armies of 50-70 thousand men in terrain that lacks suitable lateral canals and are either unconsecrated land or already denuded of local supplies and expending ammo profligately and clearly at a much much higher rate than seen even in ACW battles but without the benefit of rail lines to take supplies most of the way there. Many of these battles are taking place hundreds of miles from functiong canal staging posts because of damage and operating at right angles to the rivers and mountains. For example the campaign ending in the battle of kepligar most of the natural lines of water borne communication run north-south but Eastshire is advancing mainly east-west. realistically he would be looking at a logistaical requrement of moving close to 1 million pounds of freight each day in food, forage, ammo, spares etc.

A single 6" gun firing a shell/cartridge of 140lb combined firing 30 rounds in an engagement represents 4200 pounds of freight. A six gun battery needs 25,000 pounds of ammo to resupply after one good engagement. Said battery will also have approximately Lets also give this battery a conservative 10 men and 6 horses per gun +10 men and 20 horses in command staff and spares for a total of 56 horses and 70 men. Each horse needs about 25 pounds of forage and the men need about 5 pounds of food and spares per day each. Therefore to run the battery for 1 day you need to transport just under 2000 poounds of supplies every day. This is an entire civil war era transport wagon EVERY DAY just for this one battery. If you are 100 miles from your bridgehead you are looking at a minimum of 4 days travel time each way so you need a minumum of 8 wagons just to keep this one battery of less than 100 men supplied.

Basically given the logistical infrastructure of the area the wonderful battles that Weber describes are pretty much impossible. I know that he has given his draft dragons much higher carrying capacity than horses have had historically but a movement like that of Duke Eastshires 70000 men and at least 16000 horses should have required a logistical tail of several thousand wagons to keep it supplied even minimally given the distance they are from thier supply bases or unloading points. (Needless to say similar numbers are required for the temple loyalist armies.)

If you want more I suggest "The Sinews of war: Army Logistics 1775 to 1953" https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Y8p ... frontcover

In here we have an example hypothetical civil war army of 100,000 infantry and 1600 horses. Using the standard 2000lb army wagon (drawn by 6 mules) they stated to need:

2 days from base - 2000 wagons drawn by 12,000 animals
3 days from base - 3760 wagons drawn by 22,000 wagons

these calculations were made originally by the Comte de Paris in his 4 volume history of the american civil war.