History/Military History... Experts/Facts/Interests

[RDU Neil]

I can only imagine there are some serious history buffs on these boards. Maybe there is another thread, but I didn't see one.

 

I have a question, and wondered if anyone knows the answer or sources. My Google-fu hasn't come up with anything.

 

I'm looking for statistics on % of numbers killed or wounded vs. the total number... in landings like D-Day... Iwo Jima... etc. What were the odds of being hit in a hail of machine gun fire/mortar and artillery rounds, etc. Of X number of soldiers who hit the beaches at Utah or Omaha... Iwo Jima especially managed one of the most costly defenses, where more US Marines were lost than Japanese. There was a book, back in the '80s on the statistics on rounds fired for every casualty, etc. 

 

Any history buffs here with good resources and/or knowledge on this?

 

Thanks in advance?

[Cancer]

Some stuff here but not precisely what you wanted.  I'll look around a bit more.

[RDU Neil]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

Some stuff here but not precisely what you wanted.  I'll look around a bit more.

 

Yeah... not really what I was looking for but interesting, nonetheless. 

[Old Man]

Best google search I could come up with was "battle casualty figures by weapon".  Turned up this and this among other links.  Have to filter out the civilian mass shooting stuff though.

[zslane]

I'm curious what this information would be used for. I ask only because a single overall number may not tell an interesting or particularly enlightening story. For instance, the casualty figures for D-Day depended heavily on which beach (landing area) you're talking about, the degree to which the atrocious ocean conditions affected the different landing areas, the degree of preparedness of the German defenders in each area, etc.

[assault]

Also, when and where units landed.

 

For example, the various parachute and commando/Ranger units would have had relatively high casualties, as would have the first units to hit the beaches. (Especially on Omaha beach - the others don't seem to have been anything like as bad.)

 

[RDU Neil]

Actually, I've just finished watching Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and it appears that the landing actions, and whether one particular person gets hit or not seems basically a pure matter of chance. Nobody is really aiming at anyone in particular, not in an OCV/DCV way. It just seems that, like, every moment you are on the beach, there is a percentage chance you get hit or not. I'm trying to figure out what that chance would be? 1 in a 100 every 3 seconds (an action round)? More? Less? Just thought if there would be a percentage of "# of men stormed the beach/# of men hit? "

[Lawnmower Boy]

You would need a much more granular breakdown of casualties than we have. One of the problems with reconstructing the D-Day fighting is that we don't even have day's end returns. Most "D-Day" casualty returns are for the first 48 hours of fighting, and even longer for the paratroopers. 

 

The conventional view of causes of casualties by enemy action is that it is dominated by artillery, with the overall returns from the British Army Medical Corps giving 75% by artillery, 10% each by bullet and mine, plus residual causes. Here I'm quoting an extract from Ellis, WWII Databook, quoted on Axis History Forums. Yes, I did just google that, but it aligns with some studies I've seen that use the presumed randomness of artillery casualties to do some prosopographic work on who gets hurt, and not. (Basically, morale has nothing to do with it.)

 

As zslane said, your chances of getting hurt during the beach assault varied heavily with the location. Even at Omaha, they were concentrated in certain units, while half the American landing force was at Utah, which was such a walk in the park that command's main problem was preventing the landing troops from taking a leisurely post-invasion nap in favour of a bold push inland. (Too much dramamine . . .)

[Badger]

My dad's sister's late husband (2nd husband) served in Europe in WWII (didn't know that for a long time).  Though, pretty sure he wasn't involved in D-Day.  Though, I think he did mention serving on transport boats in the aftermath (weeks after), now that this has been mentioned, I really wish I could remember the details of that.

 

To be honest, he didnt really mention much about his service, usually only after my dad (who had been in the Marines pre-Vietnam) could get him to talk about military service (or my dad's other sister's husband who also served in the Army-mid/late 1950s-but that uncle died way back in the 1990s) 

[archer]

8 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

Actually, I've just finished watching Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and it appears that the landing actions, and whether one particular person gets hit or not seems basically a pure matter of chance. Nobody is really aiming at anyone in particular, not in an OCV/DCV way. It just seems that, like, every moment you are on the beach, there is a percentage chance you get hit or not. I'm trying to figure out what that chance would be? 1 in a 100 every 3 seconds (an action round)? More? Less? Just thought if there would be a percentage of "# of men stormed the beach/# of men hit? "

 

D-Day landings "The British and Canadians put 75,215 troops ashore, and the Americans 57,500, for a total of 132,715" https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-statistics/

 

"The First U.S. Army, accounting for the first twenty-four hours in Normandy, tabulated 1,465 killed, 1,928 missing, and 6,603 wounded...Canadian forces at Juno Beach sustained 946 casualties, of whom 335 were listed as killed. Surprisingly, no British figures were published, but Cornelius Ryan cites estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 killed, wounded, and missing, including 650 from the Sixth Airborne Division."

https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties/

 

The number missing were most likely the ones who were killed in the water before reaching the beach. (And keep in mind that this is the number for the beaches, mostly not counting paratroopers, except for the British, or casualties on ships and planes.)

 

1465 + 1928 + 6603 + 946 + 3000-ish then compare that to the 132,715 who were there will give you the percentage. It'll come out roughly to 10.5%

 

If you want it broken down by segment, there's 86,400 segments per day so you'd divide your total number of casualties (which looks to be around 14,000) by 86,400. That's a rate of casualties among the Allies of about one every six segments on the beaches. But keep in mind that casualties weren't evenly distributed throughout the day.

 

Those are numbers from the first two links googling "number of casualties on d-day". There's several other links that look promising if you want to double-check the numbers.

 

You could probably get good results from googling "number of casualties fill-in-the-blank landing" then just plug in Okinawa, Sicily, Iwo Jima, or anyplace else you want to look. 

[Pattern Ghost]

One thing to consider is that a lot of rounds fired in war are suppressive fire vs troops, and even screening fire against aircraft (using personal weapons to create a "curtain" of lead in front of an aircraft to make it bugger off), and not direct fire on personnel. So, on a beach landing, was the goal of the infantry to make the other side duck so that artillery could do its job, or to take out individuals? Might be something to consider. Might be inconsequential to your core question on odds of being hit by small arms fire.

[RDU Neil]

4 hours ago, archer said:

 

D-Day landings "The British and Canadians put 75,215 troops ashore, and the Americans 57,500, for a total of 132,715" https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-statistics/

 

"The First U.S. Army, accounting for the first twenty-four hours in Normandy, tabulated 1,465 killed, 1,928 missing, and 6,603 wounded...Canadian forces at Juno Beach sustained 946 casualties, of whom 335 were listed as killed. Surprisingly, no British figures were published, but Cornelius Ryan cites estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 killed, wounded, and missing, including 650 from the Sixth Airborne Division."

https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties/

 

The number missing were most likely the ones who were killed in the water before reaching the beach. (And keep in mind that this is the number for the beaches, mostly not counting paratroopers, except for the British, or casualties on ships and planes.)

 

1465 + 1928 + 6603 + 946 + 3000-ish then compare that to the 132,715 who were there will give you the percentage. It'll come out roughly to 10.5%

 

If you want it broken down by segment, there's 86,400 segments per day so you'd divide your total number of casualties (which looks to be around 14,000) by 86,400. That's a rate of casualties among the Allies of about one every six segments on the beaches. But keep in mind that casualties weren't evenly distributed throughout the day.

 

Those are numbers from the first two links googling "number of casualties on d-day". There's several other links that look promising if you want to double-check the numbers.

 

You could probably get good results from googling "number of casualties fill-in-the-blank landing" then just plug in Okinawa, Sicily, Iwo Jima, or anyplace else you want to look. 

 

Yes... this is a great start. Now, the landing wasn't a constant stream of boats hitting the shore under an unchanging rate of fire for 24 hours. Likely the first hours of boats under full fire took more casualties than later landings (not sure, but seems likely), but also, the first boats might not have been as vulnerable to artillery as the second and third waves where the beaches were clogged with men, so fire for effect was more deadly.

So if your average GI, scared, wet, and dogging it up a beach head under fire had probably a 2 SPD. Figure moving 12 meters every 3 seconds or so if they are able to fully move, from boat to initial cover (at least under a dune and able to hunker down for a bit)... that is, in best case circumstances, being exposed to fire for 15-30 seconds where likelihood is highest of being hit. Say, double the overall rate, so one casualty every 3 segments. But those casualties are spread across thousands, not any particular person or unit. I'm not sure how to scale that to the odds of say, a twelve man rifle squad hitting the beach, the likelihood of any one of them to get hit, in the 15-30 seconds (best case?) it takes to hit the beach and get some cover? 

If we say, 1 in 100... it seems like you figure that out by calculating "not being hit."   i.e. 99/100 chance of not being hit first 3 seconds, x 99/100 chance of not being hit next 3 seconds, x 99/100 etc. This puts any one man a 95% chance of NOT being hit in 15 seconds. 89% chance of NOT being hit over 30 seconds. That is probably too high a chance of being hit... 5% and 11%? The ebb and flow of battle, where those who get through the first wave, now can fire back, reducing enemy fire for the next wave, etc. 1 in 200 chance cuts that in half, so a full 30 seconds of exposed (running for cover) puts you at 5% chance? (Then, granted, the "hit" could be obliterating or minor of course.)

 

Infinite variables makes an exact chance impossible to calculate, but a rough estimate is interesting.

 

3 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

One thing to consider is that a lot of rounds fired in war are suppressive fire vs troops, and even screening fire against aircraft (using personal weapons to create a "curtain" of lead in front of an aircraft to make it bugger off), and not direct fire on personnel. So, on a beach landing, was the goal of the infantry to make the other side duck so that artillery could do its job, or to take out individuals? Might be something to consider. Might be inconsequential to your core question on odds of being hit by small arms fire.

 

I'm less worried about just small arms hits, vs. hit by anything (small arms, emplacements, mortars, artillery) that were part of the defensive barrage.

 

What is interesting, is at Iwo Jima, the Japanese were highly tactical and let the marines hit the beach an move in a quite a bit before opening fire, and they had created intersecting fields of machine gun fire from their positions that were way more lethal than any other beach landing defense.  

[Cancer]

My memory is that Tarawa is well documented and as a more compact operation the casualty rate is both higher and better known, but I need to get to the library to confirm all that.

[pinecone]

The DoD keeps real good statistics on this, though they might not be willing to share them. Consider that Somebody needs to figure the number of body bags needed, medical resources etc. 10% sounds about right for a beach landing, consider that Decimation litteraly means "10% loses" to put that in context.

 

Morale does have an impact on Artillery fire casaulties ..sorta. Veteran units suffer less loses, that seems to be because the "best" way to get injured is to stand up. Veterans know this and "wait out" bombardments better. Sadly it might be because the sorts of folks who panic, and try to run, are the first to die, leaving the "calmer" troops to become veterans.

 

But check the DoD web sites.....

[RDU Neil]

5 hours ago, Cancer said:

My memory is that Tarawa is well documented and as a more compact operation the casualty rate is both higher and better known, but I need to get to the library to confirm all that.

 

The Wikipedia page is certainly very thorough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa

[Cancer]

Tarawa was bloody because it was the first US landing attempt against an actively contested, fortified position.  Consequently, no one on the US side knew what they were doing, and this led to bad decisions all along the command chain, up to and including the highest levels ... and the Marines paid the price.  OTOH, that also makes Tarawa a possibly atypical case, because a number of changes were made after the operation, changes in more or less every aspect of the horrendously difficult task of amphibious assault on an enemy-held position, and no subsequent operation was as messed up from the get-go as Tarawa.  Those changes came after considerable study.

 

Appendices C and I here give you a quantitative handle on Marine casualties and Japanese heavy weapons in the defenses, but not ammunition expenditures.

 

Japanese casualties in the operation are pathologically high, because in the late stages at least, a number of Japanese suicided rather than let themselves be captured (something that went on through the whole Pacific theatre).  So you can't use their losses as inputs to a general rule.