Guide to Logistics
- Thread starter Saphroneth
- Start date
Saphroneth
Banned
Don't think so, but that's a great topic - aging of ammunition alone has killed multiple RN battleships, I know that. (Prince of Wales and Repulse, their AA ammo from Singapore stocks had deteriorated in the tropical climate.)
Driftless
Donor
The ageing of powder was a topic of concern with the Iowa turret explosion as well, though there are about 447 other causal theories at work there as well.
Think of the handling of gunpowder in the black powder era. Powder that's gotten wet and dried a few times is.... unreliable... old powder, even if stored reasonably well is un-stable.
I was especially thinking of the ageing and spoilage of foodstuffs from both weather, storage and handling, and time. i.e. Fresh meat and produce has a very short shelf-life, particularly in temperatures above 40* F/ 4.4* C
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Would anyone be interested in analysis of logistics in non-European types of armies(i.e. Middle-Age/Modern Chinese/Korean armies)?
I don't know that much about Japan so somebody could help me up on this.
I don't know that much about Japan so somebody could help me up on this.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
Lack of friendly air cover and air recon killed Force Z not ageing or spoiled Ammo - after all a 3rd of the 88 aircraft that attacked them were damaged
Repulse had issues with her ready use 2 pounder ammo in the tropical climate - I wasn't aware of shore based stocks being affected though?
Ammunition quality control has affected battles in the past not sure if you have covered this
Main gun ammo for the RN at Jutland
German Ammunition in WW2 ie Graf Spee vs Exeter of 11 hit scored on the British ship only 2 exploded
US Navy Torpedo's in WW2
Driftless
Donor
I would think that should be of special interest to any of the pre-1900 folks. There should be some parallels that can be dran between armies from various cultures.
I just came across this thread today and read through it; a really fascinating thread with lots of useful material. Subscribed!
As a professional truck driver, I deal in civilian logistics everyday moving freight around the country, so I have a professional interest here.
BTW one idea for a topic: corruption. How often do we see supplies pilfered for personal gain or lost due to theft? Corruption can also affect readiness; the RN suffered readiness and supply issues due to corruption during the ARW.
As a professional truck driver, I deal in civilian logistics everyday moving freight around the country, so I have a professional interest here.
BTW one idea for a topic: corruption. How often do we see supplies pilfered for personal gain or lost due to theft? Corruption can also affect readiness; the RN suffered readiness and supply issues due to corruption during the ARW.
Driftless
Donor
Corruption that cause loss can be/is a real problem, in part dependent on the nature of the commodity involved. There's also it's near relative: OS&D (overs, shorts, and damages). i.e. the well-trained French mountain troops at Narvik 1940, had their weapons & skis, but lacked the majority of the bindings for the skis, rendering them temporarily useless. If you don't get the items you need, but you get something else, it may not do you any good - a rose is just another weed if it is in the middle of a corn field.....
Interesting idea. a few years ago when in the Ropkey military vehicle collection I asked about cracks on the turret of a restored Japanese tank. They were not characteristic of hits from cannon ammunition. The chief mechanic told me they had tried to weld similar cracks on another Japanese tank they were restoring & failed. Samples were sent to metals lab & the experts there interpreted the test results as indicating "cast iron".
There are several hypothesis proposed as to why a Japanese tank turret might be made of brittle low grade metal, but one proposed leads back to a foundry cheating on contract specs & getting away with casting low quality stuff vs high strength steel.
Saphroneth
Banned
Caveat Emptor - friction and losses in the chain of supply
So, you've done everything right (or, as close to right as you can manage). You've got just the right amount of ammunition - enough, at least. Everyone has a gun, and there's a couple of dozen spares too. And you've got all the supporting material, all the war machines, and certainly all the winter clothes.
So why is everything going wrong?
Well, just because you've ordered it doesn't mean you get it.
The reasons for this effect are many, varied, and complicated - and there's no quick solution.
Perhaps you're contracting out, and the company hired to build your tungsten-tipped anti-tank rounds has skimped a little on the tungsten because that way they can stretch what they have further - after all, it's nearly as good, right?
Or maybe they're selling the excess tungsten on the side. Or perhaps they just plain got the formula wrong.
One rather more dramatic example from the American Revolutionary War was the contractors supplying the fledgeling US army who mixed in sand to the flour being delivered - because that bulked it out and meant they could get more money for the actual flour.
How do you catch this kind of thing?
Inspections.
You can do every-unit inspections or random-sample inspections.
Every-unit inspections means looking at everything produced to make sure it is what it says it is - this is feasible for, say, ships (builder's trials are one example) but not really possible for ammunition. It's also often quite manpower intensive.
Random-sample inspections mean you select one or two units in a given batch and test them - meaning, say, firing an anti-tank round at a tank and seeing how well it does.
This *should* - eventually - catch any cases of systematic mis-production... if the selection is truly random. But if the company is paying off the inspector on the sly to fudge things a bit, then it can pass unnoticed for a long time and do a lot of damage.
A related problem is when equipment doesn't live up to the specifications, for whatever reason. This plagued rifles in the American Civil War, for perhaps an unusual reason - the guns fitted specifications, but the gunpowder fouling them meant that residue built up on the insides of the guns... meaning that the bore shrank slightly with use.
The solution was to use slightly sub-caliber rounds (.57 instead of .58) which fit more easily, but which did bad things to the accuracy of the weapons compared to a well-cleaned rifle using .58.
What about once the equipment's produced? Well, you have to deal with graft and corruption. It was incredibly common - and still is, indeed - for quartermasters in an army to sell off some of their stock for a bit of money on the side. This can be anything from clothes to ammunition and even rifles, and it means that what you ordered is not what you get... so you have to get a surplus, which adds to the cost and difficulty of it all.
Or there's the problem of someone who should be getting supplies taking a little extra - the oft-mentioned example is the German rear area soldiers who took more than their fair share of winter clothing in 1941. This can up the required supplies quite drastically, and usually results in those with least clout (those who get last pick) being dramatically under-equipped.
The worst thing about this problem is that, being by definition secret, it can go unnoticed for years. The most dramatic example is discovering that a regiment of troops is actually only half the size it says it is in the pay books, and that the commander's been collecting the pay of the 'fake' soldiers - but the creeping, invisible degradation results in a general and quite invisible drop in quality that takes a vigorous commander - and a lot of time, effort and soldierly resentment - to sort out.
It's also been going on forever - a logistic corruption scandal is mentioned in Livy, and one can guess it's been going on since the first improperly tied stone axe.
So, you've done everything right (or, as close to right as you can manage). You've got just the right amount of ammunition - enough, at least. Everyone has a gun, and there's a couple of dozen spares too. And you've got all the supporting material, all the war machines, and certainly all the winter clothes.
So why is everything going wrong?
Well, just because you've ordered it doesn't mean you get it.
The reasons for this effect are many, varied, and complicated - and there's no quick solution.
Perhaps you're contracting out, and the company hired to build your tungsten-tipped anti-tank rounds has skimped a little on the tungsten because that way they can stretch what they have further - after all, it's nearly as good, right?
Or maybe they're selling the excess tungsten on the side. Or perhaps they just plain got the formula wrong.
One rather more dramatic example from the American Revolutionary War was the contractors supplying the fledgeling US army who mixed in sand to the flour being delivered - because that bulked it out and meant they could get more money for the actual flour.
How do you catch this kind of thing?
Inspections.
You can do every-unit inspections or random-sample inspections.
Every-unit inspections means looking at everything produced to make sure it is what it says it is - this is feasible for, say, ships (builder's trials are one example) but not really possible for ammunition. It's also often quite manpower intensive.
Random-sample inspections mean you select one or two units in a given batch and test them - meaning, say, firing an anti-tank round at a tank and seeing how well it does.
This *should* - eventually - catch any cases of systematic mis-production... if the selection is truly random. But if the company is paying off the inspector on the sly to fudge things a bit, then it can pass unnoticed for a long time and do a lot of damage.
A related problem is when equipment doesn't live up to the specifications, for whatever reason. This plagued rifles in the American Civil War, for perhaps an unusual reason - the guns fitted specifications, but the gunpowder fouling them meant that residue built up on the insides of the guns... meaning that the bore shrank slightly with use.
The solution was to use slightly sub-caliber rounds (.57 instead of .58) which fit more easily, but which did bad things to the accuracy of the weapons compared to a well-cleaned rifle using .58.
What about once the equipment's produced? Well, you have to deal with graft and corruption. It was incredibly common - and still is, indeed - for quartermasters in an army to sell off some of their stock for a bit of money on the side. This can be anything from clothes to ammunition and even rifles, and it means that what you ordered is not what you get... so you have to get a surplus, which adds to the cost and difficulty of it all.
Or there's the problem of someone who should be getting supplies taking a little extra - the oft-mentioned example is the German rear area soldiers who took more than their fair share of winter clothing in 1941. This can up the required supplies quite drastically, and usually results in those with least clout (those who get last pick) being dramatically under-equipped.
The worst thing about this problem is that, being by definition secret, it can go unnoticed for years. The most dramatic example is discovering that a regiment of troops is actually only half the size it says it is in the pay books, and that the commander's been collecting the pay of the 'fake' soldiers - but the creeping, invisible degradation results in a general and quite invisible drop in quality that takes a vigorous commander - and a lot of time, effort and soldierly resentment - to sort out.
It's also been going on forever - a logistic corruption scandal is mentioned in Livy, and one can guess it's been going on since the first improperly tied stone axe.
WW2 Torpedoes
If I recall correctly from Astrodragon's Whale has Wings thread, there were considerable problems with some of the USN's torpedo suppliers during WW2...
Saphroneth
Banned
If I recall correctly from Astrodragon's Whale has Wings thread, there were considerable problems with some of the USN's torpedo suppliers during WW2...
Yes, the manufacturers making extravagant claims that weren't borne out by performance. Same thing happened with German torpedo manufacturers - IIRC the Brits mostly escaped that problem in WW2, as did the Japanese. Italians I'm not sure of either way.
?
War in the West, looks like it might actually concern itself to some degree with volume of rail traffic, although the ease/speed with which railway lines can be repaired looks to me slightly suspect. And apparently bombing German fuel supplies/industry awarded an Allied player 'victory points', but didn't actually affect the German ability to produce/stockpile fuel until a recent round of patches/updates.
Though as far as 'logistics' in War in the Pacific - Admiral's Edition go... Most 'grand campaign' games reported that I've read so far seem to start with 'IJA' players taking the historical conquests, and large chunks of India and/or Australia, by mid-1942, with nary a problem with supply or having enough ships to move things around. (And several recent reports have featured games where Hawaii gets successfully invaded by mid-1942 too.)
And the fighting in Burma (and other areas) apparently never needs to stop for the Monsoon...
I've been browsing a number of 'after action reports' on the Matrix Games forum recently, and in some of them, at least for games of War in the East, apparently it's possible to supply an entire Army from one railway line, so long as said line is continuous back to one of a number of key locations.
War in the West, looks like it might actually concern itself to some degree with volume of rail traffic, although the ease/speed with which railway lines can be repaired looks to me slightly suspect. And apparently bombing German fuel supplies/industry awarded an Allied player 'victory points', but didn't actually affect the German ability to produce/stockpile fuel until a recent round of patches/updates.
Though as far as 'logistics' in War in the Pacific - Admiral's Edition go...
Most 'grand campaign' games reported that I've read so far seem to start with 'IJA' players taking the historical conquests, and large chunks of India and/or Australia, by mid-1942, with nary a problem with supply or having enough ships to move things around. (And several recent reports have featured games where Hawaii gets successfully invaded by mid-1942 too.) And the fighting in Burma (and other areas) apparently never needs to stop for the Monsoon...
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Saphroneth
Banned
I've been browsing a number of 'after action reports' on the Matrix Games forum recently, and in some of them, at least for games of War in the East, apparently it's possible to supply an entire Army from one railway line, so long as said line is continuous back to one of a number of key locations.
War in the West, looks like it might actually concern itself to some degree with volume of rail traffic, although the ease/speed with which railway lines can be repaired looks to me slightly suspect. And apparently bombing German fuel supplies/industry awarded an Allied player 'victory points', but didn't actually affect the German ability to produce/stockpile fuel until a recent round of patches/updates.
Though as far as 'logistics' in War in the Pacific - Admiral's Edition go...
And the fighting in Burma (and other areas) apparently never needs to stop for the Monsoon...
Yes, I do get that impression (though I've heard that future plans do have railway traffic limits intended) - it's just unusual for a grand strategy game to track supply to even the same granularity as WitE at all.
Bump
I like logistics threads. A thread that illustrates the situation (albeit accidentally) is this one here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=367134
The OP of that thread posits an entirely reasonable situation: the Allies have X materiel, the Germans have Y materiel, X>Y, so let's have a fight and the Allies win, right? Unfortunately the thread is being torn apart for logistical reasons: *how* do you get X to the area, *how* do you resupply it, and so on. I post it in this thread so that logistical problems pointed out may be reposted here as examples.
I like logistics threads. A thread that illustrates the situation (albeit accidentally) is this one here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=367134
The OP of that thread posits an entirely reasonable situation: the Allies have X materiel, the Germans have Y materiel, X>Y, so let's have a fight and the Allies win, right? Unfortunately the thread is being torn apart for logistical reasons: *how* do you get X to the area, *how* do you resupply it, and so on. I post it in this thread so that logistical problems pointed out may be reposted here as examples.