Why do Special Forces perform so poorly in carrying out infantry missions?

Griffith

Banned
I notice that special forces(who are always generally considered the cream of the crop in armies) fare so horribly when given tasks normally assigned to infantry. Here are examples:

1)Rangers in Italy in WW2
I read of cases in which Rangers were cut off from the main force and ended up taking shelter in buildings in certain places in Italy. When the German infantry assaulted these buildings these Rangers were using, the Rangers were quickly slaughtered and those who survived the assault were easily captured as POWs!

2)Special Forces Camp in Khe Sanh
I read of how when the NVA assaulted the special forces camp nearby Khe Sanh, in less than one hour the Special Forces camp was overrun with the many Green Berets killed in the battle and the remaining surviving one being forced to retreat from the camp to the main bases in Khe Sanh!

3)GCMA in Dien Bien Phu
For those of you who don't know the GCMA were the French equivalents of the Green Berets in the Indochina War. During the siege of Dien Bien Phu there were several GCMA units in the French fortress, When the counterattack to take back Eliane and Dominique took place, GCMA units were proved to be useless in the counterattack being among the first to be expelled from the counterattack. By the time the counterattacks took place the GCMA were all but knocked out of the battle.It is interesting to note that , the GCMA commando troops who were garrisoned near the main hospital, were seen as the most useless unit in the fortress by Pierre Langlais, the garrison's dynamic commander.

How come special forces perform so badly in basic infantry functions such as defending places or directly assaulting enemy positions?
 
Special forces tend to be light weight units without organic heavy weapons or artillery or anti tank equipment.
 
Why are boning knives so bad for chopping wood?

Though special forces are almost universally drawn from experienced infantry, they perform a completely different function. Special forces train different, organize differently, and are differently equipped than normal infantry. In particular, special forces are more used to deploying in small units (and so aren't great at coordinating large groups of people); special forces often aren't used to calling in fire support; and special forces seldom carry heavy weapons (heavy machine guns, anti-tank guns, mortars, etc). This makes them bad at, say, assaulting things head on or withstanding a head-on assault.
 
a Squad of Green Berets aren't supermen, and being attacked by 300 PAVN troops is pretty one sided.

But 101st Airborne worked fine as leg infantry at Bastogne
 

longsword14

Banned
Special does not mean superman. Also, context matters; as some poster above wrote they are usually light infantry which when caught by a heavier opponent can and will get mauled.
They are meant to do some specific set of tasks, hence the word special.
 
Standing and defending is not second-nature to special forces. Since SF operate in such small groups, their first response to large enemy forces is running away to fight another day. The are easily overwhelmed by large numbers of enemy if they don't have a pre-planned retreat route.
Also SF are supposed to be brighter than line infantry, which means that they lack the patience to sit in trenches while getting bombarded for days on end.
SF are more aggressive than line infantry leading them to take riskier missions deeper in enemy-held terrain.
 
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Using SF as ordinary leg infantry is a very poor use of highly trained troops. However they can on ocasion hold off superior numbers - e.g. the Battle of Mirbat.

This. It seems like they'd be effective at holding choke-points, in comparison to equal numbers of regular soldiers (and this seems to have been their role in WW-III planning).

Put them in a mobile and deep front of operations and they could be chewed up by artillery strikes or armored movements as easily as regulars.
 
Special forces are like a scalpel with standard infantry is like a hammer.
You wouldn't use a scalpel to hammer in nails would you?
 
Would any comparable sized infantry unit have done better in any of the above battles? Not sure but they all look like being hit by much larger and well organized opposition?
 
This is a bit simplistic, but here are some answers that touch on the complexities...

I notice that special forces(who are always generally considered the cream of the crop in armies) fare so horribly when given tasks normally assigned to infantry. Here are examples:

The Rangers were not special forces in the same way as the Green Berets, Spetznats, Delta Force, SAS, Brandenberg unit, ect... They they were organized and trained as specialized light infantry for raids, infiltration attacks, and assaults requiring light infantry among other missions. As such they were mostly sucessful. ie: the flanking attack decribed by Ingersoll in is book 'The Battle is the Payoff'; of the raid on the PW camp on Luzon that liberated the prisoners held there. No one with any sense or intelligence expects expects every military action attempted to be sucessfull. Failure is likely somewhere along the line.

1)Rangers in Italy in WW2
I read of cases in which Rangers were cut off from the main force and ended up taking shelter in buildings in certain places in Italy. When the German infantry assaulted these buildings these Rangers were using, the Rangers were quickly slaughtered and those who survived the assault were easily captured as POWs!

In this case the Ranger battalions were to infiltrate and size a lightly held outpost line & key ground (Cisterna town) to prepare a later advance by other US formations. Advances on their flanks by the 7th and 15th US Regiments were part of this operation. The failure lay in that the area had been reinforced by enemy mechanized forces. including the bulk of the Herman Goering Division & the 26th Panzer Division. A light screen of scattered infantry and reconissance units had been reinforced by a far larger unit including armor, artillery support from six or more artillery battalions, FLAK, pioneers, & other division/corps supporting units. 'Salerno' by Pond, and 'Rangers in World War II' by Black have accounts of this action and details about the German division battle groups that counter attacked the Rangers. The German units the Rangers and flanking regiments ran into had been prepared to counter attack the beachhead the previous days, but had the action postphoned.

... the Rangers were quickly slaughtered and those who survived the assault were easily captured as POWs!

I dont know who told you the Rangers were quickly slaughtered and captured, but they must have trolling you. It took the Germans some five hours to eliminate the Ranger battalions they surrounded. That is five hours for a German division with tanks & strong artillery support to kill & capture some 900 men who lacked tanks, AT guns, mines, & significant artillery support.

The leading battalions of the 7th & 15th Infantry were badly shot up the same morning, tho they had some extra support from companies of the 751st Tank Battalion & their regimental cannon companies. The core problem here is the US 3rd Infantry Division was attempting to attack a reinforced corps built around the HG & 26th Pz Divisions. This was aggravated in that neither 3d Div, the Corps command, or 5th Army understood the sector defense had been reinforced to corps strength.

2)Special Forces Camp in Khe Sanh
I read of how when the NVA assaulted the special forces camp nearby Khe Sanh, in less than one hour the Special Forces camp was overrun with the many Green Berets killed in the battle and the remaining surviving one being forced to retreat from the camp to the main bases in Khe Sanh!

Aside from the 300 NVA infantry there was heavy artillery and tank support. A company of PT76 light tanks participated. A Special forces team & a undersized company of Montanards should have been withdrawn much earlier.
 
Lancastrian laws of warfare are based on the square law: if one side has equivalent weapons and training, then the kill ratio goes as the square of the ratio of weapons to bear. If one side has twice the number, they shall inflect casualties at four times as great. If ratio is 10, then kill rate is 100 times as great. Give one side armor and artillery, the kill rate is even greater.

I was a LRRP in RVN (173 Airborne) and we did have very lopsided kill ratios but that was primarily due to surprise factor. Without gunship and artillery support, most recon teams would not have finished a tour.
 
Rangers at Pont Du Hoc and the subsequent assault on Maisy Battery (where the guns and AAA actually were!) - did a pretty good job as 'infantry' - particulalrly as their heaviest weapons at pont Du Hoc for 2 days was a small number of 'dismounted' Lewis guns manned by Royal Navy sailors from Swamped or grounded LCIs who had joined the 60 or so uninjured Rangers who defended the Site and blocked the MSR to the south for 2 days.

I'd say they did a pretty good job as infantry

In WW2 they were the equivalent of the British Army / Royal Marine Commando units and had been trained at the same places along side those units for the same sort of assault missions

But generally I would not give the Rangers, Paratroopers or Commandos the title 'Special Forces' - they were certainly (and still are) Elite Light Infantry and their members taken from the best of their armed services/Nations and these units are capable of conducting precise assault missions either on their own (ie raids) or in concert with other larger formations (ie D-Day) - particulalrly when the mission is critical to the success of a larger plan.

They can conduct missions that 'Special Forces' cannot do - like capture a town and hold the MSR till heavier units can relieve them or grab a Bridge

'Special Forces' for me are those capable of operating in small groups of perhaps 4-12 men behind enemy lines without recourse to a larger formation and capable of taken their own initiative in that sense they are recon troops and not assault troops their job is the gleaning of information not slaughtering hundreds of enemies with an M60 in each hand, epic upper body strength etc - although to become a very good recon Soldier you have to be a very good Soldier first - so it was often those units that became their nations initial Anti Terrorist units (ie SAS at Princes Gate / DevGru bumping off OBL etc) - so its not like they are not good at the soldiering bit!

Now generally 'Special Forces' have to operate light and often spend a long time without resupply - so they cannot bring lots of heavy weapons with them - so things like Food, fresh water and radio batteries are more important than Ammunition. So when they do get into a serious fight A) they are usually out numbered and B) they lack the ammunition and weapons for a protracted fight.

Its not their job to fight like infantry
 
Rangers at Pont Du Hoc and the subsequent assault on Maisy Battery (where the guns and AAA actually were!) - did a pretty good job as 'infantry' - ...

Precisely the sort of mission the Rangers were intended for. Commandos or Special Forces would have been suitable as well, but their technique would have been different. There were other missions more suitable for special forces or commando type units in that battle.
 
3)GCMA in Dien Bien Phu
For those of you who don't know the GCMA were the French equivalents of the Green Berets in the Indochina War. During the siege of Dien Bien Phu there were several GCMA units in the French fortress, When the counterattack to take back Eliane and Dominique took place, GCMA units were proved to be useless in the counterattack being among the first to be expelled from the counterattack. By the time the counterattacks took place the GCMA were all but knocked out of the battle.It is interesting to note that , the GCMA commando troops who were garrisoned near the main hospital, were seen as the most useless unit in the fortress by Pierre Langlais, the garrison's dynamic commander.

I'm not sure where a lot of this is coming from. I reviewed Fall and Windrow and, although my French is rusty, looked at Rocolle and Bergot for any discussion on whether the GCMA was involved in the counterattack on the 5 Hills and I found nothing. Nowhere in Fall or Windrow do they mention a combat role for the GCMA. Fall does discuss GC 8 and by extension the GCMA doing intelligence work and there is a short section on when Langlais has GC8 and GCMA moved out of their quarters near the hospital so it can be expanded. There were rather unceremoniously tossed out and Langlais does not have any love for them.
As others have stated, these type of units are designed for patrolling, reconnaissance, and ambushes; definitely don't have the training or equipment for major defensive operations or a combined arms counter-attack.
 
The way you train is the way you fight, no exceptions. Special forces tend to train in reconnaissance and small unit raiding in limited operations. If you wish to wish to use them as regular infantry then you need to train them as regular infantry with infantry tactics and integration to supporting arms. But then they won't be "special" any more.
 
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