British WW1 Army organised and trained to todays standards

[jsb]

the Old Contempables, the Volunteers and the Conscripts of the Empire were trained and organised to todays standards? What a difference, what changes and saving in loss of life?

Its not the PBI that really matters if they are trained to UT standards that opens a few "intresting" posibilities...

- Early 1914 the Old Contempables staff will know what is happing and outmanoeuvre the Germans decisively....
- 14-18 UT trained RA will anyway win any counter battery gun duel so making the causalities very lopsided.
- By 1915 if they don't have UT morals just UT Training then what would the chemical defence training units have brewed up?

 

[YYJ]

This seems like a great question, and the more I think about it, the more it evaporates into specifics that depend on equipment not yet available. Combined arms tactics are the key to winning modern battles, but in 1914 the arms available to combine are infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Airpower and tanks are yet to make their influence felt. And Cavalry on horseback or vehicle can perform their role only if the battlefield allows.

Modern command and control relies on radio, without portable radios, everything is different from squad all the way up. Training every member of the BEF to be snake eating killers like the SAS is not economically practical or desirable. Line infantry is different than special forces in their role, not just their killyness.

As a Canadian I have been raised on the innovations that made the Canadian Corps so effective at Vimy Ridge, but those small unit tactics, artillery co-ordination and counter battery fire solutions were figured out on the battlefield by experience. They trained and practiced the hell out of that battle, but that battle was not something that would have been anticipated before the war.

 

[YYJ]

Part of the training involves unit composition, which comes back to equipment load out. A modern Canadian Infantry platoon (sticking with the Vimy Ridge analogy) has 3 rifle sections of 8-10 with 2 LMGs each and a heavy weapons section with another MG and a rocket launcher. That would translate into 7 Lewis guns per platoon in World War 1 terms, with no equivalent to the Carl Gustav. And a platoon of 24-30 riflemen/machine gunners plus support. That is much smaller than a World War 1 platoon, but it needs to be smaller because each squad needs to fit into an APC. And it can be smaller because of the firepower made possible by fully automatic rifles. And part of what makes it possible for the ammunition-hungry fully automatic weapons to not run out of ammo as quickly is that assault rifle rounds are lighter so a soldier can carry more.

 

[Gunnarnz]

- 14-18 UT trained RA will anyway win any counter battery gun duel so making the causalities very lopsided.

<puts artillery corps-belt on>
Well... they might. Thing to remember is that modern artillery is quite a different beast to WW1 artillery. Modern guns are individually more capable than what was available then (lighter, more mobile, more accurate) and fire better ammunition (longer-ranged, more effective, and again more accurate). It also makes use of equipment that simply was not available then (radios, fire control gear, location equipment, etc). Doctrine has evolved to match those capabilities.

With respect to the counter-battery duel, there are two components - conducting counter-battery fire, and avoiding it.

When conducting it, gunners with modern training won't be any better off than their counterparts. They're still using sound and flash ranging to locate targets, carrying out paper calculations to aim the guns, using runners to communicate that information to the gun positions, and then firing WW1 shells from WW1 weapons. I don't see how any of that could be meaningfully improved simply by different training.

When avoiding it, the main difference would be "shoot and scoot" tactics - that is, displace immediately after completing a fire mission to avoid counter-battery fire. That may have an effect, but it might not be much of one. Consider:
WW1 guns firing WW1 shells with WW1 fire-control and targeting are less effective than their modern equivalents, so they must fire more shells to achieve the same effects. This takes longer, meaning they must remain in place longer to fire them and giving the enemy longer to respond. Once they begin displacing, this takes longer too - the guns are heavier and more awkward, they're usually using horses or trucks that are (by modern standards) weak and underpowered, and there's more of everything to move across terrain that is more difficult, so they can travel a shorter distance in the same time. The enemy will be firing more guns at them and less accurately, so the counter-battery fire will be spread over a larger area. An enemy who is sufficiently quick to respond might still catch them before they left the area.

Even once they've successfully dodged counter-battery fire, the disruption isn't over. I'm assuming they have pre-surveyed positions available to displace to which allow them to cover their assigned areas, but it will still take time to get the guns set up there and surveyed in so they can fire accurately. Then you have to establish communications again - tell your headquarters and FOs where you've gone, so that calls for fire can get to you and you can receive supplies of ammo and food, tell your neighbours so they don't get alarmed by sudden loud noises, etc etc. In any event, the gun battery is out of action for a while even if the enemy fire hits nothing but mud. And again, none of this process will speed up simply with different training.

So yes, modern training might make a difference in the counter-battery duel. But it might not be a huge one, and I doubt it would produce "very lopsided" casualty rates.

And part of what makes it possible for the ammunition-hungry fully automatic weapons to not run out of ammo as quickly is that assault rifle rounds are lighter so a soldier can carry more.

And also that the supplies are being moved by all-terrain motorised transports such as lorries. Resupplies of first-line ammo are often carried out quickly, thanks to radios and motorisation, and in quantities that are not practical in WW1. The standard WW1 supply line, lest we forget, was taking ammo off a train, moving it to a forward distribution point by horse-drawn cart, moving it further forward via pack mules, and then often grabbing a bunch of soldiers to carry it the last mile or so.

 

[StevoJH]

Modern Movement drills would presumable be better then what they were using 100 years ago, however the big thing that would prevent modern tactics from being implemented beyond the squad or platoon level would be the lack of radio's. They were just to large to be practical down to that level back then.

A quick google search shows that the first two-way radios were introduced in 1923 by Victoria Police in Australia, they were so large they took up half the police car.

It wasn't until the late 1930's a man-portable version was developed in Canada.

 

[Dorknought]

In 1914, Tirpitz viewed the BEF as an army of sergeants. They were well trained and expert marksmen. German units thought they were slaughtered by machine guns when they were only up against rapid firing BEF riflemen.

Perhaps you don't need to reach forward a century. A 1914 Battalion commander would be completely bewildered and lost on the 1918 frontline but a 1918 Battalion commander would recognise many of the battlefield attributes evident today; fire and manoeuvre, supply, logistics, evacuating casualties, air support, cooperation and supply, radio comms etc. By the middle of 1918, the Allies had worked out the combined arms way of the future. Use technology to protect the infantry so they can secure the objective. When battalions were depleted, Gen Monash's point of view was that it didn't matter how many riflemen a Battalion had as long as it had a full complement of 38 Lewis Gunners.

 

[aaronupright]

The modern British Army is CI focused. While post 2014 they have once again emphasized peer conflict, the Army as a whole is still readjusting,
A whole generation of NCO and field grade officers have no real institutional experience of modern peer battle, except for half remembered basic and academy classes.
Training 1914 guys on 2019 lines promises to be a shitshow.

 

[yulzari]

Trivia but,
StevoJH WW1 would have used wireless telegraphy rather than radio telephony so they could have at least vehicle mounted sets. They certainly had aeroplane mounted sets. Platoon or even company infantry sets were not yet practical as they would need virtually line of sight in a portable size. Even in WW2 the sets used by SOE made a very heavy small suitcase and still needed many yards of antennae even as W/T not R/T. No microphone so no 'Ello Lurndon, this is Naight'awk'.

Dorknought, the rifle fire identified as machine gun fire turned out to be a touch of hyperbole traced back to a prisoner interrogation where the prisoner was trying to say that the rifle fire was as if it were machine gun fire, not misidentified as such. But the story had it's own legs.

Our (in my case) grandfathers were just as able as us. Often it seems more so and they developed training just as good as is today's but for the situations of their day. Swap the training and you have two sets of armed mobs.

 

[Fred the Great]

I think the greatest difference could be if we believe - as many militaries do - in the problem of soldiers not wanting to kill their enemies. A body of research showed a majority of soldiers aimed to miss, and this led to a theory on killogy that saw modern militaries seek to make the act more instinctive through modified training. Targets were made to better resemble enemy soldiers, for example, and shooting was conducted at varying ranges and with shorter time spans.

Beyond this, I wouldn’t underestimate the advances generally in the training of soldiers, and I certainly wouldn’t pay too much attention to this nonsense about how they’re only trained for COIN these days and not “real” wars.

 

[StevoJH]

Trivia but,
StevoJH WW1 would have used wireless telegraphy rather than radio telephony so they could have at least vehicle mounted sets. They certainly had aeroplane mounted sets. Platoon or even company infantry sets were not yet practical as they would need virtually line of sight in a portable size. Even in WW2 the sets used by SOE made a very heavy small suitcase and still needed many yards of antennae even as W/T not R/T. No microphone so no 'Ello Lurndon, this is Naight'awk'.

Dorknought, the rifle fire identified as machine gun fire turned out to be a touch of hyperbole traced back to a prisoner interrogation where the prisoner was trying to say that the rifle fire was as if it were machine gun fire, not misidentified as such. But the story had it's own legs.

Our (in my case) grandfathers were just as able as us. Often it seems more so and they developed training just as good as is today's but for the situations of their day. Swap the training and you have two sets of armed mobs.

Sure, i’m aware of that, but were they transmitter only? Or transmitter/receiver?

If the first, then it doesn’t really solve the problems. Today’s tactics work because troops at the platoon level or lower can call for support from the tiers above at short notice, this was just not possible back then.