After watching Braveheart the other day I got to thinking about what % of fighting soldiers end up as casualties in typical battles throughout history.

Battles such as in Braveheart where a hoard of soldiers clash with swords in a giant free for all.
Then I thought about the movie the patriot where formations of regular rifleman square off and shoot volleys at each other with cannon blowing each other up. To WW1 with GI's getting gunned down with machine guns and long range artillery lighting up the trenches.

I really could not find much information on google or wikipedia. Haphazardly while looking at a article on Alexander the Great I read that a typical trained greek phalanx formation might only experience a 5% casualty rate in battle. I thought this was rather low considering the chaos of ancient warfare.

6/21/2007 10:29:02 PM

Battle of Stalingrad was the biggest loss of life in any single battle I'm pretty sure (???) but I'm sure the % wasn't as high as some older battles...

I'm sure the WWI trench and no-mans land battles weren't as high %...

6/21/2007 10:44:52 PM

Greek phalanxes and Roman legions were way ahead of their time - that's why they dominated. Soldiers were well organised enough to take gatorade breaks and call for substitutions in the heat of the battle.

6/21/2007 10:56:27 PM

i thought gatorade was invented in the 1970's

6/21/2007 11:07:50 PM

It was actually invented by Young Frankenstein. True story!!

6/21/2007 11:53:31 PM

The Battle of Thermopylae had a 99.6% casualty rate

6/22/2007 12:10:45 AM

The British Army had 57,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI (including 19,000 deaths).

6/22/2007 12:59:26 AM

Casualty reates depend to some degree on the style of warfare. Historically, some of the highest casualty rates have come when technology takes a leap but tactics are slow to follow. In the Civil war for example, rifle boored muskets were a huge technological advance, capable of accurately firing from ranges of 500 to in some cases up to 1000 yards. Yet commanders continued using Nepoleonic tactics. It doesn't take a geneous to figure out what happens when men with these weapons lined up 150 yards apart and fired at eachother or made frontal assualts by marching on fixed positions without cover. WWI comanders encountered similar problems, made worse by the advent of the machinegun. In time, tactics catch up to technology and new technologies, ie) the tank, help to stabalize casualty rates.

There is a sort of ebb and flow to it.

6/22/2007 1:40:10 AM

Quote :

"Casualty reates depend to some degree on the style of warfare. Historically, some of the highest casualty rates have come when technology takes a leap but tactics are slow to follow."

Correct, however your post rapidly disintegrates from there.

An M16A2 is not reliably accurate in the hands of most riflemen past 500 yards, though that has as much to do with the 5.56mm round as it does the actual technology. A .58 cal Minie ball was stretching at 300 but with a competent shooter could reach 500. A thousand yards is a joke.

I won't start in on your grammar.

6/22/2007 9:42:38 AM

Quote :

"The British Army had 57,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI (including 19,000 deaths)."

There's a surprise. I would have thought that 57,000 casualties would include 57,000 deaths.

6/22/2007 10:30:36 AM

No, any time the word "casualty" is used it means killed or wounded. There is some debate about what counts as wounded in the casualty figures though. A guy with a shallow puncture wound from shrapnel is wounded and will recieve a Purple Heart, but he's not out of the fight like a guy whose leg is shattered.

6/22/2007 10:34:16 AM

Oh, I always equated casualty with death. I guess I've learned my 'new' word for the day.

6/22/2007 10:36:40 AM

There were some insanely high casualty rates in the Civil War. One Union regiment at Gettysburg lost 200 of 262 men in 15 minutes. Gettysburg had the highest casualty rate of any battle, as 30% of all soldiers involved were killed, wounded, captured, or missing.

One pet peeve of mine is the media seems to hone in on the deaths, rather than casualties today, when medical advances have made deaths a small portion of overall casualties.

Decent overview of casualties at http://www.answers.com/topic/casualties-1

Russia took some insane losses in WWII...around 7 million troops and 20 million civilians. German forces lost over 4 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Theatre_of_World_War_II


In simple terms, casualties historically increased as advances in weaponry preceded the evolution of tactics. Later advances in medicine and transportation helped reduce death rates.

6/22/2007 10:58:24 AM

^^Don't ever call me good for nothing . . .

Part of the confusion is because the media is reporting deaths in Iraq as casualties in Iraq. There have been roughly 26,000 service members wounded in Iraq on top of the 3,000 deaths. Now, I'm also not sure if it is 26,000 people who have been wounded, or 26,000 wounds nor am I sure what consitutes a wound. I've seen guys get Purple Hearts after they fell out of a vehicle during an IED attack.

^ At Cold Harbor in 1864, Union troops lost an estimated 10,000 dead or wounded in the space of 20 minutes.

[Edited on June 22, 2007 at 11:28 AM. Reason : my spelling is atrocious today!]

6/22/2007 11:03:07 AM

If you're interested in battles or campaigns with really high rates or really high death tolls, think about.....

Cold Harbor 1864
Antietam 1862
Gettysburg 1863
Gallipoli 1912?
Somme/Flanders/Verdun 1914 +/-
Iwo Jima 1945
Napoleons Egyptian and Russian campaigns 1810/1812??
Kursk 1943
Stalingrad 1942-42
Lenningrad 1941-44?
Allied bombing of Germans in WWII 1941-45
Winter battles around Kharkov 1942-43-44
Jap/Chinese war in late 1930's

You'll often note that some battles have high casualty tolls with relatively minor percentages, while other smaller battles (Alamo for example, which was a very small battle) have near 100% death tolls with minor number involved.

If you want a real shocker, look at death tolls for WWI. They'll have some big ass battle and one side may gain 1000 yards, but at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties, only to gain NO strategic advance (because they didn't have the speed to exploit a break through), only a minor change in position. If you want an excellent book read Heinz Guderians "Achtung Panzer" which details the start of mechanized warfare, which is almost exactly the same principles we use today in our military. It addresses many of the issues from WWI.

6/22/2007 11:32:02 AM

wwI had the greatest #'s and % lost...

actually most medieval battles had a relatively low % killed or injured as one side would capitulate or run before most could be slaughtered.... movies like to make us think huge numbers where killed in ancient battles but it just didn't happen...

6/22/2007 11:43:51 AM

dont forget all the fire bombing that we did to japan in wwii

6/22/2007 12:40:08 PM

Quote :

"capitulate"

what does that mean?

6/22/2007 1:29:48 PM

ca·pit·u·late /k?'p?t???le?t/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuh-pich-uh-leyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used without object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.
1. to surrender unconditionally or on stipulated terms.
2. to give up resistance: He finally capitulated and agreed to do the job my way.
[Origin: 1570–80; < ML capitulatus (ptp. of capitulare to draw up in sections), equiv. to capitul(um) section (lit., small head; see capitulum) + -atus -ate1]

—Related forms
ca·pit·u·lant, noun
ca·pit·u·la·tor, noun

6/22/2007 2:06:18 PM

Quote :

"movies like to make us think huge numbers where killed in ancient battles but it just didn't happen..."

Depends. The Romans supposedly lost around fifty thousand men at the Battle of Cannae. Hannibal lost a few thousand. That's more people than go to state, killed in a single battle.

Later pike clashes in 16th century could also be extremely deadly. The leader of one German unit reported that only a handful of the three hundred men he had commanded survived.

6/22/2007 2:40:32 PM

those are more 'killed to a man' battles than you would typically see through those era's

but i do agree

(it seems tho to me that the romans probably exaggerated their losses.... as in, desertion....?)

[Edited on June 22, 2007 at 2:47 PM. Reason : ?]

6/22/2007 2:45:25 PM

In a tough fight, even the victorious army could expect to lose 5-10% of its strength. In a rout, the other hand, the winners might hardly lose anyone.

It varied a lot, but we're still talking about thousands of men dying in one day most of the time.

6/22/2007 2:55:03 PM

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD

20,000 of 25,000 Romans killed - the rest were sold into slavery.

The attacking germans had very light casualties - this was used to support German nationalism into the 20th century.

6/22/2007 2:55:44 PM

in the year.....9

that's kind of funny

continue..

[Edited on June 22, 2007 at 2:58 PM. Reason : .]

6/22/2007 2:58:38 PM

Quote :

"There were some insanely high casualty rates in the Civil War."

True. Not to split hairs, but there, almost twice as many soldiers died from disease than actually being killed in action.

                                    <------------Casualties------------>
                                    [-----Deaths---]                             <-----Percentages-----> Duration 
Conflict                Enrolled    Combat   Other   Wounded     Total    Ratio  KIA    Dead   Casualty   Months  KIA/Month          
Revolutionary War          200.0    4,435   *          6,188      10,623   2.4   2.2%    2.2%     5.3%      80       55
War of 1812                286.0    2,260   *          4,505       6,765   3.0   0.8%    0.8%     2.4%      30       75
Mexican War                 78.7    1,733   11,550     4,152      17,435   1.3   2.2%   16.9%    22.2%      20       87
Civil War: Union         2,803.3  110,070  249,458   275,175     634,703   1.8   3.9%   12.8%    22.6%      48    2,293
           Confederate   1,064.2   74,524  124,000   137,000 +   335,524   1.7   7.0%   18.7%    31.5%      48    1,553
           Combined      3,867.5  184,594  373,458   412,175 +   970,227   1.7   4.8%   14.4%    25.1%      48    3,846
Spanish-American War       306.8      385    2,061     1,662       4,108   1.7   0.1%    0.8%     1.3%       4       96 &
World War I              4,743.8   53,513   63,195   204,002     320,710   2.7   1.1%    2.5%     6.8%      19    2,816
World War II            16,353.7  292,131  115,185   670,846   1,078,162   2.6   1.8%    2.5%     6.6%      44    6,639
Korean War               5,764.1   33,651   *        103,284     136,935   4.1   0.6%    0.6%     2.4%      37      909
Vietnam War              8,744.0   47,369   10,799   153,303     211,471   3.6   0.5%    0.7%     2.4%      90      526
Gulf War                 2,750.0      148      145       467 ^       760   2.6   0.0%    0.0%     0.0%       1      148

Combat deaths refers to troops killed in action or dead of wounds. 
Other includes deaths from disease, privation, and accidents, and includes losses among prisoners of war. Wounded excludes those who died of their wounds, who are included under Combat Deaths.
Ratio is the proportion of wounded in action to combat deaths. 

Note that the wounded figures do not include cases of disease. 
Under Percentages, KIA refers to the percent of those enrolled killed in action, 
Dead to the percent dead from all causes, 
and Casualty to the percent killed or injured. 

KIA/Month, killed in action per month, gives a fair indication of the intensity of combat

Notes:
* Non-battle deaths not known for these wars.
+ Confederate non-battle deaths and wounded estimated.
& Actually only six weeks of sustained combat.
^ There was only one month of combat.

6/22/2007 4:46:09 PM

Quote :

"It doesn't take a geneous to figure out what happens"

Apparently not.

6/23/2007 2:03:44 PM

Verdun (WWI)

French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities. The only real effect of the battle was the irrevocable wounding of both armies. No tactical or strategic advantage had been gained by either side.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/verdun.htm

6/23/2007 2:10:08 PM

Gallipoli was real bad for Australia and New Zealand. 11,000 died with 35,000 causalties when the total population of the countries was about 6 million combined.

6/23/2007 5:29:24 PM

Quote :

"in the year.....9"

what year did they call it back then?

6/23/2007 10:18:06 PM

^ 36 seasons after the baby jesus was born

6/24/2007 9:59:30 AM

^^ They would have been using the Jewish calendar.

6/25/2007 10:59:04 AM

interesting thread.
let me add to this by saying that %'s are likely higher when the war is about life and death or religion rather than land or politics.

6/25/2007 12:15:46 PM