On Wed 23 Jul, John Erickson wrote:
> Chris,
> Good point about the numbers, but what if you compared the numbers
> for just one battle. I mean one day of one battle. How many men were one
> the same battlefield on the same day. I figure since you have these stats
> handy maybe you can look up some others...;)
> John
> ----> Felt the need to throw some stats out:
> (this is from the U.S. Army's center for historical research
> http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/default.htm)
>
> BRANCH OF NUMBER BATTLE OTHER WOUNDS
> SERVICE SERVING DEATHS DEATHS NOT MORTAL
>
> CIVIL WAR (UNION FORCES ONLY)
> 1861-1865
> TOTAL 2,213,363 140,414 224,097 281,881
>
> ARMY 2,128,948 D/ 138,154 221,374 280,040
> NAVY - 2,112 2,411 1,710
> MARINES 84,415 148 312 131
>
> WORLD WAR I
> 1917-1918
> TOTAL 4,734,991 53,402 63,114 204,002
>
> ARMY 4,057,101 50,510 55,868 19,366
> NAVY 599,051 431 6,856 819
> MARINES 78,839 2,461 390 9,520
>
> WORLD WAR II
> 1941-1946
> TOTAL 16,112,566 291,557 113,842 671,846
> ARMY 11,260,000 234,874 83,400 565,861
> NAVY 4,183,466 36,950 25,664 37,778
> MARINES 669,100 19,733 4,778 68,207
>
> >From this, you might conclude that a million points shouldn't
> mean squat to the imperium, orks, squats, etc. Remember
> that this is the U.S ONLY, and that even in WW2 the population
> of the U.S. was far less than it is today. An entire world can
> generate a staggering number of troops. War Machines would
> be less common, but still the "thousand gun" infantry barrage
> was a reality on the WW2 Russian front. You want epic...
> Most of our battles, even in epic, are skirmishes. That
> 10,000 point batle I did several years back was hard to do
> even with three people per side. Now imagine a _Real_
> Imperial guard offensive. Infantry, tanks, artillery - marines would
> not even be a drop in the bucket on this scale, so when
> mixing them, think of them as elite special forces/commandos
> /stiffening troops. I can see titans being concentrated
> into groups within a few mile front, and used to break through
> >enemy lines like tanks were in our real wars.
> I think with some historical numbers, maybe a new
> perspective on what is "realistic" and "likely" can be gained. Even with
> 1000 chapters of 1000 marines, that's 1 million marines total. Not much
> to cover a whole galaxy. They're the rapid reaction force, kinda like
> marines today (and airborne and the other rangers). It's the IG and
> the TL's who fight the meat grinder wars and defend whole planets.
> Orks, 'Nids, Chaos -there's a lot of 'em out there.
> Let me know if you get anything out of this...
>
> Chris Miller
>
>
>
What I would be interested in doing, if I had the time, is to
inventing rules for a game of epic on a much larger scale. So
that I could play games were the battle represented 100 titans,
thousands of IG and marines etc. Of course the figures would
have to be considerably smaller.
This is however only a dream while I am doing masters.
--
Sean Smith
Home - Seans_at_...
--
Received on Wed Jul 23 1997 - 02:41:37 UTC