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Logistics in WWII Online
by Ike

Expendible supplies are food, ammunition, and fuel. (Yes, I know it's a lotmore complicated, but I don't want to write a doctorate thesis on logistics.) All of the equipment that division needs must be carried from the factory to the soldier, whether the equipment is issued back in the home country or is shipped to the front as a replacement for lost or damaged equipment. Each and every item of equipment and supply from boot laces and gravy to four-engine bombers and the aviation gas to fly them has to be made somewhere. That somewhere is always a long way from the fighting. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to ignore the equipment part of logistics and talk only about the expendible supply part of logistics. I do this for two reasons: first, shipping equipment such as replacement trucks, weapons, tanks, and aircraft will most likely be done by the Rats' host computer with little or no player input required; second, what little player input needed will be in the nature of designating the line of supply or line of communications along which the equipment will be carried, and all the actual "work" involved will be done by AI (aka "Otto") drivers, supply ship captains, and railroad engineers. Not fun and no place for us.

Each infantry division of the World War II era consumed approximately 200 short tons (400,000 pounds) of expendible supplies per day in combat. Each typical armored division in this era consumed approximately 300 short tons (600,000 pounds) of expendibles per day in combat. Those weights included both the supplies themselves and the packaging and boxes in which it is shipped. As much as 20% of the weight shipped was in the packages and boxes. The examples that follow use Great Britain and the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) as the military context for the outline of logistics. The B.E.F. consisted of three infantry corps: I Corps of two infantry divisions; II and III Corps each of three infantry divisions, five divisions not formed into corps or assigned to one of the existing corps, and the 1st Armoured Division. There were a number of other regiments and formations smaller in size, but for logistics purposes, they were each attached to one of the Corps or Divisions of the B.E.F. Notice that, assuming average requirements for expendible supplies, the B.E.F. in combat would require 2,900 tons for its divisions each day: 5,800,000 pounds each and every day.

Once the supplies are produced, they are loaded onto railroad cars of the appropriate types, tanker cars for the fuel and boxcars and flatcars for the food and ammunition. At this point, the food and ammunition are packaged in cases and the cases are stacked in carload lots; these carloads are then loaded onto the cars for shipment. The train carries the supplies to a port, where they are unloaded into a military controlled warehouse, inventoried, and repackaged for shipment in cargo ships. Why don't they just load from the train onto the ships? Several reasons: one, the cargo handling facilities weren't sufficient to handle several train loads each day; two, the railroads had to unload and get the empty cars back to where they could earn revenue for the railroad; three, the supplies have to be repackaged because a carload for rail shipment is not appropriately sized or packed for shipment in the hold of a cargo ship. Once repackaged, the supplies are moved by a dockyard train to the docks, loaded onto a ship, and carried to a port on the Continent. If I recall correctly, Bordeaux was the principal port for the supplies of the B.E.F. in 1940. At the port, the ship is unloaded, the supplies taken to a warehouse once again, inventoried, and repackaged for shipment in railroad cars again. Loaded onto French trains this time, the supplies travel northward to the B.E.F.'s central depots, where it is -- surprise! -- unloaded into a warehouse, inventoried, and unpacked for shipment to the Corps and Division depots with the B.E.F. From the central Army depots, the supplies are carried by train or occasionally trucks to the Corps and Division depots, where it is -- yes, you guessed it: unloaded, inventoried, and repackaged for shipment to the Division and Brigade depots. Fortunately, at this point, the packing done at the factory is probably the correct one for distribution to the divisions and brigades; at least, the amounts required are some convenient multiple of the basic factory packaging. >From here to the division and brigade depots, wagons, carts, the occasional large truck, and once in a while a train were used to convey the supplies. At division, the supplies were unloaded, inventoried, and unpacked once again, then shipped to the brigade depots. From the brigades, typically the individual battalions would send either a convoy of trucks or of wagons and carts to carry their share of the supplies back to the battalion. At battalion, again typically, carts and wagons would carry the supplies to the line companies, and carts and "shank's mare" would carry them from the company to the platoon for distribution to the troops. Then the Corporal comes by, throws a 100-round box of rifle ammunition and a box of field rations at you and tells you to adjust your sights and dig your foxhole deeper.

Why didn't they use more trucks? The road network that Europe enjoys today did not exist then. For another, the militatry was thinking in terms of another war like World War I, with continuous front lines with fixed entrenchments and plenty of time in which to move supplies from the rear depots to the front lines. One other feature is that the forward battalions and regiments were not necessarily on a rail line or even a paved road. Oh, well, you don't need paved roads, you say? Quite right, if you have only one vehicle or even ten. How many two-ton trucks do you suppose it would take to carry 5,800,000 pounds of supplies each and every day to the front line battalions from the brigade depots? Having guessed that number to be quite large, now consider what that large number of trucks travelling over unpaved roads would do to the roads, even in dry weather. More than that, the fuel for that number of trucks would have greatly added to the logistics load. If that isn't enough, the military is one of the most conservative of social institutions and all the armies of Europe had been doing it that way for at least 70 years and they believed that way would continue to be effective in the next war. That they were wrong is the subject of many a learned thesis.

Now, what are the implications for WW2OL and for us as players? Reading between the lines of the many informative posts by Mo and other Rats, my guess is that the towns in the game will be the supply depots and the places where the unskilled or unlucky troopers who are killed will be spawned. In turn, this means each and every town is a valuable piece of real estate, providing that it has been designated as a supply point or depot. Country Commanders and Theater Commanders will designate the supply routes, the supply depots, and -- probably -- the replacement depots (a.k.a. re-spawn points). The supply routes will be the railroad and road lines. The depots will be the towns and cities. In order to advance the front, infantry will have to capture enemy towns or cities and our Commanders will have to designate the newly captured town or city as a supply point.

I know: very nice, Ike, but what about logistics? I'm getting there. First, each and every player squad should have as a part of its regular standing equipment a truck or several trucks. Enough trucks to carry the entire unit to wherever the battle will be and enough trucks to re-supply the unit once the battle begins. Notice, too, that in cases where the re-spawn point for any given unit is not the town or city they're fighting near, the same trucks can also pick up the replacements (respawned KIA's) and carry them back to the battlefield. Second, commanders at all levels -- but especially the battlefield commanders -- will have to be more sensitive to their lines of supply and communication than they are probably accustomed to in the various FPS games we're used to playing. Imagine, if you will, how a battle would go if you allowed the enemy to get dug in across the road that is your supply line. No replacements, no re-supply. Keep in mind that we will be operating under nearly real world individual weight constraints: in other words, no "infinite repeaters". We'll have to reload our rifles and machine guns a lot more frequently than in, say, "Duke Nukem". And we won't be able to carry 1,000,000 rounds of rifle ammunition each, either. The trucks that carry the player squads around should also carry extra ammunition for each and every type of weapon the unit has in it. I think, again from posts by the Rats, that those trucks will not disappear from the game just because the soldiers are no longer riding in them. Assuming that to be how it will be, those squad trucks will be the unit's immediate resupply point. Tactical commanders will have to make arrangements -- in other words, tell somebody to do it or do it themselves -- for the extra ammunition in the trucks to be distributed to the soldiers in the battle. There will be more mundane things to be done in WW2OL than you expect; logistics are two of them: driving trucks to supply depots for food and ammunition and carrying food and ammunition from the trucks to the troops in the field.