Urban warfare
Encyclopedia
Urban warfare is combat
conducted in urban area
s such as town
s and cities
. Urban combat is very different from combat in the open at both the operational and tactical
level. Complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilian
s and the complexity of the urban terrain
.
Some civilians may be difficult to distinguish from combatants such as armed militia
s and gangs, and particularly individuals who are simply trying to protect their homes from attackers. Tactics are complicated by a three-dimensional
environment, limited fields of view
and fire because of buildings, enhanced concealment and cover for defenders, below ground infrastructure, and the ease of placement of booby trap
s and sniper
s.
The United States military
term for urban warfare is UO an abbreviation for urban operations. The previously used US military term MOUT, an abbreviation for military operations in urban terrain, has been replaced by UO, although the term MOUT Site is still in use.
The British military terms are OBUA (operations in built-up areas), FIBUA (fighting in built-up areas), or sometimes (colloquially) FISH (fighting in someone's house), or FISH and CHIPS (fighting in someone's house and causing havoc in people's streets).. A lesser known term is used by the S.A.S. for their specialist first strike and reconnaissance team, known as FART (First Assault Reconnaissance Team).
The term FOFO (fighting in fortified objectives) refers to clearing enemy personnel from narrow and entrenched places like bunkers, trenches and strongholds; the dismantling of mines and wires; and the securing of footholds in enemy areas.
Israel Defense Forces
calls urban warfare לש"ב , a Hebrew acronym for warfare on urban terrain. LASHAB in the IDF includes large-scale tactics (such as utilization of heavy armored personnel carriers, armored bulldozer
s, UAVs for intelligence, etc.), CQB training for fighting forces (how a small team of infantry soldiers should fight in close and build spaces). IDF's LASHAB was developed mainly in recent decades, after Operation Peace for Galilee (1982) included urban warfare in Beirut
and Lebanese villages, and was further developed during the Second Intifada (2000–2005) in which IDF soldiers entered and engaged in fighting in Palestinian
cities, villages and refugee camps. The IDF has a special large and advanced facility for training soldiers and units in urban warfare.
Urban military operations in World War II
often relied on large quantities of artillery
fire and air support varying from ground attack fighters to heavy bombers. In some particularly vicious urban warfare operations such as Stalingrad
and Warsaw
, all weapons were used irrespective of their consequences.
However, when liberating occupied territory some restraint was often applied, particularly in urban settings. For example, Canadian operations
in both Ortona
and Groningen
avoided the use of artillery altogether to spare civilians and buildings, and during the Battle of Manila in 1945, General MacArthur initially placed a ban on artillery and air strikes to save civilian lives.
Armies are bound by laws of war
governing military necessity
to the amount of force which can be applied when attacking an area where there are known to be civilians. Until the 1970s this was covered by customary law and IV Hague Convention "The Laws and Customs of War on Land" of 1907 and specifically articles 25–29. This has since been supplemented by the "Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International
and Non-International
Armed Conflicts."
Sometimes distinction
and proportionality
, as in the case of the Canadians in Ortona
, causes the attacking force to restrain from using all the force they could when attacking a city. In other cases, such as the Battle of Stalingrad
and the Battle of Berlin
, both armies considered evacuating civilians only to find it impractical.
When Russia
n forces attacked Grozny
in 1999, large amounts of artillery fire were used. The Russian Army
handled the issue of civilian casualties by warning the inhabitants that they were going to launch an all-out assault on Grozny
and requested that all civilians leave the city before the start of the artillery bombardment
.
Fighting in an urban environment can offer some advantages to a weaker defending force or to guerrilla fighters through ambush-induced attrition losses. The attacking army must account for three dimensions more often, and consequently expend greater amounts of manpower in order to secure a myriad of structures, and mountains of rubble.
Ferroconcrete structures will be ruined by heavy bombardment, but it is very difficult to demolish such a building totally when it is well defended. Soviet forces had to fight room by room; while defending the Red October Steel Factory during the Battle of Stalingrad, and in 1945, during the race
to capture the Reichstag; despite heavy bombardment with artillery at point blank range (including 203 mm howitzers).
It is also difficult to destroy underground or heavily fortified structures such as bunker
s and utility tunnels; during the Battle of Budapest
in 1944 fighting broke out in the sewers, as both Axis and Soviet troops used them for troops movement.
The characteristics of an average city include tall buildings, narrow alleys, sewage
tunnels and possibly a subway
system. Defenders may have the advantage of detailed local knowledge of the area, right down to the layout inside of buildings and means of travel not shown on maps.
The buildings can provide excellent sniping posts while alleys and rubble-filled streets are ideal for planting booby trap
s. Defenders can move from one part of the city to another undetected using underground tunnels and spring ambush
es.
Meanwhile, the attackers tend to become more exposed than the defender as they must use the open streets more often, unfamiliar with the defenders' secret and hidden routes. During a house to house search the attacker is often also exposed on the streets.
was the US Army's first major encounter with urban warfare. It occurred in September 1846 when the US Army under Zachary Taylor invaded the town. The US Army had no prior training in urban warfare and the Mexican defenders hid on rooftops, shot through loopholes, and stationed cannons in the middle of the city's streets. The houses at Monterrey were made of thick adobe, strong double doors, and few windows. The rooftops were lined with a two foot tall wall that acted as a parapet for the defending soldiers. Each home was a fort unto itself.
On September 21, 1846 the US Army which included some of its best soldiers, recent West Point graduates, marched down the city's streets and were cut down by the Mexican defenders. They could not see the men hidden behind walls, loopholes, or rooftops. They tried to march straight down the street until the intense fire drove them to hide in adjacent buildings. Taylor tried to move artillery into the city but it could not hit the well-hidden defenders any better than the US soldiers could. Two days later the US again assaulted the city from two sides and this time they fought differently.
Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the 21st, General William Jenkins Worth listened to his Texan advisers. These men had fought in Mexican cities before at the Battle of Mier
in 1842 and the Battle of Bexar
in 1835. They understood that the army needed to "mouse hole" through each house and root out the defenders in close combat.
Worth's men used pick axes to chip holes in the adobe walls of the homes, or sometimes in the roof of the house from where the soldiers could drop in. Or they used ladders to climb to the top of a rooftop and assault the Mexican defenders in hand to hand combat. The typical assault on a home would include one man who would run to the door of the house and chip the door away with a pick axe while under covering fire. Once the door showed signs of weakening, 3-4 other soldiers would run to the door and barge in with the revolvers blazing. Worth lost few men on the 23rd using these new urban warfare techniques.
s of six to eight men, closely supported by field artillery. These were tactical units which were able to apply the tactics of house to house fighting that the Soviets had been forced to develop and refine at each Festungsstadt (fortress city) they had encountered from Stalingrad to Berlin.
The Germans tactics used for the urban warfare that took place in Berlin was dictated by three considerations. These were: the experience that the Germans had gained during five years of war; the physical characteristics of Berlin; and the tactics used by the Soviets.
Most of the central districts of Berlin consist of city blocks with straight wide roads with several waterways, parks and large railway marshalling yards. It is predominantly flat but there are some low hills like that of Kreuzberg that is 66m above sea level.
Much of the housing stock consisted of apartments blocks built in the second half of the 19th century. Most of those, thanks to housing regulations and few elevators, were five stories high, built around a courtyard which could be reached from the street through a corridor large enough to take a horse and cart or small trucks used to deliver coal.
In many places these apartment blocks were built around several courtyards, one behind the other, each one reached through the outer courtyards by a ground-level tunnel similar to that between the first courtyard and the road. The larger more expensive flat
s faced the street and the smaller less expensive ones could be found around the inner courtyards.
Just as the Soviets had learned a lot about urban warfare, so had the Germans. The Waffen-SS
did not use the makeshift barricades erected close to street corners, because these could be raked by artillery fire from guns firing over open sights further along the straight streets.
Instead they put snipers and machine guns on the upper floors and the roofs because the Soviet tanks could not elevate their guns that high and they put men armed with panzerfaust
s in cellar windows to ambush tanks as they moved down the streets. These tactics were quickly adopted by the Hitler Youth
and the First World War Volkssturm
veterans.
To counter these tactics the Soviets mounted sub-machine gunners on the tanks who sprayed every doorway and window, but this meant the tank could not traverse its turret quickly. The other solution was to rely on heavy howitzers (152 mm and 203 mm) firing over open sights to blast defended buildings and to use anti-aircraft guns against the German gunners on the higher floors.
Soviet combat groups started to move from house to house instead of directly down the streets. They moved through the apartments and cellars blasting holes through the walls
of adjacent buildings (for which the Soviets found abandoned German panzerfausts were very effective), while others fought across the roof tops and through the attics.
These tactics took the Germans lying in ambush for tanks in the flanks. Flamethrowers and grenades were very effective, but as the Berlin civilian population had not been evacuated these tactics inevitably killed many civilians.
most of the Chechen fighters had been trained in the Soviet armed forces. They were divided into combat groups consisting of 15 to 20 personnel, subdivided into three or four-man fire teams.
A fire team consisted of an antitank gunner, usually armed with a Russian made RPG-7
s or RPG-18
s, a machine gunner and a sniper. The team would be supported by ammunition runners and assistant gunners.
To destroy Russian armoured vehicles in Grozny
, five or six hunter-killer fire teams deployed at ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements. The snipers and machine gunners would pin down the supporting infantry while the antitank gunners would engage the armoured vehicle aiming at the top, rear and sides of vehicles.
Initially the Russians were taken by surprise. Their armoured columns that were supposed to take the city without difficulty as Soviet forces had taken Budapest in 1956 were decimated in fighting more reminiscent of the Battle of Budapest
in late 1944.
As in the Soviet assault on Berlin, as a short term measure they deployed self-propelled
anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23-4
and 2K22M) to engage the Chechen combat groups, as their tank's main gun did not have the elevation and depression to engage the fire teams and an armoured vehicle's machine gun could not suppress the fire of half a dozen different fire teams simultaneously.
In the long term the Russians brought in more infantry and began a systematic advance through the city, house by house and block by block, with dismounted Russian infantry moving in support of armour. In proactive moves the Russians started to set up ambush points of their own and then move armour towards them to lure the Chechen combat groups into ambushes.
As with the Soviets tank crews in Berlin in 1945, who attached industrially produced wire mesh screens (commonly confused with bedsprings in the west) to the outside of their turrets to reduce the damage done by German panzerfausts, some of the Russian armour was fitted quickly with a cage of wire mesh mounted some 25–30 centimetres away from the hull armor to defeat the shaped charges of the Chechen RPGs.
The term close-quarter battle refers to fighting methods within buildings, streets, narrow alleys and other places where visibility and maneuverability are limited.
Both close-quarters-battle (CQB) and urban operations (UO) are related to urban warfare, but while UO refers mainly to the macromanagement
factor (i.e. sending troops, using of heavy armoured fighting vehicle
s, battle management), CQB refers to the micromanagement
factor—namely: how a small squad of infantry troops should fight in urban environments and/or inside buildings in order to achieve its goals with minimal casualties.
As a doctrine, CQB concerns topics such as:
It should be noted that military CQB doctrine is different from police CQB doctrine, mainly because the military usually operates in hostile areas while the police operates within docile populations.
Armies that often engage in urban warfare operations may train most of their infantry in CQB doctrine.
Combat
Combat, or fighting, is a purposeful violent conflict meant to establish dominance over the opposition, or to terminate the opposition forever, or drive the opposition away from a location where it is not wanted or needed....
conducted in urban area
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
s such as town
Town
A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...
s and cities
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
. Urban combat is very different from combat in the open at both the operational and tactical
Military tactics
Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
level. Complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
s and the complexity of the urban terrain
Urban Terrain
Urban Terrain is a military term for the representation of the urban environment within the context of urban warfare. Urban terrain includes buildings, roads, highways, ports, rails, airports, subways, and sewage lines....
.
Some civilians may be difficult to distinguish from combatants such as armed militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
s and gangs, and particularly individuals who are simply trying to protect their homes from attackers. Tactics are complicated by a three-dimensional
Three-dimensional space
Three-dimensional space is a geometric 3-parameters model of the physical universe in which we live. These three dimensions are commonly called length, width, and depth , although any three directions can be chosen, provided that they do not lie in the same plane.In physics and mathematics, a...
environment, limited fields of view
Field of view
The field of view is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment....
and fire because of buildings, enhanced concealment and cover for defenders, below ground infrastructure, and the ease of placement of booby trap
Booby trap
A booby trap is a device designed to harm or surprise a person, unknowingly triggered by the presence or actions of the victim. As the word trap implies, they often have some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. However, in other cases the device is placed on busy roads or is...
s and sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
s.
Military terminology
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
term for urban warfare is UO an abbreviation for urban operations. The previously used US military term MOUT, an abbreviation for military operations in urban terrain, has been replaced by UO, although the term MOUT Site is still in use.
The British military terms are OBUA (operations in built-up areas), FIBUA (fighting in built-up areas), or sometimes (colloquially) FISH (fighting in someone's house), or FISH and CHIPS (fighting in someone's house and causing havoc in people's streets).. A lesser known term is used by the S.A.S. for their specialist first strike and reconnaissance team, known as FART (First Assault Reconnaissance Team).
The term FOFO (fighting in fortified objectives) refers to clearing enemy personnel from narrow and entrenched places like bunkers, trenches and strongholds; the dismantling of mines and wires; and the securing of footholds in enemy areas.
Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
calls urban warfare לש"ב , a Hebrew acronym for warfare on urban terrain. LASHAB in the IDF includes large-scale tactics (such as utilization of heavy armored personnel carriers, armored bulldozer
Armored bulldozer
The armored bulldozer is a basic tool of combat engineering. These combat engineering vehicles combine the earth moving capabilities of the bulldozer with armor which protects the vehicle and its operator in or near combat. Most are civilian bulldozers modified by addition of vehicle armor/military...
s, UAVs for intelligence, etc.), CQB training for fighting forces (how a small team of infantry soldiers should fight in close and build spaces). IDF's LASHAB was developed mainly in recent decades, after Operation Peace for Galilee (1982) included urban warfare in Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
and Lebanese villages, and was further developed during the Second Intifada (2000–2005) in which IDF soldiers entered and engaged in fighting in Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
cities, villages and refugee camps. The IDF has a special large and advanced facility for training soldiers and units in urban warfare.
Urban operations
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
often relied on large quantities of artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
fire and air support varying from ground attack fighters to heavy bombers. In some particularly vicious urban warfare operations such as Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
and Warsaw
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
, all weapons were used irrespective of their consequences.
However, when liberating occupied territory some restraint was often applied, particularly in urban settings. For example, Canadian operations
Military history of Canada during the Second World War
The Second World War officially began on September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declared war on the Nazi Third Reich on September 3, 1939...
in both Ortona
Battle of Ortona
The Battle of Ortona was a small, yet extremely fierce, battle fought between a battalion of German Fallschirmjäger from the German 1st Parachute Division under Generalleutnant Richard Heidrich, and assaulting Canadian forces from the 1st Canadian Infantry Division under Major General Chris Vokes...
and Groningen
Battle of Groningen
The Battle of Groningen took place during the final month of the Second World War, from April 13 to 16, 1945, in the city of Groningen between a mixture of German soldiers, Dutch and Belgian SS troops numbering 7,000 against the entire 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, though the whole division was...
avoided the use of artillery altogether to spare civilians and buildings, and during the Battle of Manila in 1945, General MacArthur initially placed a ban on artillery and air strikes to save civilian lives.
Armies are bound by laws of war
Laws of war
The law of war is a body of law concerning acceptable justifications to engage in war and the limits to acceptable wartime conduct...
governing military necessity
Military necessity
Military necessity, along with distinction, and proportionality, are three important principles of international humanitarian law governing the legal use of force in an armed conflict.-Attacks:...
to the amount of force which can be applied when attacking an area where there are known to be civilians. Until the 1970s this was covered by customary law and IV Hague Convention "The Laws and Customs of War on Land" of 1907 and specifically articles 25–29. This has since been supplemented by the "Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International
Protocol I
Protocol I is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts. It reaffirms the international laws of the original Geneva Conventions of 1949, but adds clarifications and new provisions to accommodate developments in modern...
and Non-International
Protocol II
Protocol II is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts. It defines certain international laws that strive to provide better protection for victims of internal armed conflicts that take place within the borders...
Armed Conflicts."
Sometimes distinction
Distinction (law)
Distinction is a principle under international humanitarian law governing the legal use of force in an armed conflict, whereby belligerents must distinguish between combatants and civilians...
and proportionality
Proportionality (law)
Proportionality is a principle in law which covers two distinct concepts. Within municipal law it is used to convey the idea that the punishment of an offender should fit the crime...
, as in the case of the Canadians in Ortona
Ortona
Ortona is a coastal town and municipality of the Province of Chieti in the Italian region of Abruzzo, with some 23,000 inhabitants.Ortona was the site of fierce fighting between German and Canadian forces during the Italian campaign in World War II...
, causes the attacking force to restrain from using all the force they could when attacking a city. In other cases, such as the Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
and the Battle of Berlin
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II....
, both armies considered evacuating civilians only to find it impractical.
When Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n forces attacked Grozny
Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)
The 1999–2000 battle of Grozny was the siege and assault of the Chechen capital Grozny by Russian forces, lasting from late 1999 to early 2000. The siege and fighting left the capital devastated...
in 1999, large amounts of artillery fire were used. The Russian Army
Russian Ground Forces
The Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. The formation of these forces posed economic challenges after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and required reforms to professionalize the force...
handled the issue of civilian casualties by warning the inhabitants that they were going to launch an all-out assault on Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
and requested that all civilians leave the city before the start of the artillery bombardment
Bombardment
A bombardment is an attack by artillery fire directed against fortifications, troops or towns and buildings.Prior to World War I the term term was only applied to the bombardment of defenceless or undefended objects, houses, public buildings, it was only loosely employed to describe artillery...
.
Fighting in an urban environment can offer some advantages to a weaker defending force or to guerrilla fighters through ambush-induced attrition losses. The attacking army must account for three dimensions more often, and consequently expend greater amounts of manpower in order to secure a myriad of structures, and mountains of rubble.
Ferroconcrete structures will be ruined by heavy bombardment, but it is very difficult to demolish such a building totally when it is well defended. Soviet forces had to fight room by room; while defending the Red October Steel Factory during the Battle of Stalingrad, and in 1945, during the race
Race to Berlin
The Race to Berlin refers mainly to the competition between two Soviet Marshals to be the first to enter Berlin during the final months of World War II....
to capture the Reichstag; despite heavy bombardment with artillery at point blank range (including 203 mm howitzers).
It is also difficult to destroy underground or heavily fortified structures such as bunker
Bunker
A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...
s and utility tunnels; during the Battle of Budapest
Battle of Budapest
The Siege of Budapest centered on the Hungarian capital city of Budapest. It was fought towards the end of World War II in Europe, during the Soviet Budapest Offensive. The siege started when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army...
in 1944 fighting broke out in the sewers, as both Axis and Soviet troops used them for troops movement.
Urban warfare tactics
Sewage
Sewage is water-carried waste, in solution or suspension, that is intended to be removed from a community. Also known as wastewater, it is more than 99% water and is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical constituents and the bacteriological organisms that it contains...
tunnels and possibly a subway
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
system. Defenders may have the advantage of detailed local knowledge of the area, right down to the layout inside of buildings and means of travel not shown on maps.
The buildings can provide excellent sniping posts while alleys and rubble-filled streets are ideal for planting booby trap
Booby trap
A booby trap is a device designed to harm or surprise a person, unknowingly triggered by the presence or actions of the victim. As the word trap implies, they often have some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. However, in other cases the device is placed on busy roads or is...
s. Defenders can move from one part of the city to another undetected using underground tunnels and spring ambush
Ambush
An ambush is a long-established military tactic, in which the aggressors take advantage of concealment and the element of surprise to attack an unsuspecting enemy from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind hilltops...
es.
Meanwhile, the attackers tend to become more exposed than the defender as they must use the open streets more often, unfamiliar with the defenders' secret and hidden routes. During a house to house search the attacker is often also exposed on the streets.
Battle of Monterrey, Mexico
The Battle of MonterreyBattle of Monterrey
In the Battle of Monterrey during the Mexican-American War, General Pedro de Ampudia and the Mexican Army of the North was defeated by U.S...
was the US Army's first major encounter with urban warfare. It occurred in September 1846 when the US Army under Zachary Taylor invaded the town. The US Army had no prior training in urban warfare and the Mexican defenders hid on rooftops, shot through loopholes, and stationed cannons in the middle of the city's streets. The houses at Monterrey were made of thick adobe, strong double doors, and few windows. The rooftops were lined with a two foot tall wall that acted as a parapet for the defending soldiers. Each home was a fort unto itself.
On September 21, 1846 the US Army which included some of its best soldiers, recent West Point graduates, marched down the city's streets and were cut down by the Mexican defenders. They could not see the men hidden behind walls, loopholes, or rooftops. They tried to march straight down the street until the intense fire drove them to hide in adjacent buildings. Taylor tried to move artillery into the city but it could not hit the well-hidden defenders any better than the US soldiers could. Two days later the US again assaulted the city from two sides and this time they fought differently.
Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the 21st, General William Jenkins Worth listened to his Texan advisers. These men had fought in Mexican cities before at the Battle of Mier
Mier Expedition
The Mier Expedition, was an offshoot that developed originally out of the Somervell Expedition, which was a unsuccessful military operation launched in November 1842 by a Texian militia against Mexican border settlements. It included a major battle at Ciudad Mier on December 26 and 27, 1842 which...
in 1842 and the Battle of Bexar
Siege of Bexar
The Siege of Béxar was an early campaign of the Texas Revolution in which a volunteer Texan army successfully defeated Mexican forces at San Antonio de Béxar . Texians had become disillusioned with the Mexican government as President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's tenure became increasingly...
in 1835. They understood that the army needed to "mouse hole" through each house and root out the defenders in close combat.
Worth's men used pick axes to chip holes in the adobe walls of the homes, or sometimes in the roof of the house from where the soldiers could drop in. Or they used ladders to climb to the top of a rooftop and assault the Mexican defenders in hand to hand combat. The typical assault on a home would include one man who would run to the door of the house and chip the door away with a pick axe while under covering fire. Once the door showed signs of weakening, 3-4 other soldiers would run to the door and barge in with the revolvers blazing. Worth lost few men on the 23rd using these new urban warfare techniques.
Battle of Berlin
A Soviet combat group was a mixed arms unit of about eighty men, divided into assault groupFireteam
A fireteam is a small military unit of infantry. It is the smallest unit in the militaries that use it and is the primary unit upon which infantry organization is based in the British Army, Royal Air Force Regiment, Royal Marines, United States Army, United States Marine Corps, United States Air...
s of six to eight men, closely supported by field artillery. These were tactical units which were able to apply the tactics of house to house fighting that the Soviets had been forced to develop and refine at each Festungsstadt (fortress city) they had encountered from Stalingrad to Berlin.
Most of the central districts of Berlin consist of city blocks with straight wide roads with several waterways, parks and large railway marshalling yards. It is predominantly flat but there are some low hills like that of Kreuzberg that is 66m above sea level.
Much of the housing stock consisted of apartments blocks built in the second half of the 19th century. Most of those, thanks to housing regulations and few elevators, were five stories high, built around a courtyard which could be reached from the street through a corridor large enough to take a horse and cart or small trucks used to deliver coal.
In many places these apartment blocks were built around several courtyards, one behind the other, each one reached through the outer courtyards by a ground-level tunnel similar to that between the first courtyard and the road. The larger more expensive flat
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
s faced the street and the smaller less expensive ones could be found around the inner courtyards.
Just as the Soviets had learned a lot about urban warfare, so had the Germans. The Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
did not use the makeshift barricades erected close to street corners, because these could be raked by artillery fire from guns firing over open sights further along the straight streets.
Instead they put snipers and machine guns on the upper floors and the roofs because the Soviet tanks could not elevate their guns that high and they put men armed with panzerfaust
Panzerfaust
The Panzerfaust was an inexpensive, recoilless German anti-tank weapon of World War II. It consisted of a small, disposable preloaded launch tube firing a high explosive anti-tank warhead, operated by a single soldier...
s in cellar windows to ambush tanks as they moved down the streets. These tactics were quickly adopted by the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and the First World War Volkssturm
Volkssturm
The Volkssturm was a German national militia of the last months of World War II. It was founded on Adolf Hitler's orders on October 18, 1944 and conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard.-Origins and...
veterans.
To counter these tactics the Soviets mounted sub-machine gunners on the tanks who sprayed every doorway and window, but this meant the tank could not traverse its turret quickly. The other solution was to rely on heavy howitzers (152 mm and 203 mm) firing over open sights to blast defended buildings and to use anti-aircraft guns against the German gunners on the higher floors.
Soviet combat groups started to move from house to house instead of directly down the streets. They moved through the apartments and cellars blasting holes through the walls
Mouse-holing
Mouse-holing is a tactic used in urban warfare, in which soldiers create access to adjoining rooms or buildings by blasting or tunneling through a wall. This tactic is used to avoid open streets where advancing infantry, caught in enfilade, are easily targeted by machine-gun and sniper...
of adjacent buildings (for which the Soviets found abandoned German panzerfausts were very effective), while others fought across the roof tops and through the attics.
These tactics took the Germans lying in ambush for tanks in the flanks. Flamethrowers and grenades were very effective, but as the Berlin civilian population had not been evacuated these tactics inevitably killed many civilians.
First Chechen War
During the First Chechen WarFirst Chechen War
The First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996...
most of the Chechen fighters had been trained in the Soviet armed forces. They were divided into combat groups consisting of 15 to 20 personnel, subdivided into three or four-man fire teams.
A fire team consisted of an antitank gunner, usually armed with a Russian made RPG-7
RPG-7
The RPG-7 is a widely-produced, portable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Originally the RPG-7 and its predecessor, the RPG-2, were designed by the Soviet Union, and now manufactured by the Bazalt company...
s or RPG-18
RPG-18
The RPG-18 Mukha is a Russian short-range, disposable light anti-tank rocket launcher.-History:The RPG-18 is very similar to the US M72-series LAW anti-tank rocket and was developed after the Soviet military obtained M72s from its allies in Vietnam...
s, a machine gunner and a sniper. The team would be supported by ammunition runners and assistant gunners.
To destroy Russian armoured vehicles in Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
, five or six hunter-killer fire teams deployed at ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements. The snipers and machine gunners would pin down the supporting infantry while the antitank gunners would engage the armoured vehicle aiming at the top, rear and sides of vehicles.
Initially the Russians were taken by surprise. Their armoured columns that were supposed to take the city without difficulty as Soviet forces had taken Budapest in 1956 were decimated in fighting more reminiscent of the Battle of Budapest
Battle of Budapest
The Siege of Budapest centered on the Hungarian capital city of Budapest. It was fought towards the end of World War II in Europe, during the Soviet Budapest Offensive. The siege started when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army...
in late 1944.
As in the Soviet assault on Berlin, as a short term measure they deployed self-propelled
Self-propelled
Self-propelled often refers to some form of self-propelled travel. It can refer to* Self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon* Self-propelled anti-tank gun* Self-propelled artillery* Self-propelled barge T-36* Self-propelled gun* Self-propelled mortar...
anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23-4
ZSU-23-4
The ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" is a lightly armored, self-propelled, radar guided anti-aircraft weapon system . ZSU stands for Zenitnaya Samokhodnaya Ustanovka , meaning "anti-aircraft self-propelled mount". The "23" signifies the bore diameter in millimeters. The "4" signifies the number of gun barrels. It...
and 2K22M) to engage the Chechen combat groups, as their tank's main gun did not have the elevation and depression to engage the fire teams and an armoured vehicle's machine gun could not suppress the fire of half a dozen different fire teams simultaneously.
In the long term the Russians brought in more infantry and began a systematic advance through the city, house by house and block by block, with dismounted Russian infantry moving in support of armour. In proactive moves the Russians started to set up ambush points of their own and then move armour towards them to lure the Chechen combat groups into ambushes.
As with the Soviets tank crews in Berlin in 1945, who attached industrially produced wire mesh screens (commonly confused with bedsprings in the west) to the outside of their turrets to reduce the damage done by German panzerfausts, some of the Russian armour was fitted quickly with a cage of wire mesh mounted some 25–30 centimetres away from the hull armor to defeat the shaped charges of the Chechen RPGs.
Close-quarters battle
The term close-quarter battle refers to fighting methods within buildings, streets, narrow alleys and other places where visibility and maneuverability are limited.
Both close-quarters-battle (CQB) and urban operations (UO) are related to urban warfare, but while UO refers mainly to the macromanagement
Macromanagement
Macromanagement is the act of leading decision makers or managing the managers. Macromanagement is a close concept to the economic concept of mechanism design....
factor (i.e. sending troops, using of heavy armoured fighting vehicle
Armoured fighting vehicle
An armoured fighting vehicle is a combat vehicle, protected by strong armour and armed with weapons. AFVs can be wheeled or tracked....
s, battle management), CQB refers to the micromanagement
Micromanagement
In business management, micromanagement is a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of her or his subordinates or employees...
factor—namely: how a small squad of infantry troops should fight in urban environments and/or inside buildings in order to achieve its goals with minimal casualties.
As a doctrine, CQB concerns topics such as:
- Weapons and ammunitionAmmunitionAmmunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...
most suitable for the mission - Extra gear, such as bulletproof vestBulletproof vestA ballistic vest, bulletproof vest or bullet-resistant vest is an item of personal armor that helps absorb the impact from firearm-fired projectiles and shrapnel from explosions, and is worn on the torso...
s and night vision devicesNight vision gogglesA night vision device is an optical instrument that allows images to be produced in levels of light approaching total darkness. They are most often used by the military and law enforcement agencies, but are available to civilian users... - Accurate explosiveExplosive materialAn explosive material, also called an explosive, is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure...
s - Routines and drills for engaging the enemy, securing a perimeter, clearing a room, etc.
- Team maneuvers
- Methods and tacticsMilitary tacticsMilitary tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
It should be noted that military CQB doctrine is different from police CQB doctrine, mainly because the military usually operates in hostile areas while the police operates within docile populations.
Armies that often engage in urban warfare operations may train most of their infantry in CQB doctrine.
See also
- BattleplanBattleplanBattleplan is a military television documentary series examing various military strategies used in modern warfare since World War I. It is shown on the Military Channel in the U.S. and UKTV History...
(documentary TV series) - Military urbanismMilitary urbanismMilitary urbanism is the militarization of urban spaces. This can include changes to built environments in military conflict areas or modifications of cityscapes to strengthen or subvert control by authorities...
- Mouse-holingMouse-holingMouse-holing is a tactic used in urban warfare, in which soldiers create access to adjoining rooms or buildings by blasting or tunneling through a wall. This tactic is used to avoid open streets where advancing infantry, caught in enfilade, are easily targeted by machine-gun and sniper...
- Siege warfare
- Urban guerrilla warfareUrban guerrilla warfareUrban guerrilla redirects here. For the Hawkwind song, see Urban Guerrilla.Urban guerrilla refers to someone who fights a government using unconventional warfare in an urban environment...
- Urban WarriorUrban WarriorOperation Urban Warrior is a United States Marine Corps program created as an exercise meant to plan and test Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain and urban warfare in general...
- Urban TerrainUrban TerrainUrban Terrain is a military term for the representation of the urban environment within the context of urban warfare. Urban terrain includes buildings, roads, highways, ports, rails, airports, subways, and sewage lines....
- Second Battle of Fallujah
- Civilian casualty ratioCivilian casualty ratioIn armed conflicts, the civilian casualty ratio is the ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties, or total casualties...
External links
- Handbook for Joint Urban Operations
- BF1942 Desert Combat (feel the Urban Warfare)
- Small Wars Journal - Urban operations, reading guide.