Thread by @TrentTelenko

I've gotten some push back on my last two casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War threads.

So, I'm going to drop some photo clips in this 🧵from on-line WW2 casualty documents that were background to the previous casualty posts.

They will illuminate who is dying in this war.
1/

When I referenced Trevor Dupuy in the previous tweets. It was due to the fact I backtracked to WW2 casualty reports to validate Dupuy's source data so I could trust it.

There were a lot of casualty reports in WW2, but they had the same general pattern for battle casualties.

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When it comes to non-battle casualties, the WW2 reports get a lot flakier.

Let's start with the 1945 Okinawa Campaign and specifically with issues of neuropsychiatric casualties

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...from the following document:

Section Report - Ryukyu Campaign - Staff Section Reports, Section XV - Medical

in

Tenth Army Action Report -- Report of Operations in the Ryukyu Campaign, 26 March to 30 june 1945, Volume 2 [Part 18]

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Please carefully note the medical text gives percentages but not hard numbers.

Also, who wrote the casualty reports changed.

After WW2 the Adjutant General's Office did so in 1953. During WW2 other agencies did so.

In the Central Pacific, it was the Replacement Training
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...Command.

The following is the cover and a bar chart from this document:

"Casualty report no. 1, Replacement Training Command, POA, 25 February 1945"

US Army infantry suffered 80% of the battle casualties through August 1944.
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These photo clips are from this document:

"Casualty report no. 2, Replacement Training Command, POA, May 8, 1945"

It provides the battle & non-battle casualties for the US Army XXIVth (24th) Corps in the Leyte campaign om Oct 1944 - Jan 1945.

Again, ~80% infantry battle

7/

...casualties.

Part of the reason I dug into the Tenth Army medical reports was to try & get those sort of bar charts for Okinawa.

Neither US Army Iwo Jima nor Okinawa casualties were accounted for by the Replacement Training Command. The war ended too soon for the RTC
8/

...to tabulate them before the war ended.

It would take until 1953 for the following to be published:

Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II. Final report, 7 December 1941-31 December 1946.(Four parts) by the Adjutant General's Office, 1953

9/

This report was a lot harder to parse and it had none of the RTC bar charts.

It was all typed tables of data.

I've included a link so you can chase down the document.
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archive.org/details/ArmyBa…

You can chase down the casualties for Okinawa - see Ryukyus - but there is no separate US Army losses listing for Iwo Jima. (Yes, the US Army was there. Don't believe USMC Press releases.)

Which may have been lumped into the "other units" tabulation lines at bottom.

11/

The key datum from "Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II. Final report, 7 December 1941-31 December 1946" is in row #1 of this table. It gives total battle casualties for all ground forces vs infantry.

661,059 of 820,877 total battle casualties were

12/

...infantry. When you do the division, it shows 80% of all WW2 US Army ground force casualties were in the infantry branch.

This is some of the WW2 data Colonel Trevor Dupuy used as the foundation for his two methods of computing modern casualty rates.

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So, whether you run the Russian Army casualty numbers, like I did based on Ukrainian reported Russian deaths, or the method the US DoD has used.

We are still looking at 80% of all Russian casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War being infantry.

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What does that 80% casualty rate number mean in the context of events to date?

@KofmanMichael made clear in one of his recent podcasts that Russian Army BMP & BTR going into Ukraine had 2-to-3 dismounts versus the six they should have had because of corruption.

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So add that datum to the success of the Ukrainian Foreign legion #Severodonetsk counterattack.

Which attacked into the teeth of a focused _25_ BTG Russian Army offensive and overran DNR infantry doing so. The only logical conclusion you can draw is the Russian Army
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...has hit the wall in terms of infantry in #Severodonetsk.

Sanimir Dobrev's (@delfoo) recent youtube stream with @MilHiVisualized provides additional depth to this Russian infantry shortage & how the "Ghost Troop" issue might mean the real size of the active Russian
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...military is 700,000 not 1.14 million active & reserves, because Dobrev spotted new uniforms were being made for only 700K & not 1.14 million.

Even leaving out the Reserves, there are supposedly 850,000 active Russian troops 'on the books.'



18/

,@delfoo also goes into how Russian Army corruption killed Russian readiness and how the Naval Infantry brigade in the Far East was increased to "Division" size without either new troops or vehicles, AKA it was a "press release division."

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We have here the full bell, book and candle of historical infantry loss data, recent & accurate intelligence of the scale of Russian corruption and the Ukrainian battlefield success/Russian defeat at #Severodonetsk to underline the Russian infantry shortage in Ukraine.
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The bottom line is that the Russo-Ukrainian War will be going increasingly pear shaped for the Putin Regime because of its shortage of trained infantry.

10% of 700,000 active troops is 70,000 infantry.

Russia has taken 79,000 casualties with 80% being infantry.

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You should be looking for more #Severodonetsk type successful Ukrainian infantry counter attacks in the near future.

22/End