eli5 How do military units navigate chaos and maintain direction when faced with casualties, especially if the commanding officer is killed, as depicted in the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan”?

Question

Recently I watched “Saving Private Ryan” again, and it made me have some questions. For example, in the opening scene of soldiers rushing to the beach, most of the soldiers were almost dead before they even got out of the landing craft. If the commander was also killed, what about the remaining soldiers? Who should direct the people? How should each unit perform the tasks assigned before departure?

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Answer 1

In big complex operations like this *everyone* has been briefed on their mission. So if/when a unit loses their officers the unit still knows what their mission is and what the planned method to success is.

the related Band of Brothers (produced by HBO In a similar pairing as Apollo 13 and Earth to the Moon) covers some of the planning and rehearsal that occurred before the landings. In this case it was from the paratrooper point of view.

Also in the case of the D-Day landings, the Allies assumed a **significant** casualty rate and planned manpower and officers accordingly (if I remember double the normal number of officers *per unit* so enough would survive the landing). and a lot of the issue was addressed by “throwing more bodies at it”.

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edit – planned casualty rate for D-day was about 25%.

edit – and in many cases it was *higher* once they hit the beach.