Eli5: Why is Urban warfare feared as the most difficult form of warfare for a military to conduct?
In: 1719
I would like to slightly disagree here…
Urban warfare may be the most famous “feared” environment but here are a few that are as dangerous if not more:
1. Thick jungle – Most people cannot even imagine how thick jungle can grow, how humid it can get and how many insects and small animals can hurt you. The Japanese at Guadalcanal basically defeated themselves by not bringing tons of medicine, mosquito nets and lots of food and clean water with sometimes as high as 50% of the troops incapable of fighting…
2. The desert – if you run out of water, you die. And you do so rather quickly. Sand gets absolutely everywhere, washing is most of the time not an option and it gets soooo hot (and cold in the night). And we are not talking Iraq like dry lands with dust but full blown desert. In the mid of the Sahara probably no army can fight.
3. Landing operations – Saving private Ryan is – as Hollywood movies usually go – overly dramatizing casualties per minute and underestimating scale but it shows very well the terror of being sitting ducks in the open while getting rocked by the sea and no quick reinforcements can save you. Horror scenario for any military.
4. Eastern European mud… if modern Russian equipment gets road bound and the Wehrmacht didn’t move at all for a month with high attrition I think it tells you all. Mud gets everywhere, rainte everything and you better are prepared to be stationary…
Now, urban warfare is of course horrendous due to a lack of visibility and constant fear of ambush as people say here but other scenarios are horrible too. Stalingrad also is not just so infamous for being urban combat but it’s urban combat with a horrendous winter and river crossings on top.
Latest Answers