We Have Reserves: Difference between revisions
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* In the Strategic Bombing Campaign over Europe in [[World War 2]] the US Eighth Air Force won by finally figuring out that trying to hit a "pinpoint" target from a heavy bomber was like trying to hit a nearby telephone line from a passing subway train by throwing a golf ball while being hit on the head with a golf club (and in any case the bomb was likely to land on some poor schmuck which is one reason they headed for cities where there was a multiplicity of poor schmucks). In any event tactics were changed to make the bombers the bait and provoke as many dogfights as possible on the assumption that Germans would run out of planes and pilots first.
** Note, though, that is not the technical definition of the term "reserves". Reserves are units hoarded to bandage a breech in your line or exploit one broken in the enemies. The technical term for "trading casualties until the superior force wins" is "attrition", although that is only one context of the term. Thus using your reserves for [[We Have Reserves]] is usually suboptimal although it sometimes cannot be avoided.
***There is an indirect relation between the two concepts. As a weaker army starts to be unable to take the stress of combat it will be tempted to draw on reserves until it is out. "We have reserves" really means "they have none." The result to use a gross allegory is rather like a starving man dissolving his muscle when all the fat is gone. When that point comes however there is no more need for attrition because the superior force can do basically whatever it wants to with it's reserves, and what it wants to do will usually be to launch a blitzkrieg. It is to be noted that there are all kinds of ways to arrange this some both more humane (so to speak) and more [[Guile Hero|clever and artistic]] then merely killing off [[Cannon Fodder]]. For instance in [[World War II]] The Allies made an effort to lure as many enemy units as possible to be out of place doing nothing when the blow fell, thus effectively getting the same results as a Verdun wannabee. This did not always work of course and there was a lot of hard fighting to do in any event. But that shows the link between [[We Have Reserves]] and the actual use of reserves-as well as how cleverness can subvert this trope.
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