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07/12/2017 at 11:59 #78127WhirlwindParticipant
I was just skimming through this: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2016/10/25/tank-loss-rates-in-combat-then-and-now/ and having a look at those comparative tank losses between some US Armor units from the the US 6th Armd Div and the British Armoured Regts losses from Operation Goodwood. To me, the only way that you can account for those casualty figures is if the Brit crews were, by-and-large, abandoning their tanks before they were lost, whereas the US crews were being killed in their tanks. What are the alternative ways of reading this data?
07/12/2017 at 16:21 #78155Not Connard SageParticipant“July 1944 – May 1945” for the Americans, and “18 – 20 July 1944” for the British might have some bearing on the figures…
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
07/12/2017 at 16:58 #78160WhirlwindParticipantIt might, but that is what I am asking really – I’m asking why the British crew casualties as a percentage over a short period of intense battle are a lot lower. The US Division’s figures, taken over 10 months represent a baseline for the kinds of casualty figures that an armoured division suffers over the campaign; intuitively one might expect it to be the other way around. I checked 6 Armd’s war diary and the human casualty figures seem to be of the same type (i.e. they aren’t a record of permanently dead or disabled, but battle casualties off the field for more than 24 hours). It may be an accounting issue with tank losses of course, although I haven’t seen anything to suggest what that would be.
07/12/2017 at 17:30 #78163Not Connard SageParticipantYou have to compare a British unit’s loses with an equivalent American unit’s losses over a similar time period. Anything else is a pointless argument.
“The US Division’s figures, taken over 10 months represent a baseline for the kinds of casualty figures that an armoured division suffers over the campaign; intuitively one might expect it to be the other way around.”
Why? I’m not looking for a fight, I’m intrigued at your thinking.
Unit A could be heavily engaged over a couple of days, but suffer relatively few losses.
Unit B might be heavily attrited over the course of nearly a year.
You can’t extrapolate B’s losses from A’s, or vice versa. Can you?
Take the other two examples given. I’m not understanding the averages, cos I is fick:
Arracourt lasted over 11 days in September 1944 and Lorraine/Saar (I assume this means the Lorraine campaign, of which Arracourt was arguably a part) from the beginning of September to mid-December 1944. Total Third Army casualties for the latter were over 55,000 men K/W/MiA. You have to take into account the assaults on Metz, the Saar and the Siegfried Line/Westwall against dug in and determined German forces.
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
07/12/2017 at 19:43 #78175Ivan SorensenParticipantAre there differences in what is considered a “loss” ? (non-recoverable vs lost in action but recovered later) ?
07/12/2017 at 19:52 #78176Not Connard SageParticipantAre there differences in what is considered a “loss” ? (non-recoverable vs lost in action but recovered later) ?
Is a damaged, but recovered and repaired, tank that is knocked out a second time counted as a loss twice?
‘Casualty’ needs clarifying too. Does it mean dead/seriously wounded and shipped home/wounded but able to return to duty at a later date?
Both of the above would skew the figures in a lengthy campaign.
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
07/12/2017 at 20:05 #78179WhirlwindParticipantI don’t know of a British armoured unit’s losses overall over the same period. There is this http://jramc.bmj.com/content/jramc/123/2/65.full.pdf which shows the losses of the British Armoured regiments with Shermans, Cromwells and Comets in 1945, which are approximately the same in terms of tank losses but show the same great disparity in terms of casualties.
“The US Division’s figures, taken over 10 months represent a baseline for the kinds of casualty figures that an armoured division suffers over the campaign; intuitively one might expect it to be the other way around.” Why? I’m not looking for a fight, I’m intrigued at your thinking. Unit A could be heavily engaged over a couple of days, but suffer relatively few losses. Unit B might be heavily attrited over the course of nearly a year. You can’t extrapolate B’s losses from A’s, or vice versa. Can you?
No, you can’t extrapolate losses, totally agreed. But I don’t think the article is doing that. It is asking why a second-order effect, the crew casualties as a result of AFV destruction, should be so radically different. I’m not really sure why that comparison has to be over the same time period, since it is broadly with the same equipment facing broadly the same enemy with the same equipment.
However, since you consider the comparison pointless and I agree that it is hardly a thing to fight over anyway, it doesn’t really seem worth discussing.
07/12/2017 at 20:29 #78181Not Connard SageParticipantStuff is always worth discussing. That’s sort of the point of forums. 🙂
Perhaps we should start with a bigger picture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_II
…and drill down into that. What’s needed is a comparable tank crew losses list. I suspect that’s going to be harder to find, but something’s bound to be in the archives somewhere. Consider also if British built tanks had better crew survivabilty (IYSWIM) than American ones. Certainly Shermans were noted for their combustibility, but British units had Shermans also. So…
As an aside, the Soviet figures are staggering, even allowing for the obsolete stuff they were fielding early in the Great Patriotic War.
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
07/12/2017 at 20:30 #78183Ivan SorensenParticipantThere’s also a question of whether there were differences in training?
Did crew A try to stick in the tank longer, while crew B bailed the moment a round went through the hull?
07/12/2017 at 20:46 #78185John D SaltParticipantThe problem I see is that the measure chosen is a bit of a weird one; it seems to be the ratio between tank casualty rate and total personnel casualty rate, including non-AFV-crew personnel. I find it hard to imagine what this is supposed to measure. If we compared total tank casualties with total personnel casualties, making some allowance for the proportion of personnel in tanks, it might make some sort of sense.
Looking at the US tank bns, and spreading the losses over 300 days, it seems that they had something like one and a bit personnel casualties a day, and a tank casualty every two or three days. They lost personnel at a rate of about three or four per tank. The recce squadron seems to have suffered similar personnel losses per unit time, despite having more people, and with one-third the number of tanks only lost about one every fortnight (insert caveats about means being largely meaningless).
As Connard Sage has pointed out, this is hardly likely to be comparable to the losses for the British units spread out over 3 days (and probably not even that; I expect the losses for 2 Norfolk Yeo were pretty much all on the same day). 8 H and 148 RAC really have too few losses to count, 2 tanks and 1 tank respectively. 2 WG is a recce unit, and so may not be typical, but it has lost 5 tanks per day and slightly less than one man per tank lost (which might reflect the good escape prospects from a Cromwell, or might indicate a greater likelihood for recce tanks to fall victim to mines or obstacles of all sorts in their recce role, or might be just random variation on a tiny sample). The only British armoured unit heavily engaged is 2 Norfolk Yeo, with about 17 personnel and 12 tank casualties per day (and as I said probably really all 50 personnel and 37 tanks lost on a single day). The full orbat figure of 72 tanks is perhaps a bit misleading, too; 11 of these were Honeys, which were regarded as useful for recce, but not combat. At full strength (another questionable assumption) there would have been only 273 personnel and 57 tanks in the fighting echelon of the sabre squadrons, and on that basis the casualties suffered were 18% in personnel and 65% in tanks. 2 Norfolk Yeo’s losses of 1.35 personnel casualties per tank casualty may seem a touch on the low side compared to the campaign average, but it wouldn’t take a vast number of minings or boggings to account for it.
Ivan has mentioned the difficulty of comparing casualties between nations that use different recording conventions. Even assuming the figures given are commensurable, it seems to me deeply improbable that the US figures of 3 or 4 personnel casualties per tank casualty reflect casualties to crewmen fighting in their tanks. The average over the war was more like 2 to 2.5 casualties per tank destroyed, and there’s also the point that a good 20% of the US tank casualties over 300 days were probably mechanical breakdowns, and I can’t imagine the proportion for Goodwood being that high. Three or four crewmen per tank loss is simply not believable. I expect the US casualties include a fair contribution from people in the echelon being hit by German mortars or artillery (or perhaps Allied airpower) which have no connection to the tank losses at all.
All the best,
John.
07/12/2017 at 21:54 #78190MikeKeymaster08/12/2017 at 06:40 #78201EtrangerParticipantI’m on the smart phone & with no references to hand to back this up currently but there was a rule of thumb for Britsh/US tanks in NW Europe. In KO’d tanks, approximately 20% of tank crew were KIA & a further 20% WIA. That will include casualties sustained after bailing out but won’t always include minor injuries treated at unit level.
That isn’t the same as saying that you had 1 in 5 chance of dying if your tank was hit, as there were plenty of cases where most/all of the crew were killed, but equally there was a fair chance of the crew surviving.
The US and UK may also have counted their casualties differently, particularly in the more lightly wounded catergories, which IIRC weren’t necessarily recorded in British units if they were handled at the Regimental Aid Post and retained in the unit. I’m not sure how the US accounted for these. The Germans did it differently too.
I’ll see if I can find the reference later.
08/12/2017 at 06:49 #78202EtrangerParticipantAnd FWIW British tank losses were particularly heavy at Goodwood, but thanks to the ‘Left Out of Battle’/cadre system and abundent spare tanks (100% reserve tanks cf US 20-30% reserve & German bugger all!) The British could put up full strength armoured units day after day.
08/12/2017 at 07:09 #78205MartinRParticipantThe disparity is fairly easy to explain, Dupuy table is looking at divisional losses, so including the infantry elements. At Goodwood, the Armoured Div lorried brigades were by and large, stuck n the rear. The poor old US armored infantry had ten months of dying to do.
He presented it that way due to the curious way he calculates projected armour and artillery losses in his QJM combat model.
When I’m not on my phone, I’ll chip in a bit more, hopefully before John tears into me:)
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke
08/12/2017 at 15:28 #78246John D SaltParticipanthopefully before John tears into me:)
I’m not a bitch, I’m just an Aries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmN4QzuUBk
All the best,
John.
08/12/2017 at 17:55 #78253GrimheartParticipantAs others have already mentioned the US table is using a different time metric to the UK one.
ie a UK tank unit loses 90 tanks in 10 days, average tank strenght is 60, therefore loss ratio is 1.5
a US unit is measured over 180 days, losing 180 tanks in that period, average tank strenght is 50, therefore ratio is 3.6 – oh no the US loss rate is terrible!
But the time measured is not the same, therefore the results are not comparable.
If you redo the US one but pro-rata it to average 10 days you end up with 10 tanks lost per 10 days, a ratio of 1.0. Which is comparable.
At least that’s how I read those two tables, I could be wrong
Interest include 6mm WW2, 6mm SciFi, 30mm Old West, DropFleet, Warlords Exterminate and others!
08/12/2017 at 18:22 #78257WhirlwindParticipantI don’t think that the tank losses metric is interesting (in these results). I think what is interesting is the different ratio of crew losses to tank losses. There doesn’t seem any very obvious reason why that should vary wildly over time given that the equipment, the enemy and (very broadly) the operations remain similar – unless someone can think of one. The sample size issue is then one of considering simply the losses – are the losses big enough to constitute a significant sample size.
As John pointed out above, the odd figures are for the US tank battalions – I don’t doubt he is right and that what they show is that over the course of the campaign, these battalions suffered a large number of battle casualties of personnel who weren’t crewing tanks at the time – alternatively, the tank losses are being recorded differently from the battle casualties.
08/12/2017 at 19:32 #78264MartinRParticipantAh, yes. I’d not read far enough down. Yes there is a big disparity in the crew loss rates, but even the good Colonel essentially says he does’t know why and it it warrants further investigation.
I would suggest small sample size, differences in duration and differences in tank loss recording (write offs vs damaged etc). The crews at Goodwood were also far less likely to have been outside their tanks doing non combat stuff like maintenance, eating, sleeping etc. Lots and lots of crew casualties occurred due to mortar, artillery and airstrikes when they were outside their vehicles.
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke
08/12/2017 at 20:50 #78271John D SaltParticipantI think what is interesting is the different ratio of crew losses to tank losses.
The problem is (and please remember, I’m not a bitch, I’m just an Aries) that *nowhere* in any of this are there any figures showing the ratio of crew losses to tank losses. It would be more helpful if there were.
What Dupuy has collected (presumably for the very excellent research reason that “that’s what there is”, and the measures we woud like to have are not recorded) is the ratio of personnel casualties to tank casualties. Not at all the same thing. Taking the personnel strength of 2 Norfolk Yeo as 662 (by backwards calculation from number and percentage of pers cas), only 337 (about half) of these actually sit in tanks of any kind (and of these 20 are in RHQ, and 44 in Honeys from recce tp). And this is a pure armour unit; as Martin has pointed out, once you go to brigades or divisions, there will be infantry and support arms and services of all sorts from which personnel, but not tank, casualties can be counted.
To take the most extreme mismatch of the unit-level stats quoted, consider the US 86th Cavalry Recon Squadron (a battalion-sized unit). They show 426 personnel cas, and 20 tank cas. That is 21.3 personnel casualties per tank casualty. I don’t care how inflammable anyone thinks Shermans are, there is no way on earth that those personnel casualties are all tank crewmen.
All the best,
John.
08/12/2017 at 22:28 #78283EtrangerParticipantI didn’t have you down as an Arien, John!
The US recon units were mostly equipped with armored cars, halftracks and only a few light tanks, so it’s not surprising that they lost few tanks.
09/12/2017 at 02:33 #78293WhirlwindParticipantYou are obviously quite right John. The interesting thing (for me) is just how many casualties the Tank Bns were taking amongst their non-Sherman crewmen over the course of the campaign. If the Tank Bns were suffering crew casualties at typical US rates, then only 25-35% or so of their unit casualties were crewmen (whilst crewing tanks), the remainder becoming casualties in the situations Martin refers to. I confess myself surprised, I wouldn’t have expected the non-crew casualties to have been that high.
09/12/2017 at 07:56 #78308MartinRParticipantI guess it depends what they were doing in their time at the front. Stuck holding defensive positions in pelting rain for weeks at a time (as eg 7th AD had to do) exposes them to all the same risks as infantrymen including enemy snipers and infantry attacks. As John notes, a large number of personnel in Armoured units don’t drive tanks, they drive around in lorries and jeeps. Even the guys who do drive tanks, don’t sit in them 24 hours a day. Our view of what an Armoured unit looks like and how it works is skewed by all those toy tanks on the tabletop.
A better analogy is an infantry regiment which has to also haul around a load of fuel, ammunition and maintenance hungry heavy equipment.
Note: by unit I mean a battalion sized element, not a formation like a division.
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke
09/12/2017 at 09:54 #78321Not Connard SageParticipantThe best I can find, now that Bayonet Strength has gone, is this
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CGSC/CARL/nafziger/939BXAB.pdf
Page 4 gives the paper strength of a British armoured regiment at the end of the war; 78 AFV, including support, and 698 officers and OR. A bit of rough calculation shows that, even allowing for an average of 5 crew per AFV, around 50% of the regiment’s manpower aren’t crewing tanks.
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
09/12/2017 at 10:07 #78323EtrangerParticipantIf you feel like looking at the original research & have a couple of bucks to spare. https://www.merriam-press.com/surveyofalliedtankcasualtiesinworldwarii.aspx
09/12/2017 at 10:34 #78325EtrangerParticipantThe best I can find, now that Bayonet Strength has gone, is this http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CGSC/CARL/nafziger/939BXAB.pdf Page 4 gives the paper strength of a British armoured regiment at the end of the war; 78 AFV, including support, and 698 officers and OR. A bit of rough calculation shows that, even allowing for an average of 5 crew per AFV, around 50% of the regiment’s manpower aren’t crewing tanks.
The 1945 roster is wrong (or at least incomplete) though, as there were several different types of armoured unit. The comments below apply to NW Europe, as things were different in Italy. It’s the British Army, nothing is straightforward!
In British Armoured Regiments (Sherman equipped), there were 4 tanks per troop, with the extra 1 being a Firefly, usually with 4 troops of 4. In fact by 1945 there were often 2 Firefly per troop. The independent armoured brigades usually (but not always) followed a similar T, O & E, there were exceptions eg those with DD Shermans, where the Fireflies were only in the 1 (of 3) squadrons that had ‘standard’ Shermans, the FF being too found heavy for the DD gear.
The Cromwell equipped 7AD initially were issued FF, 1 per troop, with 3 Cromwell, as the Cromwell based Challenger was delayed. The also Cromwell equipped Armoured Recce Regiments didn’t get the Fireflies (poor buggers), so stuck with the 5 X 3 organisation, as did the sole (in NWE) Churchill equipped Army Tank Brigade (6th Guards Tank Brigade). The ARR received Challengers eventually IIRC.
By 1945 most of the AA tanks had been retired, as there was no need for them.
What’s missing are all the A & B echelon vehicles & personnel, along with the attached REME Light Aid Detachments, RAMC, spare crews etc, https://www.quartermastersection.com/british/companies/370/Armoured from https://www.quartermastersection.com/
ARRSE has a good thread https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/d-day-british-orbats.266454/
09/12/2017 at 10:57 #78328Not Connard SageParticipanthttps://www.quartermastersection.com/british/companies/370/Armoured from https://www.quartermastersection.com/
From your link.
36 x Officers.
627 x NCOs & Other Ranks.
8 x Motorcycles.
9 x Jeeps.
62 x Trucks.
9 x Scout Cars.
15 x M3 Half-Tracks.
11 x Light Tanks.
58 x Cruiser Tanks.
6 x AA Tanks.
5 x Recovery TanksFrom my link.
Total in armored regiment
–
55 cruisers, 6 close support tanks, 11 light tanks,
and 6 AA tanks, 39 officers and 659 enlisted.There are still a similar amount of AFV (80 v 78), including support, and manpower (663 v 698) strengths there. We’re not discussing softskin and ancillary vehicles. My list and yours are in broad agreement. So unless I’m missing something?
We’re beginning to argue around ourselves here, and the goalposts keep moving.
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
09/12/2017 at 11:03 #78330EtrangerParticipantIt was more pointing out that Nafziger isn’t infallible. Our numbers are indeed broadly similar.
09/12/2017 at 11:09 #78332Not Connard SageParticipantIt was more pointing out that Nafziger isn’t infallible. Our numbers are indeed broadly similar.
No source is infallible, what’s your point?
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
09/12/2017 at 13:04 #78343John D SaltParticipantIf you feel like looking at the original research & have a couple of bucks to spare. https://www.merriam-press.com/surveyofalliedtankcasualtiesinworldwarii.aspx
I have a .pdf of that report that didn’t cost me a penny, which I downloaded from (I think) USAHEC, but I’m damned if I can find the link to download it again.
If only the site had a page where we could share .pdf files — or indeed .xls files, for people interested in things like P(hit) calculations or penetration formulae… hint, hint.
All the best,
John.
09/12/2017 at 13:25 #78346Not Connard SageParticipantTry a hosting site, like Keep & Share that allows you to share links to uploaded docs.
See below.
https://www.keepandshare.com/doc8/17813/150081-full-pdf-1-4-meg?da=y
Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.
09/12/2017 at 14:32 #78357John D SaltParticipantMr. Picky has been very slow on the uptake, but after a bit of pottering with Joslen’s “Orders of Battle” and some googling, it seems pretty clear to me that Colonel Dupuy has, like many before him, been baffled by the British Army’s organisational customs.
“2nd Norfolk Yeomanry” is a mistaken unit designation. The Norfolk Yeomanry served in WW2 as 65th anti-tank regiment RA, which at the relevant time was the anti-tank regiment of 7th Armoured Division. I think what is intended is 2 NY, the 2nd Northhamptonshire Yeomanry, then riding Cromwells as the armoured recce regiment of 11th armoured division, as described in Keith Jones’ “Sixty Four Days of a Normandy Summer”. And, I should have recalled, 8 H (King’s Royal Irish) were the armoured recce regiment of 7th Armoured. So the units chosen are all recce, apart from 148 RAC which is part of the independent 33rd Armoured Brigade. It would have been much more useful to have numbers from the armoured regiments in the armoured brigades of the armoured divisions, but none are provided.
All the best,
John.
09/12/2017 at 15:26 #78367WhirlwindParticipantPage 4 gives the paper strength of a British armoured regiment at the end of the war; 78 AFV, including support, and 698 officers and OR. A bit of rough calculation shows that, even allowing for an average of 5 crew per AFV, around 50% of the regiment’s manpower aren’t crewing tanks.
Thanks very much for that. I feel I have a much better understanding of why those figures look the way they do now.
09/12/2017 at 16:45 #78374John D SaltParticipantIt was more pointing out that Nafziger isn’t infallible. Our numbers are indeed broadly similar.
I was going to type in the armoured regiment WEs from Joslen, but as I see Nafziger gets his stuff from Joslen (misspelling the unit titles “Armored” wherever possible and scrambling all the dates to the American MM/DD/YY format) they are as correct as anything is ever likely to be.
On the other hand I would tend not to trust quartermastersection.com given that it took Mr. Picky about two minutes to spot that they mistakenly believe the British Army is “Royal”, that they wrongly call the Covenanter the Cruiser Mk III, and they assign a fictional ‘A’ number to the Valentine, which is famous for not having an ‘A’ number.
Have we done the anatomy of British WW2 tank designations recently? That’s always a good one to baffle people with.
All the best,
John.
09/12/2017 at 17:19 #78381NTMParticipantTrux Models best resource for British organisation in NWE IMHO. Now hosted by WW2talk forum.
10/12/2017 at 00:52 #78427EtrangerParticipant… On the other hand I would tend not to trust quartermastersection.com ……. Have we done the anatomy of British WW2 tank designations recently? That’s always a good one to baffle people with. All the best, John.
Oh yes, to be taken with a large grain of salt, as with most things on t’net. Others have made the same mistake re the Valentine, which must be in a ‘reputable source’ given how often it comes up
Life’s too short to get into the topic of British tank nomenclature…
10/12/2017 at 21:59 #78527Jemima FawrParticipantI’ll have to dig it out, but I’ve got an armoured regiment (Churchill) roll of honour here somewhere that shows a very considerable number of their casualties from 1944-45 being caused by mortars, artillery and ‘dawn strafes’ when the crews were outside their tanks having a brew/O-group/pony/sleeping… That sort of statistic seems to be what has skewed the US data – i.e. a sample drawn from a long period of time, including all those casualties suffered when the crews were outside the protection of their armour.
My wargames blog: http://www.jemimafawr.co.uk/
11/12/2017 at 01:04 #78532John D SaltParticipantI’m sure this table has been posted before, and it probably will be again, but this summarizes the British experience of tank crew casualties in WW2:
WO 291/1186 "The comparative performance of German anti-tank weapons during WWII" This report is dated 24 May 1950. Percentage personnel casualties, by type of tank: Tank type Mines ATk guns Tanks SP guns Bazooka Sherman 24.6% 41.4% 60.5% 54.3% 44.7% Churchill 14.7% 45% 46.7% 30% 14.7% Stuart 34.6% 29.8% 51.7% * * Crusader * 38.5% 41.7% Cromwell/Valentine/Matilda/Grant 17.4% 34.4% 28.6% * * Mean values 21.8% 40% 46.4% 48.4% 38.6% Of which killed 4.8% 18% 21.8% 20.4% 18% Of which wounded 17% 22% 24.6% 28% 20.6% An asterisk indicates a sample smaller than 30. These are included in the mean values.
Notice that, apart from mines, there is an approximately evens chance of a casualty being killed or wounded, and as most of the tanks in the sample had a crew of five the expectation of an average of one killed and one wounded per tank knocked out is a very well justified rule of thumb.
All the best,
John.
11/12/2017 at 02:35 #78534EtrangerParticipantThanks for finding that John, as it’s where I got those figures quoted earlier from.
Since Crusaders & Matildas are listed, presumably these go back to c1941 or so
11/12/2017 at 04:03 #78535Jemima FawrParticipantCheers John! 🙂
My wargames blog: http://www.jemimafawr.co.uk/
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