How powerful was Elephant in real battle..?

[Serpent]

I have heard and read that elephants ware not so powerful as many may think. Actually roman army didint even see point to produsing these kind of units. Because soon Romans found good ways to counter them.(Whit infantry if I remember correctly.)

Now are elephant tank like units that can trampel everything.

[Ldvs]

They're not unbeatable in the demo though, order all your archers to target the elephants and they'll run amok quickly once their crews got killed.

[English assassin]

IIRC elephants were not terribly successful against Romans at least. They found it was quite easy to wound the animal with javelins, so that its handlers lost control and it simply charged about at random, or, even worst, turned tail from the javelin throwing Romans and piled back into the carthaginians.

There is also the problem that so far as I know domesticated elephants are captured wild elephants (ie not bred in captivity). I assume this was so in Roman times. I have never quite worked out where the Carthaginians got their elephants from (since if there are wild elephants on the Libyan coast its news to me). I assume they traded with India, but they can't have had many. I think Livy says how many Hannibal had after crossing the Alps and its very few indeed.

So even if they were any good you would not be able to have many in an army.

[KillerKadugen]

They wouldn't have to trade with India because they had the African elephant. I have heard that they were smaller than the Indian elephant. Also, there used to be elephants upon the African coast, but overhunting and trapping have led to their extinction.

[hotingzilla]

No, African elephants were bigger than Indian ones.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King shows how powerful yet how limited they are in battle.

They are good when dealing initial charges, but once the enemy army have gotten enough trampled, they will develop a tactic to counter. Throwing javelins and shooting the crew down.

Alexander the Great also came up with a counter against the elephants when he first sae them in a battle.

[Shoraro]

No, African elephants were bigger than Indian ones.

True, except they didn't use the African elephants which survive today, which are apparently untameable. They used African forest elephants, which were smaller than Indian elephants and are now extinct.

[katank]

yep, the african eles they used were the same variety that the persians used and in one ele battle, the Indian eles completely bulldozed the smaller African ones.

[CBR]

Well it sort of like an arms race.

At first elephants did great against armies that had never encountered such beasts before and tactics were pretty simple, just charge straight into enemy infantry.

Pyrrhus had success with his elephants against the Romans and same with Carthage in the First Punic War.

But when troops no longer got scared away easily and started developing tactics then they could defeat the simple elephant attacks.

I know later on elephants got escorts of light infantry and the Romans did use elephants in a few battles in 2nd century BC but it was in smaller groups and on the wings instead of just trying to go into the enemy center.

The African elephant was IIRC not big enough to have a tower on its back so they were used very much like a horse with one rider. That limited them a bit and it wouldnt be as easy to get Indian Elephants. I dont know when the forest elephant became extinct..


CBR

[katank]

when the Romans fought against Philip of Macedonia to protect the Greek city states, I think they used a few eles.

[Longshanks]

Actually, African Forest Elephants are not extinct. About 200,000 of them still survive in Central Africa, though at one time North Africa was also their home range.

African Forest Elephants:








Info on the forest elephant:

http://www.elephant.se/african_forest_elephant.php

[ah_dut]

IIRC horses are terrified of elephants, so the main thing is for tottaly blunting cavalary charges. But otherwise they aren't so useful after a while, good transport mules thugh

[DisruptorX]

Ok, so we've all by now heard of the disadvantages of elephants, but how about indian elephants? Are they more effective than African ones?

[kchickenlord]

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King shows how powerful yet how limited they are in battle.

So were they african or indian elephants? :-)

Im sure the carthaginians would have paid handsomely for a few cgi super-elephants

[katank]

Indian eles are bigger and also easier to train IIRC.

the lord of rings stuff look more like wooly mammoths.

[lars573]

Ok i have to interject here. African bush elephants are the biggest elephants they are about half a meter taller than indian elephants on the average. I've heard it put this way a cow african bush elephant is a hair bigger than a bull indian elephant, although the term indian elephant is misleading as it is found all over south east asia from india all the way down to thailand and vietnam and into the indonesian islands. Elephants aren't now nor ever were bread in captivity, they just won't do the deed so to speak. This is because male elphants are the most disagreable ornery creatures you've ever met, well maybe not but they are generally solitary. Female elephants form social groups. And in lord of the rings those are oliphaunts . Peter Jackson did incorperate all the easy ways to dispatch elephants/oliphaunts, kill the mahout, wound it enough for it to go ape-shit, or just kill the animal itself. He didn't however put in the creative ways to get rid of them, that is using pigs. Pigs you say yes pigs, pigs that were covered in lamp oil set a-fire and pointed in the general direction of the elephants.

[Papewaio]

Considering the size of Oliphants you would have to dip dwarves in grease and set them alight to get the same size ratio and rage going...

[Kali]

Elephants aren't now nor ever were bread in captivity, they just won't do the deed so to speak. This is because male elphants are the most disagreable ornery creatures you've ever met, well maybe not but they are generally solitary. Female elephants form social groups. .

Just interjecting because I've read this bit of info on several threads. Having spent some time on an Elephant breeding project in Chitwan National Park in Nepal and visited breeding projects in India and Thailand. I can say that Elephants, will and do breed in captivity. In fact male wild elephants have displayed a taste for bondage and visited there restrained female friends during the night.......(The females were on long tethers in open ground) Meaning we often didn't know who the father was. The male ele's in the sanctuary could barely be restrained when a female was in season, a site to put any man to shame. There were several babies to testify to the succes of the project.
ahhh, so cute,

[lars573]

Considering the size of Oliphants you would have to dip dwarves in grease and set them alight to get the same size ratio and rage going...

Nah horses would do the job up proper. But if PJ had put the flaming pig anti- oliphaunt trick in LOTR rings PETA would have had his ass in a sling right some quick.

[Shoraro]

Nice to hear the small African ele's are still going

Rome may not have used elephants for war, but they apparently didn't like other people using them. They were normally banned in peace treaties by the Republic and any kept despite this might be hamstrung by Roman weapon inspectors.

[Sociopsychoactive]

The elephant was a shock unit, almost exactly the same way heavy cavalry is. If you know what they will do and can prepare, they are near useless, if they catch you unawares and especially the first time you see them, they are devestating.

In battle itself, an elephant can be relied upon to do only one thing. Panic. Elephants can be trained to some extrent, and trained to charge, but never trained not to stamp on people in THAT unifiorm, while being allowed to stamp on people in THIS uniform.

Therefore, what an elephant will do in battle is run around alot stamping on things. Elephants can;t see very well, especially in broad daylight, so they will just pick out green and head for it, whether that be the forest or the generals command tent....

When nations got used to using elephants in abttle, especially smaller ones with the trainer actually directing it in combat, the trainer was provided with a chisel. He would drive this into the basde of the elephants skull if it ran amok or threatened freindly troops, killing it instantly.

As to LOTR, well, firs tof all they were Oiliphants, as said, and much larger and more agressive than anything real since the donosaurs. They did not show all the anti-elephant tactics however, and I'm not talking pigs.

Elephants have very soft, tender soles to their feet. It is like supple leather and not nearly as tough as the rest of their hide. Therefore one of the main anti-elephant tactics was to lay down Caltrops (small wooden devices with 4 or more spikes, so it always lands with a spike facing up). While elephants are exreamly strong they were therefore almost uselss in sieges, as the beasiged would just lay caltrops around vulnerable area's.

Romans found the best tactics to combat elephants were to take them down from a distance with ranged weapons, or kill the crew (or trainer) and then get the hell out of the way. Also, they do scare horses to some extent, but have vulnerable legs and cutting these with swords would force the elephant to the ground, without killing it.

Elephants are therefore not tanks, they are far to unreliable. once wounded an elephant will either panic or lie down, niether of which are usefull in battle. As to pigs, well, it wasn;t the fact that they were burning that scared the elephants, it was the noise. The squeel of a pig will send an elephant running in fear, like the smell of a camel is to horses. They set light to the pigs in order to ensure they would squeel loud and clearly, plus you get some crispy fried bacon out of it.

[Lonewarrior]

I found that the Elephants in the game only did a good inicial damage after their charge, later on, the troops that went down, basically got up again.

[Red Harvest]

I just had a vision of flaming camels being used vs. a cavalry charge...or would it be the infantry lighting up and smoking some Camels?

[katank]

the infantry being charged setting themselves on fire? yeah, the sheer stupidity will scare the cav away

anyhow, the Romans used elephants in the battle of Cynoscephalae against the Macedonians and this was right after the Second Punic war so probably adopted a bit of Cathargian stuff, eh?