Whose squad tactics worked the best in WW2? I think that the russian design was very crude and I think was the least effective. On the contrary I really like the german squad makeup of a 3 man MG-42 team for suppression and a 5 man assault team.

The one germany used to conqueor Polony. The "lighting war" with the stukas.

Uh, that's an army manouever, staurofilakes. Armies are much, MUCH bigger than squads.

The German model was a sound decision, Whispering Death, and infantry types here will no doubt tell you it was "borrowed" to some extent.

Originally Posted by Charge_7

Uh, that's an army manouever, staurofilakes. Armies are much, MUCH bigger than squads.

The German model was a sound decision, Whispering Death, and infantry types here will no doubt tell you it was "borrowed" to some extent.

okey, I do not know much about army tactics...Where is it borrowed from??

I was talking about infantry tactics today borrowing from the German model (to various extents).

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

Whose squad tactics worked the best in WW2? I think that the russian design was very crude and I think was the least effective. On the contrary I really like the german squad makeup of a 3 man MG-42 team for suppression and a 5 man assault team.

I happen to agree and 2 things made the Wehrmacht squad particularly effective - the German NCO training and emphasis on taking the initiative and the MG-42 itself, one of the outstanding weapons of WW2. The efficiency of the German squad was one of the reasons why the Germans were very successful in utilising 'elastic defence', particularly on the Eastern Front after 1942.

I got to go with the Marine Raiders Fire Team concept.

Yeah, actually I don't know too much about how American's faught in WW2 outside of the basics of fix and flank. How where the marines organized at the squad level?

The USMC rifle squad changed throughout the war.

From what I can find, typical Iwo squad:

5 riflemen
1 BAR (I think they did anything they could to have more than one)
1 SMG (Thompson)
2 scouts

On Iwo it appears a typical infantry platoon was composed of 4 squads: 3 rifle and one assault. The assault squad featured flamethrowers. I think they probably had demolitions in all squads.

They had separate machine gun and mortar platoons.

The Marines took ground quickly by bypassing whatever they could get around with their rifle squads. That was the concept anyway: cut them off. When able, they left the taking out of hard targets to specialized units like engineers, weapons companies, and tank battalions. On Iwo they also had excellent air support, artillery support, and naval gunfire.

If I can find more stuff, I will add to this.

Did the Army Rangers employ any kind of different squad composition than the regular infantry?