Best Squad Tactics of WW2

Whispering Death

Whispering Death

Active member
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.
 
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.
 
Charge_7 said:
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.
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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).
 
Whispering Death said:
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.
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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.
 
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.
 
heres some of chinese squad tactics used in special forces

however this tactic works in platoons


one heavy support squad, 2 assult squad, a squad of light infantry, 2 individual machinegunners, 3 snipers and 2 mortars


when defending it is done with luring the enemy into heavy support with asssult as the bait and an assult with light squad to enclose, mortars will support the defence


snipers will provide scouting and kills anyone who escapes the encirclement


tactics involve strategy and preplaning, a badly madeup squad can still defeat a well trained squad if strategy and goodp lannign is emphasized
 
If I am not mistaken, the marines had two BAR's but the army only had one per squad. I can not remeber the source of information. It was a couple months ago on the history channel I think.
 
I don't think that was the case.

The 5th Marine Division had 853 BAR's on Iwo Jima.

They may intended to have a SMG for each rifle squad, but they apparently fell far short of that as the division had just 49 Thompsons for the invasion.

They had 10,943 rifles.
 
Zucchini said:
I don't think that was the case.

The 5th Marine Division had 853 BAR's on Iwo Jima.

They may intended to have a SMG for each rifle squad, but they apparently fell far short of that as the division had just 49 Thompsons for the invasion.

They had 10,943 rifles.
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The 1st (Edsons) Raiders and the 2nd (Carlsons)Raiders. Used 2 BAR's per fire team plus ethier a Thompson SMG or a Riesing SMG in each Fire Team. The remaining Marines were armed with 03 Springfields until the M1 Garand became available.

In 1945 the Thompsons were no longer the Standard Issue SMG due to cost and manufacturing time. The Standard Issue US SMG was the M3A1.A2, and A3 "Grease Gun". So while 5th MARDIV's TO&E my show 49 Tommy Guns you may rest assured that the other SMG's were Grease Guns. The 5th was a recently stood up Division. The availabilty of Thompsons at the time it was stood up would have been minimal. Most Thompsons available to the Marines were prewar manufacture and had been issued along with the Riesing Guns to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Marine Divisions "special attachments" i.e. Para Bn's, Raider Bn's, and Special Detachments.

The majority of the Thompsons manufactured during the War were issued to the Army/Allied Airborne, Ranger and Special Services formations in the ETO. So coupled with the adoption of the M1 Carbine in the Platoon Commander/ Support troop role and the loss of weapons due to Battle Loss. By 1944-45 the Thompson was a rare duck in the PTO.
 
The Raiders had 2- 7 man Fire Teams per squad. Because they were BAR heavy. The Regular Infantry had the standard 4 X 3 configuration for the most part.
 
If I'm not mistaken the difference between German and American squad tactics in WW II was the employment of the machine gun.

For the Germans the MG was the main weapon, the riflemen supported it.

The Americans on the other hand used the MG to support the riflemen.

Hard to say which is better.

I do like the idea of the MG as the main weapon.
 
British Squads always had a Bren Gun for fire support, the only difference being between the Allies and the Germans was the Germans had a belt fed gun and the British and many American had a magazine fed gun
 
Gladius!

I know, there is people who thinks that germans used LMG as a primary weapon supported by rifles. I do not know where this idea is coming from, but I think it's not correct. MG 34 and 42 are very bulky weapons, intended to give to rifle squad their own "heavy support weapon". Sure, you can run with it (and even shoot when running), but it's still lacks manoverability of MP, rifle or assault rifle. So, basicly it was riflemans business to kick out the enemy from trench. There was also iteresting change in squads organisation before summer offencive 1942. A new squad composition was:

- Shock team:
Squad leader
LMG
5 rifles
3 MP
- Support team
LMG
2 rifles
Sniper

So, there was 2 LMG's in the squad. In platoon there was 3 squads + HQ.
 
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