A carry over from some previous debating regarding hypothetical use of 223/5.56 in WWII, here.

The Germans pushed their machine guns into the squad to increase the fire rate of the squad, because if not it would have been entirely armed with bolt action rifles, minus the SL/gruppenführer, and would basically been unchanged since WWI pre-Stormtroop tactics. You state that the SL didn't control people, but controlled weapons. He didn't control weapons, because he actually only had one real weapon system to utilize, along with a bunch of obsolete rifles not much different from what his dad would have used in the Great War. That was why the Germans pushed machine guns, they didn't have the industrial capability or mindset to arm everyone with submachineguns, so it was easier to base the squad around a single capable machine gun. But that only works in principle. if you actually look at the TO&E of a German squad, page 13/14 here, the official combat load for a machine gun squad was only 1,000 in the entire machine gun team (four men). The realities is that the MG34/42 fired so damn fast that it would eat up that ammo load in minutes, so the rest of the squad (other five men) effectively became mules to hump ammo.

You mention machine guns hitting a fire team rushing across an open area at 900 meters. The tripod mounted periscope aiming system of the MG42 would have been useless in that situation. By the time you got on target after adjusting for impacts, adjusting mils, etc, your targets would be gone. From a bipod the shots would go wide anyway from the recoil, and even with a tripod mounted gun, unless the legs were dug in and sandbagged, the recoil would also drive the gun away from target anyway. So low cyclic rate, high cyclic rate, it wouldn't matter, because they'd be misses. Aside from that, we haven't had a low cyclic rate machine gun since we ditched the M60, the M240 is much faster. Almost too fast, at least the M240B lowered the cyclic rate.

BTW, here's a USMC M240 gunner engaging and hitting the target at long range with a bipod. Notice the recoil control and ability to engage accurate, quickly?.

Increasing the usefulness and effectiveness of the squad machine gun was the fact that for a good percentage of the war, specifically against the Americans, German units were mostly in the defensive, fighting from dug in prepared positions, mutually supporting one another, often supported by mines, mortars, and arty. So it wasn't that the machine gun was the big killer (it wasn't, high majority of casualties came from mortars and artillery), it was that for direct fire weapons, the MG34/42 was pretty much the only threat to an attacking force.

In addition, the fabled German infantry squad and platoon didn't even use the Lafette tripod, those were for company and battalion level machine guns. I have read quite a few accounts of WWII and I don't really remember situations where Americans were being hit or pinned down by machine gun fire from a +1,000 meters. Most accounts relate close range engagements against well positioned and dug in machine guns, not from those shooting from the far side of a hill using plunging fire. That might have worked well in the Steppes, but it few other places have the terrain that would allow that type of shooting. Either trees and such get in the way, buildings, hills, etc., or observation of enemy is low enough that focus is on directing mortars and arty, not calling back on the few radios available (Germany had no organic radio communication section below battalion level). So communication to direct fires becomes a chore in itself.  

I've watched the videos of the German squad in attack and it looks all well and good in theory, but the reality is that the Germans didn't attack by squad, they attacked with regiments, in combined arms, usually in a fast paced manner. Making believe that some situation will come along where some enterprising and intelligent German NCO is suddenly going to independently plan an attack on his own isn't realistic. Name one battle that you can relate dealing with Americans, or even Russians or British, where this occurred, because most historical accounts I've ever read of German attacks emphasize speed, combined arms, and massed firepower.

Further, attaching a machine gun team to every squad as an organic unit works only for some very specific environments and terrain, where visibility to over 1,000 meters is assured. Some places in Afghanistan, or eastern Europen, are good examples. But imagine going into a village or town with that same squad. What is the four man machine gun crew in the squad supposed to do while the other five men of the squad clear the buildings? Just chill out and pull security? Often times it at least a whole squad of US military infantry (9-13 infantrymen) to clear a structure properly, so task organizing almost half of the team's strength to overwatch is retarded, especially when other assets at the platoon level are already set aside to do it. This also applies to advancing in highly defensible positions, like bunker/trench complexes, where it's not always possible for a squad leader to leave half his squad back in the rear, meaning they will have to try to keep up, while humping all the ammo they need, as well as the heavy gun, tripod, etc. Its simply not realistic.

To further demonstrate that not everything the Germans did made sense nor should it be replicated, Germany also pushed mortars down to the platoon level, which I think was a huge mistake. One, a single mortar does little damage as compared to a team of three (sheef and impact area), and two, the platoon most certainly lacked the communication control for a FO (a German company at least had wiremen, which the platoon didn't). It makes no sense to make one mortar team organic to a platoon when the platoon will hardly ever operate independently from the company (and if it does its easier to attach a mortar team/section to a platoon). They should have put their 50mm mortars at the company level in a proper section that could provide fires and not have to be supervised by a leader 300-500 meters away (platoon leaders can't deal with this while leading attacks or defending objectives). Can you imagine a platoon leader trying to maintain accountability and direction when he has an element over 300 meters away, and not under communications? It makes sense ONLY if the unit is in the defensive (when wire will usually already have been laid for comms).

First issue I see with what you're saying here is that you're quoting the US Army intelligence pamphlet that goes over the crap I've already stated we didn't and still don't grasp about what they were doing. I've actually gone to primary sources, like the German pre-WWII Truppenfuhrung, autobiographical accounts written by their infantrymen, and I've also extensively interviewed some of the old guys myself. What's in our books and sources is not how they conducted business, nor have we done a very good job of trying to establish what they thought they were doing when they did what they did to our infantry. I'm telling you now, the US Army is not a good source for this information, because our intel guys did the same thing you've done: Evaluated the Germans through the lens of their own practices and experiences.

You claim that the Lafette tripod wasn't used at the squad and platoon level. This confuses the shit out of me, because both the German gunners I spoke with describe having their tripods either carried in the company trains during the assault, or having to haul them around with the team. The Germans used the tripod extensively on everything but the final assault, because the doctrine they had required engaging the enemy at the greatest practical distance, in order to lessen the number of casualties they'd be able to inflict on the Germans. The gunners, by the way, were men who served in rifle squads, not company or regimental MG units.

Couple of things about them, too: Both guys emphasized two key points, one of which was to have as many barrels as possible, and the other was that you never had "too much ammo", ever. One of them described having a full panje wagon and a horse to haul just the ammo for his gun around when they were in the retreat. Both of these guys graphically described what it was like to be the sole gun opposing entire battalions of Soviet infantry, and what kind of losses they inflicted when they did so. I'd say both of those guys probably should have had PTSD from those occasions, but they sort of vanished into the background of all the other horror they witnessed and participated in.

I've read about every account I've been able to get my hands on, that describes the way the Germans used their MG down at the lowest levels. The amount of extensive training they gave their men, and the elaborate equipment they issued for each gun argues that they were far ahead of what we were doing back during that same time period. An examination of the exchange ratios makes it quite clear that there was something they were doing better than us, and it wasn't because the German Army was hyped up on Nazi propaganda, either.

I've fired the current version of the MG42, the MG3. Even with the heavier bolt they put in the post-war 7.62mm NATO version, the rate of fire was appreciably higher than the M60 I trained on as a private. Actually using that thing on ranges with pop-up targets out to 1200m, I found that the higher rate of fire and smaller beaten zone that the higher inherent accuracy of the design enabled got me much better results on the longer-range targets than I got with the M60. A lot of our guys didn't appreciate that fact, and criticized the MG3 for that reason. I'm personally kind of ambivalent--I see why the Germans of that era did what they did, but I also think that the lower rate of fire we've always had in our doctrine has its points, as well. One thing you neglect to account for is that the Lafette tripod had a built-in "fire disperser" in the mechanism to cause the beaten zone to open up at intermediate ranges, which is why the squad gunners almost always had that available to them, especially in the defense.

In your first paragraph, you outline why you think the Germans focused on the machinegun over the individual weapon. Basically, you say they had no other choice, because they couldn't do anything else with their weapons industry. What you're missing is that the German Army made the crew-served weapons of the squad the focus of what they were doing quite deliberately, and did that because all their research indicated that a single crew-served weapon was more effective than a bunch of individual weapons spread out in the squad. That was intentional design. If they'd have thought that the individual weapon was the primary source of combat power, they'd have focused on those. They did not--Instead, they expended all their effort on the crew-served weapons. Historical exchange ratios do a pretty thorough job of telling us who was right.

And, honestly, what really came out of the war was this: Both our individual rifleman-based concept of warfare, and the German idea of the primacy of the crew-served MG/mortar team turned out to be flawed. If you note, the actual MTOE for the late war squads, the ones that were actually in use out in the units, came to resemble each other to a huge degree: The late-war German Volksgrenadier units that had the good fortune to be issued the StG44 had their MG assets concentrated at the platoon and company level, but routinely worked with belt-fed weapons as parts of their combat teams. The US, on the other hand, pushed job-lots of belt-fed guns down to the squads and platoons in the form of the M1919A6. Both schools of thought were converging, and came to about the same conclusion. Trouble was, none of that "lessons learned" stuff really got institutionalized by the US Army in the form of doctrine, and the "gravel-bellies" managed to warp weapons procurement towards buying an uber-Garand instead of a real intermediate-caliber assault rifle. And, to add insult to injury, they optimized what became our standard MG caliber for firing out of an individual weapon, which has left us at a range disadvantage vis-a-vis our competitors ever since. I think if wartime experiences had really been digested, we'd have gone with an individual weapon caliber like the .280 British, and kept the .30-06 as our MG caliber. Ideally, though, that would have been beefed up a bit, to become something a bit more powerful. Preferably to the point where it really overmatches the PK family with the 7.62X54R.

If you really want to get an understanding of these issues, you really have to do some digging. Martin van Creveld lays out the raw numbers, which are impossible to argue against: The Germans did better against all comers than they had a right to. Without our extensive supporting arms, our infantry probably would have done only marginally better than the Soviets managed, especially in fights where we didn't have overwhelming superiority in numbers on our side. A lot of people completely fail to understand how often the Germans superior small unit tactics and flexibility pulled their shit out of the fire, and how many times we had our asses handed to us by rear-echelon troops who were thrown together into ad-hoc formations that really had no right to be as successful as they were against some of our better troops. All this came down to the Germans having had the wisdom to recognize some brutal realities of war in the mid-Twentieth Century, things we simply didn't want to admit to ourselves. Probably the key point was the primacy of the crew-served MG, and the essential irrelevance of the individual rifleman. You can read all the wartime intelligence reports you like, but you're going to find out that much of that stuff is, at best, mis-interpretation and misunderstanding of what the Germans were actually doing. In a German rifle squad and platoon, the individual riflemen existed for three basic purposes: Providing security for the MG team, carrying ammo, and scouting for the best route to the next position for the guns. Using those techniques, the Germans managed to inflict exponentially greater casualties on their opponents than they received themselves. There are reasons for that, and it is well worth trying to understand those.

I tried to kill a VW Jetta with an MG 42 yesterday  


Sorry, that is all I've got.  I am sure  my Uncle who was shot by the Nazis disapproves of how much fun I hand

The MG42 is about my favorite MG, to tell the truth. If I'd had the opportunity when the balloon went up in Western Europe back in the 1980s, that was my first choice for looting in order to replace my probably-by-that-time-broken M60. Some poor German troopie would have been napping by his position, or left his gun unattended somewhere, and awakened to a changeling on his tripod...

You really do have to do a careful job of separating yourself from the ideology and historical prejudices, in order to do an honest job of evaluating the whole issue. I took a long damn time to admit to myself that we weren't ten feet tall, and doing The Right Thing (tm) at all times, and it was painful to finally have to admit to myself that we had and still possess a lot of those same issues. You can trace a continuous thread from the post-WWI era through to the present day with a lot of our tactical problems. It's really amazing to go back and look, and then see just how stubbornly we've held to policies that didn't even make sense at the time, simply because "That's what we were doing when we won the war...".

Yeah, well... That victory cost us a lot more in lives and money than it really should have. That's what pains me the most, looking back at a lot of this stuff. Men died that didn't need to.

Here's a short 1944 OSS film on German infantry squad tactics

Here's one on the various US Infantry weapons

The logic that adding up rates of fire for repeating arms and comparing them to automatic weapons was used prior to WWI by almost every nation to discount machine guns, but the bottom line is you cannot replicate the fire power of actual automatic weapons by substitution repeating arms that equal the same theoretical rate of fire.

A normal German infantry squad had the MG42 deployed as a light machine gun, meaning minus the tripod. They were incapable of using the machinegun in the sustained role you are describing, as the squad (on its own) was incapable of hauling the necessary ammo. For sustained firing of the type you're describing, a machine gun would not only need much more ammo capable of being humped by a squad, but that ammo would have to be close by. The MG42 with tripod and periscope was considered a heavy machine gun by the Germans, because of the ammo necessary to utilize it. It was NOT by MTOE in an infantry platoon, but instead HMG teams were assigned to the company (2) and in the machine gun company in a battalion. The LMG version of the MG42 in an infantry squad was used more like a SAW is, as a more maneuverable base of fire weapon, not as the +1,000 meter suppression weapon you are describing (squads don't begin their deployment over 1,000 meters out).

American infantry lagged behind for a myriad of reasons, but it had little to do with doctrine or arms, within the Army the infantry got 2nd, 3rd, or 4th pickings of personnel to the Air Corps, artillery, signals, and other stressed MOS's. But even so, I'd really like read of a specific campaign or battle where the German infantry simply outmatched and outperformed the Americans, because of all the campaigns I am aware of, German infantry was rarely responsible for breaking an American unit and most disastrous campaigns involved Americans attacking heavily defended objectives. I'd really like an actual example of a specific German unit overwhelming a specific American unit.

When I get time, I'll cover some other stuff in your post.

Agreed, which is why the US had always used automatic weapons within the squad. The BAR wasn't the best choice but unfortunately at the time it was the only real choice. But having the rest of the squad armed with semi auto larger capacity rifles like the Garand vs. the Mauser 98K definitely increased the ability of an American squad to suppress an enemy force without a squad level belt fed machine gun (though we had them at the platoon level to augment squads when necessary).

My argument isn't about the usefulness of machine guns, but that the German tactics weren't superior nor was the tripod/periscope mounted HMG some miracle weapon. Could it sometimes be useful? Yes. Should weapons machine gun team leaders know the basics of indirect fire with machine guns? Sure. But I don't see a need to try to replicate German infantry MTOE. Not only does a heavy machine system directly attached to a rifle squad slow it down (its an anchor) but it also turns switches the emphasis of the squad from maneuver to supporting the gun and feeding it. Which is fine if you are on the defensive and not planning on maneuvering on the enemy but not when on the attack and need to be more mobile.

Good primers on the subject

On Infantry, revised edition

Cliffs so I can catch up?


Wasn't following the other thread.


 



ETA.  On the issue in question.  I'm pretty familiar with the composition of both armies' Infantry at the time.

Germans kind of saw rifleman as glorified security for the gun teams.

The addition or subtraction of the tripod does not a heavy gun make, the weight and size of the projectile is what defines light, medium and heavy guns .  Although IDF with a MG is a useful tactic, the real benefit of the tripod is fires along fixed lines especially important in the defense but also to a lesser extent an increase in effectiveness in the offense.

That's true for the US military, not for the Germans of WWII. They defined the difference between range. Close range (bipod) is LMG and squad humping ammo. Long range and anti air (different mounts) means is classed as a HMG and is supported by more people, as well as horse drawn carts to haul necessary ammo.

Whether the composition and doctrine of the German squad, because of the inclusion of the MG34/42 ands its use, made the German infantry that much more effective than the Americans.

Was a German infantry squad broken down into fire teams?  I skimmed through the text of the 1943 pamphlet, but didn't see any reference to it.

If that was the case, it reinforces my opinion that, even though the Browning .30 cal. LMG was technically inferior to the MG 34 and MG 42 GPMGs, the small arms organic to a U.S. rifle company were inherently better overall than what was issued to the bulk of the Germany Army.

The question in my mind, is, whether the American infantry squad was broken down into fire teams like they are now, and if so, how many?  Fire teams offer the squad leader the ability provide a base of fire while the maneuver element (preferably two fire teams) closes with the enemy.

Clearly, the M1 Rifle, the M1918 BAR, and the Browning LMG offered more firepower and versatility to the platoon commander / platoon leader than what the German's apparently had available to them.  Furthermore, the Germans lacked anything like the M1 Carbine to issue to officers, NCOs, and soldiers assigned to crew-served weapons.  

I'm too tired and lazy to research any of this at the moment.  I know when I attended Infantry Training School (West) in the mid '80s, the USMC under CMC P.X Kelley, we were being trained to transition from a three fire-team squad of four Marines per team, to a two fire team squad of five Marines each.  In the end, it was decided a squad with only two fire teams limited the squad leader in his ability to maneuver and close with the enemy too much to bother with.

I can't imagine what it would be like to have an infantry squad that couldn't provide both a base of fire and a maneuver element (or two).  I believe it says something that the U.S. rifleman of today still finds himself accompanied by the successor to the Browning Automatic Rifleman, and the squad is still assigned a belt-fed MG team from weapons platoon.

No real fireteams for Germans. A squad leader, assistant squad leader, four riflemen, and a machine gun team of gunner, AG, and ammo bearer, nine total, one MP40, seven 98k, one MG42. Riflemen usually hauled extra machinegun ammo too.

US Army didn't have real fire teams either, they were broken down into scout, assault and support by fire teams, that were all equipped differently.

USMC created the concept of identical teams after copying it from Raider Battalions who borrowed it from the Chinese Communists, of all people. The equalized fireteams is the best and most versatile force structure.

You might find this website interesting. Specifically, open up the paper marked "Suppression is Critical", it contains some studies done about fire team size and ability to suppress.

Subscribed for more sober reading.

All of this is very cute, but doesn't have anything to do with things that really matter, like artillery.

No, no, no, and an emphatic NO! again. Gudmundsson screwed that book up beyond belief, and left out nine-tenths of the footnotes that made the original work by John English so damn useful. Get the original, and use that for a starting point in research. I had both versions stolen from me while I was in the Army, on multiple occasions, usually by officers, and the only one I replaced this last time was the original edition by English. Cost me some $60.00-70.00 on the used book market, but it's worth every penny. I'm probably going to have to go dig that thing out of storage in the course of this thread...

Edited to add this:

A Perspective on Infantry, by John A. English

That link takes you to the original version of John A. English's book, which is an expansion of his doctoral thesis. Anything you can find by English is worth reading, assuming you can afford it or find it in a library. He's a Canadian, and most of his stuff is Canada-centric, but he knows whereof he speaks. I just wish we had a few dozen more like him in the US Army...

The Marines aren't at all like the Army. Their organization and tactics at the squad level actually make sense, and they refused to compromise squad structure the way the Army did by downsizing to fit in a particular (poorly conceived and designed) vehicle. I actually got to try out Marine squad MTOE when we were forced to shut down a squad due to NCO manpower issues back in the 1990s, so I convinced the boss to reorg the platoon with a pair of "super squads". To this day, I'm convinced that the three four-man fireteam structure is the way to go. I only wish I could convince the knuckleheads running the MTOE design process of that fact...

The Army has this really bad habit of restructuring units based on the idea of modernization, thinking that the latest batch of new gear (which, oddly, somehow never seems to actually reach the field units I've served in...) will allow them to do the same job as they did in the past, but with fewer people. The restructuring always happens--The new equipment never quite seems to get down to where it matters, or it doesn't really work that well in practice.

After all the innovations, when you add up actual available manpower? I had more troops on the ground as a fucking Corporal in West Germany back in the 1980s than most of the Lieutenants I O/C'd at the NTC had on-hand in their platoons in the late 1990s. Gee, I wonder why my fucking squad put more mines on the ground in a night than most of those platoons managed in the course of a rotation... Huge fucking mystery, that, eh? What's even more fucked up? Those young lieutenants were the only ones in their platoons who even knew what the recording forms looked like, let alone how to fill them out. And, I was handed things as a SFC O/C that would have earned me a trip to meet up with the First Sergeant or the CSM for a major ass-chewing over professional incompetence as an NCO. Engineer Restructuring Initiative, my ass--They should have called that the Engineer Irrelevancy Initiative.

The Army lost a lot of hard-won ground during the Clinton administration. It's a miracle that didn't cost us more lives in the 2000s than it did.

You're absolutely right, about the King of Battle.

In the grand scheme of things, small arms really don't matter. Until, that is, they do. It's a lot easier to defend the battery position against an infantry assault when your small arms are working right, though...

It has its place. But neglecting infantry is what got the US in trouble in countless wars, including WWII and Korea. Unless we're fighting a balls out high intensity war, infantry has been and will be the main effort.

Key point is that the guns were not seen as being fixed to either role--You shifted as dictated by the tactical situation. Same gun, same gunner--Different mission. If the situation required, they'd bring up the tripods and extra ammo, and go to town with it. The key thing was flexibility--If the HMG sections needed to, they could drop down an echelon and serve as extra LMG teams or fill in for combat losses in the squads.

Please remember that a lot of the "case studies" done during and after WWII were by War College guys who had to justify how their/our "superior tactics" prevailed....If that means that an egghead writing an "objective" study can find a way to justify his intelligence while patting himself and some cronies on the back, well,,,OF COURSE he will do the intellectually honest thing and admit,,he .. was WRONG?  Have you ever read some of the crap they came out with?  Ever wonder why EVERY book reviewed in a magazine is .."great" groundbreaking", etc--it is because when the REVIEWER writes a book, he wants/needs someone to owe him one...Have you seen the video that advocated charging the MG42, because it was "so inaccurate due to its high rate of fire..."?  REMF's have a lot of time to "think", if you know what I mean...
Also, remember: many of our guys were still using Springfields until 1945; a lot of the good German units were transitioning to more firepower(STG and more usage of the MP 40 series) based on lessons form the Russian front; and our eventual General of the Army was the same guy who torpedoed a transition to a .27 caliber weapon due to financial reasons......

You're partially right, and partially wrong. The difference between an automatic rifle and the LMG is that tripod, and a few other things. The Marine's new M27 is an automatic rifle, while the M249 is a weapon that can be used in both roles. The actual differences between the classes are more based on usage and capabilities, not caliber.

AR--One man operation, generally magazine fed, no changeable barrel, no capability to be mounted on a tripod for fixed or repeatable fires using a T&E mechanism. Caliber immaterial--The BAR used the same round as the MMG and rifle of its era, and there's no way it could be considered a true LMG.

LMG--Generally bipod-mounted in use, but can be mounted on a tripod if mission requires that, possibly belt fed, can still be magazine fed. Critical differences between an LMG and an AR are that the LMG can be crew-served, and will usually have more of a sustained-fire capability due to things like a quick-change barrel. Examples of this class are the BREN, and all of the GPMG weapons fired off a bipod. The M249 is capable of being used in this role, as well as serving as an AR. If you're confused about which of the two roles your M249 is supposed to be filling, look at your MTOE: Spare barrel allocated? Tripod?  Your M249 is meant to be used in the LMG role. No spare? No tripod? You've got an M249 in the AR role. Note that the key difference between the roles is sustained, repeatable fires. You can't set an M249 for azimuth and elevation to fire off a range card, unless you've got that tripod and T&E mechanism. Even in the attack, this is a critically important planning factor. I do not want a section of M249s providing overhead covering fire as I make an assault when they are fired off a friggin' bipod. That's just asking for a field-test of the ballistic plate on the back of your body armor...

MMG--This classification was first used to describe the old air-cooled light Brownings fired off a tripod. The differentiation was the amount of fire you could expect--An MMG was air-cooled, and could not sustain the rates of fire a water-cooled HMG could pull off for planning purposes. These weapons have to be mounted on a tripod, and are generally manned by at least a three-man dedicated crew. Again, the difference wasn't in the caliber, it was in the amount of sustained fire the weapon could deliver. And, whether or not that fire was capable of repeated and/or restrictable fire. I repeat, you do not want someone providing you overhead supporting fire when firing off a bipod...

HMG--Originally, these were water-cooled rifle-caliber MGs, like the Brownings that had the water jackets on the barrel, the various types of Maxim, and the Vickers. Big, heavy guns, which could literally fire hundreds of thousands of rounds, so long as  you could keep them supplied with ammo and water for the cooling system. Since the passing of the water-cooled guns, the HMG term has sort of morphed to cover the .50 caliber guns, which were once considered the equivalent of the TOW, being intended as anti-tank weapons. WWII and Korean War training and doctrine materials rarely refer to anything other than a water-cooled gun as an HMG. By Vietnam, you start to see references to the M2HB as being considered an HMG.

GPMG--General purpose weapons capable of filling all roles. First weapon of this class was the MG34, followed by the MG42. Both guns stayed in production throughout the war, and were used interchangeably. Exception to this was the MG42, which could not be used in armor mounts inside the tanks due to the way the barrel changes out the side of the receiver. MG34 was used in both the turret coax, and in the hull MG positions. Otherwise, there was no real differentiation between the two, although the Germans did strive for keeping one type to a unit for logistical support reasons. Again, no real differentiation based on caliber, although it's rare to see one of these in a lighter caliber when the individual weapon that the using army has one. Chinese are about the only people I can think of who issue a "light-caliber" GPMG, which is in their 5.8mm round that is also for use in the individual weapon. Generally, you're going to see a GPMG in what we might term an "old-school rifle caliber", such as the 7.62mm NATO or Soviet 7.62X54R.

Absolutely the point I've tried to make throughout this whole thing. Every time we had to compensate for poorly trained or equipped infantry with combined arms tools, that meant that at least a few of the PBI died to make them call for fire, or bring up the tanks and aerial artillery.

I'd like the best of both worlds: Really effective Infantry, backed up by really effective supporting arms. Seems like that would reduce casualties to the minimum possible, which I've always taken as my duty as a professional soldier. We're only lent the manpower we have, and it's our obligation to ensure that as few as possible get killed on the way to performing the mission. You do that with good training, and good equipment.

Mmmm... I'll agree with you about the point you're making about the case studies and so forth, but I think you'll find that the Springfield was a pretty rare bird out in the combat units by 1945. The only place they went on the MTOE was as a dedicated sniper rifle, in most units. Even the Marines, who were very dubious about the M1 Garand, had replaced nearly all of their bolt-action Springfields by that point in the war.

I've done a lot of reading from that era, and I can't say that I ever found anything that led me to believe that the US Army ever really figured out what the hell the Germans were actually doing. It's like they were color-blind, and watching The Wizard of Oz--They got the general plot of the movie, but they completely missed the transition from black-and-white to Technicolor. Ask them to describe the movie, and they'd never mention that key and critical moment, which any person with normal vision would remark on.

And, again, the numbers tell the story. The Germans inflicted more casualties on the allies, man-for-man, than we inflicted on them. If we hadn't had the advantage of having nearly limitless supply and firepower, by comparison, our casualty lists would look a lot worse than they did. Hell, I'm not sure that they wouldn't have been able to fight us to a standstill, to tell the truth. The Nazis might still be running Central Europe, if their resource base had been as good as ours was. Thank God it wasn't, because that's a real nightmare scenario.

The only 1903s were for grenadiers and snipers. Line infantry were not equipped with them.

And even then, the M1's grenade launcher was getting spread decently far and wide by Normandy.

I think we have really effective infantry now. Not perfect but certainly better than nearly everyone else cobsidering size and costs.

I just don't think the German Heer were all that great. Some units were, some equipment was, but I never truly bought the superiority of the German war machine. For every one thing they excelled at, they also had a major short coming. We can learn from their successes but I really don't see anything about their squad MTOE or doctrine that really makes me envious.

How often is a squad expected to perform an unsupported attack, alone? The only time I can think of it is during MOUT, and our normal task organization would work fine for that.

The BAR sucked as a SAW but the Garands and mortar/arty fire support made up for it. It paid off to have good fire support and the best radios, pushed  down to the company, and even platoon level sometimes.

The biggest shortcomings in WWII infantry weren't doctrine nor equipment, but small unit leadership (and lack of it), bottom of barrel selection if personnel, to include officers (fail flight school and you become an infantry platoon commander), and similar issues. Average age of a battalion commander was 27 years old, that's never a good thing. The training system was okay but the replacement system was near criminally negligent. Plus being on the attack and impatient to end the war with risky and poorly planned attacks didn't help matters.

A good example is the 36th ID's crossing of the Rapido River near Cassino in Italy. Total and unnecessary bloodbath, costing two top notch regiments out of stubborn pride, incompetence, impatience, and inability to say "fuck no" to your boss when he tries to murder your division.

I don't think casualties alone can effectively describe the performance abilities of hm the US Army. We were fighting a well equiped, trained, led, and supplied army with lotsvof experience. In nearly all the big camoagns of the war, the Allies were on the offensive which meant significant casualties compared to the defender. The Germans good trade space with ammo expenditure, we had to it with life's. So its no wonder so many casualties occurred. But it wasn't a slaughter by any means. Every once in a while a green unit would get hemmed up but most learned quit, even the problem children divisions like the 106th ID.

Overall, the US Army infantry did a pretty damn fine job considerong the enemy had a 3-5 year head star in mobilization. I'd have liked to have seen a better gun then the BAR, like a M249 or that MG42 copy the Rmy experimented with in .30-06 but c'est la vie.

Cool, I didn't know they had them then. I'm still iffy on how they even worked, aiming, range, etc. Were they point detonating or did landing just knock the spoon off?

What other metric, besides casualties, could we agree on? The number of troops pushed through sensitivity training, perhaps?

We won not because of our infantry, but despite it. We never faced the German Wehrmacht at its height, but only after it had been worn down to a percentage of what it had been in '41 and '42. Look at the casualties they managed to inflict on the Soviets, right up until the end of the war: The exchange ratio was on the order of ten to one, right up until the very end. And, considering just how much reliance the Germans put on the line infantry Landser, when it came to holding the line and exploiting advances, that's some sobering stuff to have to acknowledge. The US Army never faced the Germans on their own terms, thank God. The Germans did all that with a mostly horse-drawn, and leg-infantry army, and they did it because they had a better understanding of how to fight a modern war, down at the grunt level. There are a bunch of first-person accounts from those poor bastards starting to come out, as their kids and grandkids find daddy's or grandfather's written recollections of the war.  You read through those, and it rapidly becomes quite clear just why the hell they were able to manage what they did with what they had. They simply used their limited resources a hell of a lot better than we did, and you're left wondering if we'd have been up to the task, had the Germans had our resource base to work from. I'm pretty sure that if they had all the material and manpower advantages that we did, they'd have made our fight one hell of a lot uglier than it was. To me, this is a damn good reason to try to research, understand, and try to implement the lessons they had to teach. Which, sadly, is something we haven't done in all the years since the war ended.

Depends on the model.

Good site for a detailed explanation:

US WWII Rifle Grenades

Multiple types, really. There were Anti-Tank grenades, fragmentation grenades (which look for all the world like the Mk.2 "pineapple" body screwed onto the end of a rifle grenade tail--because that's essentially what they are), and the adapter, which allowed a regular Mk.2 frag grenade to be launched via the rifle grenade launcher.
Here are some of the live and practice grenades, though as the header indicates, not all were in use during WW2. The M9A1 was the standard AT grenade, and the M17 was the frag grenade.
M9A1 was point-detonated, and contained a shaped charge. If memory serves, the fuze for the M17 was ignited by the propelling charge when the grenade was launched, or maybe there was a trip for the fuze in the grenade tail...I would have to do some digging.


Then there's the adapter, which had a clip for the spoon (image courtesy 90th Infantry Division Preservation Group):


Obviously, it's the rifle grenade tail with a cup and clip head for attaching a standard frag. You'd pull the pin before firing, and I forget if the spoon came off in flight or after landing. (if Wikipedia is to be believed, the former--but I'm wary of that place sometimes)

Inert-Ord.net has decent pages on the launchers, the grenades, and the adapters if you're interested.

The whole point of maneuver for the Germans was to get those guns into advantageous positions, and then use them to win the fight by indirect means, if at all possible. Where we used the guns in support of maneuver, the Germans maneuvered the guns themselves, using the riflemen as scouts, security, and ammo bearers. An unnecessary frontal attack, like we normally used when faced with a defensive position, was grounds for disciplinary action in a lot of German units. You were expected to find a way to get your guns into a position where they could dominate the objective, and use them to drive the enemy out of it before you resorted to a direct frontal attack. Best was to be able to render that position untenable, and then engage them again as they withdrew, ideally wiping them out if you could.

From the MWCP

Light Machinegun (LMG). The light machinegun (LMG) classification generally includes .22 to .250 caliber (5.45mm to 6mm) automatic weapons. An LMG typically weighs between 15 and 30 pounds, complete. A crew of one or two individuals normally mans an LMG, depending on the accessories being used. Neither a tripod nor a spare barrel is normally used with an LMG when a single individual mans it. Bullet weights for LMGs normally range from 45 to 72 grains. They are optimally employed against exposed and lightly protected personnel at ranges less than 1,000 meters. In this category, the Marine Corps employs the M249; though its nature as a light machinegun is not as conducive to the attack as a true automatic rifle (defined in the Glossary).  

Medium Machinegun (MMG). The medium machinegun (MMG) classification generally includes .264 to .33 caliber (6.5mm to 8mm) automatic weapons. Typical MMG weights are 25 pounds or more, by themselves. Remaining ammunition, ground tripod, spare barrel, and other accessories can add another 25 pounds or more to the overall weight of MMG systems, which requires a standard crew of three personnel – a gunner, a team leader/assistant gunner, and an ammunition bearer.  A MMG generally uses bullets that weigh between 140 and 220 grains, with the most popular calibers being 7.62x51mm NATO or 7.62x54R Russian. Generally, they are used against personnel and light materials (e.g., motor vehicles) at ranges of 1500 meters or less.  In this category, the Marine Corps utilizes several variants of the M240 medium machinegun – for both vehicle and ground employment.  The infantry will typically utilize the M240G in a supporting role for the maneuver elements of a rifle company, while the M240 and M240E1 are utilized on tanks, AAVs, and LAVs.  This type of automatic weapon is also commonly referred to as a General Purpose Machinegun (GPMG).

Heavy Machineguns (HMG). The heavy machinegun (HMG) classification generally includes .50-caliber or larger (12.7mm to 15mm) automatic weapons. The system weight of a heavy machinegun is substantial. In a ready to fire configuration using a ground tripod, an HMG without ammunition can weigh more than 125 pounds. A crew of four or more personnel normally mans an HMG (although a crew of three may be sufficient if motor vehicles or draft animals are employed for transportation over distance). The common bullet weight of an HMG is 700 grains or larger. HMGs are primarily employed against field fortifications, vehicles, and aircraft.  They are generally effective against these types of targets at ranges of 1,000 meters or greater.  Heavy machineguns are typically used in a mounted or crew-served supporting role and are capable of defeating lightly armored vehicles such as Armored Personal Carriers (APCs) and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs).  The machineguns from this category currently employed by the Marine Corps are the M2 heavy machinegun and the Mk19 grenade machinegun.

This is an interesting thread but I gotta run to work. A few thoughts:

The most German-like depiction in US tactics was in Donald Burgett's third book, on 1-506 Airborne at Bastogne.  They had pushed one M1919A6 per squad, and it generally looked like they used it in the frontal assault as a concentrated source of firepower, with riflemen bounding up alongside the gun and the gun team bounding forward as they overwatched each other.  Really not MG tactics so much as fire and maneuver, applied a different way.

I think optics on MGs are great, but what makes the MG effective is precision.  Repeatable results. Best long range effectiveness is a gun+T&E+leader with binos.  I wish someone would objectify those stats vice the gun on a bipod...dont know why it hasnt been done.

The old 7-70 related two guns on the SBF if you can see the OBJ AND the length of the avenue of approach the maneuver element is taking.  Split the guns if you can see one and not the other.  If neither, dismount them and move off bipods with maneuver element.

I would commend "Doctrine and Dogma" as a book, if you havent seen it.  The Germans in WWI tried to synchronize direct and indirect fires at every level in the offense, something we have failed to do.  A grenade launcher at squad level, lightweight mortar at platoon, heavier mortar pus perhaps an assault gun at company and increase as you go, seeking to synchronize an indirect HE chucker with an automatic weapon.  I think a handheld 60mm in a weapon squad is a prerequisite and an unconsidered shortcoming, especially with prox rounds and bad guys who are too stupid to build overhead cover.  For that matter, we could saw off our mortars and shirten the range and use them to get prox munitions into the fight more.  That is a function of the stormtroopers in the offense that should be more influential then it was.

Great posts though.

ITT we learn who knows about combined arms, fire and maneuver, as well as machine guns and machine gunnery both current and historically.

LOL just got done reading the kirks other replies in the parent thread.
Standing by for even more nonsensical non logic based fallacies that he creates.  





Maybe one day he'll find thespock to keep him in check LOL.

In a traditional offensive movement, like those demonstrated in the WWII German squad in the attack video, it would never work out as planned unless the machine gun specifically held its fire as much as possible. The MG42 machine gun team was never truly self supporting as they could never carry enough ammo between three of them to run the gun for any longer than a few minutes. They weren't issued any horses or carts or jeeps or tactical wheelbarrows to haul ammo, so the rest of the squad carried it. Which means the rest of the squad can no longer maneuver forward under machine gun fire if everyone becomes an ammo bearer. During an attack, the options are that the SL, ASL, and four riflemen are going to have to either stay with the machine gun, to feed it the ammo they carry, meaning all squad progress is measured in position of the gun. Or they will have to all ditch the ammo they are carrying and consolidate it with the gun when it positions itself as the support by fire, which will allow the rest of the squad to move out independently, but it will make the gun team immobile, when three men who are supposed to (in theory anyway) maneuver further to new positions will be carrying an entire squad's worth of ammo between three men, without any true means of doing it.

The reality of that tactic was that it only worked when the Germans were in the defensive, fighting from prepared positions, where the squads were bunched together already, allowing easy resupply. Or it only worked in platoon attacks, when entire squads could be made into support by fire units to support their machine guns. But in a situation where one squad is supposed to maneuver on the enemy, I don't see it working unless the machine guns use minimum ammo.

The use of the BAR and even the more modern M249 or M27 at the fireteam level for a SAW is much more practical. They can keep up with the rest of the squad when maneuvering, they don't require a crew to operate, and their ammo consumption is not high enough that they require the entire squad to become mules.

As to this idea that the Germans never attacked frontally, hogwash. Historical accounts of WWII, whether from Africa, France, or the Eastern Front are full of examples of Germans attacking prepared division sized enemy positions frontally. For instance, the defensive line at Kursk had few open flanks for a squad leader to maneuver his men into. Theory and reality are two separate things. The reality is that a single squad doesn't have the firepower to perform a breakthrough of nearly any position above an OP, because combat isn't squad vs. squad. The enemy position will have platoons or companies in the direct vicinity that a German squad is preparing to attack. Unless the theory is that single MG is going to suppress an entire company, the Germans are going to need to attack as a company themselves, which means being on line, and not being able to use only concealed avenues of approach and microterrain. It also means they will use mortars, artillery, and tanks when possible, since the Germans were all about combined arms.

I don't think airborne units even jumped with BAR's until Market Garden, because previously they had no way of doing it individually, so they weren't even issued them. As such, they probably never really felt the need for them, especially when the 1919A6 became available, which was more useful as a squad automatic weapon (aside from weight).

Why does the platoon need mortars when the company already has them, capable of being detached?

Yup...

That sounds like the entire combined arms doctrine of the Marine Corps.



 

So, wait, what was the question?  

Actually no, it wasnt at all.  It wasnt necessarily that of the US Army either, but I'm not trying to be parochial.

The nature of the German tactics  was to create the complementary forces that puts the defender on the horns of a dillemma.  That is basic tactics, and yes, part of USMC doctrine.  And Army.

Most of the time we do it with a SBF that emplaces frontal fire, and a maneuver force that comes from the flank.  If you keep your head down to not get shot by the SBF, the assault forc overruns you. Get up to repel the assault force and you get hit by the SBF. The dillemma is generaly delivered by attacks from two directions.

Bad tactics, like Japanese tactics, is to do a frontal banzai charge with no SBF.  There is no dillemma, it is simply return fire and defeat the attack.

The Germans in WWI sorta couldnt necessarily outflank the enemy all that often, so the dillemma they created was direct and indirect fires.  Grenade launchers at squad level, light weight mortars at platoon.

The Marines in WWII had rifle grenade launchers at squad level, and phased them out.  60mm mortars were a company asset the Platoon commander didnt have.  The Army kept the grenade launchers but used 60mms the same as the USMC.

The big USMC intiatives, as everyone knows, is larger sqauds with three teams and triple the BARs. Which is great, but there was no indirect weapon at platoon or below.  


The trend in the US is to not carry lightweight HE launchers but bring a radio and trust you can get the support from higher. In theory you can be more mobile as you can call for a 105mm rather then hump a 60mm, or 50mm like the Germans had for a little while.  In practice you get the firepower and the mobility but trade away the authority because the PL doesnt own those fires.  My point is the US creates those dillemmas between indirect and direct fire, but NOT at all levels.  Generally at fire team, with 203s, and company, with 60mms, but in between there isnt an asset that SLs and PLs control and own organically.


As to why you should do it that way, as opposed to have mortars at CO level and task them down:  There isnt a good reason if you have the proper weapons.  IMHO the mortar used at company level as the commander's pocket artillery is bulkier then it need to be and a lighter version with less weight and shorter range would be useful in a weapons squad.

You may disagree, but I notice in US discussions the chief debate is over precision rifle vs automatic fie and what is the proper mix, and HE is something conceded to be on the other end of the radio.  Which is fine, and may work the best; but in WWI the German tactics were the lower you could sync it the better, and that was preferable to more firepower synced at a higher level.  Then again, that was the pre-radio era, but still, an interesting observation.

I cut a junk Buick in half with an MG42 at a shoot once.  

Back when 8mm was cheap...

Often, 60mm teams are attached to PLTs and are under control of the PLT commander. When that isn't the case, Assaultmen bring SMAWs to the PLT, helping to bridge the HE gap. Newer weapon systems, such as the M32, also help.