a proposal: infantry using armor for cover (again)

[Yeknodathon]

Great idea!

Why not extend the idea to "attach" infantry to walls to sort out the problem of unrealistic retreats?

Yeknod

[Sailor Malan]

Am I alone with not missing tanks as cover? I know you see a lot of pictures of (especially) Russian Infantry advancing behind tanks, but I am not sure how useful/effective this actually was.

As has been pointed out - tanks draw fire, tanks move (backwards, forwards at more than 10mph etc)

Good tank positions and good infantry positions don't always coincide (hull down for the tank, concealment for the infantry)

It is difficult to communicate with a tank.

9-12 infantry (1 squad) dont fit well behind a tank without bunching, or only being covered from one direction. And, of course, that isn't terribly useful when the standard response to infantry close to tanks is used - mortar them, and then pick off the tanks.

I may be well off line here, but I don't recall many pictures (that aren't obviously posed) where anyone used wrecks as cover.

Final thought - whatever killed the tank can see you. And has line of fire, and range etc. Still want to hide behind wrecks?

[lassner.1]

Indeed, its a valid point. And I agree that there are many times when infantry may *not* want to be too close to a tank. I have watched some of my own troops positioned close to a tank become casualties during a catastrophic explosion. That said, there are times when tanks as cover are appropriate. Advancing on an isolated infantry position? Sure would be nice to use that tank as cover. The tank may well draw fire, but so does infantry moving across a field.

[Redwolf]

In any case, infantry taking cover behind a dead tank beats lying in open ground, doesn't it?

Wilson's "If you survive" has a quite lengthly passage about a failed advance of US infantry with a few Shermans. He goes quite a bit into the topic of exposure when riding on them, and options how to get out through enemy infantry with the tank's help. The final solution did not include the tanks, because they just fled and left the grunts behind, though.

[lassner.1]

Bumping this on the hope of a response from BTS.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Sailor Malan:

Am I alone with not missing tanks as cover? [snips of many good points]

Certainly you're not alone. One of the corporals responsible for my basic infantry training memorably informed me that tanks are "nasty, smelly, noisy, dangerous things", and one should have nothing to do with them. There are simply too many ways that even a friendly tank can hurt you if you get too close to it -- tank crewmen don't call their mounts "gruntcrunchers" for nothing. Apart from the hazard of the commander thinking he's seen something nasty and calling "driver, reverse" just as you step up to grab the tank telephone (assuming one is fitted), the blast from the main gun could be pretty unpleasant, and for the Brits at least you might already in WW2 have bits of discarding sabot to worry about.

I believe it was British WW2 doctrine for all weapons to engage tanks freely, so attracting lots of fire should certainly be a hazard for anyone facing them. According to PRO document WO 291/502, "Germany Infantry in Action" (an early-war training pamphlet, so not necessarily definitive) German doctrine against tanks was for infantrymen not equipped with anti-tank weapons to take cover and hold their fire, so this might not be such a problem for opponents of the Germans; although, presumably, if you know that there might be enemy infantry in close proximity with an enemy tank, you should hose it down on principle.

Contrariwise, I seem to recall reading somwhere that an established method in the US Army for getting a platon that had gone to ground moving again was to call up a tank, so that the platoon leader could stand up behind cover to rally his troops. This raises a question about the way CM works -- can leaders exercise leadership when they are hiding?

The whole question of intimate tank/infantry co-operation is a tricky one. British and American tanks in the 1944-45 time-frame would, I belive, have radios working on different frequencies to their accompanying infantry (House mentions this in his "Combined Arms Warfare in the 20th Century"). Tank telephones were one solution tried -- a telephone on the back plate of the tank, wired into the tank's intercomm system. British tanks would sometimes carry a spare 38 set in the turret, tuned to the infantry frequency, but after the withdrawal of the 38 set from infantry use (whenever that was -- anyone know?) there was no common set.

Being on the same frequency as the infantry might not help that much, anyway. WO 232/77, "Infantry communications in the infantry battalion", quotes a "lessons learned" document from the Staffordshire Yeomanry as saying that infantry communications are "without exception deplorable. There is a general defeatist attitude amongst infantry that their communications are bound to fail once the battle starts. The attitude is justified as they always do."

WO 291/482 and /486 deal with target indication by tanks to infantry, and within the infantry dection. Both seem to favour indicating targets by the use of tracer. Perhaps surprisingly, trials at Barnard Castle showed that target indication within the section by tracer was usually quicker than doing it verbally.

All the best,

John.