23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A ten-year battalion commander's course in 64 pages, July 14, 2005
This review is from: World War II Infantry Tactics (2): Company and Battalion (Elite) (v. 2) (Paperback)
My private library has a number of military manuals and books on military science. "World War II Infantry Tactics: Company and Battalion" is a condensed, image-rich guide for the military historian, World War Two gamer, and the scale modeller. Dr. Bull examines both the theory and practice of British, German, and American armies in Western Europe between 1939 and 1945. Don't look in here for the latest and greatest cutting-edge infantry tactics--Stephen Bull wrote about what happened in the past. That's history, folks! A battallion commander would need about a decade of military education and experience to apply the lessons in this thin little book.
Line and block charts dipict the organization of line infantry battalions--one from the three countries. Germany seemed to have a battalion for every purpose, so the charts are a bit generic--but give a clear picture of the parts if a battalion. Dr. Bull shows how the different parts worked together through text and pictures. The color plates on pages 33-40 are easy to understand. Showing how the British and Germans conducted urban warfare is valuable to understanding why American infantry doctrine until Iraq was to stay out of cities--and blast the cities into rubble. City fighting can be more costly than taking down a fortified enemy postion. Dr. Bull didn't mention non-combatant civilians or guerrilla activity--but neither did US Army doctrine of the period, at least not for the line infantry battalion commander. Bull did cover machine guns, mortars, anti-tank techniques, land mines and booby traps, mototized and "armored" infantry, and tank-infantry cooperation in detail. World War Two combat was combined arms--the infantry was never alone (though the World War Two infantry veterans I spoke to swear they were the Army's step children).
"World War II Infantry Tactics" spotlighted that German, British, and American infantry tactics were surprisingly similar. Surprising, perhaps, to someone who didn't consider that humans were conducting the same sort of activities over the same terrain with similar hardware--but there were significant differences between the three nations. At the basic squad eqipment level, the Germans had a belt fed light machine gun and severl 5-shot bolt action rifles and one or two submachine guns, the British BREN gun fed from a "30-shot" box mangazine and was teamed up with several 10-shot bolt action rifles and a submachine gun or two, and the Americans had one or two Browning Automatic Rifles (20-shot magazine) and bunches of the 8-shot semiautomatic Garand M1 rifle (and occassionally .45 caliber submachine guns and semiautomatic M1 carbines). The basic "fire volume" was about the same, even though the American Browning Automatic Rifle didn't have a quick-change barrel like the other two squad automatic weapons. America got into the war about the time that the anti-tank rifle was being retired for being ineffective against tanks, and American infantry generally had the workable 2.36-inch rocket launcher (AKA "Bazooka") and the M9 and M9A1 anti-tank rifle grenade when they began seeing large-scale combat, so they didn't have to have the elaborate anti-tank teams that the British and Germans were forced to cobble together with improvised anti-tank weapons. Fighting a tank while armed with just a crowbar--so that your buddy with a can of "petrol" can heave it atop the engine deck of an enemy tank so that a third man can puncture the can with rifle fire and a fourth can ignite the flammable fuel with a hand grenade or perhaps a bundle of smoldering rags is different from waiting until the enemy tank passes by your Bazooka position until you can get a flank or rear shot! The early-war infantry 37mm anti-tank guns were not very effective on late-war light tanks--and just about everybody had medium tanks in service during 1942.
"World War II Infantry Tactics: Company And Battalion" is concise and compact. If I were briefing "battalion commanders" in a WWII war game, I'd want them to have read this book first. I learned a few things that I hadn't known before, and I have dozens of other books on this very subject in my collection!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
basic good book on company and battalion infantry tactics, May 9, 2006
This review is from: World War II Infantry Tactics (2): Company and Battalion (Elite) (v. 2) (Paperback)
From the days of the Greek Hopilite to the modern mechanized infantry of today, the infantry has been the premier fighting force of war. Whetherer it be horse cavalry of back then or modern tanks and aircraft, all other units are just knife and fork where infantry is still the teeth who do the chewing and tearing.
Dr. Stephan Bull gives the reader in this little book insights into the organization and doctrines of German, British and American infantry at company and battalion level. Just as his accompanying book on Squad and Platoon Tactics provide insights into organization and doctrine in regards to formations at the squad adn platoon level.
A must read for anyone interested in understanding the battles of the period.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid introduction to the role of companies and battalions in World War II, March 11, 2011
This review is from: World War II Infantry Tactics (2): Company and Battalion (Elite) (v. 2) (Paperback)
Companies and battalions were important organizational units among British, German, and American armies in World War II. The book begins with a somewhat vague description of the battalion. But organizational charts on pages 6 (British) and 11 (American) and 12 (German) begin to exemplify the battalion. Key building blocks are companies, smaller units.
The book describes tactical operation of battalions. The work also examines other aspects of the units considered here: machine gun support, mortars, mines, anti-tank tactics and their evolution, and motorized infantry (including the role of armor).
This Osprey volume in the Elite series does a nice job or providing a sense of tactics at the company/battalion level. Nice illustrations and photographs provide useful context.
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