Combat Along the Skirmish Lines

Light Infantry in Close Combat

A subscriber recently said, “I understand why Soviet Combat-Origined Battle Norms are so important to guiding future offensive operations, but such studies appear to be more appropriate for larger scale operations. What about fighting at the sharp end, small scale actions along the skirmish lines?”

First we must clarify the situation. Battle norms are available at all levels of combat. QuikManeuvers offers several publications in their Light Infantry category, to include Close Assault; Hard-Striking, Fast-Moving War; and Infiltration that focus particularly on infantry combat. Light Infantry combat consists of the armament organization weapons and tactics of infantry forces who are fighting without air, artillery, or tank support. They fight with machine guns, RPGs and light mortars, and the tactics discussed are those used by light infantry units (America has no regular army light infantry units), commando special forces, ranger, and guerrilla operations.

Machine guns are of prime importance to infantry combat. The following excerpt from Close Assault demonstrates the superiority of the small infantry units of the German 3rd Fallschirmjager (parachute) Division in World War Two.

”The 3rd Fallschirmjager Division (3rd FJD) in 1944, had 930 light machine guns, eleven times as many as its chief opponent, the U.S. 29th Infantry Division. Rifle companies in the 3rd FJD had twenty MG 42s and 43 submachine guns; rifle companies in the US 29th Infantry Division had two machine guns and nine Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR). At the squad level, the GIs had a single BAR; the German parachute squad had two MG 42s and three submachine guns. The Germans had three times as many mortars as the Americans, and heavier ones. So in any encounter between equal numbers of Americans and Fallschirmjager, the Germans had from six to twenty times as much firepower.”
(excerpt from Close Assault)