Most common scale of attacks

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Koldobika
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Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:05 pm

Most common scale of attacks

Post by Koldobika »

During WW2 what would have been the typical scale for an attack / offensive action?

To expand a little, the common battle drills that soldiers are trained upon are section(squad) and platoon level attacks and react to contact drills etc. My thoughts are that whilst this is easy to train, in a full, peer or near peer conflict, it would be rare for an action to take place at this scale. Of course there are always raids and ambushes, and in Iraq/Afghan this scale would probably be the most common unit used, but surely on the Western or Eastern front, you would see little action smaller than a company attack?

The second part of my question really is whether in a company attack you would have a platoon operating as the support by fire for the attack itself, or whether each platoon part of the attack would form its own SBF position and have it's own objectives so as to reduce the scale. From my understanding of german tactics and the use of a focal point of attack, the former would seem to be more logical.
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