NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

If none of the above has helped, another way to think about it is this:

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An platoon, or a troop, is led by a lieutenant (hahahahahahahaha). This is between 20 and 40 men.

A company, or a squadron, or a troop, or a battery, is led by a captain, or a major. This is between 80 and 200 men.

A (here we gooo) battalion, a regiment, or a squadron, or a battery is led by a lieutenant-colonel or a colonel. This is between 400 and 1,000 men.

A brigade or a regiment or a combat command is led by a brigadier-general, or a brigadier, or a colonel. This is between 2,500 and 5,000 men.

A division is led by a major-general. This is between 10,000 and 20,000+ men.

A corps is led by a lieutenant-general. This is upwards of 30,000 men.

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Unit "types" are divided into three forms:
Combat arms: infantry, armour, reconnaissance

Combat support arms: artillery, engineers, aviation, signals, intelligence.

Combat service support arms: logistics, transport, ordnance, medical, maintenance, construction, liaison, administration, vets, propaganda, religious.

These can vary a bit according to opinions.

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Generally speaking, a person can only command five combat arms subunits before it becomes too much for him or his staff to handle.

Consequently, a captain or major can only really deal with 5 lieutenants. Similarly, a major-general would be hard pressed to deal with 5 or more brigadiers. However, units are not only comprised of the subunit below them in the hierarchy, but also subunits two or three levels below. Thus, an infantry battalion might have:

A headquarters, with the lieutenant colonel, and his executive officer, a major. And a staff captain for intelligence, and a staff captain for logistics.

There is an administration element led by a lieutenant and a medical element led by a lieutenant and a planning element led by a lieutenant.

Three infantry companies each led by a captain. Each infantry company has three platoons of infantry led by a lieutenant.

A weapons company led by a captain. The company has three platoons of support weapons led by a lieutenant each.

This way the lieutenant colonel has to deal with four captains of each company (who in turn have to deal with three lieutenants). His executive officer covers the staff and he has to deal with two captains and three lieutenants. This way nobody breaches the "5 limit".

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

Also tanks can and do operate alone. No problem.

The tanks advantage is mobility under armour, ie its ability to move across hostile terrain while protected. This means it can keep up its movement speed without stopping.

The tank is a successful weapon because 95% of weapons can't suppress it. Tanks can be suppressed by weapons that can kill them, but most weapons can not.

Infantry moving across a battle space can't be suppressed by supersoakers. Therefore the infantry can go anywhere, and their speed is limited by the terrain and human endurance. The maximum, as far as I'm aware, movement to battle was some units of the PLA which advanced 75 miles in one day to Luding bridge. And that's just mental.

Of course, it doesn't take much to suppress infantry. Rifle fire can suppress infantry. That slows their movement to basically zero. At max pace, infantry can cover a mile in about 8 minutes or something. A sniper in a church tower can see more than a mile and can keep the infantry suppressed. Maybe it takes them an hour or two or three even to remove the sniper. And that's just one guy with a rifle. To not allow yourself to be suppressed takes maximum aggression. And that's over open ground. Now put snipers and machineguns in rocky ground, with enfilading fire, and make the infantry move over a small stream and advance uphill.

Tanks can only be suppressed by anti tank weapons or other tanks. And tanks move much, much faster than infantry and on more terrain as well. In the first example the tank will just drive around the town. The sniper likely won't even waste time shooting it. This is the advantage of the tank. This is also why tanks should not be wasted by having them thrown against well defended positions. Tanks can go around and dislocate the enemy from his line of communication and do other funky strategic things, but throwing them against well defended positions, with or without infantry and artillery, is a blunder.

[New Solaurora]

Okay I'm getting mixed answers. What is usually the smallest group size for just standard infantry? Is it a squadron or a platoon? And what the heck is a section? (I think I sorta get how corps work. A corps serves a specific function and so they vary in size yeah?)

[The Manticoran Empire]

Okay I'm getting mixed answers. What is usually the smallest group size for just standard infantry? Is it a squadron or a platoon? And what the heck is a section? (I think I sorta get how corps work. A corps serves a specific function and so they vary in size yeah?)

Team. A team will be 2 to 5 guys and will usually be part of a squad. Most squads will thus be organized in such a way that two or more teams can be organized. This can be explained as a squad having, say, 10 men. Three men form a Machine Gun team with a light machine gunner, assistant gunner, and ammo bearer. Two men form the Command Team, with the Squad Leader and, if your army does it, a Radioman. The remaining 5 men are in the Assault Team, with the squad's second in command leading the remaining riflemen. The US uses 9 man squads, divided into two 4 man teams and a Squad Leader but you could do three 3-man teams or a 5 man team and a 4 man team or any other combination.

So the Team is the smallest infantry group size.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Also tanks can and do operate alone. No problem.

The tanks advantage is mobility under armour, ie its ability to move across hostile terrain while protected. This means it can keep up its movement speed without stopping.

The tank is a successful weapon because 95% of weapons can't suppress it. Tanks can be suppressed by weapons that can kill them, but most weapons can not.

Infantry moving across a battle space can't be suppressed by supersoakers. Therefore the infantry can go anywhere, and their speed is limited by the terrain and human endurance. The maximum, as far as I'm aware, movement to battle was some units of the PLA which advanced 75 miles in one day to Luding bridge. And that's just mental.

Of course, it doesn't take much to suppress infantry. Rifle fire can suppress infantry. That slows their movement to basically zero. At max pace, infantry can cover a mile in about 8 minutes or something. A sniper in a church tower can see more than a mile and can keep the infantry suppressed. Maybe it takes them an hour or two or three even to remove the sniper. And that's just one guy with a rifle. To not allow yourself to be suppressed takes maximum aggression. And that's over open ground. Now put snipers and machineguns in rocky ground, with enfilading fire, and make the infantry move over a small stream and advance uphill.

Tanks can only be suppressed by anti tank weapons or other tanks. And tanks move much, much faster than infantry and on more terrain as well. In the first example the tank will just drive around the town. The sniper likely won't even waste time shooting it. This is the advantage of the tank. This is also why tanks should not be wasted by having them thrown against well defended positions. Tanks can go around and dislocate the enemy from his line of communication and do other funky strategic things, but throwing them against well defended positions, with or without infantry and artillery, is a blunder.

History has proven you incorrect on numerous occasions. Perhaps you should ask Britain and Russia how well their tanks fared without infantry support.

I'll give you a hint. They didn't fare well. It is incredibly difficult to see out of a tank and infantry can easily hide themselves, making the tanks incredibly vulnerable to infantry anti-tank weapons. You simply are not correct in your opinion that tanks can operate alone. They cannot and thousands of men died because people believed they could.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Okay I'm getting mixed answers. What is usually the smallest group size for just standard infantry? Is it a squadron or a platoon? And what the heck is a section? (I think I sorta get how corps work. A corps serves a specific function and so they vary in size yeah?)

How many "best friends" do you have?

[Triplebaconation]

You simply are not correct in your opinion that tanks can operate alone.

Well obviously tanks can operate alone, since as you pointed out they have historically.

Their effectiveness and vulnerability in doing so will depend on the situation, not universal truths.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Okay I got another question. How the heck is the army divided up? So there are armies but then there are subdivisions and then people refer to the small groups by their numbers like 7th division or 201st platoon or something? Can someone explain this to me as if I was a child because I am not understanding how this works?

OK there are firstly two types of Army. There is the Army in reference to the Ground Warfare organization and then there is the Field Army (I.E. 6th Army (GER) or Third Army (US)) Field Armies will typically command several corps, divisions, and other units. For example, US First Army in July 1944 had under its command four Corps, two ranger battalions, an independent tank battalion, an independent infantry battalion, and several Anti-Aircraft, Engineer, Quartermaster, Ordnance, Medical, and Signal units. The Corps themselves commanded a total of 13 Infantry and 3 Armored Divisions as well as several more supporting companies and battalions.


Corps are collections of divisions, as few as two, sometimes many more than six. But, in general, a Corps will have 3 to 5 divisions to reduce the strain on the staff. It will also have a large number of independent battalions and companies providing additional support. These can be of any branch of service, such as infantry, armor, cavalry, medical, signals, supply, transportation, anti-aircraft, field artillery, and ordnance. If you look at the image attached, you'll see that V Corps, assigned to First Army, had under its command 3 Infantry Divisions, 8 Artillery Battalions, 3 Tank Battalions, 4 Tank Destroyer Battalions, 5 Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalions, 5 Engineer Battalions, 4 Engineer Companies, 2 Cavalry Squadrons, 1 Quartermaster Battalion, 4 Quartermaster Companies, 1 Medical Battalion, 3 Medical Companies, and 1 Signals Battalion. This comes to a total of 44 subordinate units. In the same army, though, you have VII Corps with 71 subordinate units. And then there is XIX Corps with 42 subordinate units. As you can see, even in the same Field Army, no two corps are the same. No two armies are the same, either.

That is because the Corps and the Army are task organized. They aren't fixed formations with fixed allotments of units. Rather they are administrative formations that are attached units as needed and will gain and lose units as the situation demands. A corps may start a campaign with 5 divisions, 16 combat battalions, 12 support battalions, and a dozen or so support companies and lose half of those units to other corps during the campaign because its sector of the front is not heavily contested. Or it might double in size after it runs into significant resistance. So you may have a corps go from the size of V Corps to the size of VII Corps to the size of XIX Corps over the course of a few months due to the changing tactical situation.

Fixed organization becomes important at the Division. For most armies, the Division is primary tactical formation. When you fight modern battles, you are fighting with divisions so it is important that every Armored Division be organized the same way as every other Armored Division and every Infantry Division be organized the same way as every other Infantry Division. This is where Tables of Organization come into play. They will dictate how many units are assigned to a specific division type and how many men should be in those units. For example, an armored division in 1944 in the US Army had about 11,000 officers and men in 15 units. 9 Combat Battalions, 4 Support Battalions, a Support Company, and a Support Platoon. There are then 5 Headquarters companies, bringing the total number of units in the division to 20. In practice, the Division commander has to coordinate the Headquarters units and the support units. The combat battalions are coordinated by their own headquarters in the form of the Division Artillery headquarters and the Combat Command Headquarters. In another way, these would be the Brigade Headquarters. Divisions are generally designed as relatively self-sufficient formations, able to sustain themselves in the field for several days on their own supplies before requiring resupply from higher echelons, such as Corps and Field Army. They also tend to be combined arms formations, with most of the Combat Arms present. For example, a modern Heavy Division will have Tanks, Mechanized Infantry, Self-Propelled Field Artillery, and helicopter aviation at its disposal to conduct combat operations. It will also have a liason from the Air Force and/or the Navy to coordinate support from those branches.

Now in combat, divisions will be maneuvering brigades. In most cases, these are from a single combat arm with some supporting elements attached (mainly maintenance and medical). A division will typically have 3 Maneuver Brigades, an Artillery Brigade, and possibly an Aviation Brigade. The Maneuver Brigades will depend on what type of division it is. Airborne, Air Assault, and Infantry Divisions will mostly have leg infantry brigades and towed artillery. Armored and Mechanized Divisions will have more mixed brigades, though the tank brigade will have more tank battalions than infantry battalions. The reason for this mixing of the arms in armored and mechanized units is World War II. During the Second World War, it was learned at great cost that tanks simply could not function without support. The British tried it for almost half the war and it cost them dearly. A British Tank Division had 2 tank brigades, some 340 tanks, but only 2 battalions of mechanized infantry to support them. This left the tanks vulnerable to the German divisions, which had 1 Tank Regiment and 1 Infantry Regiment working together. The tanks, having limited visibility due to the need to have armor, couldn't see infantry and anti-tank guns, meaning that British tanks, more often than not charging without any infantry around, would drive past German infantry and be hit in the flanks and rear by anti-tank guns or grenades from infantry they could not see before being engaged by German tanks. It was particularly devastating during Operation Crusader, where the British armored formations were finished as combat units within a few weeks of the operation beginning. The British inevitably added an Infantry Brigade to the division in 1942. Something that both the Germans AND Americans had already done.
So ignore anyone who says tanks don't need infantry. They are idiots.

Brigades are made up of 3 or 4 battalions, again mostly the same arm except for mechanized and armored brigades, and then have a headquarters company and a maintenance company in most cases. Heavy Brigades (Armor and Mech) will generally have most of their battalions from the branch which the brigade is named for. I.E. an armor brigade with three battalions will have 2 armor battalions and 1 infantry battalion while a mechanized brigade with three battalions will have 2 infantry and 1 armor battalion. So while divisions deploy their brigades to achieve objectives on the Divisional Level, the Brigades will deploy battalions to achieve smaller objectives to secure that larger objective.

Battalions will have 3 to 4 companies, sometimes more, depending on the battalion, but they will generally be the same arm. An infantry battalion will only have infantry companies, a tank battalion only tank companies, an engineer battalion only engineer companies, etc. The Battalions use these companies to achieve their own smaller objectives in pursuit of the larger objective the division is pursuing.

A company is 3 or 4 platoons, sometimes more, sometimes less, and typically the same arm. Exceptions are independent companies, who may have two or three arms present. For example, I'm a reserve mechanic in the US Army. I'm part of the US Army Ordnance Branch but I'm assigned to an Engineer Company in its maintenance platoon. There are two Engineer Platoons in charge of bridging operations (because my company is a Bridge Company) and then a Headquarters Platoon with some specialized people. Regardless of what type of company it is, the platoons will be deployed to achieve a company specific objective.

The Platoons have several squads, 3 or 4, maybe 5 if its a big platoon but most often 4. These squads will be used to achieve objectives set for the platoon in support of the company.

Then each squad has a couple of teams, 2 or 3, maybe more. The teams are more often than not ad-hoc units set up for specific missions. For example, if a squad is tasked to take out a machine gun, then one team might be set up around the machine gun and the rest of the squad assaults the position while the machine gun covers them. Or a squad might split up to clear two sides of a street during urban operations.

So, to bring it all back together, the Field Army will have a very general objective, I.E. take New York City. The Corps will then get slight more specific objectives, I.E. take Brooklyn. Then the Divisions will get more specific objectives, I.E. take Central Brooklyn. Then the Brigade gets a more specific objective, I.E take Flatbush. The Battalion gets even more specific, I.E. take Beverly Square. The Company gets even more specific, I.E. take Beverly Square East. The Platoon gets even more specific, I.E. take 16th Street. Then the Squad gets the most specific, I.E. take that house right in front of you.
Not exactly a simple explanation and probably incredibly rambly but its not really a simple topic. Military organization is a result of numerous converging influences and factors, technological, societal, political, economical, and even geographical. General John Pershing pointed out in the wake of World War 1 that no one divisional organization works for everything. I believe this holds true for basically every unit. No one organizational method will cover every single contingency. The best you can hope for is an structure that can handle as many of them as possible with as little change as possible and adjust what needs adjusted as it needs adjusted.

[The Manticoran Empire]

You simply are not correct in your opinion that tanks can operate alone.

Well obviously tanks can operate alone, since as you pointed out they have historically.

Their effectiveness and vulnerability in doing so will depend on the situation, not universal truths.

Just because they can physically go somewhere alone doesn't mean they can operate effectively alone. This was proven quite plainly several times in World War II, so much so that by the end of the war NO ONE was using tanks on their own without support from the other arms. Tanks were always sent with a group of infantry to escort them, whether it was on the march or in combat. It was simply too dangerous to send tanks alone, given that you really can't see out of a tank very well. Operating a tank without a support is a quick way to lose that tank.

[Triplebaconation]

No, that's a caricature. Combined arms means the arms are coordinated, not welded together at the hip.

Against disorganized opponents a pure armor attack might be the best option even in urban terrain.

Tank crews can see fine, that's not the problem. The commanding view of a tank crew can be a crucial advantage in urban combat.

Quester's point is that there are infantry tasks (assaulting static positions, holding those positions) and cavalry tasks (hasty attacks, exploiting breakthroughs). Cavalry is not good at infantry tasks. This has been understood for thousands of years.

[Gallia-]

Infantry consume the tank.

Like Kattsun consume the bepi.

[Theodosiya]

Infantry consume the tank.

Like Kattsun consume the bepi.

Then why have tanks, if mechanized infantry could do some of the task for exploitation?

[Husseinarti]

Infantry consume the tank.

Like Kattsun consume the bepi.

Then why have tanks, if mechanized infantry could do some of the task for exploitation?

literally been said already

like

how do you do this

[Gallia-]

Infantry consume the tank.

Like Kattsun consume the bepi.

Then why have tanks, if mechanized infantry could do some of the task for exploitation?

Armored volume.
Hypervelocity guns are generally better than missiles.
Johnson's criteria.

[New Solaurora]

So the Team is the smallest infantry group size.

Okay, nice, thank you!

How many "best friends" do you have?

Seems irrelevant but none. Why?

OK there are firstly two types of Army. There is the Army in reference to the Ground Warfare organization and then there is the Field Army (I.E. 6th Army (GER) or Third Army (US)) Field Armies will typically command several corps, divisions, and other units.

Holy crap that is crazy informative, thank you!

I think I got it now!

[Austrasien]

Infantry consume the tank.

Well, if by "infantry" you mean "mine".

Well it is entirely true tanks cannot uproot a well-defended position especially with a frontal attack, it isn't really correct to say infantry kill tanks in huge numbers. Maybe during the Winter War.

Even in one of the clearest victories of man over tank:

• The defenders were still forced to yield about a kilometre to the mechanized attack
• Ultimately it was the arrival of air power which broke the attack

When a whole bunch of tanks and IFVs/APCs are lined up in one place and there are no significant tank forces opposing them, unless a wild air force appears, it is almost certain they will go somewhere. Which ofc isn't the same as winning. Some of the most notable tank defeats occurred after the tanks had succeeded in pushing into hostile territory - and advancing straight into indefensible positions in the process.

In terms of intensity of losses, the top 10 saddest anime deaths (of armoured spearheads) have all involved opposing armour in a significant capacity. Though modern IFVs with ATGMs probably muddy this situation a lot. While a wall of ATGMs has merit on paper in practice it will be hard to bring the fire of very large numbers of ATGM teams to bear at any given point unless the battlefield was prepared very meticulously in advance and you made very good guesses about the axis of attack. Which is really just a case of the general problem defenders face...

[The Manticoran Empire]

No, that's a caricature. Combined arms means the arms are coordinated, not welded together at the hip.

Against disorganized opponents a pure armor attack might be the best option even in urban terrain.

Tank crews can see fine, that's not the problem. The commanding view of a tank crew can be a crucial advantage in urban combat.

Quester's point is that there are infantry tasks (assaulting static positions, holding those positions) and cavalry tasks (hasty attacks, exploiting breakthroughs). Cavalry is not good at infantry tasks. This has been understood for thousands of years.

You have never sat in a tank before if you think they have a commanding view. The only commanding view a tank has is if the commander sticks his head out of the turret. In a tank you have vision slits for the driver which offer limited forward vision, the commander and loader have sights to the front for laying the gun and the commander has his own vision slits that offer limited 360 degree vision around his turret. There is a reason why tank crews typically march with their hatches open and why tank commanders rarely button up. Closing the hatches effectively renders the tank crew blind. Actually sit in a tank and try and see out of it. You will see what I mean.


This image sums it up nicely. With the crew buttoned up, they can't see shit.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Infantry consume the tank.

Like Kattsun consume the bepi.

Then why have tanks, if mechanized infantry could do some of the task for exploitation?

To provide fire support for the infantry at stand-off range while the infantry close with enemy positions to make a breakthrough.

[Immoren]

Okay I'm getting mixed answers. What is usually the smallest group size for just standard infantry? Is it a squadron or a platoon? And what the heck is a section? (I think I sorta get how corps work. A corps serves a specific function and so they vary in size yeah?)

Team. A team will be 2 to 5 guys and will usually be part of a squad. Most squads will thus be organized in such a way that two or more teams can be organized. This can be explained as a squad having, say, 10 men. Three men form a Machine Gun team with a light machine gunner, assistant gunner, and ammo bearer. Two men form the Command Team, with the Squad Leader and, if your army does it, a Radioman. The remaining 5 men are in the Assault Team, with the squad's second in command leading the remaining riflemen. The US uses 9 man squads, divided into two 4 man teams and a Squad Leader but you could do three 3-man teams or a 5 man team and a 4 man team or any other combination.

So the Team is the smallest infantry group size.

Smallest infantry group size is actually fire-and-movement-pair.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Team. A team will be 2 to 5 guys and will usually be part of a squad. Most squads will thus be organized in such a way that two or more teams can be organized. This can be explained as a squad having, say, 10 men. Three men form a Machine Gun team with a light machine gunner, assistant gunner, and ammo bearer. Two men form the Command Team, with the Squad Leader and, if your army does it, a Radioman. The remaining 5 men are in the Assault Team, with the squad's second in command leading the remaining riflemen. The US uses 9 man squads, divided into two 4 man teams and a Squad Leader but you could do three 3-man teams or a 5 man team and a 4 man team or any other combination.

So the Team is the smallest infantry group size.

Smallest infantry group size is actually fire-and-movement-pair.

Which is also technically a team and mostly unofficial and ad hoc. A fire and movement pair functions less as a distinct group than as a part of a team that can't really operate outside of it.

[Theodosiya]

What about cross training squads with different squad weapons and then issue them the 2 LMG, a RPG/Carl Gustav, 4 disposable AT rocket, 3 UBGL, 8 assault rifle and carbine plus a designated marksman rifle?

[Triplebaconation]

There is a reason why tank crews typically march with their hatches open and why tank commanders rarely button up. Closing the hatches effectively renders the tank crew blind.

This image sums it up nicely. With the crew buttoned up, they can't see shit.

Think about this for a bit.

[Immoren]

What about cross training squads with different squad weapons and then issue them the 2 LMG, a RPG/Carl Gustav, 4 disposable AT rocket, 3 UBGL, 8 assault rifle and carbine plus a designated marksman rifle?

They already do that.

---

Smallest infantry group size is actually fire-and-movement-pair.

Which is also technically a team and mostly unofficial and ad hoc. A fire and movement pair functions less as a distinct group than as a part of a team that can't really operate outside of it.

Clearly it's official if it was listed in field manual diagrams along side others?

---

Cavalry was first part to get their hands on newfangled tanks when they were in their infancy. First experimental formations was Cavalry Brigade M192X. This brigade was simple in its structure. You take cavalry regiment and reinforce it with battalion of new tanks and cavalry artillery battery from one of the cavalry artillery regiments.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

Also tanks can and do operate alone. No problem.

The tanks advantage is mobility under armour, ie its ability to move across hostile terrain while protected. This means it can keep up its movement speed without stopping.

The tank is a successful weapon because 95% of weapons can't suppress it. Tanks can be suppressed by weapons that can kill them, but most weapons can not.

Infantry moving across a battle space can't be suppressed by supersoakers. Therefore the infantry can go anywhere, and their speed is limited by the terrain and human endurance. The maximum, as far as I'm aware, movement to battle was some units of the PLA which advanced 75 miles in one day to Luding bridge. And that's just mental.

Of course, it doesn't take much to suppress infantry. Rifle fire can suppress infantry. That slows their movement to basically zero. At max pace, infantry can cover a mile in about 8 minutes or something. A sniper in a church tower can see more than a mile and can keep the infantry suppressed. Maybe it takes them an hour or two or three even to remove the sniper. And that's just one guy with a rifle. To not allow yourself to be suppressed takes maximum aggression. And that's over open ground. Now put snipers and machineguns in rocky ground, with enfilading fire, and make the infantry move over a small stream and advance uphill.

Tanks can only be suppressed by anti tank weapons or other tanks. And tanks move much, much faster than infantry and on more terrain as well. In the first example the tank will just drive around the town. The sniper likely won't even waste time shooting it. This is the advantage of the tank. This is also why tanks should not be wasted by having them thrown against well defended positions. Tanks can go around and dislocate the enemy from his line of communication and do other funky strategic things, but throwing them against well defended positions, with or without infantry and artillery, is a blunder.

History has proven you incorrect on numerous occasions. Perhaps you should ask Britain and Russia how well their tanks fared without infantry support.

I'll give you a hint. They didn't fare well. It is incredibly difficult to see out of a tank and infantry can easily hide themselves, making the tanks incredibly vulnerable to infantry anti-tank weapons. You simply are not correct in your opinion that tanks can operate alone. They cannot and thousands of men died because people believed they could.

Cool, replied but didn't actually read my post, next.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

During the Second World War, it was learned at great cost that tanks simply could not function without support. The British tried it for almost half the war and it cost them dearly. A British Tank Division had 2 tank brigades, some 340 tanks, but only 2 battalions of mechanized infantry to support them. This left the tanks vulnerable to the German divisions, which had 1 Tank Regiment and 1 Infantry Regiment working together. The tanks, having limited visibility due to the need to have armor, couldn't see infantry and anti-tank guns, meaning that British tanks, more often than not charging without any infantry around, would drive past German infantry and be hit in the flanks and rear by anti-tank guns or grenades from infantry they could not see before being engaged by German tanks. It was particularly devastating during Operation Crusader, where the British armored formations were finished as combat units within a few weeks of the operation beginning. The British inevitably added an Infantry Brigade to the division in 1942. Something that both the Germans AND Americans had already done.
So ignore anyone who says tanks don't need infantry. They are idiots.

errrrrr

The British experience in North Africa isn't characterised by lack of infantry. Infantry had almost nothing to do with it.

In the first action in North Africa, British used mechanised forces to surround Italian Tenth Army and they surrendered. The entire Italian Tenth Army surrendered despite having a superiority of everything because armoured and mechanised forces severed its constituent lines of communication. The British then drove their tanks 1,000 miles westwards without much opposition.

What is ironic about North Africa until El Alamein 2 is that the British continued and made more or less the same mistakes as the Italians had made in Compass, and the Germans did more or less everything the British had done in the same operation. But there are lots of other factors, too.

Describing Operation Crusader as a failure for the British because they didn't use infantry is a gross mischaracterisation, makes me think you haven't read anything about this battle. Firstly, Crusader was a British victory. It was a long operation and it was not won at the start, but it was a British victory nonetheless.

Also a perfect example of where you are wrong, relating to North Africa, is actually Gazala, where the dug in British infantry were encircled and separated from each other by good German armour movements. It was exactly the same thing, more or less, as the British had done to the Italians in 1940, and it was a tremendous German victory, probably the biggest German victory of the entire North Africa campaign.

The main threat to the allied tanks throughout the entirety of the war in North Africa were German anti-tank guns since none of the British tanks had any way to deal with them since they had no high explosive shells. You seem to think accompanying infantry could have just walked up the length of the maximum range of a Pak 36, 38, or 40 over open ground in the desert, or that the infantry would somehow 'know' they were there when the tanks didn't. The main problem was the British tanks pretty much just death-charged dug in anti-tank guns with no means to reply. It is of course tremendously stupid. Related to having insufficient infantry, it isn't.

The problem with the British was that they mis-handled their tanks. There is a wealth of information on the North African theatre, the British Army in WWII, or German sources, which can substantiate this. It wasn't a question of accompanying infantry. In addition the British tanks were technically inferior in some key respects (not all), and their only weapon to defeat AT guns, artillery, was still in its infancy concerning its ability to co-ordinate and co-operate with armour. The problem in Crusader specifically was that the British armour was dispersed and usually in the wrong place, whereas the German armour was concentrated and usually in the right place. It's not like the Germans didn't face setbacks either, even with their better use of armour and supporting artillery: at Sidi Rezegh the dug-in South African artillery deleted swathes of Panzers as just hours before German anti-tank guns did the same to the British 22nd Brigade in more or less the same ground.

When the British defeated the Germans in North Africa it was not because they added an infantry brigade to their armoured division. This is just utter madness. It is because they received new artillery and new artillery radios, because they had new and better tanks, and because they had learned how to handle their army in a better way. It was also because the Italian navy declined to fight and the British sank every ship more or less heading to North Africa, because the Germans had no idea how to handle tropical disease and half their army had dysentery and they were resorting to eating camel poo, and because Montgomery gave the British Army time to train, gave it confidence, and gave it a sensible plan, those three things being key elements that the Eighth Army had never had together at the same time.