Evolution of WWII Tactical Doctrines 1939–1945: Infantry, Armour, Artillery, Anti-Tank, Air Cooperation, Combined Arms & Paratroopers
Primary-source battlefield analysis and company / brigade-scale wargaming applications
By the Manx Gaming Solutions Research Team | www.manxgamingsolutions.com
World War II forged the definitive twentieth-century combined-arms battlefield. From Poland in 1939 to Berlin and Okinawa in 1945 the armies of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, the Soviet Union and the United States recast their doctrines under fire. New weapons arrived. Old habits died, or refused to die. What worked in open country failed in bocage, steppe, jungle and coral. This article sets that evolution against primary manuals and battlefield practice, then translates it for reinforced-company to battlegroup / brigade games in Flames of War, I Ain’t Been Shot Mum and CrossFire.
Evidence base. Core published sources used here include German Truppenführung (H.Dv. 300, 1933–34); British Infantry Training (1937) and Infantry Training Part VIII – Fieldcraft, Battle Drill, Section and Platoon Tactics (March 1944); War Office Military Training Pamphlet No. 19, Tactical Handling of Anti-Tank Regiments (1939); U.S. War Department MID, Soviet Field Artillery in the Offensive; U.S. studies of Japanese field fortifications; tank-battalion after-action reporting from Italy and North-West Europe; and the companion Manx Gaming Solutions work on German antitank employment. Where a national TOE or late-war mix is uneven, the cell is marked Best estimate. Cell colours: pale white 1939–41, pale green 1942–43, pale blue 1944–45.
Executive summary
Doctrine decided more battles than any single weapon. German Auftragstaktik and the radio-knit Panzerkeil delivered the early victories. From 1943 Soviet artillery offensives and reconstructed deep-battle method crushed Axis operational reserves. British battle drill turned a citizen army into a repeatable assault machine. U.S. firepower, logistics and air–ground integration overwhelmed opponents once the landing was held. Japanese deliberate fortification and close-range antitank improvisation turned islands into attrition fights. Italian forces, short of radios, transport and a coherent combined-arms method, rarely imposed their own tempo.
Two structural facts run through every theatre. First, the winning side was the side that could join infantry, guns, tanks and aircraft on the same piece of ground in time. Second, late-war “democratisation” of the antitank threat — Panzerfaust, PIAT, bazooka, lunge mine — changed the geometry of the last two hundred yards. Specialist AT regiments did not disappear; they ceased to be the only tank-killing layer.
Wargame scale used here. Reinforced company is the floor (a CrossFire or IABSM table). Battlegroup / brigade is the ceiling (Flames of War mid-war and late-war lists, IABSM “big games”). Platoon-only skirmish rules will under-show artillery groupments, Pakfronts and cab-rank air. Do not flatten 1940 and 1944 onto the same special-rule card.
1. Infantry tactics: from rigid waves to mission command, battle drill and infiltration
Germany — Auftragstaktik and the MG-centred Gruppe
Truppenführung (1933–34) put the German method in writing before the war began. The senior commander stated intention, means and time. Subordinates planned the execution. A man who did not understand the next-higher intent was obliged to ask. Initiative, decisive manoeuvre and envelopment were the stated keys.[R1]
The rifle platoon (Zug) — headquarters plus three or four Gruppen — was the fighting cell. Each Gruppe (ten men for most of the war, nine in the 1944 reduction) was built around the MG 34 and later the MG 42. The Gruppenführer, often an NCO with an MP 40, directed fire-and-movement, the approach under fire (Heranarbeiten), the break-in (Einbruch) and the fight in depth (Kampf in der Tiefenzone). Formations ran from close-order Reihe / Kette out of contact to the extended Schützenkette once fire was taken, with about five paces between men so the gun was not isolated but the file was not a single burst’s worth of target.[R2]
That system overran Poland and France because it concentrated at the Schwerpunkt and because the MG base of fire let the rifle group work a flank while the enemy’s attention sat on the gun. From 1942 shortages of trained NCOs and of infantry strength pushed the same method into Kampfgruppen: scratch battlegroups that held ground with MG fire, mines and short-range AT rather than with rifle numbers. The method did not change. The mass behind it did.
United Kingdom and Commonwealth — 1937 control to the 1944 drill book
Infantry Training (1937) still taught waves, tight officer control and a progressive ladder from the individual to the battalion. It was a pre-blitzkrieg book. What replaced it in the field, after France, the desert and the first Mediterranean years, was written down in March 1944 as Infantry Training Part VIII – Fieldcraft, Battle Drill, Section and Platoon Tactics. The object of section battle drill was “to show the soldier diagrammatically how the section fights, and exactly what every man in the section team has to do.” Movements under effective fire were at the double. The Bren group broke to a short bound on a flank; the 2 i/c’s call was “Down, crawl, observe, sights, fire.” Riflemen worked odd numbers one way and even numbers the other. The phrase the Army used for the finished product was to work “like a pack of hounds.”[R3]
Live-fire assaults on pillboxes and the bomber-and-fieldcraft syllabuses (including the Ferris material) taught the last fifty yards. New Zealand lessons from Cyrenaica added dispersion as a standing habit, not an afterthought. In Normandy the drills did not make the bocage easy. They made a platoon that had just lost its officer still able to put a Bren group down and a rifle group round. That is the difference between a citizen army that stalls and one that keeps attacking.
Soviet Union — from massed rifle waves to storm groups and AT regions
1941 rifle assaults often still resembled a 1916 picture with poorer communications. The reconstruction of 1942–43 put reconnaissance and infiltration in front of the assault, grouped “storm” detachments around the break-in point, and tied the rifle company to an artillery and mortar plan that was no longer a single lifting barrage. At Kursk the rifle corps commonly defended in two echelons of divisions, fifteen to twenty kilometres deep, with infantry strongpoints knitted to antitank regions, a mobile obstacle detachment and a small tank reserve.[R4] The offensive method after Kursk was the same geometry run the other way: find the seam, put the storm group into it, keep the artillery moving by groupment so the infantry was never ahead of its fire.
United States — patrols, the BAR and the tank–infantry team
U.S. infantry doctrine emphasised aggressive patrolling and a squad built on the BAR rather than on a true light machine gun. The distinctive American product was not the rifle squad. It was the tank–infantry team worked out in Italy and then in Normandy, with infantry riding or bounding with Shermans, artillery on call, and — by 1944 — an air liaison habit that the 1942 field manuals had not imagined. Marine practice in the Pacific added the close assault against caves and mutually supporting bunkers: flamethrower, demolition, covering automatic fire, then the next hole. The Army learned the same lesson the hard way in the Hedgerows and in the Westwall.
Japan — from banzai to the deliberate field fortress
Early-war Japanese infantry still used the night infiltration and the massed close assault that had worked in China. Against prepared Allied firepower those charges became a method of dying. The mid- and late-war answer was the deliberate field fortification: mutually supporting positions, reverse slopes, caves, and “human pillboxes.” Close antitank work used magnetic mines and the shitotsubakurai lunge mine — a suicide hollow-charge on a pole. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were not failures of Japanese infantry courage. They were the successful application of an attrition doctrine against an enemy who had to come forward and take ground.[R5]
Italy — mass without the joining arms
Italian infantry remained capable of hard local fights. What it rarely had was the radio density, the organic AT, the transport and the practised artillery–tank link that would have turned a gallant assault into a combined-arms breach. North Africa showed the pattern against British armour: the infantry could hold a box until the box was prised open; it could not often manoeuvre out of one.
| Nation | 1939–41 | 1942–43 | 1944–45 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Auftragstaktik; MG-centred Gruppe; Schwerpunkt and infiltration. Peak offensive performance. | Same method under shrinking NCO stock. Kampfgruppen become the normal wrapper. | Nine-man Gruppe. Defence with MG, mines and Faustpatrone / Panzerfaust. Initiative survives; mass does not. |
| UK / CW | 1937 wave-and-control book. France exposes the gap. | Desert dispersion; battle-drill experiments in UK training machine. | Part VIII (Mar 1944) standardises section and platoon drills. Bocage and the Rhine still costly, but the platoon no longer dies when the officer does. |
| USSR | Massed rifle assault; radios thin; 1941 disasters. | Storm groups; AT regions; two-echelon corps defence at Kursk. | Artillery-led offensive with infantry as the occupation arm of the breach. |
| USA | BAR squad; limited combat test until late 1941–42. | Tunisia and Italy teach tank–infantry the hard way. | Hedgerow and Pacific close-assault teams; air and artillery on a short string. |
| Japan | Night infiltration and close assault still the preferred decision. | Shift to prepared defence begins after Guadalcanal / Attu lessons. | Cave-and-reverse-slope fortress; suicide AT as a doctrine, not an accident. |
| Italy | Massed assault; poor AT and radio join-up. | North African boxes; increasing German tactical overlay. | Split forces after 1943; treat as receivers of Allied or German method. |
Infantry on the table
- CrossFire. German Gruppe as an MG fire group that wins initiative contests; British post-1944 sections get a more predictable “Bren bound / rifle bound” sequence; Japanese late-war positions are dummy-heavy and only die when assaulted.
- IABSM. Cards are the friction engine. Germans spend blinds and opportunity well. British after Part VIII reduce that friction — fewer lost activations once the platoon is in its drill. Soviets need a pre-plotted fire plan or the rifle companies stall.
- Flames of War. National rules approximate. Add a house-rule junior-leader reroll for German NCOs and 1944 British section commanders, and an infiltration move that cannot end in contact.
2. Armour tactics: from Panzerkeil to the integrated team
German armour in 1939–41 was not “tanks alone.” It was a radio-equipped wedge — tanks, Panzergrenadiers, artillery and air — aimed at a seam, then driven into the enemy’s rear. Early exploitation was unmatched because the radios and the habit of mission command lived in the same formation. Later the same army used heavy tanks as defensive fire brigades: Tigers and Panthers as a corps commander’s emergency counter-stroke, not as a 1940-style operational spear.
Britain began the war with a cruiser / infantry-tank split that put the exploitation tanks and the assault tanks in different mental boxes. Desert experience and then Normandy forced the join: observers travelling with the armour, infantry permanently allotted, artillery on a short call. The 1944 British armoured brigade attacking with motor battalion and field regiment in company is a different animal from Arras 1940.
Soviet armour after 1942 was mass plus self-propelled accompaniment. T-34 formations provided the deep-battle spear. SU-76, SU-85 and SU-152 were the direct-support and “beast-killer” layer that walked the infantry onto the position and then killed the German heavy tanks that tried to seal the breach. Early radio poverty was the limiting factor; by 1944–45 it was less so.
U.S. tank-destroyer doctrine assumed massed German armour that would be ambushed by towed and SP TDs while the tanks exploited. On the ground, from Italy onwards, TD battalions were constantly pulled into infantry support and assault-gun work. Shermans with infantry and air liaison did the killing. The doctrine shifted in practice long before it shifted on paper.
Japanese and Italian armour remained scarce, mechanically fragile or tactically tied to infantry escort and static defence. Do not give either nation a German-style exploitation rule after 1941.
| Force / period | Historical habit | Rule translation |
|---|---|---|
| German 1939–41 | Wedge with infantry and guns close; radios make the join. | Movement / shoot bonus when a tank unit starts the turn within command of its infantry and an FO or battery. |
| German 1944–45 | Heavies as fire brigade; fuel and numbers constrain exploitation. | Tigers / Panthers as a reserve release, not a wide sweep. Fuel token: one long move per game unless a dump is held. |
| British / U.S. 1944 | Observers and infantry embedded; air on call. | Off-table artillery and cab-rank available only while the FO / air-liaison stand is co-located with the tank unit. |
| Soviet 1943–45 | Massed T-34 plus SU accompaniment; deep-battle after the breach. | Second-echelon tank formation may not be released until the first-wave infantry / SU has a foothold marker. |
3. Artillery: the Soviet “artillery offensive” and responsive fire
No arm changed the late-war battlefield more than Soviet artillery. The U.S. MID study Soviet Field Artillery in the Offensive treated the most advanced Soviet practice as a subject the U.S. Army needed to understand, not as a curiosity. Soviet theory, absorbing Bruchmüller at one remove, ran in three named stages: fire preparation, fire support of the assault, and fire accompaniment as the attack went deep.[R6]
Organisation caught up in 1943. Breakthrough artillery divisions (on the order of 350-plus tubes from 76 mm to 152 mm) and then breakthrough artillery corps — two such divisions plus a guards mortar (rocket) division — gave a front commander a tool that could be pointed at a single seam. At Kursk, Central Front put the weight of its artillery on the expected German axis; 13th Army was padded with IV Breakthrough Artillery Corps. Offensive densities on 1943–44 main-thrust sectors commonly sat between about 180 and 270 guns, mortars and rocket vehicles of 76 mm and above per kilometre of breach.[R7] That is not a “template.” It is a planning fact: the Soviet attack does not start until the groupment is laid.
British artillery stayed the most flexible observed-fire system in the war: the FO with the leading company, the troop and battery able to switch, later the “Victor” and timed concentrations. German artillery began with excellent nets and survey; by 1944 it was an economy of shells and of horses. U.S. Time-on-Target and the air-OP made American fire the fastest large volume on a new target, provided the liaison was alive.
| Nation | 1939–41 | 1942–43 | 1944–45 |
|---|---|---|---|
| USSR | Centralisation intended; 1941 practice chaotic. | Breakthrough divisions and corps created. Kursk defensive massing. | Artillery offensive as the normal way of attacking. Infantry occupies what the guns have smashed. |
| Britain | Good survey and FO habit; limited stock in France. | Desert predicted fire and quick switch. The system matures. | Observed fire plus large timed concentrations. Cab-rank joins the same net. |
| Germany | Excellent nets; artillery walks with the Panzers. | Still competent; ammunition begins to rule the day. | Economy fire. Mortars and Werfer fill gaps. Do not allow endless German barrages. |
| USA | Doctrine sound; little combat proof. | North Africa teaches observed fire under air threat. | TOT and air-OP. Fastest large shift onto a newly seen target. |
On the table. Soviet attacks need a pre-plotted barrage with delayed lifts (IABSM “big barrage” cards; FoW templates that lift on a timetable, not on a wish). British and U.S. get a responsive FO. Germans get fewer fire missions as the calendar turns. Long games should cap Axis ammunition.
4. Anti-tank doctrine: specialist guns, self-propelled hunters and infantry democratisation
A companion Manx Gaming Solutions article treats German antitank employment in depth. The comparative point for this paper is that every major army ran two layers, and that the second layer changed character in 1943–45.
Germany began with the 3.7 cm Pak 36, climbed through the 5 cm Pak 38 to the 7.5 cm Pak 40, and used the 8.8 cm Flak as a system AT gun from 1940. Self-propelled Marders and StuGs fought aggressive ambushes and local counter-strokes. In defence the Pakfront massed guns on the likely tank approach (Kursk). In attack the same guns and assault guns walked with the infantry or covered the Panzer wedge’s flanks. Late-war Panzerfaust put a shaped charge in the rifle squad. The specialist battalion did not vanish; every squad became a possible last-two-hundred-yards killer.[R8]
Britain wrote the specialist layer down in 1939. MTP 19, Tactical Handling of Anti-Tank Regiments, and the BEF organisation put 48 guns in a divisional antitank regiment of four twelve-gun batteries. The guns were treated as mobile direct-fire weapons for surprise at short range (the pamphlet world of a few hundred yards, not a two-thousand-yard duel). Defence: depth, tank approaches, integration with obstacles and infantry, a mobile reserve line. Attack: successive AT lines pushed forward under covering fire to lock a gain. Camouflage was not decoration; it was the condition of surprise.[R9] The PIAT from 1943 gave the platoon an organic hollow-charge shot with no backblast, usable inside buildings. That is the British half of “democratisation.” Victoria Cross actions in Italy are the extreme end of a mundane fact: the platoon no longer had to wait for the regiment.
The Soviet Union built antitank regions — guns, AT rifles, mines — as a planned belt, then added the SU-152 as a “beast-killer” in ambush and direct support against Tigers and Ferdinands. The United States created separate tank-destroyer battalions for the ambush of massed German armour. The massed armour rarely arrived in the form the 1941–42 pamphlets expected. TDs were used as assault guns and as additional artillery. The bazooka (1942) gave the squad a short-range shot with a backblast penalty the PIAT did not have. Japan put 47 mm guns into the fortress and closed with magnetic and lunge mines. Italy fielded the 47/32 and leaned on German guns when they were present.
| Layer | Who owns it | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Specialist | German Panzerjäger battalion / GHQ hunters; British RA antitank regiment (48 guns in 1939 BEF pattern); U.S. TD battalion; Soviet AT region and SU units. | To stop or hunt tanks as a formed unit. Ambush, depth, reserve, flank of an armoured attack. |
| Distributed | Panzerfaust, PIAT, bazooka, lunge mine, magnetic mine — from 1942–43. | To make the last 200 yards expensive. Does not replace the regiment. Stops the player treating infantry as helpless against tanks. |
On the table. FoW: German TDs keep ambush; give British PIAT teams a no-backblast house rule and American bazookas a rear-danger rule. IABSM: AT guns as hidden deployment; Faust / PIAT / bazooka as close-range “tank hunter” cards. CrossFire: single-gun fire groups for a Pakfront; infantry AT so that a rifle company is never a free lunch for a tank.
5. Air cooperation and airborne / paratrooper operations
Air–ground cooperation is a doctrine only when the radio, the liaison officer and the aircraft exist on the same afternoon. German early-war Stuka support was real because the Luftwaffe still had air superiority and a practised dive-bomber habit. Fuel, fighters and the loss of that superiority killed it as a tactical method. Soviet air armies provided mass over the breakthrough sector rather than a cab-rank for a single battalion. Allied mid- and late-war practice — the Typhoon and P-47 cab-rank, the air-OP, the planned interdiction belt in Normandy and the Reich — is what most gamers mean by “air support,” and it is a 1943–45 phenomenon, not a 1940 one.
Airborne doctrine split in two. German 1940–41 vertical envelopment (Eban-Emael, Corinth, Crete) was operationally ambitious and, after Crete, never again launched at that scale. Allied airborne — Sicily, Normandy, Market Garden, Varsity — became a planned piece of a larger land operation, with all the drop-scatter and link-up problems the after-action reports recorded. Japanese airborne efforts were rare. Late-war Japanese air doctrine at the tactical edge of the land battle was kamikaze: a weapon of attrition against ships and, occasionally, against the landing itself.
On the table. Scheduled strikes, not an on-demand thunderbolt. Release an air card only if the FO / air-liaison or a working radio net is alive. Early German Stuka as a scarce pre-planned asset. Late Allied cab-rank as a repeatable but abortable asset. Paratroop drops: scatter first, fight second. Do not allow a clean battalion to land in parade order unless the scenario is a demonstration.
6. Combined arms — successes, failures and what the ground actually looked like
Combined arms is not a list of equipment. It is whether those arms can act on the same decision cycle.
- Germany, early. Tanks, infantry, artillery and air in one Panzerkeil. Poland and France are the proof. Later fuel, ammunition and pilot loss break the join even when the manuals still say the same words.
- Britain. The cruiser / infantry-tank split and the 1937 infantry book hindered the join. 1944 battle drill plus embedded observers made NW Europe breakthroughs possible. Caen and the bocage show the cost when the join is slow.
- Soviet Union. Early radio poverty. From Kursk onward the artillery–infantry–tank–air offensive is the Soviet way of war. Deep battle is what happens after the first belt dies.
- United States. Firepower, logistics and air on a scale no other Western army matched. TDs rerolled as infantry-support guns. Normandy to the Rhine is the method working.
- Japan. Terrain and fortification multiply scarce guns. Suicide AT substitutes for a missing specialist layer. Success is measured in Allied casualties and days, not in ground taken.
- Italy. Equipment and coordination rarely sufficient to impose tempo. North Africa is the exhibit.
| Force | 1939–41 | 1942–43 | 1944–45 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Best in the world at the join. | Still dangerous; air and fuel fray. | Local competence, operational poverty. Cap ammunition and air. |
| UK / CW | Split armour doctrine; infantry book outdated. | Desert teaches join the hard way. | Drill + FO + cab-rank. Allow the bonus when arms are co-located. |
| USSR | Theory ahead of radios. | Kursk is the defensive proof of reconstruction. | Artillery offensive plus tank echelons. The table should feel heavy and timed. |
| USA | Unproven. | Tunisia / Italy apprenticeship. | Firepower and air. TD lists should allow infantry-support use. |
| Japan | Assault method still viable against thin defences. | Fortress method takes over. | Attrition defence. Allied player must assault; Japanese player must not wander. |
| Italy | Limited join. | Worse against British armour unless German AT is present. | Not a unified national method. |
7. Putting it on the table — FoW, IABSM and CrossFire
Use one period per scenario. A 1940 German list with 1944 Allied air and Soviet breakthrough densities is a different war.
| System | What it already does well | Add or insist on |
|---|---|---|
| CrossFire | Initiative and fire-group infantry. German MG and British section fire-and-movement live here. | Hidden AT; no wandering Japanese; reactive Allied air only with a live FO. Do not add a barrage every turn. |
| IABSM | Cards = friction. Blinds hide the Pakfront and the storm group. | Big-barrage cards for Soviet preparation. British 1944 lists lose fewer activations. Axis fuel / ammo chips. |
| Flames of War | Lists and templates. National flavour is already coded. | House-rule junior-leader bonuses; PIAT no-backblast; bazooka backblast; Soviet timed lifts; German late-war ammo cap; air only with liaison. |
Minimum viable historical feel. (1) Two AT layers, not one. (2) Artillery that is either timed (Soviet) or observed (British / U.S.), not generic. (3) German early-war join-up bonus; German late-war scarcity. (4) Infantry that can still act after the officer dies if the army had a drill or an NCO culture that said so. (5) Air as a scheduled or liaison-gated asset. (6) Japanese late-war defence as a position fight, not a banzai festival.
Alt-text: Timeline of doctrinal turning points from Truppenführung and Poland 1939 through Soviet artillery reconstruction 1943 to Allied cab-rank and infantry AT democratisation in 1944–45.
Data gaps
- Italian tactical manuals in English remain thin; North African after-action colour is stronger than a formal doctrine tree.
- Japanese field-fortification doctrine is well evidenced at Iwo Jima and Okinawa; earlier China and Malaya practice should not be read backwards from 1945.
- U.S. tank-destroyer “on paper” versus “in the battalion journal” varies by theatre; scenario notes should say which.
- Exact Soviet tube counts are operational-planning figures. Use them as density bands, not as a battery roster for a CrossFire table.
References
[R1] German Army, Truppenführung (H.Dv. 300), Part I (1933) and Part II (1934). Mission-type orders, combined-arms handling, attack, defence, armour and air chapters.
[R2] Contemporary descriptions of Gruppe structure, MG 34/42 role, Reihe to Schützenkette, and five-pace spacing under fire.
[R3] War Office, Infantry Training, Part VIII – Fieldcraft, Battle Drill, Section and Platoon Tactics (March 1944); and Infantry Training (1937) as the pre-drill baseline. Battle-drill object and “Down, crawl, observe, sights, fire.”
[R4] U.S. and Soviet operational studies of Kursk defensive belts: two-echelon rifle corps, AT regions, mobile obstacle detachments, 15–20 km corps depth.
[R5] U.S. technical and intelligence studies of Japanese deliberate field fortifications; Iwo Jima and Okinawa close-AT (magnetic mine, lunge mine).
[R6] U.S. War Department, Military Intelligence Division, Soviet Field Artillery in the Offensive (Tactics and Techniques). Preparation / support / accompaniment; based on official Red Army documents.
[R7] Soviet and Western reconstructions of 1943 breakthrough artillery divisions and corps; Kursk and 1943–44 offensive densities on main-thrust sectors.
[R8] Manx Gaming Solutions, “German Antitank Employment in the Second World War,” and the MIS / Intelligence Bulletin series on Panzerjäger, Pak and Flak-as-AT.
[R9] War Office, Military Training Pamphlet No. 19, Tactical Handling of Anti-Tank Regiments (1939; Canadian edition 1940); BEF pattern of 48 guns in four batteries; later 6-pounder and 17-pounder rearmament.
[R10] Royal Artillery organisational histories of antitank regiments, 1938–45 (2-pounder, 6-pounder, 17-pounder, M10 / Archer).
[R11] U.S. tank-battalion and tank-destroyer after-action reporting from Italy and North-West Europe on infantry support versus ambush doctrine.
[R12] Allied airborne after-action and planning material for Sicily, Normandy, Market Garden and Varsity; German post-Crete refusal to repeat large airborne coups.
URLs for retrieval:
Part VIII (1944): https://archive.org/details/1944-uk-part-viii-fieldcraft-battle-drill-etc
MTP 19 context: https://wartimecanada.ca/document/second-world-war/training-manuals/lessons-anti-tank-warfare
Soviet artillery offensive (CARL): https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll8/id/4298/
RA antitank regiment organisation: https://ra39-45.co.uk/organisation/anti-tank-regiments
Battle-drill extract: http://www.madbaronet.com/british/secattack.html
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