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This is an interesting article I found.
One of the questions that was put to the U.S. military thinkers after WWII was this: 'What made the German infantry so tactically formidible?'. This question became especially intriguing after records revealed that U.S. troops on the offensive could seldom overcome their opponents without heavy artillery or air support, overwhelming numbers, tanks, or a combination of all four of these. Although there were a number of different factors which contributed to this disparity in combat effectiveness, this article will show how even the difference in the basic squad theories could cause an unevenly-matched small unit engagement.
As with most armies that developed their tactics after learning lessons the hard way in World War One, both the U.S. and the German Army had the same basic recipe for defeating the enemy in an infantry fight:
"After neutralizing the enemy with FIRE SUPERIORITY, riflemen will MANEUVER forward and eliminate him." So much for general philosophy - the big difference lay in the extent and the way in which both armies went about doing it.
The American System:
Sometime after WWI, a bunch of American Infantry brains sat down to think up a set of tactics for the U.S. footsloggers. With a basic train of thought rooted in the sharpshootin' tradition of the American rifleman, these men formulated methods based on the rifle. In a slight concession to the contemporary trend to increase squad firepower, the U.S. tacticians included a Browning Automatic Rifle (or BAR) in the squad's equipment.
The 12-man squad itself was divided into 3 distinct parts - a 2-man scout team, a 4-man support team including the BAR, a 5-man assault team, and the squad leader. The system was supposed to work like this: the squad leader advances with the scout team to locate the enemy, then direct the fire of the support team on their positions before joining the assault team in order to lead them in to wipe them out. This seemingly simple system placed a lot of faith in the GI and that indisputably fabulous weapon, the M1 Garand.
Then the war came and these squad tactics were put to use. Here's what often happened to the squad in combat: the squad leader gets pinned down or hit with the scout team; the support team blasts away in the general direction of the origin of enemy fire without any real idea of where their positions really are; the leaderless assault team then makes the attack alone, that is if they didn't need the influence of their NCO to do it under fire in the first place. Worse yet, the whole plan could be upset by a few casualties.
The main problems here were twofold: an inability to achieve fire superiority and squad tactics that invited the loss of unit cohesion.
This first problem explains why the GIs were so dependent on the support of heavier weapons outside of the squad to build up a large enough base of fire to get that all-important "fire superiority". The combined fire of M1s and a BAR was seldom enough to sufficiently suppress or damage the enemy; unable to do this on their own, the squad was obliged to call in help from the outside.
Unit cohesion is especially important to counteract the effect of battlefield confusion, casualties, and a lack of individual offensive spirit. The fact that this was a problem in the standard infantry outfits is emphasized by the accomplishments of a few specialized units like the Rangers and the Paratroops. These units had pretty much the same armament as the standard squads, but their training stressed aggressive action with whatever resources were available and taught these men not to expect much help from the outside. Therefore the training of these units was tailored to develop fire superiority and retain unit cohesion with whatever could be assembled after a drop: the result was, in the small unit level at least, that the fighting ability of these GI formations was at least as good as that of the best German units.
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