A question about the use of a Tank Platoon in battle.

[MartinR]

Even if the combat detachments were formed around specific units, it doesn't mean that their sub groups weren't grouped into specific assault teams with attached engineers, DF artillery and tanks. It is very hard to manouvre an entire tank battalion in urban fighting as a unit.

The fighting inevitably degenerates into a series of section and platoon sized skirmishes due to the close terrain.

This 1975 DARPA study on Soviet tactics for urban fighting is quite interesting (I deliberately picked an old one as it includes WW2 experience), and includes examples of the organisation of combat sub groups.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a022998.pdf

Cheers
Martin

[Arlequín]

While minefields were common, the number of 'dummy minefields' was even greater, but even these were salted with real ones. It is indeed potentially accurate that fewer casualties might actually be taken by crossing the minefield, real or not, than would be received in the killing ground that they were designed to divert you into by avoiding them. Mines are as much a psychological weapon as a real one.

I don't know about urban fighting in WWII, but the Israelis used individual tanks (and even M109s) to back infantry platoons going building to building in Lebanon in '82... but they were part of a whole platoon attached to an infantry company and on the company net. Their platoon mates would be on parallel courses on the next streets, so not exactly isolated either. Having said that they also used M163 VADS as rooftop sniper suppression vehicles... so not perhaps the exemplar of conventional combined arms doctrine when all's said and done.
             

[Arrigo]

Well the VII corps used similar systems in Aachen.  The Marines Tank-Infantry team was the same you assign a single tank to a platoon but the whole platoon is abreast with the company (and the tanks have infantry telephone). Cramming more than one tank abreast in a city road (ok maybe the not in the Champs Elysee) is not convenient. but still the gist of the question is that you are not attaching a single tank but a platoon.

I think we have a broad agreement on that... 

[Arlequín]

Cramming more than one tank abreast in a city road (ok maybe the not in the Champs Elysee) is not convenient.

Clearly you are not a Flames of War player.