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Advance! Attack! Assault!
Duties of the lead platoon:
If your platoon is leading the APC company in an advance to contact the enemy you must:
The M113 Armoured Personal Carrier, fast, agile and heavily armed,
is a frightning weapon.
Working together in company strength, just a dozen of them can deliver more than
100 fighting men into the thick of an attack quickly and in relative safety and support
them with their own devastating fire power.
We can now look at the way APCs are used in attack, to assault enemy
positions and destroy them in the shortest possible time. An attack can be split into two
separate parts:
1. Movement to contact.
2. The assault itself.
Intelligence from patrols, airborne surveillance and perhaps interrogation of enemy prisoners will give the attack commander an idea of the positions the enemy is occupying, but things happen so quickly in battle that this information is only ever a starting point. Moving towards contact with the enemy, the attack commander wants to achive two things: Uppdate his information, and get his troops into position safely and without giving away too much of his plan.
Clearing obstacles:
Moving forward using the technique called Bounding Overwatch, the company's armoured
vehicles support each other and the much heavier armour of the tank platoon, dismounting
their infantrymen to clear obstacles and possible ambush sites and whenever they encounter
difficult terrain such as woodland and buildings that can't be by-passed, and when
visibility is poor. Their speed and manoeuvrability allows them to get in, dispose of the
obstacle, and get on with the advance with the least possible delay.
Movement to contact:
The movement the leading element of the patrol or advance makes contact with the
enemy it must react quicklyand agressively. The platoon's action in the first few
seconds of the engagement may well determine whether the battle is lost or won.
The platoon Commander has three objectives now:
1. Supress enemy fire.
2. Deploy his forces.
3. Report the contact.
His first step is to assess the situation and make an estimateof the enemy's strength.
Quick attack:
If enemy resistance is light, a hasty attack without further planning or
reinforcement may be the best way to deal with it. Troops should be mounted in the
vehicles wherever possible, so that they can be moved or redeployed quickly.
It may be, though, that the enemy doesn't present a real threat, and can be safety by-passed. It's important to keep the forward movement going, and so the company commander will probably use this option whenever he can, mopping up the enemy pocket later when there's more time.
Enemy contained:
If there is strong enough enemy resistance to stop the lead platoon's forward
movement, then they will have to be contained and supressed. If this is the case, it may
require the attention of the whole company together with whatever support units, such as
combat engineers, are available.
The assault:
An attack generally has one of two objectives - to destroy or capture enemy
troops or material, or to secure a key territorial feature. Accurate intelligence,
training and equippment, and troop morale are all vitally important, but so is effective
leadership - to assess the situation, organice the tactical plan, and communicate it to
the men who are going to carry it out.
At a minimum, the plan has to cover five headings:
1. Situation.
2. Mission.
3. Execution.
4. Support.
5. Communications.
Nothing must be left to chance - or even assumed - at this point. The troops involved in the operation, must all know their starting point, timetable and objectives, and there must be enough flexibility to take account of changes in the way enemy forces are deployed and the inevitable problems of troops sticking to their timetable as a result of resistance being more forceful than was anticipated.
Where enemy resistance is light, anti-armour weapons can be dealt with and the terrain allows easy movement, then the infantry will stay mounted in their vehicles.
Heavy armour:
If a tank force is available, then the hevy armour will take the lead, laying
down as dence volume of fire as possible on to the enemy positions, with the APCs
followingtwo to four hundred metres behind, covering the flanks and rear of the tanks with
heavy machine-gun fire.
If a stop order comes, the vehicles commander chooses a covered position with a good field of fire and continues to engage specific targets or lay down general suppressing fire.
Any halt at this stage will be short, so troops do not dismount to establish security for the vehicles, but should there be real dangerfrom enemy anti-armour teams, the dismount order will come before the final assault is begun. It would be suicidal to stop the transport in the full face of enemy fire and dismount troops then.
As in any other circumstances, the dismount option is used during the final assault when the enemy anti-tank weapons can't be supressed, or when there are obstacles that will slow or halt the APCs. And just as before, the carrier element will be placed to give the best possible covering and supressing fire, moving to an overwatching position from the point where the troops have been dropped if necessary.
The object of the final phase of the attack - the assault proper - is to lay down ferocious firepower into the enemy positions and then take them physically if necessary, killing and capturing as many enemy personnel as possible and securing the maximum amount of equippment and material. The assault is not a mindless charge. It is a cautious yet bold and agressive action, using all the principles of cover and concealment and fire and movement.
Resistant positions:
The most hastily-prepared defencive positions can be surprisingly resistant to
vhicles, even to tracked vehicles such as M113 APCs and tanks, and the attack commander
must always be ready to dismount his troops and fight them as regular infantry. Even then,
the heavy weapons and ammunition load that the APCs can carry can have a significant
effect on the outcome of the assault.
The carrier element, now empty of all troops exept for the driver and gunner and in one case the team leader, maintains heavy covering fire. This supporting fire needs to be close in to the dismount element, especially in the last stage of the assault, and so the gunners responsible must be very careful when selecting their aiming points so as not to endanger friendly forces.
The carrier element leader will mark the borders of the firezones, perhaps with tracer rounds, and also order smoke grenades where necessary. The dismount element will generate their own smoke as well, of cause, and will vary the color of smoke used - yellow, green, red for example - to signal to the carrier element that certain pre-arranged points have been reached so that supporting fire can be redirected.
Flexible overwatch:
The overwatching position of the carrier element need not to be firmly fixed. In
fact, there will probably come a time during the assault when the vehicles will have to
cease their supporting firefor fear of hitting their own dismounted men.
At that point they are free to move to a secondary overwatch position from which they have a clearer view of the target and can re-start their support activity. In this way it may be possible to hit the enemy defencive position from both sides at once.
As soon as enemy resistance has been suppressed, the assault force must consolidate and reorganize, either to continue the attack or to prepare to repel a counterattack. When the troops have remained mounted on vehicles right through the attack, it's often possible to push on and make more significant gains in the relatively soft and ill-defended rear echelons.
Rear gains:
In fact, gains made in the rear, which will contain command posts and assembly
areas, may be conciderablymore important than taking the front line defencive positions,
especially from an intelligence point of view.
Even though the fighting may be over at this point the operation isn't.The captured areas have to be scoured for hidden dangers, both human and in the form of mines and booby traps; defencive positions have to be prepared; essential troops lost in the action - TOW and GPMG crews, for example - have to be replaced; resupply organized; casualties and prisoners evacuated; and a detailed report of the operation made to higher command.
And even when all these tasks have been completed, still there's no time to relax. There's never time to relax on the battlefield.
Assaulting the objective:
The Assault is the last phase of the attack when the attacking force closes on the enemy
position. It is not a 'charge' in the
old-fashioned sense; you must use all available cover and concealement and the techniques
of fire and movement. Using
mutually supporting covering fire, you move on to and across the objective, destroying or
capturing the enemy.
Dodging Enemy Anti-tank Missiles:
From a drivers view:
1. Look out for the tell-tale flash as the enemy anti-tank guided missile operator launches his missile.
2. Immediately fire all your machine-guns at the enemy gunner: if it does not hit him it will at least disturb his aim.
3. Drive in an erratic zig-zag to make it hard for the enemy to keep you in his sights.
4. Head for the nearest cover: a hollow or ridge is ideal, but trees, bushes or even telegraph poles can obstruct the missile's flight.
From a anti-tank gunners view:
1. Anti-tank missile operators need to keep the crosshairs of their sight centred on your vehicle. You must do everything you can to put them off.
2. Obstacles like bushes and small trees may not actually detonate the missile but they can snag its control wires, causing it to miss.
3. If all else fails, you can try a sudden turn to right or left in the last seconds of the missile's flight.
Advancing Along Roads:
A column of APC's moving down a road is very vulnerable to enemy anti-tank
weapons, particulary where the roads bend. When advancing to contact, send the dismount
teams ahead to check out each corner.
How the Platoon crosses a bridge:
Approach a bridge as a possible ambush site and clear it before crossing.
Remember, the enemy may have weapons ranged in on the bridge, or may have booby-trapped
the approaches or wired the whole structure for demolition.
