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Elite
O
SPREY
PUBLISHING
World War II
Street-Fighting Tactics
Stephen Bull
•
Illustrated by Peter Dennis
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Elite • 168
World War II
Street-Fighting Tactics
Stephen Bull
•
Illustrated by Peter Dennis
Consultant editor
Mar tin Windrow
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
WORLD WAR II
STREET-FIGHTING
TACTICS
INTRODUCTION
Romanticized impression
of fighting amongst ruins, in
Will Tschech’s wartime painting
Grenadiere,
once on display at
Munich’s Haus der Deutschen
Kunst.
‘
S
treet fighting’ – known today by the acronyms FIBUA (Fighting in
Built Up Areas) or MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain)
– has occurred since biblical times, and one of the first writers to
refer to the subject in a tactical context was the Roman author Vegetius.
The medieval, early modern and Napoleonic eras offer numerous
examples of bloody fighting and
appalling massacres in the streets
of contested towns. During the
19th century, however, it was the
engineering branches of armies
that occupied a specialized niche
not only in the prosecution of
sieges, but in the attack and defence
of ordinary civilian buildings. In
1853 a British officer, LtCol Jebb,
RE, writing in the
Aide Memoire to the
Military Sciences,
attempted to
formulate universal and scientific
principles for the conduct of the
defence of buildings and villages.
Jebb’s key maxims were: that
forces should not be ‘shut up’ in
built-up areas without a particular
object; that the means of
reinforcement and retreat were as
crucial as the actual defence; that
buildings required very different
treatments depending on their
relationship with an overall plan;
and that the selection and
preparation of any particular
structures for defence was a ‘great
art’, in which one might have to
sacrifice almost anything to be
successful. When it came to
defending a building, Jebb saw
little distinction between a
church, a factory or a country
house – all could be made
defensible if six factors were taken
into account:
3
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
RIGHT
A bullet-pocked building
in the central Várhegy district of
Buda, 2007. More than 100,000
soldiers and civilians were killed
in the battle for Budapest, which
began with its encirclement in
December 1944, and ended with
its fall to the Red Army on
13 February 1945. The German
defence centred on the Buda
side of the Danube, where a
labyrinth of tunnels ran under
the ancient castle. About 80
per cent of Budapest’s buildings
were damaged in what came
to be regarded as the final
rehearsal for the battle of Berlin.
BELOW
Plan for the defence of
a house ‘not exposed to artillery
fire’, from the British
Manual of
Field Engineering
(1939). The
copious use of barbed wire,
loopholes, steel loophole plates
and traverses is suggestive
of lengthy preparation – and
draws extensively upon devices
developed for the trenches
of World War I. The thick apron
of ‘close wire’ prevented enemy
troops getting close enough to
place charges or put grenades
through narrow openings.
4
(1) The building should ‘command all that surrounds it’.
(2) The structure should be ‘substantial’, and furnish the materials needed.
(3) Its size should be proportionate to the number of defenders.
(4) It should have walls and projections suitable for flanking – i.e. positions
from which enfilade fire could be brought to bear on the attacker.
(5) The approach should be difficult for the attacker, while the defender
should maintain a route for ‘safe retreat’.
(6) The situation should be suitable to the ‘object for
which the detachment is to be posted’.
In 1862 the same journal printed a counterpart
article in which Gen Sir John F. Burgoyne elaborated
principles for ‘street fighting’ and the ‘attack and
defence of open towns’, citing illustrations from both
Napoleonic and more recent examples. Burgoyne’s
approach was brutally realistic; he recognized that
when committed inside a built-up area, confronted by
‘tumults and insurrection’ and often unable to tell
bystanders from foes, troops were liable to respect
‘neither person nor property’. The only satisfactory way
to prevent loss of control was therefore not to bring the
soldiery into an enemy or rebellious town until they
were ‘fully authorized to act’. Where facing determined
opposition, attackers would do well to deploy ‘sappers’
provided with ‘an assortment of crowbars, sledge-
hammers, short ladders, and above all, some bags of
powder’. These could work their way along continuous
terraces of buildings, breaking through walls, while the
infantry – avoiding column formations – fought in
‘small detachments well supported’. The infantry could
similarly help the engineers by keeping up fire against
windows, preventing defenders from shooting out.
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
In some instances burning the whole town had much to recommend it.
Many of Burgoyne’s points would be demonstrated during May 1871,
when the French Army of Versailles recaptured the streets of Paris from
the rebellious Communards in ‘Bloody Week’.
By World War I street fighting had a long and unedifying history, and
it was natural that this particular form of combat should be increasingly
codified and integrated into formal training. Grenades were standard
issue for engineers long before 1914, while the modern flamethrower
was perfected in the decade leading up to the war and unleashed in
1915. In Britain, Charles N. Watts published his
Notes on Street Fighting
in
1916. By this time British Army sniper training included lessons on built-
up areas, and ‘realistic environments’ were specially created for practice.
At the end of the Great War, US instructors took the idea a stage further
with the introduction of the now-famous ‘Hogan’s Alley’ concept.
According to Maj J.S. Hatcher, this was originally the brainchild of a
Capt Deming, ‘an artist by profession’, who had ‘contributed much
valuable material’ to training by creating landscape targets. Back at
Caldwell, New Jersey, in 1919, he constructed a ‘French Village’. At the
back of this was
a pit for the scorers. Each of these scorers had a cardboard figure,
resembling the head and shoulders of a man, nailed on the end
of a long stick. The shooter took his place at the firing point, gun
in hand. Suddenly at the windows or the corner of a wall, or some
other unexpected place, one of these figures would be exposed for
three seconds, then withdrawn… This is a very hard thing to do.
At Camp Perry, the US National Rifle Association would teach similar
urban combat skills to police and civilian pistol shooters
using this same ‘Hogan’s Alley’ idea.
The last real opportunities to refine street-fighting
techniques before 1939 came in the Spanish Civil War.
Methods learned in, for instance, the defence of Madrid
in 1936–37 would later be disseminated to British forces,
both by veterans of the International Brigades working
with the Home Guard, and subsequently through lectures
at the Commando School. Subjects learned included
demolition, barricades and urban sniping; but arguably
the most important observations were made on the
interactions of armour, aircraft and ‘guerrilla’ techniques
in urban settings. In the opinion of Capt Tom
Wintringham (the Great War veteran who had led the
British 57th Bn in 15th International Bde until wounded
at Jarama), in the face of new technologies the
infantryman’s best chance of survival was invisibility – and
urban streets provided the best cover both from sight, and
from the action of aircraft and tanks. Neither machine
could carry enough munitions to destroy an entire town
in one mission, and even if an area was flattened, the
rubble and ruins could still be defended. Completely
razing a city to the ground would take far more time than
any modern mobile or ‘blitz’ army would be able to invest.
Some basic tips for the
infantryman from Maj G.A.
Wade’s
House to House Fighting
(1940). Again, the drawings are
only slight modifications of those
produced during 1914–18
showing troops the correct
way to treat traverses during
the advance along a trench.
5
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