"Were engineers and pioneers REALLY good at killing tanks?" Topic

"And what extra AT ability did German engineers have?"

Well, none, they just had the standard allocation of infantry AT weapons. They did have demolition charges, flamethrowers and mines too, which (apart from mines) aren't specifically AT weapons but could be used to 'demolish' tanks the same way they would a bunker.

Frankly I think the whole 'engineers are good at assaulting tanks' thing is a load of wargamery tosh.

I would accept that if you have an exceptionally well led, trained and motivated unit supplied with explody things it might do marginally better in close combat with AFVs. But it is the 'led,motivated, trained' bit which matters, not the 'engineer' label.

Engineers main job is obstacle creation and clearance, road and bridge construction etc. A decent minefield with a well mantained road network behind it and scorched earth in front is going to be a far bigger obstacle to an armoured advance than all the demo charge waving heroics in the world. The Germans used their divisional engineers as infantry because they had to, not because they wanted to. The engineer platoons in panzer units weren't there to assault enemy tanks, but to lift mines etc.

The scale of issue for bazookas is much lower in combat engineers than it is in the infantry.

T/O&E 5-15 Engineer Combat Battalion 15 July 1943:
29 x Bazooka Total
T/O&E 5-15 Engineer Combat Battalion 13 March 1944:
29 x Bazooka Total

T/O&E 7-15 Infantry Battalion 15 July 1943:
25 x Bazooka Total
T/O&E 7-15 Infantry Battalion 26 February 1944:
29 x Bazooka Total

T/O 5-17 Engineer Combat Company or Engineer Combat Troop 1 April 1942:
0 x Bazooka per Coy
T/BA 5 1 December 1942:
6 x Bazooka per Coy
T/O&E 5-17 Engineer Company (Troop) 15 July 1943:
9 x Bazooka per Coy
T/O&E 5-17 Engineer Company (Troop) 13 March 1944:
9 x Bazooka per Coy

T/O&E 7-17 Infantry Company, Rifle 15 July 1943:
3 x Bazooka per Coy
T/O&E 7-17 Infantry Company, Rifle 26 February 1944:
5 x Bazooka per Coy

No better than an infanrty squad unless it was house clearing, flamethrowers give yoou a good edge.

I think the thickness of Bazookas with the Engr Coys, specifically with the above, is partly because the Engr Bn had no Weapons Coy that need atk defence capability. About half the Inf Bn Bazookas were knocking around with subunits outside of the Rifle Coys. As noted the two Bn types had the same overall issue by 1944. Back in 1942 the US Engr Bns had three towed 37-mm atk guns allocated per Coy to give them some way of annoying Panzers. US Engr Bns also had quite decent allocation of LMGs or HMGs to enable them to operate as inf where required.

A RE Field Sqn or Coy had eight PIATs by late 1943, which sounds a lot offhand, but with 256 all ranks they were twice as big as a Rifle Coy (on a good day) and just had two per Tp or Pl, which were likewise twice as big as a Rifle Pl.

Late war German Pioneer Coys proper and Regtl equivalents only had the basic one boom stick equivalent per Pl (the KStN tables are almost universally vague on just what atk weapon was authorised, the below link gives the last Armd Pio Coy table available) –

link

Gary