Appreciating the lost art of Field Manuals

[Tukhachevskii]

Now why don’t they illustrate AFMs/FMs like this anymore? Certainly tops those evil, unnecessarily complicated and down-right confusing wire, systems, network (et al) diagrams you see in AFMs these days. Being a visual learner myself I always find well drawn (and thought out) diagrams to be invaluable in putting across information. I can’t imagine a better indoctrination tool for young men and women in their teens (or even in their thirty’s!) than a AFM/FM -like FM 90-10-1, Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Areas or FM 3-24.2 Tactics in Counterinsurgency for instance - presented as a graphic novel (maybe even drawn by someone like Geoff Darrow or Dave Gibbons) or even an anime movie in MP4 format (&c.)....now, if I was the enterprising type....

I wonder who the artists were on these and if they ever went into the comic book industry?

Any other examples out there?


Picture credits:

• Fig. 6 & 14 from FM 17-42, Armoured Infantry Battalion, 1944

• Fig. 41 from FM 17-33, The Armoured Battalion Light and Medium, 1942

• “What to do in a Jam” from DA Pam 750-30, The M16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventative Maintenance, 1969