I think you are expecting more from the TMs than they are able to support. In the early 80s as training and awareness I used to force my guys to submit changes (form in the back of every TM) to the TM 43-0001 series of ordnance pubs. When you get into the fine details all of these publications are full of small, sometimes significant errors. Finally after one series of change requests we got a call from the publication author, asking why we wanted the change and what difference it meant. After explaining that we used the publications as a simpler (non-classified) quick reference on ordnance ID and details, he explained that while he was the author of the document he was not an ordnance person, nor had he ever seen the ordnance he was writing about. Just a writer - He had no idea what he was writing about and how it related to any of the illustrations. I know that this was not far from the truth with the later EOD publications (TM 60 series), and doubt that it was any different for the WWII TM 9 series. A few years ago I was asked to do a review of some DHS contracted documents on some WMD stuff, same story. The author was a research desk jockey, had never seen a single piece that he was writing on and had no ordnance or WMD background. Always try to know your source material and never give it your full trust, good writers are not ordnance people and few ordnance people are good writers.