Officers alone should not be able to shoot if there are only officers in the squad...

It was almost comical when my friend had an 2 squads with only officers left that were flame throwers and had Merciless assault... EACH GOT 5 DICE ON A HEX WITH ITS COVER TAKEN OFF!

Right out of a war movie!

However, unless cutbacks in the army have reduced squads to just 4 soldiers, there are proberly still a few grunts left to actualy carry the flamethrower, as no real  officer would ever consider that kind of manual labour :-)

RAF1945 said:

Very useful bit of info from the RCD (Rules Clarification Document) which can be found on BGG:

Q: In Tide of Iron, does each figure represent one soldier?
A: No. Each squad (one base with up to four figures) is a representation of somewhere between 10 to 24 soldiers – it varies a little from scenario to scenario. The easiest way to look at this is to think of each base as a small group of soldiers (about 12 maybe) and the figures – and specialty tokens – represent what type of squad it is and its threshold level (2 to 4 hits) before being removed from play.
 

But yes, flamethrowers are insanly powerfull. Even with only one "squad" left.  Thats why in my games my oponents dont seem to like them. (I kill them entirely, first thing I do)