150p historical Allied Combined Arms Plt

[Andras]

I worked out a '44 US Armored Division Tank Plt plus Armored Infantry plt is 150 points.


Tank Platoon- 5 M4A1 Shermans- 105pts

Infantry Platoon- 45pts
Captain(7)
3 Garands (12)
3 Bazookas (12)
1 M2 Mortar (6)
1 Vickers 30cal (8)

Technically, the bazookas are part of the Garand squads, since the '44 Armored Infantry 12 man sqd included a bazooka. The Vickers is a replacement for the .30cal Browning Squad.

Also missing are 5 half-tracks for the armored infantry platoon.

[RHINOMAN]

Looks good and i am hoping next expansion they have a M3 halftrack.That would make a nice addition to allied forces.

[Richter von Manthofen]

I am not an expert for (military) history, but it seems to me that there are too many bazookas.

For the game I would have added another Vickers and 2 French 3pt infantry (replacing the missing 3pt US inf) and dropped the mortar and two bazookas. - With 5 Sherman you don't need many anti tank weapons.

[Danyel Phelps]

The Bazooka wasn't a squad weapon. it was deployed one per company/platoon, I forget which.

[joshbaumgartner]

A caution about trying to apply the TO&E to infantry units at this size. Such units never resembled their TO&E by the time they met the enemy. Even in peacetime you don't match up right with your authorized strength levels, and it all goes to hell in a handbasket when you get in theatre. Infantry squads tended to have a collection of weapons dependent on what was available when deployed, what they have ammo for, what broke, what they could capture or salvage along the way, and what they had the people to use. Naturally, after all that, what the official documents list as their equipment is out the window. Thus I like to use the weapons as representative of the platoon's abilities, instead of tailored to the TO&E.

Thus a platoon that I consider to be full up with personnel (more or less) should have around four squads. I give it a Captain to represent the platoon commander, two or three rifle squads, a bazooka, and a machinegun or mortar. The bazooka represents those that are probably distributed amongst the squads, while the MG/mortar represents the weapons squad. Formation for advance is one rifle and one weapon in each of two adjacent hexes with the third rifle and commander in the hex behind. Defensively, the rifle squads take up hexes, perhaps with one hex between them, with weapons emplaced where they have appropriate fields of fire, and the commander centrally located. These formations match historical infantry guidelines for employment that have pretty much held up since the war. An infantry platoon is expected to advance on a 200m front and defend 400m of line. An infantry company of three to four platoons advances on a 750m front and defends 1500m.

[Zeus[BTY]]

How many soldiers are you counting a single AAM unit (for instance an M1 Garand unit) as?

If a single AAM unit counts as a full squad, units like bazooka and the no doubt forthcoming Thompson (in other words, weapons which were deployed based on availability and need, but usually not deployed as separate squads) **** up the composition of a force.

While I would have preferred to introduce platoon-level weapons to a squad with upgrade cards (for example, the Thompson upgrade card would reduce the squad's ranged attacks a bit, but would increase close range combat values and/or confer the "urban fighter" ability), if they are introduced using separate models it would probably be better to count a single AAM unit as a group of 5 soldiers.

A platoon would then be something like 4-5 M1 Garands, 1 bazooka, 1-2 Thompsons, 1-2 machine guns, and a commander.

It could be quite fun to have infantry battles based on historical platoon compositions :) .

[Andras]

I don't have the book with me at work right now, but I'll edit for accuracy later tonight.

Osprey's US Armored Divisions, European Theater Operations 1944-1945 says that the 43+ pattern Armored Infantry Battalion squads that are part of the AD were reorganized and given an extra man and a bazooka. That's each squad in the Armored Division. Now remember that each squad also has it's own halftrack. They picked up and took everything they got their hands on since they didn't have to carry it on their backs.

The Armored Infantry Rifle Company's had 3x 60mm mortars and 18 bazookas. Each Battalion had a total of 74 Bazookas and 9x 60mm mortars. Each company also had a platoon of 3x 57mm antitank guns.

I'd love to see a A&AM unit of 'US Armored Infantry 1944' that combines the Garand and Bazooka into one unit, that would be historically accurate.

The squads in the Infantry Divisions may not have had integral bazookas, but those in the Armored Divisions did.

[joshbaumgartner]

Zues, good point. The way the game is organized, they appear to be representative of a squad. However, by the stats, and considering the specials like the bazooka and such, it is tempting to think of them as fire teams. However, I think the numbers work out best by thinking of the rifle units as squads, and the other weapons as individual weapons with crews.

Thus a rifle unit would be about 8 men (officially 12, but reality meant less) with M1 Garands, a BAR, some rifle grenades and probably a shotgun/SMG or two.
A bazooka unit would be two men with a bazooka and ammo plus carbines or SMGs. It might makes sense for it to be considered double this but I'm not sure which makes more sense.
A machine gun team would be 3-8 men with one MG, ammo, and protective weapons.
A flamethrower team would be two men with a flamethrower.
An antitank gun would be the gun plus a crew of 4-8.

A complication is when it comes to transport. Obviously AAM transport rules are very generic, with all transports so far having the same capacity (the SdKfz.251, being the bigger of the two main German armored halftracks, carried more than a Jeep quite easily, and the T-34 had its own limitations). So an SdKfz can't carry two Panzerschreks, but a Jeep can carry an entire squad of Engineers...okay that's probably not to realistic, but is clearly a nod to playability by the designers.

In WWII, infantry squads of all nations were still rifle-heavy, especially if you are thinking of modern infantry squads and fire-teams. While late in the war, more integration of weapons into squads was done, for the most part, infantry squads were still a bunch of guys with rifles protecting a single piece of firepower (usually a machinegun). Since rifles did almost none of the killing (despite doing most of the dying), it would be silly to have individual rifles as units. However, each of the bigger weapons (bazooka, mortar, MG) had an impact at squad level as an individual weapon and it is warranted to employ them as such.

[joshbaumgartner]

I'd love to see a A&AM unit of 'US Armored Infantry 1944' that combines the Garand and Bazooka into one unit, that would be historically accurate.

Good point...I think that the SS-Panzergrenadier unit provides the precedent for that, so this might be what we'll see in the future. The Mauser unit covers early infantry organization, while the PzGr unit covers those units later in the war that integrated more firepower into the squad.