LemuelG
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Posts posted by LemuelG
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Curiosity got a hold of me, I had to do some tests to see whether I was mad or not. I did a few rounds, time demands have got the better of me for now though.
I figure it's best to test with as few variables as possible, conditions of fire-superiority for the attacker (about 2:1), who also gets a hedgerow.
The field: Default size map; 'mixed-grass' style terrain; perfectly flat. Two parralel rows of 'tall' bocage, approx. 200m apart, running from north to south.
The forces: US para company + battalion HQ - 131 men. German platoon, company HQ and HMG section - 63 men. Rough 2:1 advantage for the US, plus 3 light mortars.
Ten minutes time-limit for show-down - time for forces to spot and engage from 30-60 seconds. Soldiers spread evenly along the lines of bocage facing each other.
First round of tests is the base-line, no foxholes, US has 3 60mm mortars slightly behind the line, it's HQs can call them freely. When I give numbers they will be for (total casualties/total squads routed and broken)
Test # - Test type (US losses) (German losses)
1 - mortar/no-holes (7/0) (30/4)
2 - mortar/no-holes (9/0) (33/5)
3 - mortar/no-holes (7/0) (31/4)
4 - mortar/no-holes (3/0) (33/4)
5 - mortar/no-holes (4/0) (39/3)
Clear trend - Germans take about 50% casualties, half the rest are rendered ineffective, fleeing and/or out-of-command. Negligible harm to the US troops. Now we add holes, 13 of them to be exact - almost one for every team, two are overloaded.
6 - mortar/holes (9/0) (7/0)
7 - mortar/holes (15/0) (11/1)
8 - mortar/holes (8/0) (16/1)
9 - mortar/holes (16/0) (14/0)
10 - mortar/holes (18/0) (8/0)
Dramatic turn-around, Germans now holding their own, and sometimes even coming out ahead, despite mortar-fire; near-misses by mortars are notably less effective on the fortified Germans.
Casualties reduced by 50%+, and even though they are still heavily out-gunned the Germans hold stronger, with only 1 team routing, at most.
A few more, this time without mortars on the US side. First without holes for baseline.
11 - no-mortar/no-holes (8/0) (27/3)
12 - no-mortar/no-holes (9/0) (21/2)
13 - no-mortar/no-holes (8/0) (22/3)
Now giving the Germans back their spider-holes.
14 - no-mortar/holes (12/0) (9/0)
15 - no-mortar/holes (12/0) (12/0)
16 - no-mortar/holes (14/0) (9/0)
Again the holes are a significant boost for the Germans; in their bocage-holes, and with no nassty mortarsss, they are rock-solid morale-wise. It would have been nice to run it longer to see if the Germans could possibly win, but I haven't the time now.
Short, inflammatory conclusion: holing your bocage will at least double effectiveness of defensive fighting-positions. It works, real good.
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IIRC someone In the first couple weeks found this with slit trenches?
Beats me, I posted this after reading about how this specifically couldn't be done in another thread; it was gonna be a surprise for the scenario - but I thought, why not? So much moaning about the poor quality of prepared positions, but there are answers for the designer who is prepared to get sufficiently 'cute' with the engine.
After I stumbled on this and instituted changes to defensive positions, the Germans went from usually bugging-out after a couple of minutes of a fire-fight (as good as dying for the AI) to holding on long enough to completely run out of ammo in some cases, if the allied player runs out of mortar rounds he's in deep poop. I'm now tinkering very carefully with their experience/motivation levels.
Try it out for yourselves. I'm interested to see and hear of your results.
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This is only do-able by scenario designers; I discovered it after accidentally laying a row of bocage through some foxholes already placed on the map. It's that simple.
Now I just find the section of hedge I want 'fortified', delete it in the editor, go to placement-mode and move some foxholes into the gap, back to the map-editor and replace the hedge - voila!
After doing this to some key positions dislodging the Germans became much more difficult, no genuine testing has been made - observations appear very favorable, and I'm running with it.
They are still the same-old earth-pimples we all know and love though, scenario featuring bocage-forts soon
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Gun displaced after some aimed mortaring, gunner notably shell-shocked.
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Looking at the issue as 'left/right' only confuses matters. While Gregor Strasser was alive and in a position of influence, the Nazi platform had more than a faint whiff of socialism about it, there is no doubt the party platform could be described as 'leftist'.
Strasser was highly influential, and the organizational genius behind the rise of the Nazis from Bavarian curiosity into national powerhouse; Schleicher offered him the vice-chancellorship ahead of Hitler, and it sealed his fate (being murdered SS men.. I mean 'pussys' through the window of his cell).
A monolithic, 'extremist' view of Nazis in general is a mistaken attitude, a vote for the NSDAP was not exactly a vote for a bayonet in the heart of every Gypsy-child. There's way more to it.
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Hard to be sure, my guess is that it's one of the Lorraine/Hotchkiss chassis-conversion SP guns of the type that served with 21st Panzer's artillery regiment.
In one of my Concord books (D-Day Tank Warfare)there's a photo of one with a WWI-vintage 150mm howitzer installed, the caption states it's unit as "Verstarken Schnellen Brigade West". Attached to 21st panzer.
Other photos of the dumps for tanks captured in the Cotentin show a real mish-mash of stuff, most of it French-manufactured and converted. It just wont be Normandy until we have, at the very least, Somua R35 tanks... they should have made it in before Panthers
But I digress, that's for another thread
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Oh Lawd; personally, I will only begin gushing once captured Renault and Hotchkiss tanks are added
It's Normandy baby! Keepin' it real etc.
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Consider what we see on highways every day, cars a few feet from each other doing 70 without slamming on the brakes and pausing for 10 seconds every other minute.
Maybe you live in some mythical land with perfect motorway traffic, but I assure you, in my neck of the woods it's a biatch.
And oddly enough the behaviour you describe is almost exactly what happens. A long column driving at speed and far too close to each other, even a small tap on the brakes from the head of the column can be amplified into a half-hour long stop-start crawl a couple of kilometers down the line. don't ya love it? All that time in a traffic jam you were imagining the apocalyptic events which caused the delay, but it's never anything interesting, just another tail-gating ass-hat f*ing with your life.
It is, quite simply the greatest challenge to civic planners trying to relive motorway traffic congestion. Bad driving, brake-humping, lane-jumping MORONS. I gotta move to the country.
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1. To calculate casualties properly you should include 750'000 civilians killed in the US bombings. Plus the whole population of Tokyo where the third nuke was destined.
2. I do not say Japanese were angels - they were fully responsible for annihilation of huge masses of people. I say in its quest to crush Japan state the US started to exterminate Japanese population and were fully prepared to finish the job if necessary.
Let's stop it here. I don't think even reading Downfall or any other book will change anything. You don't believe there could have been another way out of the mess. And I do believe there was. So this is it
What bugs me is that you have moralized the situation to the point where it has completely flipped on it's head.
Suddenly, in IMHO-land, the Imperial Japanese are victims, and the US becomes the genocidal aggressor. Give me a break, the amount of Japanese civilians killed pales in comparison to the 17 million killed at the hands of Imperial Japan, genocidal beasts that they were.
The US applied precisely as much violence as was necessary to achieve the goals of it and it's allies - if there was any similarity between IJ and the US, then the Japanese surrender would have just been the beginning of the massacre.
If the dim-wits who ran the Japanese war-of-conquest had admitted their shame, and that they had lost the war sometime in '43 - then committed ritual-suicide or surrendered themselves to justice, a lot of Japanese, and other Asian, civilians would have lived.
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Personally, so far US leaders do not look that much different from Japanese.
Then I suggest you look again.
Let me summarize that article for you:
This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued.Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.
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More recently, though, Marshall's works have been the center of some controversy. There is considerable evidence that his data collection and collation methods were less disciplined than what they should have been for a professional historian. Some have even accused him of outright fabrication. Needless to say, all this casts doubt on his work as a whole.
I would suggests some Googling and reading if you're interested in more; it's a complex topic. My personal opinion is that Marshall's work does have some value, but that he does sometimes put the cart ahead of the horse.
His conclusions and theories should be examined and challenged like any other; the work he and his team put in making interviews and gathering information has been of inestimable value to many historians, and has enriched the historiography immensely.
No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater
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Terrific news! Tactical-victory for team 3-squad; I must admit I wasn't confident.
If it is to be a new/alternative ToE can it also reflect some other changes as-outlined in Four Stars..? Such as: 4-man platoon HQs (1st lt., 2nd lt., buck sergeant; radioman); seperate zook-teams in every platoon etc.
Thank-you very much for your time Steve, and mercy
'Team we need captured French tanks in first module!' now recruiting
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So, BF, please, if possible, adding more AI groups would be a very welcomed addition. Thank you.
Agreed, hopefully it is being worked on at the same time as AI triggers.
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True, maybe we can have a Airborne batallion both early and late...satisfy both sides.
It would be nice not to have to wait for two modules (so... at least a year from now) to be able to make (what I believe after careful research to be) an accurate D-Day scenario.
I don't think my proposal is too far-out in coding terms, I was careful to ask for something that would work in the way that the game currently does.
To re-iterate: I would like full 12-man squads to be able to be added as 'specialist teams', and for there to be a toggle when a squad is selected to add a BAR to the squad in place of a rifle.
I've kind of run out of steam on this, the passage in Nordyke's (voted by the 82nd VA as it's official historian, a respectable source) detailing the platoon-structure, specifically stating it as being instituted pre-Normandy is the best evidence I can find, and it appears to be conclusive. Maybe it is just the 505th, or formations intended for the most important objectives, it should still be included.
I was hoping there would be a convenient, 21st century method of contacting the author and seeking clarification, but he hasn't made it easy for me. From here, in the southern Pacific conversing via letter is prohibitively slow and un-reliable.
I found a potential contact address for him in Texas, if any Americans/other forumites would like to try to correspond with the author to try to get to the bottom of this, I will provide it by PM. I'm sure there is good reason for him to write what he has written, and that he will help clear things up for us.
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The thing I wonder about is whether France could have won the war in 1939. If France had launched a major offensive into Germany in September of 1939 maybe a lot of subsequent misery could have been avoided.
Yeah, the opportunity was there while Poland was still in play. But with war against Stalinist Russia still on the cards I'm not sure prudence was as foolish as it looks after the fact.
The red fear plays into a lot of decision-making at this stage of events; end-result is that Poland gets thrown to the wolves.
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Yeah, every minute the Japanese held-on was yet more enslavement, death, torture, disease, and famine for the millions of innocents still subject to their, frankly, sick and detestable cultural crusade. Talk about Nemesis, and in the same breath you deliver the best possible deterrent to Stalin's mischief.
When your enemies lose it is a good thing, do I endorse the killing of civilians? No, and that is why the enemy needed to be mercilessly destroyed. It's a shame so much violence was necessary to achieve our goals, but when you face a life-or-death conflict it is pure folly not to respond with every possible tool at your disposal. Too bad for them that happened to be the greatest destructive power ever unleashed by man, someone picked the wrong fight.
Submarine-blockades will not do when your kinsmen and allies need succour immediately. F* Imperial Japan.
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This is exactly my thought, as well. The editor is your friend.
It would be nice to find out about BAR's, but that is merely satisfying a curiosity. It has no bearing on the game. (The editor can add as many BAR teams into your airborne units as you'd like. The lack of BAR's in the game's pre-existing TO&E is nearly meaningless in this regard.)
You cannot attach them to a squad sergeant. That is not a satisfactory solution.
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Lieutenant Turnbull posed a question to the 23 men in his platoon who were still able to fight: “Should we charge them to the front or the rear?” Pvt. Joe Sebastian suggested they all try to get out before they were cut off completely and try for a breakout towards Ste. Mère-Eglise. Corporal James Kelly, the platoon medic, said he would remain behind, taking care of the wounded.
That said, Sebastian, who had recommended immediate evacuation, elected to stay behind with his lethal BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). Cpl. Roy Smitson and Sgt. Robert Niland would stay and went to man the machine gun. Niland was killed instantly. Someone yelled, “Let’s go! For Christ’s sake, let’s go!” As they were heading out of the trap, they heard 60mm mortar rounds exploding into the German field position. (1)
The mortar was fired by Sgt. Otis Sampson of E/505, the most deadly accurate mortar sergeant in the 505th. They held off the Germans long enough to get back to their Ste. Mère-Eglise outposts. Lt. Turner Turnbull and his 505 platoon held off the huge German force coming from the north, which gave the 3rd Battalion time to defeat the enemy force coming from the south.
At about 1600 hours, a few rounds of German artillery or mortars landed on the causeway in front of the church. The tanks shelled the Cauquigny church as the infantry closed up on the side of the road next to it. Both sides were now about ten yards apart, throwing grenades at one another. Private Orlin Stewart was on the west side of the church at the fork in the road when he saw a bazooka round hit a tank. Then two other Renault tanks tried to get past the damaged tank while a volley of rifle fire erupted along the enemy line. To Stewart’s surprise, a 1st sergeant and a private, who were total strangers to him, began a battle with the enemy. This mystery sergeant and private had a handful of gammon grenades that they both threw against the tanks while Stewart covered them with his Browning automatic rifle (BAR). They disabled both tanks, and the unknown sergeant killed the crews with a fragmentation grenade as they tried to bail out.Murphy, Robert M. (2009-04-07). No Better Place to Die (Kindle Locations 952-959). Casemate Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Krause ordered Company I to counterattack and throw the enemy back. The company moved south along a hedgerow-lined dirt road that paralleled the highway west of the N-13. Sergeant Bill Dunfee was carrying a BAR that he’d picked up during a lull in the shelling that morning.“We moved back to our platoon and set up a line of fire on Lieutenant Turnbull’s immediate left, the farmhouse with the enemy gun to our immediate front. We formed a perimeter defense with our power to the front. We commenced firing on order, firing BARs, mortar, bazooka, and small arms fire, making quite a racket.“After possibly five or ten minutes—all hell broke loose. The enemy, moving west down the road near the farmhouse and to our immediate front, walked right into our hidden left flank, who were stretched out along the hedgerow so that they were practically facing east. Corporal [Thomas J.] Burke, who had already won a Silver Star for bravery, with his Tommy gun; a [trooper with a] BAR; and three or four riflemen held their fire until the enemy was within a few feet of them. Then they opened fire. The surprised enemy took off in every direction, losing a good number of men.With that, the whole platoon opened fire with everything they had at the enemy. This included Sergeant Sampson, the greatest and most accurate mortar sergeant in the business. He fired at this close range and laid the shells down in a line right on their heads.”29
At that very moment, Company A trooper Private First Class Dave Bullington was just about to open up with his BAR from his position in front of the hedgerow next to the river, north of the bridge. “[sergeant Oscar L. “Stonewall”] Queen was the first one that fired. He had the machine gun off to my right. His tracers went right in front of me. He was firing at the infantry—his tracers went right over their heads in the center of their column. He was a little high, and I got him on the target, and then we let’ em have it. I don’t know how many infantrymen there were; there might have been a couple hundred of them. They were all bunched up real close and made a real nice target. They were right up close to the tanks. All I remember was my BAR and Queen’s machine gun. I don’t know how many magazines I fired at them.”62The Germans shelled Ste.-Mère-Église while reorganizing for a renewed attack to capture the town. Private First Class Joseph L. Comer, at one of the Company H roadblocks, saw one of his good friends hit by a German shell. “Corporal Glenn ‘Red’ Carpenter, a BAR man, got his legs blown off and died of a loss of blood and from shock. It really hurts you when you lose a good friend but you couldn’t dwell on it. You kind of had to put it in the back of your mind at the time.”29
(yeah.. that was the 7th, close enough)“Then their infantry came again, and we gave them everything we had. The machine gun I had was so hot it quit firing. I took Private [Wesley H.] McClatchy’s BAR (he had been wounded earlier) and I fired it until I ran out of ammo. I then took a machine gun that belonged to a couple of men who took a very near hit. They were killed. The gun had no tripod, so I rested it across a pile of dirt and used it. With this and one other machine gun and a 60mm mortar, we stopped them, but they had gotten to within twenty-five yards of us.”7
(the 8th, makes specific mention of "the squad's BAR")Pulling back to the crossroad, Company I reorganized and attempted to move around the German flank, to the right of the road. Tucker, heavily laden with his .30-caliber machine gun, followed Private First Class Ray Krupinski, the squad’s BAR man, who had laid down a withering fire to cover the withdrawal of Tucker and his two men earlier.
Nordyke, Phil (2006-11-15). Four Stars of Valor: The Combat History of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II (Kindle Locations 4754-4756). Zenith Press. Kindle Edition.
There are two points I hope to make (by this lazy Kindle-search for 'BAR' then cutting-pasting examples to forum) here, the first is that it is kinda hard to avoid BARs when making a historical D-Day scenario involving the 505th - it doesn't matter to me how they got them (I know it does to BFC, I get this), I need to be able to include them. Somehow, someway. I am a sick, sick person
The second is that Sergeant Sampson ought to be the model for all your 60mm mortar-men
As Turnbull’s platoon pulled out, the fire from Sergeant Sampson’s lone 60mm mortar devastated the German infantry west of the highway. “I used the mortar with direct firing from an open, high grass area, with just [Private First Class Harry G.] Pickels [the gunner] up there with me to feed the tube. We changed positions often, using various objects as sighting stakes. Our firing, along with the rifles and machine gunners, finally started to tell on the Krauts and their firing began to slack off. Just over the hill, the Jerries were crossing the lane one man at a time on the run. I timed the interval, and when I thought another would cross over, the tube was fed a round. And as planned, when Jerry was in the center of the lane, the shell hit, right to the fraction of a second. On the easing off of the firing, I gave a couple of the squad men a chance to use the weapon as I did, to get the feeling of what it was like under fire. I kept a close watch with my Tommy [gun]. -
The Nordyke numbers look odd to me, unless they just threw the official TOE out the window. I'd have expected 126 with two squads (not 118), or 162 with three squads (not 152).
152 adds-up if you take the organization described by Lt 'Joe' Meyers (quoted earlier) at face-value: 8-man company HQ (x 1); 4-man platoon HQs (x 3); 3 x 12-man rifle squads per platoon; 1 x 6-man mortar section and 1 x 2-man bazooka team per platoon (making 48 men total per platoon, an 8-man co.HQ makes 152).
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I went mining for nuggets in Google Books, one I dug-up is a passage from All American, All the Way, by Phil Nordyke, which is very similair to the passage from Four Stars... except he is much more explicit:
(p.3)Before Normandy, an unofficial increase in the strength of the rifle companies had been made so that an additional rifle squad was added. This increased the strength of the rifle company from 110 men with 8 officers to 144 with 8 officers.I think it's fair to say he meant 'platoons' instead of 'companies' in the first sentence (poor editing, nothing more), and the final count appears to be out by 2 (?), but nevertheless leaves little to conjecture.
Incidentally this figure meshes more-or-less perfectly with the strength of A/505 at dawn on D-Day given by Bob Murphy.
There's also this from everybody's fave, Stephen Ambrose:
Within a few days of it's formation, Easy company had it's full compliment of 132 men and eight officers. It was divided into three rifle platoons and a headquarters section. There were three twelve-man squads and a six-man mortar squad to a platoon.All I really took away from that was that the author's sums don't add up. He does say there are three squads though, so he's on the team
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Regarding the 3 Squad implementation prior to Normandy... sheesh, with all the obsession and research about the US Airborne we wouldn't even have a question about this!! Damned historians and their obsessions with documenting 101st haircuts and "crickets" instead of TO&E
OK, for sure there is some evidence the changes were made prior to Normandy. I'm not totally convinced yet, however. I'm even less convinced it was 100% universal. It could be they only managed to scrounge up the extra manpower and equipment for a couple of Battalions, or perhaps one Company per Battalion. So far there's no good overall picture of this situation, other than officially it didn't exist and several other sources do not mention it in place for Normandy.
Regarding the BARs, kinda a similar thing. Did paras use BARs? I don't doubt it. But did they pick them up after being on the ground? Did they only manage to get a few sprinkled amongst a Battalion? This is important because putting in too many BARs could be more incorrect than having none as we have now.
And lastly, 17th Airborne wasn't in the ETO so it counts as part of this discussion as the PTO's 11th Airborne Div and the 503rd PIR
Steve
I think the reasons for not going and not making wholesale changes to the ToE are good, as you've outlined.
But for example: I can find evidence that puts BARs in at least two different squads of A/505 on the morning of the 6th; where would they have picked these up? My guess is out of the bundles that dropped with them, where they got all their equipment.
That's why my suggested compromise was to allow single extra squads to be purchased in the design phase and added to each platoon, and that the presence of a BAR in a squad be determined by a toggle in design-mode, BAR/No-BAR? A bit like Grenadier/not-grenadier for the Germans.
This way if a scenario-designer, through thorough research, is satisfied that these changes are appropriate then he can include them in his OOB.
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That's good stuff, Lemuel, but it's a bit problematic. Meyers wasn't in Normandy. He's relating something he was told to the effect that the orgasnisation he was about to take into MARKET GARDEN is the same as had been used in Normandy.
I concede this, though Nordyke does feel at liberty to embellish the testimony: "Lieutenant Meyers was briefed on the unofficial table of organization and equipment that had been adopted before Normandy, with the addition of a squad to each platoon in a parachute infantry company."
The 'before Normandy' part was in the author's words. Otherwise it is Meyers simply describing the state of a para platoon in D/505 as he found it. Nordyke comes highly recommended, I found the book after reading Bob Murphy's endorsement in No Better Place To Die.
17 troops per-plane is conservatively-estimated as well - the first testimonial by a para on that site gives the troops in his plane (elements of H/505) as 21.
Total planes for the 505th + divisional HQ elements + attached engineers is 120 (according to the site linked), at 21 troopers per plane that gives us a (rough potential) capacity of 2520 men, subtract the head-count of three on-paper rifle battalions and you're left with almost 1000 'spare' places for some engineers and HQ elements. The extra bodies required to make up an extra squad in each platoon is only 324 men.
To my mind this is actually a very good reason for. Go team 3-squads!
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A more complete quoting of the key passage, for discussion's sake (courtesy my horrid Kindle):
Lieutenant James J. Meyers arrived with a group of replacement officers at Camp Quorn on July 18, 1944, and was assigned to Company D. “Upon entering the pyramidal tent that served as the D Company orderly room, the XO, 1st Lieutenant Waverly Wray, greeted me. Wray introduced me to the First Sergeant, John Rabig, and he informed me the company commander would return shortly. In the meantime, he assembled the other company officers.“I stood a quarter inch short of six feet, which made me the runt of the litter of platoon leaders. They were: 1st Platoon, 2nd Lieutenant Thomas J. McClean, three combat jumps, a big Irishman and a former New York City policeman; 2nd Platoon, 1st Lieutenant Oliver B. Carr, three combat jumps, a son of the old South from Palm Beach, Florida; 3rd Platoon, 2nd Lieutenant Charles K. Qualls, two combat jumps, a giant of a man.
“Assistant platoon leaders were Lieutenant [isaac] Michelman, hospitalized and recovering from wounds; and 2nd Lieutenant Russell E. Parker, a former 1st sergeant, three combat jump veteran, and the recipient of a recent battlefield commission. I was a replacement for 1st Lieutenant Turner B. Turnbull, killed in action in Normandy.
“Following the introductions, McClean asked me, ‘What do we call you?’
“I replied, ‘Jim.’
“He paused, looked at me and said, ‘We have too many Jims in this outfit. From now on your name is Joe.’ I thought he was joking. He was not and to this day my airborne colleagues know me as ‘Joe.’
“When the CO, Captain Taylor G. Smith, returned, he met ‘Joe’Meyers. He assigned me as Tom McClean’s assistant. I had much to learn and Tom had extensive combat experience. He could teach me the ropes.”4
Lieutenant Meyers was briefed on the unofficial table of organization and equipment that had been adopted before Normandy, with the addition of a squad to each platoon in a parachute infantry company. “Company headquarters had a CO, XO, first sergeant, operations sergeant, company clerk, supply sergeant, supply clerk, and armorer. Each of the three rifle platoons had three twelve-man rifle squads, a 60mm mortar section, a rocket launcher (bazooka) team, and a platoon headquarters with a platoon leader, assistant platoon leader, platoon sergeant, and a radio/telephone operator (RTO). Each rifle squad had a light machine gun (LMG) and a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). One squad member was the assistant LMG gunner and the rest of the squad’s riflemen had the additional duty of carrying added ammunition for the LMG. In our company, the only true rifleman was the squad leader. As long as the ammunition held out, the airborne platoon had roughly two to three times the firepower of a straight infantry rifle platoon.
Nordyke, Phil (2006-11-15). Four Stars of Valor: The Combat History of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II (Kindle Locations 5287-5308). Zenith Press. Kindle Edition.
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A key binding too make buildings not translucent when your troops are in them..
I would like this too. Good idea.
Three-squad Para platoons, myth? Or fact?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Good point, but I have no idea which other units recieved Lorraine/Hotchkiss conversions - something like a hundred of them went to Panzer formations other than the 21st - I just referenced them because I figured they were a bit more famous.
A Lorraine chassis-conversion. Sd.Kfz 135, 7.5cm Pak40/1 auf Lorraine Schlepper (f)!
The gun and mount are identical to a Marder's, unsurprisingly.