Historical makeup of combat groups

[Clinton]

I am wanting to know the general makeup of American, British, and German forces in company sized to Battalion sizes. I really want to use as realistic of selections that I can. Any good info on this? A general guide would be helpful even. Websites with OOB or anything useful is also helpful. Thanks for anything you can provide.

PS is there any programs out there that can generate realistic battle groups???

Clinton

[Pak40]

CM does a pretty good job of this but there are a few irregularities with the CM OOBs. For example, CM has the U.S. Heavy weapons Company with 8 M1919 mmgs when the table of organization calls for 8 M1917 Hmgs. Also the HW Company in CM has one 81mm FO which only represents 4 81mm mortars. In official table of Organization it should have 6 81mm mortars. The U.S. rifle companies are perfect in CM.

this is all nit picking if you really want an exact OOB.

I don't know any web sites off hand, but they're out there. You're best doing a search for "Order of Battle" U.S. infantry division, or something like that.

[Conscript Bagger]

Try this: http://www.britwar.co.uk

and go to the Army Lists section.

Also, remember that during the period covered by CM, U.S. commanders usually organized their divisional units into combined arms "combat commands" (from armored divisions) or "regimental combat teams" (infantry), and the liberal use of attached formations like tank or tank destroyer battalions means that just about any combination of units is within the realm of possibility for a scenario. I don't know to what extent other Allied armies did this. The Germans are famous for forming those ad hoc "kampfgruppes" which could be a grab bag of anything, but I wonder if that's overstated in the minds of gamers.

[Michael Dorosh]

See the page on Modelling an Infantry Battalion on my Canuck website, below.