US Rangers

[Panzer Leader]

((Did a search, turned up nothing))

Are all US Rangers considered paratroopers? I thought there were plenty of Rangers that were regular ground troops, like Mountain troops, pathfinders, scouts, and Armoured Cavalry.

Was it different in WW2? It just occurred to me that they are not modelled in CM and was curious why...

[Echo]

I didn't consider them that much of a missing item till I read up a little bit, saw a few documentaries, and then called my uncle who was a Ranger in New Guinea.

They were better armed, carried more ammunition, and better trained than the average riflemen. The Sturmkompanies were included in the unit line-up, I think the rangers should have been in there too.

My uncle said every other man had a thompson, BAR, or a bazooka. They armed themselves add-hoc. Thats why they were always called to the front of the position to bust up strong points. Thats kind of inherent firepower isn't modelled in any of the allied units.

Bad move leaving out the Rangers.

[chrisl]

You can't buy them in a QB, but you can make them in a scenario, except for the special equipment parts (climbing, skis, etc).

Take rifle platoons, make the troops a mix of cracks and elites, give them lots of support weapons (bazookas, mmgs, hmgs). They won't have quite the level of squad level auto weapons that you want, but they'll do pretty well.

[Panzer Leader]

Yeah, I guess that's one way. It just seems an interesting ommission.

I was thinking how Allied players have no choice when picking infantry (except for Airborne) and it made me start thinking about different Army Formations. I wonder: did the Brits have a Ranger-like unit? Maybe the Royal Marines, that seems a likely choice for the invasion of Normandy.

Oh well, I realize it is too late now, but I most want to know what led up to such an ommission.

[chrisl]

It's come up a few times, and if you do a search and wade through the responses you might find it, but IIRC, the special units (rangers, SAS, whatever) were too small a fraction of the available forces to justify the time necessary to put in a well researched implementation.

There seems to be a general philosophy in the design of CM that it is built to model things in a pretty generic way, with enough variable parameters so that you can create forces that give good approximations of the expected results. Modeling every last unit that got used probably wouldn't be cost effective. I also forgot to say that when you design the Rangers in a scenario you should load them up with extra ammo, rifle grenades, and the occasional demo charge.

There is probably hope for what you are asking, if you can wait a few years. CM II is likely to be more of a game engine with unit and map editors. If you ask now, and make a good case, BTS might be convinced to add a squad editor (if they haven't got it on the list already) that lets you add men armed with various available equipment to the squad (like make a US tommy-gun squad, or add a captured MG42 to a Brit squad). I would bet that they won't let you edit the weapon characteristics, but you might get them to let you pick and choose squad composition.

[Panzer Leader]

That would be pretty cool, chrisl -- a squad editor. Maybe I will put it on that big list floating around.

But, really, were the Rangers less numerous than the Sturmkompanie?

In modern times, Rangers are a pretty much standard branch of the ground troops, with specialized training, equipment, etc. Weren't they similar in WW2 or were they like you say: an ad-hoc bunch of commandos wearing cammo, bandannas, and using captured weapons. That sounds a little fishy. Now that I think abou it, wasn't Capt Miller in SPR a ranger?

I am not asking about Delta Force, just Rangers. Many other games model them.

Also, when typing in "US Rangers" into the search engine, I get 200 responses (almost all of them from the first half of '99) and NONE of the threads mentions Rangers. I just want BTS's take on the subject.

[KMHPaladin]

Several of the SPR cast were Rangers - both Miller and the BAR man, whose name was something like "Reiben," wore the patch. That would lead me to believe, along with recollections from reading and television documentaries, that Ranger graduates would be dispersed back to their original units except a small percentage that would go to dedicated Ranger units.

[Head Mahone]

I could be wrong, but I think I remember seeing that there were only about 1500 US Rangers in Europe during WWII. If this is true then I can understand why BTS didn't model this unit in C.M..

Still hurts though. The Rangers were some gutsy bastards, and still are!

-Head

[Panzer Leader]

Thanks for the info so far. I did another search with "ranger" in only the subject line, and found this tid-bit of information:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Shelby Stantons "World War II Order of Battle is great: Ranger Battalion 29 Feb 44

27 Officers 489 Men

24 .30-cal Lt mgs

6 81mm Mortar

18 60mm Mortar

14 2.75" rockets (bazooka)

6 3/4 ton trucks

9 1/4 ton trucks

56 .45cal submachineguns

338 rifles .30cal

198 pistols .45cal

3 Anti-tank rifles .55-cal

Hope this helps...

Chris <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I wonder how different that is from a standard rifle 44 battalion?

[Enoch]

The 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions fought in western europe from D-day on. The 2nd battalion fought from D-day and on to Brest and then in Central Europe. The 5th battalion fought landed at omaha beach and fought in some of the key battles of the Normandy campaign. In addition they fought in the battle of the bulge and the hurtgen forest.

The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Ranger battalions fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

I'd think that they should be considered for inclusion as a seperate unit in cm3 or cm4. whichever is supposed to cover the med campaigns.

[Panzer Leader]

Hey thanks, anyone else have anything to add?

I'm still curious, why DID BTS leave them out?

[Walter]

I would guess for much the same reasons that the Canadian Airborne was left out: not enough of them in the theatre is the answer I've gotten to the CA question in the past.

Cheers,

Walter

[LTShotgun]

Not to rain on anybody's parade, or go against the grain, but I believe that CM's ommission of the Rangers is justified. I just recently purchased CM, and have not had any time to actually play it yet, but I have read the manual, and studied this site extensively. CM sounds like a very accurate representation of tactical combat up to battallion sized units for conventional operations. Rangers have been developed from their origin, to serve the role of filling the gap between conventional, and special operations forces. Missions where tasks were too specialized for conventional forces, yet required a more sizeable force than special operations units. In fact, most people think that blowing bridges and raiding rear positions is SF stuff, and it's not. It's Rangers. Don't be fooled. They are by no means regular ground troops, nor were they back then...I believe that CM was designed to represent virtually any piece of ground on any slice of the timeline, and do the basic missions of search, attack, and defend. Things that weren't worth wasting Rangers on. CPT William Darby was a member of the 34th ID, and took some volunteers to form the Rangers to meet the needs of more specialized tasks. The remainder used to flesh out these units were convicts that had their sentences commuted to literally fight for their freedom. The 34th ID had more front line combat experience than any other unit in the US, and therefore they were highly elite. The CM manual explains that the occurance of "elite" status troops was very rare, and in reality, it was. Rangers were utilized to scale steep cliffs at Normandy to take out gun emplacements, and suffered 80%-90% casualty rates or greater in the process. The very "generic" nature of CM tactical scenarios may accomodate the meeting engagement, attack, and defend missions very well, but has no accomodation for the "raid," which is the mainstay of the US Ranger. A raid being a planned insertion, a multitude of means, a planned objective, usually behind enemy lines, and a planned extraction, again a multitude of means, and the defining characteristic of a raid. I would like to see BTS go for the modern day version of CM, and model it specifically for the Ranger missions. I like your enthusiasm about them. I believe that they are interesting as well. That could be a simulation across all time periods from WWII through present and beyond. They pack a lot of punch to soldier ratio, and could be a great tactical game with the planning of insertion and extractions, and the associated unplanned complications that can arise from them. How many ways can you attack and secure an airfield? What do you do when your extraction helicopters get shot down? How do you change your plan when you've taken 25% casualties on your insertion? 50%? ...Though I be the lone survivor... You've got something with the Ranger thing. Let's get them to make it a stand alone game!

[easy-v]

I have several points to add to this discussion:

1. Rangers were not *as a whole* airborne qualified in WWII. There are exceptions, and specifically that is when the 1st Special Service Force was disbanded, the American members of the force were fed into the Ranger battalions as replacements. So, no, the Rangeers then were not paratroopers.

2. There was no formal, centralised "ranger school" back then. There were no "bumblebee rangers" or "tabbers" then. IIRC, the training was conducted within the battalions, and if you didn't wash out, you were a ranger as long as you were assigned to a ranger bn

3. It was not uncommon for each US Division to have its own "rangers". These were provisional units and were trained within the division itself. Thesse units complemented the Divisional I&R platoon (could be a company though)

4. Rangers WERE used as regular ground troops. This was in direct contradiction with their express purpose. The fact was, the use of unconventional units was not accepted by all commanders and they were frequently misemployed. For example, the 2nd Ranger Batallion was nearly destroyed becuase from September-December of 1944, they were used as a conventional line battalion. (I have a booklet written by one of the company commanders about the 2nd's service in france, if anyone is interested). The sad fact is, that the Ranger battalions in France,, were more often than not, assigned to do the work of line battalions (except they were expected to cover the area a normal leg infantry regiment would)

Hope this helps

easy-v

[gunnergoz]

Traditional West Point career officers seemed to detest the idea of special forces like Rangers and the 1SSF during the war years. I think it ran against their sense of "regular army" and offended them in that many such units had an elite but citizen-soldier type of attitude that often was a tad anti-authoritarian in the front ranks. The Rangers were terribly abused and misused, losing two of their battalions at Anzio due to mishandling. The Ranger "papa" was Col. William O. Darby, one of the Army's best infantry leaders. Unfortunately he died in action and the Rangers went orphan and were easy prey for their conventional enemies in the U.S. Army's general officer ranks.