OT: Battalion/Company frontage?

[Thompson]

Sorry, this is slightly off-topic here. Could someone tell me what were the average battalion and company frontages in WWII. Did they vary much between nations?

[JonS]

It depends.

[Thompson]

Well, of course it does, but surely there's some sort of average or expected value - you know, e.g. how long a front would a battalion or company be expected to hold on the defensive in open(ish) ground?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Thompson:

Well, of course it does, but surely there's some sort of average or expected value - you know, e.g. how long a front would a battalion or company be expected to hold on the defensive in open(ish) ground?

It depends.

[Michael Emrys]

Thompson, if I may expand on what our more laconic members are trying to tell you, what it depends on are a lot of variable factors. And without defining those, an answer just isn't possible.

Here are a few of the more outstanding factors that come immediately to mind:

</font>

• Terrain. Is it open, providing long lines of sight and fire? Or is it closed so that sighting for only short distances are possible? We may as well lump in weather and lighting effects here that would impact sighting distances.</font>
• Expected size and type of enemy forces. If you are expecting light opposition that may not be of an impressive sort, you may be confident that you can thin out your own forces.</font>
• Attack or defense Units on defense generally occupy greater frontage, sometimes much greater frontage, than units on offense. If they are occupying prepared and hardened positions, the amount of front they can cover increases yet again. Also, if they are backed up with powerful mobile reserves, they can afford to be thinner on the ground.</font>

These are just a few of the concerns that determine unit frontage, but they should get you thinking.

Michael

[Dandelion]

Thompson

If you are not too particular, and just need a generic rule of thumb, squad frontage can be said to be 50 meters. The rest is just adding (but remember that the formula calls for two up front and one rear, so a platoon would use 100 meters, not 150, and so on). That frontage is frontage as in covered by men. Actual frontages issued to units were much wider, because you need not actually stand eight paces apart along an entire frontage in order to control it.

Of course, this is all just highly generic, not taking into consideration any of the highly relevant variables listed by Michael (the American Michael), nor national difference.

Frontages have been discussed many times before and a "search" will rapidly bring lots of more specific information. Don't forget to do search om CMBB and CMBO forums as well.

And let us know if you needed something more specific.

Cheerio

Dandelion

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Dandelion:

...you need not actually stand eight paces apart along an entire frontage in order to control it.

Right. On defense, the norm was that each position (foxhole, etc.) was occupied by two or more men in close proximity. Each of these positions would be separated by ten meters or more. Then there might be as much as 20-50 meters between squads, depending on terrain.

Attack formations were, as stated earlier, usually quite a bit denser, with companies having the frontage that a platoon would have on defense. In addition, on attack you might have all the companies in a battalion echeloned behind the lead company, such that you would have the whole battalion attacking on a frontage defended by a platoon.

Michael

[JonS]

... or you might not ...

Thompson, it's worth noting that your second post in this thread is very different to the first. The difference? The qualifiers ('hold', 'defensive', 'open-ish ground') it contains. Without those your initial question is so broad as to be senseless. Even with those three in there it's still rather too vague to really answer, but it's much better

[Mupid]

for the german army as a general rot I think I read something like up to 700m per company in defence and approx. 500 in depth(Kompanieabschnitt); just a guess so correct me

though as the posts above made clear it really depends on a LOT of factors.

[Thompson]

OK, thanks guys. I just needed a quick rule of thumb, really. I should've guessed it was a sum of many variables and as such hard to even give a meaningful estimate without narrowing it down (my very limited WWII military knowledge comes only from wargames, so that ain't much). Cheers!

[JonS]

... speaking of wargames. Have you played Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem? I played the demo when BFC were pimping it, but never got around to playing the full game. BUT, IIRC it had quite a nifty scheme in which you could changed the size, shape, and orientation of the footprint for units. Obviously, larger units could manage a larger footprint, but the game also gave you the option to 'stretch' the footprint of units - at the cost of lower effectiveness.

Very good game system from what I saw of the demo.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by JonS:

Very good game system from what I saw of the demo.

Yeah. I wish to god they'd put out a Mac version or license a third party to do so.

Michael

[Thompson]

Originally posted by JonS:

Have you played Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem

Yes, I played the demo, but didn't get around bying it at the time. Don't know why, I really liked the demo. Probably didn't have the cash. Later I bought its sister game (or should I say sequel) "Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich" which was published by Matrix Games. AA:HTTR is basically a refined AA:RDOA with more scenarios (it has Nijmegen and Eindhoven scenarios in addition to Arnhem ones). It's an excellent game and has given me insight into frontages and formations (as well as order delays - I always keep it on Realistic even though it leads to much frustration, but not on Painfully Realistic as I'm not a masochist ).