Attack frontages

[Andreas]

Agree with Dandelion here.

Two possibilities to reduce force density/extend frontages on a map exist though;

- add some HQs that can extend command range (slightly unrealistic, but you can always reduce the overall number of men, e.g. by using the loss function, or by deleting a squad here and there)

- split squads into teams (reduces firepower and morale, but otherwise good way of extending the range of your force)

In general the problem that Dandelion describes seems to lead to force densities that are too high for a given map. For me as a designer one goal is to achieve maximum map size for the forces I want to see in play.

[Moon]

Dandelion, I seriously doubt if a squad frontage of 25-70 meters was normal during WW2. Even I trained advancing with squad frontages of 24 meters (2 meters between men) when in the Army years ago. You might have been increasing that in extremely open terrain, but then in such open ground your point about outgoing fire and LOS doesn't exist either.

Martin

[Andreas]

Martin - if you take the numbers by Greiner & Degener and divide them by four (4 sections in a platoon were standard in 1941, IIRC), you end with the following frontages for sections:

Attack 35-60m

Defense 50-125m

Rearguard 100-250m

This is the autumn 1941 edition of their book (8th printrun, revised a few times), and in the introduction states that it is revised to take account of Poland and France, and the new infantry training guidelines from spring 1941. Both authors were Colonels.

[Moon]

OK, but this doesn't mean that the section/squad itself is spread out over that distance, does it? This seems to be the point that Dandelion was making, that the squads in CM are too bunched up "internally". If anything, the numbers by G&D support what I said - if it was normal to spread out your squad over 25-70m, then the area *covered* by them should be two or three times bigger than stated in the textbook.

Martin

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Moon:

Dandelion, I seriously doubt if a squad frontage of 25-70 meters was normal during WW2. Even I trained advancing with squad frontages of 24 meters (2 meters between men) when in the Army years ago. [snips]

Cor crikey, old-timer, that must have been years ago, we did open-order drill at those intervals!

When I was in the TA (1978-83) the minimum distance between riflemen moving in the open was supposed to be five metres, and ten was preferred. This couldn't apply to weapons such as the GPMG or the MAW with a number two, where both men had to move together, but it applied to everyone else.

"Infantry Training volume IV, Infantry section leading and platoon tactics", published by the War office in 1950, recommends an interval between men of five yards by day, and says the distance between sections should not exceed 100 yards.

Rifle sections in CM are considerably more scrunched-up than their real-life equivalents. Indeed I think that distances in CM in general are typically about half what they should be.

All the best,

John.

[Sergei]

I often keep distances of about 20-25 metres between my squads. It allows me to concentrate a good deal of firepower within a sector of my front, while keeping them too close together could cause the whole platoon to get pinned by one MG.

I keep greater distances when expecting to be hit by artillery and shorter distances when in forest or such environment.

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by Moon:

Dandelion, I seriously doubt if a squad frontage of 25-70 meters was normal during WW2. Even I trained advancing with squad frontages of 24 meters (2 meters between men) when in the Army years ago. You might have been increasing that in extremely open terrain, but then in such open ground your point about outgoing fire and LOS doesn't exist either.

Martin

Martin

By "normal" I simply meant the full range of frontages used in training. The difference in frontages given, if such are found, will surely be accountable to the fact that the Germans did not count in meters, but in "steps", when it came to training squads in formations. Actual length of a "step" was not standardised, but should be about 70-80 centimeters or so.

The default, thus really normal, frontage was some 50 meters per squad, obtained by the "Schützenreihe mit 8 Schritt Abstand!" command as used only in training - a command I dare say every armed man in the army (and Waffen SS) knew by reflex, or at least was supposed to.

Post-training, that particular distance needed no mentioning, as it was default. I am sure you also used default commands in the army in which you served - e.g. when you made the arm signal for line, the men would know what distance to default to.

In the German army, if a commander screamed "Schützenreihe!" and mentioned no distances - or gave the arm signal - 8 steps or about a total of 50 meters was what all squads in the entire armed forces were supposed to default to.

If Panzergrenadiers were ordered to disembark under combat conditions, and given no specifics, they would default to deploying on a line facing the same direction as the vehicle, using the vehicle as... well what you call it in English, the point from which you measure, with half squad on each side and 8 steps distance between each man. The men counted the steps as they ran from the vehicle during training to get their individual count, and to learn the distances by eyesight.

As John points out, crewed weapons narrowed the frontage, but then again the men placed in the command squads in CM were normally dispersed among the squads in IRL, increasing frontages.

The German squad frontages had been drastically increased during WWI, when modern high rpm weapons and grenades made previous default frontages suicidal. But I don't think it changed much between the wars. Nor do I know of changes during the war, but then again I have no 1945 edition of the manual.

I'm not sure what you mean by open terrain nullifying need for wide frontages (in terms of firepower projection). As I had understood things, the need of wide frontage is constant, both for protection and firepower projection, and open terrain allows it. Whereas constrictive terrain, low visibility or poor troop quality are the classic variables that reduce frontages by not allowing them to be very wide.

Sincerely

Dandelion