BAR teams

[poppy]

Hello everybody, Im desiging an operation and would like to use BAR teams as much as possible and still be historically correct. Any info will be helpful. :confused

[YankeeDog]

Technically, AFAIK, a 2-man BAR team doesn't exist anywhere as an official combat team in any US Army Combat TOE from the period.

That doesn't mean their presence in the CM battlefield is unrealistic, though. They could be used to represent a couple of men detached from an infantry to man an OP/LP position. Experienced units especially also might have "found" a few extra BARs and carry them for more firepower. Experienced infantry commanders also sometimes shifted weapons around from unit to unit depending on assigned role. For example, a Battalion commander might temporarily shift more BARs to A Company because he planned on giving A Coy the overwatch role during an assault on a town, while B Coy as the assault group picked up A Coy's SMGs for more close-range firepower. At present it's tricky to depict this kind of thing in CM since you can't change the weapons loadout of squads, but adding a few BAR teams to the overwatch group does help if you're inclined to try to represent this kind of combat kit reshuffling.

To use BAR teams in this way, you should probably 'short' an infantry squad by a couple of men to represent the detached BAR team, since the soldiers have to come from somewhere.

Also, various heavy weapons units, such as mortar batteries, AT Batteries, etc. actually have more men than CM depicts -- most of the balance were truck/jeep drivers, messengers, ammo bearers, radio operators etc. If such a unit were to be in danger of getting overrun, these men would certainly pick up small arms and fight. Most would probably be armed with M1 Carbines, but a BAR or two here and there is certainly plausible, if not strictly TOE. This would also apply to non-fighting formations like Trains, Mess, etc, if they got caught in combat.

From what I've read, the longer a unit was in theatre, the farther it often strayed from its official TOE in terms of the weapons carried. Units with combat experience especially seem to have gravitated towards carrying more automatic weapons of all types, including resorting to carrying captured enemy weapons.

I also think some early war US TOEs actually had BARs assigned to trains units as light AA protection. I think this usage of the BAR ended pretty early on, though, and in any event BAR teams in CM couldn't depict this as they won't fire on aircraft.

Cheers,

YD

[JoMac]

There would be 1 BAR team(1BAR) and 2 rifle fireteams per squad, a platoon would have 3 squads and a platoon HQ.

CMAK should allow a squad with a LMG from any nationality to split into 1LMG team and 2 fireteams instead of the split squad command. Atleast that should give alittle more flexability. Yankee Dog has also a good reply in his above post.

[ July 22, 2004, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: JoMc67 ]

[poppy]

Thanks for the replys,YD and JoMc67 Il use the

BAR teams but sparingly.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by JoMc67:

CMAK should allow a squad with a LMG from any nationality to split into 1LMG team and 2 fireteams instead of the split squad command. Atleast that should give alittle more flexability.

Wouldn't be historically correct, however. The British and Canadians trained rigorously with a one rifle team and one Bren team doctrine. Never heard of them splitting into more than one fireteam.

I believe the situation was the same for the Germans. At least, GERMAN SQUAD TACTICS IN WORLD WAR TWO by Matthew Gajkowski - which is a translation of a wartime manual - states "The (Squad) is usually employed in combat as a unit. The division into two parts - a light machine gun section and a rifle section, with different combat missions - no longer applies."

It describes different missions and how the two groups were used, but never discusses more than one rifle group.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Poppy:

Hello everybody, Im desiging an operation and would like to use BAR teams as much as possible and still be historically correct. Any info will be helpful. :confused

Well, you could have them serving drinks...