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Where are the Bazookas?


SSG D

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I am surprised that there are 1xPlt HQ, only 2xRifle squads, 1x60mm mortar, 4xMGs and no Bazooka.

I think the CMBO TO&E for the parachute platoons was 1xPLT HQ, 3x rifle squads, 1x60mm mortar, 1x bazooka, and 1x MG. In all my reading of the period, I have never heard of this CMAK TO&E. But maybe the Army changed the TO&E in the spring of 1944

SSG D

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Originally posted by dalem:

The '43 TO&E for US parachute infantry platoons WAS 2 squads per platoon, I believe.

Just so.

Inf Para Regt, Feb 42 has 2 squads per pn.

Inf Para Regt, Dec 44 has 3 squads per pn.

Not sure what happened in between. Gliders had 3 squads at both times.

Relevant Link.

Regards

JonS

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The bazooka is added to parachute platoons in March '44. At this time the TO&E of the airborne units changes too. They now have 3 squads of paratroopers and 5xM1919 MGs in addition to a bazooka team (and they lose the 60mm mortar team).

I don't know what source Charles & Steve used for these TO&E changes, but apparently they believe that they're more realistic. I don't know of any good resource that contradicts their TO&E's (especially for the Meditterranean theater).

[ February 03, 2004, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

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It is amazing what one can learn from the folks on this forum.

Thanks for the info. It sounds like CMAK got the parachute TO&E right for that early part of the war.

I am still surprised that the army would not include a bazooka somewhere in a parachute battalion or company. You would think one might have come in handy somewhere in the Med.

SSG D

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For scenarios you can still add/purchase a bazooka team (from the Support column) for those platoons that don't have them ('43 & early '44). However I'm not sure where they attached to historically. They may have been part of any unofficial TO&E, a HQ/Heavy Weapons company/platoon or possibly supplied to them when they were acting as light infantry. As far as I'm aware the CM series doesn't include unofficial or 'field-expedient' TO&E's.

The Nafzinger Collection (scroll down to American and then Airborne) is supposedly based on official documents. For the "Infantry Rifle Company, Parachute" the TO&E 7-37 dated February '42 and August '44 would probably be applicable here.

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Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by dalem:

The '43 TO&E for US parachute infantry platoons WAS 2 squads per platoon, I believe.

Just so.

Inf Para Regt, Feb 42 has 2 squads per pn.

Inf Para Regt, Dec 44 has 3 squads per pn.

Not sure what happened in between. Gliders had 3 squads at both times.

Regards

JonS </font>

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The bazookas probably lived officially in the battalion AT platoon or company HQs. Even if true they probably got parsed out once on the ground. I can check...

Hmm. Forty sort of backs me up but it's not totally clear, date-wise, and there are some funky things going on with his Airborne TO&E that he doesn't explain.

I don;t think I have any Nafziger for Airborne.

-dale

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Originally posted by dalem:

The bazookas probably lived officially in the battalion AT platoon or company HQs. ...

According to the TOEs I linked to above, there were no AT Pns in para regts or bns in either 42 or 44. Seems weird to me, but thats what the TOE sez. The glider regts, OTOH, had an AT Coy at Regt, and AT Pns at Bn level (but the sheets don't mention 'zooks).

Even if true they probably got parsed out once on the ground.
Quite so. I understand that airborne officers were sticklers for good grammar.

Regards

JonS

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Accounts I've read of the 82nd. Airborne at Gela (I think Gavin's memoir is one) specifically mention the use of bazookas in resisting the HG Pz. Division. I think this was before they had made contact with the troops coming over the beach, so they must have dropped with them [Edit: meaning that the bazookas were organic to the paras, not just passed to them by some other formations). No real information on what level they were attached though.

Michael

[ February 04, 2004, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: Michael Emrys ]

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Well, the Gammon Bomb is soft and squidgy, so it would be sort of possible to fold it in half. However, I think he was talking about the aiirborne version of the 'zook which folded in half.

Sidebar: I was watching a cooking program the other day (don't ask) and they were cooking a leg of ham over the barbie. Anyway, it turns out that the leg is called a gammon - can anyone guess what it looked like? ;) Straight up. I don't know if that is where the name came from, but the coincidence is uncanny.

Regards

JonS

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Originally posted by JonS:

Sidebar: I was watching a cooking program the other day (don't ask) and they were cooking a leg of ham over the barbie. Anyway, it turns out that the leg is called a gammon - can anyone guess what it looked like? ;) Straight up. I don't know if that is where the name came from, but the coincidence is uncanny.

Not a coincidence at all. The word derives from Old North French gambe, which means 'leg'. Thus a gammon was a ham, though nowadays that usage seems mostly to be confined to Jolly Olde England. It also refers to a side of bacon or more specifically the lower end of a side of bacon.

Interestingly enough, the word is also related to the slang word 'gam' which refers to leg. Mostly I've heard it in reference to a womans leg (usually in the plural: "Man, that dame sure has a nice set of gams!"), but it seems to have gone out of favor in the last forty or fifty years.

There are other senses of the word 'gammon' but those have a different etymology so I won't bother with them here.

Gee, Jon, I thought you knew all this stuff...

;)

Michael

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Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Not a coincidence at all.

No, I think you missed my point. I meant the coinicidence of the Gammon Bomb being called such, and its visual similarity to a gammon of ham.

(I'm familiar with the use of 'gams' to refer to a pretty ladies pretty legs, but I thought that was confined to North America, and in particular to hard-boiled private detective novellas set in the NE of the US.)

Gee, Jon, I thought you knew all this stuff...
Well, not quite all of it yet ;) Maybe next week, after I've read 90% of all the books ever written on WWII ...

Be cool

Jon

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I won't get into the issue of TO&E levels since I don't have reference material handy now, but we should recall that WW2 organizations didn't always get their hands on weapons just because some chart said they should have them. In particular, items like bazookas could have very well been apportioned out to the troops in contact with the enemy who seemed to need them the most. This might well have applied to the para organizations who got ahold of some during the Italian campaign. There might not be a TO&E of the day that called for it, but they still could be issued from the ordnance depots since there was urgent need for infantry AT weapons. If we slavishly follow only the TO&E's, we stand to short our CM troops in ways that the historical forces were not.

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