jimcarravallah
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Joined: 1/4/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dholedays
I've know in the default estab there had been a decision to divide up mg or atg platoons in a battalion among the various line companies, i.e. avoiding stand alone atg or mg platoons, even though thats how some forces may have been organized on paper.
What I would like to know is, when you would want to divide up a hw/atg company's platoons or a hw/atg platoon's sections up in this way, and when you would not? And for what reasons you would want to do either one? I know that ideally, the smallest force should be company sized, but certainly that does not mean that there should be no platoon sized forces, ever?
The next question concerns the prime movers of these heavy weapons. I remember reading on a thread somewhere that the prime movers for atg guns were removed from the line companies so that they would not be prevented from entering woods. My question is, what happened to these prime movers? Were they moved to the nearest base unit? To the nearest wheeled hq? Or did they just disappear? I'd like to figure out what I should do with my own estab.
There's a couple of reasons you may assign smaller sized units to a command structure.
If you're modeling a country's force structure, one would revolve around the combat doctrine (a US Army term) for assembling the basic force.
For example, one type of combat doctrine may say a typical battalion commander oversees a structure that includes three maneuver companies, a mortar company, the battalion command staff, one of the engineering platoons from the regiment's assigned engineering company, and a heavy weapons platoon from the regiment's assigned heavy weapons company. Since the doctrine says that the regimental assets are directed by the lower echelon commander instead of being directly controlled by the regimental staff, the regiment's support elements would be broken down so the maneuver battalion commander can control them directly.
Doctrine will identify these relationships based on the tasks it says a battalion commander should be able to handle with his organic assets. If maneuver battalion tasks include bridging minor rivers, then an engineering platoon would be assigned from the regimental engineering company instead of having the company assigned a bridging task by the regimental commander.
If you're modeling a specific operational scenario the smaller unit might be tasked to support the battalion in that particular operation. For example, by doctrine the regiment normally builds bridges with a platoon from its engineering company, but in the specific scenario there was a task force consisting of one maneuver battalion with an engineering platoon attached to form a bridging task force.
For example, the Peiper scenarios in BftB reflect operations where the typical German 1944 brigade force structure was changed so Peiper could command a special armored task force as a spearhead for attack.
Doctrinal documents for the era you're modeling should be unclassified, and may exist as digital historical copies in the source document locations you've already reviewed for your 1950s Estab.
Hope this helps.
_____________________________
Take care,
jim
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