The best WW2 infantry squad or Platoon, choose, construct compare.

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

Soren said:
Sure, but what can we use that for Adler ? One small car and no personnel.

In short: we need another a/c.
Click to expand...

No there are different kinds of transports used for different kinds of missions. If you only rely on one kind of aircraft because it can carry 2 cars, that is kind of pointless...
 
The only mission the DC-3 can help our platoon with is one where only the men can go. That's the problem. You need another type of a/c, one that is more versatile.
 
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
How is that? A platoon of infantry does not need anything else.
Click to expand...

They don't ? Hmm.... I wouldn't look forward to walking 200 miles and take weeks to accomplish what could've been done in a couple of days.

What you want is the ability to bring the max amount of firepower in there as fast as possible in as small a package as possible. That's the goal.
 

See there you go, It depends on the mission. A Squad or platoon is probably not going to have anything other than their personal equipment and weapons.

Most Squads of infantry are not going to have there own private vehicles.
 
The C-47s could carry tanks using gliders. There is no reason to suggest that the Russian Li-2s could not do the same.

The C-47s also were superioor to the types you mentioned in their rough strip landing characteristics. The standard German transport, the Ju-52, suggered massive attrition rates on the eastern front, partly because of the difficulties it experienced with rough strips. The other aircraft pressed into the Stalingrad releif operation suffered very similar attritiopn rates.

The C-47s were used in comparably rougth situations in Burma and New Guinea and suffered extremely low attrition rates. They were superior to the larger C-46 commandos in Burma because they had better handling characteristics at altitude.

I dont know the attrition rates for the Li-2s in the Russian winters, but I am willing to bet that they are lower than any German transport fielded during the war.

Also the chief use for transports is to get to places where the road system cannot get your people there efficiently. The Russians used their transport fleets extremely efficiently during the conquest of Manchuria in 1945. The tanks were kept re-supplied as they moved through Manchuria (outflanking the japanese defence lines) because the transports were able to keep fuel and ammunition up to them. Doesnt prove their ability as Infantry transports, but it does demonstrate the ability of the Li-2 as a reliable trransport, able to operate under rough conditions.

I would take an Li-2 over any of the essentially experimental types you mentioned any day. I am not saying those heavier types are not useful, but overall, they cannot perform with as much utility and reliability as the C-47/Li-2
 
I might have missed something
Is the thread concerned with stand-alone squads, or how the squads would be constructed within a larger formation of similarly constructed squads? If it's stand-alone, then for air insertion

If we're talking 10-15 man-sized squads
then vehicles are irrelevant, they won't be going. A squad that size DOES NOT want to be penetrating aircraft-hop deep into enemy territory and then making that much noise ie a marked, motorised vehicle. It will attract attention, attention that a 15-man squad, whatever you want to arm it with, is not going to be able to deal with; its ability to defend itself will be its undoing, it will only attract more attention.
A squad that size, that deep, is probably on a LRRP OP/recon/demolition mission and will be avoiding enemy contact rather than courting it. It will fight if it has to but it will be on the very sensible basis of trying to break contact rather than maintain it - running away, if you want it in simple terms.
Insertion by air will almost certainly be by parachute, no vehicles. If they hit the DZ and then have to walk 200 miles to achieve what they could have done much more easily with vehicles then tough, that's why they're called Special Forces (the sort of people who would be conducting that kind of mission).

You would see vehicles at something like brigade level, eg a large airdrop of forces behind the main battlefront where commanders need the rapid communication with each other that vehicles would provide and, due to the size of the drop, the additional noise is largely academic.
Even a drop this size would be reliant upon hooking up with a surface-based thrust from their own side of the lines or they too, eventually, would be unable to deal with what came next.
 
Last edited:
That makes sense, Colin. That is why I wanted to add a USMC Raider squad in there. The Marines were assault troops who specialized in moving fast and hitting hard. The Raiders were especially good at guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations.
 
Soren
Quote: "The US platoon would be well of with the M29 Weasel as a small tower. As for carrying the men, well not sure what they would use at this point. Now I've found a number of heavy tracked movers, such as the M4,5 6 tractors, but the problem is their all very large and as heavy as a tank, making transport by air almost impossible, and the engine takes up so much space that they can hardly carry any men."

I really wonder what you are meaning. M29 could carry men, its main function was carry men and material over thick snow or over very muddy or otherwise soft terrain.

If you mean for ex. your M4 tractor the Tractor, High Speed, 18-ton, M4, it main function was to tow heavy guns, for ex 240mm. And as other gun tractors, it towed the gun and carried gun crew and ammo. And the gun crew of 240mm gun wasn't small. So it could carry a squad but really was not designed to do that and much less to be airtransported. But as wrote earlier, normally squad or platoon wasn't intended to be air-transported to combat zone, that's a job paras or glider troops.
Now to airtransport heavier vehicles to combat zones Allied usually used big gliders, Hamilcar was capable to carry small tanks, so it could easily carry Jeeps or Beeps.

Juha
 
Last edited:

I'm not sure how you can conclude that when the C-47 didn't see action on the eastern front. The copycat Li-2 did, but did it do better than the Ju-52 ? Also where is your source for your claim ? And if you have one, is a/c other than the Ju-52 mentioned ?

At any rate the Arado 232 beats the C-47 by miles when it comes to landing taking off from rough landing strips Parsifal, and it is also the a/c which needs by far the shortest landing and take off strip of all the a/c mentioned: 200 m with 4 tons of cargo, and even less when equipped with RATO rockets.

I dont know the attrition rates for the Li-2s in the Russian winters, but I am willing to bet that they are lower than any German transport fielded during the war.
Click to expand...

Bet ? And that is useful to us how ?

I would take an Li-2 over any of the essentially experimental types you mentioned any day. I am not saying those heavier types are not useful, but overall, they cannot perform with as much utility and reliability as the C-47/Li-2
Click to expand...

Besides the Ju-390 what other a/c were "experimental" Parsifal ? Answer: None.

The Ju-252 saw limited production, but it served very successfully with the LW being prized by its' pilots.

The Me-323 was a full production a/c, and it did very well.

The Ju-290 was a full production a/c, and again it did very well. (Was used as an airliner after the war and go top marks)

The Ar-232B was a full production a/c, and it did excellently in all conditions. It was tested by Eric Brown after the war who gave it top marks and expressed its clear superiority over Allied transport a/c.

The BV-222 was a full producion a/c, and it did great.
 

We're talking a 30 to 40 man platoon Colin, and it needs to be self reliant much of the time, hence the need for vehicles. Nowhere was it mentioned that they be dropped behind enemy lines.

Also Special forces often rely on vehicles for transport on land, esp. if the target area is far away from the nearest possible DZ, and often that equipment is dropped by air or sailed in at shore (Or Commandeered). It depends on the mission. The SAS Long Range Desert Group is a good example of this, speeding around in their armed cars hitting axis airfields and causing a lot of havoc. Fact of the matter is that vehicles are essential to any military Special Forces unit, if you don't have them then a lot of missions change from extremely hazardous to impossible.

But this is btw not a discussion about a Special Forces unit, it's a regular combat squad.
 
Last edited:
Soren said:
A squad is 10 men strong normally, thats' true, the fire teams are 3 to 5 men strong, a missprint on my part.

The Germans did have 5 man squads late in the war though.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought you were talking about, not a platoon

So if we're NOT going behind enemy lines, why is all of this important? The concept of airborne was devised and implemented during WWII, I don't recall any combatant boasting of an airportable capability, which is what this must be if we're only getting troops to the start line rather than across it.

Soren said:
Sure, but what can we use that for Adler ? One small car and no personnel.

In short: we need another a/c.
Click to expand...
Again, why? If we're staying this side of the line, there'll be surface transport at the airfield we're landing at

The WWII LRDG and the modern Mobility Troop from each Sabre Squadron do indeed rely on vehicles for transport, that is their speciality insertion technique. Their Air Troops on the other hand will either HALO in or possibly use a conventional static line parachute insertion. Vehicle exfil obviously can't be ruled out because it might be the most viable method but they will likely have another route out once the job is done; this could range from helo to submarine exfil.

I wasn't trying to drive this debate in the direction of an SF squad, it seemed to be driving itself that way.
Again, maybe I missed something
 
It's ok Colin I understand your confusion, I think I've been stumbling abit about in regards to what size the unit should be. But a 30 to 40 man platoon is the idea, so lets take it from there on.

Also I meant to say combat platoon in my last message btw, sorry about that.

As for why a/c are needed, it is not necessarily to drop the men behind enemy lines (Esp. since a border line in war is a relative term), but it might be a necessity in many cases in the inviroments we're talking about. Like for example in the Burmese jungles, where airstrips are nearly none existant and certain natural obtacles make sure that you can't start off with transport by land, it would just be way too slow. Or in mountainous terrain where you sometimes absolutely need a/c to get the heavy equipment up there.

Lets say for example that the Germans suddenly decided that they wanted Iceland before the Allies got a hold of it (Hypothesis), then they could land a platoon by sea or by air. A couple of Ar-232 could simply land on some crop fields, or what'ever reasonably flat space they can find (A road perhaps), load off the men and the equipment, and voila, they got the island under control (Iceland has no military).
 
Last edited:
Soren
Quote: "Lets say for example that the Germans suddenly decided that they wanted Iceland before the Allies got a hold of it (Hypothesis), then they could land a platoon by sea or by air. A couple of Ar-232 could simply land on some crop fields, or what'ever reasonably flat space they can find (A road perhaps), load off the men and the equipment, and voila, they got the island under control (Iceland has no military)."

Now firstly if country has no military doesn't mean that one can occupy it with a few platoons. In Finland our farmers had fought against regulars in numerous wars and still most of them had rifles and they hunt. I don't know much on Icelander farmers but I know that they keep Iceland free of polar bears, so at least some of them had powerful rifles and know how to stalk and shoot dangerous animals. Of course if Icelanders took one as a protector, it doesn't matter how small the force is but of course it should have been so large that it would have had reasonable chances against enemy's counterlanding(s). And of course one should have had ability to supply and support it.

If one had wanted to occupy Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland during WWII, why to try to land on some crop field, there might have been some hidden boulders, why not land on Reykjavik's airport? British might have sent by Hamilcar gliders a couple light tanks, a couple Daimler armoured cars, some carriers, a couple of them with mortar teams, a couple scout cars. As armoured vehicles they would have been hard nuts to riflemen before these could develop some means to fight against them (Molotov cocktails, improvised explosive devices), maybe a couple Morris C.8 SP Bofors guns. Mostly of infantry, arriving say in Stirlings or Halifaxes, would use taken local vehicles which probably were well suited to local terrain. More troops and heavy equipment would have been sent by ships.

Juha
 
Last edited:
There was never the slightest chance of the germans invading Iceland. The British invaded it with over 25000 men in May 1940. I dont believe there were any airfields, though I concede i am not sure. British Battleships would have made short work of it if there was even a hint of a german invasion.

Two plane loads of germans Infantry or airbonrne Infantry would have resulted in two plane loads of german prisoners.

In the vernacular of the time, the most effective airborne troops were the so-called airlanding troops, the troops who were brought in by glider. These troops were able to transport substantial quantities of heavy equipment and vehicles. Both sides found the use of gliders preferable to the construction of heavy transports, primarily because the medium transports were vastly more effieicient, dollar for dollar, than the larger types, and because gliders were essentially expendable items able to deliver a very large punch in a very short space of time.

The other principal employment of airmobile formations were the British Chindits. Here the C-47 was supreme, due to its unsurpassed rough handling characteristics. The majority of the force moved over 200 miles by land, but an advance force landed on the strip using the Dakotas. Thereafter the Dakotas kept the forces supplied and this demanded that the aircraft used retain a high serviceability rate and be able to fly under the most appalling conditions . In the first campaign, the Chindits were eventually defeated, or rather elected to withdraw, whilst in the second ooperation they were a crucial element for the final victory in Burma.

Airborne transport was useful in areas where wheeled transport was difficult to get access to the target. Burma was an obvious answer, as was New Guinea, where the entire campaign was supported logistically using the "biscuit bombers". Here the high serviceability rates stood the Dak in good stead. In Manchuria, an entire Soviet Front, moving at very high speed through the trackless wastes of Mongolia where wheeled support vehicles could not traverse were kept mobile by the ceaseless support of the Li-2 and Lend lease C-47 fleets. The Russian employment of their transport fleet in this operation was nothing short of masterly, enabling them to conquer a well defended piece of Real Estate bigger than western Europe, in less than a month. It remains the single most successful blitzkrieg operation in history, with more than a million enemy casualties in less than two weeks.

The key to airborne transport is, like all this discussion about hardware in wwii, an argument about getting as much force projected as you can. If you are going to develop an air transportable capability, you need to do it in sufficient numbers as to make a difference. The German types mentioned by Soren cannot produce that kind of mass and numbers. The types were too few in number to matter, too vulnerable in the case of the Me 323, and simply too expensive to build and maintain and moreover, in my opinion, were not as good as the Dakota in rough handling and serviceability issues, which are crucial in the types of campaign your air transportable assets are likley to be engaged in. For this reason I am in no doubt that the C-47, and all its foreign permutations is a far superior aircraft to use as an Infantry squad/platoon/company mount for air tranport operations. It is of modest size, reasonable performance, high serviceability, docile onground characteristics. It is cheap to build, and availble in large numbers. this should be a no-brainer
 
Some people just don't understand the word "Hypothesis"!

No the Germans did not invade Iceland and weren't going to either, it was a hypothetical example, nothing more. But if they were the first to get there then a 40 man platoon could very effectively take control of the island until reinforcements arrived. The populace weren't going to prove the slightest threat to that, anyone who thinks the opposite needs to get educated about Iceland and the actual number of people who lived there in the 30's 40's.

Also this is about creating the best WW2 platoon possible! Not about how much was available of the equipment you want to use for your unit, I thought that was a no-brainer!

There are many reasons for why certain types of equipment only were produced in limited numbers, such as cost, change of priorities etc etc.. The Ar-232B was already in full production when the production line was shut down in order to instead create fighter aircraft at the introduction of the emergency fighter program. But this doesn't change the fact that it was the best transport a/c out there, with unrivalled rough handling characteristics and the ability to take off land on the shortest fields roads whilst carrying huge loads.

And as for the Me-323 being too vulnerable, it was no more vulnerable than any other WW2 transport a/c. To conclude otherwise would be ignoring obvious facts.
 
Last edited:
Soren, you are not understanding the alternative way of approaching this issue. The problem with your theory is that whilst you may very well produce the best squad in a technical sense, with the best and most expensive equipment you can think of, in actual point of fact you are producing the worst Infantry squad, why, quite simply because of the cost.

Take your aircraft mount for example. you have chosen the AR 232B because you rightly assert it has impressive performance characteristics. But the AR 232B utilized 4 engines, and adopted technology that required much effort and development to put into effect. the result is, and was, that only a handful could be built, and had no impact on the course of the war. i acknowledge that the Luftwaffe had other priorities in 1942-4 when this aircraft was being produced, but that is precisely the point. to be effective, it had to be available in numbers, or potentially available in numbers, and this just wasnt going to happen with this aircraft, or any of the others you selected for that matter.

By comparison, the Dakota used existing technology, easily produced and replicated. the result was that it could be fielded in such numbers as to make a real difference to the outcome of the war. But to boot, it happened to excel at the sort of operation it needed to do, namely, to transport things to all manner of rough strips and out of the way places, and do it very cheaply I might say.

So it needs to be a given that your squad needs to be easily replicated, otherwise it would remain a pointless, expensive experiment, as was so often the case with German endeavours during the war
 
Soren
do you seriously think that 40 men "could very effectively take control of the island " which has the area of 103.000 sqkm and had a population of say 150.000? Knowing you, you probably reallythink so if the 40 men are Germans.

Juha
 
Parsifal,

The reason behind the low number of Ar-232B's built was the emergency fight program shutting down production almost emmidiately after it had begun, not because the a/c was unusually expensive or difficult to produce.

As for the rest of the equipment proposed, most of it was in ample supply to the Germans during the war, and the rest could've easily been supplied in huge numbers if just a few of the needless projects such as the Maus, long range pulse cannon, railway guns etc etc had been shut down in favor of them.

So I will repeat, this is about creating the best WW2 platoon possible, not about the availability of the equipment you want your unit equipped with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

O
How America Leaped Into WW2 After Pearl Harbor...(or did we?)
Replies
15
Views
2K
fannum
Were airborne operations in WW2 worth it?
Replies
14
Views
939
frankv
F
Help identifying Wehrmacht or Panzer Division/Regiment
Replies
15
Views
961
Frog
F
Stalag Luft III: Did the Germans Know About the Escape
Replies
3
Views
379
KLS&C 85
N
US Navy WW2 squadron patch
Replies
1
Views
1K
Wurger
Menu
Log in
Register