Squads?

Chairman · Post by **Chairman** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 2:49 pm

How many men are in a squad??
Differnt in German or Soviet??

heiks · Post by **heiks** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 3:29 pm

Originally posted by Chairman:
How many men are in a squad??
Differnt in German or Soviet??

By doing a little math a while ago I came up with about 50, but the whole concept if a "squad" should IMO be treated only as an abstraction.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 5:33 pm

A squad is about 10 men. (3-5 squads in a platoon, dpending on country and period)

A WIR squad was originally 10 men, but since that gave losses way below those experienced on the East Front, the number of men per squad was increased to 50 in Matrix Project rework. So a WIR squad should be considered a platoon. Perhaps the text could even be changed to read "Platoons" rather than "Squads" in some future release?

Lokioftheaesir · Post by **Lokioftheaesir** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 12:27 pm

Originally posted by Chairman:
How many men are in a squad??
Differnt in German or Soviet??

Chairman

The whole world 'round a squad is 9 to 14 men.
In WiR a 'squad' is actually a 'platoon' of 50 men.

Nick

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 7:00 pm

The units in WIR are squads, not platoons. There were only about 250 squads, 3 of which normally made up a platoon, in a WW2 division, on the high side. For the Germans, the high end was lower, like around 225 or so. The losses allocated as 50 per squad is strictly to account for the manpower that is present with the support weapons, including mortars, command elements, cooks, etc that are not present in the game but would suffer losses if the division is in combat. In my mind the correct number should be more like 20-25, but Arnaud came up with 50 and it is really meaningless in game terms anyway.

The correct term is and should stay squad, as that is what is being represented. These are not platoons being used, as no nation had even 100 platoons in a division.

Chairman · Post by **Chairman** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 7:43 pm

Well my interest in how many soldiers in a squad was to know how many men there were in the losses represented in squads.

Chairman · Post by **Chairman** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 10:51 pm

Hmm... I have been calculating losses for this turn and a Russian "squad". losses ar around 53-68 men.
Smaller engagement yields "bigger" "squads", not sure if crews for tanks, artillery and aircrafts are also included in the total losses.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 11:39 pm

Originally posted by Chairman:
Hmm... I have been calculating losses for this turn and a Russian "squad". losses ar around 53-68 men.
Smaller engagement yields "bigger" "squads", not sure if crews for tanks, artillery and aircrafts are also included in the total losses.

It is 50 men per squad, and extra for each gun and AFV lost. I don't remember the numbers for these two - something like 10 for artillery and 5 for tanks???

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Fri Oct 12, 2001 3:13 am

Ricky, are you saying that a German infantry division (establishment strenght of about 15.000) only had about 2.400 men of combat troops, and that the remaining 12.500 were support personel? It sounds unlikely... talk about big tail!

In the SPWAW TOE tables, I see that and Infantry Division would have 9 infantry battallions with each 3 rifle companies, one heavy weapons company and one infantry engineer platoon. Each company was composed of three platoons with 4 squads of 10 men each. This would give 9x4x3x4 = 432 squads. Add to this the 9x4 squads of the infantry engineer platoons and you end up with 468 squads. Then there was an engineer battallion of (presumably) another 4x3x4 = 48 squads, putting the total of combat infantry at 516 squads - more than twice the 243 WIR gives us.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Fri Oct 12, 2001 6:37 am

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
Ricky, are you saying that a German infantry division (establishment strenght of about 15.000) only had about 2.400 men of combat troops, and that the remaining 12.500 were support personel? It sounds unlikely... talk about big tail!

In the SPWAW TOE tables, I see that and Infantry Division would have 9 infantry battallions with each 3 rifle companies, one heavy weapons company and one infantry engineer platoon. Each company was composed of three platoons with 4 squads of 10 men each. This would give 9x4x3x4 = 432 squads. Add to this the 9x4 squads of the infantry engineer platoons and you end up with 468 squads. Then there was an engineer battallion of (presumably) another 4x3x4 = 48 squads, putting the total of combat infantry at 516 squads - more than twice the 243 WIR gives us.

The establishment strength was not 15,000 anymore by 1942. In 1941 many of the infantry divisions had been reduced to either 2 regiments of 3 battalions or 3 regiments of 2 battalions, and by 1942 I am not aware of any divisions with more than 6-7 main battalions. The heavy weapons companies were just that - short barreled infantry guns, machine guns, mortars, AT guns, etc. They are not 3 squad in WIR terms, but part of the guns in the division. However, add 1 platoon total for the various infantry in the heavy weapons company and other battalion support. A German division only had something like 48 artillery pieces in the artillery regiment - 12 155s and 36 105s, the heavy weapons companies make up most of the rest in the WIR division. I can cut and paste the unit breakdown from PzC Kharkov which shows the German divisions with the 6 battalions. From somewhere I thought that at least for part of the war the Germans only had 3 squads per company, with machine guns making up the rest, but I can't confirm that. Using the 4 squads that you show, this would give 6x3x3x4 or 216 for the line battalions, plus 18 for the assumed platoon per battalion for the heavy weapons, etc. Then another 27 per battalion for the engineers and recon, for a total of 288 squads, using 4 squads as the basis of the line units and 3 for the others. Thus, I give it as low as 234 and as high as 306 if all platoons had 4 squads. The name doesn't matter much, but there would not be more than 90 platoons in a German infantry division, so platoons would be way overstated in any case.

Ranger-75 · Post by **Ranger-75** » Fri Oct 12, 2001 7:40 am

The original game concept was Infantry Squads, not heavt weapons mortars MG, engineer, Recon, or Artillery. Infantry squads.

A "typical" Infantry division of WW-II (most of the major combatants) was 3 regiments each of 3 battalions each of 3 companies each of 3 platoons each of 3 squads. the old "triangular" division model.

That's 243 Squads. Pretty close. Panzer and allied armoured divisions had differing TO&Es and this is why those divisions have fewer squads.

From 1942 on, German infantry divisions were generall reduced to 6 Bns on the average. (160-170 squads). Western Allied units were almost always kept up to full TO&E strength.

The German logistical "tail" was much smaller than the allied or Soviet counterpart, that is true, and it is partly why Germany mamaged to field so many divisions with less than half the population of the US. Nevertheless, there were large amounts of support and service troops in German divisions even infantry divisions. (someone had to "drive" the hundreds of horses in each division).
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