Magua
Posts: 112
Joined: 7/31/2005
From: Phoenix, AZ
Status: offline
|
We all have this perception, thanks to Hollywood, and after-action reports (of questionable reliability) that every other paratrooper in Normandy carried a Thompson submachinegun. Well, maybe not every other, but a lot. So I've been doing some research in the matter, and though I have been unable to find a definitive description of what the airborne infantry carried into battle, I've dug up some info that is revealing, andd I would like to share it here.
It's helpful to first look at the table of organization for an airborne platoon in Normandy. Until December 1944, the official organization for a paratrooper platoon was two rifle squads and a mortar squad. The TO&E for the rifle squads included: One man armed with a Thompson submachinegun, 10 riflemen armed with M-1 Garand rifles (or carbines) and a machine gunner with a 30-caliber 1914 machinegun. Since each squad had its own integral 30-caliber machinegun section, a BAR was not assigned. (Mark mentions this at least once in the rules, though we do see an occasional BAR sneaking into a couple of the scenarios). The platoon leader also had two additional 30-caliber machinegun teams to deploy at his discretion.
The two-squad organization was disliked by airborne platoon commanders who would have preferred the greater flexibility of three rifle squads, and ultimately by December 1944 the airborne platoon was reorganized along the lines of the standard Army rifle platoon.
In practice however, things were a bit different. American soldiers had a long tradition of scrounging, and given that weapons of any type were plentiful in the American army, all squad types, including airborne squads tended to vary somewhat in their actual armament makeup. So, how can we determine what the average airborne rifle squad might have looked like on June 6, 1944? What sorts of data are available?
Certainly, there are after-action reports such as those compiled by Stephen Ambrose and S.L.A. Marshall, that provide some insight. Unfortunately, few of these go into any great detail regarding the makeup of the average airborne rifle squad, and eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. So, I used the best source available to me, photographs. I would review every photograph I could find of American paratroopers taken just before D-Day, and those on the ground in Normandy just after.
Even though photographs don’t lie, or at least they didn’t back then, the captions often do, and I wanted to be confident that the data was robust as possible. So I had to adopt some research guidelines. First, in order for a photo to be included in the data set, there had to be something in its content that allowed reasonable certainty that it was a true D-Day airborne photo. Second, the type of weapon carried by the paratroopers in the photo had to be unambiguous. Any photo that could not meet both of these criteria was not included in the study.
My data sources included: my library, the internet, and local bookstores. In all, I was able to identify the weapon carried by 86 paratroopers in 63 photos.
Here's the inventory:
44 carried M-1 Garand rifles
22 carried Carbines
20 carried Thompson submachineguns
I also saw three .30 cal. machinegun teams. I did not see a single BAR, nor did I see a single mortar team.
So, from this study we can surmise that about 25% (3) of the paratroopers in an average airborne squad in Normandy, carried a Thompson. We can also conclude that none carried a BAR.
Now, I have not done a similar study of American footsloggers in Normandy. However, I have seen and read that one or both of the soldiers in the two-man scout section of the squad were often armed with Thompsons, and so often, did the NCO. If so, the percentage of men carrying automatic as opposed to semi-automatic weapons in an airborne squad, was in practice not very different than the standard infantry squad.
In BoH game terms this suggests that the standard rifle squad in Normandy could have the same FP as an airborne squad. Let’s put it this way. Looking at the numbers alone, the FP of an American 12-man infantry squad with 2–3 Thompsons should be the same (2) as the 12-man airborne squad with approximately three Thompsons. I don’t think an average difference of one Thompson would make a 50% difference in the firepower of these two types. I assume that, in addition to the raw numbers, there were other considerations that went into the calculation of the FP factors in BoH.
Ultimately, I always find it interesting to see how accurate or inaccurate our assumptions can be, and how rewarding it can be to feel more comfortable about these assumptions after doing even a very simple research exercise.
This post is not intended to be the end-all of information on this subject. I’m hoping that some of you might have some insight and perhaps more data to share.
|
Printable Version
Did all paratroopers carry Thompsons? - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread