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Light4bettor -> RE: Squads, companies and battalions (1/26/2021 9:52:17 AM)
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Just to expand on the previous responses- You can look at it this way too-- in June 1941 the general German Heer (Army) system was that a division had 3 infantry regiments. You should notice that the early war TOE (table of organization and equipment) for a German infantry divison is about 342 rifle squads (just click the unit to see). Divide the 342 by 3 regiments (to find out how many per regiment). So you get apprx 114 rifle squads per regiment. Now each rifle regiment (and this can change over the war for various reasons) has 3 battalions. So if we divide 114 by 3 again, then we get apprx 38 rifle squads per battalion. Again, dividing the Battalion (Bn) by 3 companies (each Bn has 3 companies) you get apprx 13 squads per company. Finally, each company has 3 platoons (german- "Zug"), so each platoon has apprx 4 squads.
However, when you try to use your imagination to interpret 20 rifle squads lost, you should also keep in mind that the way the Infanterie division employed its regiments in the attack/defense and other missions varied. For example, in a particular situation a german division may only be using 2 of it's regiments in the attack and keeps one in reserve, so the lost rifle squads would only be lost to the 2 regiments and not the third. But this game does not go that deep, so you can just abstract it.
A German infantry brigade (900th motorized for example) is approx the size an infantry division's regiment (approx 100 squads) with the addition of its own integral (organic) support and artillery.
Notice that a 17,000 man German infantry division only has about 3420 men who are actual infantry men (aka line infantry). The support squads (an abstraction of medical/ supply/ support services etc-in other words- non-front-line soldiers - make up more than 10,000 men of the division.
By the way, it makes me wonder if this game accounts for the fact that most attacks (in real life) would not necessarily make use of every single divisional organic artillery piece. Not all regiments were necessarily engaged during an attack or a defense (which means that some attacks might only be made by a battalion plus size. Does anyone know if the game somehow accounts for this? Another thing comes to mind, pretty much every soldier was assigned a Kar98, and non-frontline soliders would occasionally find themselves joining combat in emergencies.
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