Rifle Platoon

This article is fucking 'Murican. Expect copious amounts of Freedom with an infrequent side of Awesome.

"People sleep soundly in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

– Richard Grenier

"And rifles go marching along."

The American Rifle Platoon was an organizational unit used during WWII and is a unit available in Flames of War. American Rifle Platoons typically had anywhere from 16-50 men, including a Lieutenant.

Flames of War

The stats

IRL

The Platoon as an organizational unit can trace its roots back to the early era of gunpowder and derives from the French word "peloton" which meant a small detachment of soldiers. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden organized his firing unit Platoon in the early 1600s, and by the latter part of the century, the French had adopted the system as well.

In WWII, the American Rifle Platoon consisted of the aforementioned number of men, mostly armed with M1 Garands, due to the American infantry philosophy built around the Rifle Doctrine. In the early war, officers, sergeants, and messengers would be equipped with the Thompson Submachinegun, but post-1942 this weapon was phased out by the more accurate but controversial M1 Carbine. A single B.A.R was present for each platoon, as well as a single M1903A4 Sniper rifle to be given to a man at the unit leader's discretion. M7 Rifle Grenade Launchers were intermittently passed through the unit to add long-range indirect fire against fortified positions or to get shots over obstacles such as walls or hills.

On paper, every US infantry regiment had some trucks to haul their supplies, and roughly 150 jeeps, enough for each platoon to have a few for courier and medevac tasks, although as the war progressed many were field modified to increase capacity or mount weapons. In practice: The US was basically the only army in WW2 to not use horses. Units in the field had an ork-like ability to make their vehicles multiply by writing off anything damaged to get replacements, and then fixing what they already had.

As for a brief rundown of every weapon:

• The M1 Garand was the best rifle in the whole damn war, not having the janky problems of emergency build SVTs, the bolt action inferiority of pretty much everything else, and the logistics line complicating STG with its separate caliber at a time with no fuel to go around.

• The Johnson 1941 Rifle, while adopted concurrently with the Garand, was used almost exclusively by US Marine paratroopers. On the whole it operated almost the same as the M1 Garand, with a few notable differences; it has a ten round capacity and it takes stripper clips instead of en-blocs. The army refused to adopt it fully due to the inability to mount a bayonet and that the Garand was more mechanically reliable. It's more of a design oddity than anything else, as its rotating bolt would later be adopted into the Armalite AR-10 battle rifle and its numerous, numerous descendants.

• The B.A.R was probably the worst LMG outside the Type 99 or Breda. Not necessarily because the BAR was bad mechanically like the Breda or the Type 99, (it was created by John Browning after all), but more so of its implementation as a squad LMG. When it was introduced in WWI it was. . .well arguably already out of date. The Bar was designed in ww1 to facilitate a tactic known as "Marching Fire", you basically shoot without aiming as you advance to suppress the enemy before you get into close quarters. Of course In WW1 the German's solved the solution of advancing against an enemy position via there Storm Trooper Tactics, so the BAR was arguably the best weapon at what it was designed to do: it just was a thing that was very good. The Panda of guns as it were. By WWII it was very outdated, and military thinkers failed to give it even basic design upgrades like a pistol grip, muzzle brake, or interchangeable barrel - features that plenty of foreign copies and non-military versions of the BAR all had. This was in large part because the Army spent most of its small arms budget on the Garand; since they couldn't make many BARs, any changes to the design had to fit the many 1918A2 pattern BARs in inventory. It was still highly valued by American G.I.s because come on, twenty automatic shots of .30-06 is awesome.

• The M1 Thompson was heavy, but a reliable weapon provided it wasn't equipped with a drum magazine (the M1, which also substituted the vertical foregrip of the original "Tommy Gun" with a simple plank, couldn't fit drum mags anyway). Not the match of the sheer firepower of the PPSh, but manufacturing and magazines were significantly superior. Not quite as controllable as the MP40, but fired faster. It's biggest problem though was that it was expensive, for something that spat bullet's about the same as a cheaper piece of junk. The replacement M3 Grease Gun was a cheap and simple gun used by tankers and other crew-served far longer than it.

• The M1903 was and still is a solid bolt action rifle, but it was clearly on the way out of the line of battle. Did well in the early war at the Pacific before the Garands got sent out at numbers and after that served as an excellent sniper rifle and with the rifle grenadiers before the Garand's got their rifle grenade launchers.

• The M1 Carbine was not terrible, but the marines often complained it had insufficient stopping power, though the M1 Carbine had always been intended as a backup weapon for support troops, not a frontline weapon. It worked best in close combat for units that were not expecting infantry combat but still needed something better than a pistol. M2 Carbine with automatic fire and M3 with night vision paved the way for assault rifles.

• The Bazooka was mediocre AT weapon and one of the first rocket launchers. While it performed well against bunkers and tanks, it struggled against the heavier armor that was deployed later in the war. Ironically, the Germans reverse engineered Bazookas and developed the Panzershreck as a result. The Upgraded M9 and M20 Super Bazookas were more effective, and remained in use up until Vietnam where they were replaced by the M72 LAW.

In the Modern day, the US Rifle platoon officially consists of 42 men, including the Lieutenant in charge of the unit.