British Rifle Platoon

The British Rifle Platoon is an organizational unit of the British Army and a unit available in Flames of War.

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. It appears the British adopted the Platoon as well in spite of the French also using it.

The British Platoon had 36 men under the command of a Lieutenant or Second Lieutenant, and a small administrative staff that included a Signaller equipped with a Bicycle. British Rifle Sections (The British equivalent of a squad) had 10 men each. A Corporal commanded the section, and his second in command was a Lance Corporal, responsible for commanding the Bren gun team that was integrated into the section. The remainder of the unit were Riflemen.

The British focus on Rifle doctrine was similar to the Americans, though not for the same reason. Rifle ammo was easier to buy and send to colonies to supress dissent, and lots of shots were good for scaring (or killing) troublemaking crowds screaming about silly American ideas like "independence" and "freedom". Bear this in mind as we look at the likely armament of a given Platoon.

• The Sten was a fucking cheap weapon that many British troops hated with a passion due to being of shoddy reliability without being "broken in". Early war Stens (mostly Mk 2) were built to be as cheap as possible so that enough could be issued for the front lines, but later in the war, the British could afford to make better quality versions like the Mk 5. The Sten was also incredibly silent when suppressed, so much so that the Germans took notice and tried making copies of it for their own clandestine use. The Sten had reliability problems due to the magazine feed, infamously one jammed during Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich's assassination, forcing a grenade toss to indirectly kill Heydrich via an injury and infection.

• The Lee-Enfield was the distant second best rifle of the war, carrying more bullets than the Kar98 but beaten out flat by the M1 Garand and about equal to the SVT. The Enfield was primarily influenced by the aforementioned British Pre-war colonial policy of having a rifle that could work well against dissenting colonials with a good number of shots if needed, after the Boer War taught some painful lessons when one-bullet-at-a-time loaded magazine rifles got matched up against Mausers. The biggest downside of the World War 2 era No 4 Mk1 was being unable to mount a sword bayonet as the World War 1 era SMLE MkIII/MKIII* could, which ended up not being that big of a deal because the spike bayonet did the job just fine.

• While the British never fully adopted an automatic rifle, conversions of the Lee-Enfield popped up in both world wars; guns like the Howell or Charlton saw service among reserve units or Commonwealth soldiers in limited numbers, especially when the supply of surplus Lee-Enfields was much greater than Bren guns.

• The Bren far outmatched anything made by the Americans, Japanese, or Italians. It was well-balanced with a decent number of shots and mechanically reliable. In spite of thie, it was outshined by the Commie and Nazi LMGs, the former because the DP-27 was objectively better at providing suppressing fire, and the latter because 1000 goddamn RPM.

• The Lewis Gun, a holdover from WWI, was brought back into service to make up for shortfalls in the supply of Bren guns. Despite being bulkier it was still a very reliable machinegun, and remained in service until the war ended.

• The PIAT was a unique AT weapon that was a spigot mortar that shot a shaped charge in an arc that would hit a tank on the lighter top armor of the vehicle. It had the secondary advantage of being an excellent house clearing weapon and unlike a rocket launcher, you could fire it from inside a house without burning your jimmies off with the backblast. While easier to build than the rocket weapons that would become the norm like Bazookas and quite popular among troops, it became rapidly outdated and was notoriously difficult to reload even to the point of causing injury, and to reliably hit a tank you had to get uncomfortably close and wait in ambush. It got ditched in favor of rockets in the fifties, specifically the M20 Super Bazooka. However, it was ubiquitous enough to be used by the Viet Minh and the French in Indochina and Israel had British surplus as well.