Rifle Company

The British Rifle Company is a unit available in flames of war and an organizational unit of the British Army.

IRL

The Company is an organizational unit that is made up of several platoons. The British Rifle Company had 5 officers and 122-124 men.

During the Second World War, the British Army followed the rifle doctrine, much like the U.S. army. How they differed was that they integrated far more equipment into every platoon compared to the Americans. Each platoon had a second Lieutenant and 36 enlisted men.

All enlisted men had rifles, minus officers or drivers who were equipped with either pistols or SMGs. Each Company was commanded by a Major.

As for a brief rundown of the small arms you'd find at the company level:

• 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 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.

• 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 any American LMG, being well balanced with a decent number of shots. It was outshined by the Commie and Nazi LMGs.

• 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 remain 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. While easier to build than traditional rocket weapons like Bazookas and quite popular among troops, it became rapidly outdated and was notoriously difficult to reload even to the point of causing injury, and to reliably hit a tank you had to get uncomfortably close and wait in ambush.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 at Indochina and Israel had British surplus as well.