The Commander Series Forum

Hello,

I'm a long time wargamer of other systems who has been playing BKII for about a year with little regard to historical army composition. I am now interested in creating a 1943 era German Armored Panzergrenadier Company using the GHQ lists I found in this sites download section.

http://www.ghqmodels.com/pages/military/squadga...

I play in 10mm scale and prefer 1 vehicle model = 1 vehicle.

The lists seem fairly straight forward. A platoon appears to be 4 sections of infantry in 4 sdkfz 251 half tracks. 3 platoons plus an armored support platoon = a company.

Where I am not clear is how do I incorporate my company of Pz III's into a historical based list? Or my Stug III assault guns? Or even the couple of Tiger tanks I own? How many of the "Support Units" found in the GHQ list would typically support a company of infantry?

How often would a company of infantry have access to battalion/regiment/division assets and in what quantity?

Thanks for the help.

Rob

Greetings

The below focus on Kursk.

The gepanzert grenadier battalion would normally support/operate with the panzer regiment and support assets would be added to make up a KG as required (often engineers).

So you could have your PzG company operating with a panzer companies - the Panzer III (and/or IV's if you have them)would be this - in terms of the list limits a panzer company would often lack a lot of runners pretty quickly. A Tiger I platoon from a schwere Panzer Abteilung might be attached as sometimes a Panzer Division would be assigned a company (penny packeting was against doctrine but certainly happened) so your couple of Tigers could fit.

The assault guns were less likely to be present if part of the panzer division (eg GD)they sometimes operated with the Aufklarungs (recce) Abteilung. Otherwise assault guns would usually be supporting the grenadiers not the panzers.

Regards

Edward

Edward,

Thank you for the quick reply.

There were a few terms used that I'm not really familiar with, so I'd like to see if I understood you correctly.

Historically speaking, it's not unlikely that a company of infantry in armored half tracks might appear alongside a company of panzer III's....

or perhaps be found with a few tiger tanks....

or perhaps engage the enemy supported by assault guns.

However, it is unlikely that assault guns would fight alongside panzers. Did I understand correctly?

When you stated that a "panzer company would lack a lot of runners pretty quickly"... do you mean that the units would be fielded "understrength" with less than the ideal 5 tanks per platoon?

Thanks again,
Rob

On paper, half-track mounted infantry were more likely to fight alongside tanks, rather than assault guns. This is due to the fact that half-tracks were typically issued to armoured divisions, whilst assault guns were issued to panzergrenadier (i.e. motorised) divisions.

Tiger tanks were typically organised as independent battalions and served as corps / army level assets. As such, they could have fought alongside infantry, motorised infantry, or armoured infantry units.

The Panzerdivisions did build "Kampfgruppen" = combat commands. This was a mixed force.
When attacking they would build a wedge. One of the tank batallions ahead and close followed by the grenadier battalion on hts and supporting sp-arty. Light tanks and sp-at would cover the flanks.

One of the joys and frustrations of gaming and studying WWII Germans is they never followed the rules and no 2 formations were alike. As Jesse says assault guns were generally in Panzer Grenadier divisions (but some of these had tanks) but many Panzer divisions received StuG III instead of tanks. Depleted formations were often absorbed into other units. Tigers were indeed in Independent Bttlns but at Kursk some Panzer Divisions included a Tiger company (& SS Panzer Grenadiers which had as many if not more tanks and Armoured Panzer Grenadiers as a Panzer division)

Confused welcome to my world I'd like to say it gets better but the more you look at it there's just more to confuse you. When you finally get to the point where you've nailed everything down some 'new evidence' is unearthed to send you back to square one. So don't worry too much about it or you'll spend all your time on research rather than actually playing like me