Quote:
Smersh said:
the tank desant company in the game is modeled as a 3 plt ,with six squads each, and 5 men squads, unit. there is no official to&e regarding their organization, but this seems to be a little unweildy. I assume it was done to represent ,in the game, desant mobility, or something similar.
I can't find any official to&e information about them. but tank brigades also contained an smg company, it may be that the brigade level smg company was used to make the tank riders (tankodasantniki).
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Yeah, the tank brigade SMG Coy appears to be the tankodesantniki formation, at least as far as I can tell, and it would appear the squads were 8 men, at least in the beginning:
"The sub-machine gun company was made up of three 25-man platoons, entirely equipped with sub-machine guns. These were intended as close protection for the tanks, with the sub-machine gunners riding on the tanks in the tank battalions, and thus rarely served under the infantry battalion HQ in combat." Page 75 of the Red Army Handbook 1939-45. (I know you have the book, I'm just providing the quote for other readers.)
That was as of December 1941 with the company totalling 79 men. In November 1943 the company appears to increase in size to 95 men according to Table 2.13 on page 82, which may have meant an increase in squad size to 9-10 men, but this is not explicitly stated anywhere that I've seen. I would guess the latter number as the unit breaks down as 4 officers, 10 NCOs, and 81 men.
"The tank brigade's motorized rifle battalion was reconfigured as a sub-machine gun battalion. This made few changes to the battalion organization, the only notable ones being that the two former rifle companies were converted to purely triangular organizations (three platoons of three squads) and re-equipped with sub-machine guns. Unlike the sub-machine companies in other roles, however, theses units kept their crew-served machine guns for long-range fire. The third (original) sub-machine gun company kept it's prior organization and role of riding into combat on the tanks of the brigade." Pages 81-82.
