How the US Goes to War? - Anatomy and Tactics of an Army Rifle Company (June 1944) 3D DOCUMENTARY

Video corrections: [00:00] pronunciation of B.A.R. should be "B-A-R" rather than "Bar" [15:35] Each LMG Section had 12 soldiers (10 men in the LMG squad and 2 men in the HQ). [24:10] Infantry scouts should be represented with the infantry's X-shaped icon, not the cavalry icon with a single diagonal. [25:00] In this engagement, one 60mm mortar has been attached to each rifle platoon for the attack itself. While this could be done in doctrine and in practice, it was more common to leave the attacking rifle platoons unreinforced or attach an LMG squad instead. ]26:55] The battalion 81mm mortars would typically have been further to the rear, rather than being collocated with the company 60mm mortars.

Special shout out to History Youtubers who persevere to produce quality videos and refuse to partake in the use of AI generated art/narration in their videos. You guys are the real deal!

I always find videos like this super interesting, both from a strategic perspective and a social perspective because a lot of these unit sizes are based on natural social sizes (such as roughly 30 people being the number of people you can know well, and roughly 100 being the number of people who's name and face you can have memorized).

One thing I didn't hear much was weapons calibers. All of the Springfields. M1 Garands, B.A.R.s and tripod mounted machine-gun used the. 30-06 round. Thompson submachineguns, M-3 "greaseguns", and m1911 pistols used the .45 ACP round. If the officers carried an M-1 carbine, it had the .30 cal M-1 carbine round. This simplicity allowed for some ease of resupply since more than 90% of the ammunition was of two common rounds

Excellent video! My Dad was in Europe with the 361st Engineer Special Service Regiment. The regiment was composed of all sergeants and officers. All in the regiment came out of the construction trades back home. The idea was that each sergeant would act as a construction Foreman and oversee unskilled lower ranks from other units or POWs to build or repair things. The 361st landed in Normandy D-plus 30 days and the first thing they built was a POW camp. Dad was one time in charge of 500 German POWs working on a rail yard. He said felt sorry for a lot of the POWs who would look up at the bombers headed to Germany and shake their heads not knowing if the bombers were headed to their home cities. He did say too that if a German POW told you he was a carpenter or a mason, by golly they were a good one due to the excellent trade school training Germany had. He also said the hard core Nazis POWs would refuse to work.

As an Infantryman, today we carry even more stuff around, 15 pounds rifle and ammo, 10 pounds of water... body armor, kit pouches, rucksack of 40 pounds, it gets up there to 70-80 pounds and really starts to kick your ass after around 12 miles of hoofin it. When i volunteered i really wish i could have chosen to be in the Mechanised!

My grandfather volunteered to serve in the infantry following Pearl Harbor and left the service in 1946 as a staff sergeant. He was with the 102nd Infantry Division

Just a couple notes I saw while watching: 1) The Assistant Sergeant of a squad also carried a Rifle Grenade launcher, bringing the total according to the TOE up to 3 per squad. 2) The 50cal on the Heavy Weapons platoon's Jeep was often dismounted to add it to the Machine Gun Section's Firepower.

This is a well detailed video for the subject; US Infantry company composition during WWII varied greatly from Division to Division- sometimes even between Regiments- throughout the war, as each Division had its own unique history with how it was created and how it was filled. Some were all volunteer, some were mostly conscripted, at least one was volun-told: they took a bunch of kids out of a ROTC program and created the 104th Division with them. The USMC has retained the 12 man squad, and my unit (27th Inf Regt, 25th ID) augmented our 9 man squads with members of the Mortar Sections and support troops to be able to fill the minimum of 3 HMMWVs on each patrol in Iraq; they were also useful for carrying breaching equipment.

This is one of the best explanatory military videos I have ever seen. One of the things that I have always wondered and struggle to understand is the dimension of the frontline, in terms of amount of soldiers and how much ground is covered. In most war movies you only see a handful of soldiers, not hundreds of even thousands in a panoramical view. This video really made it easy to imagine a full scale battle involving many companies or even divisions or heavy weapons. Its hard to believe the amount of intensity and chaos that could involve having thousands of human beings trying to kill eachother. What a happening.. Thankyou for making this fabulous depiction. I hope more of this comes in the future.

Invicta puts forward some of the best content on this platform. Thanks for the new video!

If I were an instructor at any basic level training organization, I would use this video to teach my class for me. You friggen nailed it…. Are there a few things I would tweak? Maybe, but let me go out on a limb here, I’m a retired army LTC, and I watched this from the beginning to the end and I thoroughly enjoyed being educated while I was being entertained. Great freaking job.

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The first time I held a BAR I was shocked at how heavy it was. I then held a m1 carbine which felt like I was holding a toy in comparison. I'm used to carrying a K98 in reenactments. Which feels light compared to the BAR. Tough guys who ran around carrying that BAR I have to say.

Wow, this is the most helpful explanation I’ve seen yet. I’ve been trying to understand how companies and platoons really move and this does that in spades. I’ve seen lots of videos try to explain the same thing but pale in comparison.

My dad was an infantryman in WW2. He started out as a B.A. R. Gunner. But later he was allowed to switched to what he felt was best for each mission. But I remember him saying that he often carried up to 300 rounds going into an attack. This was because during his first week of combat near Saint Lo, after his company took an enemy position on a hill top, he was out of ammo and the enemy counter attacked before replacement ammo arrived.. He was captured and being tortured by an SS trooper when a fresh American company unit counter attacked and retook the hill giving him a chance to escape. After that he fought all the way into Germany and took part in several major battles like the Bulge. He also said he preferred white phosphorus ( Willy Peter) grenades to fragmentation grenades as "they were more versatile" and he carried a lot of them as well. 30:39

Please keep these going!! I love them so much! Maybe one day you can use this True Size to depict battle formations and movements during a battle

The Roman fort in the background really adds to the immersion. Love it.

I love this video. It addresses pretty much all the questions I have about a military unit (how they march, how they attack, the frontage, etc.). I cannot wait to see the division & corps formation videos!

Great stuff as always. Remarkably documented, structured and illustrated, and wonderfully narrated. Thank you!