How common was the BAR in US rifleman squads?

Basic rifle squad had 11-12 men. I believe there were typically two members that carried the BAR. The rest had M1 Garands. Ncos or officers sometimes chose Thompson or carbine.

Squads would split into two teams with one BAR each for supporting each other or leapfrogging to position.

Meat will correct me if I’m wrong.

I know I am not the person you are asking, but I found these cool posts from the WW II forum:

http://www.ww2f.com/threads/to-e-for-the-basic-us-infantry-squad-platoon.19320/

There is even a cool diagram. Looks like bazookas were an individual squad and not part of a normal rifle team, but they all appeared to have a bar and a rifle grenade. Also, looks like HEAT rounds were common for bazookas, sounds like an upgrade for infantry doc! Pretty cool forum.

I have wondered this myself, what if when you selected a weapon option, or two, the rest would be locked out, so you could not have one of each type of weapon in each squad, i.e. grease gun, bazooka, rifle grenade and bar. I believe this is the first mod to allow all weapon types in one squad. It is probably a balance thing, but it would be cool to have to make a choice when upgrading your squad. Plus, you can always pick up weapons from the battlefield.

Or, like the WW II forum shows, all rifle squads should have the bar and the rile grenade, but that would make them very tough early game, even though the munitions would not be available early game to use the rifle grenade. However, the Soviets start with PPSH and that makes them very deadly up close early on and they have anti tank grenades as well, so rifle grenade would not really be overpowered if all squads had it, maybe the typed of rifle grenade round would be a more realistic unlock, say smoke, anti vehicle, etc. They also talked about attaching mortar rounds to their rifle grenades to really clear a position. Interesting.

Hey Guys,

Interesting subject 🙂

My original doctrine design was going to include an overhaul of the rifleman loadout but due to time constraints this has been pushed out to a later date and will be included in a more general infantry rework for all doctrines.

I know they aren’t perfect at the moment but they also aren’t really broken either, so the decision was made to leave them as they are.