The US Army Weapons Company of 1940
Battalion: An Organizational Study of United States Infantry
The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface, as well as previously posted parts of this book may be found via the following links:
The tables of organization approved in March 1940 wrought few changes to the weapons company of the infantry battalion. Those of October 1940, however, made four significant alterations. In particular, they:
doubled the number of sections (and thus squads) in the anti-tank and mortar platoons
deprived machine gun platoons of their spare .30 caliber machine guns
provided a Browning automatic rifle to each section
provided eighteen “basic privates” to the company as a whole1
The increase in the number of anti-tank and mortar squads created a situation in which each of the four platoons of the weapons company hung upon the same framework. That is, each consisted of a headquarters and two seventeen-man sections. Each section, in turn, was made up one leader and two eight-man squads.
Indeed, were it not for a single departure from the norm, each of the platoons would have consisted of the same number of men. (Where the headquarters of machine gun and mortar platoons consisted of one officer and ten men, those of the anti-tank platoon had but one officer and nine men.)
The man missing from the anti-tank platoon was the instrument corporal. This was the non-commissioned officer who, in the machine gun and mortar platoons, operated the devices that facilitated the use of indirect fire. (While the .50 caliber machine guns of the anti-tank platoon were capable of indirect fire, the authors of the tables of organization presumed that the squads armed with those weapons would be fully occupied dealing with tanks.)
Editor’s Note: The details of the table of organization described in this post can be found at the other end of the following link.
Source: US Army Adjutant General Table of Organization 7-18 Infantry Company, Heavy Weapons (1 October 1940)
Six of these joined the company headquarters. The rest were distributed, at a rate of three per platoon, to each of the platoons.