Size of the Platoon and Company

[Tukhachevskii]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it already but an interesting bit of info regarding dissolving the section level of command in platoons which Wilf may find interesting (and probably already knows about) came my way recently. While reading a thesis written for the US Army Command and General Staff College (2005) by Maj. Peter Drake Jackson entitled “French Ground Force Organisational Development for Counter-Revolutionary Warfare between 1945 and 1962” I read on pp.89-90 that during the Algerian War the French Army in Africa reorganised its infantry battalions into what they called the North African Type 107 battalion (Bataillon D’Infanterie – Type Afrique du Nord dit “107”). It contained a HQ & HQ company, a weapons company with mortars, HMGs and Rcl rifles, four rifle companies with one light mortar in the HQ and four rifle platoons. So far so good.

Interestingly, each rifle platoon had a small HQ and six fire teams (one rocket launcher team, two LMG teams & three “rifle grenadier teams) which were flexibly combined to form two sections each of a flexible combination of the teams above depending on mission and commander’s preference (which see attached picture below). There were no formal sections or section levels of command. Later the fourth rifle company was disbanded and its personnel used to created a bn level Psyops cell and beef up the intel cell and the battalion weapons company. The 1958 Parachute Regiment rifle platoon had an identical structure.

I don’t suppose anyone has any further info?

Also, I would appreciate it if anyone (more than likely Wilf, but all are welcome) with access to a pdf version of Maj. W. N. R. Scotter, “Streamlining the Infantry Division”, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (or Military Review, Vol. 34, 1954) would find it within themselves to pm me a copy. Apparently, he also broached the idea of platoons organised around five five-man teams although his actual focus was on dropping bde level HQs and organising divisions with seven battalion groups which probably had something to do with the lean post war years.