Pardon me for being pedantic, but it's what I do! These are *assault* (shturmoviy) engineer-sapper troops. They had that special designation.
You've probably got something pretty close to the organizational structure. But the platoons would not usually fight just as platoons, but would task-organize into assault groups, each *based* on about a platoon. Unless you read Russian, this won't help (and Google translation mauls it viciously):
link
…so let me try to make sense of the pertinent bit:
"At the storming of the city of Danzig in March 1945, 1st ShISBr prepared 30 assault groups. Each engineer assault group consisted of 4 shturmoviks [assault sappers] and 4 flamethrowers (including 2 spare). Within each of these groups was a "faustnik" assault group of 4 engineers (a squad leader and three "faustniks", one of whom had a special machine for throwing volleys). This machine was a purely domestic inventions and allowed you to simultaneously throw up to 10 "faustpatrony" [panzerfaust rounds; sorry, no further info!--AEC] A "faustnik" group was armed with 50-80 panzerfausts and 12 discs [magazines] for the submachineguns. For the transport of personnel and equipment each assault sapper team had one tank or self-propelled gun, which also conductedng fire support."
A little disorganized, and you have the term "group" meaning three different and distinct things; but let's try to make some sense of it. So an assault engineer-sapper brigade could form 30 assault groups; with 45 platoons in its five battalions, each group would be a platoon or more in strength. Each platoon, we can assume, would comprise three squads of about eight men each (the total platoon strength was 33), and for an assault mission, each squad would form a group equipped with a whopping four flamethrowers.
Now we know how many small arms were in the battalion (20 DP light MGs, 313 SMGs, 9 antitank rifles), but we don't have numbers of flamethrowers, so it's hard to tell if this is credible across the board: 360 flamethrowers in the brigade? Doesn't sound right. But there was certainly some allocation of flamethrowers.
Then in each group (platoon), there would a group (team) of four "faustniks". I don't know what to make of the volley-firing machine, or of the idea of four sappers carrying 50-80 panzerfausts! But there would be some number of panzerfausts, at any rate.
There's a photo in that article of an assault engineer-sapper squad that shows it with two DP light machineguns. But with only 20 in the battalion (just over two per platoon), those were doubtless parceled out as needed.
So Battlefront is somewhere on the right path in providing their "battalion" (actually only four platoons' worth) boxed set with a few DP light machineguns and some faustniki, and then telling you you can supplement these with antitank rifles, and flamethrowers (in separate platoons?) and Maxim HMGs, and mortars, etc.
If you're planning to run your platoon in a skirmish ruleset, it's kind of bare by itself. It surely needs at least a few flamethrowers and a "faustnik" team, and maybe a DP or two. Unfortunately, BF doesn't provide these outside the boxed set. But the additional figures don't *have* to be in body armor. A battalion only had 125 sets of armor for those 297 men in the line platoons, which sort of makes BF's saying they're *all* armored a bit of a hoot. So if you have some spare flamethrowers or DPs from other units, they could fill in. Scratchbuild three or four panzerfausts and load them onto the extra guys in the platoon HQ, and you have your "faustniks". Add a tank or SAU per squad in support, and there you go!
Hope that helps.
Allen
