"BKC universal carriers as infantry transport?" Topic

Hi to all Blitzkrieg Commander II players

I bought the rule set. I am really excited about it. It looks like a great system. Reading through, I was often delighted by the clever way they handled some things.

Anyway, enough of my gushing.

I ordered a large number of 10mm BKC armies, from WW2 Pendraken, to sell ready painted. For the British armies, there aren't that many universal carriers. It seems like they are for recon/AOP etc.

But, looking through the rule book, there is an example of an infantry company making an assault in universal carriers.

On page 59 of the rule book it says "universal carrier can transport a mortar or AT unit." That is repeated on every British list. They don't list infantry as a possible "cargo", whereas they are listed for M3 half tracks and trucks.

So, what is going on? Do they transport infantry or not?

In command decision, I saw many of the little devils being used in British armies.

Carriers did transport infantry but only one platoon in an infantry battalion (a sort of assault unit due the high number of brens) or one platoon per motor rifle or Recce company. You wouldn't see a full company in carriers.
Inf Battalion link
Motor battalion
link

You will enjoy Blitzkrieg Commander. An excellent set of rules.

The carriers listed as Support Units are the ones from the carrier platoon of the company's support platoon. Their Arm is Infantry, the infantry don't dismount, consider the support carrier a combined infantry/vehicle unit.

The example from pages 16-17 is repeated from the 1st edition of BKC, when carriers where handled differently.

If you want to use your carriers that way, introduce a house rule, allowing you to use them like the Belgian army (p.57).

As above, carriers were essentially weapons carriers, not APCs, so they weren't used that way.

In CD you would have seen loads towing AT guns, carrying mortars and Vickers guns and lugging around the batalion carrier platoon (essentially a companies worth of Brens, 2" mortars and PIATs manned by a strong platoon of crews in a dozen carriers). Some 1 base = 1 platoon rules choose to represent the latter as a single stand, others as multiple stands.

Thanks everyone. Sounds like I bought the right number of carriers, not figuring that I needed them for my regular infantry stands.

The Canadians also used them as APC's in Operations Totalise and Tractable.

For BKC, I do small transport carries 1 stand, medium 2. Medium if killed, 1 passenger gets killed, other dismounts suppressed. (I have enough trucks & halftracks to go around carrying 1 each, but greatly prefer the visual reduction of clutter)

I use them for my Carrier Platoon. Each carrier trnasport 1 stand of infantry.

Historically the Battalion carrier platoon would occasionally be used as transport for infantry to speed up an advance, the troops being carried as much on top of as in the carrier in much the same manner as infantry sometimes rode tanks.