"Machineguns in 1914?" Topic

I've been reading Before The Leaves Fall by Ian Senior and it has got me contemplating gaming the 1914 period.

But I have some questions regarding HMGs and how they fit into the organization of infantry formations in the British, French and German forces.

How were MGs deployed? Were they attached to infantry companies? To battalions? To brigades?

Were they usually deployed as individual guns, or as groups of several guns?

Any links/books with good info on tactical doctrine for MGs in the first few months of the war?

I looked this up a few weeks ago when I was thinking of using WW1 Brits as a model for 40K IG…

link

1914-1918.net/whatbatt.htm

"Up to late 1915 each battalion had a Machine Gun Section consisting of a Lieutenant, a Sergeant, a Corporal, 2 drivers, a batman and 12 Privates trained in the maintenance, transport, loading and firing of the Vickers heavy machine gun. These men made up two six-man gun teams."

"By February 1915 the allocation of machine-guns to each battalion had been doubled to 4. This, plus other minor adjustments, changed the full establishment of the battalion to 1,021 men of all ranks. Pioneer battalions, which were introduced in 1915, had 1,034.

In action, battalion machine gun sections were increasingly collected into a brigade group of 16 guns, under a Brigade Machine Gun Officer. This arrangement was made permanent in January 1916: a month later, the gunners were formally transferred from their regiments into the newly-formed Machine Gun Corps. When they lost control of the Vickers guns in this move, the infantry battalions received 4 Lewis light machine guns. By the opening of the 1916 Somme offensive this had been increased to 16 guns per battalion, and early in 1918 this was increased again to 36 guns. The firepower of the battalion was thus considerably increased throughout the war."

British and French forces can be regarded in the same way. In 1914, their medium MGs (Maxims/Vickers for British and Hotchkiss/St Etienne for French) were deployed by battalion as a two gun section. Doctrine dictated that MGs should be used in pairs to provide mutual support. This reflected the possibility of a stoppage in one gun but also the more routine of aspect of maintaining more contiuous rates of fire. The Germans learned to count the number of shots fired from a Hotchkiss and then rush forward during the reloading process if a gun was operating alone.

It was common practice for the MMGs to be separated. Single guns would operate on each flank in more open warfare conditions.

The Germans had a different approach. They grouped MG sections into an MG company, which provided the 13th company in infantry regiments. It was quite common for all six MGs to be deployed together, especially when defending or consolidating a position. It was also common for MGs to be parcelled out as 2 gun sections, especially in direct support of an attack.

You won't find books on tactical doctrine for MGs in the first few months. There are books on tactical doctrine from before the war. Do you read German or French at all?

There are books that describe how MGs were actually used in the first few months. Zuber's (Ardennes and Mons) and Sheldon's books (Vimy Ridge and First Ypres) give excellent descriptions of German usage. Jack Sheldon often includes information about French MG usage as well, from the German perspective.

Robert

Pretty much what monk2002 said, although it was still doctrine in WW2 to deploy belt fed MGs in sections of two (to allow for stoppages, belt changes etc).

Battalion MG sections for British & French, regimental MG comapnies for Germans.

Two of the VCs won at Mons were by lone Vickers gunners who held critical sections of the front, at the expense of the lives of their crews.

Haythornthwaites 'First World War Source' book has a chapter on machineguns tactics, but it is all the ovbvious stuff about interlocked enfilade fire and a bit about indirect fire. The WW2 manual 'The Tactical Employment of Medium Machineguns' has more detailed stuff about how to deploy MMGs, much of which is backwardsly applicable to WW1.

Sorry, realised what I posted was for much later in the war.

Hacksaw if it was info about MGs, then it could have been interesting/valuable. I wish you had left it up? :)

Thanks for the info everyone, very useful!

A further question, if gaming WW1 at the battalion level (that is, the standard maneuver unit is the battalion) do you think it is appropriate to have MGs on table, or is it more realistic to have them abstracted into the battalion and regiment's firepower?

If a stand is a battalion, then MG companies (the 12-16 gun variety) are fine. If a stand is a company (as in Spearhead/Square Bashing), then MG platoons (or weak 1914 era MG sections) are fine.

Further to Martin's comment, for early war scenarios where a stand is a battalion then MGs will be abstracted into the battalion. This would be true for German forces as well, even though their MG companies often operated as a single unit. The firepower of an MG company would be approximately equivalent to an infantry battalion but you cannot hand the Germans such an advantage on the table. As noted above, German MGs were also distributed as MG sections so there is historical precedent to treat MGs in the same way as per British and French forces.

The alternative would be to mess around with the stats for firepower. BEF and French infantry battalions would have extra fire power compared with German battalions but the Germans would have an extra battalion-equivalent of MGs. Tricky. This approach would force the German commander to think about how to deploy the MG stand to best augment the weaker infantry battalions. While this would be historically correct in some circumstances, the more significant issue is that it adds a layer of tactical thinking that is well below what you are trying to model from a command perspective with battalions as stands.

Robert

One approach we use in larger games (one stand per Bn, brigades as manouvre units) is to use the MGs as status markers to show a brigade has deployed defensively.

In my Corps level trench warfare rules with Bn stands I model the brigade MG and mortar companies as separate elements, but the whole thing is area based so they more tend to represent the presence of such elements in an area (so you can e.g. hold the forward battle zone with MG teams while keeping infantry battalions in reserve to counter-attack).

Horse, Foot & Guns ignores MGs completely in its 1914 incarnation, which seems a reasonable approach too.

I did a 1914 variant of Fire & Fury (brigades as manouvre units, half battalion stands as elements) which took much the same approach.

Thanks for the additional info.

It seems on table MGs would work at the level I was thinking, with maneuver units as battalions made of several stands (each stand represent 1 – 2 companies).

Thanks everyone!