"Engineers In Combat" Topic

I'm not sure exactly where I should post this message, but as I'm really thinking of those who fought during the French-Indochina campaign, I'll put it here.

The question is, in a straight fire fight how good would engineers be? Would the time spent on their specialist training have a negative impact on their performance, or would it actually increase their potential?

I suppose most of the time they would have been kept out of such situations, but I'm sure there were instances when they were pressed into "normal" fighting to help their comrades.

It depends on the type of enginner unit. A construction or bridging unit may not fare terribly well in a fire fight if they were caught while doing their thing. A combat engineer unit, one designed for hasty mobility (clear routes quickly), counter mobility (block routes quickly), and survivability (quick emplacements) would probably do just fine against an infantry force and depending on how they are configured could prbably hold their own for a little while against armor.
Engineer untis usually have a lot of fire power and vehicles to carry it. Therefore what they may lack in numbers of shooters, they make up for with machine guns and explosives. In my experience, they know how to use those things.

Combat engineers would be able to dig/explode/mechanically dig positions/provide obstical's very fast so could do better than infantry in defense.

As above, it depends what kind of engineers. A road repair labour battalion is not likely to do very well, an assault pioneer platoon might do very well indeed (as they are basically all infantrymen armed with lots of explody, flamey things).

My maternal grandfather was in the Royal Engineers, he said when they crossed the Rhine his section had one rifle between them. He spent his war building bridges.

All good answers lads!

It was actually combat engineers I had in mind when I posted the question, and you have all cleared that one up very nicely! :O)