Man, am I glad I didn't do this platoon last. Not a fantastic run, though I suspect I've been forever spoiled by things with cannons.

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Platoon Patrol 16: British Mechanised Infantry

Welcome back to Combat Mission Shock Force 2 for the 16th episode of the Platoon Patrol. We’re nearly there, I promise. This time British Mechanised Infantry in FV432 Bulldogs are up. Specifically, this platoon is mounted in the Enforcer variant of the Bulldog which features a .50 calibre M2 machinegun in a Remote Weapon System.

As always for the Platoon Patrol, our platoon’s job is to find and destroy a reinforced US Marine squad playing Opfor in one of four locations on our map. For this one, the Brits started out at Entry Point Six in the north-west corner and leapfrogged past an empty Alpha before finding the enemy at Charlie.

Kick Off

Of course, by ‘finding the enemy’ I mean a SMAW team on top of building C1 launched a rocket at them as I occupied the unnamed compound. 2 Section’s A team at the receiving end spotted them in return.

This puts me in a pretty familiar situation. I’ve got the platoon spread out in and beyond the unnamed compound, giving me access to the previously very successful avenue of attack via the Charlie ditch and the open field with the water tower.

Things might be a little different here though. Doing this with heavy machinegun equipped FV432s is not the same as doing it with cannon equipped Bradleys or BMP-2s. My initial concern is 3 section, who are coming up the right side of the unnamed compound in Bulldog D. The Bulldogs have ERA, but I still don’t fancy the chances of losing a whole section to a lucky SMAW, so I stop it immediately and kick the dismounts out while everyone suppress the Charlie tower.

With that immediate risk neutralised, I start to focus on how to go forward. That means finding a way to take out the Marine antitank teams. They’re going to be on rooftops, so I bring the Platoon HQ up so they can get their 51mm mortar into action and start dropping bombs on them. The platoon HQ Bulldog came with extra light mortar ammunition, which I’ve made sure to grab, so they should have a good chance to make an impact.

I’m concentrating a little too much on this instead of what the rest of the platoon is doing. 3 section start to move into nearby buildings and, for some reason, I decide that Bulldog D should keep up with them by going forward and then reversing into the compound.

This is a terrible decision: the SMAW gunner on C1 rapidly gets over the suppression and puts a HEAT rocket into the lower front plate of Bulldog D. The driver’s killed and the vehicle is a write-off.

The SMAW gunner doesn’t get much time to celebrate- Bulldog B further back nails him with a burst of .50 cal- but the damage is done. I made a mistake and got punished for it.

Starting the slog

I’ve fallen into considering this avenue of attack because it’s the most direct from where I made contact. But it relies on having a firepower advantage over the enemy. That advantage was already less significant than other autocannon armed platoons, now I’m down a vehicle and its heavy weapon.

The result of this is that I start to wonder if I’ve got the firepower to pull it off. An indecisive firefight breaks out. 2 and 3 sections are both spread across rooftops in the unnamed compound, where they start exchanging fire with a Marine fire team in the Charlie ditch. It certainly feels like the enemy are getting better of it: after a couple of minutes I don’t appear to have done anything and they manage to land a 40mm grenade on 2 section’s A team, causing two casualties.

Bulldog C is hanging around undercover in the unnamed compound because I don’t want to expose it to the antitank threat.

The Platoon HQ is getting plenty of mortar bombs out, but it’s depressingly inaccurate and appears to be achieving absolutely nothing.

The only glimmer of success comes from the other two Bulldogs. Bulldog A with the platoon HQ and Bulldog B with 1 section in depth both spot the C1 SMAW when it rears its head again and gun it down.

That at least neutralises the spotted AT threat. But I’m not actually getting anywhere. My infantry are 300m away from the Marines in the ditch and they’re barely able to keep their heads down. Obviously I need to get closer.

Attacking up the Ditch

This is a job for my as yet uncommitted 1 section. I switch the platoon HQ to firing smoke to obscure the end of the ditch from the Charlie compound, then rush 1 section up in Bulldog B, pop more smoke and dismount into the end of the ditch.

This goes off without a hitch, which feels like a nice change of pace.

1 section split to put a fire team on each side of the ditch, which brings 1A on the right into line of sight of the second SMAW team. That’s on the corner of C3’s roof looking past C1. They engage the dismounts with some rifle fire and don’t notice Bulldog B until it’s too late. I was shuffling this right to get a better field of fire and it immediately shreds the Marines with its .50.

After this, things go quiet for a few turns. I know there’s at least one Marine rifle team further up the ditch, near the footbridge, but they’re no longer engaging 2 and 3 sections in the unnamed compound. The Platoon HQ is out of mortar ammo now, so I remount them and chuck them in the ditch to support 1 section, which frees up Bulldog A to cover the left side while Bulldog B covers the right.

1 section is almost halfway up the ditch before I get another contact. It’s nowhere near them though: 2A back in the unnamed compound come under SAW fire from across the highway. They return fire, but lose a man and take cover.

This is just reinforcing my growing impression that I need to expand my attack. 2 and 3 sections don’t make for an effective base of fire and sending them to reinforce 1 section wouldn’t be very helpful because the ditch is such a narrow frontage.

2 section is now down to 5 men and isn’t good for all that much, so I remount 3 section in Bulldog C and punch them up through the orchards to the left, all the way to the highway ditch. That should allow me hook inwards and come at Charlie from a different angle.

The Grinder

And I’m probably going to need to. One of 1A’s pixeltruppen decides to go out onto the track next to the ditch as they’re moving up and gets shot by the enfilading highway contact. Not long after, the rest of the team gets wasted at close range by an unseen contact on the other side of the ditch.

1B are only about 30ms down the ditch from the new contact, so they light it up, supported by some converging fire from Bulldogs A and B. After a couple of turns of shredding the foliage, 1B moves up and discovers what’s left of the Marine HQ team.

They keep moving until they reach the end of the footbridge and more Marines open up on them. This was where the first Marine team in the ditch was, but it looks like they’re all out of action and the fire is coming from further up. 1B spot the offending enemy team right in the corner where the Charlie ditch meets the Highway.

That puts them in a right angle between 1B and 3 section, who are off to the left. So I start moving 3A down the highway ditch to flank them, while 3B gets up to the highway itself and starts engaging the Marines further down on the other side.

It’s tricky going. 3A have a hard time slogging through the dense terrain in and around the ditch, while the Marines they’re going after are on a slight reverse slope and it’s hard to get the supporting Bulldogs to contribute effectively. 1B is not really in a position to do very much and the same goes for the platoon HQ behind them.

That leaves the understrength 2 section. I’ve piled them into Bulldog C and sent them forward to grab the Charlie buildings, a position from which they should be able to engage both the ditch and highway contacts.

Endgame

As it turns out, they’re not quite needed. The highway contact gets chewed up between 3B’s small arms and the last of Bulldog A’s .50 ammo.

The Marines in the ditch take longer to bow out but they’re eventually pinned in a pretty risky crossfire between 3A and Bulldog B, before 1B moves up and finishes them off.

Endex

With that, all the Marines are out of action and Charlie is secured so it’s time to ceasefire. The Brits sustained 8 casualties and lost an FV432 Bulldog, which translates into an overall score of 810 points.

That puts them firmly at the bottom of the NATO cluster on the leaderboard, but still significantly higher than the Syrian Airborne immediately below them.

As always, the score is arbitrary and can be very swingy, particularly when vehicle losses are involved, but I would argue the British Mech’s general position makes sense. It falls into line with the distinction between IFV equipped platoons and non-IFV equipped platoons.

That’s something for the final roundup though.

Thoughts?

As for the actual battle here… it’s kind of hard to think of much to say. This might be because it’s the 17th or 18th time I’ve played through this scenario, but I’m not sure there was much that stood out.

Even the very rare occurrence of a vehicle getting SMAW’d doesn’t seem all that interesting. I’ve manoeuvred about in similar ways in other runs and escaped punishment, here I got doubly unlucky in that Bulldog D was not only hit but hit in an area that was not covered by Explosive Reactive Armour.

The British Mech got the job done. They weren’t able to destroy the enemy at a distance, like the cannon-armed platoons, but they were ultimately able to deal with the Marines at close range. This is naturally more costly that deleting the enemy at arms-length, but the platoon isn’t configured to do that.

The Bulldogs were probably better fire support assets than it felt like they were. Bulldog A, on the left of the ditch, ultimately accounted about half of the Marines so those .50 calibre RWSs were clearly doing something, but it was also totally out of ammunition by the end and the gunner was almost domed several times as he popped up to reload.

To some extent they probably seemed underwhelming because my yardstick on this avenue of attack is cannon-based. Shooting into the Charlie ditch with 25 or 30mm high explosive shells is obviously a lot more effective than firing non-explosive bullets. Even with converging fire, you still need to hit your targets with a .50 and that obviously makes them less effective than HE shells which can get away with near misses.

Overall, the Bulldogs felt more useful in getting the dismounts forward- ultimately on all three axes: centre, left and right.

And despite evidence to the contrary, it seemed it was the infantry who did the heavy lifting. A bit like the Canadians, having two balanced fire teams at section level streamlined decisions about who went where and they had plenty of firepower up close. The dismounts did have some bad moments- like 1A being wiped out in the ditch or 2B eating a 40mm grenade- but again we’re just looking at a mix of bad luck and ‘don’t tread on me’ losses.

Even the indecisive firefight that broke out after Bulldog D got hit was arguably not that indecisive: it only lasted a few minutes before I punched 1 section up, and that Marine contact in the ditch was apparently wiped out or at least neutralised.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m glad I didn’t decide to end the Platoon Patrol series with the British Mech. The poll for this one came out 50-50 and I thought the cannon-armed YPRs would make for a more fun final run, both to watch and to play. Unfortunately, the Brits didn’t surprise me on that one. The mechanised in FV432 Bulldogs are not a bad platoon by any means- nowhere near as painful as some of the Syrian ones- but I feel like they sit in that awkward APC middle ground.

Anyway, there is no poll for the next platoon. There’s only one left and it’s the Dutch Mechanised in their YPR-765s armed with, thankfully, 25mm automatic cannons. I can’t tell you how much the last three runs have left me wanting to get back to something with a cannon. That’ll be up next week, after that we’ll round off the whole series by trying to draw out some lessons learned and what to look for in TOEs.

So there’s that to look forward to, if you’d like to see those videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.