사용자:Eunj/번역문서

Army Ground Forces, Study No. 4

Section I

GENERAL SURVEY

In World War II, the United States mobilized an Army of 91 divisions, two of which were inactivated.1 The remaining 89 divisions were employed overseas, and after entering the theaters all were maintained at or near their table of organization strength. In this respect the experience of World War I had been very different. At the time of the armistice in November 1918, 58 divisions had been activated, but only 42 had been shipped overseas. Twelve of these 42 divisions were not functioning as combat units, having been drained for replacements or converted to other uses in France. Of the 16 divisions forming at home, 9 were at less than half strength in November 1918, and one recently activated division could boast of only a single enlisted man.2 This situation in 1918 reflected the fact that the war ended before mobilization in the United States was complete. But it reflected also the fact that the War Department was unable to maintain at full strength the Army that it had projected, and that some divisions had to be dissolved, or never filled, in order that others might have enough manpower to enter or remain in combat.

It was therefore a considerable achievement, by the standards of World War I, not only to raise 91 divisions in World War II, but also to maintain 89 at effective strength as combat units, replacing losses without dissolution of any divisions committed to action, although some divisions suffered heavy and continuous losses over a period of years. By 31 January 1945, 47 infantry regiments in 19 Infantry divisions had lost from 100 percent to over 200 percent of their strength in battle casualties alone.3 By May 1945 the 5 hardest hit divisions had suffered 176 percent battle casualties in all components.4 Yet substantially all losses were replaced.5

Seen in another light, a ground army of 89 divisions was a modest creation. The Germans mobilized over 300 divisions, the Japanese about 100. Though not all enemy divisions were kept as nearly at effective strength as were the American, the preponderance was still heavily on the enemy side. British ground forces did not suffice to redress the balance. Success of American ground forces therefore depended heavily on a number of other factors. One was the Russian Army, which was estimated to have over 400 divisions in 1945, and which engaged the mass of the German combat power, as well as neutralizing certain Japanese forces on the Manchurian border. Another was Allied naval strength, which enabled American ground forces to attack at advantageous times and places. A third was Allied air power, which enabled ground forces to attack an enemy underequipped, disrupted, and immobilized by bombing. To the strengthening of these other factors the United States devoted the bulk of its resources and its manpower. At the beginning of 1945 the United States had spent over ten times as much, in terms of dollars, on World War II as on World War I. The total armed forces of the United States were well over twice as large as in November 1918. But the size of combatant ground forces was not much greater than in 1918. Because the divisions of the later war were much smaller than those of the earlier, the 89 divisions of 1945 included only 25 percent more manpower than the divisions of 1918. (see Table I.)

The ground forces of World War II proved to be none too large. In 1918 American troops were needed only in France. After 1941 they were needed on opposite sides of the globe. (See Table II.) More United States ground forces were required in Europe in 1914 than had been expected. Despite the tremendous victories of the Russians, and despite control of the sea and air by the western Allies, all American ground forces were committed when Germany surrendered in May 1945. At that time over 96 percent of tactical troops of the Army Ground Forces were overseas, and the last divisions had been dispatched three months before. No more combat units were forming at home. No reserve, other than replacements, remained in the United States. Nor was there any

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significant strategic reserve of uncommitted forces in the theaters. This may be interpreted either as remarkably accurate planning of the minimum forces required or as a fairly narrow escape from disagreeable eventualties?winning by the skin of the teeth.

With so relatively few divisions, every division in the theater had to be used to the utmost. This disadvantage was aggravated by the fact that, with many other demands for space, divisions were shipped to the theaters rather slowly. It was difficult, and in some theaters impossible, to withdraw divisions from combat for periods of rest. During periods of intensive combat an infantry division suffered about 100 percent losses in its infantry regiments every three months. While the gaps caused by these losses were generally filled by the continuous stream of replacements, divisions suffered in efficiency with such a high turnover of infantry. A severe mental strain was imposed on the individual soldier, especially the infantryman, who felt that no matter how long he fought or how long he survived the dangers of combat he must remain in action until removed as a casualty. Cases of battle neurosis multiplied from this cause. Or men simply became tired, and when tired more easily got themselves killed, wounded, or captured. The stream of replacements thus flowed into somewhat leaky vessels. Had more units been available to relieve units in battle, not only would the strain of combat soldiers have been eased, but some saving of manpower would probably have resulted.

The present study traces the process, so far as it was known at the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces, by which the United States combatant ground army of World War II was planned, mobilized, and maintained at effective strength. Other studies in the present series are closely related. Study No. 3 presents a view of mobilization in tabular form. Study No. 7 deals with the replacement system, by which units once mobilized were kept in being. Problems in the procurement of suitable personnel, and in the training of officers and specialists for the expanding Army, are treated in Studies Nos. 5, 6, 30, and 31. In Studies Nos. 12 and 14, which describe the training of infantry divisions and other units, the reader will find details of the effects on training of certain difficulties inherent in mobilization, such as the need of supplying cadres, the shortage of manpower and equipment, the turnover of personnel within units and consequent need for repeated retraining, and the tapping of units for replacements?for the replacement system did not work smoothly to produce the results noted above. The internal organization of units, and hence the allotment of manpower and equipment to each unit set up for mobilization, is treated in Study No. 8. Aspects of the mobilization of armored forces, airborne units, and heavy artillery are presented in Study No. 9. Attempts to provide combined training of ground forces with aviation, on which it was foreseen that ground forces would depend for success, are traced in detail in Study No. 35.

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Section II

GENERAL PROBLEMS OF MOBILIZATION: ROLE OF THE ARMY GROUND FORCES

The ultimate size to which the Army should be expanded was by no means the first question which had to be settled in the planning of mobilization. A more immediate problem was the timing of expansion. Under ideal conditions mobilization would synchronize on the one hand with the production of equipment, so that troops would not be organized faster than weapons became available for training or combat, and on the other hand with general strategic plans, so that troops would be ready in the necessary types and numbers, organized, trained, and equipped, as operational requirements developed. It was wasteful of manpower to induct men before equipment was available for training, or to train them too long before they were required in operations. Another immediate problem was to distribute the growing strength of the Army among its component parts. Apportionment had to be made between air forces and ground forces, between combat troops and service troops, and among the several branches such as Infantry, Field Artillery, Quartermaster Corps, and Military Police. Strength had

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also to be distributed within each unit; in the infantry battalion, for example, among riflemen, machine gunners, clerks, and cooks. The need throughout was to achieve a balance; the right ratio of machine gunners to riflemen, of artillery units to infantry units, of service troops to combat troops, of air forces to ground forces, and of all forces to overhead?the right ratio or balance being ultimately that by which the end could be defeated soonest.

Size and internal balance of individual units were specified in tables of organization (T/O?s), treated at length in Study No. 8. The ?authorized strength? of a unit was normally its table of organization strength. A unit was ?overstrength? if it had more men than its T/O called for, ?understrength? or ?short? if it had fewer. In some circumstances overstrengths or understrengths might be authorized.

The number of units to be mobilized was set forth in a document known as the troop basis, which gave the authorized strength of the entire Army as of a specified date in the future. The total figure set by the troop basis was the total of the tables of organization of all authorized units, plus allotments of manpower to allow for men in transit, hospital patients, replacements, overhead establishments, and other needs for which no set tables could be prescribed. The troop basis was therefore a blueprint of the Army, indicating how many bomber groups, infantry divisions, ordnance companies, etc., should be mobilized. It was a budget of manpower, showing the use to which the War Department proposed to put the manpower made available to it. It was also a plan of mobilization, showing, by successive projections several months or a year into the future, what the size and composition of the Army should be at successive future dates. A more technical description of the troop basis is given in Study No. 3.

The Activation Schedule was derived from the Troop Basis. The Troop Basis set up the objective and the major phases in timing. The Activation Schedule marked out the individual steps by which the objective should be reached, showing exactly what units should be activated each month. Whether a unit called for in the troop basis should actually be activated on a given date depended on a variety of practical and often transitory circumstances; whether men were forthcoming from Selective Service, whether a trained cadre could be obtained, whether training equipment and housing accommodations would be available. All these factors fluctuated over short periods. They were also difficult to foresee. The activation schedule therefore had to be closely watched and frequently modified. In principle, the troop basis was revised only for reasons of general strategy or fundamental necessity; the activation schedule was revised to conform to circumstances of the moment.

The largest decisions of mobilization policy, determining the total strength of the armed forces and the distribution between the War and Navy Departments, were made by the highest executive authority, acting with the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Within strategical requirements as transmitted by the Joint Chiefs, the War Department determined the relative strengths of the Army Air Forces (AAF), the Army Ground Forces (AGF), and the Army Service Forces (ASF), originally called the Services of Supply (SOS). To the Army Air Forces, until the end of 1943, the War Department made a bulk allotment of manpower. The troop basis showed only a lump total for the Air Forces until October 1943. By that time mobilization was virtually complete.

Over the ground army, both Ground Forces and Service Forces, the War Department exercised a more immediate jurisdiction. Without explicit War Department approval the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces could not alter tables of organization by adding or removing a single individual. It could not modify the troop basis by adding or deleting a single battalion. Until September 1942 it could not change the activation schedule on its own authority. A few weeks after the reorganization of the War Department in March 1942 it was even proposed by G-3 of the War Department that while the Army Air Forces and Services of Supply should continue to activate their own units, the

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power to activate AGF units should revert to the War Department.6 General McNair not concurring, the proposal was dropped. But the War Department continued to hold the Ground Forces within a framework of central control. The Army Ground Farces had extensive powers of recommendation on matters of mobilization, but the decisions were made by the War Department General Staff.

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Section III

EARLY ANTICIPATIONS: A 200-DIVISION ARMY

On the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor General McNair, then Chief of Staff, General Headquarters, estimated that an army of 200 divisions could be necessary for offensive action by the United States.7 Expectations of the War Department General Staff (WDGS), ran in 1942 to somewhat the same figure.8 A study of the Joint Chiefs on the ultimate size of the Army envisaged 334 divisions, an Air Force of 2,700,000 and an antiaircraft artillery force of no less than 1,120,000.9 In the spring of 1942 the United States, ejected from the Philippines, was everywhere on the defensive. The military value of its allies was profoundly open to question, the British having been driven from Singapore and being hard pressed in the Middle East, and the Russians making a seemingly, desperate stand on the Volga.

These forecasts for the American army were in the nature of preplanning estimates, and are significant mainly in illustrating the feeling at the time. Practical and specific phoning could hardly look beyond a year into the future. It was relatively moderate in its aims.

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Section IV

THE FIRST TROOP BASIS OF 1942

The plan in effect at the time of the establishment of the Army Ground Forces was the troop basis issued by the War Department in January 1942, about five weeks after the entrance of the United States into the War. The Army at the time of Pearl Harbor, after fifteen months of peacetime mobilization, consisted of about 1,600,000 men. (See Table III.) Some 36 divisions had been organized. The Air Corps had a personnel of only 270,000. Certain types of service units had not been developed in the proportions needed in war. The troop basis of January 1942 provided that by the end of that year the Army should reach a strength of 3,600,000 enlisted men to include 73 divisions and an Air Force of 998,000. So far as ground forces were concerned, emphasis was placed on the mobilization of new divisions. Divisions required a year to train. Nondivisional units, whether of combat or service types, could for the most part be trained in six months. It was therefore believed that the nondivision program could proceed more slowly.11

It was also decided in January 1942 that replacement training centers should not be expanded proportionately with the expansion of the Army. In 1941 basic training had been concentrated in replacement centers, and tactical units drew their fuller personnel from graduates of the centers. General McNair believed that tactical units could be trained more rapidly and effectively under this system. But the War Department preferred not to authorize new housing for replacement centers, and to use incoming manpower to create units as rapidly as possible.12 Units were therefore to draw filler personnel from untrained recruits at reception centers. This policy had serious effects on the mobilization of units making them function in effect as basic training centers and as replacement pools in addition to their training as tactical units.

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Section V

STRESSES AND STRAINS OF EXPANSION IN 1942

Many developments upset the initial program for mobilization in 1942. It proved impossible to foresee all needs, or to build the Army according to the blueprint of the January troop basis.13 Units not called for in the troop basis were activated, and the troop basis was then revised to include them. With manpower thus diverted to

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unforeseen needs, units set up in the original troop basis could not be brought to authorized strength. AGF units especially suffered from chronic shortages of personnel.

Shortages were in part due to the normal process of growth.14 Trained units had to supply personnel as cadres for the formation of new units. Some units furnished cadres more than once. All units lost enlisted men who became officer candidates or went to service schools for enlisted specialist courses. Some men were lost as physically unfit, others as parachute volunteers. There was a large drain to the Army Air Forces, which recruited throughout the Army for Aviation cadets. This attrition in units, as distinguished from the supplying of cadres, would have been much less had basic training remained concentrated in replacement centers, because the selective processes involved commonly occurred during the individual?s first months in the service.

Foreseeing such attrition, General McNair in January 1942 recommended that new units be activated with a 10 percent overstrength, in order to be at T/O strength on completion of training.15 The War Department, wishing to create a maximum number of new units with the personnel available took the opposite course of authorizing an understrength. New units were activated at T/O strength, less basic privates. Basic privates were men included in tables of organization over and above all specified job assignments as an advance provision for replacements. In most units they constitute 10 percent of T/O strength. Units were supposed to be able to sustain combat without their basics, but since it was planned to add the basics before shipment of units overseas, their absence meant a shortage which had eventually to be filled. In March 1942, a proposal was made by G-3 of the War Department General Staff, to authorize an additional 15 percent understrength for units in early stages of training. The proposal was not carried out.

?It is believed that since we are at war,? wrote Maj. Gen Mark. W. Clark, then Chief of Staff, AGF, ?our combat units should be trained as complete standard units, at a strength suitable for immediate combat. It is considered that to add about one-third strength to a unit approximately three months before the unit engages in battle against our well trained adversaries, would be to place the unit on the battlefield at a disadvantage which would have been avoided, without serious detriment to the war effort as a whole.?16

Understrength was not authorized, except for the initial omission of basic privates. But it continued to exist in fact. The War Department was under heavy pressure to supply manpower to other than Ground Force organizations and within the Ground Forces to divert manpower to other than primary combat units. The Air Forces grew more rapidly than the January troop basis provided. Antiaircraft units were authorized by the War Department in this early and defensive phase of the war beyond the number at first planned. The earlier plan to defer activation of nondivisional service units until after the launching of divisions on their training program broke down; service units were in fact activated in great numbers.

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Section VI

OPERATIONAL NEEDS IN 1942 — EFFECTS ON THE ARMY GROUND FORCES

These calls upon the War Department reflected operational needs, both in the defense commands, in which certain types of forces, especially antiaircraft, were assigned to combat stations, and in the overseas theaters which were then beginning to be built up.

In April 1942 first priority was given to a plan to ship 1,000,000 men to United Kingdom for employment in a cross-channel operation in April 1943 (“Roundup”) or in a smaller operation late in 1942 (“Sledge hammer”) if assistance to the Russians became absolutely imperative.17 The plan was gradually modified as the British position in Egypt grew more critical, and in July was abandoned in favor of an operation is northwest Africa (“Torch”) Meanwhile troops were shipped to Great Britain, especially

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service troops to prepare the way for combat forces. In August a limited offensive was mounted in the South Pacific. Other troops, chiefly in service, air, and antiaircraft units, with here and there an infantry regiment for local protection, were scattered in quiet theaters from Alaska to the Persian Gulf.

These operations had pronounced effects on mobilization and training in the Army Ground Forces. Since AGF units were generally understrength, and since the output of replacement training centers was inadequate, the filling of divisions and other units to T/O strength, in preparation for overseas movement, required transfer of trained personnel from other units destined to remain longer at home. These units in turn either remained understrength or received untrained men from reception centers, repeated parts of their training program, and finally filled their last shortages by tapping still others units. From some old divisions whole regiments or combat teams were bodily removed. On 24 July 1942, the 30th, 31st, 33d, 38th, and 40th Divisions lacked regiments or other major parts. Thus crippled, it was difficult for them to engage in maneuvers or advanced divisional exercises. New divisions could not attain full strength on activation because other elements of the Army had higher priority on inductees. Training of new divisions was thus delayed at the start, or, once began, was interrupted by the receipt of fillers direct from civilian life at spasmodic and unpredictable intervals. Meanwhile the attempt to create three or four new divisions a month meant that nondivisional units could not receive personnel. The Army Ground Forces preferred to pass a tactical unit as an integral whole through progressive phases of training, but it proved impossible to carry out this policy. Some small units remained at cadre strength for months after activation. Most large units, with the constant attrition and turnover of personnel, found themselves training men at different levels at the same time.18

Drained by supplying cadres, officer candidates, aviation cadets, etc., and by furnishing personnel for overseas assignment, AGF units could with difficulty replace their losses because of the demand of the Army Air Forces and the Service of Supply for inductees. (See Table III, with annex.) The Air Corps, which had not grown as rapidly as the ground arms in the prewar mobilization of 1941, was given high priority by the War Department in 1942. The Services of Supply, as projected in the troop basis of January 1942, was smaller in proportion to combat forces than it had been in 1917 and 1918. With the cross-channel plan came new demands for port battalions, construction units, signal corps, and other service elements for use in Great-Britain. In May the required proportion of service elements in the invasion force was estimated at 30 percent, a figure to which General Eisenhower, then Chief of the Operations Division of the War Department, found it necessary to consent, though observing that with so many service troops the necessary combat troops could not be shipped.19 But on 2 June the proportion of service troops in the force had risen to 48 percent.20

In May, to keep up with activations already effected or planned, the President authorized the induction of an additional 750,000 men in 1942, raising the objective set in the 1942 troop basis from 3,600,000 to 4,350,000.21 Of the 750,000 added, 250,000 were earmarked for the Air Forces, 250,000 were already used by overdrafts on the troops basis of January, and most of the remaining 250,000 were committed to new units authorized for the Services of Supply.22 The allotment of 4,350,000 was soon overdrawn. A revised troop basis issued in July represented an increment, for units to be mobilized in 1942, of 851,536 men over the troop basis of January. Only 13 percent of this figure was for combat units in the Army Ground Forces, and almost two-thirds of this 13 percent was for antiaircraft artillery.23

It was generally agreed in the summer of 1942 that activations, especially of service units, were getting out of hand. “There is evidence,” noted G-3 of the War Department on 11 June, “that in some cases sufficient forethought is not exercised to utilize units already provided for in the Troop Unit Basis.”24 In order to build up

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their theaters, overseas commanders tended to request a great variety of useful but not indispensable special units; chiefs of branches wished to enlarge the usefulness of their branches to the Army; the War Department liberally granted requests, trusting to the judgment of the specialist or of the men on the spot. By September 1942 the number of enlisted men authorized to put a division into combat had risen to 50,000, of which only 15,000 represented organic divisional strength.25 Medical troops alone amounted to 3,500 per division, in addition to the medical battalion organic in the division itself.26 G-3 of the War Department, in charge of the troop basis, observed ironically that service units could not be curtailed unless American soldiers, like Japanese, would consent to live on rice.27

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Section VII

THE MANPOWER CRISIS OF THE SUMMER OF 1942

By 30 June 1942 the Army Ground Forces were short 162,505 men.28 The War Department proposed either that units be kept purposely understrength while in training—the proposal rejected by the Army Ground Forces in March—or that the activation of new units be slowed down.29

Understrength in training units was again described by the Army Ground Forces as “unsound.”30 The request for overstrength, as a reserve against cadre losses and general attrition, was repeated.31 The request was granted in September, when the War Department empowered the three major commands to authorize a 15 percent enlisted overstrength to such units as they might designate.32 Overstrength, if actually attained (not merely authorized) was a protection against attrition for those units which received it. But it offered no general solution. In so far as some units received an overstrength, one of three things must happen: either some units must be abnormally short, or fewer units must be activated, or more men must be inducted.

In conference during June and July 1942, AGF and SOS officers considered the slowing down of the Activation Schedule. They discovered that representatives of each arm and service advised deceleration in other branches than their own. General McNair concluded that neither the Army Ground Forces nor the Services of Supply had sufficient knowledge of over-all requirements to judge conflicting claims. He urged that the War Department General Staff assume a firmer control over the troop basis.33 He recommended deferment of the 97th Division, scheduled for activation in December 1942, as a means of obtaining personnel to refill the depleted older divisions.34 The War Department approved this recommendation in August.

Further deceleration of the activation schedule at this time, postponing the units due for activation in July and August, would have reduced the shortages which were accumulating in the Ground Forces, and made possible more effective training. But General McNair believed it dangerous at this time to slow down the mobilization of combat troops. He recommended instead a speeding up of inductions through Selective Service. In July the 2d Cavalry Division was inactivated and most of its personnel were used to fill up the 9th Armored Division.35 Although the plan for invading Western Europe was indefinitely postponed on 22 July, it was not easy to defer activations. For an infantry division there was a preactivation process extending over three months and involving hundreds of officers and over 1,000 enlisted cadremen. Once started, this process could not be stopped without excessive waste and confusion. The War Department, unable to foresee the operations of Selective Service and assigning inductees in large numbers to the Air Forces and the Service of Supply, could never accurately predict, three months in advance, how many inductees would be available to divisions and other AGF units on their dates of activation. The Army Ground Forces therefore proceeded with activations called for in the troop basis. New units were created, but men failed to appear and shortages mounted.36

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By September 1942 the Ground Forces were short 330,000 men; or over 30 percent of authorized unit strength. (See Table IV) The Air Forces were short 103,000, or 16 percent, the Services of Supply 34,000, or 5 percent. Shortages in the Ground Forces threatened to make proper training impossible.37

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Section VIII

CHANGE OF WAR PLANS — DECELERATION OF MOBILIZATION OF THE GROUND FORCES

By this time the plan to attack Western Europe early in 1943 had for various reasons been given up. An invasion of North Africa was being prepared, but major operations by United States ground troops were deferred to an undetermined but relatively distant date. Meanwhile the offensive against Germany was to be conducted chiefly by aviation.

In September 1942 a conference on personnel shortages was held at the War Department.38 The Army Ground Forces expressed a desire to decelerate its activation schedule until its existing units were filled. The Army Air Forces and the Services of Supply opposed deceleration within their own commands. “It is presumed,” reported the AGF representative on returning to the War College, “that AGF would postpone activations so as to make inductees available for the AAF and SOS.”39 The War Department instructed each command to submit a list of “must units” for activation during the remainder of 1942. The Army Ground Forces included as “must units” only two tank destroyer brigade headquarters, to supervise the training of the large number of tank destroyer battalions already in existence, and two parachute infantry regiments to absorb the personnel already graduated or about to graduate from the parachute school.40 Only these units, with a few others of small size, were activated by the Army Ground Forces at full strength in the last three months of 1942. Infantry and armored divisions that were planned for these months and that were too far along in the preactivation process to stop were activated at cadre strength only. Activations proceeded as planned in the Air Forces, including arms and services with the Air Forces, except that certain Air Base Security Battalions—mostly Negro organizations—were deleted. Activation of SOS units continued.41

In September the President approved another increase, this time of 650,000, in inductions for 1942, raising the authorized enlistment strength of the Army by the end of the year to 5,000,000.42 About a million-and-a-half men were provided by Selective Service in the last four months of the year. Those received by the Army Ground Forces were used mainly to fill shortages in units activated before September and to bring certain units to the newly authorized 15 percent over strengths. By March 1943 the actual and authorized strengths of the Army Ground Forces virtually balanced. But freedom from shortages proved to be temporary. (See Table IV.)

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Section IX.

SUMMARY OF MOBILIZATION IN 1942

At the close of 1942 the Army could look back on a year of unprecedented expansion. Almost four million men had been added during the year, actual strength (including officers) having risen from 1,657,157 to 5,400,888. Thirty-seven new divisions had been called into being. Seventy-three were in existence. The pressure of growth had repeatedly broken through the plans of the troop basis. Growth had been uneven and inadequately controlled, in part because of inherent difficulties in planning during a period of chaotic expansion, in part because of fluctuations in strategic objectives at the highest level, in part because component parts of the Army were too powerful and autonomous for complete coordination by the War Department General Staff.

Distribution of strength within the Army shifted greatly in 1942, more so than in any subsequent year of the war. (See Table III, with chart.) At the beginning of 1942 the Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery, and Coast Artillery (which together included tank, tank destroyer, and antiaircraft personnel) constituted 52 percent of the Army,

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the service branches 26 percent, the Air Corps 16 percent. By the end of 1942 the figures were respectively 36, 37, and 24 percent. At the beginning of 1942 there were two soldiers in the ground arms for one in the service branches—at the end of 1942 only one. During 1942 the ground arms more than doubled, but the service branches and the Air Corps multiplied more than fourfold. The Air Corps, it will be recalled, constituted only a part, though by far the largest part of the Army Air Forces, in which elements of the service branches were also included.

In the long run, the total authorized strength of ground combat units increased very little after 1942—by only 6.5 percent. (See Table V.) Many units were added (see Table VI), but other units were dissolved. The number of officers and men in the combat arms other than coast artillery increased materially after 1942, (see Table III, with chart), but most of these went to fill shortages in units, or into the rising population of replacement centers, hospitals, etc., rather than increase the total strength of combat units.

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Section X

INITIAL PLANNING OF THE 1943 TROOP BASIS

Figures tabulated in the preceding Study No. 3 provide essential evidence for the remainder of the present study, which in turn provides a narrative explanation of the facts shown statistically in Study No. 3. The table in Study No. 3 offers a synopsis of mobilization from the drafting of the 1943 troop basis to the close of the war in Europe.

Planning began in the spring of 1942 for the augmentation of the Army to be made in 1943. The Operations Division of the War Department General Staff wished to add 67 divisions in 1943 and 47 in 1944, bringing the total of divisions to 140 at the close of 1943 and 187 at the close of 1944.43 The figures were admittedly very tentative. The Ground Forces in May 1942 pronounced such a program capable of accomplishment—before the rapid activations of the summer of 1942 raised the gross number of men per division to 50,000.44 G-3 of the War Department expressed his belief that only 37 divisions should be added in 1943, in view of limitations on shipping and construction and the undesirability of withdrawing men from industry and agriculture too long before they could be employed in military operations. The G-3 figure, involving a total of 100 divisions by the end of 1943, was accepted as the basis of further discussion.45

In July and August 1942 the War Department instructed the three mayor commands to make detailed proposals for the 1943 troop basis. The main outlines were prescribed, although no figure on the total size of the Army was yet given. A total of 2,000,000 enlisted men were allotted to the Air Forces. The capacity of officers candidate schools was raised to 73,000. The Army Ground Forces was to organize about 110 divisions by 31 December 1943, increase the antiaircraft artillery to 610,000, and augment the strength of other arms by certain specified percentages, which in all cases were less than the percentage increase of antiaircraft artillery. General Edwards, G-3, War Department General Staff, noting that Germany had some 300 divisions and the Japanese probably 90, observed unofficially that the diversion of American military manpower to non-combat functions should be checked, that the Army in 1943 should undergo “a complete revamping,” and that the gross number of men required per division should be reduced from 50,000 to 33,000 by 1944.47 In this way he hoped that, by the end of 1944, 141 divisions might be organized. As it turned out, by the end of 1944 there were only 90 divisions in the United States Army, whose aggregate strength (not counting the Air Forces) was then approximately 5,700,000 showing a ratio of over 60,000 per division.

The Army Ground Forces submitted its detailed proposals on 30 September 1942.48 (See Study No. 3) A total of 114 divisions was recommended. Because of the inclusion of airborne and light divisions, the net divisional strength remained within the figure prescribed by the War Department. Recommendations for nondivisional units exceeded

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the allotments made by the War Department. The aim of the Army Ground Forces was to assure the mobilization of a balanced force, in which nondivisional troops such as medical units, engineer battalions, ordnance maintenance companies, tank battalions, and Military police should be in a proper proportion to each other and to the number of divisions. The “type” army and “type” corps, formerly used as a yardstick to secure proper proportions, had been abandoned. For each type of unit the Army Ground Forces adopted instead a ratio per division based on anticipated requirements of operations. The strength of nondivisional combat units (“combat support”) obtained by application of these ratios exceeded the War Department allotment by 122,092 men. It was mainly in heavy artillery, tanks, tank destroyers, mechanized cavalry and nondivisional infantry that the AGF estimate of requirements for combat support exceeded that of the War Department. Recommendations for nondivisional service units (“service support”) had been arrived at in conference between the Army Ground Forces and the Services of Supply. Exact demarcation had not yet been made between types of service units which AGF and SOS were to activate and train. Duplication and overlapping resulted. The recommendation for service support exceeded the War Department allotment by 385,752. The total excess was about 500,000.

These proposals were submitted with reservations. The Army Ground Forces recommended that if cuts were necessary they be made in armored and motorized rather than in infantry and airborne divisions, that reductions be made proportionately so as to maintain forces in balance, and that the whole question of service troops be reexamined. “Precise data,” wrote the Chief of Staff, AGF, “as to the total personnel engaged in the services in the entire United States Army are not available to this headquarters for analysis. However, from the general information at hand, it appears that over-all production of services to combat forces is grossly excessive; and some definite measures to control the dissipation of manpower to these non-combatant functions must be instituted at once.”49

The recommendations of the Army Air Forces, like those of the Army Ground Forces, exceeded the allotment made in August. In August the War Department had allotted 2,000,000 men. The Air Forces now asked for 2,330,000.

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Section XI

THE NEED OF ECONOMY — 1942-1943

September and October of 1942 marked a turning point in the development of the war Army. Hitherto the tendency had been toward rapid expansion of all parts of the military establishment. Now a more exact consideration of choices was made necessary by various facts of strategy, logistics, manpower, and supply.

When the plan, to invade Western Europe early in 1943 was given up, the need of mobilizing a large ground army became less immediate. Air power was to be developed first. Shipping estimates in September 1942 indicated that at most 4,170,000 troops could be shipped overseas by the end of 1944 and that if the prevailing high rate of shipping losses continued the number might not greatly exceed 3,000,000. If an Air Force of 1,000,000 were placed overseas in either case (as was now proposed) the number of divisions overseas by the end of 1944 would be 88 by the most liberal estimate, and only 61 if shipping losses continued. Allowing a year to train a division, it therefore seemed premature to mobilize many more than 88 divisions by the end of 1943. As it turned out, the number of troops overseas in 31 December 1944 was 4,933,682, well above the highest estimate of 1942; this number included an Air Force of over 1,000,000 but only 80 divisions, though the 9 divisions remaining in the United States on 31 December 1944 were being rushed to Europe to stem the German breakthrough in the Ardennes. In October 1942 the chairman of the War Production Board announced that that procurement program of the Army, the Navy, and the Maritime Commission for 1943, totaling $93,000,000,000, could not be met. He set the maximum at $75,000,000,000. The Joint Chiefs of Staff revised procurement plans downward to $80,000,000,000,51 a

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reduction of 13.7 percent. Emphasis was kept on the aircraft program. The allotment of funds to aviation (military and naval) exceeded the combined allotments to aviation the rest of the Army and Navy. Distribution was as follows:

PROCUREMENT PROGRAM FOR 1943

 Percent Reduced
  New Total (Billions)

Army Ground Program

21.0
  $14.8

Army Construction (less airfields)

31.0
  2.2

Navy Program

18.0
  11.8

Navy Construction (less airfields)

4.2
  1.1

Aircraft Program (including airfields)

10.1
  33.3

Merchant Shipbuilding

22.2
(Increase)
4.4

Lend Lease and U.S.S.R. Protocol

18.1
  8.6

Miscellaneous

7.1
  3.9

In the Army Ground program reductions were heaviest in the procurement of antiacraft and antitank guns, tanks, mortars, and heavy artillery.

In October 1942 the President authorized a total of 7,500,000 enlisted men (i.e., an Army of about 8,200,000) by the end of 1943.52 It became probable that this would remain the permanent ceiling on the strength of the Army. The Director of the Budget wished to defer the attainment of this ceiling to 30 June 1944 limiting the Army for 1943, to 6,500,000 enlisted men.53 War Department obtained confirmation of the authorization of 7,500,000 for 1943.54 It was desired to proceed with a rapid rate of mobilization, even though the need for combatant ground forces was less immediate than before. It was believed that, with maximum over-all strength reached by the end of 1943, more divisions might be organized in 1944, if desired, by transfer of personnel within the Army.55

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Chapter XII

REDUCTION OF THE AGF PROGRAM — THE 100 DIVISION ARMY

The net result of these considerations was the War Department decided to mobilize by the end of 1943 a ground army of 100 divisions. Fourteen divisions with supporting units were cut from the recommendations of the Army Ground Forces. This represented a reduction in planned strength of ground troops of about 450,000 below the War Department allotments of August. The recommendations of the Army Air Forces were met in part, the August allotment being raised from 2,000,000 to 2,200,000 which was 130,000 less than the Air Forces requested.56

In deleting fourteen divisions from the proposed 1943 troop basis the War Department hoped to obtain a manpower reserve, shown to be desirable by experience with mobilization in 1942. In 1942 it had proved impossible to foresee all requirements. Units had been activated which were not in the troop basis and for which therefore no personnel was earmarked in advance; the diversion of manpower to these unanticipated units had produced shortages throughout the Army. It was desired to have, among the men due for induction in 1943, 500,000 who were not required in advance for planned and scheduled units. Hence the number of planned and scheduled units had to be kept down; the most convenient units to delete, given the state of strategic plans, shipping, and the production of equipment, were divisions and other ground combat units. As it turned out, the reserve of some 500,000 obtained by dropping these units was not available for unforeseen requirements in 1943, for before the end of 1942 130,000 were set aside for the Army Air Forces, 150,000 for the Women's Army Corps, and 150,000 for the Army Specialized Training Program. In numbers involved, i.e., in the room provided for them under the fixed ceiling of Army strength, any one of these was the equivalent of ten divisions.

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The approved troop basis of 1943, calling for a 100-division Army with an enlisted strength of 7,533,000, was issued to the major commands of 24 November 1942.58 Enlisted strength proposed for ground combat units was 2,811,000. Breakdown of this strength was regarded at Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, as unbalanced. Antiaircraft strength remained over 600,000, not having been reduced in proportion to reductions in other arms or in anticipation of the growth of American air power. More armored divisions were retained than were believed appropriate by the Army Ground Forces in relation to infantry. The Army Ground Forces desired more tank destroyers, more nondivisional tank battalions (for employment with infantry divisions), more heavy artillery, and more separate infantry regiments, whose use in certain tasks might prevent such dismemberment of infantry divisions as had occurred in 1942.59

It was hoped at Army Ground Forces that additional units of these types might be formed by transfers of personnel made surplus through certain economies which the War Department had ordered.

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Chapter XIII

REDUCTION OF TABLE OF ORGANIZATION AND EQUIPMENT THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST OVERHEAD

To save personnel and equipment the War Department not only reduced the number units in the troop basis but also sought to reduce the size of individual units and overhead establishments within each of the three principal commands. Units were in general controlled by tables of organization and equipment (T/O & E’s), overhead establishment by special allotments in each case. The War Department hoped in January 1943, by reduction both of tables of organization and of overhead allotments, to recover 750,000 men by 1944 and to use this manpower to increase the number of tactical units of the Army by 29 percent, obtaining in 1944, still within the 7,500,000 enlisted ceiling, a force of 120 to 125 divisions with supporting troops.60 Some of the 750,000 men to be saved would come from reduction of individual units in size, and so, while adding to the number of units, would not, increase the number of men in units. Some of the 750,000 were to be used to form units of service, not combat, types. If it be assumed that only 200,000 had been added to the strength of 2,811,000 then carried in the troop basis for ground combat units, the enlisted strength of ground combat units in 1944 would have exceeded 3,000,000.

Tables of organization had been thought for some time to be, too liberal in providing men, vehicles, and accessories not necessary to a unit in the discharge of its mission. On 2 October 1942, as the need for economy became urgent, the War Department directed the three mayor commands to prepare downward revisions of their respective table.61 Compliance of the Army Ground Forces with this directive, described in Study No. 8, resulted in significant economies. The infantry division, for example, even after some of the cuts proposed by the Army Ground Forces were restored by the War Department, was reduced from about 15,500 to about 14,000. Hence for every nine divisions under the old tables ten could be obtained under the new. In some types of nondivisional units the cuts, were proportionately greater.

Overhead consisted for the most part in troops not organized in tactical units of the field force but absorbed in nontactical headquarters, training installations, and Zone of Interior establishments. On 29 January 1943 the three major commands were directed to survey their overhead installations with a view to reduction.62 Hitherto allotments to each AGF overhead installation had been made by the War Department. On 6 February 1943 the War Department undertook to make a bulk allotment for overhead to the Ground Forces, and General McNair received authority to sub-allot personnel, to overhead establishments as he saw fit.63

Overhead in the Army Ground Forces in the spring of 1943, as calculated at that time, consisted of some 80,000, officers and enlisted men.64 It comprised 4 percent of

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the total strength of the Army Ground Forces. It was mainly concentrated in the service schools, the trainer personnel of replacement training centers, and the headquarters of the Armored Force, the Antiaircraft Command, the Replacement and School Command, and other such nontactical establishments. At the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces were about 260 officers and 750 enlisted men. General McNair believed that during 1943, with the training program at its peak, and with the prospect for 1944 of training 20 percent more tactical units than were specified in the 1943 troop basis little if any saving of AGF overhead would be possible. He imposed close restrictions on subordinate commands.65 Overhead was somewhat reduced through reorganization of the Armored Force, the Airborne Command, and the Tank Destroyer Center.66 But it was clear that if the War Department wished to make extensive recoveries from overhead, it would have to look almost entirely to other elements of the Army than the Ground Forces.

In January 1943 the War Department created a Manpower Board under the presidency of Maj. Gen. L. D. Gasser. G-3 of the War Department pointed out to General Gasser various possible sources of manpower savings, including ordnance, signal and transportation troops, port of embarkation, the Alcan Highway, the defense commands, replacement training centers, medical personnel designed to remain permanently in the United States, Zone of Interior Military Police, AAF hotel schools, and headquarters organizations in the Army Air Forces and the Services of Supply.67 General McNair confided to General Gasser his belief that “the Service of Supply was very, very fat, particularly, in headquarters,” and that the Manpower Board, since it would obtain voluntary reductions from no one, would have to institute thorough inquiries of its own.68

So far as the Army Ground Forces were concerned the principal savings obtained in 1943 came through reduction of T/O's of AGF units. With these reductions, a given number of units in the AGF troop basis could be brought to full strength with less manpower than before, or, conversely, a given amount of manpower allotted to the Army Ground Forces in the troop basis would produce a larger number of units. The aim of the reductions, in accord with the desire of both the War Department and the Army Ground Forces, was to place a larger percentage of the Army in combat positions. This aim was not realized. The need for increasing the number of combat units was not urgent in the first part of 1943, since more such units were on hand than were intended for early employment. Paradoxically, while General McNair labored to make possible a larger number of combat units, he was also laying plans to reduce the number of combat units to be mobilized in 1943.

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Section XIV

FORMER DECELERATICN OF THE AGF PROGRAM — THE AGF POOL PLAN OF APRIL 1943

In the winter of 1942-43 divisions moved overseas less rapidly than had been expected. Hence they accumulated in the United States. In January the activation schedule for divisions was slowed down; three divisions planned for activation in May, June, and August were deferred to the last months of 1943.69 On 5 February the War Department foreseeing difficulty in meeting the 1943 troop basis, advised the Army Ground Forces that 10 of the 100 divisions planned for 1943 might have to be deferred to 1944.70

One difficulty was to obtain sufficient equipment for training. Housing facilities also were crowded by retention of troops in the United States. The production both of equipment and of new housing for ground troops had been severely cut when the Joint Chiefs modified the procurement program.71 In March 1943 it was also decided to furnish a French army of 250,000 men in North Africa with weapons of American manufacture.72 The Allies thus obtained a large fighting force in a combat zone without having to ship personnel, but less equipment was available for American forces in training. Delay in providing equipment, observed an AGF staff study, “will continue to be reflected in press comments on the training and ‘inexperience’ of United States troops in action… The training lag, occasioned by delayed distribution of equipment, will cause every intelligent soldier to conclude that his induction was premature and chargeable to poor planning.”73

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At any rate Army Ground Forces was not satisfied with the allowances of equipment and ammunition hitherto available for training. Since early in 1942 divisions while in the United States had received only 50 percent of their authorized equipment in certain critical items, nondivisional units only 20 percent. These partial allowances had been accepted by the Army Ground Forces as unavoidable during the early stages of rapid expansion. But shortcomings shown by American troops in combat in North Africa and the Southwest Pacific were attributed by the Army Ground Forces in large measure to lack of opportunity to train with enough weapons and ammunition.74

On 1 March 1943 the Army Ground Forces proposed revisions of the procurement program to the War Department.75 It was requested that full allowances of equipment be made available to nondivisional units by the fourth month of training and to divisions by the sixth month, so that combined training and maneuvers might be more realistic; and that ammunition allowances be raised to the point where all personnel might qualify in the firing of their individual weapons. It was requested also that procurement be modified to correspond with the plans of the Army Ground Forces to increase, out of personnel saved by reduced T/O’s, the number of certain types of units in the troop basis believed necessary to achieve balanced forces. These were chiefly heavy and medium artillery, tank battalion, nondivisional infantry, engineers, and tank destroyer and ordnance maintenance units.

Negative replies were received to these proposals.76 The War Department held that no general change of the procurement program was practicable in the near future. Distribution of equipment as it left the production lines was in any case controlled by the Munitions Assignment Board. The War Department preferred that personnel saved by reduction of T/O’s should revert to the War Department reserve pool. This meant that it should be the War Department, rather than the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces, which decided what units should be added to the troop basis to achieve a proper balance of forces. Staff officers of the War Department expressed doubt as to need of increases of heavy artillery in view of development of the bomber. Before authorizing additional tank battalions, the War Department wished to see the results of the reorganization of the armored divisions then under consideration.77

It was concluded at AGF headquarters that the most promising way to obtain the quantity of equipment judged necessary for units in training was to train fewer units in 1943.

Supply of manpower had also to be considered. By March 1943 the shortages which afflicted the Army Ground Forces in 1942 had been overcome. Units were generally at full strength, and it was desired to keep them so; but at any moment the activation of new units, if not carefully checked against anticipated inflow of men, might again produce shortages of manpower with their ruinous effects on training. Recalling the crisis of the preceding September, the Deputy Chief of Staff, AGF, on 11 February issued instructions that the staff must watch activation “like a hawk.”78

One danger was to receive too few men in proportion to the number of units activated. Another was to receive too many men and have too in any unit with respect to the dates at which they could be shipped. An officer of the War Department General Staff observed unofficially that the Army must reach maximum strength during 1943 for fear that, if it waited longer, the Navy would get the men first. The Chief of Staff, AGF, thought it better to take a chance on obtaining manpower when needed:

“War needs of an Army we should be able to defend. We could not defend a situation where we had too many men away from other essential pursuits, merely because we were afraid the Navy or other agencies would gobble them up—I believe in a reserve, but I believe that you could well keep that reserve in members (in civilian life) and not actually induct the men into the service until shipping indicates that we will be able to use them when they are trained.”79

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All these ideas came together in a proposal made by General McNair to the War Department on 14 April 1943 for a general revision of mobilization procedures in the Ground Forces. The aim was to control the activation schedule by relating it more closely to shipping capacities, receipt of equipment and manpower, time necessary for training and types of units most immediately needed for a balanced mobilization.

In this plan the Army Ground Forces were considered to be a pool of troops mobilized in the United States and awaiting employment in overseas operations. The size of the pool was to be 1,500,000 (the approximate strength of AGF tactical units at this time) and was to be maintained continuously at this level until some future date when the War Department, with the transfer of troops to overseas theaters and the attainment of mobilization objectives, would allow the level of the pool in the United States to decline. Meanwhile activation of new units should be suspended when the pool rose to 10 percent above its prescribed level. To activate units beyond this point, explained General McNair, would make necessary more housing construction, tie up manpower unproductively, spread equipment for training too thin among activated units, and result in having units go stale from remaining in the United States after the conclusion of their training. New units should therefore be activated only as old units were shipped. If shipments were less rapid than expected, activations would be slower. Units chosen for activation should be not necessarily those set up in the initial 1943 troop basis but those of the types judged necessary by the Army Ground Forces to obtain a proper balance of forces.

To obtain the desired balance within a total of 1,500,000 the plan included recommendations, for each type of unit in the Army Ground Forces, of the exact number which should be added to or deleted from the existing troop basis of 1943. (See Study No. 3) Units dropped from the 1943 program might be activated, if desired, in 1944. The chief readjustments recommended were to drop 5 infantry and 4 armored divisions, adding 8 light divisions in their place, and to drop 38 tank destroyer and 118 antiaircraft battalions, adding 21 tank battalions and 32 battalions of heavy and medium artillery, together with certain engineer, signal, and quartermaster units of types used in close support of combat forces, but which remained scarce in spite of the steady growth of the service branches. The total inductions needed to maintain a 1,500,000 pool at the most favorable shipping rate would be 102,000 less than the existing troop basis called for.

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Section XV

REVISION OF THE MILITARY PROGRAM — THE 90 DIVISION ARMY

The War Department took no direct action on this plan. Instead, a Committee on the Revision of the Military Program was appointed in the War Department General Staff to consider, among other matters, the danger of overmobilization. Meanwhile the Army Ground Forces continued to activate units under the existing troop basis. On 21 April, calling attention to the pool plan submitted on the 14th and anticipating difficulties in the receipt of personnel, the Army Ground Forces requested permission to defer the infantry division scheduled for activation in August. The War Department replied that no action would be taken on the AGF pool plan for over a month and that meanwhile the pre-activation process for the August division should be launched. The Chief of Staff, AGF, fearing a repetition of the summary of 1943 of the personnel crisis of 1942, took care to place this decision of the War Department in the record.81 On 14 May the War Department announced that the pool plan would probably be approved “in principle,” and that inductees would in the long run suffice to fill AGF units.82 In June 1943 shortages began to reappear.83 (See Table IV.)

The Committee on the Revision of the Military Program reported early in June. Since a year before, when the Operations Division of the War Department had hoped for 140 divisions by the end of 1943, the strategical picture had greatly brightened. The German advance in Russia had been checked and bombing of Germany from Great Britain was assuming larger proportions. It was decided to reduce the strength authorized the

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Army by the end of 1943 from seven-and-a-half to seven million enlisted men. Ultimate size of the Army was to be determined later. “This will depend, to a large extent,” observed the Committee, “on the outcome of the Russo-German operations this summer and the effectiveness of the Combined-Bomber Offensive, the trends for which should be sufficiently apparent by early September to warrant a decision.84

The Committee sought to obtain the 500,000 reduction almost entirely by deletion of combat ground troops from the troop basis. It recommended the following change in allotments:85

TROOP BASIS AS OF 31 DECEMBER 1943

 Enlisted Strength
    

Category

Former Allotment
New Allotment
Reduction
  

Air Forces and Services

2,200,000
2,200,000
0
  

Divisions

1,422,918
1,067,082
355,836
  

Non-div Combat Units

1,409,167
1,308,248
100,919
  

Non-div Service Units

1,153,275
1,196,981
43,706 
(increase) 

Overhead-U.S.

503,000
458,000
45,000
  

Overhead-Overseas

60,000
70,000
10,000 
(increase)

Trainees in Replacement Training Centers

316,000
288,000
28,000
  

Trainees in Officer Candidate Schools

42,000
25,000
17,000
  

Trainees in Army College Program

150,000
150,000
0
  

Office of Strategic Services

5,000
5,000
0
  

Unassigned

271,640
235,689
35,951
  

Total

7,533,000
7,004,000
529,000
  

It was proposed that 12 divisions be deleted from the 1943 program, leaving 88 to be mobilized. Over 350,000 men were to be taken from divisional strength, reducing divisional strength about 25 percent, an economy made possible in part by the deletion of 12 divisions, in part by the reduction of divisional tables of organization. Whether the 12 divisions should be restored to the troop basis in 1944 was to be decided later. From “combat support” (nondivisional combat units) only 100,000 were to be taken. The proportion of combat support to divisions was to be increased, and a larger allotment for heavy artillery and for tank battalions, as desired by General McNair, was to be included. In antiaircraft artillery the committed proposed no significant reductions. Allotment for service troops continued to grow. The gross number of men per division (not counting Air Forces) was about 55,000.

General McNair was willing enough to check the growth of the Ground Forces, though his own proposals had been less drastic, but he viewed with disfavor an economy in which all cuts were applied to combat troops. “... the proposed distribution of manpower,” he wrote to the War Department, “indicates a serious condition which warrants radical corrective action to effect the assignment of a much greater proportion of the manpower to units designed for offensive combat.”86 He noted that of ground forces intended for use against the enemy (totaling 3,642,311 men) only 29 percent was in divisions, whereas 36 percent was in combat support, 33 percent in service support, and 29 percent in theater overhead. He observed that almost half the combat support was antiaircraft artillery, “even though a strong air force is provided to combat the hostile air forces,” and that the service support did “not include essential field service units in sufficient numbers for the support of 88 divisions,” being predominantly in communications zone troops. He recommended a complete reorientation of the troop basis in the remainder of 1943 and in 1944 to provide a larger ratio of offensive combat troops, a cut of

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180,000 in antiaircraft artillery, and the taking of measures, through economy of service troops in inactive theaters and in purely Zone-of-Interior functions, to assure that enough medical, ordnance, signal, and quartermaster units would be at hand to maintain the combat troops, most of which were still in the United States.

On 1 July 1943 the War Department issued a new approved troop basis for 1943. It provided for 88 divisions and 7,004,000 enlisted men, but authorized somewhat more manpower to combat support and somewhat less to service support than the Committee had originally proposed. Two provisional light divisions were authorized. These soon received a permanent status. The new troop basis therefore projected, for 1943, a “90-Division Army.”

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Section XVI

END OF EXPANSION OF GROUND FORCES

It proved in the long run that expansion of AGF tactical forces virtually terminated in the middle of 1943. The activation of 4 divisions in July and of 2 in August fulfilled the 90-division program. Thereafter no new divisions were organized and one, the 2d Cavalry Division, colored, was inactivated overseas. Nondivisional units of AGF type continued to be activated through 1944, especially service units, but also certain types of combat units in large numbers, notably heavy artillery and combat engineers. But these activations were offset by inactivation of other units, or by decision not to activate units as planned. Individual AGF units required less manpower after the middle of 1943 than previously, because of reduction in tables of organization. New units were added without increase of combined unit strength. When the war ended in Europe, T/O strength of all AGF-type units (2,502,000 enlisted men on 31 March 1945) was about the same as for all AGF-type units already mobilized on 30 June 1943 (2,471,000 enlisted men on that date). (See Study No.3) Combined strength of all AGF units of combat types only, in March 1945, was hardly greater than that of combat units already mobilized on 31 December 1942, although many combat units were added after 1942. (See Tables V and VI.)

It is important to keep in mind that, while the Army as a whole showed a net growth of almost 3,000,000 in 1943 and 1944 and while the combatant arms, as arms, continued to expand, the combined strength of combat units (other than Air Force) hardly grew after 1942, and the combined strength of all AGF units, including service units, hardly grew after the middle of 1943.

It was not intended in July 1943 that expansion of AGF unit strength should cease. The troop basis of 1 July 1943 allotted an enlisted strength of 2,823,000 for all AGF units, both combat and service, by 31 December 1943. Cut from the corresponding allotment of 3,157,000 in the troop basis of November 1942, the new figure represented a troop basis reduction of 334,000. But since only 2,471,000 were as yet mobilized on 30 June, the figure of 2,823,000 called for an increase of 352,000 in AGF units in the last six months of 1943. It has just been stated that AGF units were at about the same T/O strength in March 1945 as in June 1943. Hence in the long run AGF units not only suffered a troop basis reduction of 334,000 on 1 July 1943, but in net result failed to receive the increment of 352,000 which even the reduced troop basis of 1 July 1943 provided.

Difficulty in meeting the 1 July troop basis was not long in revealing itself. Inductions did not meet stated requirements. The 42d Division, activated in July, waited until September to receive enough personnel to begin basic training. The 65th Division, activated in August (the last infantry division to be activated), waited until January 1944 for the same purpose.87 It was this division whose activation the Army Ground Forces in the preceding April had proposed to defer. In general, Ground Force units in the United States, after a brief period at full strength in the spring of 1943, suffered from personnel shortages until August 1944, despite continuing deletion of units from the mobilization program. (See Table IV.)

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On 21 September 1943, having been short-shipped 26,710 men from reception centers in August, the Army Ground Forces described its situation to the War Department.88 Within the last few weeks, it was pointed out, 10,817 men had been taken from infantry divisions as overseas replacements. Wholesale losses were occurring under liberal discharge policies recently adopted. Approximately 55,000 men had recently been transferred from the Ground Forces to the Army Specialized Training Program in the colleges. Some 15,000 had been transferred to the Air Forces as aviation cadets in three months. Hence shortages were spreading; newly activated units were short 75,000; even units alerted for overseas movement were understrength. One expected source of personnel, the surpluses left by application of reduced tables of organization, would yield relatively little, because with units short under the old tables little surplus would be created by reorganization under the new tables. The Army Ground Forces therefore requested full shipment of newly inducted men. The War Department replied that some of the causes of shortage were temporary (as indeed they were, though new temporary causes seemed always to be appearing), and announced that the situation would soon be relieved by a reissue of the troop basis, in which the number of units to be mobilized by the Ground Forces would again be cut.89

It had been planned in June to re-examine the mobilization program in September, after evaluation of the bomber offensive and the Russian summer campaign. A new troop basis was issued as of 4 October, again projecting the Army to 31 December 1943. Strength of combat-type units was cut by 190,000, AGF service units being somewhat increased. Despite the efforts of the Operations Division (OPD) War Department General Staff, to impose a ceiling on service units,90 about 125,000 enlisted men were added to forces of this type, of whom only 25,000 were for AGF service units designed for close association with combat troops. The fears felt at AGF headquarters came true; largely for want of service troops the Desert Training Center and the maneuver areas were gradually shut down in the winter of 1943-1944, to the considerable detriment of advanced training of combat troops.

The troop basis of 4 October slashed the tank destroyer program and applied to the antiaircraft program the major amputation desired by General McNair. Units of these two arms were inactivated and their personnel converted to other branches, in which they were used not so much to form new units as to fill shortages in units in the United States or to furnish replacements for units overseas. The artillery objective, raised in the troop basis of 1 July, was now somewhat lowered; but activated of field artillery battalions had to be continued to meet even this more moderate aim, so small had been the artillery program in the earlier stages of mobilization. The combat engineer program was also cut. The program of 90 divisions for 1943 remained unchanged, all reductions in combat troops coming in nondivisional units, whose projected strength, per division, fell from about 15,270 in the troop basis of 1 July to about 13,000 in the troop basis of 4 October.

In summary, the 4 October troop basis, the final form of the troop basis for 1943, dealt with the manpower shortage by reducing the requirement for ground combat troops. Where on 24 November 1942 it had been planned to have 2,811,000 enlisted men in ground combat units by the end of 1943, on 4 October 1943 it was planned to have only 2,284,000. This figure was substantially realized. T/O enlisted strength of ground combat units active on 31 December 1943 was 2,282,000. Actual strength was less, because of continuing shortages. T/O strength was further reduced in 1944 by inactivations.

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Section XVII

THE 1944 TROOP BASIS — FINALITY of THE 90-DIVISION ARMY

When the detailed drafting of a troop basis for 1944 took place in the later months of 1943 the role of Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, in troop basis planning was very much diminished. During 1943 the overseas theaters had rapidly grown, especially the North African Theater of Operations, the European Theater of Operations, and the

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Southwest Pacific Area. The commanding generals of these theaters estimated the size and composition of forces necessary for their respective missions. The Operations Division of the War Department, coordinating the activities of the theaters, mediating the requests of the theaters to the War Department, and scheduling the shipment of troops to theater commanders, announced operational requirements as of successive future dates. G-3 of the War Department, in charge of drafting the troop basis, followed chiefly the expressed desires of the Operations Division. The Army Ground Forces was simply requested in the fall of 1943 to estimate what troops it would need in 1944 for training overhead in the Zone of Interior. These overhead troops, plus Ground Force units called for by OPD, plus replacements as determined by the War Department, constituted the Ground Force portion of the 1944 troop basis. The role of Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, was more than ever purely advisory.91

At the end of 1943 the War Department considered activating 15 new divisions in 1944 and reducing the allotment to the Army Air Forces to a figure in the neighborhood of 1,850,000 enlisted men. This would give a total of 105 divisions in place of the 120 or 125 which had been estimated early in 1943 (before total enlisted strength was cut from 7,500,000 to 7,000,000) as attainable in 1944. But the Air Forces at this time were developing their program for very long range bombers (B-29’s). It was deemed impossible to reduce the Air Force allotment or to find the personnel for the new program by economies or conversions within Air Force organizations. To provide manpower for the B-29 program and for certain lesser needs of the War Department, including continuation of the Army College program on a reduced basis and allowances for rotation of personnel between overseas stations and the United States, the idea of adding 15 divisions in 1944 was abandoned. The ground Army would remain at 90 divisions.92

In nondivisional units the first tentative proposals of the War Department for the 1944 Army contemplated no extensive changes from the plans for 1943, except that more combat engineers and more artillery of the lighter calibers were to be organized, certain seacoast artillery units inactivated, and an additional 125,000 enlisted man allotted to service units. It was believed at Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, that both overseas commanders and the Operations Division, in view of the nature of ground operations hitherto engaged in by American forces, underestimated the amount of heavy artillery required in a major offensive.93 For over a year the Army Ground Forces had urged more heavy and medium artillery. The War Department now modified its tentative proposals for 1944 by adding 30 battalions of heavy artillery and 19 of medium, deleting 35 nondivisional light artillery battalions. Further reductions in antiaircraft artillery were also incorporated, in consequence of recommendations of the Army Ground Forces.

[19]

Section XVIII

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1944 TROOP BASIS

The 1944 Troop basis was published under date of 15 January 1944. It called for an Army of 6,955,000 enlisted men, slightly reduced from the earlier figure of 7,004,000 to allow for passage of enlisted men into the warrant officer and commissioned grades. With officers, who were henceforth included in the troop basis, the authorized strength of the Army aggregated 7,700,000. This strength was attained by April 1944. But while the Army as a whole was now at its planned ultimate strength, shortages continued to exist in various components. The Army therefore continued to grow. Actual strength reached 8,000,000 by July 1944 and was approaching 8,300,000 at the time of victory in Europe in May 1945. The War Department, while obtaining special authorization to carry this overstrength, attempted through 1944 to cut back the strength of the Army to the 7,700,000 authorized in the troop basis. With the continuance of war in Europe this idea was given up. In May 1945 the troop basis was raised to 8,290,993. Thus actual strength was finally covered with a troop basis authorization. This figure became the point of departure for reductions subsequent to victory in Europe, not treated in the present study.

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It was doubted from the beginning whether the troop basis of January 1944 could be implemented—i.e., whether actual needs could be met within the 7,700,000 ceiling. The main reason was that the troop basis made inadequate allowance far the “pipeline” men in hospitals, in replacement centers and depots, in reassignment centers, in transit or on furlough under policies of rotation between the United States and overseas stations. “I doubt,” wrote General McNair in February 1944,” that the troop basis can be balanced because there is an insufficient allowance for pipelipe—the invisible horde of people going here and there but seemingly never arriving.”94 With more men always in the, pipeline than the troop basis allowed for, men were not available, within the 7,700,000, ceiling, for anticipated requirements. These requirements were considerable.

Even after the idea of adding fifteen divisions was abandoned, the troop basis of 15 January 1944 called for new units requiring half-a-million men in the three major forces. The Army Ground Forces required a net increase of about 150,000 for new units—chiefly AGF service units, combat engineers, and heavy artillery. For some of these units the Army Ground Forces had been wholly unable to plan. When the troop basis of 15 January 1944 was delivered at the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces on 27 January it was found to contain units on which no previous information had been received, though they were needed for the invasion of France in the coming June, and now scheduled for activation by the Army Ground Forces in February and needed for the invasion of France that took place the following June. Certain activations scheduled for 1943 but deferred because of shortages in receipt of personnel also remained to be carried out in 1944. Some old units were also short; divisions on the Six Months List were short almost 10,000 infantrymen; divisions not on the Six Months List were short 32,500; nondivisional engineers were short 12,000. Heavy losses overseas in 1944 were expected, for which replacements had to be made ready.95

In addition, further demands on the troop basis, not provided for in January, developed in 1944. Operations at Cassino, Italy, having shown the value of heavy cannon in comparison with bombers, the artillery program was again increased in May 1944 by 34 heavy battalions, chiefly of 8-inch and 240-mm howitzers.96 This made a total of 143 battalions of heavy artillery. On 30 September 1942 the Army Ground Forces had recommended 101 for the end of 1943, but only 54 had been approved, and as late as 1 January 1944 only 61 were in fact active, some of them in very early stages of training. Over 100 artillery battalions of calibres above 105-mm were activated in 1944. Requirements for infantry replacements in 1944 as in 1943, also exceeded all advance provisions made by the War Department.

Since the troop basis of January 1944 authorized no increase in the strength of the Army over that authorized for 1943 (though not attained until April 1944) and since the War Department did not intend to exceed this authorization, it was desired that manpower for new requirements in 1944 should be obtained by internal distribution within the Army. Since 1942 the War Department had looked forward to a time when personnel could be redistributed to increase tactical forces. Measures of economy initiated in the winter of 1942-43, including the establishment of the War Department Manpower Board, have been noted above. It had been hoped that the desired readjustment, within a fixed ceiling, might occur in 1944.

Plans for economy were again stated you 20 January 1944, in a memorandum of G-3 for the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, circulated in photostat to the headquarters of the Army Ground Forces.97 Proposed economies—included “inactivation of units rendered surplus by the changing pattern of the war” (meaning chiefly antiaircraft and tank destroyer units so far as the Army Ground Forces was concerned), “reduction in Zone of Interior activities due to decrease in the training load” (such activities were relatively small in AGF), and “the exercise of drastic economy in the use of manpower both in the United States and overseas.” It was stated that considerable transfer of personnel between the major commands in the United States would be necessary, with a net balance of transfers

[20]

from the Air Forces to the Ground and Service Forces. The War Department Manpower Board was to extend its investigations to overseas theaters.

[21]

Section XIX

ECONOMIES AND CONVERSIONS IN 1944

Very great economies were in fact accomplished in 1944. Certain luxuries of an earlier day, or installations once useful but now surplus, were stringently curtailed. Many kinds of establishments set up for other purposes tended to liquefy into the replacement stream, thus providing either combat replacements for old units or filler replacement for new units due for activation.

The Army Specialized Training Program, which held almost 150,000 partly trained troops on college campuses, was virtually dissolved. About 73,000 of its students were transferred to the Army Ground Forces.98 Some 24,000 surplus aviation cadets were reassigned from the Air Forces to the Ground Forces in the spring of 1944.99 The flow into the Ground Forces from these two sources did not wholly constitute a quantitative gain in manpower, since the Ground Forces surrendered some 16,000 low-calibre personnel in return, the aim being to improve the quality of combat soldiers. (See Study No. 5) At the end of 1944 the War Department ordered the transfer to the Army Ground Forces, without exchange, of 25,000 men from the Service Forces and 75,000 from the Air Forces.

In January 1944 the enlisted overstrength authorized at the end of 1942 (16 percent over T/O strengths) was abolished, having in any case become less necessary with the end of expansion, which meant that units were no longer subject to the older forms of attrition.100 In May 1944 all tables of organization except for infantry rifle companies and cavalry rifle troops were reduced by removal of 50 percent of basic privates.101 These two measures left surpluses in units from which men could be converted to new needs, or at least lowered the claims of non-rifle units for personnel.102

Volunteers for infantry were called for from other branches. Under this program, launched in June 1944, in addition to 66,000 parachute volunteers, 25,000 volunteers were obtained by the following February, the 25,000 were enough for the infantry of three divisions. Volunteers came mostly from other arms in the Ground Forces.103

Many coast artillery units were converted to heavy field artillery. Nondivisional infantry regiments were dissolved into the replacement stream. Tank destroyer battalions were inactivated as prescribed in the January 1944 troop basis. Antiaircraft battalions were inactivated at a more rapid rate than the January troop basis envisaged. It now proved fortunate that these two arms had been so extensively built up, for they constituted storehouses of soldiers who could be used for other purposes with only a little retraining and who otherwise would not have been available in 1944. By the end of 1944 antiaircraft and tank destroyer battalions were less than half as numerous as had been anticipated in the troop basis of November 1942.

Service troops were saved by consolidation, closing, or reduction to a caretaker status of posts no longer required as tactical forces moved overseas. Station complements were reduced, tactical units of the Army Ground Forces, while still in the United States, taking over post housekeeping duties from which in the early period of mobilization, to speed up their training, they had been exempted.104

Despite these very real economies the Ground and Service Forces experienced great difficulty in meeting the activation program in 1944. So many men were needed for replacements or disappeared into the pipeline that although hundreds of thousands were recovered by economy, and although the Army as a whole was almost 300,000 over its troop basis strength by July 1944 men were not available to meet the troop basis of the preceding January. Troop basis requirements were revised downward. Some Ground Force

[21]

units were cancelled. Between cancellation of planned activations and inactivation of units already mobilized the total strength allotted to tactical units of the Army Ground Forces declined steadily through 1944. That is to say, activation of new units in 1944—AGF service units, combat engineers, and heavy artillery—required far less personnel than did the units which were inactivated or canceled. Troop basis strength of combat-type units only, in the Army Ground Forces, fell from 2,282,000 to 2,041,000 enlisted men between l January 1944 and 31 March 1945.

With such difficulty in meeting the troop basis and with the Army as a whole nevertheless 300,000 over troop-basis strength, it was evident that the trouble was maldistribution and that concealed overstrengths must be present somewhere in the Army. The problem was complicated by methods of personnel accounting which were inadequate to the extreme complexity of the subject. During 1944 the War Department devised improved procedures for keeping current record of both actual and authorized strengths of each theater and of each of the three major commands. But the use of troop basis strengths, reported actual strengths, and reported authorized strengths as distinguished from the troop basis, all applying to an Army constantly fluctuating in size, spread over the globe, and subject to continual battle losses, presented a problem defying the most patient analysis: the problem was complicated further by the breakdown of the component branches into T/O units, replacements, and overhead, which could be defined or distinguished only with difficulty.

Searching for hidden overstrengths, the War Department discovered by September 1944 that overseas theaters were carrying overstrengths of more than 50,000 in their T/O units, especially divisions and other combat organizations, and, in addition, reserves of replacements more than 100,000 in excess of War Department authorizations. These overstrengths, while adding to the immediate combat power of the theaters which enjoyed them, were compensated for by corresponding understrengths in units and replacements in United States and therefore compromised the ability of the War Department to reinforce the theaters at future dates. Broadly speaking, a theater which exceeded its authorization in combat troops was either depriving another theater of combat troops at the time or robbing itself as of a future date—except in so far as additional combat troops might be formed from noncombat organizations. But it was found that overhead was also overexpanded. “Overhead” meant troops who were neither in tactical headquarters (army, corps, etc.) nor in combat units, T/O service units, or replacement pools. Overhead in the European Theater of Operations, authorized 93,227 men, actually absorbed 114,137. Overhead in the United States, authorized 1,272,323 men, actually absorbed 1,297,688. Gross overstrength in overhead throughout the Army was almost 50,000.105

Attempts to economize on overhead in the United States met with limited success. Overhead could be only partly reduced as troops moved overseas. Zone-of-Interior overhead, composed of officers and men in jobs which would never take them overseas, fell about 15 percent between 30 June 1943, roughly the date at which troops in the United States were at their maximum, and 31 March 1945, at which date the proportion of the Army left in the United States was approaching the minimum. Figures were as follows:106

ZONE OF INTERIOR MILITARY PERSONNEL

 30 June 

1943

31 March 

1945

Number 

Reduced

Percent Reduced

Army Ground Forces

169,000
140,000
29,000
17.2

Army Air Forces

831,000
710,000
121,000
14.6

Army Service Forces

547,000
444,000
103,000
18.8

War Dept. Activities

13,000
23,000
10,000 (added)
76.9(added)

Total

1,560,000
1,317,000
243,000
15.6

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Over 200,000 were thus recovered for overseas assignment, whether for tactical forces, replacements, or overseas overhead; but recovery was rather slow, for reduction in Air Force Zone of Interior personnel, which comprised over half the Zone of Interior personnel in the Army, did not reach substantial proportions until the last months of 1944.

On 14 January 1944 the War Department ordered that enlisted men assigned to Zone of Interior jobs should in general be those not qualified for overseas service.107 These included men disqualified by age or physical condition, or who had already served overseas. In February 1944 there were about 600,000 enlisted men qualified for overseas duty in Zone-of-Interior Jobs. About 400,000 were in the Air Forces, 200,000 in the Ground and Service Forces. The latter were rapidly transferred to other positions during 1944. The 400,000 in the Air Forces remained virtually untouched until October 1944. At that time the prolongation of the war in Europe added to the drive to get able-bodied men overseas. The Air Force figure fell to 262,000, but the reduction represented for the most part transfer of physically qualified men to the category, of “critical specialists,” in which they became temporarily disqualified for overseas duty, and hence remained at their Zone-of-Interior jobs. Figures were as follows:108

MEN QUALIFIED FOR IMMEDIATE OVERSEAS DUTY BUT ASSIGNED TO ZONE-OF-INTERIOR JOBS

 29 Feb 44
30 Nov 44

Army Ground Forces

41,705
6,557

Army Air Forces

397,954
262,345

Army Service Forces

158,036
4,059

War Dept. Activities

389
0 (?)

Total

598,084
272,961

On 30 June 1944, during the most critical days of the Normandy beachhead, the number of enlisted men in the United States, qualified for overseas duty but assigned to Zone of Interior jobs, exceeded the number of enlisted infantrymen in the European and Mediterranean theaters. It exceeded the number of Air Corps personnel, enlisted and commissioned, in the two theaters. It was 92 percent as large as the number of enlisted men in the infantry, armored and tank destroyer forces, cavalry, field artillery, coast artillery, and antiaircraft artillery in the European theater.109 Many combat soldiers in the theaters were physically inferior to men scheduled to remain at home. This situation was not one which the Army Ground Forces approved, but it was difficult for the War Department to correct it in 1944. Since the early days of mobilization many prime physical specimens had been trained as technicians in Zone-of-Interior assignments. They now occupied key positions. Under pressure of combat in 1944 the Ground and Service Forces, but not the Air Forces, generally replaced these men with men not qualified for overseas service or who had already served overseas.

Meanwhile the War Department urged economy on overseas commanders. Attempts in this this direction since 1942 had not been very successful. In April 1944 representatives of overseas theaters attended a conference in Washington. The Deputy Chief of Staff declared that in the past the War Department had liberally granted the requests of the theaters but that these requests had frequently been immoderate. He said that use of communications zone troops had been extravagant and that henceforth waste in one theater would mean insufficiency in another. He urged the theaters to practice the same economies—inactivation, conversion, retraining—that were in progress in the United States.110

It became increasingly difficult for the Zone of the Interior to meet the replacement needs of the theaters. The situation was recognized as critical before the German

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breakthrough in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944. Officers of the War Department General Staff and Headquarters, Army Ground Forces, met in conferences on 7 December.111 Battle losses in the European theater alone were running to 3,000 a day, or 90,000 a month, while the Army Ground Forces was receiving only 53,000 a month from reception centers. Not all these were physically fit for training as combat replacements. To raise the induction rate would raise the proportion of physically unfit. Other sources of economy were vanishing; it was stated at the conference that the Ground Forces had reached the limit of inactivation, the Service Forces in the United States were drained of physically high-grade personnel, and the Air Forces, if called on to supply more men for retraining as infantry, would have to furnish Air Force specialists in the grade of sergeant. The Chief of Staff, Army Ground Forces, was asked point-blank by G-3 of the War Department whether he believed that the War Department was providing sufficient replacements to carry on the war. He replied that he did not, and recommended that capacity of AGF replacement training centers be raised by 160,000 infantrymen, adding that the Ground Forces, even with reduced overhead, could find means to conduct their training. It was decided that ASF and AAF must meet their quotas for transfers, that the AAF quota might have to be raised, that steps should betaken to raise the induction rate, and that if necessary the replacement training program should be cut to fifteen weeks.

The German counterattack of 16 December, suddenly subjecting American troops to still higher losses, therefore produced a downright emergency. The G-1 of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) flew to Washington. The last divisions were rushed to Europe and were hence not available to supply replacements. The War Department insisted that the Zone of Interior was incapable of meeting the full requirements of ETO for replacements, and that the theater must greatly accelerate its own program of conversion and retraining. The bulk of the Army, it was pointed out, was now overseas, mostly in Europe; and such manpower resources as the Army had within itself were now in the theaters, especially in the European Theater of Operations. It was agreed that henceforth the War Department should simply announce to each theater the number of replacements to be expected from the United States and that each theater must meet all requirements above this number by redistribution of its own strength. By sending men below desired physical standards, men with only 15 weeks training (or with only 6 weeks retraining in infantry), and men in the higher enlisted grades beyond the normal proportion, and by cutting the allocation of replacements to the Southwest Pacific, the War Department was able, on 8 January 1945, to assure the European theater that about 56,000 replacements a month (85 percent Infantry) would arrive from the Zone of the Interior from February to June. Only 45,000 a month had been allocated to ETO before the emergency of December.112

In January 1945 Lt. Gen. Ben Lear, who had succeeded General McNair in command of the Army Ground Forces, was transferred to the European Theater to supervise the combing of physically qualified personnel from rear-area establishments and their retraining as combat troops, principally infantry riflemen. General Lear, since the time of his command of the Second Army, had urged the assignment of the physically fit to combat positions and the physically less fit to headquarters, service, and overhead installations. It was now his task, by conversion and retraining in Europe, to fill the gap in manpower between what the depleted Zone of Interior could supply and what the units at the front actually needed.

[24]

Section XX

THE STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN THE 90-DIVISION ARMY — THE REPLACEMENT PROBLEM

It has been stated above that T/O strength of AGF units in March 1945 was scarcely greater than in June 1943. The fact is borne out by Table V, which shows that ground combat units grew very little after December 1942. At the same time the number of men in the ground arms increased, both through inductions and through conversion and retrain as described above. This increase is evident in Table III and its annex which show that the ground arms grew more rapidly in 1944 and in the first quarter of 1945 than did other

[24]

elements in the Army. Increase in personnel, without increase in units, indicates that most men added to the ground arms after the middle of 1943 went into the “pipeline.” The increase of strength by arm for the most part represented, not men in units, but men who had been in units and were now in hospitals, and men who were scheduled to take their places in units, but were currently at some point in the replacement stream.

In other words, the main problem with respect to Ground Forces after the close of 1943 was not to activate new units, but to preserve the units already active at the end of 1943, and in particular to hold together the 90 divisions already mobilized. One of these, the 2nd Cavalry Division (Negro), was inactivated immediately after reaching its overseas station in 1944. But use of this division as a combat organization had hardly been expected. In effect, the remaining 89 divisions (which include two Negro infantry divisions) represented the planned divisional strength of the Army. The problem was to hold together an Army of 89 divisions.

By the inactivations, conversions, and retraining described above, and by assigning the majority of newly inducted men to AGF replacement training centers in 1944 and 1945, the War Department succeeded in holding the 89-division Army together and avoided repeating the experience of 1918, when almost a third of the divisions then activated became hardly more than paper organizations. But the process was a complex one, in which some divisions in the United States were almost lost. The personnel needed by overseas units was not provided simply from replacement centers or from special installations for reconversion training but to a large extent from units destined soon to enter combat themselves. Some divisions virtually went out of existence as combat organizations (as in 1918), only to be rebuilt at the latest possible moment.

The last divisions had hardly been activated, in August 1943, when a crisis developed in the replacement system. The replacement problem is dealt with in Studies Nos. 7 and 32 of the present series. Only its effects on mobilized units are considered here. The replacement crisis was essentially an infantry crisis. Infantry organized in divisions of the various types, by which virtually all infantry fighting was done, numbered about 700,000 officers and men, well under a tenth of the strength of the fully mobilized Army. The figure changed a little after the close of 1943. But to maintain 700,000 officers and men in divisional infantry units, the strength of infantry as an arm rose to 1,800,000 by April 1945.

With the opening of operations in Sicily in July 1943 and the commitment of ground forces to battle in increasing numbers thereafter, a demand rose for replacements in the infantry, which suffered most of the casualties, far beyond the capacity of infantry replacement training centers to produce. Nondivisional infantry regiments were depleted and inactivated, their personnel sent as replacements to the Mediterranean. Divisions also were tapped. By January 1944 approximately 25,000 men had been taken from infantry divisions in the Army Ground Forces not earmarked for early shipment.113 These divisions in January were on the average 2,000 understrength in their infantry elements. As each division was earmarked in its turn, it had to be brought to T/O strength by transfer of trained personnel from divisions of lower priority. The divisions of lowest priority, generally those most recently activated, chronically short or partly refilled with men direct from reception centers, could with difficulty proceed beyond basic training. The troubles of 1942 were repeated at the beginning of 1944.

The first weeks of 1944 were a time of extreme difficulty in replacement planning. On 4 January General McNair, reviewing the shortages in infantry divisions, expressed a fear that one or more divisions might have to be broken up.114 On 12 January the War Department, anticipating the invasion of France, announced that, within two months in the early summer, ETO would require 50,000 more infantry and field artillery replacements than replacement training centers could produce.115 The Army Ground Forces was directed to plan accordingly, with minimum disruption of units in the United States, minimum delay

[25]

in activation of new units, and reduction of replacement training if necessary to thirteen weeks. On 19 January substantially the reverse policy prevailed: The Army Ground Forces was directed to submit a plan by which overseas combat replacements should be men with at least nine months training, taken from all units in the Army Ground Forces not due for early shipment.116 This directive reflected the school of thought which had long believed seventeen weeks of training insufficient to produce a good replacement. In addition, it was thought undesirable to send into combat men with only seventeen weeks of training at a replacement center, and who in many cases were 18-year-olds or “Pre-Pearl Harbor fathers,” while other men who had been two or three years in the Army remained in units in the United States—some of which, in an optimistic view, might never be required in battle. The justice of this policy can hardly be disputed. Its inconvenience was equally great. The situation was an awkward one, and arose from postponement of invasion plans, as a result of which units had been mobilized longer than necessary before their dates of commitment.

On 25 January General McNair, in a carefully documented reply to the War Department, showed that it was mathematically impossible to hold enough divisions in the United States to give nine months training to the required number of replacements and at the same time to ship divisions overseas on the schedule laid down for 1944. Since 80 percent of replacements had to be infantry, it was chiefly infantry divisions that were affected. All but nine infantry divisions were due for shipment by the end of 1944. To give nine months training, including a period within divisions, to the number of replacements estimated by the War Department as needed in 1944 would tie up 16 divisions in the United States. For the number of replacements estimated as necessary by the Army Ground Forces (which was 50 percent higher, and nearer to the requirement that actually developed), 26 divisions would have to be held at home. The program proposed by the War Department, if adhered to as a continuing policy, would therefore relegate about a quarter of the infantry divisions to the status of replacement training organizations.117

On 7 February General McNair pointed out that, even under a seventeen-week program for training replacements, a severe shortage was to be expected. He declared that to provide overseas replacements as needed, together with their trainer personnel, and to fill shortages in units already earmarked for shipment, the Army Ground Forces would have to receive 500,000 men in the remainder of 1944. Adding requirements for new units in the troop basis and allowing for attritions, the Army Ground Forces would need 1,000,000 in the remainder of 1944. If this figure could not be met, and assuming it is correct, wrote General McNair, the only recourse would be to curtail the troop basis. “In short, we may be over-mobilized, or have an unbalanced mobilization in light of present conditions.”118 The AGF troop basis was in fact curtailed, as had been noted, by 250,000 between 15 January 1944 and 31 March 1945, chiefly through inactivation of antiaircraft units.

At this point, on 10 February 1944, General Marshall went directly to the Secretary of War with a proposal to liquidate the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). Measures of economy already undertaken, he said, would provide men for units to be shipped after 31 August 1944. The need was for men already basically trained to fill shortages in units due for shipment before 31 August. These units were needed for the forthcoming invasion of France. Men basically trained were available on college campuses in the Army Specialized Training Program. General Marshall offered a choice between drastically reducing the college program and disbanding ten divisions and certain nondivisional units. The Army Specialized Training Program was immediately reduced.119

Of the 35 divisions among which ASTP trainees were distributed, only 7 actually went overseas before 31 August. ASTP trainees were generally assigned to lower priority divisions to fill vacancies caused by application of a six-months rule for overseas replacements.

[26]

The War Department abandoned the nine-months project but was still determined to draw replacements from divisions and other units before using the newcomers to the Army currently graduating from replacement training centers. On 26 February 1944 the War Department directed the Army Ground Forces to obtain overseas replacements in all the combat arms by stripping units not on the Six Months List.120 Men chosen were to have had at least six months service, those with the longest service to be chosen first. No 18-year-old or Pre-Pearl Harbor fathers with less than six months training were to be sent overseas as replacements until all other sources were exhausted.

Units not earmarked were now systematically stripped. Although the six-months policy applied to replacements in all combat arms, comparatively few replacements were required except in the Infantry, so that it was mainly infantry units that lost their men. Divisions surrendered their privates and a percentage of their noncommissioned officers until a date about four months before sailing. Divisions therefore entered combat, in the latter part of 1944, which as divisions had been in training for periods averaging two years, but which were composed in large part of men new to the division, new to the infantry, or even new to the Army. In some ways divisions profited, for they received new men of higher quality than had been previously obtainable by the Ground Forces; but unit spirit and unit training, carefully built up in the preceding years and generally admitted to be vital in combat, had to be recaptured at the last moment.121 (See Studies Nos. 5.and 12.)

The six-months replacement training policy lasted for only about two months in the spring of 1944. The War Department, in view of the major offensive impending, would not decelerate the shipping schedule for divisions and other combat units. Units therefore soon became unavailable as producers of replacements. There were not enough divisions in the Army for the War Department to gain both its objectives, namely to ship divisions to theaters as rapidly as was feasible and to ship replacements to theaters from divisions remaining in the United States. By the summer of 1944 replacements were again being sent overseas with seventeen weeks of training. But the internal composition of infantry divisions in the United States had in the meanwhile been revolutionized.

While the six-months policy was given up, the 18-year-old policy confirmed anew. On 24 June 1944 the War Department ordered categorically that no 18-year-old should be sent overseas as an infantry or armored replacement.122 Over 20,000 18-year-olds, currently in training in infantry and armored replacement centers, were assigned to divisions on completing their course, since there was no bar on 18-year-olds going overseas as members of organized units and since many of the men concerned would be 19 by the time their divisions sailed. Meanwhile, to fill the void in the replacement stream, divisions lost an equal number of older men—older both in being over 18 and in being trained members of their units. At this time about half the men being inducted into the Army were 18-year-olds. At the same time virtually all inductees were being assigned to AGF replacement centers, the Army being completely mobilized and in general needing only to replace losses, of which over 80 percent were infantry and armored. The 18-year-olds rule was therefore difficult to apply. To find enough men over 18 to fill infantry and armored replacement centers, all available inductees over 18 had to be used, regardless of age or physical condition. Many men received at the front as infantry and armored replacements in the later months of 1944 were therefore inadequate physically. Meanwhile the rule was abolished as unworkable. Beginning as early as August, 18-year-olds again put into the infantry and armored replacement centers, from which beginning in November they were shipped overseas with seventeen weeks of training—reduced in January 1945 to fifteen. (See Study No. 7.)

During 1944 about 40 divisions yielded overseas replacements. Seventeen lost most of their infantry privates and many of their NCO’s. (See Study No. 12.) Divisions were reconstructed, in part by assignment of replacement training center graduates during the period when seventeen weeks of replacement training did not qualify a man as an overseas

[27]

replacement, in part by personnel received through economies and conversions described above. ASTP trainees, transferred aviation cadets, and 18-year-olds from replacement training centers supplied 37 divisions from April to July with about 100,000 men. Men volunteering for transfer to infantry and men converted from tank destroyer and antiaircraft artillery were also assigned to divisions, but most of these, along with men from the Air and Service Forces at the end of 1944, were assigned to special replacement centers or special infantry regiments for six weeks infantry training.

For a time at the end of 1944 it seemed that despite all the effort to preserve them certain infantry divisions would be broken up. Operations in the European theater, after proceeding ahead of schedule, met with strong resistance at the Siegfried Line in September. The infantry of divisions in action since the landing in France was desperately in need of relief. It was decided to adopt a system of unit replacement. Recommendations of the Army Ground Forces in 1943 to provide more nondivisional regiments for this purpose had not been adopted. Instead, nondivisional infantry regiments had been dissolved in considerable numbers to furnish individual replacements. Now, in October 1944, it was decided that the infantry regiments of most Infantry divisions still left in the United States were to be shipped to Europe separately.123 But the plan was altered before going fully into effect. Only certain regiments were shipped separately. In any case all divisions headquarters and auxiliary elements went overseas where they were reunited with their infantry and reappeared as standard organizations. The crisis of December was likewise passed without dissolution of any divisions. The need for divisions as units was even greater than the need for their personnel as individual replacements. By February 1945 all divisions had left the Army Ground Forces.

A year earlier, in January 1944, 57 divisions were still in the United States. Most of them were more than a year old. But instead of having a stock of units from which to meet at leisure, after a long period of waiting, the calls of the Operations Division for shipment of divisions and other units to theaters, the Army Ground Forces had to make exact calculations in order to have them ready when needed. The period of waiting in 1943 was followed by a race against time in 1944. Units scheduled to go overseas received their permanent personnel at the latest possible moment. Some went over less fully trained than the Army Ground Forces desired. Seven infantry divisions had never engaged in a division vs. division maneuver. Ten others had engaged in such a maneuver with from only 30 to 60 percent of the personnel which they took overseas (See Study No. 12.) Not all calls on the Operations Division for nondivisional units could be met. In June 1944, for example, of 1,304 AGF-type units then put by the Operations Division on the Six Months List, 214 were reported as unavailable.124 With the influx of new personnel, they could not be trained (or retrained) by the dates desired. The situation was like that of 1942, when the Army Ground Forces struggled to provide units trained and at T/O strength for the abortive invasion plan of that date.

[28]

Section XXI

SUMMARY OF MOBILIZATION

Perhaps the largest generalization that can be made about the mobilization of combatant ground forces is that they were the first to be mobilized and the last to be used. Mobilization may be said to have begun in September 1940 with the adoption of Selective Service and induction of the National Guard. Until the declaration of war, mobilization and training were concentrated on combat-type ground forces. Air Forces remained relatively small, and service units were not produced in the proportions required for war, especially for a war conducted on the far side of oceans. In 1942 the emphasis remained heavily on the formation of new divisions. By the end of 1942 divisions and other ground combat units already mobilized had an enlisted T/O strength of 1,917,000. It was planned that this figure should reach 2,811,000 by the end of 1943.

At this time, in January 1943, the War Department expressed an intention to raise, through economies of manpower, the strength of ground combat units to a figure exceeding

[28]

3,000,000 enlisted men in 1944. Although mobilization had been in progress for over two years prior to the winter of 1942-43, no significant measures were adopted to economize manpower in the Army. There was now an ambiguity in the situation. Economy was now to the fore, but the need for adding to combatant ground forces had receded. Plans for invasion of northern Europe had been indefinitely postponed. Combatant ground troops moved overseas very slowly in 1943. Hence reserves accumulated in the United States. With the development of air power and with Russian victories, there was no certainty that United States ground forces would be needed in large numbers. Among the many demands for military manpower those of the Army Ground Forces were judged to be of low priority in 1943. In January 1943 the activation of three divisions was deferred from the first to the last half of that year. In June 1943 twelve divisions scheduled for the last half of 1943 (including the three deferred thereto) were deferred to 1944. But the War Department, while deferring divisions to 1944, did not defer to 1944 the attainment of the full strength of the Army. The troop basis of 1943 used up the full strength which the Army could expect to reach. This strength, including officers, was 7,700,000 after June 1943, when the ceiling was lowered from the 8,200,000 set in 1942. It was largely to accommodate the Army within the lowered ceiling that the twelve divisions were deferred in 1943. Despite lowering of the ceiling the Army in fact grew to a strength of over 8,200,000 as had originally been planned. Nevertheless, the deferment of divisions proved to be a postponement to the Greek Kalends, for the time never came when manpower was available for more divisions. The only hope of adding divisions in 1944 was the redistribution within the Army. Redistribution to divisions was not achieved, because the demand for overhead and replacements proved to be persistently in excess of estimates, because the increase of service units seemed impossible to check, and because certain combat requirements, such as the B-29 and heavy artillery programs, had to be met after the Army was already formed.

As a result, not only did the hope of raising ground combat strength to 3,000,000 enlisted men never materialize, but ground combat strength in the end hardly exceeded the strength already mobilized at the end of 1942. (See Table No. V.) On 31 December 1942, as noted above, T/O strength of enlisted ground combat units already mobilized was 1,917,000. Strength of such units mobilized on 31 March 1945 was only 2,041,000. T/O enlisted strength of divisions mobilized on 31 December 1942 was 1,056,000—on 31 March 1945 only 1,125,000. More units did exist in 1945 than at the end of 1942. Seventeen divisions were added in the first eight months of 1943, and almost 200 nondivisional field artillery battalions and over 150 engineer battalions in 1943 and 1944. (See Table VI.) But units were added without increase of total strength of ground combat units of all types. That is to say, the added units were not obtained by redistribution and economy within the Army as a whole, but by redistribution and economy within the combat elements of the Army Ground Forces. These redistributions and economies took the form of inactivation. With these inactivations and reductions the total strength of ground combat units in 1945 was approximately 1,000,000 below what had been planned in the winter of 1942-43. Combat ground forces grew to only two-thirds of their anticipated strength.

Although the total strength of combat ground units did not materially rise after 1942, the total strength of the Army rose by almost 3,000,000 after that date, increasing from about 5,400,000 to almost 8,300,000. These three million officers and men went into the Air and Service Forces, into nondivisional service units of the Army Ground Forces, into overhead in all forms, into the hospital population, and into organization of all kinds designed for the training and storage of replacements.

Thus in the Army of over 8,000,000 in existence in March 1945 only about one-fourth were combatant ground soldiers, not counting men currently in training as replacements, approximately 500,000, who would eventually join combat units but add nothing to their strength. (See Table I.) Excluding the Air Forces, which numbered 2,300,000, the strength of combat units was about 37 percent of the strength of the Army. Comparison may be made with World War I. In November 1918 combat ground forces numbered 1,660,000

[29]

officers and men, within 600,000 of the corresponding figure for 1945. If from the 1945 figure we deduct the antiaircraft artillery, which scarcely existed in 1918 and which in 1945 was not all used on the battlefield, the strength of ground combat units in 1945 was only 300,000 greater than in 1918. Ground combat units in 1918, numbering 1,660,000, constituted 45 percent of the total strength of 3,700,000 then carried on the books of the War Department. Excluding aviation, which in 1918 numbered 190,000, ground combat units constituted almost half the Army. Excluding both aviation and antiaircraft artillery, the Army put half its strength into combat forces in 1918, but only a third in 1945. (See Table I.)

Strength of ground combat units had not only fallen to 27 percent of the Army by April 1945, but according to plans then in effect for redeployment against Japan it was due to fall to less than 23 percent by December 1946. On 1 May 1945 General Stilwell, in a memorandum for General Marshall, called attention to the “disappearing ground combat army.” Copies of charts submitted with this memorandum are here attached as Annexes VII and VIII. The trend, wrote General Stilwell, “may be pregnant with disaster if we have a tough ground fight with Japan.” The Operations Division of the War Department, asked by General Marshall to comment, reviewed some of the main features of mobilization. It was noted that troop basis plans followed theater estimates of forces required. The continuing decline in the proportion of combat troops to the total Army, observed OPD,

is a natural result of a diminishing need in the actual numbers of assault troops due to mechanization of the Army, i.e., the great masses of armor airplanes that prepare the way for the final assault of the foot soldier with resultant saving of human life. While decreasing the actual number of assault troops needed in battle, these engines of war require a large and more extensive line of communication. The assault trooper is still the cornerstone of the offensive. However, mechanization had made him more efficient in the carrying out of his duties and he is not now needed in the great numbers formerly demanded when assaults consisted mainly of human blows against defended positions.

With due regard for the weight of this statement, it was nevertheless felt at the Headquarters of the Army Ground Forces that assault troops might be “more efficient in the carrying out of their duties,” and might be employed with more “saving of human life,” if certain advantages following from larger numbers could be obtained. One advantage in numbers was the ability to withdraw units before the point of fatigue at which casualties mounted. Another was the ability to concentrate decisive force at critical moments. A third was the ability to give systematic training, without the disruption and turnover within units caused by emergency demands. (See Study No. 12) In addition to numbers, there were qualitative considerations in the employment of manpower, treated at length in Study No. 5. Officers of the Army Ground Forces believed that casualties might be reduced if men of high caliber, both in physique and in intelligence, could be assigned liberally to combat units, where quick thinking and strong leadership might save not only a man’s own life but the lives of many others.

That aviation and mechanization, as noted by OPD, saved the lives of combat troops was not questioned by the Army Ground Forces. Indeed General McNair, especially in 1942 and 1943, had urged more attention to the air support of ground troops than he was able to obtain. (See Study No. 35.) But in Europe, despite extensive use of air and mechanized forces, infantry divisions had been required in larger numbers than had been planned. The same might conceivably recur in the Far East. In any case it was clear that success against Japan would depend heavily on the factors noted at the beginning of this study on naval and air power, and on the larger ground forces of foreign armies, in this case especially the Chinese, but also to an unpredictable extent the Russian, which at the least could be expected to neutralize certain enemy forces.

[30]

Section XXII

LARGER QUESTIONS

The foregoing narrative raises two general questions, which reach beyond the jurisdiction of the Army Ground Forces but on which its experience with mobilization may be of value to those responsible for military policy of the nation. One question relates to timing, the other to quantity.

As for timing, it is evident that more preparation of air and service forces in 1940 and 1941 might have produced a smoother mobilization in 1942 after the declaration of war. As seen in 1941, the 36 divisions mobilized before Pearl Harbor hardly seemed too many for an Army Aggregating 1,600,000, the strength attained at the end of 1941. But they proved to be far out of proportion as the Army developed. In 1942 emphasis continued to fall on divisions; 37 divisions were activated in that year alone. It was believed that corresponding nondivisional units could be activated somewhat later than divisions, since they required less time for training. This policy proved to have serious disadvantages. Activation of divisions and of supporting nondivisional units got out of step. Since the 1942 troop basis at first made too little provision for service units and since it developed that service units were in fact needed in the theaters before combat units arrived, many service units were activated in 1942 without troop basis authorization. Activation of service units became irregular, uncoordinated, and difficult to control. The troop basis, instead of forecasting mobilization, had to be changed repeatedly to authorize mobilization, ex post facto. At the same time, with divisions intentionally launched some months before their corresponding nondivisional units, future commitments for nondivisional units, especially service units, were continually built up. Thus the service program always seemed to be lagging; and to find manpower for service units many combat units were kept under strength for months after activation. Meanwhile the Air Forces were also rapidly growing.

The timing of mobilization depended directly on strategic plans. These were unstable in 1942. From March to August 1942 planning called for an invasion of northern Europe in conjunction with the British in April 1943. Rapid activation of divisions in 1942 was necessary to implement this plan. Then in the closing months of 1942 it was decided to confine ground operations in the eastern hemisphere to Northern Africa and to concentrate meanwhile on an air offensive against Germany. The date for invading northern Europe with land forces was indefinitely postponed. The mobilization objective for ground troops was reduced, and the rate of mobilization was slowed down. Two theaters were built up in the European area, each with a large requirement for overhead and service troops, though there was no ground fighting in the European theater until June 1944, and in the Mediterranean theater the number of United States divisions employed together in combat never exceeded half a dozen.

It is speculative to ask what would have happened had the plan to invade northern Europe in 1943 been carried through, had the mobilization of combat ground forces not been curtailed, and had the manpower productive facilities and ship space necessary to implement the bomber offensive and to maintain a number of partly inactive or secondary theaters been concentrated in a single invasion army. Invasion in 1943 would have lacked the incalculable advantage of prior assault by air. On the other hand, it would have had the advantage of being timed with German reversals after Stalingrad, with the German army overextended and on the defensive in the depths of Russia. Likewise it may be said that combatant ground forces were as large in April 1943 as they ever became later, though not so fully trained or organized into as many units as in 1944. Had invasion occurred in April 1943, means would probably have been found to increase the proportion of combatant ground forces within an 8,000,000 man Army. Coming in April 1943, major ground operations would have begun at almost exactly the same interval after declaration of war as they did in World War I. This would seem to have been at least theoretically feasible, considering that in World War II a head start had been gained by prewar mobilization. As it turned out, the United States was at war in Europe over twice as long in the second World War as in the first.

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Combatant ground forces, virtually mobilized in over-all strength by the end of 1942, and thereafter improving their striking power by economy and reorganization within themselves, had a long period of waiting before commitment on a large scale. Except for two airborne divisions, no division activated after Pearl Harbor entered combat until 1944. For strategic plans as finally adopted, mobilization of ground forces was premature, and mobilization of air forces somewhat tardy. Decision to concentrate on strategic bombardment having been made rather late in the day, and the Air Forces continued to expand rapidly while the Ground Forces essentially marked time. All types of service units, some remaining from 1942, had to be formed in 1943 and 1944. Even so, it is difficult to understand why in the later period of mobilization, the period following 1942 in which the Army showed a net growth of almost 3,000,000 it was only air and service units and overhead establishment, not combatant ground forces, that expanded.

This leads into the question of quantity. It is a question of great national and international importance. The question is essentially this: How much power can the United States, considering all circumstances in its situation, actually deploy overseas on the ground? How much force is exerted at the far end of the stick? If the United States, with 12,000,000 men in its armed services, including those under the Navy Department, can produce less than 100 divisions including those in the Marine Corps, this fact must be considered by all concerned in a future global war, and will certainly be considered by any possible enemies. The ability of the United States to conduct ground operations overseas was limited in World War II by a number of factors: by the amount of national resources needed to control the sea and the air, by policies of allowing resource to strategic bombardment and to the support of allies, by the need of maintaining long supply lines with streams of personnel and equipment constantly in transit over immense distances, and by the effort to provide American soldiers with something corresponding to the American standard of living. It was to the last two of these factors that the prodigious growth of service units and overhead was in large part due. These factors are likely to be always present. The strength of American ground armies is likely always to depend on the degree to which economy in these limiting factors is achieved.

How much such economy was achieved in World War II is too intricate a question to be answered without further study. Certainly the Army by the beginning of 1945 was a more economical and leaner organization than in any previous year of the war. Indeed the fat stored up in previous years proved to be a useful reserve. It was found that much could be dispensed with under pressure, such as a pool of soldiers on college campuses over half as large as the armored forces, comfortable surpluses of aviation cadets, and anti-aircraft artillery half as large as all infantry divisions combined, personnel engaged solely in post housekeeping duties, and allowances for margins of overstrength and for basic privates in tactical units. Somewhat tardily, since the necessary retraining had to be hurried, troops were converted to combat jobs.

These economies were mostly produced by emergency. Men saved by them were used mainly as replacements, going to maintain but not to increase the number of existing units. Maintenance of units at effective strength, as noted at the outset of this study, was a considerable achievement. If only for this reason, and apart from superiority of firepower, the 89 Army divisions overseas in 1945 were the equivalent of a larger number of enemy divisions. As for increase in number of combat units, all increase occurring after 1942 could be traced to economy with the Army Ground Forces rather than in the Army as a whole.

Smooth and economical mobilization, both in quantitative distribution and in timing, may well be impossible in any way, but if attained it would appear to require primarily two conditions. One would be a consistent strategic plan, in which successive phases of operations were foreseen well in advance and substantially adhered to. The other would be an authority able to judge between the claims of ground, air, naval, and service

[32]

forces, which with each engaged in its own business are unavoidable rivals and to apportion to each of them, in the light of strategic plans, such as a share of the national stock of manpower and resources as would assure to each the means for attaining maximum efficiency in its assigned role. Since no plan is infallible and no central agency omniscient, mobilization can never be perfectly smooth and perfectly economical. The problem is to find the best middle ground between rational foresight and short-run practical readjustments.

[33]

Table I

THE ARMY IN TWO WARS

Aggregate Strengths

 I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII

 15 Nov 18 Reported 

Actual Strength

30 Apr 45 Troop Basis Strength (Approximately actual)
Per Cent of

Total Army

Per Cent of

Total Army less Air

Per Cent of

Total Ground Combat Forces

   1918
1945
1918
1945
1918
1945

Excluding Air Forces:

  Divisions
933,862
1,194,569
25.2
14.4
26.6
20.0
56.3
53.5

  Non-divisional Combat
  (less AAA)
726,149
779,882
19.6
9.4
20.7
13.0
43.7
35.0

 

---

  Ground Combat Forces
  (less AAA)
1,660,011
1,974,451
44.8
23.8
47.3
33.0
100.0
88.5

  Antiaircraft Artillery
?
259,403
?
3.1
 4.3
?
11.5

 

---

  Total Ground Combat Forces
1,660,011
2,233,854
44.8
26.9
47.3
37.3
100.0
100.0

  Non-divisional Service
945,470
1,638,214
25.5
19.8
26.7
27.4
56.9
73.5

  Replacements
454,863
841,715
12.3
10.2
13.0
14.1
27.4
37.8

  Overhead and Miscellaneous
453,793
1,269,709
12.3
15.3
13.0
21.2
27.4
56.9

 

---

  Total Army (less Air)
3,514,137
5,983,492
94.9
72.2
100.0
100.0
  
  Army Air Forces
190,493
2,307,501
5.1
27.8
    
 

---

Total Army

3,704,630
8,290,993
100.0
100.0
    
 

SOURCES:

For 1918: Tables 1, 4 and 14 of ?Personnel Statistics Report, A-21, Strength of-the Army as of November 15, 1918,? dated December 5, 1918, Statistics Branch, War Department General Staff. In Army War College Library, UA 24 A 554 P 68150.

For 1945: War Department Troop Basis, 1 May 1945. In Ground AG Records, 320.2 Troop Basis (S). The Troop Basis, after authorizing an aggregate strength of 7,700,000 from 1 July 1943 through 1 April 1945, was raised on 1 May 1945 to cover the actual strength to which the Army had grown.

[35]

---

NOTE TO TABLE I

CAUTION: While it is believed that the picture given by the accompanying figures is accurate in its general outlines, detailed comparison of figures for the two wars is subject to serious limitations. The strength of the Army was not classified in the same way in 1918 and in 1945. The following may be noted of the categories used in the tables:

Divisions. In principle the triangular divisions of 1945 had a higher percentage of combat personnel than the square divisions of 1918. In practice there was surprisingly little difference. Divisions in the AEF in November 1918 varied greatly, but the average strength of 29 effective divisions was 22,995, of which 76% was in infantry, field artillery and machine gun personnel. (Tables 2 and 14 of the source listed above.) Infantry divisions of 1945 had a T/O strength of 14,037, of which 81% was in infantry and field artillery (machine gunners being carried as infantry in 1945). Armored divisions of 1945 had a T/O strength of 10,670, of which only 63% was in tank units, infantry and field artillery. (T/O?s 7 and 17, 24 January 1945.) Other divisions of 1945 (chiefly airborne) resembled infantry divisions. Weighting for the different types yields 78% combat strength for all divisions in 1945. Hence the proportion of combat strength in divisions of 1918 and 1945 was about the same.

Non-divisional Combat and Non-divisional Service. In these categories in the table the figures for 1945 include organized units only, whereas the figures given in the statistics of 1918 were not explicitly limited to organized units, and probably include some personnel which in 1945 would have been carried as ?Overhead and Miscellaneous.?

Antiaircraft Artillery. Refers only to unite in 1945; no such category in 1918.

Replacements and Overhead and Miscellaneous. Principal components of these categories in 1918 and in 1945 are shown on the following page.

Army Air Forces. Figures for the two dates are roughly comparable, the figure for 1918 including not only the Air Service of that period but also personnel classified in 1918 under ?Aircraft Production? and Military ?Aeronautics?; but since aviation in 1918 drew more heavily on services of the rest of the Army than in 1945, it is probable that the total effort expended in 1918 on aviation should be represented by a higher figure than 190,000 if comparison with 1945 is desired.

INTERPRETATION: Subject to reservations as indicated above, the following may be noted, considering only the Army without the Air Forces:

1. In 1918 almost half the Army was in combat categories, in 1945 only a little over a third. (Cols. V and VI.)

2. Within the category of combat troops, divisions and non-divisional forces (including antiaircraft) were in about the same proportion to each other in the two wars. (Cols. VII and VIII.)

3. Personnel classifiable as replacements numbered somewhat over an eighth of the Army in both wars. (Cols. V and VI.)

4. Personnel in service categories numbered somewhat over a quarter of the Army in both wars. (Cols. V and VI.)

5. Personnel in overhead and miscellaneous categories was proportionately much higher in 1945 than in 1918, approximating respectively one-fifth and one eighth. (Cols. V and VI. ) To some extent this reflects the more accurate accounting methods of 1945, by which overhead and miscellaneous functions were more carefully distinguished from tactical units than in 1918. Analysis of the overhead and miscellaneous category in the two wars appears on the following page. It may be noted that, excluding the Students Army Training Corps of 1918, which was not a form of operating overhead, the figure for 1918 scarcely exceeded 275,000, or one-thirteenth of the strength of the Army.

6. The large figure for overhead and miscellaneous in 1945 explains the relatively low proportion of combat forces, since proportion of replacements and service forces was almost the same in the two wars. (Cols. V and VI.)

7. Replacements, while forming about the same fraction of the Army in the two wars, were in higher ratio to combat forces in 1945 than in 1918, because the ratio of combat forces to the whole Army was lower. (Cols. VII and VIII.) This higher proportion of replacements to combat forces in 1945, plus the fact that they were more fully trained and that the movement of replacements was more systematically conducted, partly explains why units were kept more nearly at authorized strength in 1945 than in 1918.

8. Service troops, while forming about the same fraction of the Army in the two wars, were also in higher ratio to combat forces in 1945 than in 1918. (Cols. VII and VIII.) This reflects the fact that the combat forces of 1945, more highly mechanized and in part more distantly deployed than in 1918, required more service support. It reflects also the fact that overhead and miscellaneous establishments required service facilities. Even if the combat troops of 1945 had received no more service support than those of 1918, the ratio of service to combat troops would have been higher in 1945, because of the need for service troops to support the overhead and miscellaneous establishments.

[36]

ANNEX TO TABLE I

?Replacements? in Table I includes personnel classified in 1918 and in 1945 as:

1918 1945 AGF (Arms) ASF (Services) Depot Brigades 196,383 Replacement Training Centers 298,100 29,600 Infantry Replacements 54,666 Replacement Depots 67,500 10,800 Machine Gun Replacements 15,741 Emergency Replacement Stockage 17,200 2,460 Casuals and Unassigned 15,369 Officer Candidate Schools 5,000 6,000 Troops en route to Ports ,250 Officer Replacement Pools 10,000 5,000 Development Battalions 40,760 Rotational Policy 11,250 12,500 Officers Training Schools 59,468 Casuals in Staging Areas and en route Overseas 61,000 16,000 Casuals and Replacements in Europe 34,970 Other AGF and ASF 18,000 20,950

---

---

---

Total 454,863 Total AGF and ASF 496,350 117,460

     Army Specialized Training Program   16,250   
     Special Training Units   11,000   
     Overseas Replacement Depots and Training Centers   200,655   
         

---

     Total   841,715   
             

?Overhead and Miscellaneous? in Table I includes personnel classified in 1918 and 1945 as: 1918 1945 Headquarters of Camps, Etc. 16,205 Bulk allotments to AGF (131,440 and ASF (398,467) for zone of interior installations, etc. (including permanent personnel of replacement agencies listed above) 529,907 Students Army Training Corps* 175,872 Reception Centers (Recruits) 30,000 Recruits at Depot and Camps 32,747 Hospital Population 415,000 Patients in SOS Hospitals 82,013 War Department Groups 6,408 War Department 2,007 Theater Overheads 159,726 Unclassified 116,934 Repatriated Military Personnel 20,000 Other 28,015 Other 108,668

---

---

Total 453,793 Total 1,269,709

• Although the ASTP of 1945 and the SATC of 1918 were alike in that their personnel were stationed on college campuses, the ASTP is here classified as ?Replacements? because its trainees had had basic military training and were usable for military purposes, and the SATC is classified under ?Overhead and Miscellaneous? because its trainees had negligible military experience and were not usable for military purposes without considerable further training.

[37]

TABLE II

DEPLOYMENT OF THE ARMY

1918 and 1945

Reported Actual Strengths In Principal Theaters

20 November 1918

---

 30 April 1945

---

In Europe European Theater

Mediter-

ranean Theater European & Mediter- ranean Theater Combined Southwest Pacific Area Pacific Ocean Theater China & India-Burma Theaters Principal Theaters Combined Divisions 678,146 819,342 102,485 921,827 183,798 80,834 --- 1,186,459 Divisions Non-divisional Combat Troops 507,912 595,418 37,797 633,215 113,318 102,076 15,766 864,375 Non-Divisional Combat Units* Total Ground Combat Troops 1,186,058 1,414,660 140,282 1,555,042 297,118 182,910 15,766 2,050,835 Total Ground Combat Units Non-divisional Service Troops 464,497 828,726 128,307 957,033 214,835 142,579 69,898 1,384,345 Non-divisional Service Units Air Service 78,804 439,425 153,005 592,430 173,343 75,438 90,949 932,160** Army Air Forces Replacements 34,970 171,933 34,551 206,484 34,203 20,371 4,355 265,423 Replacements Patients in SOS Hospitals 82,013 128,305 15,679 143,984 41,135 6,423 1,439 192,981 Patients Unclassified 116,934 27,598 4,972 32,570 29,500 19,851 10,447 131,636 Overhead Army in Europe 1,963,276 3,065,505 493,876 3,559,381 12,372 3,380 5,966 54,288 Miscellaneous

      802,504 450,952 198,830 5,011,667 Army in Principal

Theaters Per Cent Ratio of Ground Combat to Total Army (3,704,630) 53.1 37.0 6.0 43.0 9.7 5.4 2.4 60.4 Per Cent Ratio of Army in Principal Theaters to Total Army (8,290,993) Per Cent Ration of Ground Combat Troops in Europe to all Ground Combat Troops in Army (1,660,011) 71.4 63.4 6.3 69.7 13.3 8.2 0.7 91.9 Per Cent Ratio of Ground Combat Units in Principal Theaters to All Ground Combat Units in Army (2,333,854)

---

SOURCES:

For 1918: See Table I

* Including as combat units all engineer, signal and chemical units to AGF type.

For 1945: Strength Reports of the Army, Vol. 11, 1 May 1945 (S), Strength Reporting Office of the Chief of Staff.

** In addition Air Forces aggregating approximately 200,000, under direct command of the commanding general of the Army Air Forces, were engaged in oversees operations, chiefly in Pacific, without being assigned to a theater.

[38]

TABLE III

GROWTH OF THE ARMY BY BRANCH

Reported Actual Strength

BRANCH

1941

31 December

1942

31 December

1943

31 December

1945

31 March

Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery (includes Artillery Armored and Tank Destroyer)*

690,083
1,512,730
1,960,068
2,423,075**

Coast Artillery Corps (includes Antiaircraft)*

177,379
425,187
590,939
330,442

Total Ground Arms

867,462
1,939,317
2,451,007
2,753,517

 

Adjutant General

966
4,416
15,688
56,115

Engineers

91,476
333,209
561,066
688,764

Signal

50,596
241,227
309,641
331,105

Medical***

129,512
469,981
622,227
670,151

Ordnance

34,278
235,350
316,174
332,042

Quartermaster

122,672
327,794
453,419
491,301

Chemical

6,269
46,182
66,610
61,458

Military Police

----------
147,840
222,639
203,823

Transportation

----------
51,041
167,612
260,260

Total Services

435,769
1,359,042
2,735,076
3,095,020

         

Air Corps

270,535
1,270,677
1,810,900
1,331,091

         

All Other (includes Women?s Army Corps, Warrant and Flight Offi?cers, and No Branch Assigned)

83,391
333,252
485,451
477,758

Total

1,657,157
5,400,988
7,482,434
8,157,386

Per cent of Total Army

Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery (Incl Armd and TD)

41.7
28.0
24.9
29.7

Coast Artillery Corps (incl AAA)

10.7
9
7.9
4.1

Total Ground Arms

52.4
35.9
32.8
33.8

         

Adjutant General

.1
.1
.2
.7

Engineers

5.5
6.2
7.5
8.4

Signal

3.0
4.5
4.1
4.1

Medical

7.8
8.8
8.3
8.2

Ordnance

2.1
4.3
4.2
4.1

Quartermaster

7.4
6.1
6.1
6.0

Chemical

.4
.8
.9
.7

Military Police

------
2.7
3.0
2.5

Transportation

------
0.9
2.2
3.2

Total Services

26.3
34.4
36.5
37.9

         

Air Corps

16.3
23.5
24.2
22.4

         

All Others

5.0
6.2
6.5
5.9

         

Total Army

100.0.
100.0
100.0
100.0

• Armored, Tank Destroyer and Antiaircraft war not reported as separate arms. Because of inclusion of these specialties in the basic ground arms, exact breakdown of the ground arms cannot be made.

• • This figure, at this date, includes perhaps 300,000 carried in the Troop Basis as ?Hospital Population,? most casualties occurring in the ground arms and to a less extent in the Air Corps.

• • • Includes Army Nurse Corps, Dietitians and Physical Therapists.

SOURCE: ?Strength of the Army,? prepared monthly by Machine Records Br. A.G.O.

[39]