View Single Post
  #25  
Old 11-09-2012, 07:47 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: East Tennessee, USA
Posts: 2,873
Default

I've always been bothered by the way the writers (GDWs) simply stated that for example, these three armored brigades will form this completely new division.

When you look over the TO&Es and the ROAD and Air-Land battle concepts, the independent armored and mechanized brigades had a mission. They were assigned directly to the various corps to be used as reserves, to reinforce a division for a specific operation, to be used as covering forces or to protect flanks/rear areas. There never was any intention or even a need to group them into divisions, after all, why wait until a war is underway before you try to throw together a division, not to mention its support structure.

To be sure, the US, in World War II did exactly that, expanding from a pre war base of 174,000 men (in 11 divisions) and, in five years, building up to a strength of 8,300,000 (in 91 divisions). It was, and still is an impressive achievement. But that very build-up cuased tremendous problems. Training at all levels was so short as to be, at best poor, and at worst laughable. Leaders couldn't lead and soldiers, couldn't soldier. It took over three years of intense effort, stupid defeats and lots and lots (did I mention lots?) of trail and error to produce the military machine that played such a critical part in winning the war.

The lessons learned from World War Two is that it takes time to create a division and train its personnel to work together, effectively. It was easy for Washington to say that they were creating four new divisions, but that process took some four years to complete, before the Light Infantry Divisions were declared to be "combat ready". So to say that the Army would have dumped its prewar doctrine in order to create an "ersatz" division(s) and then throw that the division straight into combat...in real life, I doubt that the Pentegon would have wasted the time.
__________________
The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
Reply With Quote