Troop List

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

A lot of that was Army Ground Forces desire to have the smallest, most combat effective division. Then grouping the extra units at Army/Corps level...too bad they didn't realize that once the ole fhit hit the san that the divisions would latch onto as many extra combat elements as they could get their greedy hands on. 1st Infantry Division, at one time had two tank bns, two tank destroyer bns, a cavalry sqn, three antiaircraft bns, two field artillery bns and a combat command from an armored division....maybe the stories about the Army consisting of the Big Red One and a million replacements were true!

S&T magazine, back in the SPI days, did a study and figured out that if the "extra" combat elements had been converted into divisions, that at least another 42 divisions could have been fielded. One thing was for sure....a lot of waste and duplicated effort went into fielding the WWII army.

I don't think any Division actually went into with just their authorize strength. Even when they units detached to others and if they were on the line, they had other units attached to replace them...