29th Infantry Division

[kota1342000]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

The division isn't really missing from the T2K order of battle. It's component units are just under different flags, so adding it to the order of battle is double-dipping units in the 26th and 46th IDs in the T2K order of battle.

Absolutely true Horse, and Im terrible about double dipping for additional order of battle stuff. But I try to make up for it by either explaining what had happened to the original parent units of the component brigades, or building new formations out of the pool of inactive colors.

[pmulcahy11b]

One thing I do every so often when I come up with the "Twilight 2000 Notes" part of my descriptions on my site is incorporate a little story about how some unit got some equipment it shouldn't have had, or just say that a certain vehicle "somehow" ended up at a certain unit (I assign a lot of unusual vehicles to the TX ARNG's 49th AD that way -- as much as I love the Army, I had a good time in the Guard and learned a lot of valuable stuff from those old veterans that came in handy the whole time I was in the Army). Or the little story, I think it's under the SAR-80 in Singaporean Assault Rifles, about the mysterious raid on Soviet submarine pens at Cam Ranh Bay early in the war. Sometimes, you can just through some unusual equipment, weapons, or vehicles at a unit, and when necessary, figure out later where they came from. Too much winging is bad, but a little bit of winging it doesn't really hurt, and can be used to throw a little mystery at the players.

[James Langham]

As ever nitpicks and comments welcome.

I haven't forgotten my more recent articles and I'm still working on them but I periodically revisit my older articles and update them - this is one of them. Enjoy!

[kiltedguard]

Not for nothing...but if you are really looking to get into the weeds with this, you can find the MTOEs for almost anything from the Army's past through the Army Heritage Center in Carlisle PA. If you go yourself....Lt. Col. Andresen (ret.) might come out just to see what oddball was trying to read an MTOE. If not...you can usually order documents.

[Olefin]

If you are really looking to resurrect US units (since Horse Solider is right and the 29th is already in the game, its just distributed among other units) how about the 198th Brigade or the 11th Brigade from the 99th Division, along with the division itself?

[dragoon500ly]

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.

[Olefin]

I agree with you there as to raising new divisions - I have a unit in my East Africa story that is a battalion from a division they were trying to raise but in the end they only managed to put together a single regiment in the time they had and only two battalions of it managed to make it to Africa.

Never agreed with the training division's as presented by GDW - for one they would have done something to get them some armor for sure. Even if all it was were old Sheridans and M113 APC's or the M8 AGS. Sending in pure foot infantry, many of them half trained, without some kind of armor support is basically throwing them away.

And why even form new divisions when their current divisions are heavily depleted? If you have divisions that are now basically brigades or regiments then send the 5000 guys from a training division to a combat division where they could actually have some veterans to show them how to survive.

So lets form new divisions instead of bringing your combat formations back up to strength? Especially considering the last guy who did that was Hitler - and look how good that worked out for him. In many ways the game has American military leaders acting very stupidly - always thought those who wrote the game had a grudge against the US military and it shows in many ways, this being one of them.