On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by Louied

Chico, I think your doing a great job trying to explain how a Div slated to join III Corp would get stuck Stateside. I was thinking along the lines of it being in the midst of conversion to M1/BFV when the was kicked off in December, basically having the whole Div having to retrain.

I can post them later but some interesting things I have found to bolster your points (even though you know since you were there)

1) found a doc concerning observing 50 ARD in 1992 BCTP training/warfighter exercise…..” Observing the 50th Armor during BCTP is a sobering experience. I doubt this “crowd” could ever go to war in an effective posture”

2) from what I am finding the AC Corp commanders wanted priority for the separate ARNG Bdes to reinforce as they felt they were more useful initially to supplement the AC divisions (Roundup?)

3) it appears one of the ALB Future papers call for a Heavy Corps having, as separate maneuver formations…an Avn Bde, an AR Bde, an ACR, and a IN Bde (Rear Battle). Sep MXB would go to XVIII Corp and I/IX Corp for Korean contingency.1

4) again it appears from Congressional testimony that the AC did not have any faith that the RO Bdes would be ready when a war started, one statement was that they had no plans to send them over in REFORGER. It looks like 194 ARB & 197 MXB would have been used to RO 5 MXD & 1 CD (at least before 89 when 4 MXD lost their Bde)

Chico, keep up the good work and did you see my response to the UK JTP plans?
I can list all the US centric ones later tonight.

Thanks for the comments! Yes, I saw your response; that would be great!

I did see some of those documents on the model corps structure, and it sure looks different from the cobbled-together divisions and corps that GDW laid out! And GDW certainly didn't know (or decided to ignore) the readiness problems.

I'll probably use the same rationale for 42nd ID as well. I'm also going with the idea that the Army establishes two more NTCs, at Yakima Firing Range in Washington and Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona as well as setting up a second JRTC (at Ft Chaffee or Ft Polk, whichever your t2k world has the other one at) with the idea that most reserve component brigades will get at least a 3-week rotation through before deploying. Seeing if it's possible to fit those resources with the deployment schedule GDW laid out is on my to-do list... I recall the 1990s "what to do with the National Guard" discussions where there was considerably more enthusiasm for independent brigades to augment the AC than there was for the continuation of entire divisions.

I'm also going on the idea that some reserve component units had their act together. The 116th ACR is listed as deploying to Germany early in 1996(!) and as I noted 256 Bde and 155 AB deploy with their AC divisions. The 35th ID also is an early deployer.

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Chico, you have been dealing a lot with the sea war. This is a much-neglected area of the Twilight War, in canon, supplements, and to tell the truth, by us on this board. It is a welcome addition.

Thanks! I'm glad you guys are enjoying this. I have a lot of my stuff on the naval war that I've been putting together over the years. I would balance it out with more from the air and ground side but I don't have as much to draw on... my Battle of Germany doc is really just a bare outline, with less detail than I've already put in here. Once Advent Crown kicks off in April I have my history of that campaign to draw on through the summer. I'm still spending a couple hours a day scraping various sources and beefing up the master timeline document, trying to balance going over a lot of sources for what I need to post today/this week/this month with trying to go through a source comprehensively so that I know it's all in there.