This week’s Big Blog Topic was to Blog about something interesting that we found doing research for our Second WW II Project. I picked a story about the United States Army at the beginning of WW II.
-The United States mobilized troops in a very short time after they were brought into the war.
-The United States army troops knew that they may have to fight soon, but nobody knew when or if they would have to fight in World War 2.
-In 1940, the United States divided up their forces and put up almost 600,000 troops in three different areas: The Regulars, The National Guard, and The Organized Reserves in 130 camps.
-In the Years before 1940, the Untied States Army consisted of about 4,400 troops in four different divisions.
-There was only nine infantry Divisions, three complement regular formations.
-The other six divisions were only 3,000 strong.
-The United States had a Calvary division and a mechanized division that were respected.
-These task for mobilizing troops was given to a group known as General headquarters or GHQ.
-The Army was expanded on June 17, 1941 to 280,000 troops.
-Just over nine days later the Army had over 375,000 troops, insane huh?
-The National Guard troops were absorbed into the army by the Selective Service Act.
-In July of 1941, the Army had more than 606,000 men inducted.
-There were 27 total divisions in the United States Army; Nine regular divisions and 18 National Guard members.
-There were two armored divisions and three more were completely the required courses to become part of the armored divisions.
-The American mobilization of troops was moving along at a good rate and then when war broke out in December of 1941, the mobilization became completely insane because the need for troops was even more and more as the days went on.
-The main issue in American mobilization was that the shipping of the number of troops needed in the war.
-Calculations show that no more than 4,170,000 troops could be shipped over to war by the end of 1944.
-This meant that only 88 divisions would be at war, which is not nearly enough to fight a war and restricted the allied powers.
-Increasing of troops was not under looked; actually it was more over exaggerated more than anything.
-In 1945, a total of 91 divisions were in Europe. But three of these divisions were broken up into reinforcements.
-The remaining 88 divisions were maintained to complete and full fledged fighting forces in Europe.
-The deadly Campaign known as the Ardennes Campaign was terrible.
-47 regiments in 19 divisions lost 100 to 200 percent in battle casualties.
Source:
--- http://ww2total.com/WW2/History/Orders-of-Battle/United-States/US-Army-1942.htm
Pictures:
GI’s landing in a port on the Mediterranean
GI Picture collage
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