The division was the largest permanent formation in the land forces of most participants in the Second World War. It varied in size from 6,000 to 25,000 men and was usually commanded by a major general or lieutenant general. The army division should not be confused with the naval command echelon called a division, which consists of just ten to thirty men under a junior officer.
United States. U.S.
infantry divisions
normally consisted of three infantry
regiments, an artillery regiment,
and an
engineer battalion, with other supporting
units. The authorized strength in 1943 was 14,253 officers and men. The
three infantry regiments each had a strength of 3118 men; the artillery
regiment comprised 2160 men, 36 105mm howitzers, and 12 155mm
howitzers; and the engineering battalion numbered 647 men. In addition,
there was a reconnaissance troop (company)
of 155 men, a medical
battalion of 465 men, a quartermaster company of 193 men, an ordnance
company of 147 men, a signals company of 226 men, a military police platoon of 73 men, a headquarters
company of 110 men, and a marching band of 58 men. The total
weapons count was 6518 rifles, 243 automatic rifles, 157 0.30 machine
guns, 236 0.50 machine guns, 90 60mm
mortars,
54 81 mm mortars, 557 bazookas, 57 57mm AT guns, 54 105mm
howitzers, 12
155mm
howitzers, and 2012 vehicles. U.S. troops tended to
identify with
their division, particularly in former National
Guard divisions, which were regional in character.
Prior to the war, the U.S. Army still had a number of square divisions containing four regiments organized into two brigades. This organization was less flexible than the three-regiment triangular division, and the square divisions were in the process of being triangularized when war broke out. The extra regiments were organized into new divisions or broken up for cadre.
The U.S. Army raised a large number of independent tank battalions, and there was a
tendency to attach a tank battalion to each infantry division, though
this was never a formal part of the division table of organization and
equipment.
Marine divisions resembled Army infantry divisions, but were slightly larger (17,465 officers and men in 1944) and formalized the attachment of a tank battalion. The engineer battalion was joined by a pioneer battalion (for unloading men and supplies on the beach) and, early in the war, a Naval Construction Battalion. For a short time these were organized into a single engineer regiment in the division, before the Navy pulled the Seabees out of the Marine divisions.
No armored divisions saw combat in the Pacific, but one airborne and one cavalry division were assigned to the Southwest Pacific Area. 1 Cavalry Division retained the square structure (two brigades of two regiments) and fought as elite infantry. 11 Airborne Division also fought largely as elite infantry, with its elements making only two combat drops during the war. It had a triangular structure, with two glider infantry and one parachute infantry regiment when first deployed. Later the ratio was reversed, so that the division had one glider infantry and two parachute infantry regiments.
Britain. British divisions had brigades in the place of regiments, but otherwise resembled American divisions. Each brigade consisted of three or four battalions. The battalions could be drawn from various regiments, which in the British system were regional recruiting and training formations that were the repositories of military tradition. For this reason, British troops identified with their regiment rather than their division.
China. The typical Chinese division wqs triangular, with a manpower of 10,983 on paper. The actual strength was typically 6000 to 7000 men. There was no real replacement system. The division had barely enough rifles for its men, a third the number of machine guns of a Japanese division, and no other support elements to speak of. It was reckoned that a Japanese division had the combat strength of three Chinese divisions under even the best of conditions (for the Chinese).
A few Chinese divisions were organized, trained, and equipped to a
higher standard. The Germans had
trained about 30 divisions for Chiang
in the late 1930s, but most of these were destroyed at Shanghai in 1937. Later the
Americans organized a training camp at Ramgarh
in India that trained and equipped a
handful of divisions to a standard previously unknown in the Chinese
Army. These divisions fought mainly in Burma.
Japan. Japanese
divisions were highly
variable in composition, with some garrison divisions consisting of
just 6,000
men, while a few divisions retained the square organization and had as
many as
25,000 men. However, the organization of most divisions
resembled that of
a U.S. division, with three infantry regiments organized into an
infantry group. There was no officer rank between colonel and major
general in the Japanese Army, and divisions were commanded by
lieutenant generals. The infantry group was commanded by a major
general who also acted as deputy division commander.
The Japanese Army also raised a large number of independent mixed
brigades, which typically had about five infantry battalions and a
battalion of artillery along with supporting units. In some respects,
the independent mixed brigades resembled small divisions with a very
narrow divisional wedge, and some were
eventually redesignated as divisions.
Japanese
divisions were
typically raised on a regional basis, like British battalions or U.S.
National
Guard divisions, but at all echelons. For example, the men in a
particular
company might all be from the same small town. This
contributed greatly
to unit cohesion, but it also meant that the destruction of a unit was
devastating to the folks back home in the town from which the unit
came.
Japanese citizens from Gifu
Prefecture still make visits
to Mount Austen on Guadalcanal,
where two
regiments recruited from their fishing villages were annihilated in
1943, to
search for remains.
Divisions in all armies had a considerable number of men assigned to support duties, with only a fraction normally on the firing line. The fraction of a division’s manpower that supports the front-line riflemen is known as the divisional wedge. The U.S. had the broadest divisional wedge, with large numbers of supporting troops. This contributed to superb logistics and engineering support, but it also led to a severe shortage of replacements for rifle companies by late 1944. Japanese divisions had a very thin divisional wedge, which reduced their staying power considerably, because the support services just weren’t there when they were needed. British divisions were somewhere in between.
Personnel policies of the major powers reflected various tradeoffs
between flexibility and unit cohesion. Men perform best in combat when
they are among friends with whom they have trained for some time. Thus,
fighting power is maximized when replacements are kept together
throughout the recruiting and training process and are sent in large
groups to be integrated into depleted units that have been pulled out
of the fighting line. However, such rigid personnel policies make it
difficult to keep units in the front line for a prolonged time, and
divisions involved in heavy combat risk depleting their replacement
pool while divisions in quieter parts of the battle zone build up a
backlog of replacements.
U.S. Army policies represented one extreme of this tradeoff. There was a single large replacement pool shared by all divisions in a theater. Individual men were sent wherever they were needed, often being fed directly into the front line, at great cost to unit cohesion and morale. However, the American replacement policy did have the benefit that units suffering heavy casualties could draw replacements from one large pool rather than quickly exhausing a smaller regional pool. The Marines, as well as some specialized Army branches such as the Airborne, were much more careful to keep a man with his unit, and as a result, they enjoyed much better unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. The episodic nature of Marine and airborne operations, as well as the specialized training of the replacements, favored such a replacement policy.
The strict regional basis of Japanese recruitment represented the
other extreme. It produced excellent unit cohesion, but units suffering
heavy casualties quickly exhausted
the available manpower in their geographic base while other units had
manpower to spare. The effect on civilian morale at home when a unit
was annihilated has already been noted.
The British system was a compromise between these extremes. Battalions were recruited on a regional basis by their regiment, which favored unit cohesion. However, battalions were not assigned to divisions on a permanent basis. When a battalion was exhausted from prolonged combat, it would typically be withdrawn en masse and replaced with a fresh battalion, which need not be from the same regiment. Ideally, this allowed a division to remain in the front line indefinitely, with depleted battalions moved into reserve and then exchanged for fresh battalions with fully integrated replacements. The difficulties of the British Army arose from shortages of manpower and lack of generalship, not from its replacement policies.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2007-2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index