Netherlands Order of Battle

Note: The order of battle pages in the Pacific War Online Encyclopedia are still under construction.

We present here the Netherlands order of battle from 7 December 1941 on. Units that deployed as part of a higher echelon (such as regiments assigned to divisions) are not listed separately. Also, units redesignated from other units are not included. Units that saw no service in the Pacific are not included. The intent is to give a reasonable reinforcement schedule for war games.

Tabulated information

Unit. This is the name of the unit.

Commander. This is the commander of the unit at the time of its activation. For units already active when war broke out, it is the commander of the unit on 7 December 1941. In general, we do not display commanders below flag or general rank. Ships showing a commander are the flagship of that commander.

Start. This gives the date and location of the unit's activation. For units already active when war broke out, only the location is given (at 8:00 AM on 7 December 1941, Hawaii time). If no location is given, a unit should be assumed to be at the same location as its operational headquarters (or administrative headquarters if no operational assignment is given.) Naval headquarters are located on the flagship of their commander unless otherwise specified.

Administrative Assignment. The administrative assignments in this table represent the formal organizational structure. The table is sorted by administrative assignment, such that every unit appears after the unit to which it is administratively assigned.

Operational Assignment. The operational assignment, if one is given, represents temporary attachment to another unit for a single operation. For example, an aircraft carrier might be administratively assigned to a carrier division, but be operationally assigned to a task force for a particular mission.

Notes. Miscellaneous information about a unit, such as its manpower and equipment, where it was raised, what its initial orders were, and how well it performed in battle.

Organization of the tables

The order of battle tables are laid out for maximum readability by software tools while retaining some semblance of human readability. Because the complete orders of battle for the major powers are many megabytes in length, we have broken these tables up into individual sections of less than 400K to avoid difficulties with older Web browsers.

In addition to the displayed text and associated links, each unit has an HTML anchor with a unique identifier based on the unit name. For example, the entry for I. Division includes the anchor I._Division which appears immediately before the unit name in the table. These anchors are used to cross-reference the tables but may also be of use to software tools scanning the tables.

We are considering offering the complete orders of battle as SQL files or as C++ code. Users of the Encyclopedia who desire these or other formats may write to trollingshallows@msn.com and make their desires know.

The order of battle

References

Ellis (1993)

The Netherlands East Indies 1941-1942 (accessed 2010-9-4)

Rottman (2002)

Willmott (1982)

Womack (2006)

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