Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Interwar => Topic started by: commissarmoody on October 10, 2012, 10:51:58 AM
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I am looking for the U.S. Army TO&E for the interwar 1930s.
Infantry, Armor, Cav, and Arty.
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May not be exactly what your looking for, but there is some infomation under the 'Reorganisation National Defense Act 1920' section (Page 57)
http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/AMH%20V2/chapter2.htm
Besides, I found it an interesting read overall!
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I don't know if there was a reorganisation between 1918 and 1942... but here are the tables for the end of the Great War;
http://www.militaryresearch.org/army_wwi_table_notes.htm
and another summary of the NDA 1920 & Armour and Cavalry Between the wars;
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Infantry,_Part_I:_Regular_Army_/_The_First_World_War
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ARMOR-CAVALRY:_Part_1;_Regular_Army_and_Army_Reserve
Interesting to know that by law, only the infantry could have tanks... which is why the early cavalry vehicles were called 'combat cars'.
:)
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Yes, they mechanized the 1st Cavalry in 1933 but in 1934 they only had 7 armored vehicles (the used trucks with a stripe of paint on them to represent other armored vehicles).
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There are four wonderful volumes available online:
Steven E. Clay, ed. U.S. Army Order of Battle 1919-1941 (4 vols.) (Combat Studies Institute Press, 2010, 2011).
http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp
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Thanks for all of the info, it would appear that i have a lot of reading to do. :D
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So, it would seem that kit wise there really wasn't really any changes until at least 1936 at the earliest.
I am heaving trouble, trying to find Battalion, Company, platoon. and Squad TO&E in all of this. Any body have any idea about those?
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Ideas only and unconfirmed...
A platoon would likely be four squads of twelve men, with a platoon HQ of four. In WW1 the sections had set tasks, but I'm willing to bet that this was changed to four equal sections, each built round a gun team serving a BAR and two rifle teams, each of which may have still had one or two VB grenade launchers, each team having a corporal and each squad a sergeant. Platoon HQ would have been a Lieutenant, Platoon Sergeant, Platoon Guide (Sgt) and two privates acting as runners. The Army is often mentioned as being under-manned, so squads may have realistically been ten men (3 teams of three and the Squad Sgt).
Four platoons would make a company, which had an HQ of a Captain with an XO (1st Lt. usually). 18 Other ranks formed the company admin and staff in the usual roles. There were also 'Basics', who were a pool of men ready to be assigned within the company as required (to fill casualties, guys on leave etc). I'm not sure if the basics were around pre-war, so your call there. There was no weapons platoon at this point in time.
4 Companies formed the core of a battalion, which also had a HQ and a HQ Company, with all the admin staff and the usual REMFs. It's possible that there was a heavy weapons company at this time, as the machine gun battalions had ceased to exist and there would be a lot of weapons available to the now much smaller army. If it did exist it would likely be three or four platoons each of two squads. Each squad having a Sgt and two Browning M1917 teams of 6 men.
3 Battalions formed a regiment, which also had a machine gun company in 1918 (but wouldn't exist if each battalion had its own later), a cannon company (three platoons of 2 M1916 Guns?) and possibly an Anti-Tank company, armed with Puteaux 37mm guns. I have no idea what the US Army used before the M1 and M2 Mortars and I can't find an SNL number in the OSC for anything close.
The above is the 1918 organisation crossed with that of 1942's reorganisation, so it might not be exact, but I doubt it's far off. "Close enough for government work"... or not as the case might be.
;)
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The four square organisation was kept until the late '30s. IIRC 1936/37. Of course peacetime parsimony meant that companies would be kept at two platoons, the other two to be activated in event of war. The Marines, who saw active service during the period actually used this organisation in places such as Nicaragua and China.
I'll have a dig around and see if I've saved the link but there is a fabulous web article, a masters paper IIRc that details the organisational changes in the US Army across the 20th C.
Also worth looking at is the Tradoc site that somewhere has a copy of a young Matthew Ridgway's report on the US Marines in Nicaragua circa 1928/29. That goes right down to the platoon/company organisation of the USMC, which at the time was organised on similar lines to the US Army. I had a copy stored on my old laptop but sadly...........
Oh hang on, I think I may have posted the details on the Test of Battle website.
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Carlos jogged my memory... the Marines started WW2 with four squad platoons, three of rifles (with one Sergeant, one rifle grenadier, one BAR and 6 riflemen each) and one of automatic riflemen (2 BAR teams of three men, plus squad leader), so the Army may also have been similar or the same between the wars.
What was interesting to me was that squad leaders were supposed to have Thompsons... in order to encourage them to direct their squad, rather than have them be able to join in the shooting at long range, but to be also able to augment their squads firepower at short range. Everyone else had the Springfield M.1903.
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I think I shell use the Marine's TO&E for this then. Might not have all the Ncos with Thompson s, but shotguns and 1903s will work just fine.
Now to figure out what to use for the Cav troop's.
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I think I shell use the Marine's TO&E for this then.
I see what you did there. ;) lol
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I see nothing :D