Army Ground Forces Study No. 4

Section XV

REVISION OF THE MILITARY PROGRAM — THE 90 DIVISION ARMY

The War Department took no direct action on this plan. Instead, a Committee on the Revision of the Military Program was appointed in the War Department General Staff to consider, among other matters, the danger of overmobilization. Meanwhile the Army Ground Forces continued to activate units under the existing troop basis. On 21 April, calling attention to the pool plan submitted on the 14th and anticipating difficulties in the receipt of personnel, the Army Ground Forces requested permission to defer the infantry division scheduled for activation in August. The War Department replied that no action would be taken on the AGF pool plan for over a month and that meanwhile the pre-activation process for the August division should be launched. The Chief of Staff, AGF, fearing a repetition of the summary of 1943 of the personnel crisis of 1942, took care to place this decision of the War Department in the record.81 On 14 May the War Department announced that the pool plan would probably be approved “in principle,” and that inductees would in the long run suffice to fill AGF units.82 In June 1943 shortages began to reappear.83 (See Table IV.)

The Committee on the Revision of the Military Program reported early in June. Since a year before, when the Operations Division of the War Department had hoped for 140 divisions by the end of 1943, the strategical picture had greatly brightened. The German advance in Russia had been checked and bombing of Germany from Great Britain was assuming larger proportions. It was decided to reduce the strength authorized the

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Army by the end of 1943 from seven-and-a-half to seven million enlisted men. Ultimate size of the Army was to be determined later. “This will depend, to a large extent,” observed the Committee, “on the outcome of the Russo-German operations this summer and the effectiveness of the Combined-Bomber Offensive, the trends for which should be sufficiently apparent by early September to warrant a decision.84

The Committee sought to obtain the 500,000 reduction almost entirely by deletion of combat ground troops from the troop basis. It recommended the following change in allotments:85

TROOP BASIS AS OF 31 DECEMBER 1943

It was proposed that 12 divisions be deleted from the 1943 program, leaving 88 to be mobilized. Over 350,000 men were to be taken from divisional strength, reducing divisional strength about 25 percent, an economy made possible in part by the deletion of 12 divisions, in part by the reduction of divisional tables of organization. Whether the 12 divisions should be restored to the troop basis in 1944 was to be decided later. From “combat support” (nondivisional combat units) only 100,000 were to be taken. The proportion of combat support to divisions was to be increased, and a larger allotment for heavy artillery and for tank battalions, as desired by General McNair, was to be included. In antiaircraft artillery the committed proposed no significant reductions. Allotment for service troops continued to grow. The gross number of men per division (not counting Air Forces) was about 55,000.

General McNair was willing enough to check the growth of the Ground Forces, though his own proposals had been less drastic, but he viewed with disfavor an economy in which all cuts were applied to combat troops. “... the proposed distribution of manpower,” he wrote to the War Department, “indicates a serious condition which warrants radical corrective action to effect the assignment of a much greater proportion of the manpower to units designed for offensive combat.”86 He noted that of ground forces intended for use against the enemy (totaling 3,642,311 men) only 29 percent was in divisions, whereas 36 percent was in combat support, 33 percent in service support, and 29 percent in theater overhead. He observed that almost half the combat support was antiaircraft artillery, “even though a strong air force is provided to combat the hostile air forces,” and that the service support did  “not include essential field service units in sufficient numbers for the support of 88 divisions,” being predominantly in communications zone troops. He recommended a complete reorientation of the troop basis in the remainder of 1943 and in 1944 to provide a larger ratio of offensive combat troops, a cut of

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180,000 in antiaircraft artillery, and the taking of measures, through economy of service troops in inactive theaters and in purely Zone-of-Interior functions, to assure that enough medical, ordnance, signal, and quartermaster units would be at hand to maintain the combat troops, most of which were still in the United States.

On 1 July 1943 the War Department issued a new approved troop basis for 1943. It provided for 88 divisions and 7,004,000 enlisted men, but authorized somewhat more manpower to combat support and somewhat less to service support than the Committee had originally proposed. Two provisional light divisions were authorized. These soon received a permanent status. The new troop basis therefore projected, for 1943, a “90-Division Army.”

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