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Post by quincannon on Oct 13, 2017 16:44:07 GMT
I am old enough to remember ROCID (Reorganization of Current Infantry Divisions) and ROCAD (Reorganization of Current Airborne Divisions) which led to the concept of Pentomic Battle Groups. and later ROAD (Reorganization of Army Divisions).
ROCAD/ROCID was an effort to make small largely self contained units designed primarily for the battlefield where small atomic weapons were commonplace. It was an organization far ahead of its time that could not be supported by the technology then available. It was short lived, and while it had a great many benefits in both tactical and strategic level mobility it was dropped starting in 1962 in favor of ROAD and gone by 64.
ROAD envisioned a standard division build around three brigade headquarters. To those brigade headquarters could be attached any type of maneuver battalion, including tank, mech Infantry, regular Infantry, and airborne Infantry. Those battalions could easily be interchanged between brigades as the situation dictated. Brigades themselves therefore were not fixed in structure, and could configure themselves into any construct the division commander wished. One division, the 8th ID had for a time all of the four types of units I mentioned, including airborne, and all divisions contained at least two types, most having three.
The ROAD division had a common base of reconnaissance, engineers, aviation, and signal, along with a common to all support command structure to meet all logistical requirements,
The idea, in terms of what we are talking about here, a strike force, was that one brigade would be tactically tailored for the mission at hand, and be given minimal logistics support, BUT the rest of the division would be in the immediate follow up echelon, so both problems, quick response, and long term build up of both combat power and sustainability could be solved.
My personal feeling, given what I have said on this thread in its totality is that the ROAD construct is probably the best way to address the problems of today, in that it focuses on both the short and long term, and is a saver in both the number of people and the amount of equipment, and transportation required.
While the current brigade combat teams address part of this problem, in that a division today is nothing more than a headquarters that can handle any type BCT, it does not afford the flexibility, and does create the wastage in personnel and equipment that ROAD did not.
A division therefore must be a warehouse of many and varied capabilities to meet the military problems of today. The BCT structure is fixed in structure and does not meet these requirements in total, although it addresses some of them. You still need a division's sustainment brigade regardless if you employ only one brigade, or up to five brigades. My argument then is that if the modern division should be a warehouse of capabilities, those then of all the powers engaged in WorlD War II should have been governed by the same driving concept. The problems associated with combat have not changes one iota.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 14, 2017 9:47:49 GMT
Those ROAD divisions, remind me of someone going on line and collecting everything they need to do a particular job, for instance, you could see a general who had been ordered to get his division ready for a mission, say in the horn of Africa and he gets on his computer and looks down the list of units and ordinance available at this fingertip and as he scrolls down the list, each formation he requires has a box next to it and he simply clicks his mouse and ticks the little box, that would mean that when the time came for his division to ship out, very thing would be there all ready and waiting and all he had to do was to brief the unit commanders in each formation.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 14, 2017 16:22:29 GMT
Ian: The process is called at one level strategic tailoring.
Examples during the ROAD era:
The 24th ID in Germany contained 6 Mechanized Infantry and 3 tank battalions, plus the common division base and support command. That allocation of battalions was based upon where the 24th was based in Germany and where their initial war fighting positions (terrain).
The 7th ID and 1st Cavalry Divisions in Korea, were both built around 5 Infantry battalions and 2 tank battalions,plus common division bases and support commands. Again their structures were based upon location and initial war fighting terrain.
When I was in the 29th we had 6 Infantry battalions and two tank battalions plus the normal base and support. Ours was a reinforce Europe mission with no specific area of Europe designated.
When I was in the 28th we had 5 Infantry, 1 Mechanized Infantry, and 3 tank battalions, plus the normal division assets. Our mission was also reinforcing Europe but were given a specific location in Germany.
The heavies we kept in the States, 1st and 2nd Armored, and 5th ID were all various combinations of Mechanized Infantry and tank battalions. They were a little different in that they had two sets of equipment,one at their home station, and another complete set in Germany that they could rapidly fall in on in time of war or crisis
So strategic tailoring is a little more than button pushing. It is the end result of pre-made war plans that dictated the resources allocated to those divisions.
Tactical tailoring was done at two levels, division and brigade
The division commander would allocate forces to each of his brigades for a given mission from among his strategically tailored resources.
The brigade commander given these resources would in turn tailor them to the mission at hand by cross attachment of type units, forming task forces. When I was in the 29th my brigade had three battalions, 2 Infantry and 1 tank. My battalion when we trained together with the rest of the brigade would cross attach one company to the tank battalion and gain a tank company, while the other Infantry battalion remained pure Infantry.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 14, 2017 17:35:24 GMT
Just for you Ian. After my last post I went down to the basement library and pulled out:
"The 4th Armored Division in the Encirclement of Nancy" by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel
It was published by the Combat Studies Institute, at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1986.
I commend it to you and should be available on line. It is only 27 pages, but the first three or four will give you a very good picture of how U S Armored divisions operated, and how later this same concept of operation was incorporated into ROAD. In fact the guy in charge of TRADOC (then called CONARC) was with the 4th Armored in the Nancy battles, and his experiences with the 4th AD were incorporated into the ROAD design.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 14, 2017 18:27:13 GMT
Found it Chuck; linkHe certainly goes to great lengths to explain the ins and outs of the 4th armoured division.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 14, 2017 18:42:47 GMT
I think I got the wrong end of the stick regarding how certain formations are collected to fight in a certain environment against a particular type of enemy.
I thought they might have started from scratch with just the basic essentials. When I was researching British armoured divisions, I soon saw that the division was like a revolving door with brigades swapping and changing as the war progressed, but the kept the spine of the division mainly intact. We called them "divisional troops" and these were essential units like these;
Divisional HQ Divisional Signals Reconnaissance [usually old light cavalry regiments] Royal Artillery [couple of field regiments, AT reg & AA reg] Royal Engineers [various troops and squadrons] Various Admin and medical units.
Now these units were the frame work of the division, the top brass allocated tank and infantry brigades to this to form a complete divisions, but like I said, these could be swapped about and even added to as the war went by.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 14, 2017 19:27:42 GMT
Spine is a good word. The concept of a division base is actually from World War I. In WWII the USA had a differently configured division base for each type division. That was carried through Korea, and the Pentomic experiment (ROCID/ROCAD). ROAD made all division bases identical, with an add on in the airborne division of a Quartermaster rigger company.
When you get into Gabel you will note how the 4th AD borrowed Infantry battalions. Most of the time they were from the 80th ID, You will also note the typical attachment of Quartermaster truck companies. Evidently both were quite normal during their operations. I have been told that is where Clarke got the idea for ROAD, where instead of one or two types of battalions, a division could support any type of battalion within the same command and control umbrella.
Therefore this goes back to what I said initially, it is not the division that makes contact, conducts maneuver, exploits, and all the other things that we associate with combat. That is done by battalions and battalion task forces. The division is them merely the spine upon which these forces are supported.
In other words had the Germans put one or two tank battalions in all of their divisions, and used their production capacity to modernize and motorize their entire army, then they could have employed the same doctrinal concept they did with the panzer division. A fixed organization is the sworn enemy of a flexible organization. True in the military, true in business, true in every area of life and society.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 15, 2017 11:10:13 GMT
I think the way the division could be split is down to the equal number of battalions; 3 x Armored 3 x Infantry 3 x Artillery Even if they are reduced by battle, they could adopt the same formations, as they could assemble task forces to do different missions, but also be part of the division, that is what Major General Rose did with his 3rd Armored division during the Battle of the Bulge; Task Force Hogan Company G 33rd Armored Regiment Company A 36th Armored Infantry Regiment + one platoon of C Company 83rd Reconnaissance Battalion Battery A 54th Field Artillery Battalion Attached section of the 486th AAA Battalion Task Force Orr Company A & C 36th Armored Infantry Regiment Company H 33rd Armored Regiment Company B 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion Battery B 54th Armored Artillery Battalion Attached Platoon 486th AAA Battalion [Quad .50s]. Task Force Kane 1st battalion 32nd Armored Regt. (minus companies G and A) + Company D 83rd Reconnaissance Battalion and C company (only one platoon) One squad from 23rd Engineer Battalion Attached C Company, 517th Parachute Battalion
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Post by quincannon on Oct 15, 2017 15:57:39 GMT
Ian: Learning how to form task forces and teams that fit mission profiles is something that is a time consuming learning process, and one that is emphasized at every level of an officers education from the basic course on through the advanced course and culminating at the Command and General Staff College.
The process made such an impression on me that it is the basis of my thinking about flexibility and what a division should look like. To me a division that is not multi-functional, is like having a tool box, going out on a job, and finding that you do not have half the tools you need to do the job.
It was not as big a factor in WWII when the typical corps would contain two Infantry and one armored divisions, but today the corps is nearly a forgotten factor, it has become an immobile theater headquarters, and the division has replaced it as the prime maneuver headquarters. That said, I advocate that the division should not be a one trick pony, but rather, a tool box, a warehouse, from which the proper tool, the proper solution, can be pulled out to fit the need.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 28, 2017 15:03:30 GMT
I remember an old discussion about Albert Kesselring and how well he did as an air force officer and a commander of ground troops.
Colonel in the Artillery Feldmarschall in the Luftwaffe Awarded the Knights Cross Given the command of Ob Südwest Managed to withdraw over Strait of Messina Defended the Gustav line and Anzio bridgehead Took over as commander of the western front after the failure of the Ardennes offensive.
In the discussion it was said that Kesselring felt aggrieved at losing the role Commander of the Luftwaffe to Goring and how would the Luftwaffe had performed during the Battle of Britain, if under Kesselring then under Goring.
One of his views, was that, generals in the future would have to be adept at managing all aspects of combat on land, sea, and air.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 28, 2017 16:09:36 GMT
The art of command at that level Ian is to be tactically, operationally, and strategically proficient, lay out your broad campaign objectives along with a must do task list that is consistent with those objectives, turn them over to your subject matter deputies, then get out of their way and let them execute. Today we would call it command of a joint force. Any general or flag officer at the three star and above level should be capable of doing just that, or they should not have those three or four stars.
What Kesselring was saying is that all combat is a joint effort, and no longer will it be possible to wage a campaign in but one dimension.
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Post by yanmacca on Jan 5, 2018 13:45:42 GMT
I read last night that the 5th Panzer Division was involved in the invasion of Greece. After Greece capitulated, the 5. Pz was going to join Rommel in Libya and this was going to take place in the summer of 1941. After detaching a company of tanks to be stationed in Crete, the orders to go to North Africa were withdrawn and division was deployed in Russia.
So around the time this deployment was meant to take place, Rommel had the 5th light division and most of the 15th panzer division.
The 5th light was soon up graded into 15th panzer so if the 5th panzer had arrived in Libya circa July 1941, then this would give Rommel three panzer divisions, a luxury which he never had until it was too late [Tunisia 1943].
Just shows how things can change by a simple order from the top.
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Post by quincannon on Jan 5, 2018 16:18:41 GMT
5th Light was redesignated 21st Panzer.
15th Panzer started out as the 33rd Infantry Division.
5th Light was created from scratch, built around the headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Brigade, and tanks and artillery drawn from excess created by the reorganization of the 3rd Panzer Division, The division became the 21st Panzer just before Crusader.
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Post by yanmacca on Jan 5, 2018 17:02:10 GMT
Of course it was Chuck, I was getting confused with the 5th panzer, I only realized my error when I got back to work.
5th light division Afrika - renamed 21. Pz div 1st Aug 1941
I cant believe I got 15th pz wrong, it was formed from the 33rd inf in November 1940.
But the point still stands, if Rommel had these formations in late 1941
5. Panzer 15. Panzer 21. Panzer 90. Light Division.
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Post by quincannon on Jan 5, 2018 18:28:19 GMT
If is the biggest word in the English language Ian. IF a bull frog had wings it would not bump its ass.
The outline histories of these division I have, do not mention anything between Greece and going to Russia, Seems that they may have stayed in Greece for some period, although I cannot tell because of lack of specific narrative.
But to your WHIFF. 5th Panzer would have given Rommel more combat power, but Rommel could not feed and fuel what he had. Therefore I am not at all sure that there would be all that much difference as long as Malta was in British hands. Had Rommel been well and reliably supplied, then that is a completely different story altogether, but Rommel was on the short end of the stick after the invasion of the USSR.
Hitler was like a hungry man at a pie eating contest. He tried to eat too much with too little access to Alka Seltzer.
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