US Troops

HA!
Kudos for a double delete.
Sounds like burger king drive thru..." Ill take a double delete, hold the mayo."

 

My post was delayed for some reason then BOOM it got posted three times!

Yes yes I may very well need it, only if your teaching.

 

Infantry casualties were far higher than had been anticipated, which threw a hefty spanner into the manpower planning. The army had a model of the expected number of casualties against different intensities of combat. After D Day they had to take account of a new scale of casualties "Double intense". One consequence was to raid infantry formations low in the landing schedule for trained infantrymen. For example, the 106th Infantry Division, which had been raised and in training for two years actually entered battle in Dec 1944 with a high proportion of new recruits.

The US Army had been built for mechanized warfare, and structures modeled on best practice. (The US Infantry Division had a very similar structure to the German 1939 infantry division - but with motor vehicles replacing horses.) The US Army had not copied the German replacement system, with its territorial recruiting areas and field replacement training units. There were particularly high casualties among infantry replacements, who were often put into the front line with very limited induction and treated very much as the, expendable, FNG. Nor had the US Army made enough provision for armour replacements, resulting in a shortage by Dec 1944.

The western armies also miscalculated the amount of AAA troops. In 1942 a lack of effective air defence can be seen as behind some of the spectacular failures against German and Japanese command of the air. As a consequence there was an over provision of AAA, against German and Japanese air forces whose weakness was a precondition for allied offensives. The AAA were a pool of reserve manpower for the allied armies. The British combed through AAA units from June 1944 form individuals. AA units were used occasionally as infantry. For example the 62nd AA Brigade RA in Italy, part of 4th US Corps had two HAA regiments as "field artillery", three LAA Regiments as infantry and IIRC some manning M10 Tank Destroyers