Battalion Organization
during the
Second World War
An
enthusiast's site dedicated to the evolution of the Infantry Battalion, in its
many forms, during the course of the Second World War.
After a prolonged absence following the demise of my
old hosting firm, this is the beginning of my attempt to resurrect my fallen www.bayonetstrength.150m.com
site.
It will take a while to complete all the sections I
would dearly love to, and let’s be honest, the internet is littered with
abandoned or abbreviated hobby projects, so this may become yet another
one. Fingers crossed, I’ll hopefully
complete the first batch of studies at least.
This attempt represents the major redesign I had
planned before real life demanded my full attention. It is also the way I wish I could have
undertaken the project from the outset, replacing my first stumbling efforts of
around 2000. At the time there was
practically no readily available information giving detailed organization of
Allied and Axis units during the Second World War. Much of what was on the internet was
translated into wargaming terms, some was factually correct but taken out of
context, and some was plain wrong.
As I was chipping away at the subject with the
equivalent of a hammer and chisel, other folks were harvesting thousands of
pages of documents utilising digital technology. You couldn’t quite get Tables of Organization
and Equipment for free with your breakfast cereal, but it seemed like it for a
while. I will not be able to rival those
levels of acquisition, so after some consideration I have decided to return to
my original endeavour, low level unit organization.
The site will focus primarily on Infantry Battalion
organization of the major Allied and Axis nations between 1939 and 1945. At the moment there are four unit types
covered; the British Infantry Battalion, the German Infantry (later Grenadier)
Battalion, the Red Army Rifle Battalion and the US Army Infantry
Battalion. With these I am declaring my
first objective line reached. Next will
be either the armoured and motorised Infantry Battalions of the same four
principle players, or the somewhat quicker to produce British and US airborne
Battalions; there is also the USMC Infantry Battalion to address as well.
The emphasis for these opening studies is detail and
evolution. Not just how many men and
what weapons they carried, but also information I rarely see, such as
ammunition allocations and communications equipment. I cannot pretend to have this to the same
degree for all unit types, so the sections for Imperial Japan and Italy will of
necessity be rather more basic.
Commonwealth forces will feature thanks to past contributions, though
they do make for a large degree of duplication with their British counterparts
and offer their own problems in terms of detail. Eventually, I do hope to have the same
coverage as before.
Below then are the currently four active links,
representing the end of the first batch of studies I set out to complete.
British
Army organization during the Second World War updated November
2021 – Organization of the British Motor Battalion, 1938-1945 added – also a
few updates to the main piece on the British Infantry Battalion, added January
2022
German Army
organization during the Second World War
Red Army
organization during the Second World War
United States Army
organization during the Second World War
New links will be posted to this page as and
when. As can be seen from the above, the
general approach will be an overview of the unit involved, coupled with
detailed organizational data taken from the contemporary documentation for
it. These are provided in PDF files
which I reckon that most people now will be able to open. If anyone does have issues accessing any
files then please let me know.
So, to those who expressed some disappointment at
the old site going, I hope that the new approach will provide an
improvement. Needless to say the PDFs
are intended to be download and saved.
If you do wish to extract information from them for your own publication,
then a credit or link would be welcomed.
Over the years I have been gifted information from numerous others and
have tried to keep track, so please see the acknowledgments and sources section
at the end of each general overview.
As ever, I hope you may find the site of use and
interest. Should anyone need to get in
touch over technical or sourcing issues, or to offer answers for my ‘still
searching for’ queries, then my old Hotmail address remains operable -
gary$gjk$at$hotmail.com; remove each $ sign and replace at with @ (spammers -
it’s not grown up and it’s not funny).
Gary Kennedy
July 2018
Progress;
Departed Start Line August 2018
Objective Line 1 reached September 2019