Recently reading the headlines about Band of Brothers coming from HBO tho Netflix and it got me thinking:
– how does the US military divide up it’s soldiers? (Eg regiment vs troop vs platoon vs squadron)
– are there different rules for each branch of the military?
– I’ve only ever heard of the 101st airborne division but not other ones… Was there a 100th division? 99th division, etc? Why is the 101st so famous?
In: 642
The US Army structure works like this:
A Field Army, commanded by a General or Lieutenant General, consists of multiple Corps.
A Corps is commanded by a Lieutenant General and contains about 20,000-45,000 troops, split up into multiple Divisions.
A Division can have 15,000 troops or so but it varies depending on operational needs, and it is usually commanded by a Major General. A Division is split up into multiple Brigades.
Below Brigades you have Battalions, then Companies, then Platoons, and finally Teams. The lower down you go, the smaller the group and the lower the rank of the person in charge.
> I’ve only ever heard of the 101st airborne division but not other ones… Was there a 100th division? 99th division, etc? Why is the 101st so famous?
The US Army had a lot more divisions during WW2 because of the massive number of troops they mobilized. Not every division existed (to try to fool the enemy, you might have divisions that only exist on paper, or you might skip a few numbers to try and trick them into thinking you have more divisions than you actually do.) The reason the 101st is so famous is because they participated in D-Day and some other major operations in the Western theater of WW2, and unlike many other divisions they were not disbanded at the end of WW2.
It is hard to explain the army’s structure in ELI5 format, but in general it goes:
Team –> Squad –> Platoon –> Company (so easy Company, 506th, 101st) –> Regiment/Battalian –> Brigade –> Division –> Corps –> Army.
Air Force would be
Team –> Flight –> Squadron –> Group –> Wing –> Air Division –> Numbered Air Force –> Major Command
Going back to the army, it is helpful to understand who is what. Winters was company commander, as such the ranks from 2LT to Captain (so 01-03) are called ‘company grade officers.’ They are in command of companies and smaller. Above that, when he made major, he was at the battalion level, so many companies that come together to form a cohesive battle ready unit. Those officers are called ‘field grade’, they go from Major to Colonel. A general officer starts at the brigade, as such the first general rank is called ‘*brigadier* general.’
Typically an army division is where we talk about the individual special ability. So the 101s Airborne division contains all of the needs to field the airborne capability in a theatre of battle. They have logistics, medicine, mechanics, trigger pullers, intelligence, etc. Those are divided out into brigades and companies. A company is a group of people that generally do the same thing as far as the mission goes. You won’t have heavy armor guys in a airborne rifle *company*.
It gets more complex, but basically field and general grade officers are able to take units regimental level and above to form a function that they need in order to execute a mission given to them by the President. So, if the President says “Invade Europe”, the officers are able to put together the units at their command to execute that mission. It would include the paratroopers, landing craft, the navy, the army air force, etc. The army is designed to allow this flexibility.
What we learned in WWII was the more flexible you can make your unit down to the company level the better. When we killed a German or Japanese officer, the men below them would lose combat effectiveness. In the allied military, a Seargent would simply pick up the duties as needed, and a corporal would temporarily backfill him.
Now, in NATO land, we are even more integrated. The supreme commander of NATO forces Europe can call on American, Italian, German, French, and English armies, navies, and air forces quickly and effectively. The structure of the army and other branches allows this to happen.
Each branch of the US military has the same set of rules known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it is section 10 of the US code. Each branch has their own instructions (that is what they are called) on specific items of military discipline, but they are all broadly similar. Like, an Air Force officer would expect the same courtesy from a Marine Corporal as a Marine officer would. Officers, by the way, are appointed by the President. It is a big deal, they are authorized to order people around, they have legal responsibilities, it is no small thing to be an officer.
The US Army airborne divisions are just special types of infantry divisions. They are numbered by age as they were formed. So before the 101st airborne division were formed the 100th infantry division formed up and they were followed by the 102nd infantry division. Actually the 101st were formed as an infantry division during the end of WWI but when they were activated for WWII they were given paratrooper training along with the 82nd division. The Band of Brothers series even shows this multiple times as the company trains for and spends most of their time as infantry. And in the deployment at the Battle of the Bulge they even say that they are supposed to be surrounded because they are the airborne as they walk into battle. So the 101st is an infantry division which have specialized in parachuting and fighting behind enemy lines.
101st Airborne was created during WW2. The number was a chosen to convince the Axis powers the Allies had larger numbers of troops than they did in an effort to misdirect their forces.
There were 4 airborne divisions operating around D-day. 2 were British (1st and 6th) and 2 were American (82nd and 101st). In the run up to D-day the allies put enormous effort into convincing the Axis their forces were much bigger than they were in reality. The German army used sequential numbering starting from 1, so it was hoped that by skipping numbers the Germans would be fooled into thinking the Allied army was much bigger. The Allies also created radio traffic and even models to represent some of these fake divisions and arranged for a corpse with fake info to wash ashore somewhere the information would be fed to Hitler.
The same logic was used in other areas in WW2 – the British SAS only has one active duty regiment, the 22nd SAS. There is a reserve regiment (the 23rd) but no others. Even the name (Special Air Service) was a deliberate misdirection; when they were created they used jeeps to hit remote targets, not planes.
To your first question, other commenters covered it pretty well.
Your second question, each Branch is a bit different but only the Navy really diverges from the rest with carrier groups, Amphibious groups, shore and air wings.
As an 82nd Airborne vet… The 101st isn’t even an airborne unit anymore, just some Nasty LEGS that rappel out of rotary wing aircraft. You ain’t Airborne unless you let go of the aircraft. As to naming conventions, they where just regular infantry divisions that got converted to Airborne Divisions in WW2. There were several other Airborne Divisions in WW2 that have since been de-activated (11th, 13th, 17th come to mind) leaving only the 82nd as the Army’s last true Airborne Infantry Division.
1. The division depend on the type of unit and the time period. But at the time of WW2 an infantry Regiment was made of 3 Battalion (Winters was made acting Battalion Commander during the show). Each Battalion had about 3 Company, each company was made of 3-4 platoons, each platoon was made of several squads. We are talking her about the main combat unit, sometime they will have additional supporting unit. For example, an Infantry regiment have 3 Infantry Battalion, but also an artillery, an anti-tank and an service company as support as well as a Medical detachment. In operation they might have additional unit attached temporary to it. For example, maybe the commander of the Regiment could temporary receive the command of a Tank company to help him do an attack on a village.
Squadron and Troops are the equivalent of Company and Platoon, but for armored unit.
2) That’s way too vague of a question, but yes some rules are the same, some are not.
3) The US consider their airborne division as Infantry and are numbered as such. The US 99th Infantry Division fought at the battle of the Bulge, they went through some tough shit there in the Northern side of the campaign. The 100th also fought in Europe, 3 member of that division received the Medal of honor.
Why the 101st is more famous? Well of the 5 airborne division of the war, only two remain. The 82nd and 101st. Those two divisions arguable seen the most actions of the Airborne division during WW2, both had more casualties than any of the other 3 airborne division. More casualties mean more bloody history and the fact that they existed almost continuously since WW2 make it a lot more easy for them to be known to the public.
So why the 101 is more well known than the 82nd? Hard to say. Maybe the name 101st Screaming Eagle sell more than the 82nd All American? Maybe there was just more stories written about the 101. Maybe because the 82nd was deployed along the Cambodian border while the 101st had unit in the Task Force Oregon and Tiger Force and they were involved in the invasion of Southern Laos. All operations that would put them in the news more often.
In the Gulf War the 101st was the first unit to shoot, and they also made the deepest air assault operation in history, both of which were highly published event in the media, more so than the contribution of the 82nd. At the start of Afghanistan the 101st deployed their 3rd brigade as the first conventional unit to fight in the war and they were a bit part of operation Anaconda, during that time the 82nd was send across different missions so not a lot of talk about the division itself was in the media.
It seem that the 101st just have a more regular presence in the media for a long time after WW2.
The United States Army has three division numbering sequences: one for infantry, one for armor, and one for cavalry.
Airborne divisions are numbered in the infantry sequence.
As a rule of thumb, 1-25 were reserved for Regular Army divisions, 26-75 were originally National Guard divisions, and anything above that was originally Army Reserve.
Without a world war going on, the Army isn’t big enough to need so many divisions (a division varies in size, but a good estimate for a US division might be around 12,000 soldiers or so, across usually three brigades of front-line troops, some artillery, a helicopter brigade, and some other support troops like engineering and logistics, under the command of a two-star general). Right now, all but two divisions are from the infantry sequence (1st Cavalry and 1st Armored, the last other one was 49th Armored from the Texas National Guard).
The active-duty Army kept the numbers mostly from divisions which are in the 1-25 segment of the infantry division sequence. Since it doesn’t have 25 divisions total, it prioritizes numbers that were particularly distinguished in the World Wars, such as 1st Infantry, which landed at Omaha Beach in the Normandy invasion. There are two divisions from the Army Reserve sequence which still exist as actual divisions (plus a couple more which exist as administrative centers for training units, but the Army Reserve doesn’t have its own divisions anymore): the 82nd Airborne, originally the 82nd Infantry raised during World War I (the most decorated American, Alvin York, was in this division) and the 101st Airborne (raised too late for WWI but kept on the list of reserve units in case the Army was going to draft a lot of people again).
These two were designated as airborne divisions in WWII with the mission to enter battle by parachute. They participated in the Normandy invasion and other airborne operations such as Market Garden. The 101st also famously held the line ad Bastogne during the German offensive through the Ardennes (the Battle if the Bulge) and the assistant division commander famously absent a one-word refusal to surrender: “To the German commander: Nuts!”
The TV series *Band of Brothers* is about a component unit of the 101st.
Presently, there are two airborne divisions in the United States Army: 82nd and 11th. 11th was the Alaska-based portion of 25th Infantry Division until a couple of years ago (it was split between Alaska and Hawaii). The Army is transitioning back to divisions being the primary building block rather than brigades like the past 25 years where a division headquarters might have ended up with a few brigades of different roles. Airborne divisions don’t typically parachute into combat in huge numbers these days (it sometimes happens, the French had some success doing it in Mali in 2015, for example). Their main role is to be a strategic quick response force. Since they don’t have much equipment that isn’t easily air-transportable, they can deploy faster than other units. If you hypothetically need troops in Atropia to hold off a Gorgasi invasion, they can get there within a couple of days while the heavier units are still moving their tanks from the pre-positioned stocks in the Middle East. The main thing setting them apart from other light infantry divisions which also have this is that since you have to specifically volunteer for airborne training, they think of themselves as something of an elite force, typically have higher morale, typically hold themselves to a higher standard than other units might.
The 101st is called an airborne division, but since the 1960s, it has actually been an air assault division. This means that it has everything which a standard light infantry division has, plus a larger number of helicopters so that they can fly more troops around at a time than a standard light infantry division.
Light infantry units do not have transport themselves. In practice, they often borrow some extra trucks, drivers, and mechanics owned by a higher-level command for better mobility, but they mostly have trucks for moving supplies and things which are too heavy for individuals to carry like artillery (this can mean that people are expected to be capable of long marches carrying 50lbs of personal equipment, a mortar base plate, and some mortar rounds). Medium units have armored eight-wheeled trucks called Strykers to carry their front-line troops. Heavy units have a mix of Abrams tanks and tracked Bradley vehicles which carry troops. Airborne units are a subset of light units.
Edit:
At most levels, a ground unit can be divided into three primary sub-units and some support. As previously stated, a division is typically three brigades and support. A brigade is three line battalions of infantry and tanks plus some other battalions. Under the previous model that started around 25 years ago, the artillery and cavalry units would be among these battalions, but now, they’re owned centrally by the division and the brigade borrows them when deploying. They also have a battalion of combat support guys like engineers and intelligence, a battalion of combat service guys like logistics. A maneuver battalion is divided into three main companies, plus some support guys. Heavy battalions don’t have heavy weapons companies s like light infantry because their line battalions already have heavy weapons on their tanks and tracked vehicles, but they have more engineers to build bridges and clear other obstacles. Companies are divided into three line platoons, light infantry has a weapons platoon as well, and some guys under company headquarters. A platoon has three squads (a fourth weapons squad) and might have a medic, radio operator, and artillery observer under the platoon headquarters with the platoon leader (a low-ranking officer) and platoon sergeant (a high-ranking enlisted guy who works for the officer). A squad is divided into fire teams of four guys. Most people other than US Marine Corps have two teams per squad, Marine Corps is three.
A regiment is either brigade or battalion-equivalent, but for US Army conventional troops, it only has ceremonial significance. 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th SOAR are regiments in the special operations community which are roughly equivalent to an infantry brigade and an aviation brigade in size.
Infantry is the default, but everything else is slightly different. Vehicles or crew-operated equipment tend to be squad-equivalent. A tank company, for example, is 14 tanks. Each platoon has four tanks (can divide into two sections, one under platoon leader, other under platoon sergeant), one tank for company commander, one for company executive officer (#2 guy), with the first sergeant in charge of a couple of trucks carrying their stuff. Artillery companies are called batteries. A battery could have two platoons of three guns each, with a separate fire direction center per platoon, for example. Cavalry calls their battalions squadrons and their companies troops (British cavalry, a battalion is a regiment, company is squadron, platoon is troop).
It’s less standardized for air units and especially naval units because in those cases, it is more about the equipment than the people.
*”US military divide up it’s soldiers”*
From small to large:
Squad/team – 4-10 soldiers
Platoon – 3-4 squads
Company – 3-4 platoons
Battalion – 3-5 companies
Brigade/Regiment – 3-5 battalions
Division – 3 brigades
*”Are there different rules for each branch of the military?”*
Yes and no. **But mostly no.** I’d have to have specific questions to answer more specifically.
*”Was there a 100th division? 99th?”*
Yes, there is/was a 100th Training Division at Fort Knox, KY. It was the 100th Infantry Div. from the early 1900s to the 1950s. Then was the 100th Airborne Div. Then training.
There was a 99th Infantry Div. in the early 1900s (WW1). Became a reserve unit in 1929 and still is a reserve unit in New Jersey.
*”Why is the 101st so famous”*
Because the “Screaming Eagles” were some of the first US soldiers to set foot in France in 1944.
There are numerous past and present US army divisions. Some of the more notable ones – 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 3rd Infantry, and others.
Most of these questions have been answered, but as to why the 101 is so famous- BASTOGNE.
Watch the mini series Band of Brothers. Written by someone who served in the 101 during WW2, the events of the series are real events. Bastogne was the turning point during the Battle of the Bulge. Outnumbered, surrounded, harsh winter without proper winter gear, low on ammo, food, medical supplies, literally everything, the German Commander radioed the Commander of the 101 forces to request his surrender. This was his note–
To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.
The German Commander.
The 101 Commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, responded with one word- ‘Nuts!’.
General Patton was so inspired by this, that he raced his 3rd Army Tank Division 150 miles in 3 days (normally would have taken weeks) in heavy snow conditions.
It is one of the greatest battles of WW2, and an inspiring story. Americans at their best, fighting Nazis with little more than courage. And wining.
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