I, like everyone has been watching the war in Iraq. I would like to know what those ordinal numbers mean when referred to a military company.
For example, the 101st Airborne. Is there 101 Airbornes? Is there a 100th Air. or a 102nd Airborne? The 507th maintenance Company, is there a 506th or a 508th Maintenance? I would think that these numbers are codes to identify jobs in the military, but I haven’t a clue.
SP
They are simply the number associated with the unit. They are sort of assigned sequentially, but not neatly. A brief overview of this can be found here:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2080825/
In a nutshell, if there is a 507th Maintainance Company, that means that there have been 506 other US army companies that have existed since the American Civil War, but none of them might exist today, and none of them need to have been Maintainance Companies. To confuse matters even more, a unit could have been the 507th Signal Brigade, then become the 507th Supply Regiment, then become the 2nd Company of the 419th Cook Battalian and been split out as the 507th Maintainance Army, reduced in strength until it was the 507th Maintainance Division.
You’re not the first to wonder this. I read in a book about Merrill’s Marauders (5307th Composite Unit ((Provisional)) that during a battle with the Japanese in Burma, one of the marauders was heard to yell: “Where the hell are all the other five thousand three hundred and six Composite Units ?”
Okay.
First of all, you have to know what size of unit you’re taslking about. The 101st Airborne is a division, which is a very, very large unit - about 10000-20000 soldiers, depending on the country and type of force.
The U.S. Army is mainly organized by divisions. The numbers of division are sort of sequential; it’s not that there’s 101 Airborne divisions, it’s that there’s 101 divisions in total; they started numbering divisions and it was #101, and it’s also airborne, so of course it’s the 101st Airborne. Think of it as being short for “101st Division Of the Army, an Airborne Division.” There’s also a 10th Mountain Division (light infantry) but it was just the 10th division they named, not the 10th division of light infantry.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple… for instance, there are THREE 1st Divisions in the U.S. Army. During WWII they started renumbering with armored divisions, so you actually could count 1,2,3 with armored divisions. But the airborne divisions were just numbered in the line of infantry divisions. And there aren’t 101 divisions or even close to it. Some of the numbers are old and used as tradition, like the 1st Cavalry. The numbers from 26 to 50 are all reserve units, some divisions were created in WWII and don’t exist anymore… you get the idea. The U.S. Army today has “only” 10 divisions of regular troops:
1st Infantry
2nd Infantry
3rd Infantry
4th Infantry
25th Infantry
1st Cavalry
1st Armored
10th Mountain
82nd Airborne
101st Airborne
There are also quite a few reserve divisions, but they are not kept at full strength.
Above the level of division you get into Corps and Armies, huge, ponderous forces made of divisions. Patton commanded the Third Army in France, a force that at the height of its size had twenty divisions or more. But corps and armies are generally ad hoc wartime organizations, with divisions switched in and out as need be.
Below divisions, unit numbering gets complicated, and at this point in a long-standing army it can be safely assumed to mean almost nothing; the sheer number of units that have been organized, moved, switched between formations and stuck around when all the previous numbered units in the sequence were dissolved defies any sort of lucid explanation.
Gotta love those simple-minded Marines.
1st Marine Division, 2nd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division. That’s all.
Yeah, but UncleBill, even I have to admit that I get confused with “Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 16th Regiment, 4th Marines”.
I mean, shit, I’m with the 5th CES[sub]a part of the 5th Bomb Wing. Even simpler!![/sub]. How much simpler can you get?
Tripler
Marine wanna-be.
You may be interested in this thread from a couple weeks ago: How do American Amry divisions get numbered?
Ain’t no such animal. “Regiment” and “Marines” are the same thing. The three line companies in 1st Battalion are Alpha, Bravo, Charlie (skip Delta). The three line companies in 2nd Battalion are Echo, Fox, and Golf (skip Hotel). 3rd Battalion is India, Kilo and Lima. It’s alpabetical, get it?
Someone says “Golf Company” and they are automatically in 2nd Battalion.
Then the Marine Regiments (major units)
East Coast (2nd Marine Division): 2nd, 6th, 8th and 10th (Arty). The rest of the battalions have “2nd”, like 2nd Tank Bn, 2nd Recon Bn, 2nd LAR Bn, 2nd Assault Amphibious Bn,
West Coast (1st Marine Division): 1st, 5th, 7th, and 11th (Arty). Same use of “1st” for various other battalions.
Japan (3rd MarDiv): 3rd, 4th, and 12th (Arty).
Notice they are numerical, 1 through 12, skipping 9th Marines, which was deactivated within the last 15 or 20 years. Basically, once you get above 12th Marine Regiment, you are in the Reserves.
4th MarDiv is the Marine Corps Reserves Division.
Thank you for the explanation for something I’ve been wondering about for a while.
RickJay mentions the absence of corps or armies - but isn’t there a V Corps? From unreliable memory, a tank corps based in Europe?
For an example of what can happen, during reductions-in-force in the 1990s the 24th Inf-Mech. Division was folded into the the 3rd, and the 2nd Armored into the 4th Inf-Mech and 1st Cav; and the name and flags of the 24th were then “revived” in 1999 as placeholders for a division to be assembled of National Guard units if need be; WW1 and 2’s 79th Infantry Div’s patch and “history” now belongs to the 79th Reserve Command (E. Pennsylvania).
See here for the various units that can make up the battle line of a current division – NOT counting the attached medical, supply, and services units. Notice it includes units from the 7th. Cav, a regiment that also has units attached to 1st. Cav Div and other commands.
(*How come we name a Regiment after Custer’s???)
Alcibiades, the US currently has a I, III, V and XVIII Corps, which in peacetime are more like contingency task force structures for moving around and deploying the actual warfighting units – I Corps for forces designated for a Pacific Theatre deployment, V Corps for forces fwd-deployed in Europe, III Corps is the “heavy” US-based reaction force and XVIII Corps is the “light” US-based reaction force. VII and IX corps were deactivated in the 90s. The Corps have National Guard divisions and brigades assigned to them. See here III Corps, that site has the other Corps and commands as well.
Sorry for the minor hijack. Should be a short one.
The 7th Cavalry was one of three units created after the Civil War to help control the expanding Western Frontier (a.k.a Louisiana Purchase, Indian Territories). Although Custer was the first executive officer and eventually took over command, he’s just the most publicly known figure in the 7th Cav. The 7th Cav stayed in existence after Little Big Horn and served notably in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Much as I hate the way Mel Gibson butchers history, We Were Soliders is also about the 7th Cav (continuous unit history with Custer’s era).
In other words, it’s not named after him, he was just one of the first commanders.
Looking up 7th Cavalry in Google will get you plenty of unit histories, both from Custer’s time and beyond.
Sorry for the Hijack. Back to the OP
For what it’s worth, even non-sequential unit numbers are easier to deal with than the hodgepodge of “named” units from the Civil War era and before. Keeping track of The Prince Royal’s Own, The ColdStream Guards, Fraiser Highlanders, Irish Bridade, Iron Brigade, Stonewall Brigade and Dilger’s Battery must have been a nightmare. Most of the Civil War groups also had numbers, but the battle reports seem to use the names as often as the numbers.
So where does the 7th Cavalry fit it? And what’s 3-7th Cavalry?
The 7th Cavalry is now, a “historical parent unit” designation rather than an active Division. The 3-7th is the 3rd Cavalry Squadron, 7th Cavalry “GerryOwens”, which is the current holder of the traditional “7th Cavalry Regiment” designation. The 3-7th is currently attached to the 3rd Infantry Division somewhere in Iraq. Their homepage
Best link I can find quickly on the full unit history: http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/r/jrr17/infantry/7cav.htm
The 1-7th and 2-7th Cavalry are both assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division: 1st Cav Div
The historical unit designation was explained in one of the previous GD threads on US Military units. The hamsters won’t pull up the link for me right now. Must be out having lunch.
Gotcha so far. Now that ‘skipped’ company, is that the 'Heavy Weapons" company, or are those platoons mixed into the organic TOE for the standard infantry companies?
**
Just for clarification, the “2nd, 6th, 8th, and 10th” refer to regiments in the division or battalions . Running under your statement that “regiment”=“division” I assume the ‘rest of the battalions’ are attached units that simply use the numeral designation of “2nd” but are attached to the 2nd MARDIV. Seems that the even numbered battalions are under the 2nd MARDIV, the odd numbered BNs are under the 1st MARDIV.
Good stuff I should know. I’m expecting a lot of joint work in the near future. . .
Tripler
Much obliged, Sir.
I think there used to be four line companies in a battalion, hence the “missing” letter. Someone with better knowledge may help on this. And that was confusing, sorry. 2nd, 6th, 8th, are Infantry Regiments. 10th is an Artillery Regiment. Since tanks, recon, LAR, and other types of units do not rate a Regiment within the Division, they are merely Battalions in the Division, I do not believe they belong to a Regiment. (1st Tank Bn under 1st MarDiv, 2nd LAR under 2nd MarDiv).
“Regiment” is subordinate to “Division”.
Another complicating factor if you were trying to track down what happened to divisions 1-100 is that during World War II the U.S. created an entire phantom “army”, with a number of phantom divisions included in it, in order to fool the Germans into thinking we were going to invade France at Calais instead of Normandy.
As pointed out in the following threads (thank you hamsters), Regiment means something different in the US Marines than it does in the US Army. In the Army, regiment seems to have taken on more of an historical significance rather than a chain of command significance. For example, the 3-7th is part of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The 7th Cav Regiment is split among two or three Divisions. Similarly, the 75th Ranger Regiment exists as a means to identify all Rangers as an Elite group, although units in the 75th are widely separated in terms of actual deployments and chain of command assignments.
Unit sizes - Look for Xgemia’s post
What happend to Regiments? - Look for EJsGirl
Back to the OP, this just means that you have an even more confusing terminology with more “mystery numbers” and designations! 