I was watching the classic 1941 Abbott and Costello movie “Buck Privates” which is about both comedians getting drafted into the 1940 American Peacetime draft. In the movie, Costello feels confident that the draft board will reject him because he’s 241 pounds and the board rejects anyone over 240 pounds outright. Of course Abbott devises a way for Costello to lose that one pound and get accepted for the draft.
Now, I know this is a comedy movie but it was endorsed by the US Army as a recruiting tool, but I’m curious if there actually was a high upper weight limit for the peacetime draft simply because it was just supposed to be a peacetime draft, and if so did that continue into the actual drafts? And if someone was 240 pounds would they be restricted in what they could do because they were so heavy or would they basically be sent to “Fat camp” to shed some extra pounds before being sent to an actual military job? When I was in the Army in the late 90’s the weight limit for new recruits was 175 pounds without waivers IIRC.
I may be wrong on this, but it is my understanding that there was no numerical maximum weight limit. You could be rejected for being overweight, but there was no set number for which you were rejected. Instead of a weight limit, you would be evaluated by a doctor who would determine if you were in good enough physical shape to go through Army training. Basically, if you were a 240 lb football player type you could be accepted but if you were a 240 lb couch potato you could be rejected.
If you wanted to serve in the Cavalry, that did have a weight limit of 175 lbs.
On the opposite side of things, there were tables for minimum weight based on height, so there was a hard cutoff for being underweight.
You also had to have a certain number of teeth (I don’t recall the exact number). I’m not sure if that was a leftover from the days of muskets when you needed teeth in order to bite the end off of paper cartridges so that you could then pour the powder down into the musket.
There was a weight limit for enlisting when I went in. I had no issues, but my friend was told he needed to lose X pounds before showing up to the processing center to fly out to boot camp. He was sweating it until the last minute.
Later, in my unit, we had a guy that was so slim, during the annual weighing, we’d load up his cargo pockets with our wallets, watches and keys to get him a few extra pounds to keep him off medical profile for being underweight.
The Army still does have standards for enlistment, and the limit for males 21-27 happens to be 240 pounds, though you’d need to be 6’8"
I found a WW2 Army manual on physical standards here (pdf - and a big one) that shows minimum height/weight standards. As for being overweight, the disqualification is “greatly out of proportion to the height if it interferes with normal physical activity or with proper training.”
I will note anecdotally that after Pearl Harbor, my father was rejected by the Army because of a heart murmur. Nine months later with manpower requirements increasing steadily, his heart suddenly cured itself and he was drafted. Standards change.
The teeth thing was so you could consume standard Army rations, otherwise you’d be at risk of malnourishment. The standard was [Edit]six upper teeth that met six lower teeth[/Edit], or else dentures. Fun fact: in WW2 huge numbers of dentists got drafted to patch up the mouths of otherwise ineligible recruits.
I don’t know what the requirement was, but in WWII my ancestor used to bend the knees slightly when being measured, so that he wasn’t ‘too tall’ for whatever he was doing. When the Navy was determining the requirements for a landing craft (?) design, him and a friend modeled the ‘tall’ end of the occupant spectrum.
(Just in case anybody doesn’t know this, we’re talking about American men here.) I don’t know about World War II, but I can tell you about the Vietnam War. I turned 18 during the Vietnam War. I went to the local draft board and registered for the draft. I received from them a sheet which listed some things that allowed someone to be avoid being drafted. It listed things like certain medical conditions, which included your height. They wouldn’t draft anyone taller than 6’6" or shorter than 5’0". It said that if you thought you could be exempt from the draft because of a medical condition, you could get a note from your doctor about it. I went to my family’s doctor and gave him the form the draft board wanted him to fill out. He measured my height, which is 4’11", wrote this down on the form, and mailed it to the draft board. The draft board sent me a note saying that I was being classified as 1Y, which was a catch-all classification for a number of different things. Each of those things were reasons that it was decided that the person wouldn’t be drafted unless the necessity of the U.S. for military people changed. About a year later I received another note from them saying that I was reclassified as 4F, which meant that I wouldn’t be drafted at all.
Here’s a famous article about being rejected for being too thin: