What % of U.S. soldiers actually fired their weapons in combat in WWII?

[Sofa_King]

I think that if you refer to the enormous introduction to John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, you’ll be able to track the citations which show S.L.A.M.'s observations on troops firing in anger to be erroneous. But I too am going to have to go to the vault to look that up, for the reasons I name below.

Going purely from memory (of Keegan’s work and other sources), I believe that Marshall’s observations sprung from his work on Makin Atoll, which I happened to ask about in another facet of this topic. In fact, in that thread zut and mhendo came to the mathematical conclusion that, if a triangular system of reserves was employed, and no reserves were committed, only about 20% of a division would actually see combat.

I would say that the 20% figure may have spawned from Marshall, except now I can’t find where Marshall said anything about reserves OR the number of troops who fired shots in anger.

Back then, I was bad enough to not provide any decent citations–I recall having trouble finding them. Now, our good friends at the DoD have put the final report on Makin online for us to peruse.

A quick review only provides a reference to “indiscriminate” fire in the Conclusion. But I also find no reference to the “triangular” reserve problem I asked about in that other thread. Obviously, I have to read it in full, but right now I’m wondering exactly where I learned the damned Marshall-reserves problem to begin with! The link above is to the final report, not Marshall’s work, which was “edited and partially rewritten.”

I’m thinking that the two issues may have shaken out like this: Marshall may have concluded that too many troops were held in reserve; the final report writers may have come to the conclusion that the real problem was too many soldiers firing indiscriminately at night. (I recall that after Makin troops were encouraged to use grenades rather than their rifles when night fighting.) The 20% firing myth may have also spawned from this very same issue.

Sorry to confuse the issue even worse. If I can find the time to look into this I’ll offer any answers I find.

[Searching_For_Truth]

I think it’s really interesting that this came up. I read about Marshall’s statistics in Newsweek earlier this year.

“The war of nerves: And how the troops preparing for conflict with Iraq are coping with it.” January 26, 2003, By Evan Thomas
http://war-in-iraq.org/military/war-troops-260103.html
**The great combat historian of World War II, S.L.A. Marshall, wrote that fear affects all men, even those in the most highly motivated units. Marshall found that no more than a quarter of the men actually fired their weapons on the battlefield. **Religious scruple against killing was one reason. A bigger factor was shock. In one study of a division that saw heavy fighting in World War II, a quarter of the soldiers admitted they had been so scared that they vomited. Almost a quarter lost control of their bowels. Ten percent urinated in their pants.

[Ringo]

Since this thread sprang from my dim memory of having run across what was apparently a Marshall artifact years ago, and not having as yet run across the actual Marshall text, I have to ask - this figure bandied about is 15-20% of whom?

Obviously, there were many WWII service members (half or more?) who never had an opportunity to fire a weapon at an enemy. My father was a low-on-the-totem pole intelligence functionary who followed the traffic between the Japanese embassy in Moscow and Tokyo. I doubt, after he watched the Pearl attack (as a civilian), that there was a shot fired in anger within a few thousand miles of him during his WWII military service.

Similarly, many military other occupations had almost zip opportunity to actually fire on the enemy.

So I suppose the question regarding the (I’ve yet to actually see) figure of 15-20% bifurcates into a.) the questions of will, resolve, consciense and training addressed by Marshall and Grossman and b.) who is the total population referred to?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

My World Almanac lists troop strength in WWII as 16,353,659.

Simply put, in no organization, bureaucratic or otherwise, with 16,353,659 members is every job or every person useful.

Now, my copy of The Face of Battle has a discussion of Marshall on pp. 73-4.

Newsweek accurately quotes the 25% figure, which is the percentage of all “fighting” soldiers who will use their weapons against the enemy. Battle quotes from Marshall:

[The Army] must reckon with the fact that he comes from a civilization in which aggression, connected with the taking of life, is prohibited and unacceptable. The teaching and ideals of that civilization are against killing, against taking advantage. The fear of aggression has been expressed to him so strongly and absorbed by him so deeply and pervadingly - practically with his mother’s milk - that it is part of the normal man’s emotional make-up. this is his greatest handicap when he enters combat. It stays his trigger-finger even though he is hardly conscious that it is a restraint against him.

Keegan never refutes this with facts. He says:

It was [Marshall’s] conviction that success in battle depended upon structuring an army correctly; and in arguing his case for a new structure of small groups or “fire teams” centered on a “natural fighter”, he was undoubtedly guilty of over-emphasis an special pleading. … A dose of Marshall is a useful corrective but it is not a cure-all for the ills of military history.

[patchbunny]

*Originally posted by Monty *
**You’re welcome, Jman.

Patch: You are incredibly mistaken in your view of what a Soldier’s “job” is. I say this as both a former US Army Sergeant and as a retired US Navy Petty Officer First Class: Part of the “job” of a member of the Armed Forces is to be prepared. If you’re not keeping yourself prepared, then perhaps you’ve made the wrong career choice? **

I feel like we’re talking in two different things, here.

1. What soldiers are supposed to do in combat

2. What they actually do in combat

It may well be their “job” to be prepared, but what actually happens when the bullets start flying is something else altogether. Being willing to stick your head up and fire your weapon when people are trying to kill you is something you’re not going to know you can do until you’re in that situation, regardless of whether or not your job description says “be
prepared”. And that’s the crux of Ringo’s question – how many soldiers are actually doing that “job”.

My response was, in brief, ‘not a lot, but it’s improving.’ That appears to be the general direction the answers have headed, and folks agree that we need better references than Marshall. Why you’re quibbling over job descriptions is beyond me.

If you wish to make the point that “Part of the ‘job’ of a member of the Armed Forces is to be prepared,” fine. The question then simply becomes:

“What percentage of U.S. soldiers were actually prepared enough to fire their weapons at an enemy target in combat in WWII?”

So far, the consensus appears to be “not a lot, but it’s improving.”

–Patch

“I can’t get no lower, Willie. Me buttons are in the way.”
— Bill Mauldin, Up Front

[Bookkeeper]

I suspect that there is some confusion over “firing their weapon” and “firing their weapon at a specific target” in some of these statements. One of the credible studies to come out of WW2 indicated that the vast majority of rifle, and to a lesser extent, machine gun fire was simply pointed in the general direction of the enemy for the purpose of keeping their heads down, rather than aimed fire at a target.

This is known as supressive fire, and actually has some use on the battlefield. There was probably a lot of panicky blazing away or freezing in fear too, but I doubt that the level of “useless” soldiers was anywhere near 80% in actual combat units, even for green troops, and I expect the actual level would improve with experience.

(This study is one of the reasons why armies eventually dropped the M1/Lee Enfield/Kar 98 type of rifle for cheaper and more easily manufactured assault rifles - they decided that the level of accuracy provided by these weapons was rarely used in actual combat. Rifles of this type are now considered to be specialized sniper weapons rather than standard GI issue.)

[patchbunny]

*Originally posted by Ringo *
**So I suppose the question regarding the (I’ve yet to actually see) figure of 15-20% bifurcates into a.) the questions of will, resolve, consciense and training addressed by Marshall and Grossman and b.) who is the total population referred to? **

I believe Marshall was referring to troops on the front line who are directly involved in the action. Like you, I need to track down my original source on this.

–Patch

[Little_Nemo]

So I suppose the question regarding the (I’ve yet to actually see) figure of 15-20% bifurcates into a.) the questions of will, resolve, consciense and training addressed by Marshall and Grossman and b.) who is the total population referred to?

Ringo, I think I understand your question. I’ve read Grossman’s book and he clearly is referring to what percentage of troops who were supposed to be shooting the enemy actually did so. In other words, Grossman was claiming that during WWII, of the American soldiers who were in combat and had an opportunity to shoot at an enemy soldier only 15-20% would actually shoot at the enemy with the intent to hit him.

[Duckster]

<hijack=slight>
In a recent History Channel program about helicopters and their role in combat, the average soldier only saw, on average, approximately 40 days of actual combat per year for the four years, on average, they were in action.

However, thanks to helicopters, the average soldier in Vietnam during their one year tour of duty, saw more than 260 days of combat.
</hijack>

[slipster]

One of several questions under discussion here is the very interesting issue of what proportion of soldiers in combat are actually taking aim and trying to hit the enemy as a general practice.

While an important question, I doubt it is really amenable to being reduced to a certain statistic; how are we to know, after all, if an individual soldier in the chaois of battle is actually taking careful aim or just faking it?

For whatever it is worth, when I was in military school as a boy (the 70s), an active duty U.S. Army sergeant who was one of my instructors said that the Army figured that about 40% of U.S. soldiers in World War II were really trying to kill the enemy, as compared to about 80% in Korea and 90% in Vietnam.

He attributed this trend to improved training and conditioning. Assuming that such a trend actually existed, I wondered–and still wonder–if part of it had to do with the fact that a good many of the enemy in World War II, like the majority of U.S. forces, were Caucasian, while the enemy in the later conflicts was Asian.

As Paul Fussell has written at some length, American troops were widely able to treat Japanese soldiers differently than German and Italian troops during the Second World War, objectifying them to an extent European troops were not. As an illustration of his point, in an essay in Fussell’s book Thank God for the Atomic Bomb there is a photo which appeared as a human interest in Look magazine; it shows a pretty young American woman showing off the love letter sent to her by her Marine boyfriend. He had written it on the skull of a Japanese soldier.

[tspnyc]

I think you guys are WAY off in your stats.

Or rather, these percentages like 25% or 40% are referring specifically to combat soldiers in front line engagements.

Combat units made up only a small portion of the military during the Second World War.

As I understand it, the percentage of U.S. military personnel that saw combat in WWII is something like 9%.

Of that percentage, many never fired a weapon in anger. For every rifleman there were many more support and service soldiers. And many officers and their staff likewise never directly engaged the enemy.

I do not know if that 9% figure refers only to the U.S. Army or if the Navy and Army Air Force is included.

From the time combat operations began in 1942 until the end of hostilities there were typically less than 35% of U.S. Army personnel assigned to what was called the Strength Army Ground Forces - the combat part of the Army.

Inside that figure, less than half were assigned to the combat divisions at the height of Army population, in March of 1945. While some of the non-divisional personnel consisted of unassigned combat operations units, the greater majority were not fighting men.

Even within the combat divisions there were many more cooks, truck drivers, medical orderlies, clerks and typists, non-combat engineers, etc. than combat soldiers. Many served in combat areas, and were trained in small arms. But most came only in harm’s way during bombing raids or long-range shelling.

Of the 91 combat divisions, three did not see any combat, the 98th Infantry division, 13th Airborne division, and the 2nd Cavalry division.

That all being said, the question of how many soldiers and marines in combat companies actually fired on their enemy would be impossible to know. After the war they found out that the stress of being on the line reduced combat effectiveness much sooner than anyone realized - anyone not on the line of course. There were likely many instances of soldiers in holes who chose to stay there, or patrols who were less than aggressive when away from the officers who sent them out to make probe the enemy line.

[Musicat]

@tspnyc

I think you guys are WAY off in your stats.

Since 10 years have passed since the last post before yours, perhaps you have some more recent stats we should look at?

[AK84]

@RickJay

As per Paul’s comments, S.L.A. Marshall’s claims that only 20% of soldiers in combat fire their weapons, while the other 80% never pull a trigger, are not supported by any other observation, objective evidence, or common sense. Virtually all soldiers who have seen combat, and I’ve known some of them, fire their weapons and the one I’ve spoken to assure me everyone else does too.

I know this is a 10 year old post but what so you mean by soldier or in combat? Officers rarely discharge weapons. A tank driver or a forward observer for an artillery battery will not actually fire weapons themselves but they are in combat.

[prvtcuster]

According to brig general marshall only 20% actually fired their weapons in combat. However, recently those results have been questioned and he is thought to have fabricated those results. First of all we must ask ourselves did Marshall use all soldiers or only those in combat. Since the us military needed 7 men to support one man in combat, this question is critical. Glenn did a study about the % of men in combat, in Vietnam, used their weapons almost a 90% of the time.

[John_Bredin]

@Spavined_Gelding

While Marshall’s data are subject to question and criticism, the man did cause a significant change in the way the Army teaches recruits to shoot. In the old days a soldier was trained on a known distance range with bull’s eye targets. The soldier was also taught that wasting ammo was a major sin. From Marshall’s reports it was concluded that soldiers were not firing because they did not have a clear target and were afraid to waste ammo. The new system trained soldiers on “train-fire” ranges with pop up targets. The idea was to get a soldier to ID a target quickly and fire at it right now and to forget the Sergeant York model of musketry.

If I’m remembering a couple of WWI books I’ve read correctly, the British were well ahead on this. After the Boer War, British infantry were trained and incentivized to fire as many shots as possible. “Incentivized” because, beyond their formal training, they were provided extra ammo to practice with in their spare time and won awards for quick-shooting contests. This paid off in early WWI, when Germans thought that opposing British units armed with bolt-action rifles were firing machine-guns.

[obbn]

I remember reading a book on WWII that mentioned the Marshall report that few fired their weapons. In response one soldier said something to the effect of “Does Marshall think we clubbed the Germans to death?”

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

I believe I’ve read that the highest fatality rate in the US military was in the Navy Submarine Force.

And on those submarines, out of a crew of about 60, only 2 normally fired weapons, one in the forward torpedo room and one in the rear*. And usually only one of them per encounter. So would you say the other 59 sailors were not “in combat”?

*Discounting the times the submarine surfaced and used their small deck gun to actually shoot at another boat. That was a pretty rare occurrence (until late in the war with Japan, when the only ships Japan had left were small wooden boats ‘not worth a torpedo’.)

[Ranger_Jeff]

I recall reading some time ago that a study was done in the mid 50s looking at how line infantrymen fired their weapons in WWII and Korea. Of course, the men on the .30 cal machine guns and the BARs fired the most, followed by the Thompsons and M-2/3 carbines. But the odd thing was what they discovered about the men with the m-1 carbines and Garands. It seems that the farther away on the line from the fellows with the full auto weapons they were, the less likely they were to shoot. And the closer they were to the fellows with the full autos, the more likely they were going to put out rounds.

Which explains why in the request for bids for the Main Battle Rifle to replace the Garand, one of the requirements was that it would have to be able to fire full auto. What became known as the M-14 won. Once it was in the field, they discovered that it was pretty much uncontrollable firing standing or kneeling from the shoulder on full auto. That’s part of the reason MacNamara was so enthusiastic about the M-16. It was more controllable on full auto. And with the same combat load, the M-16 plus ammo weighed about 10 lbs less than a M-14 plus ammo. 10 lbs can mean a lot to a foot soldier.

[DrDeth]

@Bookkeeper

I suspect that there is some confusion over “firing their weapon” and “firing their weapon at a specific target” in some of these statements. One of the credible studies to come out of WW2 indicated that the vast majority of rifle, and to a lesser extent, machine gun fire was simply pointed in the general direction of the enemy for the purpose of keeping their heads down, rather than aimed fire at a target.

This is known as supressive fire, and actually has some use on the battlefield. There was probably a lot of panicky blazing away or freezing in fear too, but I doubt that the level of “useless” soldiers was anywhere near 80% in actual combat units, even for green troops, and I expect the actual level would improve with experience.

Right. My Dad was a decorated disabled WWII vet serving for the entire war 12/8/41 until almost a year after it ended. Mostly New Guinea & The Philippines.

I asked him if he ever killed anyone, and he told stories about running dispatches where “a jap sniper” would open up, and his crew would empty their Thompsons into the jungle while accelerating the jeep. Happened quite a few times. Now, he* said *he “mostly used a typewriter” but real combat vets wont talk about combat. So, is that firing into the jungle- counted “in combat actually did something useful”? Dad lived, the dispatch got thru, and who knows- maybe the sniper was killed. But the sniper stopped shooting. Technically, since my Dad was in HQ Pacific, he wasn’t “front line”- that doesnt mean he wasnt “in combat”.

Not too many men actually got to watch a foe die as a result of them pulling the trigger.

[mlees]

@Ringo

No, I’m not asking about combat v. support troop ratios. The question is pretty straightforward. What percentage of U.S. WWII soldiers actually squeezed off a round* in the general direction of live enemy troops?

What about a destroyer dropping depth charges on a “contact”? (Contact may have been a school of fish, or a temperature gradient.)