lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 13:10:36 GMT
End of War Force Levels France: 184 divisions Britain: 125 divisions USA: 78 divisions Italy: 63 divisions Byzantine Greece: 15 divisions Belgium: 9 divisions Brazil: 5 divisions Portugal: 4 divisions India: 32 divisions Canada: 12 divisions Australia: 8 divisions South Africa: 4 divisions New Zealand: 2 divisions West Indies: 2 divisions Rhodesia: 1 division New Avalon: 1 division Newfoundland: 1 division Germany: 287 divisions Austria-Hungary: 108 divisions Ottoman Turkey: 73 divisions Bulgaria: 27 divisions The American Expeditionary Force as of November 11th 1918 consisted of 6 field armies, 24 corps, 78 divisions and 3,624,758 men. Seems the Americans AEF is outnumbered by the British BEF. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 25, 2019 13:20:37 GMT
The British Expeditionary Force peaks at 3,240,000 men, with further British forces deployed in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Russia and quite a few other locations; Dominion troops further augment their total strength. The Americans have larger divisions than the British and French and additional units attached at corps level.
It is worth noting that the total BEF strength includes armies, corps and divisions not engaged in fighting as of 11/11/1918.
In @, "by the end of the war, the BEF "field strength", at 1.202m, still fractionally exceeded the U.S. (1.175m), but was still less than the French 1.554m (French field strength was down from a peak of over 2.2m in July 1916)."
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 14:06:35 GMT
Tsingtao involves the Japanese, British (both British and Indian) and Chinese forces. It doesn't take too long, with a larger contribution by the Royal Navy and a rather larger British Army contingent from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Weihaiwei and Peking, in addition to the small matter of 25,000 men of the IJA. My fault, i toughed that the BEF would be also larger than the AEF, seems i am wrong. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 25, 2019 14:17:49 GMT
The Americans have an extra year to mobilise from a larger population base, so will inevitably become the largest Allied army on the Western Front. The BEF is arguably the more powerful, despite being slightly smaller.
The armistice line is well into the Netherlands and the borderlands of Germany as well, rather than through Belgium and France.
Keep the questions coming. My eventual aim is a 25,000 word intro, a similar sized piece for each year, a conclusion and then a daily timeline of the war.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 15:00:36 GMT
The Americans have an extra year to mobilise from a larger population base, so will inevitably become the largest Allied army on the Western Front. The BEF is arguably the more powerful, despite being slightly smaller. The armistice line is well into the Netherlands and the borderlands of Germany as well, rather than through Belgium and France. Keep the questions coming. My eventual aim is a 25,000 word intro, a similar sized piece for each year, a conclusion and then a daily timeline of the war. Well do the Germans have some more tanks than OTL. |
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Post by stevep on Dec 25, 2019 17:44:23 GMT
The Americans have an extra year to mobilise from a larger population base, so will inevitably become the largest Allied army on the Western Front. The BEF is arguably the more powerful, despite being slightly smaller. The armistice line is well into the Netherlands and the borderlands of Germany as well, rather than through Belgium and France. Keep the questions coming. My eventual aim is a 25,000 word intro, a similar sized piece for each year, a conclusion and then a daily timeline of the war.
Just to clarify please the US ended up with more troops on the western front than either Britain or France here? Presumably they still had the ~50,000 men divisions because they were struggling to get enough trained NCOs and officers for the massively expanded forces? Whereas British and French divisions were reducing in size partly due to the heavy losses and partly because as firepower increased they needed less troops to maintain the same level of front.
If the US joined the war a year earlier - or at least part of it if the dow was in 1916 and it still went on into 1918 as OTL - then the US forces saw a hell of a lot more fighting? Which would have meant sizeable losses for them, especially going against prepared defences with veteran defenders so a steep leaning curve for them.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 21:48:50 GMT
The Americans have an extra year to mobilise from a larger population base, so will inevitably become the largest Allied army on the Western Front. The BEF is arguably the more powerful, despite being slightly smaller. The armistice line is well into the Netherlands and the borderlands of Germany as well, rather than through Belgium and France. Keep the questions coming. My eventual aim is a 25,000 word intro, a similar sized piece for each year, a conclusion and then a daily timeline of the war. Just to clarify please the US ended up with more troops on the western front than either Britain or France here? Presumably they still had the ~50,000 men divisions because they were struggling to get enough trained NCOs and officers for the massively expanded forces? Whereas British and French divisions were reducing in size partly due to the heavy losses and partly because as firepower increased they needed less troops to maintain the same level of front. If the US joined the war a year earlier - or at least part of it if the dow was in 1916 and it still went on into 1918 as OTL - then the US forces saw a hell of a lot more fighting? Which would have meant sizeable losses for them, especially going against prepared defences with veteran defenders so a steep leaning curve for them.
50,000 men divisions stevep. |
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Post by stevep on Dec 25, 2019 22:05:15 GMT
Just to clarify please the US ended up with more troops on the western front than either Britain or France here? Presumably they still had the ~50,000 men divisions because they were struggling to get enough trained NCOs and officers for the massively expanded forces? Whereas British and French divisions were reducing in size partly due to the heavy losses and partly because as firepower increased they needed less troops to maintain the same level of front. If the US joined the war a year earlier - or at least part of it if the dow was in 1916 and it still went on into 1918 as OTL - then the US forces saw a hell of a lot more fighting? Which would have meant sizeable losses for them, especially going against prepared defences with veteran defenders so a steep leaning curve for them.
50,000 men divisions stevep .
I recall something about this. May have been 40,000 per division but they were very large. In large part because the army was expanding hugely from a very small base so it was desperately short of even men who have briefly been on training courses to be officers and NCOs let along the original regular men.
There's a good YouTube video by a US military historian on the issue of how huge the task was and how many problems it caused. Will try and find it but rather late here and nothing came up from a quick search.
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 22:08:20 GMT
I recall something about this. May have been 40,000 per division but they were very large. In large part because the army was expanding hugely from a very small base so it was desperately short of even men who have briefly been on training courses to be officers and NCOs let along the original regular men.
There's a good YouTube video by a US military historian on the issue of how huge the task was and how many problems it caused. Will try and find it but rather late here and nothing came up from a quick search.
This is interesting but doubt what you are searching; |
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Post by stevep on Dec 25, 2019 22:12:01 GMT
I recall something about this. May have been 40,000 per division but they were very large. In large part because the army was expanding hugely from a very small base so it was desperately short of even men who have briefly been on training courses to be officers and NCOs let along the original regular men.
There's a good YouTube video by a US military historian on the issue of how huge the task was and how many problems it caused. Will try and find it but rather late here and nothing came up from a quick search.
This is interesting but doubt what you are searching;
No it was a presentation to a large number of US [and possibly other] military and others by some professor of history IIRC and lasted about 1-2 hours. Will have another look tomorrow.
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Post by lordroel on Dec 25, 2019 22:13:20 GMT
This is interesting but doubt what you are searching; No it was a presentation to a large number of US [and possibly other] military and others by some professor of history IIRC and lasted about 1-2 hours. Will have another look tomorrow.
No problem stevep. in some counties a 50,000 strong division would be consider a Corps. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 25, 2019 23:13:13 GMT
Dark Earth situation:
The AEF planned to employ employed square divisions totalling 32,000 men, as compared to 28,000 in @. Each division consisted of two brigades, each of two infantry regiments. These proved to be quite unwieldy in offensive action. They were reduced to 24,000 men in 1918.
The figures of 40,000-50,000 comes when we count the 'divisional slice' of support units, such as artillery, engineers, services of supply, transport etc.
The British and French didn't quite hit the same manpower crunch that forced them to cannibalise divisions and units in the same way as @.
Full details of German tanks are in The History of the Tank.
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Post by stevep on Dec 26, 2019 9:47:18 GMT
Dark Earth situation: The AEF planned to employ employed square divisions totalling 32,000 men, as compared to 28,000 in @. Each division consisted of two brigades, each of two infantry regiments. These proved to be quite unwieldy in offensive action. They were reduced to 24,000 men in 1918. The figures of 40,000-50,000 comes when we count the 'divisional slice' of support units, such as artillery, engineers, services of supply, transport etc. The British and French didn't quite hit the same manpower crunch that forced them to cannibalise divisions and units in the same way as @. Full details of German tanks are in The History of the Tank.
Many thanks for the info. The 40-50k figure was for quite a while ago so probably came across a reference which included the support units as you mentioned. The YouTube Video I saw I think earlier this year and will try and find it again as very good on the problems the US faced in WWI. Partly this was because Wilson refused to allow any preparation for war until pretty much he declared war so the huge expansion from a very small base was something of a train wreak. TTL I suspect that the US has a different President so that may not be a factor but given the longer war involvement and even larger recruitment, probably exceeding British levels here their still going to have problems.
Steve
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 26, 2019 11:07:28 GMT
Wilson did try and have things both ways with regard to 'keeping us out of war' and then going whole hog when that failed.
The US President here is Theodore Roosevelt, quite an advocate of preparedness. The USA does not stumble into war in 1916, but their entry comes on the back of considerable build-up. They still will encounter problems when entering the war, as all states did.
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Post by lordroel on Dec 26, 2019 11:10:34 GMT
Wilson did try and have things both ways with regard to 'keeping us out of war' and then going whole hog when that failed. The US President here is Theodore Roosevelt, quite an advocate of preparedness. The USA does not stumble into war in 1916, but their entry comes on the back of considerable build-up. They still will encounter problems when entering the war, as all states did. So Teddy has hist third term, nice. |
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