Panzer Korps – Hammer of Freedom

Description

Panzer Korps – Hammer of Freedom covers the American organizational structures from 1939 to 1945 at the Divisional level. Covering every major American combat organizational configuration for ETO, MTO, PTO Divisions, and the Philippine Forces. Hammer of Freedom allows gamers get a handle of how the American war machine structured themselves including:

Panzer Korps – Hammer of Freedom Contents

• Airborne, Artillery, Armored formations & more!
• Breaks down the Divisional command structures into their respective parts
• Aides in understanding the changing Command structures
• Major Vehicle and Artillery Weapons lists
• Complete Aircraft listing and charts for use with Panzer Korps
• May be used with other World War II Rules
• Covers all Theaters
• Includes Marines Army, & Air Corps

Before the start of World War II in Europe in 1939, the United States An 187.893 men was only the force of a third rate military power.

The US Army nine skeleton infantry divisions, two cavalry divisions, and a mechanized cavalry brigade with light tanks.

The Marine Corps was tiny with only 19,432 office o men and no organization larger then a battalion, and without a history of having an organization larger then a brigade.

A combined force

A combined force. Fiscal Conservatives, isolationists. Pacifists, and the Activist Left led by the Soviet Union controlled American Communist Party ho ensured that the American military was an impotent force on the international scene. Unlike the Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan the United States was not militarized society.

Nor did it have a tradition of a long standing effective military as did France and Great Britain.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe it took the outstanding political skills of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the earth shattering defeat at America’s patron Army the French to enable the American Congress to find the political will to start preparing for war by passing peace time conscription, and voting funds for equipment.

President Roosevelt

The American people can only thank President Roosevelt for doing what he could to increase the armed force over the previous year. By September of 1940 the Army had been increased to 257.000 men and the Marine Corps to approximately 30,000. The State National Guards had approximately 230,000 poorly prepared men. The one bright spot was that the United States had an organized reserve corps of 104,228 trained officers.

With the fear of war growing in, August 1941 Congress authorized that the State National Guards inducted into Federal service. By this time the Army consisted of nine infantry, four armored, two cavalry, and 18 National Guard infantry Divisions.

The Marine Corps had two divisions. Most of the equipment to equip these divisions had yet to be produced, and most of the officers and non commissioned officers who were to lead this force to victory were not trained.

Four years later the US Army would consist of 89 divisions (66 Infantry, 16 Armored, I dismounted Cavalry, 1 Mountain, and 5 Airborne) with well over 1,000 additional independent combat battalions and nearly 5.850.000 men.

The United States Marine Corps would have 421,605 men and would consist of 6 divisions and enough independent battalions to support a full field army. The United States fought WWII in three main areas: France/Germany, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific.

The vast majority of American ground forces personnel and equipment fought in Europe but approximately 30% of personnel and 20% of equipment, sent to the Pacific.

The United States ground forces

The United States ground forces had to fight continually to gain access to manpower. The United States needed millions of workers to produce the equipment to expand not only the Army and Marine Corps, but also the American Navy and Army Air Force.

America also had a new and ever expanding merchant fleet to be crewed and had to produce large numbers of ships, planes. trucks, and tanks for its Allies. Both the American Navy (3,320,000) and Army Air Force (3,100,000 men) were the largest in the world.

As a result the ground forces, especially in Europe never had enough divisions to allow divisions to be removed from the front line for rest and for proper replacement of losses. For example the US 1st Infantry Division was in combat 317 days of the 334 days between D-Day and the surrender of Nazi Germany.

This made life a living hell for the infantry and the tankers. The American ground forces lost approximately 10,000 tanks and tank destroyers in combat.

Armored Divisions lost an average of 1 to 4 tanks for every day in combat in the ETO. The 3rd Armored Division had the greatest loss, 805 tanks in 231 days of combat.

The 3rd Infantry Division the largest number of personnel battle casualties, 25,977. This was nearly a 300% casualty rate for the rifle regiments.

Weakness of American ground forces:

Too many of the best personnel went to specialist army units, Army Air force Marines, and Airborne. Lack of squad Machine Gun, The Marines compensated by organizing squads of 3-4 man fire teams, each with one Browning Automatic Rifle.

Failure to upgrade tank fire power quickly enough. Failure to provide adequate Army infantry replacements Lack of adequate number of divisions in the ETO, Lack of enough infantry in armored divisions.

Pooling in Corps versus permanent attachments, to further training. By 1945 enough independent tank/tank destroyer battalions were on hand to allow more permanent attachments.

Failure of tank destroyer doctrine. Commanders in the field were creative enough to make it work after the failure in North Africa.

Strengths of American ground forces:

Best communications in World War II. Best and most radios. Best artillery in World War II. Best artillery equipment/prime movers and doctrine, American artillery was the God of war.

American artillery was modern, accurate and reliable. As Harold Winton stated: “The real secrets of American artillery, however, were its centralized system of fire control and its well-trained and ubiquitous forward observers that together allowed commanders from company to corps to concentrate massive amounts of accurate fire at places and times of their choosing with minimal warning to the enemy.

Artillery was the biggest killer on the battlefield…” American commanders were able to place 12-20 battalions of artillery at a time on the same target. Every single shell would hit the target area within approximately 3-5 seconds.

A few minutes of this would be enough able to stop nearly any kind of attacking force. Motorization: No Army could move like the U.S. Army in pursuit or operational movement.

13,000+ fully tracked prime movers

For example. 13,000+ fully tracked prime movers were used to move American medium and heavy artillery. Organization: Thanks to Germany.

America had the time to organize its divisions in an excellent modification of German organizations. Doctrine: The U. S. command system was similar to the German system.

Each level of command gave broad mission oriented order. The command which had to carry out the order was to fill in the details and get the job done.

Americans also stressed that you could only win wars by offensive action. Using combined arms, you had to find, fix, maneuver when possible, and destroy the enemy.

U.S. units were organized in tactical units of three

It helped that U.S. units organized in tactical units of three. Three squads, three platoons, three companies, three battalions, and three regiments.

A platoon commander, company commander, battalion commander, regimental commander, and divisional commander had the same number of maneuver elements and had to organize an artillery element at company 60mm mortar, battalion 81mm mortar, regiment 105mm M3 howitzer, and division 105/155mm howitzer level.

This helped each commander when they were quickly promoted to higher levels of command as the military expanded. Bazookas: This weapon created a revolution in anti-tank warfare.

Infantry was no longer helpless in the face of armor without anti-tank guns. M-1 Rifle: The best infantry rifle of World War II. When the 60mm mortar was added, it helped to somewhat overcome the German MG 42 squad machine gun.

60mm company mortar: The best light mortar used in World War II, it gave the United States an artillery element at every level from company to division.

Bridges and engineers: Nobody had the bridging equipment or the ability to build bridges like the USA.

The Army had over 500.000 engineers (600+ battalions), not counting the hundreds of thousands of Naval construction engineers. This included the ability to build air fields, pipe lines, roads, and railways.

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