Page:John Banks Wilson - Maneuver and Firepower (1998).djvu/246

 224 heavy set for sustained ground combat. All divisional elements were to be trained in parachute, glider, and air transport techniques, making all divisional elements airborne units.

The General Board's third committee on divisional organization reviewed the armored division. Examination of both the early heavy armored division and the lighter variant introduced in 1943 revealed defects that had been corrected by attaching units. Using the 1943 division as a base, the committee added a fourth 105-mm. howitzer battalion, an antiaircraft artillery battalion, and a tank destroyer battalion. During combat operations these units had been added to the division, as was an infantry battalion or regiment, when available. The committee viewed the combat command as a major weakness because it did not have assigned units, a violation of unity of command. Furthermore, both types of armored divisions had only two authorized combat commands, but in combat they normally had operated with three. To provide the third command in the heavy division, the headquarters and headquarters company of the armored infantry regiment had been organized provisionally as a combat command headquarters, and in the light division a headquarters and headquarters company of an armored group augmented the reserve command. The committee recommended that the combat commands be replaced with three regiments, each made up of one tank and two armored rifle battalions, and that brigadier generals command the regiments. Upon reflection, the committee omitted one unit previously attached to the division, the tank destroyer battalion, because of the wartime trend toward arming American tanks with high-velocity weapons capable of destroying enemy armor, an evolution that made the lightly armored tank destroyer redundant. The strength of the projected armored division rose to 19,377 officers and enlisted men, nearly double the size of light armored divisions of 1943.

The Army Staff received the reports from the General Board and passed them along to the Army Ground Forces. In September 1945 that command began preparing new tables of organization for the postwar Army, but General Devers, commander of Army Ground Forces, refrained from making any decisions about divisional organization pending review of the board's findings and the recommendations of infantry and armored conferences being held in the spring of the following year. In July 1946 he finally forwarded proposals to the General Staff for new infantry and armored divisions that combined recommendations of the committees and of the conferences. The new tables for the infantry division were similar to those developed in 1945 when restrictions were lifted on their manning. The armored division retained its 1943 configuration with augmentations to correct organizational deficiencies. Devers believed these divisions would meet the Army's needs for versatile, mobile, hard-hitting units. Despite the availability of the atomic bomb, the nature of ground combat had not changed. The infantry division was capable of operating in jungle, arctic, desert, and mountain terrain or on plains; the armored division remained a highly mobile unit to break through a