Just out of interest me and my mate were sitting watching a old war film the other day and he said to me "of course you know its was only 30% of the army that do the real fighting (sorry i am not trying to insult anyone else who helped with the effort in WW2 just being truthful about his statement) and i then said to him i think your wrong there i thought it was 7%. anyone know what it was then and out of interest what it is now. thanks Adam
Adam - Winston S Churchill was heard to ask the CIGS - Gen. Alan Brooke - Why is it that 160,000 men turn up in the 8th Army for pay and rations when only 100,000 turn up to fight -he could never understand the relationship between those who fight and those who have to support them - everything from soup to nuts - he even went berserk on learning that the D Day invasion force needed 4.5 vehicles for every ten men .....mind you there was an certain amount of empire building as there is in all organisations ...this disparity of numbers grew from the early 8th Army days to a 9-1 ratio and I believe near the end in NW Europe it was approaching 16 -1 and they all had to be fed - clothed - holidays with pay - kept warm - and paid ! ...and many want pensions as well ! So God Knows how much Irag and Afghanistan will be costing Cheers
If you look at the British Army today wikipedia says that there are 4100 soldiers based in Iraq and 8300 in Afghanistan though I think that includes RAF and Navy personel deployed but for arguements sake that is 12,400 deployed. The full strength of the British army at the moment 109,000 and given that our current deployments mean we are over stretched just roughly estimating like I have done gives you just over 10% of the army is fighting strength. Obviously my figures are just estimates and doesn't take into account other deployments such as units still based in Germany and Belize etc or even that the figures for personel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan probably includes all the support staff as well.
Re: Tom's post, following attachment I picked up somewhere in my mil career, forget the miliatry bit mentioned, but translate the implications of such, there's a lot more support bod's behind than up the sharp end. Ken.
ken - that is becoming miore true by the day - I lke the bit about the five million in Goverment - you don't meant the Service Records office do you ? Cheers
Tom, that could be the reason, why it's taking longer for Service Records to be allocated, they have moved some 'troops' to somewhere, to back up somewhere we donn't know about, like just about everything else in goverment. Ken.
Breaking things down a bit, if we take a British Infantry Battalion of approx 850 men in 1944, ideally, there would be usually 4 duty companies of approx 120 men each. these are the men going forward to the sharp end. (though due to casualties they were reduced, either to about 60 men or reduced by 1 company). So approximately 50% of the men actually fought, ie hand to hand etc. Obviously the numbers change for various forms of fighting men. Ron and co will have totally different figures for tanks, guessing, but I would say a smaller proportion actually went forward to fight in say tanks. That is not to belittle the efforts of everyone else involved.
Ken - those "troops" have moved probably to Treasury so that they can have large severence bonuses to leave and then they can employ even more people at more money - then they will move more from the works(sic) and pensions - hand out bigger bonuses - then hire some more and so the merry go round keeps going - meanwhile the peasants will be forming up in Jarrow for another march thus fulfilling the police prophecy that the peasants are grimly revolting...or they can become Bankers and make even more tax payers money....then they can buy yachts and sail the seven seas - on disability benefits and job seekers allowances of course... keeping away from photographers..... Cheers cheers
In the Pacific theatre of operations for every US Marine island hoping he was supported by a further nine men.
In the Pacific theatre of operations for every US Marine island hoping he was supported by a further nine men. I would not doubt that, ships were labor intensive beasts.
Highland - don't know about cynicism - absolute facts by the look of the numbers of bonuses paid out .... on the main topic however during WW2 - in a squadron of Churchill Tank - Army Tanks regiments as opposed to Armoured regiments - we had 95 men fighting in 19 Tanks with around 55 men in "A" nd "B" echelons -Cooks - REME and Signals small groups so we were well off with 65% doing the fighting...this held fairly true for the whole regiment allowing for a few extra non fighters at HQ....but in the whole brigade we could only muster less than 1200 Tanks to fight from a total of around 2500 bringing the stats down to about 50%....Armoured Regiments were down to 16 Tanks per squadron with sometimes only four men per Tank as I recall. Cheers
Support troops? A damn fine job they did. take nothing away from them. There was many a bedraggled redcap laying in the Normandy dust at an important road junction. And the supply lads hardly stopped nigh or day.
I think it might have been around 20% of the army that did the fighting. Can you quote a source? And for what country?
Whilst these statistics are not really what we are trying to find on this thread, there is some good information that members may wish to read. </title> </head> <body bgcolor="#f5f5f5" text="#000000" link="#2f4f4f" alink="#2f4f4f" vlink="#2f4f4f"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://hb.lycos.com/hb.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ratings.lycos.com/ratings/lycos Regards Tom
I just found this after googling. The information is not corroborated on this answer forum, but perhaps we get an idea of others views on the subject. WikiAnswers - Did the US win World War 2 Regards Tom
I for one can't see the point of this thread. It doesn't matter what percentage of the total number of troops 'do the actual fighting'. Infantry can't be effective without armour, engineer and artillery support..... none of them can operate without logistics and it's mad to think otherwise. Without food, water, fuel and ammunition they aren't going to fight for long. Add to that the other supplies, logistics, medical support, intelligence, engineer support and a myriad of other things, right back to the people in the factories, there is no war effort and sustained fighting is impossible.
