A question has come up with respects to a wargame on the organiztion of a Regiments of the 5th FJs during the Battle of the Bulge.

Did they have 2 or 3 Battalions per Regiment?

Division headquarters with signal battalion, medical company, supply uint

5th Parachute Engineer Battalion
5th Parachute Antitank Battalion
5th Parachute Mortar Battalion
5th Parachute Artillery Regiment
Parachute Antiaircraft Battalion
11th Parachute Assualt Gun Brigade (?)
The 13th, 14th and 15th Parachute Regiments and the 5th Replacement Battalion.

I would guess that it had three battalions per regiment.

The report also states:

"Becuase the reorganization of the 5 Parachute Division had not been completed by December 1944, I reported at this date "Grade IV fighting qualities," i.e., "suitable for a qualified defense.""

and

"Most of the units had indeed reached their authorized strength of personnel but still lacked a lot of their equipment."

"Heavy Mortars, antitank guns, radio equipment, optical instruments, motor vehicles and winter clothing had not yet arrived for the most part and were only brought up to the division during and after the offensive."

"The majority of the officers, NCO's and enlisted men were formerly assigned to the "Luftwaffe" and consisted of personnel combed out from the air base, without any infantry training or combat experience and no special parachute training. The commanders of the 13 and 14 Regiment, nominated by Generaloberst Student had not yet seen any infnatry action during the war. Colonel Schimmel was a technical adviser to the German air Ministry. Most officers of those two regiments were indignant about their assignment to the infantry and had grown pampered and soft by their previous life on the air bases and so on."

"The older NCO's frankly expressed even in those days that they would not dream of risking thier life now at the end of the war. The life in the rear areas, especially in the occupied countries, had changed thier mind."

"Thus officers and NCO's were unreliable. The enlisted men made a better impression. Most of them were less than twenty years old had a good will but insufficient infantristic knowledge. Their training with heavy infantry weapons was completely insufficient. The artillerymen were retained antiaircraft soldiers and had not yet completed thier rifle scores."

"All units lacked formational training almost entirely. I strongly distrusted the headquarters personnel from the very beginning. Shortly I had taken over the division I discovered corruption and profiteering. Because I tried to uproot this sort of thing from the very beginning, almost the entire staff was against me. So far these people had been employed in France and Holland only had vegetated on plundered loot and were all accomplices together."

"Because of that division staff already my predecessor, General Wilke, had failed."

"I could not count on honest collaboration. Therefore the striking power of the division consisted only of the 15 Regiment, the 5 Enginner Battalion and the 11 Assualt Gun Brigade."

"Here the level of training was still good considering the fact that we were in the sixth year of the war."

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Originally posted by Glenn Saunders:
Guys:

A question has come up with respects to a wargame on the organiztion of a Regiments of the 5th FJs during the Battle of the Bulge.

Did they have 2 or 3 Battalions per Regiment?

Thanks
Glenn

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Both the 3rd and 5th FJD had 3-battalion regiments. However, the 5th had such a large number of barely trained transferees from other sources that the ersatz battalion was temporarily split into three 1000-man battalions. The result was that the frontline strength of the infantry battalions was probably fairly low.

Chris Lawrence

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Chris's information on the 5th FJ leaves me with the impression that this particular units combat effectiveness wasn't 1.5 times that of an equivalent US Army units combat effectiveness.

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Within a given army, unit quality will vary. This is discussed in depth in a number of Dupuy's works. For example, a look at page 115 in Understanding War shows US units ranging from 0.86 to 1.14, UK units ranging from 0.61 to 096, and German units ranging from 0.82 to 1.49.

The performance of one unit does not prove or disprove anything.

There is no question that by December of 1944, the German Army was being stretched very thin. They had been at war for over five years and had been clearly losing it for the last two to three. It seems that most people who want to disagree with Trevor Dupuy's conclusions on combat effectiveness like to point Ardennes or Alsace, in effect trying to draw conclusions across the war based upon the performance of the German army in the last 10% of the war. For some reason, the critics of Trevor Dupuy's conclusions never go back and analyze the Italian data that makes up the bulk (but not all) of Dupuy's cases.

[This message has been edited by Chris Lawrence (edited 01-22-2002).]

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Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:
Chris's information on the 5th FJ leaves me with the impression that this particular units combat effectiveness wasn't 1.5 times that of an equivalent US Army units combat effectiveness.

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