Army Defence Battalions

[Iron Duke]

Hi,

Looking through Stanton's 'OOB US Army WW2' Came across reference to Army Defence Battalions . Has anbody any information on these Battalions i.e. strengths and TOE's or can point me to an online reference.

Cheers

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: Iron Duke

Hi,

Looking through Stanton's 'OOB US Army WW2' Came across reference to Army Defence Battalions . Has anbody any information on these Battalions i.e. strengths and TOE's or can point me to an online reference.

Cheers

I have never seen any formal TO&E for these units. Since they existed for only a limited time and were few in number, being primarily garriosn force for the various Pacific Island Atolls, I really have not paid much attention to them. They were probably composite BN's with infantry, AA, Eng, and Arty, similar in concept to the Marine Defence BNs?

[lucascuccia]

The army defence battalions were composites of several other army units to form garrison forces similar to marine defence battalions. A total of 3 were raised and shipped to the combat zone. Each one had a 1 or 2 90mm batteries, 1 Semi automatic AA btty of either the 37 or 40mm aa guns and a btty of 155 seacoast guns. If I could fing my laptop, I could give you the lineage since I have copies of the ob from the National Archives. The were employed in the Gilberts and the Marshalls.

[m10bob]

I asked the U.S.Army historical LLibrary and recieved this response:

Sir,

I've found very little information on the Army Defense Battalions. I know the
3rd and 4th Army Defense Battalions saw action in 1944 in the Middle Pacific. We
have some TO&E's, particularly for 1942. I searched through the 1942 TO&E's and
did not find one for the Defense Battalion. I do not know if they had a specific
organization and associated TO&E but I suspect they did because the Marine
Defense Battalions had TO&E's. My guess is that the Army created TO&E's for them
after 1942. We don't have TO&E's in our collections here for 1943-1945.

Here's some info on the Marine Defense Battalions: <http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth ... 0/sec6.htm>

I'd suggest you contact NARA, they should have TO&E's for all army units of
World War II at their College Park location. MHI probably has them as well, but
asking NARA for them would be a lot faster. MHI tends to take about 6 months to
answer a question, and has patrons go to them to use their materials.

Here is the online question form for NARA: <http://www.archives.gov/contact/inquire ... tml#part-b>
you'll want to fill out the "I have a question about research and records at
NARA".

See Also their faq on Ordering Records at <http://www.archives.gov/research/order/#other>.

I hope this information is helpful to you.