Unit Descriptions: Air, Naval, Land

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: capitan

Here is a Belgian writeup from Charlie Lewis!

Very nice.

[meisterchow]

Ooo, it looks nice all official and stuff. [:D] Makes the typos really glaring. [:(]  I'll fix those and resubmit tomorrow.  I'm also going to do some digging to see if I can ferret out any operational details, but so far all my sources just gloss over the Belgian phase and focus on the efforts of the Anglo-French armies.

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: capitan

This looks very nice.

But it also made me think about the size of the Belgian army and I couldn't get the math to add. So what I have to say is in no way critisism on the writeup but more a question about math.

With these exellent writeups it becomes easy to compare the units of WIF with the historical OOB (Order Of Battle) and numbers of soldiers in the units.

In WIF Belgium has 3 corps and 1 reserve corps. The writeup says the "1st corps" has 2 divisions and some 14000 men. Since I haven't seen the writeup for the other corps I asume for this argument that they have 3 divisions each and 22000 soldiers. That gives the entire Belgian WIF army 11 divisions with 80000 men including the reserve.

Oxfords Companion to WWII says the Belgian field army had 22 divisions with some 600000 men in may 1940 (fully mobilized). I verified those numbers with another source.

That makes a discrepancy between WIF and history that becomes very obvious with a small army like Belgium and such nice unit writeups.

Should this be mentioned somewhere? Perhaps a small writeup on each minor country?

Maybe an information screen could be added to most minor countries in the declaration of war step that included the historical date the minor entered the war and the status at that point of its armed forces.

-Orm

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: capitan

This looks very nice.

But it also made me think about the size of the Belgian army and I couldn't get the math to add. So what I have to say is in no way critisism on the writeup but more a question about math.

With these exellent writeups it becomes easy to compare the units of WIF with the historical OOB (Order Of Battle) and numbers of soldiers in the units.

In WIF Belgium has 3 corps and 1 reserve corps. The writeup says the "1st corps" has 2 divisions and some 14000 men. Since I haven't seen the writeup for the other corps I asume for this argument that they have 3 divisions each and 22000 soldiers. That gives the entire Belgian WIF army 11 divisions with 80000 men including the reserve.

Oxfords Companion to WWII says the Belgian field army had 22 divisions with some 600000 men in may 1940 (fully mobilized). I verified those numbers with another source.

That makes a discrepancy between WIF and history that becomes very obvious with a small army like Belgium and such nice unit writeups.

Should this be mentioned somewhere? Perhaps a small writeup on each minor country?

Maybe an information screen could be added to most minor countries in the declaration of war step that included the historical date the minor entered the war and the status at that point of its armed forces.

-Orm

Does Oxford Companion give any details about the 22 divisions and 600,000 men, or just the total counts?

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Does Oxford Companion give any details about the 22 divisions and 600,000 men, or just the total counts?

I am afraid the Oxford Companion has very little information as it is an reference book.

It says about the armed forces:

"Mobilization had begun on 25 August 1939 and by May 1940 Belgium's armed forces amounted to a field army of 18 infantry divisions, 2 divisions of Chasseurs Ardennais (partly motorized), and 2 motorized cavalry dívisions, amounting to some 600,000 men in all. It lacked anti-aircraft artillery, its armour amounted to just 10 tanks, and of the 250 aircraft (90 fighters, 12 bombers, 120 reconnaissance planes) at its disposal only 50 were relatively modern types. There was no navy, only a number of small vessels for fishery protection and patrol duties. King Léopold acted as C-in-C of the armed forces and during the winter of 1939-40 limited discussions were initiated with the French and British military commands"

[meisterchow]

The information I found which enabled me to compile the descriptions of 1st Corps, 2nd Corps and the Cavalry Corps also indicate the Belgian Army to have a strength of about 150,000 men with an additional 5 Corps, a Corps-sized Force K, and an independent divison not accounted for by WiF.
 
I'm not a part of the ADG design group and my name is not Harry Rowland, so I can't explain why Belgium gets less than half of its historical forces in the game.  I do know that it is extremely difficult to get any kind of detailed information on the operational history of the Belgian army.  My guess is that the units included in WiF are there to represent the Belgian army as a whole, but because historically the Belgian front collapsed so completely and so quickly that to include all 9 Corps of the Belgian army would be too much strength to the Belgians without a complex raft of rules to allow the collapse to even be possible.

[meisterchow]

Also, given that each Belgian Corps numbered about 14-15,000 men, it's entirely possible that the scale used by ADG compressed the Belgian Army into those 3 corps that are present in the game.

[jesperpehrson]

Fascinating Orm, I suppose the smaller countries are poorly represented in WIF because of the scale, as Charlie also says.

About the writeups in general, we should be careful to subject them to the academic scrutiny, they are not meant to be academic but instead they are supposed to give colour and entertainment. That said I am sure all the writers are grateful for any observations or insights that can improve the accuracy of the texts. In this particular case however I believe we are shortchanged by ADGs design and the scale of the game.

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: capitan

Fascinating Orm, I suppose the smaller countries are poorly represented in WIF because of the scale, as Charlie also says.

About the writeups in general, we should be careful to subject them to the academic scrutiny, they are not meant to be academic but instead they are supposed to give colour and entertainment. That said I am sure all the writers are grateful for any observations or insights that can improve the accuracy of the texts. In this particular case however I believe we are shortchanged by ADGs design and the scale of the game.

I also belive it is intended by ADG that the Belgian Army is smaller than historical OOB would suggest. The fantastic unit writeups has however made me to want more. I am getting greedy by looking at all the nice things Steve and all you others brings to this site.

Would it be to hard to get a small writeup for some (all?) minor countries in addition to the writeups of the counters?

I would gladly volonteer my writing skills (or lack of it) on some of them if the overburdened Matrix team could find a way to include them.


-Orm

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: capitan

Fascinating Orm, I suppose the smaller countries are poorly represented in WIF because of the scale, as Charlie also says.

About the writeups in general, we should be careful to subject them to the academic scrutiny, they are not meant to be academic but instead they are supposed to give colour and entertainment. That said I am sure all the writers are grateful for any observations or insights that can improve the accuracy of the texts. In this particular case however I believe we are shortchanged by ADGs design and the scale of the game.

I also belive it is intended by ADG that the Belgian Army is smaller than historical OOB would suggest. The fantastic unit writeups has however made me to want more. I am getting greedy by looking at all the nice things Steve and all you others brings to this site.

Would it be to hard to get a small writeup for some (all?) minor countries in addition to the writeups of the counters?

I would gladly volonteer my writing skills (or lack of it) on some of them if the overburdened Matrix team could find a way to include them.


-Orm

I am sure that Capitan will accept additional help.[;)]

The structure right now is to separate writeups by units. So there are air, naval, and land unit writeups. For the territorial units (land counters) we found so little history (some of them did nothing during the war) that Capitan decided to do a paragraph or two on each country as part of their territorial unit writeups.

For the naval unit writeups, Warspite1 has been giving a description of each class as a sort of preamble to the units themselves. So each unit of the Lion class contains a description of the Lion class and then details about the specific unit.

For some of the reserve/garrison units another author, again faced with little history about the unit, took 6 or 7 paragraphs about the country's (in this case the USA) pre-war doctrine on how they expected to create a war-time military after full mobilization. It was also done for Sweden as I recall.

So, though it would be sort of squeezing it in, one possibility would be to do something similar for the minor countries, taking a 'longish' description of their armed forces during the war and spreading it out over several units (land or naval).

But I have no strong feelings about this; I'm merely throwing ideas out. Capitan, and others, can decide.

[jesperpehrson]

PM sent to Orm. There is always room for more writers! [:D]

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: capitan

This looks very nice.

But it also made me think about the size of the Belgian army and I couldn't get the math to add. So what I have to say is in no way critisism on the writeup but more a question about math.

With these exellent writeups it becomes easy to compare the units of WIF with the historical OOB (Order Of Battle) and numbers of soldiers in the units.

In WIF Belgium has 3 corps and 1 reserve corps. The writeup says the "1st corps" has 2 divisions and some 14000 men. Since I haven't seen the writeup for the other corps I asume for this argument that they have 3 divisions each and 22000 soldiers. That gives the entire Belgian WIF army 11 divisions with 80000 men including the reserve.



Oxfords Companion to WWII says the Belgian field army had 22 divisions with some 600000 men in may 1940 (fully mobilized). I verified those numbers with another source.

That makes a discrepancy between WIF and history that becomes very obvious with a small army like Belgium and such nice unit writeups.

Should this be mentioned somewhere? Perhaps a small writeup on each minor country?

Maybe an information screen could be added to most minor countries in the declaration of war step that included the historical date the minor entered the war and the status at that point of its armed forces.

-Orm

Does Oxford Companion give any details about the 22 divisions and 600,000 men, or just the total counts?

Belgian Army had a peace time strength of 100.000 men. The mentioned corps strength of some 14.000 men must be peace time strength. All those Belgian div. strengths mentioned in the unit write-ups must be peace time strengthes: A fully mobilized Belgian div. alone fielded 3 regiments with 3.000 men each. Plus divisional arty, supply, etc. personnel, this easily could have amounted to some 15.000 men per div. According to another source a Belgian div had some 10.000 men. As mentioned above a Belgian corps fielded 2 divs. Thus a corps must have numbered 20.000 to 30.000 men, plus/including corps troops.

600.000 men divided to 22 divs would have amounted to some 27.000 men per div. This is obviously to much per div. As for the discrepancy between 27.000 and 10.000 to 15.000 men per div.: The calculation about 600.000 men divided to 22 divs. doesen't take into account:

1. the corps troops (at least several thousand men) and Army supply troops
2. that the 600.000 mobilization strength might include all armed forces, including air force (some 234 planes, 180 operational) and the very small navy.

Belgian mobilization had begun on 25 Aug. 1939, so in May 1940 they must have been fully mobilized.

Regards


Sources:
Andrew Mollow, The armed forces of WW2, p. 48-51.
The Oxford companion to WW2, p.121.
John Ellis, WW2, A statistical survey, p. 201.

[meisterchow]

As I mentioned before, I found information showing 9 Corps for the Belgians as opposed to the three in WiF.  That accounts for a lot more men, before you hit the air corps and those involved in support (supply services, etc.).

[wosung]

Yeah, I came up with 8 corps (1.-7., plus Cav. Corps) with 22 Divs altogether (7. Corps = Ardennes Rifle Corps in Namur). There were 3 Army Corps Areas (Brussels, Antwerp, Liège). Perhaps only these were counted?! But think, it's like: 22 Belgian divs ammount to 3 WIF corps, due to 7 Divs of a WIF minor Country are counted as one Minor Country corps.

Anyway, who am I to wifzen this OOB? I'm critical to it myself. OOB issues seem to be a frequent topic on WIF forums. If you take a closer look at WIFS OOb you'll find lots of ahistorical play-balancing, national generic corps/armies (based on total divs. and national combat performance) and even hypothetical units. All this simply means that not every single corps/army of WW2 is represented in WIF.

Regards

[meisterchow]

Exactly.

[michaelbaldur]

ORIGINAL: wosung

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Orm




This looks very nice.

But it also made me think about the size of the Belgian army and I couldn't get the math to add. So what I have to say is in no way critisism on the writeup but more a question about math.

With these exellent writeups it becomes easy to compare the units of WIF with the historical OOB (Order Of Battle) and numbers of soldiers in the units.

In WIF Belgium has 3 corps and 1 reserve corps. The writeup says the "1st corps" has 2 divisions and some 14000 men. Since I haven't seen the writeup for the other corps I asume for this argument that they have 3 divisions each and 22000 soldiers. That gives the entire Belgian WIF army 11 divisions with 80000 men including the reserve.



Oxfords Companion to WWII says the Belgian field army had 22 divisions with some 600000 men in may 1940 (fully mobilized). I verified those numbers with another source.

That makes a discrepancy between WIF and history that becomes very obvious with a small army like Belgium and such nice unit writeups.

Should this be mentioned somewhere? Perhaps a small writeup on each minor country?

Maybe an information screen could be added to most minor countries in the declaration of war step that included the historical date the minor entered the war and the status at that point of its armed forces.

-Orm

Does Oxford Companion give any details about the 22 divisions and 600,000 men, or just the total counts?

Belgian Army had a peace time strength of 100.000 men. The mentioned corps strength of some 14.000 men must be peace time strength. All those Belgian div. strengths mentioned in the unit write-ups must be peace time strengthes: A fully mobilized Belgian div. alone fielded 3 regiments with 3.000 men each. Plus divisional arty, supply, etc. personnel, this easily could have amounted to some 15.000 men per div. According to another source a Belgian div had some 10.000 men. As mentioned above a Belgian corps fielded 2 divs. Thus a corps must have numbered 20.000 to 30.000 men, plus/including corps troops.

600.000 men divided to 22 divs would have amounted to some 27.000 men per div. This is obviously to much per div. As for the discrepancy between 27.000 and 10.000 to 15.000 men per div.: The calculation about 600.000 men divided to 22 divs. doesen't take into account:

1. the corps troops (at least several thousand men) and Army supply troops
2. that the 600.000 mobilization strength might include all armed forces, including air force (some 234 planes, 180 operational) and the very small navy.

Belgian mobilization had begun on 25 Aug. 1939, so in May 1940 they must have been fully mobilized.

Regards


Sources:
Andrew Mollow, The armed forces of WW2, p. 48-51.
The Oxford companion to WW2, p.121.
John Ellis, WW2, A statistical survey, p. 201.

what about the army in congo .... are they part of the 600.000 ...

[wosung]

Good question. But I don't think, that the Congo Forces are counted with the metropolitan forces.

Belgian Congo forces (Force Publique) composed of 40.000 men, probably the usual native-metropolitan mixture of a late colonial force, whose main responsibility wasn't militarily but those of an internal  security force. Nevertheless, the Force Publique participated in the East African Campaign.

Oh and, after the allied liberation of Belgium, a new Belgian Army was constituted which fielded some 75.000 men during the last months of WW.
Source: The Oxford companion of WW2, P. 120.

Regards

[jesperpehrson]

When I get back I will post the screenshot for the Belgian Congo Forces

[Grymme]

Estimations of the size of belgian army in spring 1940 varies between 350-750 000 in total personel. One of the most trustworthy sources say that the belgian army in the spring of 1940 was organized in 6 1st grade INF division, 6 Reserve INF division, 2 Ardenne jaegerdivisions and 4 light divisions. The Jaeger divisions where the same strenght as a regular INF division but also had a weak motorized artillery division. The light divisions consisted of 1 bicycleregiment and 2 motorcycleregiments each.
 
The whole field force of the belgian army is accounted as at least 350 000 personel. This means that reserves, covertroops, fortresstroops and so on could account for at most 400 000 manpower.
 
Source:Second World War vol2 page 753ff (this is a 7 volume series of books written during the war [in swedish]).

[wosung]

Wow, we all are collecting quite a bit info about Belgian Army!

Regards