24id

[Sabre21]

I just happened to notice after playing this game for a while that the US 24th Infantry Division is missing from the OOB. It was at Oahu on Dec 7 but didn't finish the move to Rockhampton until 19 September of 43. It participated in the latter stages of the New Guinea operation, in particular the Hollandia and Biak Island operations. From there it went on to Leyte Gulf in Oct 44. Only reason I know this was my Dad was in the 24th at the time and kept a war diary of all this. He was the E company 19th RCT commander at Leyte in '44 but he was with the division at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Diary has some nasty stories...makes ya shiver reading it!

Andy

[Erik Rutins]

Andy,

Thanks for the post. I'm sure Rich will see this and correct it. Any further info you have on the specifics of their deployment and activities would certainly be appreciated.

Regards,

- Erik

[Sabre21]

Hi again Erik

What made me think of this was that a comment was made earlier on one of the threads that the units were trained out of theater. That wasn't exactly true...many of the Army Divisions were brought in to Austrailia and trained there for many months before being committed to the front. The 24th finished it's deployment in Sep 43, when the first unit got there I'm not sure. It was then deployed to Goodenough island in Jan 44 for the Hollandia operation. The 24th was a regular army division and at the time of deployment to Austrailia they had the 19 and 34th RCT...I'm not sure what the other one was. At the time of Dec 7 they had the 17th, 21st, and 299th (NG).

This brings up a good point...how does the game take in account changing OOB's within the Division? I'm not sure if it is necessary or not, once the 24th deployed to Austrailia...those RCT's remained with it throughout the war.

Thanks for a good game though...I've had to go watch Tora Tora Tora to help pass the time till the patch:)

Oh..a good site for Army unit history's can be found on the Army's homepage. Here is the link for the WWII ones..

www.army.mil/cmh-pg/lineage/cc/cc.htm

Andy

[jww60]

This is my first post so I'm not sure how I should present this, but here goes.

According to my references (I certainly can't memorize all of this stuff).

The 24th Infantry Division Infantry Regiments were:

7 DEC 1941:
19th Infantry
21st Infantry
299th Infantry (Inactivated on 21 JUL 42)

23 JUL 42 - 12 JUN 43:
19th Infantry
21st Infantry
298th Infantry

12 JUN 43 - AUG 1950:
19th Infantry
21st Infantry
34th Infantry (Inactivated AUG 1950)

The 34th was inactivated during the Korean War when down to 184 of its original 2,000 men. There had been replacements of course, but the regiment seems to have been pretty well wrecked at that point.

So there were a couple of reassignments but they took place before the division was sent to Australia.

I am unable to find any regiments that were reassigned to different divisions in the forward areas, but I haven't looked very long for that.

References:
Order of Battle: US Army in World War II, Shelby Stanton
US Army Handbook 1939-1945, George Forty
The Forgotten War, Clay Blair


I hope this helps.
-- Jeff

[Sabre21]

Thanks for the help there..one of the sites I looked at...not the Army homepage one listed the 17th, 21st, and 299th. I kinda figured who ever made it might have made a typo and the 17th should have been the 19th.

Andy

[jww60]

From what I can find the 19th Infantry and the 21st Infantry arrived in Australia on 8 AUG 1943, along with the Division HQ and support elements. The 34th Infantry did not arrive in Australia until 25 AUG 1943.

I only have one reference that gets this detailed so I'll do some digging on the web to see if I can confirm it.

-- Jeff

[jww60]

The US Army Center for Military History site's list of Divisions and their organic elements.

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/lineage/cc/infcomp.htm

Looks like the 17th Infantry was part of the 7th Infantry Division from at least 1939 on and fought in the Aleutians and Central Pacific.

-- Jeff