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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

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?

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.

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.