How many soldiers were in the us military during World War 2? - Answers (2025)

This is not an easy question to answer. "Soldiers" impliesmembers of the US Army. In all branches of the military during WWIIthere were about 16.1 million Americans. More than half of thesewere in the US Army. The Air Force was then still a part of the USArmy, and almost an additional 3 million men served in the US ArmyAir Force. There were 4 million in the US Navy, and an additional760,000 or so in the Marine Corps, which is a part of the Navy(though they do not like to admit it). So excluding the US Navy,the US Marine Corps, and the US Army Air Force, there were morethan 8 million US soldiers in the US Army. Not all of these leftthe states, and not all the ones that left the states for overseasduty saw action of even a limited amount.

The problem is partly how you might define "action". Has a radiooperator assigned to an army corps HQ when a single, lost enemyplane flew over and dropped one bomb several hundred yards from himseen "action"?

The most dangerous job of WWII was to be an infantryman,specifically, a rifleman, in a rifle squad, of a rifle platoonwhich was part of a rifle (or "line", or "letter") company. Therewere never that many of them, and the vast majority of US troopskilled in the war were riflemen. In units that saw a lot of action,during several campaigns, such as the US 3rd Infantry Division, theaverage rifleman probably had to be replaced ten times during thewar. I once did a study of the rifle companies of the 30thInfantry, one of the three Infantry Regiments in the 3rd InfantryDivision. There were 9 rifle companies and 3 "heavy weapons"companies in an infantry regiment. At the start of the war, theTable of Organization called for 225 men in a rifle company, but bythe end of the war, this had been reduced to 187. The riflecompanies of the 30th infantry all had between 150 and 180 menkilled outright. Given the usual averages this meant they probablyalso had between 600-700 wounded as well, though many of thesewould have been returned to duty. Another very large number wouldhave been lost to accidents, frozen feet or trench foot, otherillnesses, and "combat fatigue". The average a rifleman could lastwas eight months even if he was not killed or wounded, as mostbecame ineffective from accumulated weariness and despair. Some ofcourse went on longer, sometimes far longer than that. But amongunits which did see a lot of action, few, very, very few, if any,who were riflemen at the start were still there at the finish. Thisis why something like "Band of Brothers" will never be possible forany of the ten or fifteen US Infantry Divisions who did most of theheavy lifting. You can't tell a connected story about them, becausethe turnover was complete, and happened not just a few times, butmany times. Even in an infantry regiment not everyone was arifleman at the front. In the 30th Infantry, which like otherInfantry regiments had around 3200 men, there were 432 "Fedala toSalzburg" men, guys who were present when the Regiment landed inNorth Africa, who were still with the Regiment the day the warended. And I am sure there could have been no more than a handful,if indeed there were any, who went the whole way in the riflecompanies.

The main US ground force element was the division. The US onlycreated around ninety divisions, which turned out to be just barelysufficient to fight a world war. There were 16 armored divisions, 5airborne divisions, 2 cavalry divisions, 1 mountain division, andabout 65 infantry divisions. There were riflemen in all these,though in an armored division they were called "armored infantry"(they must have felt that to be a joke that wasn't too funny, theironly armor being their shirts), and in the airborne they wereparatroopers, and they were plain old troopers in the cavalry. Butmost of the hard grinding fell to the infantry divisions. Therewere so few of these that once committed to action, they got fewbreaks out of the line.

An infantry division had around 14,000 men, but only about 9600of these were in the three infantry regiments. A regiment, you'llrecall, had around 3200 men. A regiment's combat force was itsthree battalions, and each of those had about 850 men, so, out of3200, only about 2550 in an infantry regiment were in an infantrybattalion. And in a battalion only around 650-700 were in a line(or letter) company, of which there were three rifle companies andone heavy weapons company. It was much, MUCH safer to be in theheavy weapons company, usually. In the 30th Infantry the threeheavy weapons companies lost around 50-60 men killed outright, asopposed to the 150-180 men killed in each of the rifle companies.And, even in the rifle companies., there were three rifle platoonand a weapons platoon, and again, the weapons platoon offeredbetter chances for survival. And even in a rifle platoon, therewere three rifle squads and a weapons squad. It was the 12 manrifle squads who did the army's business, advancing, weapon inhand, to find and engage the enemy. So, in a rifle platoon, at fullstrength, there were 36 riflemen, and in a rifle company, out of187, there were 112 riflemen. In an infantry battalion, out of 850men, 324 were riflemen, and of the 3200 in a regiment, there werethus only 972 actual riflemen. So an infantry division of 14,000men had only 2,916 riflemen, at full strength. And no unit was everat full strength after its initial contact with the enemy. So, withonly 65 infantry divisions, worldwide, there were never more thanjust over 200,000 actual riflemen, out of an entire Army of morethan 8 million. And it was these guys who were getting killedwholesale. It should be apparent that it was a very unlucky man whowas assigned to the HQ of an infantry division who managed to gethimself killed, but to many people he would be considered to have"seen action" merely by being on the roster of a front lineunit.

Besides the divisions the WWII US Army created hundreds of"separate" or "independent" battalions of various types. The WWIIUS division structure was barebones, and the idea was theseseparate battalions could be moved around and used as needed tosupplement the divisions. They were "independent" because they werenot a permanent part of any larger formations. They were assignedto higher HQs than a division - to an army corp, or a field army.For this reason they were sometimes called "corps troops" or "armytroops". Sometimes they were called "bastard battalions" - noparent unit. There were lots and lots of separate artillerybattalions of various calibers and types. All anti-aircraftartillery was in separate battalions. There were combat engineersand signals battalions, there was one separate parachute battalion.There were dozens and dozens of separate tank battalions, intendedto support the infantry divisions, to leave the tanks of thearmored divisions free for breakthrough and exploitation. All thetank destroyers (tracked vehicles with a big gun that looked like atank, but had no armor, and which were intended to destroy enemytanks - as it turned out, a poor idea) were in separate battalions.Many of these separate tank battalions were "attached" more or lesspermanently to the same infantry division, especially in Europe, sothey saw as much action as the infantry division of which they werenot actually an official part. A great many men in these 800 manseparate battalions saw plenty of action, and its difficult to digout their story today, as their unit was relatively small, and few,if any, published a "history" after the war, as almost all thedivisions and many regiments did.

So - did a guy in an 8 inch gun separate battalion, who wasclose enough to hear the battles, and who helped fire his gun attargets miles away he never saw, and who did not so much asexperience even one single enemy artillery counter-battery roundlanding anywhere near, or ever see an enemy plane, did that guy seeaction? He was at the front, for sure. But barring true misfortunehe stood a lot better chance getting home in one piece than anyriflemen.

I do not know that anyone has even attempted to decide who mightfit the category of having seen action, and then try to total themup. The WWII Navy has, and they say 86% of the Navy "saw action",which might be anything from having your ship sunk under you tobeing on a destroyer escorting a convoy where some other ship gottorpedoed.

How many soldiers were in the us military during World War 2? - Answers (2025)
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