U.S. Army Orders of Battle & Organization

The following is a set of organizational tables [Orders of Battle] for U.S. Military Divisions.

A few things to take note of:

There are some structural differences in the U.S. Army of the Napoleon's Legacy Universe compared to its real life counterpart.


 * 'Brigade' is used in place of 'Regiment' in certain instances; however, they are roughly equivalent in size and the reader should treat them as the same. To the Napoleon's Legacy Universe American Military, however, there is an important difference between the two: a unit is designated a Brigade rather than a Regiment when it is somehow irregular in structure or in operation (it has more than the normal number of Battalions, it is a support formation which doesn't fight as a cohesive unit, it is a combined arms formation intended to be capable of independent operation, etc). In other cases, more rarely, Brigades serve as an additional tier of command between the Regiment and Division level. So, when a Division has an abnormally large number of Regiments, they are grouped into Brigades [as with an Armored Divsion, for example].


 * Detatchments are Battalion equivalents, and the term is applied to units of that size based essentially on the same conditions / characteristics as when 'Brigade' is used for Regiment equivalents. 'Detatchment' is also used for the following: any battalion-sized units which are directly subordinated to a Headquarters (generally support, i.e. medical or supply, personnel), any battalion-equivalent unit of Artillery (including AA or Assault Guns), any Cavalry unit and most specialist or elite units (Airborne, Marines, Grenadiers, etc. - but NOT Light Infantry). The term is also still used in the context which is more familiar to real world U.S. military personnel: an ad-hoc group of troops pulled [or detatched, hence the name] from a larger unit for a specific purpose.


 * 'Group Army' is used rather than 'Army Group' to denote formations of multiple Armies because, in the alternate history U.S. Military, these are permenant formations - even in peace time - which the Americans give proper names based on their country's history. The majority them are thus inheritors to the legacies of Civil War-era armies, with the two most prominent 'Group Armies' being the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac [which are considered most senior, for historical reasons]. Armies (as in the organizational component of that name), meanwhile, are simply numbered using Roman Numerals. So the Army of Northern Virginia contains the IX., III., XIX., V. & XII. Armies. A few of the other Group Armies currently active (as of January 1st, 1962) include the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Shenandoah, the Army of Kentucky and the Army of Mississippi. Each such Group Army has its own unique abbreviation, since they do not follow a standard format, and incorporates elements into its insignia, heraldry and identifying system to denote whether it was a Union or Confederate formation historically (since the two sides had many armies with very similar names; Northern Armies being named after rivers [with a few exceptions, mostly for those in occupied C.S. States] and Southern ones being named after the States they operated in or out of, i.e. the Union Army of *the* Tennessee was named after the river but the Confederate Army of Tennessee was named after the State). The few Group Armies which are not modern reincarnations of Civil War armies use an alternate version of the Union-derived heraldry. [As an aside: the modern Group Army called the 'Army of the Tennessee' is the Union one, note the 'the'. For obvious reasons, when two different historic armies have similar names only one of them is used to name a modern Group Army... so there will never also be a modern 'Army of Tennessee' after the Confederate formation. However, the Union names are not preferred in these cases by default; this is just an example.]


 * The Americans have a number of different types of Armies (as in the organizational component above Corps), of these most common by far being the standard 'Field Army' [a term which is also used as a generic term for any type of Army]. Other types include Mechanized Armies - with 'elite' Mechanized Infantry Divisions rather than standard Infantry Divisions and an abnormally large proportion of Armored Divisions, among other differences - and a few Armored Armies: similar to Mechanized Armies but with an even larger proportion of tank units. There are also Garrison Armies, which are fixed geographical administrative formations to oversee the defense and policing of specific areas (they are given names referring to their area of responsibility rather than Roman numerals, i.e. the "Yukon Garrison Army" commands troops within the Yukon Military District). Another type, the 'Maritime Army', is a similar to the Garrison Armies but serves as an administrative headquarters for coastal defenses. These armies are normally named for prominent bays - but sometimes for other ocean-related geographic features - that lay within their jurisdiction (i.e. the Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, Massachusetts Bay, Long Island, Delaware Bay, Raleigh Bay, Winyah Bay & Grand Bay Maritime Armies are, in order from north to south, responsible for the defenses along the U.S.'s East / Atlantic Coast). During Operation Yellowstone, in the Anglo-American War, the U.S. commanders also formed an additional type of Army: the Airborne Army. This was used to streamline the Command & Control and logistics of Airborne [Paratrooper] Divisions in preparation of the massed airborne invasion of Great Britain, by creating the 'I. Airborne Army' to control all paratrooper units within the theatre. The I. Airborne Army was disbanded after the end of the war, but this type of Army still appears in American organizational schema and thus could potentially be formed again in the future.
 * The numbering system for units used by the Americans in the Napoleon's Legacy Universe is different from reality, as well. The period after each numeric indicates that it is an ordinal [so 1. means 1st, for example]. The numbering system goes as follows:
 * Battalion or Detatchment - standard Arabic ordinal. The Battalion / Detatchment numbers match those of their direct parent units, even when there are multiple ones of the same type within it; so the numbering format changes when differentiating between : sequential Roman numeral followed by the Battalion number with a separating forward slash (/) between the two. So "II. / 1st Infantry Battalion" to refer to the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the 1st Infantry Regiment, but just "1st Infantry Battalion" to indicate any Infantry Battalion of the 1st Infantry Regiment or for when the identity of the specific Battalion within its Regiment is understood by context.
 * Regiment - Standard Arabic Ordinal. Each Regiment is uniquely numbered within the scope of its type, independently of its parent Division; the numbers of the Regiments within a Division are arbitrary and have no relation to its own number.
 * Brigade - Brigade numbers follow the same system as with Battalions - although in most cases a Division will only have one Brigade of a given type, so the sequential Roman numeral format is used with considerably more rarity.
 * Independent Detatchments & Brigades - These independent formations - which are not integrated into any Division - each have their own unique number. These numbers are very high so that they could not possibly conflict with the designations of other units. The first digit in the number [hundredth digit] varies according to the type of unit, as an additional distinction. For example, the numberings of indepedent Heavy Tank Detatchments start with 501, Heavy Assault Gun Detatchments from 601, Mechanized Anti-Tank Brigades from 701, indepedent Pioneer [Combat Engineer] Detatchments from 801, etc. There are no '-00' numbers.
 * Corps - Corps are denominated using ordinal Roman Numerals, i.e. 'X. Army Corps'. Like Divisional numbers, the ordinals for different types of Corps are on indepedent tracts - so there is both an 'I. Army Corps' and 'I. Mechanized Corps', for example.
 * Army - Armies follow the same scheme as the Corps, but without the period after the Roman numerals to indicate ordination. Thus, IX Field Army. However, Armies are still VOCALIZED with ordination: IX Field Army is properly spoken as 'Ninth Field Army' not 'Nine Field Army'.
 * Group Army - see above

Infantry Division


Example Unit: 1st "Big Red One" Infantry Division

Division HQ


 * Headquarters Detatchment
 * Divisional Artillery Battery [self-propelled rocket]


 * Divisional Special Troops Detatchment


 * Cavalry Squadron [mechanized, armored car]


 * 1st Pioneer Detatchment


 * Medical Detatchment


 * CIC Detatchment


 * Signals Company


 * Quartermaster Company


 * Military Police Company -[attached]


 * 9th Heavy Assault Gun Detatchment [M70 assault gun] -[attached]
 * 11th Rocket Artillery Detatchment [towed rocket] -[attached]

16th Infantry Regiment


 * I. / 16th Infantry Battalion


 * II. / 16th Infantry Battalion


 * III. / 16th Infantry Battalion


 * I. / 16th Regimental Artillery Detatchment [towed 75mm]
 * II. / 16th Regimental Artillery Detatchment [towed 105mm]
 * 16th Light Infantry Battalion


 * 16th Regimental Service Detatchment


 * Medical Detatchmant

18th Infantry Regiment


 * I. / 18th Infantry Battalion


 * II. / 18th Infantry Battalion


 * III. / 18th Infantry Battalion


 * I. / 18th Regimental Artillery Detatchment [towed 75mm]
 * II. / 18th Regimental Artillery Detatchment [towed 105mm]
 * 18th Light Infantry Battalion


 * 18th Regimental Service Detatchment


 * Medical Detatchmant

1st Anti-tank Brigade


 * I. / 1st Mechanized Anti-tank Detatchment [M65 assault gun]


 * II. / 1st Mechanized Anti-tank Detatchment [M65 assault gun]
 * 1st Mechanized Howitzer  Detatchment [M65A2 assault howitzer]


 * 1st Anti-tank Detatchment [towed or self-propelled 127mm]
 * Medical Detatchment

1st Artillery Brigade


 * I. / 1st Artillery Detatchment [towed or self-propelled 155mm, gun-howitzer]


 * II. / 1st Artillery Detatchment [towed or self-propelled 155mm, gun-howitzer]


 * 1st Self-propelled Howitzer Detatchment [self-propelled 203mm, howitzer]
 * 1st Self-propelled Heavy Artillery Detatchment [self-propelled 175mm, gun]
 * Medical Detatchment

103rd Anti-Aircraft Detatchment [self-propelled 25mm / self-propelled 55mm] -[attached]

33rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Detatchment [towed 127mm] -[attached]

The Infantry Battalion
The basic component of an American Infantry Battalion is a 12-man squad. Their basic weapon is the selective-fire, 7.62x51mm M14A3 Batle Rifle, which is capable of semi-automatic, 3-round burst and fully automatic fire [although this last is rarely used except from a well-braced prone position]. The squad is lead by a Staff Sergeant and his assistant, a Sergeant or sometimes a Corporal. Both squad leaders carry Thompson M1959s, which fire the powerful 11.5mm [0.45] pistol cartridge at a blistering rate of about 1600 rounds-per-minute (with a bolt retarding mechanism that can be toggled on to reduce it to a more sustainable 700-800 rpm). Two men in the squad are equipped with the powerful M25A1 automatic rifles, firing the same rounds as the standard M14. These guns combine the rolls of a light machine gun and an automatic rifle, and can be used in either manner. Two of the riflemen are assigned as assistants for the machine gunner and carry ammunition for it addition to their rifles. A further two riflemen carry the M72 LAW [Light Anti-tank Weapon] 66mm one-shot anti-armor launcher - normally two or three of these each. In some cases, every man in the squad will carry one.

Three of these rifle squads - along with a 3-man machine gun team using an AN/M3 12.7mm [.50-calibre] machine gun, a medical section and a 5-man anti-tank team with two 90mm "Super-Stovepipe" anti-tank weapons - form a Rifle Platoon. Three platoons make up a company. The company also includes a heavy weapons platoon (or fires platoon) with an additional three HMGs and three anti-tank teams with two of the heavier 105mm M42A2 Recoilless Rifles [stovepipes] each, and a mortar platoon with six 65mm mortars and a spotting element. The Company normally also contains a spotting element for the Regimental Artillery: the M121s and M130s.

The Battalion contains three rifle companies, a headquarters company and a heavy weapons / fires company. The headquarters company has a communications platoon, a pioneer platoon, an ammunition platoon, a medical platoon and an anti-tank platoon (six teams of two 105mm stovepipes each). The Heavy Weapons Company has two platoons with four AN/M3 HMGs each and a single mortar platoon with six heavier 90mm mortars. The Battalion will normally have a battery of 75mm Regimental Guns and 105mm Infantry Guns attached to it.

Armored Division
Example Unit: 1st "Old Ironsides" Armored Division

Division HQ Company


 * Divisional Special Troops Detatchment


 * Armored Reconnaissance Detatchment


 * Armored Signal Company


 * Medical Battalion


 * CIC Detatchment


 * 16th Combat Pioneer Detatchment


 * 17th Heavy Tank Destroyer Detatchment [M70 Assault Gun] -[attached]
 * 151st Heavy Tank Detatchment [M155 Heavy Tank] -[attached]