Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

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tm1
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Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by tm1 »

HI

There was a thread some time back on the troop strengths of Italian Divisions with a number of the community mentioning that Division OB's were to low.

In the course of the discussion many put up details of what should be there actual strength in game and it was being looked into by 2 by 3 games.

Just looking at the latest BETA patch and previous ones I don't recall any info on if the issue was resolved.

Though I could have missed it somewhere, has there been any word on this subject.

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AlbertN
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by AlbertN »

Alpini Divisional strength is 16500.
Or at least that was for the Cuneense Division. Which I believe it is a standard for the 'core' Alpini divisions.

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Great_Ajax
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by Great_Ajax »

It has been addressed in a massive OB update which is planned for a release sometime in the new future. This has been a two year project of mine to review all of the OBs with an underlying spreadsheet to document the organizational composition. Understand, that there really is no difference in the current OB’s combat strength and the updated one. That increase in manpower is really to handle the increased number of pack mules that the Alpini had to manage. So, the updated OB has an significantly increased number of support squads.
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AlbertN
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by AlbertN »

May I ask the source, because right now the alpini divisions are 9000 or 10000 personnel already.
I somehow am extremely, EXTREMELY skeptical there are 6500+ personnel just to handle packmules, not counting what in the 10000 currently present are already support squads.
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Great_Ajax
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by Great_Ajax »

These divisions are pretty small compared to other regular infantry divisions. Only two infantry regiments, a light artillery regiment and a few support companies. Off the top of my head I used niehorster and nafziger. There were some online articles as well. Hit me up on the development forums and I can share the spreadsheet if you want to take a look. Definitely not opposed to making changes if there are supporting references.

AlbertN wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 3:38 pm May I ask the source, because right now the alpini divisions are 9000 or 10000 personnel already.
I somehow am extremely, EXTREMELY skeptical there are 6500+ personnel just to handle packmules, not counting what in the 10000 currently present are already support squads.
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cain012
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by cain012 »

AlbertN wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 3:38 pm May I ask the source, because right now the alpini divisions are 9000 or 10000 personnel already.
I somehow am extremely, EXTREMELY skeptical there are 6500+ personnel just to handle packmules, not counting what in the 10000 currently present are already support squads.
Several very good resources were posted in the original thread dealing with this topic, including the US War Department Handbook on Italian Forces from 1943, as well as an image of a 1942 German Kampfstarke document for the Julia Alpini division, which shows a war strength of 11,000 men MINUS all of the support elements.

Here is the link to the relevant war department handbook, which puts the regiments at around 4500 men each (three large battalions with service elements down to the company plus what was essentially an entire dedicated service battalion). Just those two regiments would therefore total 9000 men.

https://archive.org/details/TME30-420/page/66/mode/2up

It also notes that the battalion is the highest alpine unit with a fixed organization, pointing to the fact that each battalion of the regiment had to have sufficient support personnel (and mules transporting equipment, gear, food) to operate more or less independently in mountain conditions.

This also comports with the KStNs of the German Gebirgsjager, which similarly were two-regiment divisions but with total manpower around the same level of a German three-regiment infantry division. Most of that is support personnel. Mountain divisions/regiments are a lot larger than one would think just from an org chart, and it is for sure mainly because of the pack mules and logistics elements. They are larger and exist in strength much further down the chain.

However, adding to this, niehorster notes that in 1942 at least, the Italian divisions serving in Russia had a lot of non-standard units added on a permanent basis for Russian front duties: the Alpini divisions appear to have had a whole extra Alpine company in each of the six battalions across the two regiments (an Alpine company, according to the War Department document, totaled 330 men or so, so that's another 2000 guys roughly right there, putting the full-strength total for JUST the two regiments at over 10,000 guys), plus two AA and three AT companies (probably around 120-160 guys each), plus an extra artillery battalion of 700 men. So that's the extra 3400 men that make up the difference of the standard 13k-to-14k-or-so men in the 1940 division TOE (the artillery regiment, the engineer battalion, the service elements) found in niehorster, and corroborated by this War Department source.

The niehorster and nafziger material for Italian units is generally pretty janky. Niehorster doesn't include any manpower numbers for the most part, just weapon counts and internal organization. I think most of the nafziger sources on WWII Italy also deal with internal organizations (i.e. how many weapons per company, and how many companies of what kind were in each subunit, but not how large the companies actually were or what jobs the soldiers within them had). It can't be too tough to find online Italian sources which outline these details more clearly: I remember coming across a very good website on the North African TOEs for both Italian and Libyan colonial divisions a while back (though I don't remember how to find it again). The original thread had some Italian sources that seemed good. Consensus seemed clear across all provided sources that the divisions should be much larger. 16,000, with the additions coming mostly in support squads, sounds right, although some attention should be paid to those extra AA, AT, and mountain guns too, as well as the six extra Alpine companies. Those additions would add significantly to combat strength.
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Nikel
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by Nikel »

Indeed is very difficult to find the divisional composition in numbers.


The Ufficio Storico's LE OPERAZIONI DELLE UNITA’ ITALIANE SUL FRONTE RUSSO (1941-1943), has a very detailed OOB, however without numbers. Only the grand totals:

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In L’8a ARMATA ITALIANA NELLA SECONDA BATTAGLIA DIFENSIVA DEL DON, there is a table with the catastrophic losses in the 42-43 winter that gives an idea of the numbers per division:

US2.png
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Gters
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Re: Italian Divisional Troop Numbers

Post by Gters »

The OB of the italian troops generally is greatly underestimated like that of some officers, Masses above all and should be completely revised. This is from the Alpine divisions (official Site), in Italian but easily translatable https://www.alpini-cuneense.it/ordine_battaglia.htm




So the matrix are working on a new OB?
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