Personel of ordnance maintenance company

[pamak1970]

Hello to everybody

I copy a question i posted on another forum,since it seems there is more activity here.

I can not find the TOE and the number of personel for an ordnance maintenance company ( part of the ordnance maintenance battalion) of a US armored division (1944)

I know that for a US infantry division,the ordnance company is 147 men.

However things are different in the armored division.

The ordnance maintenance battalion (1944) for a US armored division has a strength of 762 (all ranks).

Other than that i can not find details for the ordnance company and the specific allocation of personel to the various platoons or even the total personel strength-distribution.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thank you

P.S I know about the material and vehicle composition of the unit.

I miss the personel data.

[ July 19, 2007, 11:07 AM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

[John Kettler]

pamak1970,

Seems to me you ought to be able to deduce it from stuff like this.

http://members.aol.com/dadswar/129ord.htm

A major commanded 5 AD's ordnance maintenance battalion, which means a captain runs the subordinate company.

http://www.5ad.org/11_44.html

This gives you the composition of a team.

http://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/ordnance/index.html

the Green Series The Technical Services: The Ordnance Department On Beachhead and Battlefront has much of interest.

History of 526th Ordnance Tank Maintenance Company

has useful manning info.

http://www.bobbittville.com/526ordnance.htm

TO&E volumes

http://www.militarypress.co.uk/us-army.htm

U.S. Army Military History Institute armor bibliography. Has several pertinent entries.

http://ahecwebdds.carlisle.army.mil/awapps/pdfopener?smd=1&md=1&did=84567

Ordnance company histories held at Armored Force School

http://www.generalpatton.org/education/collections/Armored_Force_School_History.pdf

How it was done in the "A" company of the 133rd Armored Ordnance Battalion, 11 AD.

http://www.11tharmoreddivision.com/history/133rd_armored_ordnance_a_co.htm

Ordnance FMs here.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/index.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Would whomever abducted pamak1970 kindly return him, please? Am interested in getting his reaction to what I dug up for him.

Regards,

John Kettler

[pamak1970]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Would whomever abducted pamak1970 kindly return him, please? Am interested in getting his reaction to what I dug up for him.

Regards,

John Kettler

Thank you for your help John.

Although i do not have much time for digging, i did explore the links briefly.

In fact i had a look at most of these before.

The frustrating thing is that although there is a lot of information out there, i was not able to locate personel data about these units.

I can estimate aproximate the composition but i can not have a clear picture of the personel allocation.

Note that some links with some details about personel strength are actually about independent heavy ordnance maintenance companies belonging to formations larger than divisions.

I do not know if their composition is very similar with the maintenance companies which are part of an armored division TOE.

Right now i am focussing on examining my files .

I found yesterday a photocopy of an american field manual about staff and administration data.

There ,there is a very detailed TOE showing equipment and personel strength for maintenance companies.

However ,I will need time to examine it .

The whole thing about the composition of maintenance companies started when i read some information regarding the amount of tanks repaired daily .

At some point in Thomas Jent books i found a report about repairs in independent Panther battallions after the Kursk offensive.

It stated that the two maintenance companies of the two Panther battallions were able to repair about 20-25 tanks daily.

Later i found relative information about Americans inside the book "death traps".

At some point the author mentions a battle where a combat command losses 45 tanks.

The maintenance company of the combat command receives an additional detatchment from the divisional maintenance battalion and it is able to recover and repair about 35 tanks in three days.

That was faster than the time needed to have tank replacements arriving from the rear .

(note that i recall all the above from my memory ,so actual numbers might differ somehow).

This type of information was what made me seek additional information about the maintenance organization at divisional level.

It is interesting though that it was more easy to find detailed information about German maintenance units ,than American ones.

At first i thought it would be the opposite.

Any way,thank you again for your time to find all these links.

One of them was new to me

[pamak1970]

I will post some very rough data for anyone interested for a follow up.Unfortunately right now i do not have time for specific information.

First remark is about the German maintenance companies in Panther battalions.

Although the report mentions 25 repaied tanks per day (by two maintenance companies), i will assume that some portion of this work is about repairing mechanical breakdowns not related to combat losses.

I will look again later to see the specific wording of the report and see if i can have more details.

I will have to look also for possible information in Zetterling's "kursk statistical analysis".

I want to see if there is any information regarding the strength of Panther battalions up to two weeks after the end of the Kurk offensive

The next issue is about the book "death traps".

The information is about 3rd Armored division which in 1944 retained the old TOE of the "heavy division".

According to this, every combat command had an armored regiment (minus one battallion).

Each armored regiment had its own maintenance company.

In addition , the divisional maintenance battallion provided one more maintenance company to every combat command.

So if i understand things right, the event mentioned in the book of repairing 35 tanks in 3 days , involved two maintenance companies (the regimental and the one provided by the division),plus an additional detachment(probably of platoon size) which went to reinforce combat command maintenance units with the heavy workload.