US Army insignia

barneysplash

Hi all

Does anyone know of a good webpage that has a diagram of US Army
insignia?

I watched Kelly's Heros yesterday and was wondering is the shoulder insignia
of a genuine unit? It was a blue circle with a white cross surrounded by a white circle on it.

A good reference diagram of the main units would be very handy.

Decoda

Kellys Heroes were part of the 35th Infantry Division.

This website provides quite a lot of information regading your querey.

http://www.army.mil/

DC

barneysplash

Thanks for that.

On a related topic, you know in the US army they have the 101st Airborne
the 82nd Airbourne etc, well what happened to all the units in between?

You know like the 1st Cavalry, the unit with the cool horse insignia, is there
a 2nd Cavalry etc.

HerrScheisse

Hmmmm I would also like to know that!

arnhem44

Maybe this will help the OP http://theww2resource.tripod.com/id16.htm

arnhem44

HerrScheisse wrote: »

Hmmmm I would also like to know that!

Can't answer this one but a good site here covering the Airbourne divisions during WW2 http://www.ww2-airborne.us/18corps/11abn/11_overview.html

Manic Moran

barneysplash wrote: »

Thanks for that.

On a related topic, you know in the US army they have the 101st Airborne
the 82nd Airbourne etc, well what happened to all the units in between?

You know like the 1st Cavalry, the unit with the cool horse insignia, is there
a 2nd Cavalry etc.

1st Cav is a division, I'm not sure there ever was a second cav. There were, however, a number of regiments, so 2nd Armored Cav Regiment is still swanning around as a Stryker Brigade. 3rd ACR and 11th ACR are still operational as well.

The divisional structure is based on numbers allocations and expansion. Not all divisions are/were activated.

Divisions 1-25 of any category were reserved for the United States Army, 26-45 for the National Guard and 46-106 for the Army of the United States. Within each category, the first division raised would be '1', the second '2' and so on and so forth. So, 1st ID is the oldest infantry division, 1st Armoured the oldest armoured division, 26th ID the oldest National Guard division, 46th ID the oldest division in the AUS, you get the idea. There were a few exceptions, for example the 82nd and 101st were transferred to the US Army when they converted to Airborne, and I'm not entirely sure why the 36th Infantry was renumbered to the 49th Armored when it converted. (It converted back in 2006 and is 36th Infantry again)

I'm also not entirely sure where the Brigade/Regimental structure fits into the allocations, but again, they generally started at '1' and worked up as they were created.

The Army maintains a seniority list for the various units, so when it downsizes, the most senior units are kept. It is a points system based on a number of factors, not purely on chronological creation. I don't have the exact criteria to hand, but it's going to be akin to '1 point per year of active service, 5 points per Presidential Unit Citation, 3 points per Valorous Unit Citation, 2 points per Medal of Honour awarded to soldiers in the unit, 3 points per campaign star awarded' and so on and so forth. As a result, there are some divisions which are a little 'out there', such as 24th and 25th ID which survived all the downsizing post WWII because they had done so well during the war and thus leapfrogged lower-numbered units on the seniority listings.

As a result, sometimes units get reflagged during downsizing events: I witnessed the training brigade at Ft Knox, for example, get reflagged as an entirely different unit because one brigade had to go, and the one at Knox was junior. But obviously the Knox mission stayed whilst the mission the senior brigade had vanished, so what basically happened was that everyone at Knox just changed the unit insignia on their uniforms and letterheads and continued on as before.

The allocations system still exists. My National Guard division was 40th Infantry, for example, and the local 'ghost' division is the 91st. The entire 91st division consists of a few score soldiers just to keep things ticking over in case they're needed again, and formed the cadre of the training unit when reserve units in the area started to get called up.

NTM

barneysplash

Thanks for the reply, clears a few things up.

HerrScheisse

Now that is a detailed answer - thanks NTM!