LOL Dont want to hijack the thread either LOL. Well you could try this in the "What If?" Forum. It sure would be a different change rather then some of the others threads created LOL. . But since this wouldn't involve the Germans winning I dont think some would be interested LOL.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Not 1940 or 1941. But 1942. Still horses around LOL.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

As a side note it is interesting on how the twin turret design had caught on with quite a few countries. But didn't last very long once the war started.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

J.C.,

I'm glad you took an interest in this thread, you always have the best and most informative post.

The Manuvers were one of the amazing accomplishments of the US. Can't imagine the thoughts and planning that went on at that time. Something that will never be duplicated.

One could imagine what the Axis thought when they caught word of our manuvers ?! It was the begining of their end.

Best Regards,

Thanks . I find it just another little facet of the war that some are not aware of. Just like advances in Logistics ,Training and Doctrine seems to not be thought of.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

The History of the 897th and 3562nd Ordnance Heavy Automotive Maintenance Companies
1941-1945 - 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers

Apparently written by BJ (Ben) Noster for the 897th Ordnance Association’s 15th reunion, September 16-18, 1993, in Henrietta, NY.
The 1941 Army maneuvers took place in two sections of the country – first in Louisiana followed shortly afterwards in the Carolinas.
On August 27, 1940, Congress authorized the Ward Dept. to call up nearly 300,000 Guardsmen and Reservists for 12 months of federal service. Three weeks later the Selective Service Act cleared Congress, empowering the Army to draft up to 900,000 men, also for a year’s service.
From the outset, efforts to create a combat ready Army encountered numerous difficulties, that of imposing a uniform training program where none had existed before. In spite of difficulties a formulated training program was implemented.
The soldier who entered the Army in 1940-1941 began his training with a mobilization training program (MTP) that lasted about thirteen weeks. Training began with several weeks of basic training which included physical conditioning, introduction to military knowledge and discipline, map reading, sanitation, first aid, and close order drill. The second phase introduced the recruit to his service specialty and to function as part of a small unit.
To the Army’s top command, maneuvers would provide an answer for the vital question; did the U.S. posses an Army capable of defending the nation in time of crisis?
In August of 1941, participating field units began to gather on the Louisiana maneuver grounds. At this time Gen. Krueger brought his ten divisions into the Blue assembly area north of Lake Charles.

897th en route to Lake Charles

After a month in garrison at Camp Shelby, the 897th departed on Aug. 4th, bivouacking the first night at the far end of the runway at the Baton Rouge airport. The next day brought us to Lake Charles, where we set up pyramidal tents the following day, after clearing out the primitive swamp area of copperheads, scorpions and water moccasins, etc. Cots and mosquito nets were provided for sleep. Shops were set up in a large warehouse and maintenance performed. Shops were also operated “in the field” in Crawley and Pitkin.

Encamped near Lake Charles (Gocek)

Encamped near Lake Charles (Gocek)

Encamped near Lake Charles

Encamped near Lake Charles (Crowley standing at left, Carfora in tent)
Maneuvers completed, the 897th returned to Camp Shelby on Oct. 9.
The Louisiana maneuvers consisted of two phases; phase 1 was the Battle of the Red River and phase 2 was the Battle for Shreveport. Phase 1 started on Sep. 15 in the midst of a tropical storm and torrential rain showers. Phase 2 started on Sep. 24 amidst the side effects of a powerful hurricane which grounded aircraft, flattened camps, and soaked troops.
The 1941 maneuvers helped the nation prepare for war; for the first time in the nation's history there existed a field tested nearly combat-ready Army before a declaration of war. Sixty one soldiers lost their lives in the Louisiana and Carolinas maneuvers and which cost the nation $20.6 million in expenses incurred. Additional compensation went out for damage claims for stolen melons, rutted yards, wrecked barrooms, drowned sheep, buildings damaged by tanks and fatal accidents involving Army and civilian vehicles.

897th and 3562nd Ordnance HAM Companies, 1941-1945

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I found this interesting too about the manuvers.

"The 1941 maneuvers helped the nation prepare for war; for the first time in the nation's history there existed a field tested nearly combat-ready Army before a declaration of war. Sixty one soldiers lost their lives in the Louisiana and Carolinas maneuvers and which cost the nation $20.6 million in expenses incurred. Additional compensation went out for damage claims for stolen melons, rutted yards, wrecked barrooms, drowned sheep, buildings damaged by tanks and fatal accidents involving Army and civilian vehicles."

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I never understood these maneuvers. How do they determine if a certain unit won if they met on the field?

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The article that dgmitchell link explains some of it.

Louisiana Maneuvers (1940-41) » HistoryNet

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I have taken part in several of the large scale maneuvers : "Kernal Usher", Cobra Gold, Team Spirit, Bright Star, CAX 29 Palms, CMTC Ft. Irwin, CMTC Hohenfells and endless hours at Camp Pendleton up and down hills yelling "butter butter bang bang".

With the exception of Hohenfells and Irwin the large maneuvers did not produce a winner or a loser. The operations were more a test of Logistics and deployment than they were a test of combat prowess. Regardless of wether you were the defender or attacker you were graded on how well you conducted operations and then you'd switch sides.

At Irwin and Hohenfells there were winners and losers as the entire battlefield, "The Box", was fully intigrated and monitored. Imagine a huge game of "Laser tag" with Tanks, Helicopters, Land Mines and Airstrikes. What makes this possible is the use of MILES (Military Laser Engagement System) gear for everyting from individual troops to helicopters and the ability to track the system.

Brad

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"Logos, Philos, Arete"

"Embick sought logistics assistance from senior armored and infantry corps commanders, who insisted the maneuvers be as realistic as possible. Loudspeakers would blare the recorded sounds of battle, canister smoke would shroud the battlefield, and bags of white sand would be dropped from aircraft to simulate the impact of artillery shells. U.S. Army Air Corps spotter and reconnaissance planes would gather intelligence, while transports would deliver troops to newly constructed airfields. Planners stockpiled millions of rounds of blank ammunition, and Embick established rules to govern when units would join the line of fire and what kinds of “casualties” they’d suffer. His goal was not only to determine who could “kill” whom, but also to test the time it took medical units to transfer the “wounded” to rear-area combat hospitals. Finally, Embick appointed and trained hundreds of maneuver “umpires,” who, armed with clipboards and armbands, would monitor and assess units and leaders according to a complex grading system.
While the umpires’ conclusions were important, even more important, from Embick’s perspective, was feedback from individual commanders, who were to assess their own performance and that of their troops. Embick’s goal was not to determine winners and losers of the exercises, but to create an effective training regimen for the coming war."

"The 1940 maneuvers began in May with 70,000 soldiers, who trained and “fought” in four separate exercises of three days each, beginning on May 9. These first maneuvers, Embick said, were “experiments,” not contests. The first was to see whether armored units could actually mobilize and travel long distances. To test this, the War Department ordered Maj. Gen. Walter C. Short’s IV Corps to move from its Fort Benning headquarters in Georgia to Louisiana—550 miles in six days, the longest motor march ever undertaken by the U.S. Army. Soon after arriving in Louisiana, IV Corps was thrown into a series of corps-on-corps exercises that pitted Short’s armored columns (the “Blue Army”) against Krueger’s IX Corps (the “Red Army”). As military historian Christopher Gabel noted:
In the first exercise, Red Army took the offensive, crossing the Calcasieu while Blue Army defended the river line. In the second exercise, Blue Army attacked, enveloping both flanks of the Red force. The third maneuver again saw Blue on the attack, this time with penetrations of the Red line at Slagle and Hornbeck. In the fourth exercise, the provisional tank brigade and the 7th Mechanized Cavalry Brigade were combined into a provisional division totaling some 382 tanks—the first armored division in Army history. This force spearheaded a Red Army attack, which the Blue force countered with an antitank defense extending as far east as Gorum and Flatwoods.
Embick followed up, crisscrossing the “battlefield” to question commanders and soldiers on both sides and reaching some preliminary conclusions on America’s combat readiness. What he found was not encouraging—the Army evidently had a lot to learn about mobile warfare. Vehicle breakdowns, repair team shortages, repeated traffic jams and poorly worded orders were all common. More important, senior commanders’ failure to lead from the front led to uncoordinated attacks and jumbled defenses. “Commanders and staffs mistakenly believed that they could run the war from headquarters,” Gabel noted, “relying on maps and telephones, much as they had in the static warfare of 1918.”

Louisiana Maneuvers (1940-41) » HistoryNet

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Back to the casualities suffered during the Manuvers,

CASUALTIES

SOME BOYS REALLY GOT HURT
">ON STRETCHERS AT LAKE CHARLES STATION, CASUALTIES FROM 43RD EVACUATION HOSPITAL WAIT FOR TRAIN TO TAKE THEM TO NEW ORLEANS FIELD HOSPITAL Photo Credit: Dmitri Kessel/Ralph Morse/TIMEPIX
The only great fact of war missing in maneuvers is fear of death. Guns shoot banks. Planes bomb trucks with flour bags. Prisoners are set free unhurt.
But there are real casualties. Boys on stretchers (above) have honest-to-God cases of strained backs, fractured knees, food poisoning Below, in an evacuation hospital, Army surgeons are performing a real operation for appendicitis. On opposite page, Private Le Roy Beyer looks out from an Army ambulance after the rim of a tire lie was changing hit him in the head.
IN ARMY HOSPITAL AT JONESBORO, SURGEONS PERFORM EMERGENCY APPENDECTOMY. DURING MANEUVERS, HOSPITALS AVERAGE 100-200 SICK AND INJURED SOLDIERS A DAY Photo Credit: Dmitri Kessel/Ralph Morse/TIMEPIXBefore fighting started, the Army expected that, in two weeks some 40,000 soldiers would be hospitalized. It also expected 136 deaths. When, therefore, at the end of the first week of war 17 soldiers had been killed (seven by motor accidents, one by suicide, two by drowning, two by disease, five by airplanes), the Army was relieved.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Umpire Manual

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

A little about the 4th Division and the maneuvers,

"As war clouds engulfed Europe, the 4th Division was reactivated on June 1, 1940 at Fort Benning, Georgia as America began to increase the size of our armed forces. Selected to act as an experimental unit for the development of methods recently demonstrated by the German blitz through Belgium and France, the 4th Motorized Division began a three year, wide-open experiment. From August 1940 through August 1943, the division participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers, was moved to the newly opened Camp Gordon, GA where they participated in the Carolina Maneuvers, and was moved to Fort Dix, New Jersey before being redesignated the 4th Infantry Division. A movement in September 1943 to Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida gave the division realistic amphibious training in preparation for the assault on fortress Europe."

Camp Gordon Johnston Association

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Hey JC, you seem to have more information concerning the Louisiana Manuevers than the Louisiana Manuevers Museum at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana does. Well, I really haven't been there in about 11 years, so there's no telling what they have now. Hopefully the curator there has the same access to information that you do.

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

LOL Thanks A-58. There is always more info and stories coming out .

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

15th Cav 1941

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

That had to be a bumpy landing.

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

I recall that Eisenhower's meteoric rise owed in part to his role in the Louisiana maneouvers, in which he both succeded in defending against with a mechanized command and attacking with one. Of course, he was not the only commander to see his fortunes made in the mameouvers as George S. Patton also scored a brilliant win after he was assigned under Eisenhower to fight. That was his famous "cheating" of the wargame, by making a forced march with his armor arond and out of the designated excercise grounds. =)

BtW, there were umpires present with both units at different levels and would observe the maneouvers of the opposing forces and call out the "losers" and write them of as casaulties.