Royal Marine Division - 1943-??

Dave Shoup

Banned
I have to ask why? ... As the European theatre in WW2 showed army units were quite capable of amphibious operations.

True, but the suggestion is not to replace the British or Canadian army infantry divisions that landed in Sicily, Italy, or France, but to use an existing light division (that the British had put time and resources into raising since 1940, of course) for the missions it was designed for, as opposed to breaking it up to provide crews for RN landing craft.

Which raises the question - if the RN needed 14,000 landing craft crew in 1943-44, why in the world break up an elite infantry division (which the British certainly didn't have a surfeit of, of course) and use its personnel as small boat crews? And in 1945, go back and convert them into light infantry for the 116th and 117th brigades? THAT hardly seems efficient.

It's worth noting the British manpower crisis in 1944-45 required the disbandment of the 1st Armoured Division in Italy and the 50th and 59th infantry divisions in NW Europe, while the 1st Airborne Division was never committed to combat after the losses sustained in MARKET-GARDEN, and some 25,000 RAF personnel were retrained as infantry replacements because of the demands of the 1944-45 campaigns.

Seems like a pretty obvious "what if" that a) doesn't require any handwaves, and b) was actually possible up to the moment of the POD.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
As others have pointed out, why?

A specialized amphibious assault division is useful in a situation where there will be a series of landings with no significant inland advance and which are spaced far enough apart for the unit to be ready for the next operation, i.e. the Pacific. Elsewhere the assault from the sea was a small part of a larger campaign, so either the division continues as a conventional unit or it's withdrawn and not used until the next landing. Given UK manpower & shipping shortages the latter is not really an option. The constraints on UK amphibious operations generally wasn't assault troops, it was shipping. Also, the marines will need to be replaced on board ships, so presumably there will have to be reductions either in the number of ships in the RN or in the number of divisions in the army to create the RM division.

Why? Subsidiary operations - the Adriatic and Aegean in 1944, and SEAC in 1945 - seem obvious.

And it is worth noting that according to the troop assignments and numbers in the OP, drawn directly from Watts' book, which cites a memorandum by the RM CG, there were 8,000 RMs assigned to fleet duty in 1943 that would not have been drawn on at all to come up with the 19,000 (5,000 infantry not converted to commandos and 14,000 used for landing craft crews) suggested in the OP for the "operational" RMD.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
I understand what the OP is getting at but ... snip ... The reason for Marines to be on ships had not 'gone away' during the war and that particular function could not be replaced by Soldiers or realistically by armed sailors.

Again, not suggesting a light RM division could directly replace a reinforced British or Canadian infantry division in the amphibious landings in Italy or France, but that a light division - that existed, after all, and had been training as such since 1940 - could have been used in the Adriatic or Aegean in 1944 or the Far East in 1945, rather than being re-purposed as landing craft crews in 1943-44, and then re-purposed as light infantry in 1945. Hardly seems efficient.

Also, worth noting that according to the troop assignments and numbers in the OP, drawn directly from Watts' book, which cites a memorandum by the RM CG, there were 8,000 RMs assigned to fleet duty in 1943 that would not have been drawn on at all to come up with the 19,000 (5,000 infantry not converted to commandos and 14,000 used for landing craft crews) suggested in the OP for the "operational" RMD.
 
True, but the suggestion is not to replace the British or Canadian army infantry divisions that landed in Sicily, Italy, or France, but to use an existing light division (that the British had put time and resources into raising since 1940, of course) for the missions it was designed for, as opposed to breaking it up to provide crews for RN landing craft.

Which raises the question - if the RN needed 14,000 landing craft crew in 1943-44, why in the world break up an elite infantry division (which the British certainly didn't have a surfeit of, of course) and use its personnel as small boat crews? And in 1945, go back and convert them into light infantry for the 116th and 117th brigades? THAT hardly seems efficient.

It's worth noting the British manpower crisis in 1944-45 required the disbandment of the 1st Armoured Division in Italy and the 50th and 59th infantry divisions in NW Europe, while the 1st Airborne Division was never committed to combat after the losses sustained in MARKET-GARDEN, and some 25,000 RAF personnel were retrained as infantry replacements because of the demands of the 1944-45 campaigns.

Seems like a pretty obvious "what if" that a) doesn't require any handwaves, and b) was actually possible up to the moment of the POD.

Training issues perhaps? One presume the marines had already been trained how to live and operate as shipborne troops and all the retraining they need would be small boat handling skills. Regular army soldiers would need training in both shipborne operations and small boat handling.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
Training issues perhaps? One presume the marines had already been trained how to live and operate as shipborne troops and all the retraining they need would be small boat handling skills. Regular army soldiers would need training in both shipborne operations and small boat handling.

Except why not simply use sailors? The RN manned landing craft, the RN and even the Merchant Navy manned LSIs, and the difference in fitness alone between a trained light infantryman and a sailor is obvious. As it was, in 1943-44 the RN was still manning four battleships and more than a dozen elderly cruisers that together could have yielded roughly 11,000 RN personnel; the last 3,000, if needed, presumably could have been made up by transferring the seven remaining Banff-class sloops back to the USCG (1400 men total), as well as many of the remaining ex-USN "four piper" destroyers the British chose to decommission (~150 men each). That would have required 11 of the 41 that historically survived until the end of the war.

The USN manned landing craft from LCIs and LCTs down to LCVPs with sailors and coast guardsmen; the US Army manned the landing craft assigned to the amphibious engineers quite successfully with soldiers.

In an era where the British were, historically, starved for infantry, seems nonsensical to break up a division that had been on the books since 1940 in 1943, and yet NOT use the personnel freed up as infantry, but instead go through the exercise of converting them to landing craft crew for service in 1944, and then convert at least some of them back to emergency infantry in 1945. Obviously, the British inter-service rivalries were real, as witness what happened historically, but still...
 
I'd point out that while the USMC did create divisions tasked with amphibious landings they had numerous other roles as well. A big one was the Base Defence battalions, which defended Pacific Islands such as Wake and Midway, as well as Iceland at the start of the war and eventually some 20 of these units were raised. Another role was USMC medium bomber squadrons, which did not directly support amphibious operations but rather were a general purpose tactical bomber force in the Pacific.

Nor were the USMC and RM alone in tasking their Marines with non amphibious tasks like this. In WW1 one division the German Marine Corps Flanders manned the coastal defences in Flanders, including the aircraft, tboats and uboats while the second division in the Corps was manned the first line of trenches from the sea inwards.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
I'd point out that while the USMC did create divisions tasked with amphibious landings they had numerous other roles as well. A big one was the Base Defence battalions, which defended Pacific Islands such as Wake and Midway, as well as Iceland at the start of the war and eventually some 20 of these units were raised. Another role was USMC medium bomber squadrons, which did not directly support amphibious operations but rather were a general purpose tactical bomber force in the Pacific. Nor were the USMC and RM alone in tasking their Marines with non amphibious tasks like this. In WW1 one division the German Marine Corps Flanders manned the coastal defences in Flanders, including the aircraft, tboats and uboats while the second division in the Corps was manned the first line of trenches from the sea inwards.

The USMC order of battle in WW 2 amounted to six infantry divisions, four forward-deployed air wings, and multiple defense, security, garrison, and training units, as well as shipboard detachments. The USMC also had 476,000 officers and enlisted personnel at the high point in 1944; the RM, as far as I can tell, topped out at 82,000 in 1943.

That being said, seems like an RM light division of two brigade groups was sustainable; the British certainly thought so, since when the RMD was initially set up in 1940, it was organized (on paper) around three numbered brigades, and the intention was to adopt an organization essentially the same as the standard British Army infantry division.
 
Which raises the question - if the RN needed 14,000 landing craft crew in 1943-44, why in the world break up an elite infantry division (which the British certainly didn't have a surfeit of, of course) and use its personnel as small boat crews? And in 1945, go back and convert them into light infantry for the 116th and 117th brigades? THAT hardly seems efficient.

IIRC the division was RMLI, not commando trained. For the Royal Navy it was probably less disruptive to repurpose a single unit than to try to pull boat crews from across the fleet. Committing the division would also put it under Army control and make it difficult for the RN to get it back.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
Royal Marines actually landed to liberate Penang on 3rd September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jurist. Operation Zipper, the invasion of Malaysia was scheduled for 9th September, so forces were already in place and trained.

Yes, and after VJ Day in 1945, so what? Penang could have been liberated by a RN landing party and the Calcutta Light Horse.

As it was, 3rd SS/Cdo Brigade headquarters was the same organization as 102 Brigade headquarters, and 42 and 44 RM commandos were raised from the 1st and 3rd RM battalions, respectively. Essentially, the same units as listed in the OP, except as line RM battalions, they probably would have been heavier and more effective than the half-strength battalions that a commando corresponded to... the big question is why convert seven infantry battalions to seven commandos in 1943 (5,000 troops, nominally), and slice off enough RMs to provide 14,000 landing craft crewmen, when the total of 19,000 is more than enough to sustain the RMD as it was organized in 1943 before the conversion?
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
IIRC the division was RMLI, not commando trained. For the Royal Navy it was probably less disruptive to repurpose a single unit than to try to pull boat crews from across the fleet. Committing the division would also put it under Army control and make it difficult for the RN to get it back.

The RMLI and the RMA were amalgamated in 1923. The RMLI hadn't existed as such for two decades. The RMD had been in existence as an amphibious division since 1940 and Sturges (its CG) commanded the forces at Dakar and in Madagascar, which were the first British amphibious operations of any significance in the war.

As far as landing craft crews go, the RN had a surfeit of elderly warships whose crews - bluejackets all - would have been better landing craft sailors by definition than 14,000 RMs.

And by the middle of 1943, the RN certainly didn't need eighteen obsolescent slow battleships and light cruisers.
 
Why? Subsidiary operations - the Adriatic and Aegean in 1944, and SEAC in 1945 - seem obvious.

And it is worth noting that according to the troop assignments and numbers in the OP, drawn directly from Watts' book, which cites a memorandum by the RM CG, there were 8,000 RMs assigned to fleet duty in 1943 that would not have been drawn on at all to come up with the 19,000 (5,000 infantry not converted to commandos and 14,000 used for landing craft crews) suggested in the OP for the "operational" RMD.

Still seems unnecessary to me, what is the point of raiding or even seizing a couple of Adriatic islands in 1944? The constraint on SEAC amphibious operations was not manpower, it was amphibious shipping, in fact this was generally true for all British theatres. Better to use the manpower to build & crew extra landing craft and shipping more generally rather than have a large raiding force that can't actually do any raiding for lack of shipping. While on the subject of manpower, just like the army and the navy many marines were employed in what were essential jobs that didn't involve being part of a ship's crew or fighting force, if the RM personnel were relieved of these duties then they would have to be replaced somehow.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
Still seems unnecessary to me, what is the point of raiding or even seizing a couple of Adriatic islands in 1944? The constraint on SEAC amphibious operations was not manpower, it was amphibious shipping, in fact this was generally true for all British theatres. Better to use the manpower to build & crew extra landing craft and shipping more generally rather than have a large raiding force that can't actually do any raiding for lack of shipping. While on the subject of manpower, just like the army and the navy many marines were employed in what were essential jobs that didn't involve being part of a ship's crew or fighting force, if the RM personnel were relieved of these duties then they would have to be replaced somehow.

Look up the use of Vis/Lissa in 1943-45; the RMD in the Adriatic might have actually been just the tool to help eliminate the coastal routes for Army Group F as it withdrew from the Balkans. In 1944, the RMD could have been assigned to BRASSARD, SITKA, or ROMEO, or it could have been very useful in the Aegean as the Germans withdrew in the autumn of 1944; cutting off (for example) the German 22nd Division on Crete, or the German garrisons in the Dodecanese, as late as 1945. Given that the RN was able to commit a strong enough escort carrier force to the Aegean in 1944 that the German advantage in land-based air power was negated (unlike in 1943), there are multiple possibilities of taking effective action.

A SEAC deployment opens the door to an "early" (1944) assault on Akyab and/or Ramree; a SoWesPac deployment gives the Commonwealth an amphibious force worth the name prior to OBOE in 1945; presumably there are multiple locations where such a force could be useful.

Again, as far as candidates from landing craft crews in 1943, one would think that Revenge and her sisters, much less the Ceres, Danae, etc. class cruisers, would be more obvious pools of trained sailors than an infantry division. Same for the Banffs and the remaining RN-manned "Town" class destroyers.

Given the British Army's manpower crisis in Europe in 1944-45, simply using the RMD as infantry, rather than small boat crews, seems like an obvious path, for that matter. 101 or 102 RM brigades could have been beefed up with shares of the RMD's divisional assets, and used to augment or replace army infantry brigades; as it was, the British broke up three divisions to yield an equivalent of seven infantry brigades of replacements, and added the previously independent 231st Brigade to the 50th Division in Sicily and the 56th Brigade to the 49th Division in Normandy. Presumably folding the two RM brigades into 15th or 21st army groups can keep either the 50th or 59th infantry divisions, or the 1st Armoured Division, functional as such.

If the RMD goes out to the east, and the 29th Brigade is attached, it could replace the extemporized 36th Division.
 
I think to make this realistic we need a PoD dating far before the start of WW2.

Gallipoli and lessons learned may be a decent point to at least allow the British to determine that they need specialist landing forces (from logistics to beach assault). Somehow the UK needs to keep this doctrine alive and the seedcorn structure to allow its filling out during the ramp up in 39.

Now giving the RN first a brigade then a division size beach landing force would lead to huge butterflies - both in terms of more successful evacuations and strategic inteventions across a whole host of theatres.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
I think to make this realistic we need a PoD dating far before the start of WW2. Gallipoli and lessons learned may be a decent point to at least allow the British to determine that they need specialist landing forces (from logistics to beach assault). Somehow the UK needs to keep this doctrine alive and the seedcorn structure to allow its filling out during the ramp up in 39. Now giving the RN first a brigade then a division size beach landing force would lead to huge butterflies - both in terms of more successful evacuations and strategic interventions across a whole host of theatres.

I'd agree with you if the RMD was never formed, historically, but the reality is the British made the decision to stand the division up in August, 1940, with three brigades, as an equivalent to a standard British division. The three brigade headquarters - 101, 102, and 103 - were formed in December, 1939; May, 1940; and April, 1941, respectively. Organizations are not simple to create, and time is always short in mobilizations; given the ability to fill up landing craft crews with RN sailors, breaking up an existing formation like the RMD to do so seems very counterintuitive.

Given that, with the POD that the RMD is kept, I was curious where the assembly of notables would suggest it could have been used effectively.
 
Last edited:
Top