'03s in the ETO

[firstflabn]

For those with a beancounting interest, here's a portion of an ETO report showing total '03s in the theater around the time of peak manpower. Total shoulder arms come to just over three million (that counts BARs and includes small arms for USAAF), so about one in 12 armed GIs had the '03. Obviously the Army didn't differentiate between the '03, 03A1, and 03A3.



The ETO had about 60% of all Army personnel overseas at this time - and about 65% of the Army infantry divisions - so that may give a very general idea of how many '03s were in active service late in the war (somebody else can tackle the USMC and USN quantities).

Those sniper numbers are higher than what I expected to see. Infantry battalions were authorized 9 each (one for each rifle platoon per the Feb 44 T/O&E). Armored divisions only had three infantry battalions instead of nine; that would mean the theater had the equivalent of 50 infantry divisions - or about 4,050 M1930A4s. The reported total is almost 70% higher. Is there any record of non-infantry units being authorized 03A4s?

With the successful development of the M7 grenade launcher, it seems likely that the great majority of these quarter million '03s were carried by service units. Numbers are a little squishy, but ETO service troops totaled perhaps 1.3 million (about 40% of the force).

[Richard H Brown Jr]

That's a record of ALL 1903's in theatre, both in hands of troops, spares in support battalions, and in army, theatre and other supply organizations. And probably any 1903's were withdrawn from troops and placed in emergency storeage, and 1903a3's issued to the troops as the grenade launcher for a squad.

RHB

[Tuna]

I've seen a few photos of service personnel including telephone line men with 03 rifles on their backs. I would have thought that they would have been issued carbines but I think most of those carbines went on to the front lines instead.

[RCS]

There are a lot of support units with the 1903 & 1903A3, photos of the drivers on the Red Ball Express, MP's even MP firing squad in Italy. Support troops did not require M1 rifles

[Major Tom]

My Dad was in the Army in the Pacific Theater. He carried a M1903A3. I have one of those and he said it looked like his. I do not know if he was a sniper, used a grenade launcher or was rear area.

[emmagee1917]

The M15 sight did not come out till late in the war and , while excellent for long range butt-on-the-ground mortar-like use , it sucks for short range direct . So does the M1 rifle and 03A3 rifle peeps. The '03 was the rifle you wanted for grenade launching till late '44 , and I'm sure many were kept till the end.
Chris

[firstflabn]

From a very unscientific survey of available T/O&Es for ground forces support units: in the dozen or so I have seen for QM units, a couple call for 100% carbines, but most have about 70-80% carbines; the remainder '03s. For support units organic to an infantry division (for all I know, it could be different for similar corps, army, and COMZ units), Stanton shows a July 1943 T/O&E like this:

MP platoon - 55 carbines, 17 rifles
Signal Co - 148 carbines, 45 rifles

That's right at 75% carbines. The few 1943 T/O&Es I've seen for support units tend to list a generic 'Rifle, .30 cal.' requirement instead of specifying '03 or Garand. Perhaps they were anticipating a future change - but availability slowed or stopped the changeover.

Lots of minor changes in the 1944 revisions, but my guess is that in these types, it stayed pretty much the same. My own rough estimate from compiling a pretty good pile of combat and combat support unit T/O&Es is that one third of ETO carbines were in divisions and combat support battalions (the latter being badly named - TD, tank, arty, AAA, etc. - more 'combat' than 'support').

No exact figures for reserves, but there was a theater target of 45-90 days. It varied during the course of the campaign, but had been lowered to 45 days as things slowed near the end. In 1945, ETO planners used a 2% per month loss rate for the '03 - part guess, part experience-based. So, in an ideal world, '03 reserves would have totaled somewhere between 3-6%. War is messy, so, at best, these are ballpark figures.

I don't want to read anything in to RCS's MP comment - just a reminder: after 4 Feb 43, Italy was not part of the ETO, so, of course, wouldn't be included in the above counts.

Chris, I appreciate what you're saying, but terms like 'many' don't reveal much. There were something in the neighborhood of 12,000 rifle squads in the ETO at the end. Does 'many' mean 100? 500? 5000? A Dec 44 theater beancount shows twice as many M7s with the troops as M1s. Quantities with the troops are shown at about 95% of T/O&E requirements for each. It's hard to rely on these figures as gospel, but it's the best we have - and certainly beats drawing conclusions based on no data at all (not intended as snarky as it came out).

[CPC]

Why would the M1 garand suck for short range direct grenade fire? While I agree that the M15 sight was hardly and maybe rarely used (I think about 2 ETO combat photos exist) is was developed in early 44 so had plenty of time to reach the front prior to the bulge or even D-Day as a critical weapon accessory. The M7 was developed in 43 and by 44 when the poppet valve was developed to replace the earlier valve I believe it became the primary grenade launching platform even though the 03 was still authorized for grenadiers. Based upon discussion with WWII vets and watching countless hours of WWII footage you will rarely see a 1903 in action launching or being used in combat in the ETO. By then the M7 was the primary launcher and it was most commonly used in direct fire against tanks (not effectively) and bunkers as well as house cleaning. It was fired from the shoulder or under the arm and range was applied via Kentucky windage, etc. no M15 sights were used. I don't recall ever seeing a grenade fired from the text book or FM butt on the ground technique. The debate on peep sights will continue forever. Hunters and soldiers have been using them with great success at all ranges on cartridge rifles since the mid to late 1800's and are still used today. Just some of my rambling thoughts.

[emmagee1917]

Well , I can't find my WW2 manual , but here it is in a nutshell.
Let's say you were , say , clearing a town and you were given an '03 with grenades and a launcher and you had to respond at a moment's notice with a grenade and rely on your buddies for protection .
You would load your GLC , mount your grenade , flip your rear sight up , set the slide to 1750 yds ( don't recall what yardage for sure ) and lock it down. That then gave you four aiming points . IIRC , the tree cut and front blade , top of slide and front blade , top of ladder and front blade ( all of these needed both eyes open so your left could see the target ) and top of slide and top of grenade . This allowed and instant reaction with you matching the aiming set with the range , no sight fiddling .
Now , run your 03A3 or M1 peep to 1750 ..... oh, ya , you can't !
Quick rough aim beats blind guess most every time. The GIs knew that and thier life was on the line . They kept a lot of them , tables and regs be d..... . Same way a lot of squads with a BAR ended up with two or three . Same way a regular GI had a pistol that was not on the T/O&Es . ( Firstflabn ... no problems friend )
Now , I have fired dummy WW2 grenades from rifles with the M15 . I can do quite well with the butt-on-the-ground ( but noone was firing back and no fog of war ) , but I cannot get the
m15 on target from standing . My arm's in the way or the sight's turned , the peep's too small , sight radius too short , whine , whine , whine. My only 03 is a late Remington with a pinned stock , so I have not tried the above sighting method . I will if I ever get a bolted stocked rifle.
Finally , while the M15 is good for indirect , the charts were not updated to use it's fine adjustments . The adverage GI prob'ly was content with the marked sling . It added no extra weight nor snaging arms , was a bit faster , and worked in low / no light better.
HTH , Chris

[firstflabn]

I think all will agree on the extremely high M7 loss rates - mostly from being removed and left behind it appears. Since evidence isn't required and I can create my own scenario, I'll assert that 'a large percentage' of M1s in the ETO were temporary replacements for lost M7s and that explains away anecdotal evidence of M1 use. Boy, this is easier than I thought!

Back to factual mode: if significant numbers of M7s were indeed supplanted by the M1 model (as has been suggested), how did all those M7s get lost? Did they get slippery if not used for awhile?

[TDP0311]

As an infantryman whose been downrange, I have to agree with emmagee that the likelihood of the M7 system being used in battle would be vastly diminished by the process that accompanied it. A dedicated grenade launcher has always been much more successful, and the leaf sight system used with the M1 is still being used as the primary sighting mechanism today. For example, I have seen several other sighting systems be issued for sighting in an M203, but nothing is as quick and well utilized as the flip up leaf sight.

With 3 M7s issued per squad, I could easily see them becoming "slippery" as the deployment went on. Every unit has their own SOPs, but I could also see a unit attempting to use their M7s more giving the M7 gunners 1911s just as grenadiers are issued them today, though they do not rate them per T/O.

[firstflabn]

If the M7 was such a bad tool, and thus not widely used as has been suggested, then why did field forces keep replacing lost ones? And why did the theater seek WD approval to significantly increase the maintenance rate on the M7 so that tens of thousands more could be procured? Where is the similar request to authorize more M1 replacements?

These are actual facts - open to interpretation, of course (that's half the fun!), but walking past them in favor of more scenario painting is unlikely to aid understanding.

Two things move me half an inch in Chris's direction (temporarily, don't get your hopes up):

1. The First Army's AAR covering D-Day thru July 31 recounts details of Neptune planning. Somewhere in there (not handy at the moment) it says units operating under superseded T/O&Es can keep them until after the invasion. Unfortunately it doesn't list them, but that could conceivably explain some early M1 usage on the continent. If someone can produce evidence of units continuing to operate long term under the old rules, I'd be interested in seeing it.

2. A list of C&P supplies issued to Neptune units indirectly shows the 2AD had (not assigned, but had) '03s instead of carbines. The list is not dated - so things could have changed by June - but, for the sake of argument, let's say it didn't. Whoopie, that's a whole 81 rifle squads accounted for.

Whether the M1 GL was used in 1%, 50%, or 99% of ETO rifle squads, it still wouldn't amount to a drop in the bucket towards answering the original question - where were the quarter million or so '03s in the ETO in the spring of '45 used?

[CPC]

FirstFlaBn, I didn't spend much time looking either at the TO&E's but I think the 2AD had carbines in the HQs because my father was in it and he said the Garand, Carbine, and Thompson and even M3 were all available to him. I did see in the AAR that 66 M1903 were allowed as overages to the FA Bns in 2AD but they were also allocated several beach repair bundles for carbines. I think most of the m1903's ended up in the field trains, supply and rear echelon's. Just a quick look in the 1st Army AAR indicates that from 6 june to 31 Jul. the following were reported lost; 6575 Garands; 299 M1903 variants; 229 M1904A3's. They also fired over 159168 M9A1, 10504 HC T6 Smoke, 20691 WP T5 Smoke rifle grenades. They lost 9251 M7 GL, 199 M1 GL, 1237 M8 GL. So during the time frame they lost almost 10000 Grenade launchers for the Garand which indicated they were using a heck of a lot of them. As I have seen in many of the film clips the soldiers just fired them at close range so sighting was not a problem. I have also been told by vets interviewed they just used Kentucky windage, it was not that hard. Since almost 200000 were fired during the period at targets less than 300 yds (30-125 most likely), I expect it would be fairly easy to become proficient. I fired a couple m1911A4's from a garand and I felt I could ball park it. After the development of the poppet valve which replaced the initial valve there was little need for a 1903 dedicated grenade launcher. Other than seeing a few 03 grenadiers in Holland, I think I've seen more carbines with launchers in combat than 03's all together by front line troops in the ETO.

[firstflabn]

Interesting details; thanks. The beach pack table is undated, but the earliest Neptune planning documents were published in February, so it could be that if the 2AD had '03s around that time, some or all could have easily been replaced by June. I try not to be seduced by anecdotes, but isn't there a photo floating around the 'net with a bunch of what appears to be infantry riding a 2AD Sherman around D-Day? Do you know the one? Anyway, there are a couple of riders with '03s (one has a bayonet reversed on his '03 - somehow). Recalling that anecdote made it easier for me to accept the 2AD beach pack listing.

The beach packs were supposed to be allocated as one for every 50 carbines, so if you can tell me the actual number you referred to, I can compare that to the T/O&E. The 1943 AD T/O&E shows all carbines (1,254) and SMG (348) in the arty battns, so if the 2AD arty had fewer than 25 or so carbine packs, it could mean they were armed partially with '03s.

The beach pack table shows supplies for 1,200 Garands in the division - though the 1943 T/O&E authorizes 2,063 (I don't have the 1944 revisions). Some more '03s hiding in there?

[CPC]

2AD carbines and 1903's..

Ok.. so now you are making me work. The other day I saw it somewhere ... regarding Carbines... today I find in Annex 8d.. Beach Packs 1903 (80), M1 Rifle (24), M1 carbine (0)...now I'm looking... however, if you look in any related book, Bando etc., regarding 2AD you will see carbines in action in Normandy.... here is a picture from a tank web site .. Hawkeye, 66th Armored, loading up prior to D-day.. note the carbine... hopefully the caption is correct... ok hope is not a strategy but it must be true, it was on the internet...