Divisional casualties (1 Viewer)

[larso]

I've recently read Samuel Mitcham's 'Panzer Legion's'. It gives a decent summary of each of the German army (so no SS) panzer divisions in terms of battles, composition and commanders. Given the collapse and confusion at the end in 1945 many records were lost, destroyed or simply incomplete. He did though give total casualties for two of the divisions.

The 6th Panzer suffered 7,068 KIA, 24,342 wounded and 4,230 missing.

The 23rd Panzer suffered 7,467 KIA, 20,921 wounded and 2,883 captured or missing.

I have figures for US tank divisions. The 3rd Armd suffered the most with 1,810 KIA, 6,963 WIA and another 316 DOW. The other longer served US formations had statistics generally half of these. US infantry divisions (those with significant service) generally incurred 3 - 4,000 KIAs.

It's a bit morbid but I'm curious as to what casualties other divisions might have suffered?

 

[Terp152]

I've recently read Samuel Mitcham's 'Panzer Legion's'. It gives a decent summary of each of the German army (so no SS) panzer divisions in terms of battles, composition and commanders. Given the collapse and confusion at the end in 1945 many records were lost, destroyed or simply incomplete. He did though give total casualties for two of the divisions.

The 6th Panzer suffered 7,068 KIA, 24,342 wounded and 4,230 missing.

The 23rd Panzer suffered 7,467 KIA, 20,921 wounded and 2,883 captured or missing.

I have figures for US tank divisions. The 3rd Armd suffered the most with 1,810 KIA, 6,963 WIA and another 316 DOW. The other longer served US formations had statistics generally half of these. US infantry divisions (those with significant service) generally incurred 3 - 4,000 KIAs.

It's a bit morbid but I'm curious as to what casualties other divisions might have suffered?

I've seen casualty reports of various divisions. The 29th Infantry landed on Omaha on D Day and had one of the highest attrition rates of the war. They were know as 3 divisions in 1. One in line, one in the hospital and one in the graveyard.

It's especially sobering when you consider the vast majority of the casualties you cited occured mostly in the combat battalions. So the rates sky rocket among the combat troops.
Chris

 

[larso]

Thanks Chris, yes, I think the 29th was pretty close to the top of the list - I'll try and post some stats later.

It would be unlikely for any Allied division to exceed the figures for the NZ Div. I think my figures are a bit incomplete but it seems it suffered the following -

Greece - 291 KIA, 387 wounded, 1826 POW
Crete - 670 KIA, ?? wounded, 2,000+ POW
Africa - 2,989 KIA, 7,000 WIA, 4041 POW
Italy - 1,825 KIA, 6,632 WIA, 211 POW

I think that comes in at 5,775 KIA in total, probably 15,000 wounded and just over 8,000 POWs which is considerable to say the least. Maybe one of our NZ members might have better figures than I've given here?

 

[PanzerAce1944]

I've recently read Samuel Mitcham's 'Panzer Legion's'. It gives a decent summary of each of the German army (so no SS) panzer divisions in terms of battles, composition and commanders. Given the collapse and confusion at the end in 1945 many records were lost, destroyed or simply incomplete. He did though give total casualties for two of the divisions.

The 6th Panzer suffered 7,068 KIA, 24,342 wounded and 4,230 missing.

The 23rd Panzer suffered 7,467 KIA, 20,921 wounded and 2,883 captured or missing.

I have figures for US tank divisions. The 3rd Armd suffered the most with 1,810 KIA, 6,963 WIA and another 316 DOW. The other longer served US formations had statistics generally half of these. US infantry divisions (those with significant service) generally incurred 3 - 4,000 KIAs.

It's a bit morbid but I'm curious as to what casualties other divisions might have suffered?

Getting an account of the fallen in my view shows respect for them.

Wayne

 

[larso]

"Getting an account of the fallen in my view shows respect for them."

Well said Wayne. I read a book about 1st Australian Div in WW1 which suffered, I can't recall the exact figure but I think over 13,000 KIA alone! To think that it's members kept going back into the line and embarking on actions that almost always cost several thousand casualties defies modern belief. The social impact was commensulately vast. Several books have looked at precisely this. There must have been a number of French, German, British amongst others (the NZ surely) who suffered similarily if not worse in that war (Brit 29th??), yet continued to serve bravely.

This is backed up by the casualties of the US infantry divisions in 1944/5. John Ellis in 'The Sharp End' gives the following figures -

4th Div (11 months) 4,834 KIA, 17,371 WIA
29th Div (11 months) 3,786 KIA, 15,541 WIA
30th Div (11 months) 3,516 KIA, 13,376 WIA
79th Div (11 months) 2,943 KIA, 10,971 WIA
83rd Div (11 months) 3,620 KIA, 11,807 WIA
90th Div (11 months) 3,930 KIA, 14,386 WIA
5th Div (10 months) 2,656 KIA, 9,549 WIA
8th Div (10 months) 2,820 KIA, 10,057 WIA
35th Div (10 months) 2,947 KIA, 11,526 WIA
28th Div (9 months) 2,683 KIA, 9,609 WIA
80th Div (9 months) 3,480 KIA, 12,484 WIA

These are horrendous figures for campaigns of less than a year. It is something I think that is often lost in considering the North European fighting. I don't think British casualties were quite as high. Canadian either, though both of those armies had less capacity to replace lost men. Ellis notes that Canadian casualties per battalion often exceeded those suffered in WW1.

A last thought on the above - I've read that the 1st US Infantry division felt pretty hard used and believed they did more than their share of the fighting, yet the absence of the 1st from the above list suggests things weren't as bad as they thought.

 

[Mascleo]

Those are some incredible figures if you compare them to the size of the division. I believe that an US Infantry Division had about 13000 - 15000 personnel in WWII. The 4th Div had 22000 casualties in less than a year. That is over a 150% attrition rate, more so for the front line troops who kept going through replacements.

Although, they had larger divisions (I read that in 1941 they averaged about 17000), the German average divisional casualty rate was even higher.