Would the following be true or is there another way of working it out

In any war there will be thousands of service personnel who participate, but the amount of people who are actually involved in REAL fighting is a very small percentage. For every one front line soldier there must be non combatants such as clerks, cooks, drivers, medical, supply and many more. These people are necessary, but do not usually get involved in any fighting. So if you have a war such as the Vietnam war and 500,000 personnel are sent, there may only be about 50,000 fighting personnel from that 500,000. Then out of that 50,000, there may only be about 5,000 involved in actual fighting. That boils down to about 1% who are involved in any firefights.

All services are different in combatants I believe... what say you

The standard ratio in the Army for support troops to actual warriors is usually about 10 to 1. The Navy and USAF probably have less fighters due to the more technical aspects of those services. The USMC would like everyone to think they are 100% warriors, but they have their equal share of pogues. The big difference is that in the Marines ALL pogues are trained to fight, while in the other branches SOME pogues are trained to fight.

IF I remember right, Vietnam had 12 support personnel for every actual trigger puller. Desert Storm had something like a 14-1 ratio. The currents wars are probably along the ame lines.

Your numbers are a bit skewed.
We sent nearly 3 million to RVN.
We maintained a presence of up to 500,000 at the peak.
Geneally the figure of actual combatants would be around 10%, but not a hard rule.
All army folks were trained for some combat, but maybe that 10% had it for their primary function.

All the odds(%) that have been mentioned appears to be small in comparison to what we have to fight these days Terrorists, Taliban, Gurillas, human bombs etc etc

So for example... Of the millon personnel that landed on D-Day only 100 thousand were actually frontline fighting men???

and of the 500 thousand in Vietnam only 50 thousand were frontline men???

For some reason that just doesn't seem to ring true... I think this topic needs further investigation!

quote:

Originally posted by Deadlydaring:
So for example... Of the millon personnel that landed on D-Day only 100 thousand were actually frontline fighting men???

and of the 500 thousand in Vietnam only 50 thousand were frontline men???

I'm not sure how many troops landed in Normandy on June 6th but it was in the tens of thousands, not a million. And those who did were mostly combat troops, the support guys came in after the beaches were secured. As for Vietnam, only 50,000 grunts does sound a bit lean.

The percentage points may be off, but not by much.

Look at a Divisional size unit. The support train is almost as large as the actual combat strength.
When I was assigned there, the 82nd had
9 Infantry Battalions
3 Arty Battalions
1 Cav Battalion
1 Engineeer Battalion
1 "Armor" Battalion
Roughly, 10,000 "Combat" Troops for a 17,000 man Division. AND remember, that's a Light Infantry Division. Didn't have all the Transport and Mechanic support units of a Mech or Armor Division.
Then, throw in the support units of Corps and Armys. That is one heavy support chain.

Operation Overlord, remains the largest sea borne invasion in history, involving almost 3,000,000 troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in occupied France fighting against 700,000 german troops.
Over 13,000 paratroopers across the English Channel the night before
It was a bloody battle, with 209,000 causalties on the allied side.
240,000 killed, wounded or missing on the german side with and 200,000 captured and or taken prisoner.

Also the local French civilians: 15-20,000 killed.
Now that is a lot of troops

As huge as the invasion force was, I doubt 3 million troops actually landed at Normandy on a single day. Many more troops arrived in the following days after the beaches were secured. Normandy was a campaign, not a single battle.

mj101inf
May I suggest you do some proper research instead of (I doubt etc) sounding off without some evidence of your statements and anyway I was discussing percentages of actual fighting forces

6th june 1944 was a BATTLE which was part of the Normandy Campaign
One of many links mj101inf to guide you is as follows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Allied_forces_in_the_Normandy_Campaign

All I want is an accurate and logical % breakdown please

That was a big long list of participating units but it didn't have any actual numbers of personnel. Anyway, this thread was about Vietnam.

Define Fighting forces. and support forces

If I may hijack the thread for a moment, folks:

Deadly, if you had referenced the other entry in Wikipedia about Operation Overlord, you would have seen that only roughly 156,000 troops were involved in the landings, not 3--or even 1--million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Normandy
http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm

I think you have the figures for the battle (D-Day) and the campaign turned around as the links clearly show that Allied casualties were a little over 10,000, not the 209,000 you're stating.

We now return control of your television sets to you.