How many are there ranger in World War 2?

Answer 1

Not very many. There were over eight million men in the US Army during WWII, and in total there were six battalions of Rangers, each battalion having about 600 to 700 men. The Chief of Staff of the US Army, General George C. Marshall, was opposed in principle to elite units. Other nations had large army units of varying quality, such as assault divisions, regular divisions, divisions capable of merely defending. Marshall wanted all US units to be of the same high quality, therefore he opposed creating elite formations. The paratrooper divisions he made an exception for, because of their usefulness in the WWII tactical scheme of things.

Lieutenant Colonel William O. Darby was assigned in 1942 to study the methods of the British Commandos, who were staging daring raids on the coast of occupied France. Darby returned with the idea to form a Ranger battalion modeled on Commando lines. It was an all volunteer unit, with many of the volunteers coming from the 34th Infantry Division, already in the UK. The name Rangers was chosen to hearken back to Roger's Rangers of the French and Indian War. This 1st Battalion performed so well in Sicily that Darby was allowed to form three more battalions, again from all volunteers. Collectively these first four battalions of Rangers are called "Darby's Rangers".

One of Darby's battalions, the 2nd, was taken from his command to England, where they were to scale the cliffs at Pont du Hoc on D-Day and destroy a dangerous gun emplacement. Also participating in the D-Day landings was the 5th Ranger Battalion, formed in the US and not under Darby's command. This was supposedly the unit Tom Hanks was with in "Saving Private Ryan".

In the Pacific General MacArthur read the favorable press treatment of the Rangers in Europe and decided he must have Rangers too. He took an anti-aircraft artillery battalion with nothing much to do, since the US had achieved air superiority, and ordered it to convert itself to Rangers. This was the 6th Ranger Battalion, which saw little action except for the raid to free US POWs at the Cabanatuan prison camp in the Philippines.

The 1st, 3rd and 4th Ranger Battalions were all under Darby's command at Anzio, as the 6615th Provisional Ranger Regiment. A week after the landing at Anzio, at the end of January 1944, the Rangers attempted to capture the ancient town of Cisterna, known to Saint Paul as Three Taverns. Cisterna was on a vital roadway, the Appian Way, known today as Highway 7. The first battalion crept up a large irrigation ditch, the Mussolini Canal, but daybreak found them still a half mile short of Cisterna, and the ditch petered out. Two German divisions had detected the Rangers in the ditch, but let them come on until they were deep within the German position, then opened up on them at daylight. This was a German Panzer division and the Herman Goering Parachute Division. Only seven survivors of the 1st Battalion made it back to Allied lines. The other two battalions, acting in supporting roles, suffered 50% casualties that night. It would take four more months to capture Cisterna. After that night, the Rangers were disbanded, and the survivors of the 1st, 3rd and 4th Battalions were distributed among other units in the beachhead. Colonel Darby was eventually promoted to brigadier general and was killed in northern Italy a week before the war ended, while serving as Assistant Division Commander of the 10th Mountain Division.

Also at Anzio was another elite formation, the unique First Special Service Force, also known as the Devils Brigade. It was a joint American-Canadian formation of about 2200 men, which was likewise so depleted after Anzio that it was disbanded. It was commanded by Robert T. Frederick.

Other elite WWII formations included two battalions of Marine Raiders, the Navy's "frogmen" of the Underwater Demolition Teams, and the Paramarines.