How many soldiers were in the us military during World War 2?

Answer 1

16 million Americans served in the US Armed Forces during WW 2. Richard V. Horrell WW 2 Connections.com TOTAL NUMBER IN UNITED STATES FORCES DURING WW2 ARMY:8,300,000 NAVY:4,204,662 MARINES: 599,693. GRAND TOTAL 13,104,355 TOTAL US CASUALTIES:ARMY: 223,215 KILLED IN ACTION;WOUNDED 571,679;MISSING 12,752;TOTAL ARMY CASULITES 807,646. NAVY; KILLED IN ACTION 34,702; DIED OF WOUNDS 1,783; OTHER DEATHS 26,793; TOTAL NAVY DEATHS 63,278;WOUNDED 33,670 MISSING 28; TOTAL NAVY CASUALTIES 96,976. MARINES; KILLED IN ACTION 15,460 DIED OF WOUNDS 3,163; OTHER DEATHS 5,863; TOTAL MARINE DEATHS 24,486; WOUNDED 67,134; TOTAL MARINE CAUALTIES 91,620.GRAND TOTAL KILLED IN ACTION IN ARMY NAVY MARINES 273,377.DIED OF WOUNDS LATER 4,946;OTHER DEATHS 32,656; TOTAL DEATHS 310,979. MISSING 12,780; WOUNDED 672,483; GRAND TOTAL CASUALTIES IN ARMY,NAVY,MARINES, 996,242.(AIR FORCES ARE INCLUDED IN THE ABOVE BRANCHES. US COAST GUARD HAD 172,952 MEN ENGAUGED,1,917 DEATHS OF WHICH 572 WERE KILLED IN ACTION.) THIS DATA IS FROM MY ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOK "THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF WWII" ARMED SERVICES MEMORIAL EDITION......CO.1945 1948 HOPE THIS HELPS YOU.... The best approximation for the number of soldiers that fought in World War II would be 16,000,000.
the united states had 16,115,000 soldiers in World War 2

Answer 2

In total, the major parties fighting in WW II fielded 92.2 million soldiers, of which 19.6 million (or a little over 20%) died or were reported 'missing in action'. The number of wounded totalled 20,8 million, another 22.5%.

Of course percentages varied widely, depending on whether you were a front-line soldier or - like the majority in the Allied armies- serving in support units. The latter category usually survived wholesale, unless engaged in an accident or killed by disease. Figures also varied widely depending in which army you were fighting. The death toll of the British (5.2%) and the US (2.5%, and even among the Marines 3.6%) were vastly different from the USSR (25.1%), Germany (30.4%) and Japan (24.2%). The same differences show in the number of wounded.

Answer 3

This is not an easy question to answer. "Soldiers" implies members of the US Army. In all branches of the military during WWII there were about 16.1 million Americans. More than half of these were in the US Army. The Air Force was then still a part of the US Army, and almost an additional 3 million men served in the US Army Air Force. There were 4 million in the US Navy, and an additional 760,000 or so in the Marine Corps, which is a part of the Navy (though they do not like to admit it). So excluding the US Navy, the US Marine Corps, and the US Army Air Force, there were more than 8 million US soldiers in the US Army. Not all of these left the states, and not all the ones that left the states for overseas duty saw action of even a limited amount.

The problem is partly how you might define "action". Has a radio operator assigned to an army corps HQ when a single, lost enemy plane flew over and dropped one bomb several hundred yards from him seen "action"?

The most dangerous job of WWII was to be an infantryman, specifically, a rifleman, in a rifle squad, of a rifle platoon which was part of a rifle (or "line", or "letter") company. There were never that many of them, and the vast majority of US troops killed in the war were riflemen. In units that saw a lot of action, during several campaigns, such as the US 3rd Infantry Division, the average rifleman probably had to be replaced ten times during the war. I once did a study of the rifle companies of the 30th Infantry, one of the three Infantry Regiments in the 3rd Infantry Division. There were 9 rifle companies and 3 "heavy weapons" companies in an infantry regiment. At the start of the war, the Table of Organization called for 225 men in a rifle company, but by the end of the war, this had been reduced to 187. The rifle companies of the 30th infantry all had between 150 and 180 men killed outright. Given the usual averages this meant they probably also had between 600-700 wounded as well, though many of these would have been returned to duty. Another very large number would have been lost to accidents, frozen feet or trench foot, other illnesses, and "combat fatigue". The average a rifleman could last was eight months even if he was not killed or wounded, as most became ineffective from accumulated weariness and despair. Some of course went on longer, sometimes far longer than that. But among units which did see a lot of action, few, very, very few, if any, who were riflemen at the start were still there at the finish. This is why something like "Band of Brothers" will never be possible for any of the ten or fifteen US Infantry Divisions who did most of the heavy lifting. You can't tell a connected story about them, because the turnover was complete, and happened not just a few times, but many times. Even in an infantry regiment not everyone was a rifleman at the front. In the 30th Infantry, which like other Infantry regiments had around 3200 men, there were 432 "Fedala to Salzburg" men, guys who were present when the Regiment landed in North Africa, who were still with the Regiment the day the war ended. And I am sure there could have been no more than a handful, if indeed there were any, who went the whole way in the rifle companies.

The main US ground force element was the division. The US only created around ninety divisions, which turned out to be just barely sufficient to fight a world war. There were 16 armored divisions, 5 airborne divisions, 2 cavalry divisions, 1 mountain division, and about 65 infantry divisions. There were riflemen in all these, though in an armored division they were called "armored infantry" (they must have felt that to be a joke that wasn't too funny, their only armor being their shirts), and in the airborne they were paratroopers, and they were plain old troopers in the cavalry. But most of the hard grinding fell to the infantry divisions. There were so few of these that once committed to action, they got few breaks out of the line.

An infantry division had around 14,000 men, but only about 9600 of these were in the three infantry regiments. A regiment, you'll recall, had around 3200 men. A regiment's combat force was its three battalions, and each of those had about 850 men, so, out of 3200, only about 2550 in an infantry regiment were in an infantry battalion. And in a battalion only around 650-700 were in a line (or letter) company, of which there were three rifle companies and one heavy weapons company. It was much, MUCH safer to be in the heavy weapons company, usually. In the 30th Infantry the three heavy weapons companies lost around 50-60 men killed outright, as opposed to the 150-180 men killed in each of the rifle companies. And, even in the rifle companies., there were three rifle platoon and a weapons platoon, and again, the weapons platoon offered better chances for survival. And even in a rifle platoon, there were three rifle squads and a weapons squad. It was the 12 man rifle squads who did the army's business, advancing, weapon in hand, to find and engage the enemy. So, in a rifle platoon, at full strength, there were 36 riflemen, and in a rifle company, out of 187, there were 112 riflemen. In an infantry battalion, out of 850 men, 324 were riflemen, and of the 3200 in a regiment, there were thus only 972 actual riflemen. So an infantry division of 14,000 men had only 2,916 riflemen, at full strength. And no unit was ever at full strength after its initial contact with the enemy. So, with only 65 infantry divisions, worldwide, there were never more than just over 200,000 actual riflemen, out of an entire Army of more than 8 million. And it was these guys who were getting killed wholesale. It should be apparent that it was a very unlucky man who was assigned to the HQ of an infantry division who managed to get himself killed, but to many people he would be considered to have "seen action" merely by being on the roster of a front line unit.

Besides the divisions the WWII US Army created hundreds of "separate" or "independent" battalions of various types. The WWII US division structure was barebones, and the idea was these separate battalions could be moved around and used as needed to supplement the divisions. They were "independent" because they were not a permanent part of any larger formations. They were assigned to higher HQs than a division - to an army corp, or a field army. For this reason they were sometimes called "corps troops" or "army troops". Sometimes they were called "bastard battalions" - no parent unit. There were lots and lots of separate artillery battalions of various calibers and types. All anti-aircraft artillery was in separate battalions. There were combat engineers and signals battalions, there was one separate parachute battalion. There were dozens and dozens of separate tank battalions, intended to support the infantry divisions, to leave the tanks of the armored divisions free for breakthrough and exploitation. All the tank destroyers (tracked vehicles with a big gun that looked like a tank, but had no armor, and which were intended to destroy enemy tanks - as it turned out, a poor idea) were in separate battalions. Many of these separate tank battalions were "attached" more or less permanently to the same infantry division, especially in Europe, so they saw as much action as the infantry division of which they were not actually an official part. A great many men in these 800 man separate battalions saw plenty of action, and its difficult to dig out their story today, as their unit was relatively small, and few, if any, published a "history" after the war, as almost all the divisions and many regiments did.

So - did a guy in an 8 inch gun separate battalion, who was close enough to hear the battles, and who helped fire his gun at targets miles away he never saw, and who did not so much as experience even one single enemy artillery counter-battery round landing anywhere near, or ever see an enemy plane, did that guy see action? He was at the front, for sure. But barring true misfortune he stood a lot better chance getting home in one piece than any riflemen.

I do not know that anyone has even attempted to decide who might fit the category of having seen action, and then try to total them up. The WWII Navy has, and they say 86% of the Navy "saw action", which might be anything from having your ship sunk under you to being on a destroyer escorting a convoy where some other ship got torpedoed.

Answer 4

Including the US Army, Navy, and Marines, about 13 million Americans served in the armed forces in World War 2. About 400,000 died. The rest survived.

Answer 5

I think that, over the course of the war, about 12,000,000 men served in the U.S. armed forces. Michael Montagne

Answer 6

About 620,000 American Soldiers died in the Civil War.

Answer 7

for the us it was about 500000 and 1000000 british troops in WWII

Answer 8

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