Tom from Cornwall wrote: ↑05 Jan 2021 13:06
TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑05 Jan 2021 08:54
In their book about the U.S. 88th Infantry Division, authors Sheridan and Hammerman compared 24 representative divisions of countries that fought on WW2's Western Front. Of the top 10, nine were German, one American, none British.
I think this work was done for Trevor Dupuy wasn’t it? Rich, please jump in here. I’ve found a reference to a HERO report by Sheridan and Hammerman. So that would be based on the Italian campaign database?
Regards
Tom
I may have to unignore TMP again, some of his posts are just too interesting to miss. Yes, indeed,
The 88th Infantry Division in World War II: Factors Responsible for its Excellence was coincidentally Report Number 88 in the HERO/DMSi/TNDA/TDI catalog, it was not a "book" although it seems to appear that way in Amazon. The "24 divisions" were all from the QJM "Italian" data base and all are from Italian engagements, except for the 4th Armored Division. Rick and Gay did no comparison, they simply reproduced the table of comparative CEV as Appendix C. They did suggest that an actual comparative study be done, but that is about it. The British divisions considered were 46th Inf, 7th Armd, 1st Inf, 5th Inf, and 56th Inf, in order of ranking.
Parenthetically, this study was done about six years before I joined HERO/DMSi to work on
Breakpoints and then the ACSDB and other projects. Rick Sheridan had moved on, but oddly enough he was a neighbor a few years earlier, c. 1975-1977, but at that time was running a war gaming shop. I worked with Gay on
Breakpoints, she was an interesting lady. Even more interesting, John Sloane Brown was a consultant in the study, but had a falling out with Trevor (making him part of a ginormous club) and thus did not appear as a contributor IIRC. He later wrote
Draftee Division a few years later and was the grandson of Maj. Gen. John E. Sloane, the division commander in Italy. Brig. Gen. Brown later was CMH before his retirement.
Also parenthetically, one of my favorite and one of the most popular "Trevor had no idea what he was talking about" arguments used to run "the 1st and 5th ID didn't fight in Italy. the Big Red One only fought in Sicily and the 5th ID was in Iceland and then went to England in August 1943 and neither fought at Anzio".

"Is all this pretentious pseudo intellectual citing of sources REALLY necessary? It gets in the way of a good, spirited debate, destroys the cadence." POD, 6 October 2018