Marine Infantry Regiments (1942-1945)

Battalion: An Organizational Study of United States Infantry

Marine Self-Propelled 75mm Gun on Cape Gloucester (US NARA)

Over the course of the Second World War, seven sets of documents governed the organization of the infantry regiments of the US Marine Corps. Four of these bore names that suggested that they called for significant changes to allowances for men and weapons. Three, however, carried the humbler designation of updates to existing establishments.

Strange to say, the updates to a given series often bore a closer resemblance to the establishments that followed than to earlier incarnations of the same set. Thus, examining the seven editions of tables of organization published during the war gives a better sense of the evolution of units than a perusal limited to the four lettered series.

Dates of the various tables of organization in use within the US Marine Corps during World War II