WesWorld

Hi folks

I have no clue about armies and little more about aircraft of the time. Any help with my army and AF would be appreciated. In turn I can offer help with airships. I have written my thsesis about them as well as being on the Cargolifter and Zeppelin NT teams ....

thanks

Bernhard

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If they're questions you think might be of general interest, post it here.

I quite literally have no idea where to start. What is the strength of my army? what composition? Army stuff is just totally alien to me. I know that my rifle is the Mauser 1893 in 7x57 mm ...

A/F similar. I have no feelt for the time period.

Bernhard

.....way way way back I posted a thread on rating nations Army and airforce infrastructure as well as GDP and most importantly its total population just for this very reason. First you need to know what your nations total population is and then from there you can figure out what percentage of its population could be mobilized both in war and in peace. Alot of WW1 equipment is still the most modern stuff in the military, so for planes and mechanized stuff look for WW1 weaponry.

Going back to the historical Spanish/Portugese armys will be helpful for things like unit sizes, organization, and equipment. I haven't been able to dig up any sources on the Web for this though. Your army will be bigger than those armys were historicaly, since Iberia has Great Power ambitions that Spain/Portugal didn't really have by this time. You can usually figure on 1-2% of your population as your peacetime army, with it growing to up to 20% for your Army, Navy, and Air Force combined in an absolute total war situation. This degree of mobilization will be very rare, and will involve a lot of women in non-combat roles, and even a good many combat roles, if you're ready for the postwar social consequences.

Then you've got to organize and equip it.

The usual organization for infantry is:
Regiment/Brigade - 3-5000 troops plus some light mortars and artillery

Division - 3-4 Regiments/Brigades, plus heavier artillery, engineers, signals, supply, and headquarters units - 18-20000 troops

Corps - 2-5 Divisions, plus even heavier artillery, engineers, signals, supply, and headquarters units - 45-120000 troops

Army - 2-5 Corps, and more support troops - 120,000 - 500,000 troops

Army Group - 2-3 Armies, but not many support troops - 250,000 - 1,500,000 troops

ok, having found out that Spain had a population of 25 Mio during the Civil War I have postulated that Iberia has about 40 Mio inhabitants - better industrialized, Portugal and colonies ... this gives me about 600.000 men, ie one army correct?

now I want a foreign legion but older, mainly recruited from the colonies and mainly from blacks mefinks. I know that Spain used the 1893 Mauser rifle at the time. I'll have to do the statistics on my navy which is obviously a huge drain.

Wes, you were mentioning a Renault tank? any sources on the web? Couldn't find anything ...

ta

Bernhard

Quoted

now I want a foreign legion

The Spanish Legion came to about 15,000 men, if I recall correctly. Iberia controlling Portugal too may increase that to 20,000 or so. They were scattered in small units throughout the Empire.

Here are a few web sites to look at for tanks of various nations.

http://users.swing.be/tanks.edito/edito/3451.html#905

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/index.htm

Your looking for the FT-17, M1917 (american/Canadian version) and the fiat 7000 (Italian version), but if I were Iberia I'd take a look at the Hugarian Turan and Czech LT-35 and LT-38 (later the Panzer-35 and Panzer-3 in the future. Germany may or may not be able to sell you tanks and/or tank designs but nothing is stoping other nations from doing so. Being Pro-german nuetral in WW1
may make it difficult to aquire French and British designs but the Fiat 7000 and M1917 may be easier initially to buy. It all depends on how freindly Admiral K's France would be towards Pro German simpathizers so soon after the great war!

I'd like to partly pattern India's army after Germany's c.1914, but can't seem to find (much to my surprise) any tables of organization for German combat formations. Anybody know of a link that would be of use?

http://www.worldwar1.com/maps/sfga02.gif

I'm trying to find some more stuff...

Walter

BTW, here's the link with info about the German Army's organization: http://www.worldwar1.com/sfgarmy.htm

Walter

That helps, Walter. I'd also appreciate info on how many men were assigned to each unit, if you or anybody else happens to encounter it.

Thanks,

J

Hello everybody, I´m new here but some of you know me from other forums, I´ve been following the forum for a time, but I´ve not registered until today. In any case I´m glad to be here. As I said I think I can help LordArpad a bit:

You can find info on historical tanks and armored cars for Spain and Portugal (and many other countries) in this page http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/ , I think it´s one of the best sites for accurate info on tanks up to WWII (models, number of units used by the nations etc...), the main models in the early 20s are as someone else has pointed the french FT17 and the Schneider CA-1 assault tank.

There was some few indigenous development during the 20s and 30s that´s also covered in that page. If you want my opinion with the industrial basis Iberia seems to have you should go for home built models.

As for artillery, this page is in spanish, but it gives nice info on the main models used by the spanish army during the XXth century, http://perso.wanadoo.es/padron/artilleria/ .

I think you can translate if fairly well with Altavista, but anyway, the main gun models for your army in the 20s should be:

75mm Schneider field gun 1906 model
75mm Schneider Mountain gun 1908 model
150mm Krupp field gun 1913 model
105/11 Schneider Mountain howitzer 1919 model
155/13 Schneider howitzer 1917 model

The last two models were in service well into the 30s and 40s, and were the main guns in service in the spanish army during the first months of the civil war.

Infantry, during the late XIX century the spanish army was composed of about 70-80 infantry regiments (many of them serving in the colonies), and even some of them were dissolved after the 98 war, most of them still existed (and already exist) in the 20th century. As for numbers, usually each regiment had 2-3 bataillons, and each bataillon had 4 companies of 166 men, giving about 1000 men each bataillon. Usually the regiments were organized in brigades (2, exceptionally 3 per brigade), and Divisions were composed by 2-3 brigades too. The tipical is a division with three brigades, resulting in about 18000 men per division. These divisions were territorially deployed, one per each military region, but in case of war could be joined to form army corps and armies.

A list of the regiments and a small history of them in the following page (also in spanish): http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/8745/i…regimientos.htm

There were also about 28-30 cavalry regiments (late XIX century), with about 1000 soldiers per regiment, and usually were deployed at corps level (2-3 regiments in a brigade).

About artillery organization, well I´ve not found much info so I cannot help you with that, but look for info on french organization and I guess you can find something quite similar.

So resuming, I think you can easily have about 90 spanish regiment (improved economy) and about 30 portuguese, that´s 120, about 360000 soldiers (about 30 divisions, 10 corps), only infantry, about 30-40 cavalry regiments, most of them undergoing a process of mechanization or just disappearing, that´s about 35000 soldiers more, and a artillery, that´s something you´ll have to figure out, let´s suppose a regiment of medium-light artillery per division, 3 battaillons, with about 18-20 guns per battaillon (3 batteries), that´s 54-60 guns per division, about 1600-1700 guns between 75 and 105mm. Also we can think of about one heavy-siege artillery brigade per corps, about 500-600 guns of 155mm or bigger. Of course this it´s so suppossing all units are at full strenght...

Well I hope that can help you, about aircrafts, most of them were from french or british origin, usually built under license in Spain. As for numbers, I´m not sure, but historically I don´t think there were more than 200-300 at max.

Of course these numbers are for peacetime, in case of war the regiments usually create new battaillons instead of creating new units, during the civil war some regiments got up to 10-12 battaillons.