New Style Division

The only fully motorized U.S. infantry, one of the nine triangular (three instead of four infantry regiments) divisions in the Army, last week was chosen for an experiment: to try out the newest 1942 pattern for triangular divisions. Fort Benning's Fourth, a streamlined outfit commanded by spring-legged Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall, is a weld of oldtimers, new regulars and more than 5,000 draftees. For its experiment, the Fourth is to get 50% more fire power, the first tanks to be assigned as part of an infantry unit, and the first of the Army's new self-propelled artillery.

To give the Fourth bigger fists and nimbler feet, while its fire power will be upped its man power will be cut--from 15,550 to 14,000. Machine-gun equipment will go up from 282 to 465, cannon (75s, 105s and 155s) from 48 to 66. Ten armored scout cars will be added to the 16 now in the reconnaissance troop. Fifty-two light and 54 medium tanks will be added to blast a way for the Fourth's infantrymen, who will ride to battle in halftrack caterpillar troop carriers.

The Fourth is now almost fully equipped by 1941 standards (chiefly lacks 105-mm. howitzers). Well up to snuff on the new wrinkles in high-speed modern warfare (which it demonstrates regularly to officer-students at Fort Benning's Infantry School) it expects to get most of its additional equipment in a hurry, in time to show its new punch in the First Army maneuvers, next November, in the Carolinas.

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