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The 14th Armored Division was constituted and added to the roll of the US Army on 28 August 1942; it was activated on 15 November in a ceremony at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. It was organized initially as a heavy division with two armored regiments (the 47th and 48th) and one armored infantry regiment, the 62nd Infantry Regiment. It was reorganized from a heavy division to a light division on 20 September 1943. The reorganization saw the loss of two tank battalions from the Armored regiments, one battalion each. The 1st Battalion of the 47th Armor was redesignated as the 786th Tank Battalion and the 3rd Battalion of the 48th Armor was redesignated as the 716th Tank Battalion.
The division departed Camp Chaffee in November to participate in the 2nd Army maneuvers in Tennessee from 17 November 1943 until 10 January 1944. At the conclusion of the exercise, the division was assigned to Camp Campbell, Kentucky. The division remained at Camp Campbell until late September when it was alerted for movement to the ETO (European Theater of Operations) via Camp Shanks, New York where it went for final processing. Units departed Camp Campbell on 1 October and completed their arrival at Camp Shanks on the 6th of that month. After completing their processing, the division boarded four transport ships for deployment on 13 October 1944.
The 14th Armored was part of the Seventh Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch. The 14th Armored Division was constituted and added to the roll of the US Army on 28 August 1942. The 14th Armored Division landed at Marseille in southern France, on 29 October 1944. Within two weeks some of its elements were in combat, maintaining defensive positions along the Franco-Italian frontier. The division was assigned to the US 6th Army Group on 1 November. On 10 November, the division was assigned to the US Seventh Army. On 12 November the Combat Command Reserve (CCR) was detached and ordered to the Maritime Alps by 6th Army Group to relieve units in defensive positions there. On 15 November, Combat Command A moved north from the area of Marseille to Epinal to take part in the VI Corps drive through the Vosges Mountains, and the division was on the Alsatian Plain in early December. On 17 December the division attacked across the Lauter River into Germany itself. and fought its way into a heavily defended portion of the German Westwall. Due to the growing crisis in the Ardennes, General Eisenhower, the supreme commander, ordered the Seventh Army to stop its attack and withdraw from the Westwall, where its units assumed positions south of the Lauter River. The order was poorly timed as elements of the 14th Armored Division had penetrated deep into the German defenses, and were poised to break out into the enemy's rear. In January 1945, the 14th Armored fended off the last organized German offensive in the West. It was a fierce defensive battle, which would make the Province of Alsace, France the scene of some of the bloodiest combat in the European Theatre. Following the Battle of Nuremberg, the division raced to the Danube and liberated 130,000 Allied prisoners liberated from Stalag VII-A, the largest prisoner of war camp in Germany. During the divisions' advance into southern Germany the 14th liberated several sub-camps of the Dachau concentration camp. The 14th Armored Division was inactivated on 16 September 1945 at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia.
The 14th Armored Division was assigned to:
Primary subordinate units were:
- Division HHC (Headquarters and Headquarters Company)
- CCA
- CCB
- 47th Armored Regiment
- 48th Armored Regiment
- 62nd Armored Infantry Regiment[6]
- 125th Armored Engineer Battalion
- 154th Armored Signal Company
- 94th Cavalry Recon Squadron
- Service Company
- HHB Division Artillery
- Division Trains
- HHC
- 84th Armored Medical Battalion
- 136th Armored Maintenance Battalion
- 14th Quartermaster Battalion
A division can also have separate battalions/companies that fall directly under the division and not under a regiment, for instance the HQ element for the general and his staff, a tank, artillery, engineer, etc unit. If the profile user's unit has not been created yet, or is unknown, add the profile to this division category.
For the primary, peacetime category, see:
For more information on the 14th Armored Division during the WWII, see:
- Wikipedia:14th Armored Division (United States)
- The Story of the U.S. Seventh Army (New York: Sarpedon Publishers 1999)
- Memories of the 14th Armored Division (Paducah, KY.: Turner Publishing Company1998)
- When Odds Were Even, by Keith E. Bonn ( Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1994)
- The History of 14th Armored Division, by Joseph Carter (Atlanta; Albert Love Enterprise 1946), *Riviera to the Rhine, by Jeffrey Clarke, & Robert Ross Smith (Washington DC.: Center of Military History, US Army 1993)
- Seven Days in January: with the 6th SS Mountain Division in Operation NORDWIND by Wolf T. Zoepf (Bedford, Pa.: The Aberjona Press 2001)
- The Finial Crisis: Combat in Northern Alsace, January 1945 by Richard Engler (Hampton, VA.: Aegis Consulting Group 1999)
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