Carolina Maneuvers

The “Carolina Maneuvers” of 1941 were a part of the largest maneuvers ever staged by the United States Army.
At the time of the German invasion of Poland in 1939 the regular U.S. Army was at low ebb, being made up of less than 190,000 men. It was self-ranked as being the 17th most effective army in the world, immediately following Rumania. It was proposed to enlarge the number of effectives by staging a draft of men to serve for one year, at which time, having been amply trained, they would be returned to a “ready reserve” status, enlarging the number of troops that could be brought into action in the short term. This was known as the Protective Mobilization Plan (PMP).

Field exercises, hardly worthy of the term “maneuvers”, were held in 1939 and 1940, each demonstrating the woeful state of the army where lack of equipment and insufficient training were apparent.  Faced with this desperate situation, Congress authorized the call up of 300,000 Guardsmen and Reserves for 12 months service and began the debate around the Selective Service Act, which would go into effect several weeks later in the fall of 1940. The Selective Service Act authorized the conscription of 900,000 men.

Further, the onset of war in Europe had made the American lack of preparedness even more evident. The German army had demonstrated new tactics and doctrines including the use of armor, close air support, combined arms offensives, and paratroops. None of these entered into U.S. military doctrine, which was still centered on large-scale offensives such as those we had faced in WWI.

In 1941 large-scale maneuvers were held in Louisiana and the Carolinas, testing the use of armor, paratroops, and other tactics in both offensive and defensive action. The Carolinas portion was broken into two segments. The first, held in November of 1941 and known as the “Battle of the Pee Dee” encompassed nearly 9,000 square miles of North and South Carolina divided into two “countries” with a common border along the Yadkin/Pee Dee river. The Yadkin River bridges were a key crossing point in the early stages.

Troops from the 195,000 man “Blue” Army held the area to the east of the river and crossed into “Red” territory, held by nearly 100,000 men.

Many residents of Davidson County recall that troops were encamped throughout the area and convoys of men and armor were common, as were “enemy prisoners”. Bombers were seen to drop “bombs” (bags of flour) in Davidson County fields.

When completed and analyzed, the lessons learned from the 1941 maneuvers were important in forming the battle doctrine of our WWII armies.

Copyright J. M. Daniel, 2005