Ninth United States Army

Ninth United States Army
9th Army shoulder badge
active	April 15, 1944 to June 1945
Country	United States
Armed forces	United States Armed Forces
Armed forces	United States Army
Type	army
Wars	Second World War
commander
Important commanders	William Hood Simpson

The Ninth United States Army ( German  9th US Army ) was a major unit of the United States Army in World War II .

history

William Hood Simpson

The 9th US Army was formed on April 15, 1944 under the command of William Hood Simpson and transferred to England in the same year. It was originally supposed to be called the 8th Army , but was renamed to the British 8th Army because of the similarity of the name . On September 5, 1944, during the Battle of Brittany, she was activated as part of the 12th US Army Group of General Omar N. Bradley in Brittany , with the VIII US Corps (formerly 3rd US Corps) left behind in Brittany . Army ) was subordinated. After the fall of Brest , which had been besieged since August, and the surrender of German troops on the Crozon Peninsula on September 20, the army was moved to the Western Front, where it was inserted between the 1st and 3rd US Army.

In November 1944 she was moved to the left flank of the 12th Army Group and took part in the fighting on the Rur Front . Here she was involved in the failed Operation Queen during the Battle of the Huertgen Forest . After the start of the German Ardennes offensive on December 16, on December 20, like the 1st US Army, it was subordinated to the 21st Army Group of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery , which was further north . Many of the units under her command came under the command of the 1st Army in order to clear up the German invasion as soon as possible. Unlike the 1st Army, the 9th Army remained under the command of the 21st Army Group after the end of the German offensive. On February 23, 1945 she managed to cross the Rur as part of Operation Grenade , which was the southern counterpart to Operation Veritable of the 1st Canadian Army . By March 10, the army had advanced all the way to the Rhine on all of its front lines . On March 23, she began to cross the Rhine in Operation Flashpoint , which was part of Operation Plunder , in the Rheinberg / Wesel area , after which she formed the northern pincer of the enclosure of the Ruhr area . On April 1st, armored units of the 1st and 9th Armies met at Lippstadt and thus completed the Ruhr basin , in which the largest part of the German Army Group B under General Field Marshal Walter Model was enclosed. On April 4, the 9th Army was again subordinated to Bradley's Army Group, and its headquarters were in Gütersloh . A reinforced corps was left behind to reduce the Ruhr basin, while two more corps advanced north of the Harz to the Elbe . On April 10, the army took Essen and Hanover , the following day Bochum and Goslar . On April 17th, troops of the 9th Army reached Magdeburg on the Elbe (they had liberated the Gardelegen camp on the 14th ), on April 21st the last resistance in the Ruhr basin ended. The permission requested by General Simpson after the formation of bridgeheads over the Elbe to advance on Berlin was not granted for political reasons. On May 2, the army had reached the agreed demarcation line with the Red Army on its entire front . After the German surrender , the 9th Army occupied large parts of central Germany until it was withdrawn from Europe in June 1945.

Outline on December 12, 1944

• 9th U.S. Army
  • XIII. US Corps
    • 7th US Armored Division
    • 84th Infantry Division
    • 102nd Infantry Division
  • XVI. US Corps
    • 75th Infantry Division
  • XIX. US Corps
    • 2nd US Armored Division
    • 29th Infantry Division
    • 30th Infantry Division

literature

• Conquer, the Story of the Ninth Army, 1944-1945. Infantry Journal Press, Washington, DC, 1947.

Web links

• 9th US Army on globalsecurity.org
• Edward N. Bedessem: Central Europe 22 March-11 May 1945 on history.army.mil

Individual evidence

1. ^ 9 U.S. Army at unithistories.com , accessed May 8, 2010.
2. ↑ Roger Cirillo: Ardennes-Alsace December 16, 1944 - January 25, 1945 at history.army.mil , accessed on May 8, 2010.
3. ^ Structure of the 9th Army (PDF; 179 kB) on cgsc.edu , accessed on May 8, 2010.