So with the help of the Spatial Illusions Unit Symbol Generator, I set to work making an alternate historical USMC formation. First, the very name. The name “7th Marine Division” is deliberate to symbolize its fictional nature. In real life, the USMC never had more than six divisions even at the height of World War II.
The 7th Division itself is basically an administrative formation that would never actually deploy in full as one manuever unit. Even its subunits are often unlikely to deploy in full at any one location. Its “line” formations are the following.
- The Parachute Regiment, a sort of revival of the Paramarine concept. The heaviest formation in the 7th Division (in that it has the light artillery and vehicles that an airdroppable regiment/brigade elsewhere would), it functions as a parachute-qualified light airborne formation.
- The SOF Regiment, which essentially is just the real MARSOC under a different structure type.
- The Raider regiment, which unlike the real renamed “MARSOC” is meant (at least on paper) to be a more direct-action focus formation comparable to the traditional Army Rangers.
I’m sure there are very good reasons for not adopting an organization or formations like this in real life. Oh well. This is for thriller fiction and wargaming, after all.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction 
So with the Raider Regiment, is it several of the Raider Battalions similar in purpose to the famous Guadalcanal unit or more like the US Army ranger units which have more deployment options and quite a bit of kit?
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I’m thinking more like the latter, (and yes, that means there’d be considerable overlap with the SOF Regiment. Oh well :p !)
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I would say more overlap with the Para Regiment. The SOF units would be used for specific small unit tasks. While the US system classifies the Rangers as Tier 4 SOF, most others wouldn’t – they are light infantry as used by the Brits, Cdns, Aussies etc and have integral recon, mortars, AT etc
When you compare them to a para Battalion on the other hand, and perhaps give them para capability, or at least airmobile. There aren’t many differences.
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Seems to me an airportable unit would be of more use and durability than one you just drop and have it sit there. In the Canadian Army, they have (or had) several light infantry battalions that were wheeled or airmobile, with one jump-qualified company. This might allow you to drop and take an airstrip or LZ and clear the way for the other two companies, plus follow on units.
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Yes, that’s true but in reality the Cdn light infantry battalions could aptly be named ‘unequipped infantry’ rather than light. None of them have enough (last time I checked) wheeled or over snow vehicles to move the whole unit and would have to cobble a lot of stuff together. I think we’d need every helicopter in the inventory to move the Bn in one lift.
They do (still) have a para coy and each unit has a unique specialty task, cannot remember who is who but one maintains pathfinder capability, another freefall and the third has the C2 role. This is more an effort to ‘keep the flame alive’ effort than anything else.
I agree that airportable is more sustainable but also more vulnerable on ingress, shorter ranged and still needs a linkup – which is easier because of the shorter range.
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