April 1917 - The Incredible Backwardness of the US Army

I doubt any Army was more unprepared for a major war, then the US Army in April 1917. It not only was small, its technological backwardness (due to lack of funding) was astounding. At the start of the war, it lacked the following:

• No Steel helmets, Grenades, or Mortars.
• No Tanks
• No Combat Aircraft. The "Air service" had 35 officers, 1,000 enlisted men and two airfields.
• No mobile Anti-Aircraft Artillery
• No Gas masks or Poison Gas.
• No Automatic Rifles
• No US made Light machine guns or Heavy machine guns
• No Heavy Artillery (largest field gun was the 6 inch Howitzer)
• No adequate Light machine gun ( US army had only 800 light machine guns, all unreliable Hoctchkiss M 1909 or obsolete Colt 1895)

Lack of Training and Organization
Unlike the US army in 1939, the 1917 army was not set up to rapidly expand upon mobilization. In 1939, the Regular Army had 10 under-strength Divisions, all "overstaffed" with officers and NCO's, so only reservists/recruits were required to fill out the lower ranks.

In  April 1917, the 133,000 man Regular Army lacked a single organized Division. Instead it was scattered all over the world and USA in small detachments (37 Infantry Regiments and 17 Calvary Regiments):

Location
Continental US and Alaska - 96,000
Philippines - 18,000 (includes 6,000 Filipino Scouts)
Hawaii - 10,000
Panama/Puerto Rico - 7,500
China/Other - 1,500
Total - 133,000

In addition, only 55,000 of the 133,000 soldiers were in the Infantry/Field Artillery. An astounding 18,000 were in the US Calvary. Another 21,000 Coastal Artillery men were manning forts in the USA/Overseas The rest were Engineers, Staff Departments, Medical, and Recruits.

Note: of the approximately 6,000 officers in April 1917, 16% were on "detached duty" most of them either in Training, or as instructors for the National Guard or Colleges and Universities.

Infantry and Machine Guns
The Infantry were organized into regiments/brigades. Each Regiment of three battalions (about 1,200 men) was authorized 1 machine gun company with 6 each 1909 Hotchkiss Light Machine Guns. We also had 320 Maxim-Vickers (1904)  heavy machine guns in inventory. In April 1917, the US Army was still stuck back in the world of August 1914, with lots of Rifles and 2 Machine guns per battalion. Note: In addition the USA had some 300 Lewis Guns that were held in reserve for the National Guard, however these guns did not use the Standard USA cartridge.  The Maxim-Vickers could use the USA cartridge since these machine guns had been re-chambered.

Trucks
In April 1917, the US Army had 2,400 trucks of all types. In October 1918, the A.E.F. truck requirement was 55,000.

Total Artillery in April 1917
4.7 inch guns - 60 pieces
6 inch Howitzer - 42 pieces
3 inch Gun - 533 pieces.

Artillery was organized in to 9 Artillery Regiments, each commanded by Colonel, with 6 batteries of 6 guns each. While these artillery pieces weren't obsolete, they were inferior to their French/British Counterparts and not used in France. Using the 1914 B.E.F standard, the US had enough artillery to equip approximately 7 divisions (assuming a few guns held in reserve)