Field Manuals are military documents documenting how a nations military force is organized, trained and equipped to fight. Under US law (and in many other countries), these document are not subject to copyright laws. Provided local confidentiality laws are respected, it is legal to re-publish them, and many libraries or sites interested in aspects of military history have done so.
In the past two years we have collected more than 3000 field manuals from the US Army alone, and we’re currently preparing to integrate those into the Generalstab Library. for now, you can find the various manuals here:
US Army Field Manuals from World War Two
US Army Field Manuals from the Cold War
US Field Manuals defining Military Occupational Specialities (MOS), 1976-1980
US Army Field Manuals since 2000
Statistics
| Series | Known FMs (including versions) | FMs in Library | percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1918-1939 Series | 65 | 51 | 78,46% |
| 1939-1946 Series | 536 | 426 | 79,48% |
| 1977-1981 MOS Series | 522 | 434 | 83,14% |
| 1947-2000 Series | 1944 | 1570 | 80,76% |
| New Series | 550 | 540 | 98,18% |
| FMI | 8 | 0 | 0,00% |
| ATP | 36 | 0 | 0,00% |
| Total Indexed | 3661 | 3021 | 82,52% |
Sources for US Army Field Manuals
APD – Army Publishing Directorate
The very first and best start is of course the US Military itself, which maintains a server with recent and up to date FMs insofar they are available to the public:
CARL
For older FMs (and a treasure trove of other studies, histories, and documents) visit CARL, the Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library.
Library of Congress
For those wh are completely new to the topic, or want some background information, the Library of Congress has written an amazingly detailed Ressource Guide to its holdings of FMs.
FAS
The Federation of American Scientists maintains a large collection of newer and modern US Army FMs on its website, documenting military developments around the world.
BITs
The unfortnately now defunct Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security kept a large directory of modern FMs and doctrine-related documents redarding European security policy.
CDSG
The Coast Defense Study Group has done an amazing work in documenting the history of fortifications in the United States, and has an extensive collection of documents on their website.
Digital Commons@University of Nebraska
Several US-American universities maintain collections of documents available to the public. The University of Nebraska served as a source for FMs related to Army intelligence, especially for the times of the Korean and Vietnam wars
Electronics and Books
A website somewhere between shadow library and document cache, the site hosts a surprising amount of material not found anywhere else.
Stanford Library
We found this surprisingly late, considering the vast amount of manuals and documents in theirrepository. A brilliant place for military history sources!