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Tag: US Army (Page 1 of 2)

Yay for Pattern Recognition

October 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Even if this whole bubble bursts soon, I assume that some form of “billion dollar autocomplete” as someone on Bluesky put it, is going to stick around, just as the Dotcom bubble did not rid us of ridiculous websites. I’ve put some of the new overlords to work to create a little wordpress plugin that lets you access my cloud storage, and the result is that the whole of the US Army field manual collection is now available for you in the library. Currently about 2400 files, maybe do not download them all at once – if you want the whole collection, just drop me a line.

Next steps are mostly cleanup and inventory, I need to check my lists against the actual files online, I need to visit a couple of new sources, and I want to write a couple of introductions to the pages. But I am proud and happy that I found a reasonable cheap solution to host them myself, and I hope you will find something interesting for you here.

Have a look!

 

75%

June 5, 2026 / / 0 Comments

75% is what we have now.

3.484 field manuals are now in the library, which is  75% of 4.614, which is the number of all field manuals of which we have knowledge so far. The upload to the MOS-department is happening as I am typing this, and the FMs will be added next week – I need at least the weekend to check for duplicates, and version control.

A lot of of older FMs, especially in the Second-World-War-Range, will be replaced with higher resolution ones, which we have recently found a new source for.  The “Missing”-List needs to go back online,  and we plan to change the hosting arrangements a bit. But this is now definitly the largest, most complete collection of US Army field manuals anywhere on the web.

Have a great weekend!

Hacks and Crooks

May 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Today we’re uploading another 200 MOS Field Manuals to the library, which brings the total to a little over 3400 of the 4500 FMs we know of as today. We got a bit distracted by discovering a nice way to download full documents from yet a different source, which is yielding a lot of high-resolution-scans of older manuals. So the 200 new ones are an intermediate step, with about 300 more still to be reviewed, and of course the “regular” FMs need to be processed yet.

Enjoy the read, and if you have anything missing to add, we will always be grateful!

The Ivy League

April 19, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Another research trip brought us to the Stanford Library, which hosts links to more than 1500 FMs in its catalogue. This enabled us to add 79 new MOS (Military Occupation Speciality) field manuals to the collection, as well as an yet uncounted number of other FMs which still need to be processed. Browsing through the complete Stanford holdings will probabaly keep us busy until May, when another big update will be ready. Also, we’re currently evaluating possibilities of hosting the collection on our own server, which would ease access and backups. 

On a side note, “discovering” these files while the are presented and catalogued very open, visibly and very publicly accessible makes us feel like green novices. It is as if this collection was something any decent librarian could click together in 5 minutes, and our academic experience and credentials do not help. So thank you to Stanford, and if you have any tips on how to improve this collection, let us know.

Here they currently are:

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

Another First!

January 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

day we have another first: The first two FMs exclusively available on this site, contributed by a reader! We are very grateful for Scott to have scanned FM 5-31 Use and Installation of Boobytraps (1956) and FM 21-50 Ranger Training and Ranger Operations (1962) from our Missing list, and provided the scans to us. We reduced the resolution of the scans in order to scale them down to a web-friendly sice, but the quality is still way better than most of the MHI-scans of older manuals. So a very big thanks to Scott, and you*ll find both manuals in their respective sections, or with the links above.

Small Change

January 25, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Yet another batch of field manuals, closing more gaps in the Cold war department. About 20 new manuals, from FM 5-31 Land Mine Warfare (1949) to FM 44-1 Antiaircraft Artillery Employment (1952), bringing the total in Cold War to 1458, if I am counting correctly.  Yes, thats not significantly more than before, I had to remove some doublets, too, again. I am sure there are more professional ways to handle a PDF collection like this, but most probably also involve more time than I have on my hands. And it is late, again. Also, I updated the missing list again to reflect the new manuals.

In Memoriam Ike Skelton

January 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

And another small round of additions, this time based on another visit of the Ike Skelton Library Website, after a couple of google results showed us documents we had overlooked at our first trawl. The following manuals have been added:

FM 19-20 Criminal Investiation (1945)
 FM 44-95 Service of the Piece Multiple Gun Motor Carriages M15 and M15A1 (1944)
 FM 6-100 Tactics and Technique of Division Artillery and Higher Artillery Echelon (1944)
 FM 6-105 Armored Division Artillery (1944)
 FM 6-120 Field Artillery Observation Battalion (1945)
 FM 6-130 Field Artillry Intelligence (1945)
 FM 6-135 Forward Observation (1944)
 FM 6-195 Service of the Piece. 8-inch Gun M1 and 240-mm Howitzer M1 (1946)
 FM 6-77 Service of the Piece, 4.5-inch Gun M1 (1944)
 FM 6-77 Service of the Piece. 4.5-Inch Gun M1 (1941)
 FM 6-95 Field Artillery Field Manual. Service of the Piece. 240-mm Howitzer, M1918 (1940)
 FM 6-120 The Field Artillery Batallion (1952).pdf
 FM 6-122 Artillery Sound Ranging and Flash Ranging (1957).pdf
 FM 6-130 Field Artillry Intelligence (1948).pdf
 FM 6-20-2J Division Artillery, Field Artillery Brigade, and Corps Artillery Headquarters (1984).pdf
 FM 6-30 The Field Missle Battalion Corporal (1959).pdf
 FM 6-38 Field Artillery Missile (Sergant) (1962).pdf
 FM 6-50 Tactics and techniques for the Field Artillery Cannon Battery (C1) (1990).pdf
 FM 6-91 Service of the Piece 8 inch Howitzer, M2 Truck-Drawn  (1948).pdf
FM 101-10 Staff Officers Field Manual. Organization, Technical and Logistical Data (1945)
FM 101-10-2 Staff Officers’ Field Manual. Organizational, Technical and Logistical Data (1965)
FM 21-30 Concentional Signs, Military Symbols, and Abbrievations (1943)
FM 21-45 Protective Measures, Individuals and Small Units (1942)
FM 21-50 Military Courtesy and Discipline (1942)
FM 23-50 Browning Machine Gun, Caliber .30, HB, M1919A4 (1942)
FM 24-75 Telephone Switchboard Operating Procedure (1944)
FM 25-6 Dog Transportation (1944)
FM 30-15 Examination of Enemy Personnel Repatriates Documents (1940)
FM 30-25 Military Intelligence. Counterintelligence (1940)’
FM 31-25 Desert Operations (1942)
FM 31-50 Attack on a Fortified Position and Combat in Towns (1944)
FM 44-59 Service of the Piece–Multiple Gun Motor Carriage M15 and M15A1 (1944)

This brings the World War II manuals up to 403 manuals and 75% of all manuals known to us as existing. Happy New Year everyone! 

P.S.:

The Missing List has been updated, as well as the document summary. However, there are currently still a lot of errors in my master List (shouldn’t try doint this late at night all the time), so the missing list is not really reliable right now. We’re working to get things in order.

Another year at the ODL

December 30, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The free days over the holidays, when not spent with family, provided us opportunity for yet another round of research, reordering, and publishing. By no means done, we at least can present the first results: 

Anyway, enjoy the new material, and have a wonderful 2026!

Cavalry

November 17, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Today thanks are in order: Kevin Rose has kindly agreed to share and scan the trove of Field Manuals in his archive with us, so there are quite a couple of new documents, for example FM 17-95 Cavalry Operations in every iteration from 1977 to 1996. These, by the way, make a nice background reading for BattleOrders new Youtube video on Cavalry, if this recommendation is allowed here.

In any way, the amount of new manuals made it impossible to cram them into the 15 GB limit google offers for free.  So after discarding the post 2004-manuals, we created a second website for the World War II manuals of the US Army, which can be found here. The current time ist to add a couple of more websites with military training documents, and to link them via this website. For now, follow the link if you are looking for older manuals – the cold war FMs are still here, accessible on the menu on the left.

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