Seite - 53 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The ‘entire armed force’ 53 be formed, as well as 37 Imperial-Royal Landwehr infantry regiments and three Im- perial-Royal territorial infantry regiments, 32 Imperial Hungarian Honvéd infantry regiments, 42 Imperial and Royal cavalry regiments, six Imperial-Royal Uhlan regi- ments and ten Imperial Hungarian Hussar regiments. Added to these were 56 field and ten-and-a-half mountain artillery regiments of the Common Army, heavy and light howitzer divisions, cannon divisions and regiments as well as mounted artillery divisions of all three parts of the army ; all in all still a great power army that would establish in wartime sebenteen army corps with 49 infantry and eleven cavalry troop divisions as well as 36 Landsturm or march brigades.100 The artillery counted around 2600 guns of all calibres. Illustration of the structure, strength and ranks of the formations and troop bodies of the Imperial and Royal Army Army and Troop Bodies Structure Manning Level Rank of Commander Army group* 2–3 armies over 200,000 field marshal Army 2–3 corps 100,000–200,000 general, lieutenant general (Army) Corps 2–3 divisions 40,000–60,000 lieutenant general (Troop) Division** 2 brigades 15,000–20,000 major general Brigade 2 regiments 6,000–8,000 brigadier Regiment 3–4 batallions 3,000–4,000 colonel Batallion 4 companies 1,000 major Company 4 platoons 250 captain * The designation ‘army group’ existed on the Austro-Hungarian fronts only from March 1916. Until then, the common leadership used the designation ‘command of the XXX front’ for several armies in one thea- tre of war. ** The original designations infantry troop division (ITD) and cavalry troop division (KTD) were simplified in 1917 to infantry division and cavalry division. An as yet very modest role was played by army aviation. There were only few aeroplanes, above all the Lohner ‘Pfeilflieger’ (arrow flyer). In total, the Imperial and Royal Army possessed only several dozen aeroplanes suitable for use in war (39 at the start of the war) and 85 trained pilots. They were organised in August 1914 in nine (army) aviation companies and one naval aviation detachment.101 Their weaponry was limited to the pilots’ and observers’ handguns as well as small bombs, which initially had to be thrown overboard by hand. In addition to the aeroplanes, there were twelve balloon detach- ments, which were assigned to the fortress artillery and of which more was expected than the aeroplanes, the possibilities of whose deployment had barely been recognised, due to their ability to remain for a long time in the air and to carry out continual surveillance. When adding together the military strength of the Habsburg Monarchy,