I was watching Netflix's series on the Medal of honor. And this came to me. After seeing some obscure divison patches from WWII that a recipient was in.
Id assume steamers, troop numbers and overall battle performance had some say in it. That and if that division was on the edge of advanced military combat(i.e 82nd, and 101st airborne or 10th mountain) then youd probably have a good chance of sticking around.
But what about the hundreds and hundreds of other divisions? Out of all the Infantry, Armored, Calvary, Mountain, and Airborne divisions how do you choice what stays and what goes?
How did they actually figure this all out?
Happily, the US Army’s center for military history has the answer you seek.
To determine which divisions would be retained, three different scoring systems were developed and used to rate their priority between 1946 and 1954. The Off ice of The Adjutant General (TAG) devised the first in 1946; the second evolved in the Office of the Chief of Military History (CMH, the predecessor of the Center of Military History) and was in use between 1950 and 1954; and the third, which CMH devised in 1954, has been used ever since. All three systems had two factors in common a unit's age and campaign participation credit. Both the TAG system and the CMH system of 1950 1954 embodied controversial subjective areas. The TAG system included points for divisional elements, service in war theaters, and foreign decorations. The first CMH system included points based on days in combat, unit "renown," and individual decorations. The current system eliminated the subjective areas in an effort to arrive at a simple, impartial, and defensible solution that could be universally applied. Continued usage since its inception has proven its worth.
The Army currently uses the following factors to determine the historical priority of divisions and brigades and the point value assigned to each: Age--one point for each year since initial organization. (No points are subtracted for periods of inactive status.) Campaign participation credit--two points for each campaign. US unit decorations--two points for each award.
From https://history.army.mil/books/Lineage/reflag/reflagarm.htm