It’s been said the IRA never had more than 200 active rebels at any one time … nonetheless, they managed to keep the Brits in knots for decades.
WHERE did you get your number of IRA fighters?- Fwiw in 1974, I attended a USAMPS school with an Irish GARDA captain & his GUESS was about 1,000-1500 IRA fighters.
As I mentioned in another post, BG Wendell Fertig had only about 50 guerrilla fighters through most of 1942 in the Philippines & those few US/Filipino guerrillas “played hell with” the 18th Japanese Field Force that outnumbered Fertig’s rag-tag group by at least 50-1.
(Casualty records, which were found after WWII, indicated that Fertig’s force killed or severely wounded at least 1300 Japanese soldiers & destroyed MILLIONS of dollars of Japanese equipment/supplies/property.- Setting Japanese-occupied buildings & equipment afire with Molotov cocktails cost the Japanese dearly.)
On the first actual day in February 1942 that Fertig’s force was active, the TOTAL number of longarms in USFIP hands was a about a DOZEN WWI-era Model of 1917 rifles, about 50 rounds of M2 Ball ammo, TWO privately-owned 16-gauge DB shotguns, with a single box of 25 shells, 4 “obsolete” Alaskan-model .45 caliber revolvers with about 25 rounds of pistol ammo & a single box of cane-knives.
(Knowing how PROUD that his Filipino personnel were, BG Fertig “passed out” a cane-knife to each Filipino & ordered them to go kill a Japanese soldier & NOT RETURN w/o his weapon, ammo, clothing & field gear. - USFIP records indicate that most of the few Filipinos fighters actually “- - - - returned to Fertig’s camp with TWO rifles & ammo, plus a large quantity of Japanese supplies”.)
A historical note: A former 20YO cruise ship civilian employee named Adolpho M. Guzman went into a nearby town in March 1942 to visit his family, to gather information about the Japanese who might be there, to “bring back anything useful that he could acquire” & was gone for about a week. When he returned late one night, he was “leading a group of over 100 ‘native bearers’, who were staggering under loads of weapons, numerous cases of Japanese ammo, 2 heavy machine guns with belts & about 5 tons of fresh/canned food & other military equipment & useful supplies”. - BG Fertig immediately promoted the man to 1LT, USFIP & “appointed him as Chief of Supply & Services, US Forces in the Philippines”.
Yours, TMN78247