The Generators, Units, and Missions

The basic smoke unit was the smoke generator company, 15 of which saw action in the European theater. A smoke company consisted of a company headquarters, headquarters platoon, and operations platoon. The operations platoon comprised 4 sections, each section having 6 squads. A company equipped with Mz s had a total of 50 generators, 

2 per operations squad and 2 with company headquarters. Personnel of this smoke company numbered 4 officers and 131 enlisted men. The same company with the identical number of troops would have been equipped with only 24 Mr generators, or one per operations squad. 

The mission which smoke units had originally considered their most important, the concealment of ports, never materialized in the European Theater of Operations. Experience at the time of the cross-Channel attack indicated that the Luftwaffe was not strong enough to jeopardize these basic supply installations, and this situation did not change throughout the rest of the war. Seventh Army did maintain a rather extensive smoke installation at Marseille during the period September to November 1944, but at no time did the Luftwaffe seriously threaten the port.  

But gradually smoke companies began fulfilling forward area missions as the situation warranted. These could be of several kinds. Screens were used to conceal main supply routes. Seventh Army employed smoke units in this manner as much as any other army in the 

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