75th Ranger Regiment

History

The 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as the Rangers, is the United States Army Special Operations Command's premier light-infantry and special operations force. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia, and comprises a regimental headquarters company, a military intelligence battalion, a special troops battalion, and three Ranger battalions.

The 75th Ranger Regiment primarily handles direct-action raids in hostile or sensitive environments, often killing or capturing high-value targets. Other missions include airfield seizure, special reconnaissance, personnel recovery, clandestine insertion, and site exploitation. The regiment can deploy one Ranger battalion within 18 hours of alert notification. The regiment's subunit the Regimental Reconnaissance Company is part of Joint Special Operations Command.

The 75th Ranger Regiment is one of the U.S. military's most extensively used units. On 17 December 2020, it marked 7,000 consecutive days of combat operations.

Text from Wikipedia: 75th Ranger Regiment, CC BY-SA 4.0, lightly trimmed.

Wars and campaigns

From Wikidata (CC0).

Key dates

1. 1941
   Soon after the United States entered World War II in 1941, General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, envisioned an elite unit of fifty men selected voluntarily from the 34th Infantry Division.
2. 1944
   The remaining 400 Rangers were scattered around the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and the 137 original Rangers were sent home. 1st and 3rd Battalions were disbanded on 15 August 1944, while 4th Battalion was disbanded on 24 October 1944, at Camp Butner, North Carolina.
3. 1969
   On 1 February 1969, the final period of the existence of these units began when the Department of the Army redesignated the LRP companies and detachments as lettered Ranger companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment under the Combined Arms Regimental System (CARS).
4. 1984
   In 1984, the 75th Ranger Regiment established a Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment (RRD).
5. 2001
   During the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, a CIA Jawbreaker team (a small group of CIA SAD ground branch operators) requested that the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment be inserted into the mountains to block escape routes from Tora Bora to Pakistan.
6. 2006
   On 1 January 2006, Rangers raided a remote farmhouse outside Baghdad, capturing several gunmen without a fight and rescuing British freelance journalist Phillip Sands, who had been kidnapped a week earlier.
7. 2010
   For actions between 14 and 16 November 2010, Charlie Company 1/75th, received the Valorous Unit Award for extraordinary heroism, combat achievement, and conspicuous gallantry.
8. 2018
   Shaina Coss, Captain, in 2018 she became the first ever female officer in the regiment and in 2019 deployed to Afghanistan.
9. 2019
   On 26 October 2019, the Rangers, Delta Force, and the 160th SOAR killed ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Dates and events quoted from the same Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Records that place someone with this unit

A unit history doesn't name everyone who served. These records do:

• Morning reports and unit rosters: access (National Personnel Records Center)
• Search Army morning reports, 1912–1946 (National Archives Catalog)
• Unit and organizational records held in St. Louis

More history

• U.S. Army Center of Military History
• Wikipedia: 75th Ranger Regiment