IV Corps (United States)

The IV U.S. Army Corps was first organized in 20 june 1918, during World War I as part of American Expeditionary Forces at Western Front, as Headquarters IV Army Corps. It participated in the offensives of St. Mihiel and Lorraine, being demobilized in Weimar Republic, 11 May 1919.

Word War II
Formely reactivated without interruptions since October 1939, during WWII the IV Corps was reconstituted in 27 June 1944, replacing the VI Corps in the Fifth United States Army's order of battle in Italian campaign, after Allied forces liberated Rome in the summer of 1944 when VI Corps was withdrawn to take part in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France. Initially the corps had two divisions, U.S. 1st Armored and 6th South African Armoured but was reinforced with 1st Brazilian Infantry Division from September, and U.S. 10th Mountain Division in February 1945, as well as with U.S. 85th Infantry Division in April.

Under command of Gen.Willis D. Crittenberger it took part in the fighting through the summer of 1944 as the 5th Army and the British 8th Army advanced north to the River Arno. In the autumn and winter of 1944 IV Corps formed the central wing of the 5th Army sector, taking the major role in the 5th Army's assault on the Gothic Line in the central Apennine Mountains fighting to break through to the Lombardy plains beyond.

In the spring of 1945 the corps, still the 5th Army's central sector, took part in the successful Italian spring offensive breaking out of the Apennines to outflank the units of the German Tenth and Fourteenth Armies defending Bologna forming a pincer with 8th Army on the right to surround them, and then driving on to the River Po and finally Verona and Brescia.

The corps was inactivated in 13 October 1945, at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, it was reactivated again at Birmingham, Alabama, in 1958 and inactivated at Birmingham in 1968.