Having always kept my feet on the ground re organisational research I recently took a crack at USMC aviation of the late war period, and to be honest find myself wishing I hadn't started
From what I can gather the basic strength for VMF, VMSB and VMTB Sqns during 1943 was 18 aircraft. This then appears to have been increased to 24 aircraft sometime during 1944 for VMF Sqns at least. This excludes carrier based Sqns which 18 for VMF and 12 for VMTB Sqns on Escort carriers.
I have the Apr44 T/O for a VMF Sqn which shows the Flight Echelon with 40 Naval Aviators (pilots) for 18 VF aircraft (plus two VSN types, which I think were twin engine liaison/runabout types). Online is the War Diary for VMF 121 for the latter half of 1944 -
PDF link
That shows the flight line with 40 pilots (hooray) and the Sqn with 24 fighters at the end of Jun44 (oh
). Also on the web is a brief summary of Marine aviation late war, mostly focussed on carrier development –
link
That mentions that following a conference circa mid-1944 (possibly Aug-Sep) it was decided "
the strength and composition of Marine aviation forces in the Pacific was to undergo change. Hereafter, MAGs would be comprised of three 24-plane squadrons instead of four 18-plane squadrons
"
So I'm well confused now. VMF 121 at least was already on 24 fighters a few months before said conference, but with practically the same personnel allowance published two months prior for 18 fighters.
I had a trawl on the web a while back, but frankly there's sod all on squadron organisation for most nations. That might simply be because it's too nebulous a subject, and given the excess of pilots carried on the establishment in most cases units had the potential to man more aircraft. It's not an area I'm familiar with, and should probably have no strayed into, but I'm curious now whether there's a more detailed explanation of how the increase was handled, such as simply give Sqns extra aircraft that they already had more than enough pilots for anyway?
Gary