KNIGHTS OF THE ARMOR FORCEThe History of United States Armor
Prepared By
MSG Glenn L. Husted III (ret)
MSG Randall F. High (ret)
Introduction: The following abridged history of Armor has been reassembled from a variety of sources and interviews. This historic assemblage is constructed to strip away the biases as related by past and present senior officers, other histories, and half truths. It is told from the singular perspective of the Armor Branch Tanker. It is also a particular point of importance that the reader of this history recognizes that tanks under the command of any other combat arms branch is not a tank force. It is an auxiliary to the owning branch of service and as such does not exist as a Tank Corps or Armor Force. As of the date of this writing many of the mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s are being replicated by the presence of Infantry officers and NCOs in positions of leadership in Armor units. This automatically builds in a lack of Armor core competencies and vital crew cohesion during the training and deployment of Armor Forces. This has a negative influence on moral, crew stability, training, and combat readiness. This imposed phenomenon is willfully growing the Armored Force into an unprofessional rabble that will later be used to justify its next transformation.
The Birth of the American Tank Corps
The American Tank Corps was created on 26 January 1917 in France by order on the United States War Department. Colonel Samuel D. Rockenbach (Cavalry) was selected to be in command. At this time the U.S. did not possess any tanks, and had no tank designs awaiting development. The Infantry Branch was the dominant branch within the Army and had no plans to include mechanized vehicles into their training. Therefore, Cavalry Officers who were acquainted with faster mounted maneuver warfare were selected to “stand up” the new Tank Corps and get it operational. Training areas and a limited numbers of tanks were requested from the French Army for the first American Tank School.
Reader Note: Soon after the new Tank Corps was created it was found to be lacking technical experience in the field of ordnance. Because of this eight junior officers were selected from the Coast Artillery Corps to help with the newly formed Tank Corps.
On 10 November 1917, Captain George S. Patton Jr. was ordered to report to the commandant of the Army schools at Langres France to establish a light tank school for the U.S. First Army. Patton thus became the first soldier in the U.S. Army assigned to work with tanks.
In February 1918, Patton officially established the American Expedionary Force's Light Tank School at Bourg, located five miles from Langres on the road to Dijon. Lacking tanks at the outset, Patton and his men were forced to make do with plywood mockups complete with a turret armed with a Hotchkiss 8mm machine gun. The entire contraption was mounted on a rocking device used to simulate movement over rough terrain while a trainee fired at a fixed target. It wasn't until 23 March that the unit received its first shipment of ten 7.4-ton Renault light tanks, with another fifteen following in May. The soldiers trained later formed the 304th Tank Brigade, consisting of the American 304th and 354th Tank Battalions.
A second tank organization was established in the United States on 16 January 1918. The second group was referred to as the "Tank Service of the National Army." This new service was placed under the command of the Chief of Engineers, Major General William M. Black. Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower was assigned to Camp Colt Pennsylvania to conduct tank training in the U.S. He initially commanded a complement of eighty men, but by September 1918 he was a lieutenant colonel commanding ten thousand men and eight hundred officers. Initially, the training program he established there was severely hampered by a lack of tanks. He was finally supplied with a single Renault tank. Eisenhower and his subordinates, made the most of what little they had and developed a program for training tank crewmen in the use of machine guns. The weapons were mounted on flatbed trucks, which were driven around the camp grounds while the trainees fired at Little Round Top to get a feeling for shooting on the fly. A three-inch naval gun was used to familiarize crewmen with the larger caliber guns used in tanks.
In 1919, after the war, the two Tank organizations merged, at least in part. The Tank service remained a separate organization due to the U.S. Army Appropriations Act dated 19 June 1919. This act provided for the Tank Corps though 30 June 1920.
The United States Tank Corps conducted its first tank engagement on 12 September 1918, using French tanks. Combined with American Infantry, they participated in the reduction of the St. Mihiel Salient (a salient is a bulge in the lines between the two opposing forces). The tanks that were available operated successfully and helped restored maneuver to the battlefield by neutralizing the threat generated to the infantry by machineguns and shell splinters. The objectives were reached and the German salient was reduced in 36 hours and the lines were restored.
Reader Note: After realizing the potential of Armor, General Pershing (Commander of the American Expedionary Force) was quoted to say “anything in the AEF for 500 additional tanks.” But, his opinion would change after the war was over and he would become a major player in the demise if the Tank Corps.
The Demise of the American Tank Corps (1919-1920)
After World War I, legislation was proposed in Congress known as the March-Baker Army Reorganization Bill, which requested the continuation of and increased funding for the Tank Corps. A heated debate began between those who appreciated the contributions of the Tank Corps and those who saw it as a threat to the Infantry Branch. At the time, those who sided with the Infantry were in the ascendancy.
On 31 October 1919, a House Committee meeting on Military Affairs was addressed by no less than General Pershing. He spoke out against the Tank Corps and assessing their best future use to be under the direction of the Infantry. Pershing stated: "The Tank Corps should not be a large organization; only of sufficient numbers, I should say, to carry on investigations and conduct training with the infantry, and I would place it under the Chief of Infantry as an adjunct of that arm."
Officers that argued for the independent role of tanks were soon silenced. In 1920, Colonel George S. Patton Jr. and Capt. Dwight D. Eisenhower both wrote separate articles for the Infantry Journal in defense of tanks. Both forecast the value of tanks in future wars, and at the same time attempted to answer the objections of many officers who questioned the value of tanks. As a result of their articles Patton and Eisenhower were summoned to Washington by Major General Charles Farnsworth (the first Chief of Infantry). General Farnsworth ordered them to stop their pro-tank writings and to conform to infantry doctrine or face a court martial. Years later General Eisenhower stated that he was told that his opinions were: “not only wrong but dangerous and henceforth I would keep them to myself. Particularly I was not to publish anything incompatible with solid infantry doctrine. If I did, I would be hauled before a court martial.”
Ultimately the March-Baker Army Reorganization Bill was defeated and Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1920. Provisions of this legislation that had been indorsed by the Infantry Branch spelled the demise of the American Tank Corps. Much like today all of the amassed tank war-fighting knowledge and experience that had been paid for in American blood during World War I was soon discarded. In Germany, military leaders such as Ernst Volckheim, Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel were far more appreciative of the performance of the American Tank Corps in the last war. They would use the lessons learned to start their country’s research and development for future conflicts.
American Tanks of the 1920s
The development of an American tank force ceased to exist with the passage of the National Defense Act of 1920. Infantry doctrine would replace any critical armor thinking well into the Second World War. The Act removed the official platform for tank officers who might be future advocates of Armor. Fortunately for the Unites States, a small group of these farsighted officers including men like: Adna R. Chaffee, George S. Patton Jr., Dwight D. Eisenhower, Daniel Van Voorhis, Robert W. Grow, and Bradford G. Chenoweth, continued to follow the tank doctrine evolving in Europe. They privately debated tactics, techniques and procedures but had no real way to test their theories. The best they could do was to study the advances and innovations being made in Europe. Contrary to the lack of research and development going on in the United States European tank visionaries were seeking innovations and testing theories in the field. Men like Britain's Basil H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, and France's Charles de Gaulle were breaking new ground in the field of tank development. In Germany visionaries like Ernst Volckheim and Heinz Guderian, were preparing for future armored warfare while the U.S. War Department continued to viewed tanks simply as support for advancing infantrymen.
On 3 June 1920, Brigadier General Sidney R. Hinds (Infantry) was assigned the responsibility of all American tanks. Units of the Tank Corps were divided between Franklin Cantonment, Camp Meade, Maryland and Fort Benning, Georgia (a modern irony). With the termination of the Tank Corps, the fate of the American Army tank force was sealed for more than two decades. In that time, only the French FT-17 light tank clones (called the M-1918) and British Mark VIII heavy "Liberty" tanks were built domestically and fielded to units in the U.S. Army. Tanks as they existed were the exclusive domain of the Infantry Arm. Under the leadership of the infantry, no new tank designs were taken past the prototype stage (until 1936 when cannon-less M-2A2 Infantry Light Tanks entered into production) and no new tank doctrine was explored. During World War I, the only American armored fighting vehicle designed approved for production was the M1918 Ford 3 Ton tankett which was dropped as soon as the war ended with fewer than 18 vehicles actually produced.
In 1928, the stagnate tank situation in the American Army would change due to a visit by Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis to England. While there he witnessed a tank demonstration at Aldershot, UK. At the time the British were well advanced as compared to American Infantry tank forces in area of mechanization. They had a training area to test doctrinal concepts and had organized on the Salisbury Plains a small “Armored Force,” the forerunner of their Royal Armored Corps.
This British armored force was built around a battalion of 48 medium tanks, some small tanks, or tanketts, and supporting units of artillery, automatic weapons, engineer, and signal. Mr. Davis was impressed by the massed employment of armor. When he returned to the United States, the Secretary instructed that steps be taken to develop an adequate tank force in the American Army. The War Department then started a four step process to recreate an armored force.
The first step in recreating another American Tank Corps was to start an experimental armored force. Of course there were no Armor officers to lead the way in this area. Only Infantry officers that had been assigned to Infantry support tanks were waiting in the wings. Unbelievably, the second step was to convert a horse cavalry regiment into a mechanized cavalry regiment. The third step was to upgrade the regiment to a full brigade in strength. The final step was to pronounce this cavalry brigade an Armored Force.
Unfortunately the funding only provided for about one tank per year. The War Department was largely un-interested and there was no Armor Library to draw on for lessons learned. The existing tank fleet was ten years old and the official tank doctrine was all infantry.
American Tanks of the 1930s
After two years of intense experimentation (1928-1930), the Army assembled the first elements of what was to become a permanent mechanized force at Fort Eustis, Virginia. This 1930 experiment, although valuable in later years, was soon abandoned and the various arms and services were then directed to carry on their own experiments in mechanization. This abandonment was no oversight.
The National Defense Act of 1920 was still in effect and provided the tanks would only be part of the Infantry. With infantry entrenched in the opinion that tanks would never be more than support forces to the infantry arm and any hope of a competent tank force was again swept under the skirts of the Infantry Branch. Therefore, the future of American armor development would remain dormant a while longer. During this period, The United States Military would fall to 17th in worldwide ratings as a combat power.
This predicament left other combat arms with no legal route to proceed with the development of serious armored forces. The Cavalry did have some armored cars, but early in their experimental period, these were deemed inadequate. Being a more advanced branch than the infantry, Cavalry officers understood the advancements made in mechanized maneuver and did what they could to proceed with fast moving combat vehicles that offered good cross country mobility. To allow the cavalry to develop armor along these lines independent of the Infantry, the mechanized cavalry was formed under the Chief of Cavalry. With the aid of General Douglas MacArthur, the National Defense act of 1920 was technical bypassed by the changing the name of tank to that of "Combat Car." This tactic was a clear violation of the West Point honor code for officers ("A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do”). General MacArthur had ironically been the superintendent of West Point when the code was officially invoked. The point missed by many historians at this juncture is that Cavalry doctrine and Tank fighting doctrine are not the same thing. If a "tank" is developed for cavalry missions, it is automatically not a tank. It may look like a tank and sound like a tank but its armor is not that of a tanks. It has a need for speed and the highest cross country mobility that often includes amphibious operations. It is never intended to stand toe to toe with other tanks.
Reader note: In yet another MacArthur irony, the only official use of tanks during the 1930's occurred in 1932. This happened when tanks were ordered in to crush the Bonus Army. The Bonus Army consisted of World War I veterans who gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand payment of their promised bonuses. More than 12,000 veterans and their families camped near the U.S. Capitol, urging support for a bill to force payment of bonuses already voted by Congress. Army troops led by General MacArthur drove out the protesters and burned their camps.
Though not equipped with tanks, the Cavalry’s so-called combat cars were similar to the infantry tanks and were developed on parallel test bed vehicles. The Cavalry took over the role of developing the reorganized nucleus of the Fort Eustis contingent, with Colonel Daniel VanVooris, commanding, Lieutenant Colonel Adna R. Chaffee as executive officer.
Camp Knox, Kentucky, was selected as the new home of the mechanized cavalry. The 1st Cavalry Regiment, stationed in Texas, was moved to Fort Knox on 16 January 1933; on 6 September 1936 the 13th Cavalry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles L. Scott, was transferred from Fort Riley to Fort Knox, and was mechanized. The 7th Cavalry Brigade (Mechanized) finally consisted of these two Cavalry regiments and supporting artillery.
During this time Infantry Officers still maintained the idea that the main role of tanks in any future war would be close support of infantry. Since the assignment of the former Tank Corps units to the Infantry, it had been broken up into separate companies and assigned on the basis of one Tank Company to each infantry division. A few other units were formed into infantry-tank regiments. The Infantry Tank School was first organized at Fort Meade, Maryland, but in 1932 was transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1933 it was re-designated as the Tank Section of the Infantry School (In 2010, this has essentially occurred a second time due to the decision to move the Armor School from Fort Knox to Fort Benning.) The Army's doctrine that the tanks would be used solely to support the infantry affected the development of tanks. Their mission required that they be slow, have great crushing power, and be capable of withstanding the weapons of the day. (This last part was undertaken in a vacuum since the infantry made no formal study of foreign tank designs or their possible threat to our tanks.)
Beginning of the Modern Armor Concept
Cavalry officers of the 1930s visualized the first mechanized force in the United States Army executing missions based on speed, firepower, shock effect, and a wide operating radius. They expected that armored cars and other light motorized vehicles would perform these new duties. The tank units, such as they existed at that time, still rejected any non- tradition role for infantry tanks. New combat cars had speeds exceeding 40 miles per hour and had a radius of 125 miles. They mounted caliber .50 and caliber .30 machine guns, and were potent infantry weapons of the day. The cavalry settled on a single turret featuring a large hatch that converted it to an open-top turret design. It provided a turret ring large enough to accommodate two different weapons side by side.
The new mission using this type of force would include exploitation of a breakthrough, seizing distant key points, and making wide flanking maneuvers to strike the enemy deep in his rear areas. This force was visualized also as the ideal weapon for counterattack operations. These early armored cavalrymen saw the combat cars (tanks) taking over the historic role of heavy cavalry. They conceived of armored cavalry as a strategic threat, a weapon that army commanders could use to affect decisively the outcome of any war. They conceived of the new armored cavalry as a weapon of shock and a physiological weapon to paralyze the minds of the enemy with fear. It was General Chaffee who said;
“If fast tanks can operate in this manner we will greatly aid in restoring mobility to warfare; in keeping with the doctrine of operating on the flanks and rear and through the gap, and in forcing the enemy to make detachments to guard his lines of communication, important bridges, airdromes, and bases, we would so considerably weaken his main forces in battle that a quicker decision will be reached.”
Out of this consensus by general officers, a new role for armor was conceived; with the result that armor would now have two roles: the tanks of the Infantry would support the riflemen, and the combat cars (tanks) of the Cavalry would be assigned missions requiring independent action, using great mobility and firepower. The War Department in the meantime decentralized the development of mechanization, as distinguished from motorization, to all arms and services. It was decided that the Infantry and the Cavalry would get the tanks and combat cars respectively, since they were the two arms that could best exploit tank potentialities.
The Infantry continued to develop tank units that were organized for close support of the Infantry. They chose to develop a twin turret tank with each turret having one machinegun. Both turrets could traverse independent of each other and could fire down the length of both side of any future trench that they might have to clear in support of friendly advancing infantry. This design was fielded in 1936 which was three years after all other modern tank building countries had abandoned that concept. Further, because the infantry believed that their doctrine for tank use would be respected by foreign armies, the use of two small turrets made the mounting of an anti-tank cannon an impossibility. The turret ring(s) were too small.
Infantry tanks units did not need reconnaissance, security, or other organic supporting weapons; they were merely another infantry support weapon as established in their doctrine. Cavalry on the other hand, finally began to substitute the combat car (tank) for the horse. Looking to this new mechanization for missions do a more independent type work, the Cavalry actually began to expand on its old traditional missions. It visualized a type of organization that would have organically, all the elements needed in modern warfare-tanks, infantry, artillery, air, signal, engineer, and other combat support units. If it had not been for this early work on these effective modern concepts the United States would have been even more unprepared for the challenges that lay ahead of World War II.
Armor in World War II
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 it had about 10 armored divisions. The armored divisions were not massed as an armored army. They were initially held in the rear of the attacking armies until a break in the enemy front had been affected. At that point, they were used to exploit the breakthrough. The Germans advanced 40 miles a day and completed their conquest in 18 days.
When the Germans began their campaign on the Western Front in 1940, the armored divisions were organized into corps and into an armored army. When they attacked France, they struck with their panzer divisions using maneuver and firepower to outflank the Maginot Line. They did this maneuvering through country that was considered unsuitable for tanks, and raced to the English Channel in 11 days. They would do it again during the Battle of the Bulge four years later.
Reader Note: The French Army had pioneered the use of rail and tanks in WWI but by the beginning of WW II they had largely gone back to horse power. The U.S Army is in a comparable situation now. Since the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq there has been a shift to wheel vehicles. This coupled with the small force that we are trying to maintain has caused the need to dismount Tankers and put them in dangerous wheeled vehicles. The shock effect, fire power and mobility of armor have given way to the simple mobility of a truck with more weapons on it. We have commanders that only know this type of warfare. Meanwhile, Russia and Red China are modernizing there tank forces and training and honing their armor battle skills.
Reader Note: “The important lesson in the French campaign is the use of an armored force as an independent army. This armored army supported by combat aviation made the main strategic and tactical effort of the German Field Forces. Its attack was made through an extremely rugged terrain zone using only the combined arms of its component elements.” (Major General Adna R. Chaffee Jr.)
The early success of German armor hurried the creation of the U.S. armor organization. The War Department order of 10 July 1940 issued by General Marshal, created the Armored Force. This force consisted of the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions and the 70th GHQ Tank Battalion. All of this was ordered into being after the fact that tanks as an independent combat arm had made its second world wide debut by Germany.
Reader Note: Again, the reader is reminded that an American Tank Corps or Armored Force did not exist at this time. No meaningful tank research and development had been done since the enactment of the National Defense Act of 1920. No meaningful official study of the development of tanks and tank doctrine worldwide had been conducted. No one in the U.S. Army was officially monitoring the best practices of the employment of tanks in other countries.
The Armored Force School and Replacement center (which existed as the Armor School until 2010) was established 1 October 1940 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. All of this was achieved as a direct result of the fall of France as perpetrated by German armor units operating in combined arms formation. It literally shocked the antiquated American Army into accepting the obvious. It is also important to recognize and remember in all future discussions that the introduction of the Armored Forces was done despite the direct objections of the Chiefs of both Infantry and Cavalry. Left to their own devices, the inner service rivalry would have deigned the need for the existence of the Armored Force.
During the early stages of World War II the United States had the opportunity to profit by the Germans lessons of the Polish and French campaigns, but the logic and imagination of such leaders as General Chaffee were not always used promptly. Appearing before the Congressional Subcommittee on Appropriations, 14 May 1941, General Chaffee, the Armored Force Commander, stated: “even after the experiences of the Polish campaign … the French had no concept of the unified tactical action of the combined arms grouped in the armored division “nor of … “the supreme importance of the role of combat aviation combined with the armored force.” He also noted that: "prior to the present war the British… failed to evaluate properly the importance of the combined arms in armored units."
Even with the recognition of combined arms potential, the fact was that there were no Armor leaders anywhere in the United States Army; the infantry based doctrine of tank employment remained essentially unchanged. The antics of Senior Army leaders exemplify the ramifications of their uniformed and tunnel versioned thinking. Pride and greed led to events and the deaths of soldiers that never should have happened had there been competent senior Armor officers who were free of the medaling influences of the Infantry and to a lesser extent the Cavalry.
After being witness to the events in Europe, the fact remained that as late as June 1941 there were only 66 medium tanks in the United States Army. Lend-lease American tanks provided to the British and Russian and were in direct combat with German tanks and their doctrine, yet back in American tank plants, they continued to take no notice of the effects of battle damage inflicted on U.S. designed tanks or the needless deaths caused by rivet construction of armor plate. Low velocity guns were standard tank issue through 1944. The first American tank actions of the war which occurred in the Philippine Islands, were disastrous against inferior Imperial Japanese armor. American tank crews did not receive training on the tanks they drove into battle. Neither did they receive ammunition to zero their tanks cannons. The list of amateur mistakes in the Philippines is lengthy and resulted in the surrender of two entire American Armor Battalions.
One might think the information given the Army after the fall of Bataan would have been acted on. This did not happen and the next large scale American Armor action of the war at Kasserine Pass was also a massacre of American tankers.
Another long forgotten issue for the new Armored Force was the fact that American politicians were giving away the very tanks that American tank crews needed to train with and to equip their divisions. The Lend-Lease Act stripped the tankers of their own domestically produced tanks. Some of the best tanks available were shipped to Communist forces in Socialist Russia who were ideologically the same or worse than the Nazi Socialist Fascists.
"I will bear true faith and allegiance"
The truth of this matter is that Senior American Army Officers made a collective series of bad decisions and even outright lies for which they were not held personally responsible for. The M-4 Sherman tank that became the mainstay of American armor forces were deliberately denied high velocity anti-tank cannons. Instead, existing high velocity anti-tank cannons were assigned another new combat arm called tank destroyers.
Tank Destroyers were the brain child of General McNair and was yet another step taken to reduce the importance of the Armored Force. The announced concept was that the Tank Destroyer Force would take the anti-tank fight to the enemy and that our tanks would continue to provide support to the infantry. The doctrine overlooked the fact that German tankers would never leave our inferior Shermans alone to do their job unmolested.
The concept is laughable but nobody in the Armor Force was authorized to laugh. It is appreciably the same as saying that the job of fighter planes is to support the advance of the infantry and let barrage balloons deal with enemy fighters. It does not make since even to the uninitiated. In 1943, the Chief of Armor Major General Alvin C. Gillem Jr. publicly proclaimed that the Sherman tank was superior to the German Tiger Tank: "A vital factor in the success of American and Allied armor has been the consistently improving quality of vehicles and equipment. The M-4 (Sherman) medium tank, unquestionably the finest tank now in combat, is one of the many tributes to American manufacturing genius born in this war. The Sherman tank has proven itself in many ways the superior even of the German Mark VI or "Tiger."
Notice that this publicly printed remark reveals that the general wants everyone to believe that the Sherman tank is better than the German Tiger tank. This statement is reputed by virtually every single WW II tank crewman. The perpetuated lie was carried forward by the Army until January of 1945. During the last year of the war, the following debate was recorded by Army leaders and is summed up by the Center of Military History: "They emphatically wanted no more M4's with the 75mm gun. When Colonel Colby tried to sell the battalion commanders of the 3rd Armored Division on the Shermans they already had (being unable to offer them anything better on a large scale immediately), ran into a hornet's nest. After the heavy casualties of the winter, they were beginning to regard the 75mm Sherman as death traps."
Public outrage was intense and finally altered the concept of American tanks as tank fighters as well as infantry supporters. "Shortly before the drive into Germany, the American press broke the story that American Tanks were inferior to those of the enemy. Hanson W. Baldwin of the New York Times and the editor of the Washington Post demanded to be told why."
It was never an either or question. Tanks armed with high velocity guns have continued to support infantry operations to this very day. Once again, the infantry mind set of Senior Army officers gave them the understanding that high velocity cannons were only good at delivering inert armor piercing shot. They failed to grasp that with the coming of larger and larger bore diameters, the same projectiles could be filled with anti-infantry payloads and still fire inert, high-velocity, anti-tank solid shot. This type of thinking is a direct result of a lack of knowledge that could have been gained from tank research and development in the interwar years. The un-informed Seniors Army officers of the day also were the ones who the Congress was receiving their information from. All of the needed gun/ ammunition technology already existed in the Navy and was available to the Army of the day.
The Post World War II Years
In 1946, the Tank Destroyer Forces were declared as obsolete. While tank destroyers had proven their versatility and efficiency in combat, especially in secondary roles, their long-term utility was becoming doubtful by 1945 in light of changes to Army doctrine. Their primary role was to destroy enemy armor, but this role was being usurped by tanks, as had already happened in many other armies. The most powerful tank destroyer to be fielded, the M36, mounted a 90 mm gun; the same armament was carried by the M26 Pershing heavy tank, which was beginning to reach front-line units by the end of hostilities. The M26 was re-designated as a medium tank shortly after the end of the war, becoming the standard vehicle of armored units, and further reducing the need for any specialist anti-tank capacity. In effect, tank destroyers were used just like tanks in many cases. Study of ammunition expenditures shows that tank destroyers in Europe fired about 11 rounds of high-explosive (HE) ammunition for every round of armor-piercing (AP) ammunition, showing conclusively that they were used for general support duties far more often than as anti-tank assets. Had research and development been ongoing during the interwar years the Army might have had a tank like the M26 in the early 1940s. This would have given the Army the capability to counter German armor. Beginning in 1920 and all along the way, the pride, bias, and ignorance concerning tanks on the part of the dominate Infantry branch, resulted in the needless deaths of infantrymen, cavalrymen, tank destroyer crews, and tank crews alike.
Reader Note: M26 tank was named after General John J. Pershing. This is ironic since on 31 October 1919 at a House Committee meeting on Military Affairs, General Pershing spoke out against the continuation of the Tank Corps. He stated that the best future use of tanks should be under the direction of the Infantry branch. Congress agreed, and this decision doomed the prospect of meaningful tank research and development in the years leading up to World War II. Therefore ended the prospect of a tank like the M26 being available to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II. Once again soldier’s lives were lost due to branch bias and a lack of vision of a senior leader.
After World War II, the Army began to reduce its forces again. This led to the Army Reorganization Act of 1950. Though the act made Armor a separate branch, senior leaders failed to learn from all previous history on the subject. Subsequently, the Army decided to merge the Cavalry with the Armored Force. Infantry mentality failed to comprehend that each branch must be developed independently. They instead chose to merge two combat arms into one. Once again Congress had listened to Senior Infantry Army officers. Despite this fact, and to the detriment to the Cavalry, tank and Armor development would thrive for the next five decades. It is impossible to say how the Cavalry might have developed and what contributions and battlefield reconnaissance breakthroughs they could have made to the conservation of our fighting ground forces had they been allowed to evolve independently...but that is another story.
American tanks of the Armored Force grew into the best armored fighting force the world has ever seen. No foreign combat force could stand against the might of American tanks and their incredible doctrine. All communist forces and Islamic forces arrayed over the decades were soundly crushed every time the tankers took the field.
In the Korean War, the lessons that tanks are necessary to fight other tanks and to spearhead offensive war were re-emphasized. It was further demonstrated that Armor is able to operate in terrain that is generally unsuitable for tank employment. The Korean campaign also supported the contention that when one force has armor and the other does not, that force without armor will lose (see Armor in the Korean War).
During the Vietnam War the decision to deploy U.S. Armor units to Vietnam was made only after a careful and exhaustive study done in 1966. It seems that the many of the lessons learned in the Pacific Theater during World War II were shelved away and forgotten as soon as the war ended. Contrary to the impression of the U.S. Army planners, the study found that armored forces could indeed operate effectively in Vietnam. In 1967, soon after armored forces arrived they proved to the critics that their mobility, firepower, and protection could play an effective role in Vietnam (see Success of Armor in Vietnam).
During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm the U.S. fielded the best trained tankers the world had ever seen. The Armor Force proved that the doctrine that had been worked on and refined for many years worked. Enter American politicians and lawyers. After the highly successful 2003 invasion of Iraq, It was decided in Washington not to pursue conventional warfare on a declared enemy. Proponents of Special Operations emanating from the Infantry Branch would assert that any future conflict could be won without a standing and combat ready conventional fighting force.
Tank doctrine consisted of the 17 series of manuals that covered tank tactics and tank gunnery. These manuals had been created in 1940 and had the benefit of 40 years of input from the field. Unfortunately in 2005, TRADOC made the decision to change the number designations of the Field Manuals. Therefore, during a time of war, confusion was introduced and the famous FM 17-12 was changed to FM 3-20.12 which is apparently just a random number. To add insult to injury, in 2006 another flawed decision was made. It was the decision to scrap the finest tank gunnery manual ever made. The idea was to incorporate Abrams Tank, Bradley Fighting vehicle and truck gunnery into one manual. The manual is called FM 3-20.21 HEAVY BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM (HBCT) GUNNERY. TRADOC spent millions of dollars at a time of war change settled doctrine. The result was that Armor units coming back from counter-insurgency duty had the extra burden of trying to figure out how to conduct gunnery in accordance with an incoherent manual. More than 4 years later, the manual was still a mess and virtually unusable. At that point civilian contractors were hired to help get the manual into some sort of useable form. This added even more cost to the development on this manual. A more reasonable and far less costly course of action would have been to simply develop a truck gunnery manual.
The recent stunning abdication for the responsibility for our collective national security condemns a future generation to massive casualties in the next conventional war. Since 2004, the Army has halted any real evaluations on the relative combat readiness of our Armored Division. Further, most tank crew sustainment training and tank training in general has been acutely retarded. Presently the United States does not have even one Armor unit in a combat ready status. The structure of our Armored forces have been so polluted that even if they were re-equipped and re-trained they could not fight effectively in a conventional war.
Repeating Mistakes of History
In this new century, the Armor community finds itself in a very similar situation as it did in 1920. Massive amounts of armored warfare development and doctrine hangs by a thread. Today there are no real tank battalions and the once vaunted American Armor Force does not exist as an experienced force at the time of this writing. Infantry officers are in many cases tank platoon leaders and even commanding Armor companies and above. All units are merged into Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) and the long standing Home of Armor has been moved to Fort Benning (the Home of Infantry). Reportedly, during the move of the Armor School Library many documents were thrown the dumpster. It was said that there wasn’t time to sift through the boxes and catalog the documents. Currently, Infantry commanders of Brigade Combat Teams are pushing for Armor soldiers and leaders to attend infantry based service schools such as Ranger and Pathfinder. This will take these soldiers and leaders away from the very little time they have to train on Armor core competencies. Tank crews have been converted to dismounted peace keepers and counter-insurgency forces for many years now. The majority of American tank commanders have never qualified as a tank crewman let alone commanded a real tank. The tank commanders of today that have qualified did so on the greatly watered down FM 3-20.21 tank tables. So effective has the covert effort and cover up been that the Armor Force has once again been effectively dissolved. All of this is going on as Red China is in the midst of their biggest military buildup in history. Today visionary Armor leaders like Chaffee and Patton do not exist or have not yet revealed themselves due to fear of retribution. If such leaders don’t step forward the U.S. Army is on a path to repeat the mistakes of history again.