Thread by @usacac

ARMOR (Part II)

During the Interwar Period, a lot of theoretical work was conducted with regard to the employment of tanks, but very “little tangible progress in tank production and tank tactics in the United States” was made.

“Production was limited to a few hand-tooled test models, only thirty-five of which were built between 1920 and 1935.”

“Regarding the use of tanks with infantry, the official doctrine of 1939 largely reiterated that of 1923. It maintained that ‘as a rule, tanks are employed to assist the advance of infantry foot troops, either preceding or accompanying the infantry assault echelon.’”

Among the changes stemming from the National Defense Act of 1920, tank units “were based primarily upon assignment of a tank company to each infantry and cavalry division.”

“This meant 13 separate companies, numbered the 1st through the 13th, but only ten were organized. Also provided were 5 tank battalions, the 15th through the 19th, although only three were ever activated, and the Headquarters 1st Tank Group.”

Most of these units evolved from our WWI Tank Corps organizations.

In July 1919, after most of the post-WWI demobilization was complete, the Tank Corps was reduced to a mere 154 officers and 2508 soldiers. “This cut represented a serious loss of trained personnel whose experience with tanks could not be replaced.”

“Those who remained found their professional futures clouded by rumors of a War Department intention to subordinate the Tank Corps to the Infantry.” Those rumors proved true, as we discussed on Saturday.

After WWI there were also “Army-wide grade reductions” that “returned most officers to their prewar ranks” and “this gutted the Tank Corps leadership.”

“Regular Army officers had been promoted rapidly. Patton and Eisenhower both had risen from captain to colonel. While their influence had risen with their rank, it now similarly declined.”

“Patton, again a captain, could not retain command of the tank units he had led in battle.”

“Patton’s role as a tank instructor and combat commander provided him with a degree of experience not shared by most Tank Corps officers, but his postwar writing revealed the limits of that experience.”

In the May 1920 Infantry Journal, “Patton argued that enthusiasm for the tank suffered from inadequate knowledge of its use and potential.”

Patton wasn’t developing a new theory of warfare, but rather he “combined the prevailing desire to avoid trench warfare with the demonstrated value of tanks supporting infantry.”

Leadership above Patton would focus their arguments on “the valuable contribution of the tank to the defeat of Germany” in WWI. They were in agreement with the concept of using tanks to support infantry but also argued that the tank could fill other roles.

Among those other roles – “exploitation, pursuit, interdiction of enemy movement, raids in conjunction with horse cavalry, and advance guard.”

But most importantly, the Tank Corps leadership “did not believe the tank would realize its full potential if its development were subordinated to an existing combat arm.”

With the tanks placed under Infantry after the National Defense Act of 1920, they now had to accept “their new legal role as infantry support weapons.” We deployed tanks across the US, “in small concentrations with parent Infantry units.”

One thing we quickly learned following WWI was that, in refining doctrine, our concepts “reflected the Tank Corps’ early dependence on the French for much of its training and equipment, as well as the continued respect within the US Army for the French military.”

“The tactical roles assigned to American tanks paralleled those performed by their French counterparts. Rockenbach [senior tank officer] considered the similarity between French and American postwar tank doctrines indicative of the correctness of American efforts.”

Despite efforts made at the Tank School, armor development in the 1920s was very slow.

“The tanks themselves contributed to the slow progress of tank development. The large number of M1917 light tanks and Mark VIII heavy tanks created an illusion of tank strength that hid the need for funding new designs suited to" future war.

“The number of vehicles also did not address the tank fleet’s poor mechanical condition. The M1917 suffered from major defects that required an estimated 225 man-hours per tank to rectify.”

“The FT-17s and Mark Vs brought to the US with the returning American Expeditionary Forces also required major overhauling. No tanks were battle ready when the National Defense Act of 1920 became law.”

Those we had were unsatisfactory.

“Too few Mark Vs existed; the Mark VIII was too heavy, too long, and exceptionally slow; the M1917 possessed limited firepower and poor visibility, and it was too small.”

“Both the Mark VIII and M1917 proved mechanically unreliable, and the continuous investment in money and man-hours to maintain them constituted an onerous financial drain.”

“Maintenance expenses for these vehicles further reduced the already limited funding available for the development of new tanks. To control these expenses, tank participation in field exercises was reduced.”

From 1920 to 1932, the overall budget allotted to mechanization was $2-million, which amounted to about $167,000 per year for that period.

A Mark VIII cost $85,000.

The Ordnance Department could afford to build “only one experimental model per year between 1925 and 1931. The Army’s tank fleet thus became more obsolescent and more expensive to maintain with each passing year.”

“The effective design, development, and production of a tank necessitated the cooperation of the Ordnance Department, the Infantry, and the General Staff; but not until 1922 did the latter issue guidelines for tank development.”

In fact, the Field Service Regulations of 1923 “disavowed widespread usage of tanks because of their exclusive suitability to positional warfare.”

But this perception of tanks stemmed from the General Staff failing to establish requirements for new tank designs suited to the current operational environment.

Recognizing the General Staff was going to take time to come around, “Rockenbach continued to develop his own design ideas. He envisioned the design and development of a tank as a two-step process: 1) determination of the tank’s function and 2) creation of a compatible design.”

As for the function, many agreed that the tank should assist “an infantry advance through artificial obstacles and defensive lines” and that “tanks should be designed to accompany the infantry everywhere, negotiate prepared defenses, and withstand small-arms fire.”

Most were in agreement that the trench warfare experienced in WWI was an anomaly, not indicative of the future of warfare. Think: “Mexico, not Flanders” – tanks would require more cross-country mobility.

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