The Infantry's Armor: The U.S. Army's Separate Tank Battalions in World War II

620 Pages·2010·9.27 MB·English

by  Yeide

THE
INFANTRY'S
ARMOR
THE
INFANTRY'S
ARMOR
The U.S. Army's Separate Tank
Battalions
in World War II
Harry Yeide

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ........................................ vi
Chapter General McNair's Offspring 1 ............................
Chapter 2 First Blood .........................................15
Chapter 3 Beachheads and Mountains ............................ 44
Chapter 4 The Battle for Rome ................................. 66
Chapter 5 Lethal Sea Turtles ................................... 95
Chapter 6 Saipan: Bookend to Normandy ........................ 117
Chapter 7 DDs at D-Day ..................................... 134
Chapter 8 The Bocage: A School of Very Hard Knocks ............. 146
Chapter 9 Open-Field Running ................................ 168
Chapter 10 Hitting the West Wall ................................ 189
Chapter 11 Hitler's Last Gamble ................................ 212
Chapter 12 The Reich Overrun ................................. 240
Chapter 13 Jungle Heat ....................................... 252
Chapter 14 The Philippines: Back to Where It Began ................ 261
Chapter 15 Okinawa: The Last Battlefield ......................... 287
Chapter 16 A Mission Accomplished and Legacy Secured ............ 304
Appendix A: Battalion Profiles ................................... 308
Appendix B: Separate Armored Battalions by Campaign .............. 330
Notes ............................................ 333
Glossary .......................................... 369
Bibliography ...................................... 370
Acknowledgments .................................. 380
Index ............................................ 381
INTRODUCTION
'his work tells the stories of the tank battalions that fought in North Africa,
Sicily, Italy, and the European theater, as well as the tank, amphibian tank, and
amphibian tractor battalions-all manned by armored force tankers-that battled in
the Pacific. It is a portrait of those battalions as much as it is a history. The book
explores how they fought the war, as often as possible in the tankers' own words.
It is impossible to provide a running account of each armored battalion; it was a
big war! To the extent possible, I have selected material that either illustrates
experiences common to many battalions or highlights the more noteworthy
experience of an individual unit or sector of the front. Readers interested in a
day-by-day account of the eighteen "land tank" battalions that fought in the
Pacific-albeit with no coverage of the armored amphibians-should consult Gene
Eric Salecker's Rolling Thunder against the Rising Sun.
The quality of the surviving records varies tremendously from battalion to
battalion. Some, such as the 743d Tank Battalion, left exhaustive records, while
others left skimpy and uninformative files. The officers of some battalions, such
as the 708th Amphibian Tank Battalion, wrote articles for professional journals
that fleshed out their outfits' histories. Finally, veterans and interested members
of succeeding generations have gathered information on a few battalions and
made that available on the internet, such as the remarkable website dedicated as
of this writing to the 192d Tank Battalion, created by the students of Proviso
East High School in cooperation with veterans of the battalion. The disparity in
surviving information largely accounts for the relative frequency of citations
drawn from the experiences of the various units.
I recognize that even the original accounts are not always entirely accurate.
Particularly in cases where something went wrong, such as a breakdown in
tankinfantry teamwork, the various parties are likely to have come away with-
and recorded-different views of reality. The reader should know that this book is
as close as I could get to what actually happened.
I offer one suggestion to the reader: keep in mind that the success or loss of
any given tank was a drama for the men inside. Newly arriving battalions
any given tank was a drama for the men inside. Newly arriving battalions
generally kept close track of individuals. After all, these were men that the
recording officers knew and had trained with for months. As the war dragged on
and casualties became routine, the tank to some extent became the collective
surrogate for the crew in the historical record.
This work is not a history of American military operations worldwide,
although those operations are obviously the framework in which the story of the
separate armored battalions unfolds. I have relied heavily on the excellent works
of the U.S. Army Center of Military History to relate the big picture. Reliance on
U.S. Army perspectives introduces certain biases, but that is a risk I willingly
accept. Moreover, I note cases in which other accounts conflict with the official
histories.
I do pay attention to the feedback readers give, and one critique of my earlier
books is that I have not devoted much space to discussing doctrine. Here's why:
the lesson I have drawn from looking at how armored and tank destroyer
battalions and mechanized cavalry squadrons and troops actually fought the war
is that doctrine generally went out the window in favor of a de facto doctrine
developed on the battlefield and mixed with old, familiar patterns of doing
business. The guy in the turret stopped caring very much about what the manual
said. Modifications to standing doctrine eventually caught up, but not in time to
be inculcated into units going into combat. Still, this work contains more on
doctrine than did Steel Victory.
I have hewed as closely as practicable to the original text of the records
where they are quoted but have taken some small liberties with texts drawn from
the military records and personal accounts in order to correct grammatical errors
and spelling mistakes and introduce some consistency in references to unit
designations, equipment, dates, and numbers.
I have used the word "jeep" throughout to describe the quarter-ton truck
because of the term's universal familiarity. Tankers called it a "peep" The
Armored Force as an organization was renamed the Armored Command on 2
July 1943 and the Armored Center on 20 February 1944. I have used "Armored
Force" to describe the totality of armored units throughout this book.