Military Officer - June 2007 - (Page 66)

T In the beginning begins on the stark battleﬁelds of World War I. The tank was a European invention — with a nautical bent. When a British ofﬁcer recommended the development of some sort of armored combat vehicle (the machine gun reigned as the king of battle), it was First Lord of the Admiralty Winston S. Churchill who championed its development. The British Royal Navy sponsored the testing of this “land ship” in 1915, and to this day the tank has retained nautical terms such as bow, hull, and hatch. H E STORY OF T H E TA N K Against the machine gun and the entrenched enemy of World War I, this was sufﬁcient. It became a good thing to be inside or near a tank while attacking enemy infantry troops under ﬁre — and infantry support was born. Despite the tank’s promise, mechanical failures nearly made it a short-lived novelty, and no one had ﬁgured yet exactly how the tank would work tactically. French and British forces could not mount sustained drives, but the Americans were undeterred. American Expeditionary Forces Commander Army Maj. Gen. John J. Pershing requested that production begin on 600 heavy and 1,200 light tanks. Detailed plans were approved for a Tank Corps. But at the end of the war, tanks were in short supply, and U.S. tanks never made it to Europe — although American tank units did. Then-Maj. George S. Patton became one of the ﬁrst soldiers assigned to the newly established U.S. Army Tank Corps, headquartered at Camp George E. Meade, Md. Patton created a tank school in France and organized the ﬁrst tank brigade. As a lieutenant colonel, Patton led French-built Renault FT-17 light tanks into battle at St. Mihiel in September 1918. During one major attack, his tanks got so far ahead of the advancing infantry they had to turn around, re-form, and wait for the ground troops. Meanwhile Patton's contemporary, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was organizing a heavy-tank unit — but the war ended before he got into battle with it. In the immediate postwar era, the Army all but gave up on the tank. The National Defense Act of 1920 abolished the Tank Corps, and all tanks were reassigned to the infantry. The ﬁrst tanks were shipped to France’s static front as a secret weapon. To keep these land ships under wraps, they were labeled as “water carriers” or “water tanks.” The tank was born. The tank brought greater mobility and an imposing presence to combat. These ﬁrst clunky armored ﬁghting vehicles rumbled across bullet- and wire-strewn trench lines Sept. 15, 1916, when the British employed 49 Mark I tanks, weighing nearly 30 tons apiece, near the Somme. A year later came the success the Allies had hoped the tank would bring: Roughly 400 tanks broke through a sizeable portion of the front at Cambrai. But it was in 1918 that a mass of 600 Allied tanks caused the German units to crumple for the ﬁrst time. Supporting riﬂemen Patton and others wanted an independent Tank Corps and thought the advantages offered by armor would be lost if tanks served alongside foot soldiers. The War Department saw things differently, and in 1922 it proclaimed the tank’s primary mission PHOTO: PREVIOUS SPREAD, PFC. MICHAEL S. CIFUENTES, USMC Early tanks did not feature the distinctive heavy gun; they were simply large, tracked vehicles that used their sheer size and weight to enable infantry to break through enemy lines. 66 MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2007

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Military Officer - June 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Getting the Best Care Stand By Me Promise for PTSD Cover Story: Heavy Duty Unified Medical Command Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Member Services MOAA Calendar MOAA Scholarship Donors Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - June 2007

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