Yeide - The Infantrys Armor: The U.S. Armys Separate Tank Battalions in World War II

Harry Yeide

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Chapter 3 ............................ 44

Chapter 4 ................................. 66

Chapter 5 ................................... 95

Chapter 6 ........................ 117

Chapter 7 ..................................... 134

Chapter 9 ................................ 168

Chapter 10 ................................ 189

Chapter 11 ................................ 212

Chapter 12 ................................. 240

Chapter 13 ....................................... 252

Chapter 14 ................ 261

Chapter 15 ......................... 287

Chapter 16 ............ 304

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'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 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.

"In August [1943], two weeks were spent out at Hell Cat Camp. It was a battle training camp and mighty rough. Dust lay all over afoot thick, and the men were perpetually covered in and out with it. There was usually so much dust in our throats that when we spit, a ball of dirt came out."

-History of Company "C", 44th Tank Battalion, 1942-1945

the U.S. Army's separate armored battalions in World War II labored in obscurity by comparison with the flashy armored divisions, but they overwhelmingly carried the heavier burden in the grim, global struggle to destroy the Axis Powers. The armored divisions were few in number; attracted war correspondents; frequently had dashing, well-known commanders; and flaunted memorable nicknames, such as the 1st "Old Ironsides," 2d "Hell on Wheels," and 3d "Spearhead" Armored Divisions. The separate battalions almost always worked for somebody else's division, were led by unknown lieutenant colonels, and were labeled like generic products, usually a forgettable three-digit number beginning with "7" If a battalion had a nickname, it was likely to be something like the "Seven-Five-Zero."