This two-part article traces the history of the tactical employment of the tank. In this part, the author relates the important occurrences in the history of the tank from its origin in 1918 to the end of the Second World War. Next issue, we will continue with a look at armor tactics in the Arab-Israeli Wars and conclude with current Soviet and Nato armor doctrine.

While a good many articles have appeared in popular magazines concerning the development of the tank as a weapon of war, most of them have tended to concentrate on technical developments, detailing the various improvements in armor, firepower, mobility, etc. I would rather examine the development of the tank from a broader perspective, considering why it was originally developed, how this affected its employment, and where this trend is likely to lead in the near future.

The Legacy of World War I

It is axiomatic that armies train their soldiers to fight the previous war. This is hardly surprising, and stems from a well- founded pragmatism more than from any obstinate traditionalism. Speculation as to what the next war will be like is as often wrong as right, and basing a training program exclusively on such speculation runs the risk of training an army completely wrong. On the other hand, a war is seldom completely different than its predecessor, and basing a training program on the experiences of the previous war will insure that a large proportion of the training will indeed be valuable in the next one.

The period after World War One is something of an exception to this general rule. Few, if any, military men wanted to refight the First World War. Not only was the first war a horror of pointless slaughter, is was also an exercise in frustration to the military man. The professional soldier spends a good deal of his life training to do a job. When war comes, he sets out to do that job as best he can. I say that World War One was an exercise in frustration because in that war the professional soldier was not permitted to do his job. This was principally due to the development of the machine gun.

The progressive development of the rifle had lead to vast changes in infantry tactics over the course of the previous century. As the rifle's accuracy, range, and rate of fire increased, infantry was forced to fight in more and more dispersed formations. The machine gun allowed the defender to disperse his manpower sufficiently to insure its survival while retaining the advantage of massed firepower.

Since the machine gun was much heavier than personal weapons, it was almost exclusively a weapon of the defense. Since it was cheap to produce, simple to operate, and required only a small crew, it could be employed in great numbers and ultimately frustrated all attempts to overwhelm it with infantry assaults. Since the body of military experience dictated that only the offensive was decisive, offensives were repeatedly launched only to bog down in the slaughter of the infantry assault waves, to the immense frustration of the military leaders of both sides.

Deadlock

The tank was developed by the western allies as a means of breaking this deadlock. Most readers will be aware that the term tank was an early code word used as an attempt to mislead German intelligence as to the true purpose of the project.

Less well known is the true original name of the tank, the Armored Machine Gun Destroyer. (I understand than an even earlier designation was the Weapons Carrier, but this was dropped almost immediately due to the strenuous objections of a member of the government at being posted to the WC committee.) Generally you can tell a good deal about what a thing is intended for by what its inventors call it, and the term Armored Machine Gun Destroyer speaks volumes as to the intended role of the tank.

The tank was not intended to be, in and of itself, an offensive weapon. Infantry was the basic offensive arm. The tank was merely intended to destroy enemy machine guns so that the infantry could do its job. This purpose is surely echoed in the complaints of early tank commanders that they were hampered in their advance by being forced to wait for the infantry.

In point of fact, the early tanks achieved great effect against enemy infantry, but this was due more to the sheer surprise the defenders experienced at seeing an armored phalanx of lumbering juggernauts lurching across No Man's Land, apparently invulnerable to the fire of the defenders. Countermeasures were quickly developed to deal with allied tanks, improvements were made to counter these developments, new measures were devised, and the cycle began which continues to this date.

The Inter-War Years

Between the two wars, two fairly distinct schools of through grew up as to the proper employment of the tank. The infantry school comprised the majority of the officers of each nation's army and based its arguments on the sound experience of both the later part of the First World War, and ultimately, on the Spanish Civil War. A summary of their position would be:

Infantry remains the most versatile combat arm, able to directly engage and defeat the enemy, and capable of seizing and holding ground. The tank is a necessary augmentation to infantry offensive capabilility, and thus tanks should be used in direct support of infantry formations. Tanks, when used in massed formations, become victims of concentrated anti-tank defenses, and suffer maximum losses while failing to realize their maximum combat potential.

The tank school consisted of officers with differing opinions. This school of thought held that:

Tanks are the most powerful close combat weapons on the modern battlefield. They carry the most powerful direct fire weapons in the most mobile mounts available. Their armor provides them with a degree of survivability in a hostile environment that no other unit has. Thus the burden of offensive effort will fall on the tanks; to achieve decisive concentrations, and to practice the principle of economy of force, they must be grouped in large formations.

The prominent proponents of the Tank School can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In France they were Estienne and, much later, DeGaulle. In Great Britain they were Martel, Liddel-Hart, and, the most influential of all, Fuller. The growing influence of these men can best be seen by the following chronology:

1927: British form the Experimental Mechanized Force for exercises. EMF is approximately brigade sized with 49 tanks, 20 armored cars, and a machine gun battalion, plus supporting artillery.

1931: British exercise a complete tank brigade by radio.

1933: French form the first mechanized cavalry brigade, later converted to Division Leger Mecanique (DLM). This was intended to consist of 220 tanks, 40 armored cars, 3 infantry battalions plus artillery.

1934: British form first permanent Tank Brigade with 120 tanks and no infantry.

1935: Germany forms three Panzer divisions, each intended to have 300 tanks, five battalions of infantry, plus supporting artillery.

1937: British form the Mobile Division, intended to have 450 tanks, one battalion of infantry, plus artillery.

1938: French form first Division Cuirassier (DCR) intended to have 140 tanks, one battalion of infantry, plus artillery.

Up to this point I have avoided mention of the German army and where it stood in this controversy. Generally, the German officers responsible for the creation of the Panzer Divisions are credited as the most vigorous and successful proponents of the tank school, and they certainly seemed so during the war. However, with the benefit of hindsight it becomes clear that what was happening in Germany between the wars was the development of an entirely new school: Combined Arms.

A brief examination of the three division-sized armored formations created by the allies between the wars --the DLM, the Mobile Division, and the DCR -- shows a marked and steady decrease in the amount of infantry in the units.

Panzer

By contrast, the Panzer division contained a very strong motorized infantry element. This is but the tip of the iceberg. The three men most responsible for the creation of the armored forces in Germany, List, von Thoma, and Guderian, had a different background than those in the west.

In the First World War Germany had successfully broken the deadlock imposed by the machine gun without extensive use of the tank. Instead, an improved infantry doctrine with which the Stoss Division is generally associated was used. Additionally, infantry had been able to retain its mobility on the Russian and Italian fronts, in contrast to the Western front. Consequently, there was less of a tendancy to view the tank as a panacea and more to examine it objectively as one more weapon.

Guderian's writings are particularly illuminating in this regard, for although he is often (and I believe incorrectly) associated with the Tank School, he comments in his memoirs, "In this year, 1929, I became convinced that tanks working on their own or in conjunction with infantry could never achieve decisive importance."

The doctrine that the Germans developed was that of numerous combined arms teams, consisting of tanks, motorized infantry, anti-tank guns, and artillery operating as a cohesive whole. The Panzer division was the element that would control these teams in combat; the teams being formed from the component regiments of the division. The tactics used were essentially the same as those employed by the Stoss Division in 1918: exploit weaknesses, bypass strongpoints, and above all, keep moving. The combined arms battle group (Kampfgruppe) would use its organic motorization to continue movement in the face of light opposition, and a high density of radios to maintain control in a fluid battlefield situation. The truly revolutionary nature of the Panzer division was thus not in its tanks, but in its doctrine of mutually supporting teams, a lesson which was lost on the allies for some time.

The Early War Years

In September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland and in six week's time destroyed one of the largest and best equipped armed forces in the world. That this was the case is often forgotten today due to the speed and magnitude of the German victory. That Germany was able to accomplish so much in such a short time against so potent a foe paralyzed the world with both fear and amazement, and seemed the ultimate vindication of the Tank School. Certainly the most visible differences between the German and Polish armed forces were that Germany possessed many more tanks than did Poland, and employed them in large armored formations. Consequently, the West raced to form more armored divisions to meet the forthcoming Axis assault.

Of course, Germany's military was not nearly so unified in its assessment of the potential of the Panzer division as was believed in the west. In fact, of the fourteen motorized divisions which invaded Poland, only six were true Panzer divisions (and one of these a purely temporary ad hoc grouping of independent units).

Of the other eight, four were motorized infantry divisions (a concession to the Infantry) and four were Light divisions (a concession to the Cavalry - Light divisions were manned by the cavalry and were an awkward mixture of tanks, armored cars, and mobile infantry).

Following the invasion of Poland, however, the Light divisions were converted to Panzer divisions, and the motorized infantry divisions were reorganized to better carry out a supporting role to the Panzers. The reason for this was that Poland surprised the majority of the Germans nearly as much as it did everyone else, and in the process succeeded in quelling most of the opposition to the growth of the Panzer forces. (I say most advisedly, since the Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry repeatedly renewed the struggle to regain control of some areas of armored vehicle production, control, and deployment from Schnelltruppen - Mobile Troops - throughout the war.)

Nevertheless, by the invasion of France, Germany was able to field ten Panzer divisions totalling 2,887 tanks. By contrast, the Allies fielded 3,808 tanks in France. Many of these were not in armored formations. Some 1,962 French tanks were still with 25 independent tank battalions allocated to the infantry support role, as were 210 light and 100 heavy British tanks. But the Allies still had over 1200 French and 330 British tanks concentrated in divisional armored formations (one British armored division, 3 DLM's and 4 DCR's).

Fighting a defensive contest, these eight Allied armored divisions should have been more than a match for the ten German Panzer divisions, especially considering the qualitative superiority of the Allied tanks.

Such was not the case. Where individual tanks were pitted against each other, the honors came off about even. When the British employed a regiment of Matilda infantry tanks in a counterattack at Arras, they achieved almost total success due to their heavy armor which made them almost invulnerable to German anti-tank fire. But where armored unit met armored unit, there was scarcely a contest. Allied training did not include combined arms cooperation, and thus where armored units were employed in mass, they universally lacked the support of other troops. French armored divisions were systematically broken up into their component arms by local commanders and sent to different parts of the front. The Allied armored divisions were never really defeated in open battle; they simply melted away as they were fed piecemeal into the maelstrom. In the end, Allied armor was totally defeated.

North Africa

The next contest between the Allies and the Germans occurred in North Africa, and although in the final analysis North Africa had little strategic importance, it served to illustrate the trend in armored doctrine. The Allies, in this case the British, were remarkably slow to learn the lesson of France and Poland, perhaps due to the very nature of the campaign in North Africa.

For one thing, the terrain in Egypt and Libya was ideally suited to emphasize the naval analogies popular with the tank proponents. Martel, then commander of Commonwealth armored forces, made much of the idea of the individual tank crews fighting their solitary war against the enemy in the same manner as the crew of an aircraft or a naval vessel, and nowhere was the countryside more conducive to such an analogy than in the rocky plains of North Africa.

It was easy to look out across such a plain and envision the "fleets" of massed tanks maneuvering in formation and delivering broadsides as so graphically described by Fuller. Consequently, the British armor fought alone. Armored brigades were committed en masse as units and when the armor went in, the infantry watched. By contrast, the German combined arms doctrine was found to be every bit as sound in the desert as it had been in Europe. Infantry was somewhat less useful, but the importance of integrating anti-tank guns and artillery in the Kampfgruppen was as important as ever, and remained a technique beyond the capability of British organization for some time.

Robert Crisp's excellent account of the Crusader battle, Brazen Chariots, unintentionally provides an interesting comment on this. Early on in the book Crisp spends some time discussing the belligerents and comments that the British never did develop a counter to the German practice of employing anti-tank guns well forward with their tanks.

Toward the end of the book Crisp finds his troop of tanks part of a small recon force, also containing a troop of armored cars and a troop of anti-tank guns, and observes that he could not possibly envision a situation in which the anti-tank guns could be used in cooperation with his tanks. Crisp is not to be blamed for this unconscious irony, as it is far too much to expect junior officers to formulate new doctrine on the spot.

The habit of combined arms cooperation was not part of British training, and as a result British armor was consistently defeated by German armor generally inferior to it in numbers and often inferior in quality.

The Russians

The Russian campaign, although immensely important to a history of World War Two and to the technical development of tanks in that period, is much less important to a study of the development of armored tactics. German doctrine did not change significantly during the campaign as it was founded on essentially sound assumptions to begin with. Indeed, the events of the campaign confirmed the thesis that a numerically and technically inferior tank force could defeat a superior force of tanks if the inferior force was employed as part of a combined arms team. It would not be fair to say that this lesson was lost on the Russians, although they did not embrace it as fully as did the west in the end.

This was due to several factors. First, and most importantly, the need to quickly create an army to replace the terrible losses of 1941 did not allow lavish and detailed training in close cooperation between arms. It was far more important to put as many units in the field as possible; as a result, these units tended to be "pure" units: pure tank brigades, pure motorized infantry brigades, pure anti-tank artillery regiments, etc.

As these units became experienced, selected brigades were grouped into Mechanized Corps, approximately divisional sized units and probably the most balanced combined arms formations of the war. But such units were necessarily rare, and the bulk of the offensive responsibility had to be filled by massed tank formations, which suffered great losses but accomplished much by sheer mass.

To this end the Russians formed tank corps which were primarily tanks and, ultimately, tank armies formed of several tank corps and usually one mechanized corps. The tactical formula evolved for their employment made a virtue of necessity, being ideally suited to a nation with large manpower reserves and large productive capabilities but a small pool of well trained manpower.

Large artillery barrages preceded assaults, followed by the massed tanks of the tank corps. Although losses were invariably high in the assaulting armored units, they could be relied upon to create ruptures in the German defense by their mass and firepower. Mechanized units of all arms would then exploit the breach, conducting a skillful mobile pursuit. When resistance again stiffened, the offensive weight would be shifted to another sector of the front.

In this manner, German mechanized reserves were constantly on the move and the precious Soviet mechanized corps were not sacrificed in pursuit of a drive which was losing momentum. Given a sufficient superiority in numbers, this tactical approach was essentially sound and provides the basis for contemporary Soviet doctrine.

Enter the United States

While not engaged in the early part of the war, the United States nevertheless was an attentive student of the course of the war in Europe in the early days. It has often been said that the Germans enjoyed the advantage in the 1930's of not having a standing army and thus were able to create an army to their specifications without undue concern about existing units and stocks of equipment.

Less commonly recognized is the fact that the United States enjoyed a similar advantage in the early 1940's. An even less recognized advantage, given the nation's situation, was that it did not have any major proponents of the Tank School. In the 1930's both Patton and Eisenhower had written very conservative pro-tank articles and had been severely reprimanded, stifling most writing on the subject until the war.

Consequently, the U.S. was able to examine the success of the Panzer divisions with fewer preconceived notions than could Britain or France. While formal regiments existed in the Panzer divisions, the regiments seldom fought as complete units. As was mentioned previously, the regiments of the division were generally broken into their component battalions and companies and grouped under battalion and regimental headquarters for specific tasks. The United States adopted this method and went it one better.

In addition to the regiment and battalion headquarters available to the division, the separate headquarters were provided to control the major combat teams which would be formed. These headquarters, termed Combat Commands, were true battle group control units, having no units permanently assigned to them.

The experiment, unfortunately, was not a success. Experience in Tunisia indicated that units which did not have a history of working together found cooperation difficult and were seldom able to mesh into a well-coordinated combined arms team on a moment's notice. Why the Germans were able to accomplish this while the Americans were not is a subject all its own and beyond the scope of this article.

Suffice it to say that instead of trying to force a practice which was beyond the capabilities of the troops, the United States shortly adopted a new practice which was also revolutionary in concept.

Solution

The solution adopted by the Americans was the permanent grouping of battalions of all arms under a Combat Command headquarters, thus forming virtually the first permanent combined arms team within a division. (Much earlier, the British had assigned a motorized infantry battalion to the armored brigade of each armored division, while the motorized infantry battalions of the French DLM's each had 20 tanks.

However, the United States Combat Command Armored Division was the first division-sized unit to consist entirely of formal combined arms teams.) A well-balanced force, the United States armored divisions fought with great success throughout the campaign in France and Germany.

Part 2