Camp Colt to Desert Storm: The History of U.S. Armored Forces

5. World War II Armor Operations in Europe

5 World War II Armor Operations in Europe Christopher R. Gabel At the time of America's entry into World War II the U.S. Army's Armored Force consisted of one corps headquarters, five divisions in various states of organization, and a handful of nondivisional General Headquarters (GHQ) Reserve tank battalions. The I Armored Corps and the 1st and 2d Armored Divisions had just completed large-scale training maneuvers, and were counted among the Army's most combatready forces. The recently activated 3d, 4th, and 5th Armored Divisions had not yet begun large-unit training. Armored Force headquarters at Fort Knox controlled its own schools and replacement system, and even had organizational authority over many of the nontank elements in its divisions. Fort Knox also exercised a considerable degree of latitude in creating doctrine and force structures. Although not yet an official arm of the service, the Armored Force harbored ambitions of becoming a semi-independent branch of the Army like the Army Air Forces.1 Plans for Army expansion suggested that the Armored Force would become a dominant player in the nation's military establishment. The 1941 Victory Program forecast a huge wartime armor contingent consisting of 61 armored divisions supported by 51 motorized infantry divisions in a total force of 216 divisions.2 On 23 May 1942 the Operations Division of the War Department General Staff issued a slightly more modest proposal calling for a 187-division Army that would include 46 armored and 23 motorized divisions. The Armored Force planned to forge these elements into twenty-three armored corps, each with two armored divisions, one motorized division, and a large array of corps troops including military police, engineer, medical, supply, and World War II Armor Operations in Europe 145 maintenance units specially tailored for mechanized warfare. The headquarters for II, III, and IV Armored Corps were activated in 1942. The Armored Force's plans for autonomy were short-lived. In March 1942 the War Department established the Army Ground Forces to oversee the organization and training of all ground combat elements, including the Armored Force. The head of Army Ground Forces, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, believed that the infantry-artillery team, and not the tank, was still the centerpiece of ground combat. While not an opponent of armor per se, McNair was unimpressed by claims that the newer elements of warfare, such as armor, were unstoppable. The effectiveness of German antitank guns against British tanks in Libya, as well as events in the Army's own 1941 maneuvers, reinforced McNair's convictions . Rather than building a blitzkrieg Army centered on large, specialized armored corps, McNair intended to create a lean, standardized force structure in which special requirements would be met by attaching additional forces to conventional divisions and corps. In McNair's scheme, the corps would be a combined arms task force that could direct the operations of any and all combat elements, armor included. Perceiving armored divisions to be useful primarily in exploitation missions, McNair recommended that only about ten percent of the divisions activated be armored.3 Given McNair's influence, the number of armored divisions projected for the wartime Army declined sharply. War Department estimates issued later in 1942 called for twenty-six, then twenty, armored divisions.4 Meanwhile, the number of nondivisional tank battalions designed for infantry support increased. These battalions were to be administratively self-sufficient forces that could be held in corps pools and attached to infantry or armored divisions as needed. Regimentallevel headquarters called tank groups would be used to combine tank battalions in circumstances calling for larger doses of armor support. One mission that McNair did not intend for tank battalions or armored divisions to perform was antitank combat. For years he had advocated the creation of highly mobile antitank reserves that could be kept in corps and field Army pools, then dispatched to the scene of a hostile armor breakthrough where they would intercept the enemy tanks and defeat them with superior firepower. Experiments with antitank battalions and regiment-sized groups in the 1941 maneuvers seemed to validate this concept. Accordingly, in November 1941 the War Department ordered the activation of fifty-three tank destroyer battalions to constitute an Armywide antitank pool. Shortly thereafter, the antitank battalions organic to every infantry division were detached from their 146 Christopher R. Gabel parent organizations and added to the tank destroyer force.5 The Tank Destroyer Center...