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As Chesty Puller’s landing boat churned toward the Inchon shore in 1950, he turned to a reporter near him and motioned to the F4U aircraft overhead firing rockets at North Korean positions.
“See that?” Chesty yelled over the noise. “Every plane here flew off the decks of the carriers out in deeper water. So much for the experts who said after the last war that carriers are finished.”
One notes that 55 years later, the US has the largest carrier fleet in the world. But Chesty need not have referred to aircraft carriers to find spectacularly wrong predictions:
“I predict that large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again.” — General Omar N. Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, October 1949
“We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.” — Truman’s Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, to Admiral Richard L. Connally in 1949
The “end of this or that” crowd is still practicing, only this time the predicted death concerns tanks. Writes Austin Bay,
In the original Rumsfeld program, heavy armor, like the M1 tank, was a “legacy system” — an archaic technology. Rumsfeld’s Whiz Kids weren’t the only ones who thought the tank passe. An Army buddy tells the story of a could-be Democratic appointee he escorted through DOD briefings. The pipe-smoking pontificator kept saying, “The tank’s dead.” My infantry pal finally turned to him and said: “Yes sir, the tank’s a dinosaur, but it’s the baddest dinosaur on the battlefield. You face one.”
In November’s battle in Fallujah the Army provided most of the tanks and the Marines most of the infantry. One Marine battalion commander wrote that everyone wanted more tanks. When the Marines came up against an enemy strongpoint in the city, they waited until a tank or two came up. Within five minutes, the commander said, that little firefight was over. But sometimes they couldn’t get tanks in time, so they had to go in the old-fashioned way. That’s when the Marines suffered almost all their casualties.
Comments policy, read and heed!
17 queries. 0.347 seconds
May 12th, 2005 at 10:29 am
It is my firm belief, that no person ranking higher than
Sgt., and who hasn’t personally served time on the front
lines, should have a single word of input into what/when/
where and how our military fighters get the job done.
Semper Fi!
A Marine’s mom
May 12th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
We don’t need no steenkeeng army, we got nukes! -paraphrasing of numerous DoD officials from the ’50’s
May 13th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
TO: Donald Sensing
RE: Tanks for the Memories
“The pipe-smoking pontificator kept saying, “The tank’s dead.” My infantry pal finally turned to him and said: “Yes sir, the tank’s a dinosaur, but it’s the baddest dinosaur on the battlefield. You face one.”” — Someone cited by Donald Sensing
Actually, I adhere to that old infantry credo, “Hunting tanks is easy and fun.” But only when they don’t have any infantry around them. Then things can get a bit dicey.
Anecdotal Alert!!!
In ‘82 we did a demo of MILES for the Chief of Staff of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. [Note: Ah so, Toranga-sama. The guy looked and acted like Toshirô Mifune.]
I pitted two old TOW-on-M113 systems against a company of M60s, configured as Soviets and using their tactics.
We killed every tank in a running battle over five miles and four battle positions. We lost one assistant TOW gunner who was ‘carried away’ by a tank main gun round because he wanted to get a better view of the battle; by standing up on top of the track.
In closed terrain…well…you’ve got my old S&T platoon’s situation at a JSCS at Eglin in the late 70s.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
May 16th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
You’ll hear very few (likely no) tankers claiming that they can go it alone. OTOH if that company was truly ‘acting soviet’ I’d have expected no less from your folk. (Which, btw, was a tank company in isolation, something you weren’t very likely to see back in the day. Toss in the rest of the goodies on the warsaw pact menu and it gets a bit more problematic. I’ve done my bit of MILES stuff, and Ft Carson was probably my favorite place to do it, the terrain just lent itself to the use of MILES , more so, to me than places like Ft Knox.
I’ve had other beefs with the use of MILES in free-for-all exercises above platoon level but it can still provide useful duty.