became part of the brigade. Shortly thereafter the regiment adopted tentative tables of organization that provided for a covering squadron, a combat car squadron, a machine gun troop, and a headquarters troop. Each squadron had two troops, and the regiment had a total of seventy-eight combat cars. That structure lasted until1 January 1936, when the War Department outlined a new organization that consisted of a headquarters and band, two combat car squadrons of two troops each, and headquarters, service, machine gun, and armored car troops. The new tables authorized the regiment to have seventy-seven combat vehicles, all developmental items. Eventually the War Department assigned a second cavalry regiment, a field artillery battalion equipped with 75-mm. guns (mounted on self-propelled half tracks), ordnance and quartermaster companies, and an observation squadron to the brigade. The brigade became the Army's first armored unit of combined arms, contributing much to the development of mechanized theory in the interwar years. However, bureaucratic in-fighting often stifled the unit's development.[1]
Although many European theorists urged the development of independent armored forces, their armies made little progress toward the formation of such units. The British abandoned their experiments in 1927 and did not organize their first armored divisions until 1939. The French organized light armored divisions in the 1930s, but put most of their tanks in various infantry support roles. In the United States the Regular Army fielded two partially organized tank regiments as a part of the infantry arm between 1929 and 1940.[2]
Both German and Russian Armies took a different approach. Neither had employed tanks in World War I, but both saw their potential. Only after Adolph Hitler abrogated the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty in 1935, however, did the German Army develop offensive-oriented armored panzer divisions. But their interest in mechanization, especially tanks, was evident throughout the period, as witnessed by the several visits by German officers to the 7th Cavalry Brigade at Fort Knox in the mid-1930s. The Russians experimented with tanks from all industrial nations and favored the use of mass armor in the mid-thirties. On the eve of World War II, however, the Russians had shifted emphasis to small tank units in support of an infantry role.[3]
A New Infantry Division
January 1929 marked the beginning of a ten-year struggle to reorganize the infantry division. The Assistant Chief of Staff, G–3, General Parker, reported that European countries were developing armies that could trigger a war of greater velocity and intensity than anything previously known. Great Britain, France, and Germany were engrossed with "machines" to increase mobility, minimize losses, and prevent stabilization of the battlefront. The British favored mechanization and the French, motorization, while the Versailles Treaty limited the Germans to ideas and dreams. Some Europeans adopted smaller, more maneuverable, triangular infantry divisions that were easier to command and control than the
- ↑ Ltr, TAG to CG of all Corps Areas and Depts and other addresses, 16 Jan 31, sub: Changes in Assignment of Divisional Cavalry units, AG 320.2 (12—24—31) Misc. (Ret) MC, 1st Armored Div file, DAMH-HSO; GO 2, Fifth Corps Area, 6 Feb 1932, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands, 1920–42, RG 394, NARA; Guy V. Henry, "The Trend of Organization and Equipment of Cavalry in the Principal World Powers and Its Probable Role in Wars of the Near Future," Cavalry Journal 41 (Mar–Apr 1932): 5–9; T/O, Table 423 P, Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized), 1 Jan 1933; Grow, "The Ten Lean Years," pp. 22–38; T/O, Table 423 P, Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized), 14 Oct 1935; Daniel Van Voorhis, "Mechanization"; Scott, "Early History of Mechanization."
- ↑ Corelli Barnett, Britain and Her Army 1507–1970 (Warmondsworth, England: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1974), p. 469; Glenn B. Hellmich, "Charles de Gaulle: His Ideas on Mechanized Warfare and the Army of the Future and the Application of These Ideas," Master thesis, Xavier University, 1955, p. 68; Jeffery A. Gunsburg, Divided and Conquered: The French High Command and the Defeat of the West, 1940 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), p. 9–10, 15, 41–42; Timothy K. Nenninger, "A Revised Mechanization Policy," Armor 78 (Sep–Oct 1969): 45–49.
- ↑ Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1952), pp. 36, 316; Gillie, Forging the Thunderbolt, p. 85–89; Richard M. Ogorkiewcz, Armor: A History of Mechanized Forces (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960), pp. 222–28.
