Tanks

Tanks were important armored vehicles used in World War II by both the Allied and Axis forces. From 1941 to 1945, the United States produced nearly 90,000 tanks, including the Locust, Grant, and Sherman models, though the combat performance of these tanks differed widely.

After World War I, the United States disbanded its tank corps until May 1940, when the Armored Forces were created in response to the effectiveness of the German blitzkrieg. Despite the creation of the Armored Forces and the objections of George S. Patton, Jr., who wanted a more central role for tank warfare, the U. S. Army viewed tanks as an auxiliary of the infantry. Tank doctrine included tactics that stressed exploiting breakthroughs, protecting and assisting unarmored units, and seizing and holding strategic positions.

Of the American tanks of World War II, the mediumsized Sherman tanks were especially important. The Shermans were designed specifically for speed, mobility, and easy modification, so that they could be updated as tank technology progressed. However, against Field Marshal

Rommel’s German Panzer divisions in the North African CAMPAIGN, the Sherman tanks were revealed to be ill equipped for tank-to-tank duels. Inferior to tanks such as the German Mark V Panther or the Mark VI Tiger, they were dubbed “Purple Heart Boxes” because so many of their operators were wounded. The Sherman tanks, however, far outnumbered the German tanks, a testament to the American mobilization and production effort, and the sheer number of Allied tanks proved instrumental.

U. S. tanks continued to have mixed results in the later stages of the war. During the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, many Sherman tanks, which were equipped to “swim” to the shore of Omaha Beach, sank far from their beach destination, causing thousands of casualties among the infantry. But once they were ashore, two-bladed steel prows called hedgehogs were attached to the front of the tanks and successfully sliced through the hedgerows that had provided a natural defense for the Germans. At Okinawa, flame-throwing tanks fired jellied gasoline at Japanese defenses, eventually causing those defenses to break. After the war, a general board assessed the performance of U. S. tanks and recommended improvements in design.

Further reading: Robert M. Citino, Armored Forces: History and Sourcebook (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1994); Kenneth Macksey, Tank Warfare: A History of Tanks in Battle (New York: Stein & Day, 1972).

—Michael T. Walsh

Tarawa (November 1943)

On November 20, 1943, the U. S. Marines 5th Amphibious Corps, under Major General Holland Smith, invaded two small atolls in the Gilbert Islands—Tarawa and Makin. These invasions marked the beginning of the Central Pacific offensive of the U. S. Navy in the World War II Pacific theater. But the invasion of Tarawa was a costly learning experience for the marines and changed how they conducted future amphibious warfare operations.

Because of poor communications, the preinvasion bombardment of Tarawa was too short, and it did little damage to the well-entrenched Japanese defenders. Furthermore, Admiral Raymond Spruance, the overall commander of the operation, mistakenly believed that the water would be deep enough for U. S. landing craft to pass over the coral reefs that surround the Gilbert Islands. New American amphibious landing craft (“amtracs”), which had the ability to climb over the coral reefs, landed the first three waves of marines on the beach with few casualties. But there were not enough amtracs, so the marines that followed had to use deep-draft landing craft, which became caught on the reefs. Some marines had to wade through shoulder-high water for hundreds of yards before reaching the beach, all the time under heavy Japanese artillery and machine gun attack.

By the end of the first day, the 2nd Marine division, under Major General Julian Smith, only held a small beachhead 300 yards deep, and 1,500 of the 5,000 troops that landed were dead or wounded. It took two more days of savage fighting before the marines finally secured the island on November 23, 1943. In total, the marines lost more than 1,000 dead and more than 2,000 wounded, a dreadfully high price to pay for such a small atoll. Only 17 Japanese soldiers survived out of a garrison of 5,000.

After Tarawa, the Navy continued its island-hopping campaign up the Central Pacific toward the Mariana Islands, while the U. S. Army, under General Douglas MacArthur, advanced up the southwestern Pacific toward the Philippines. Because of the experience at Tarawa and the lessons learned from it, the marines subsequently had better information on the strength and location of the enemy defenses, more effective command-and-control procedures, and greater awareness of the tides and other factors that could affect their amphibious assaults.

Further reading: Joseph H. Alexander, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995).

—David W. Waltrop