Hell on Wheels: The Men of the US Armored Forces, 1918 to the end of the 20th century

By Christopher Anderson

This valuable addition to the G.I. series is an illustrated guide to America’s armoured forces from the use of prototypes tanks sputtering their way forward in 1918, to the complex technology of Operation Desert Storm. With detailed commentary by John P. Longellier, this book demonstrates just why these lethal troops were known as ‘Hell on Wheels’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784381653

Christopher Anderson

Christopher Anderson is an internationally recognized photographer who is a member of Magnum Photos and Photographer in Residence at New York magazine.

Book preview

HELL ON WHEELS

THE MEN OF THE U.S. ARMORED FORCES,

1918 TO THE PRESENT

At 5a.m. on 12 September 1918, Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton led the attack of the United States Army’s 344th and 345th Tank Battalions during the first day of the St Mihiel offensive. The attack was the fruition of nine months of effort on the part of pioneering American officers like Patton and Colonel S.D. Rockenbach, the latter of whom had been named American Tank Corps’ first commander on 26 January 1918. With no precedent to guide their efforts, they laid the foundation for the armored forces. As Patton wrote when ordered to report on the French armored forces, ‘The job I have tentatively possessed myself of is huge, for everything must be created and there is nothing to start with.’

Not only was there no doctrine, there were no vehicles. Despite the industrial might of the United States, at the time of its entry into World War I its army was so small and inadequate to the task of fighting in a major European conflict that the bulk of its heavy equipment, including artillery, aircraft and tanks, was provided by its allies. The primary tank used by the American army in France was the French-built Renault FT17, a light, two-man tank armed with a 37mm cannon and with a road speed of 5.5 miles per hour. Additional American tank units were equipped with the British Mark V heavy tank, a silhouette of which was later adopted as the first insignia of the American Tank Corps. While American industry produced copies of the French and British tanks under license, none of the American-built tanks arrived in France before the armistice. The early armored officers familiarized themselves with their new vehicles through learning from their allies.

It is no coincidence that after observing the French, Patton, a cavalry officer, wrote a doctrine for the Tank Corps that emphasized speed and mobility. Although it seemed unlikely, the ponderous and lightly armored French Renault tanks that the Americans were first equipped with would become the inheritor of the American army’s long mounted tradition. In describing what he intended the role of the armored forces to be, Patton wrote, ‘If resistance is broken and the line pierced the tank must and will assume the role of pursuit cavalry and ride the enemy to death.’ The organization that Patton proposed, and the army adopted, was for tank battalions of seventy-seven tanks to support infantry advances by deployment in large enough numbers to breach enemy defensive positions.

Patton embraced the possibilities of armor to break the stalemate of trench warfare, and was determined to see the new branch succeed. While developing the doctrine that the American armored forces would use, Patton also sought a means of instilling the esprit de corps that had long been a part of America’s mounted tradition. It was Patton, and the other officers of the first tank school at Langres, France, who fostered the idea among America’s first armored soldiers that they were members of an elite corps within the army. To foster this sense of pride, Patton instructed his officers to develop an insignia that the men could wear as a distinguishing feature. According to Will G. Robinson, one of Patton’s officers, ‘I want you officers to devote one evening to something constructive. I want a shoulder insignia. We claim to have the firepower of artillery, the mobility of cavalry and the ability to hold ground of