Collapse of Armor Branch: Infantry Save Thyself

[Mike Sparks]

Infantry, Don't Forget to Heavy Weaponize your Tracked Armored Personnel Carriers

www.combatreform.com/brenguncarrierpassesbyhorsaglideronLZN.jpg

Not having a heavy-caliber, high explosive delivering weapon but having the tracked armored fighting vehicles to mobilize such weapons is the tragic mistake of the "A Bridge Too Far" fight for Arnhem bridge over the Rhine river in 1944.

Thanks to Keith Flint's book, Airborne Armour we now know what went wrong on the way to Arnhem bridge: unlike the British 6th Airborne Division that took both Tetrarch/Locust light tanks with turreted 37mm-40mm-3 inch guns and Bren gun armored personnel carriers into D-Day and the later Operation Varsity---the 1st Airborne Division only glider-landed 18 x Bren gun carriers to move SUPPLIES for the infantry---but without the light tanks did not even have a single "Universal Carrier" outfitted with a large caliber gun in a ready-to-fire mode when they bumped into a mere pair of German armored cars. While the walking infantry fanned out and hit-the-dirt, the Germans blasted their 1st Reconnaissance Squadron's unarmored jeeps towing 20mm Polsten anti-aircraft cannon before they could unlimber and fire.

http://www.combatreform2.com/brentan...poundergun.jpg
http://www.combatreform.com/brentank...h2pounderATgun
www.combatreform.com/brentankettewithgunshielded2pounderATgun

Had just a few of these Bren gun carriers been carrying a fixed mount 20mm, 37mm, 40mm, 57mm, 76mm antitank or 75mm pack howitzer gun as the photos below show were actually tested and proved functional---they would have enabled the men inside to save the day on "Tiger Route" to Arnhem, reinforcing LTC Frost's men there so they could have held on a few more days until XXX Corps link-up. The pay-off?

WW2 would have ended 1 year sooner, Berlin would have been entirely in Allied instead of half communist hands. Untold deaths, sufferings and atrocities would have been prevented...no Battle of the Bulge debacle....you get the point. A technotactical failure had STRATEGIC consequences for the entire world resulting in millions of people suffering. It wasn't one bridge "too far", it was a case of NOT BRINGING ENOUGH.

So why didn't Brens have big guns?

Because the egotistical infantry has and continues to refuse to admit it needs high explosive (HE) building/bunker/dug-in enemy blasting firepower help from a VEHICLE because it smacks of a "tank". Well, they are correct. Anything that is tracked and armored is indeed, a TANK, and a Bren gun carrier with a BIG gun would be a tank---which is too fu*king bad. That's what they needed on the dusty road to Arnhem when they chose to glider-land 6-8 miles to avoid anti-aircraft fire that would decimate a daylight drop of airborne or glider infantry directly on to the bridge. Paradoxically, infantry will tolerate HE firepower if its coming from a fellow narcissist on foot--but just barely. They don't like it and don't embrace HE firepower with lots of RPG gunners and yearn for kinetic energy bullet gun-slinging to carry the day. Any HE weapons carried by infantry have to be low-key and not grab the limelight from the rifleman. When the 82nd Airborne kicks German ass in WW2 they don't let us know it was greatly assisted by captured German panzerfaust disposable rocket launchers because its bad for their Superman image. You have to read carefully into LTG James Gavin's writings to learn this secret. So if Western infantry in love with bullet garden hosing the enemy is reluctant to employ HE rocket launchers from their own shoulders, how do you think they'll look upon HE from one of their tracked infantry carriers making it into a defacto tank obvious for everyone to see?

They will not like it nor want it.

This is why you can see APC/AFVs all over the world armed with only machine guns and weak cannons when they can clearly have a large HE weapon fitted--because infantrymen are little ***** egomaniacs who want all the glory to themselves via dismounted foot action--blasting an enemy position is "un-heroic". This is indeed true as an ignorant, corrupt and incompetent practice but its moreover tragic and battle-losing. History is filled with accounts where hand-carried firepower was not enough since the earth can easily absorb it if the enemy skillfully employs fortifications and denies the KE bullet shooter access to a line-of-sight (LOS) on him. The disastrous amphibious raid on Dieppe in 1942 was Eban Emael--but without the gliders 3D maneuvering infantry into LOS access---and the medium-heavy Churchill tanks stuck on the beach were unable to render vehicular fire support. Arnhem was APCs/AFVs being there with the infantry by virtue of their tracked, armored mobility but not having the meeting engagement and dug-in enemy defeating firepower to carry the day.

The infantry rice bowl protector reader will remark, "but that's the job of the tankers to provide us shock action". Well, did Armor branch get this memo? They appear to be only interested in dueling other tanks in the heaviest tanks possible not risking themselves by being in a lighter tank to be there where infantry can walk to give YOU FIRE SUPPORT. Like the USAF, tankers want to win wars all by themselves by first "shooting down" the enemy's mirror image of themselves, and then when that's done, win wars ONLY by their mounted maneuver without ever dismounting anybody. They have the same technohubris as the fly boys---just bound to the earth. Both false narrow mentalities were born when we failed to fully understand and employ both the tank and the airplane at the dawn of the 20th Century. We still don't have it figured out going on now into the 21st Century! The facts are we need both mounted (remember the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division "Thunder Run" that took Baghad when the truck-centric USMC got pinned down?) and dismounted action, how can we get both without creating factions who only want to do one or the other?--is the dilemma. We have not even broached the subject of parachuting or airlanding in light tanks or to be a forward Cavalry for the open terrain, 2D maneuver force's medium-to-heavy tanks, THEY DON'T WANT TO DO IT!

Today's tankers have lost sight of what Cavalry is and in the process have by refusing to field light tanks like the M113 Gavin into Cav units in 1970/80s, the Rapid Deployment Force Light tank in the 1980s and the M8 Buford AGS in the 1990s, forfeited the torch of mobile warfare, air-delivered Cavalry to the infantry to their present day shame and branch digestion into the Army borg.

So its now up to infantry to save itself with their own tank fire support, but first infantry has to save itself from its own wheeled stupidity. Motorized infantry is dead infantry or soon-to-be-dead infantry along roads/trails/streets where land mines and increasingly sophisticated ambushes await. In infantry's vanity to not appear like the cursed tankers, they have chosen non-functional rubber tire trucks and damned themselves to reliving the Korean war debacle again and again in Iraq/Afghanistan. Infantry needs to practice what it preaches--"the easy way is mined" and employ M113 Gavin light tracked APCs/AFVs to go cross-country through and over by available C-130/CH-47 aircraft closed terrains where heavier 2D maneuver forces cannot traverse or fly in a timely manner. Next, infantry needs to get over who is going to get the glory and wake up that they will be damn well lucky just to WIN using everything they have got and can get to help them. This means some of their APCs/AFVs will need powerful HE weaponry to be there in an instant to render fire support in a meeting engagement and to bust through enemy strong points in the face of their fire so as to not get pinned down re: Arnhem.

In the final analysis, infantry needs to learn to save itself with its own light tanks derived from their own infantry-carrying light tanks AKA APCs/AFVs. The only vehicular fire support the infantry can count on is the vehicles it takes with them that can go wherever they can walk, and this means light, low-ground pressure tracks not bloated, high ground pressure Humvee/Stryker/MRAP/JTVL wheels.

The good news is all of this is that infantry's M113 Gavins can easily take a drop-in turret for firepower up to 105mm. Its not as efficient weight-wise as a fixed-gun STUG nor as survivable and hard to hit but its easy to do as the South Korean AIFV with 90mm turret below shows.

www.combatreform.com/M113with90mmturret.jpg

However, a turret means a manual as thick as a telephone book to master and someone becoming a "pussy" (Gunner) perhaps even two (Commander/Gunner) "cowards" being created who are "getting over" compared to the dead men walking. It also means 360 degree traverse/firing in seconds and armor protection so the weapon isn't easily knocked out....

If this is too rich for infantry blood/ego since it would be...gulp...a TANK to even the morons who think such things only have turrets (look at WW1 "tanks", how many of them had turrets? I guess they were not tanks, huh?).

OK, fine, no turret, no STUG gun in the hull.

Then a simple exposed pedestal or ring mount of a recoilless rifle or a TOW ATGM launcher on the M113 Gavin gets the necessary HE blasting effect at $500 a round or $5, 000 a missile. Some gunners will die firing from exposed positions and shields should be fitted to help. There should be no qualms about this since light infantry already has Humvee trucks with TOW ATGMs on top for tank effects (remember how Saddam's sons died?) as long as the truck its mounted under doesn't get you incinerated first. Switching out the dead horse of the wheeled truck for a light armored track solves not only light infantry's lack of Armor branch showing up to the fight after parachute and airland insertion, but there's space in back for infantry to get mobility to perhaps get into position after crossing enemy fire to do an Eban Emael and M16 versus AK47 defeat the enemy that needs rooting out.

TRANSFORM THE U.S. AIRBORNE AND LIGHT INFANTRY NOW

Its almost as if....the M113....was designed by infantryman General Gavin to do this all along....that its program name of Airborne Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle Family implies it was supposed to be used as an air-transported armored mobility mount for multiple tasks such as....INFANTRY FIRE SUPPORT. That would mean our forebears actually knew what they were doing at times, and we could learn from them by studying military history for practical applications for today and the future, right?

The time is long overdue for infantry to start mounting heavy weaponry on its light tracked platforms and stop expecting someone else to save them.

[sabadgeman]

Very Interesting article. This was a lesson learned by the old SADF very early on in Angola its APC the Ratel packed quite a punch

Quote from Wikipedia which is reasonably accuarte

"The basic Ratel's (designated Ratel-20) primary armament consists of a 20 mm automatic cannon mounted in a powered turret at the front of the vehicle, supplemented by a coaxial 7.62 × 51 mm NATO machine gun and a 7.62 × 51 mm calibre pintle-mounted machine gun mounted by the commander's roof hatch. The Ratel also has four rifle ports on each side of the vehicle, allowing the infantrymen to fire from within the vehicle. An additional pintle-mounted machine gun, accessed from a roof hatch, is located at the rear of the Ratel's upper deck and provides cover for the Ratel's rear quarter. The crew consists of commander, driver, gunner, and radio operator, as well as seven infantrymen.

The Ratel-60 and Ratel-90 variants are otherwise identical, save that the former mounts a 60 mm breech-loading mortar in turrets taken from the Eland 60 armoured cars, and the Ratel-90 mounts a 90 mm low-velocity gun and also has a three-man crew. The 60 mm mortar is most effectively used in firing smoke shells, and is generally useless against armoured vehicles or dug-in troops.

The Ratel-90 fire-support variant is an unusual vehicle in that it can carry an infantry squad while retaining a 90 mm turret gun. The Ratel-90 does not normally carry a full squad, but it at least such a squad has fire support from the 90 mm gun. It is not a tank destroyer, but has occasionally been used as one, albeit with some difficulty."

The SADF Mechanised Infantry deployments generaly all had all four Ratel Variants with them on deployment and thereby always had albeit rather unconventional tank killing capacity as the Cubans found to their cost!

Steve

[Mike Sparks]

Great feedback!

Cake: the SADF has the dry, open terrain that can subsidize wheeled APCs/AFVs, the U.S. Army has to fight anywhere in the world and must be all tracked.

Icing: the SADF like the Russians know the only fire support you have for sure is what you have on hand and arm accordingly while our narcissists depend on someone else coming to save them because they don't want to be seen breaking such a sweat as having heavy HE firepower organic and visibly reminding them they ain't John Q. Rambo.

Mike

[redtanker]

great article, thank you for the post. I only wish the right people would read it and actually understand it

[Hooch Turner]

This is a very interesting and pertinent thread, due to the way many armies are now trying to intergrate what they call Fire Support or Escort Vehicles into their infantry formation – Think Stryker MGS for e.g.

Us Brits tried this many moons ago by dropping a CVR(W) Fox scout car turret onto an FV432 (analogous to the M113 family). These vehicles whilst providing quite heavy and accurate fire support from the 30mm RARDEN cannon, also proved to have a few downs sides too, very cramped troop compartment with reduced seating, high target silhouette and also somewhat top heavy whilst traversing slopes. In all it proved a bit of a white elephant and only 13 were manufactured, serving on roads only with the Berlin Brigade. The infantry did however love the punch that the vehicles could provide, and this has slowly in time been rectified with the Warrior IFV family of vehicles – again normally armed with the 30mm RARDEN.


Interestingly the Australians tried a similar approach with their M113’s. 1st arming them with 76mm armed turrets from Saladin Armoured Cars and then upgrading them again with 76mm CVR(T) Scorpion turrets (both systems using identical ammo for their closely related low pressure guns). Curiously though the Australians are now replacing them in service with yet another newer version of the M113 but now with a 1 man turret simply armed with a heavy MG or light cannon.


The Canadians too utilising the CVR(T) Scorpion have made fire support versions of the MOWAG Piranha 6x6 family, but as with all wheeled ‘tank’ styled vehicles they are not truly all terrain. Most of these systems whilst offering great suppressive fire for the guy on the ground are really only a compromise ‘Jack of all trades, but master of none’ vehicle. APC’s in tanks clothing if you wish, perhaps the best solution is to do what we have done since WWII. Mix real tanks with the carriers, at least if the fan gets covered in the brown sticky stuff, the big guys can trade punches whilst the crunchies (grunts to you Yanks) get the hell into or out of Dodge.