Category Archives: Tanks & AFV

2d Amtrac Battalion Hangs Up its Tracks

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Earlier this year, the Marines’ 2d Assault Amphibian Battalion received its first new 32-ton Amphibious Combat Vehicles. Based on the Italian Iveco SuperAV, the Marines plan to buy 632 of these big 8x8s to replace the Corps’ 1,300-odd remaining circa 1970s tracked AAVP-7 variants.

The new ACV. This is the P transport variant. About a half of the ACVs will carry either a stabilized dual-mount M2/Mark 19 grenade launcher turret in a support role or a 30mm Mk44 Bushmaster II (XM813) chain gun in a fighting role (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Leo Amaro)

The legacy AAVP7. “AAV7A1 assault amphibious vehicles transport Marines with 2d Assault Amphibian Battalion and 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, both with 2d Marine Division, for a wet-gap amphibious crossing as part of a company-sized infiltration on Camp Lejeune, N.C., Aug. 10, 2021. The infiltration focused on maneuvering across complex terrain and picket lines with near-peer capabilities in an unscripted force-on-force scenario. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jacqueline C. Arre)

While the AAV is as tall as a house and can carry two dozen uncomfortably, it also does it slowly and with a terrible safety record, giving the ACV, which can only carry 13 passengers but make 65 mph on roadways, a bright shining ray of hope.

The 2d AABn just completed the first amphibious combat vehicle crewmember course on Camp Lejeune, making the redesigation official this week. 

U.S. Marines and instructors with 2d Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2d Marine Division, pose for a photo upon completion of the first amphibious combat vehicle crewmember course on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, March 28, 2025. The crewmembers are tasked with the operation and maintenance of the Marine Corps next-generation amphibious combat vehicle platform in support of 2d MARDIV. (U.S. Marine Corps photo illustration by Lance Cpl. Frank Sepulveda Torres)

The Double Edge of Simple Weapons

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One of the most oft-retold tales of military equipment is that the spear used by the Roman Legions, the two-part composite pilum, was easy for a legionnaire to master as a thrusting weapon and, if thrown, the soft iron shank would warp and deform on impact, preventing its further use by the enemy.

Panzerfausts were no pila.

Easy to make in quantity and even easier to use, the Germans dutifully included with each crate a two-page instruction sheet that you didn’t need to know German to grasp.

They even distilled the knowledge to a simpler pictograph on the side of the Fausts themselves.

Vorsicht!

This allowed last-ditch Volkssturm to field the disposable anti-tank rocket with about five minutes of instruction.

“The Volkssturm” Painting by Franz Kleinmayer, showing the typical make up and arms of the doomed militia.

And, as seen in these images from recently Soviet-occupied Danzig in March 1945, it was just as easily translated to Red Army inheritors.

Hat Trick

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80 years ago this week. At the tail end of Operation Varsity near Wesel, Germany, the British 2nd Army and American 9th Army links up with Allied paras and glider troops that had been airmailed to the area three days prior.

Official wartime caption: “Airborne force leap the Rhine. The link-up is complete. 26 March 1945. An Achilles tank destroyer [a U.S. M10 with a QF 17-pounder] on the east bank of the Rhine moves up to link with airborne forces whose abandoned gliders can be seen in the background.”

The glider appears to be a British Hadrian model while the barbed wire could be for an EPOW bullpen, which makes sense as the British 6th Airborne bagged something like 1,500 “Jerries” during the operation. Photo by Christie (Sergeant), No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM BU 2396

Early in the morning of 24 March 1945, 1,500 American aircraft and gliders carrying two Airborne divisions, one American (9,650 men of the 17th Airborne) and one British (7,220 men of the 6th Airborne including the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion), flew over the Rhine River, completing the hattrick started by the Market Garden and Overlord/Tonga drops in 1944.

17th Airborne Glider Troops wait to board their glider on 24 March 1945 for Operation VARSITY, note the M1919, M1 Garand, and Carbine

Operation Varsity glider troops, note bandage on helmet

Operation Varsity 1945 M1A1 paratrooper folding stocked carbine. Note the bayonet on his leg

As the Normandy and Market Garden drops had been spaced out across several geographic locations, while the Varsity drop was more tightly focused at Hamminkeln-Wesel, it is considered the largest airborne operation ever conducted on a single day and in one location.

It was no walkover, with 49 C-46/47 transports, many packed with men of the 17th, lost to German flak and other casualties across a three-day fight which left 1,346 casualties among the American Sky soldiers while the Brits and Canadians logged at least 1,078.

Sadly, except for a one-minute mention in Band of Brothers, the jump is largely forgotten.

Spearhead

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A camouflaged M4 Sherman tank fitted with a T34 60-tube 4.5-inch Rocket Launcher (Calliope) from the 17th Armored Group attached to the 76th Infantry Division, LT Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army, carefully crosses over a Treadway bridge circa early March 1945 near Biesdorf in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany.

More on the Calliope via Mark Felton: 

Activated at Fort Knox, Kentucky on 20 March 1943 as the 1st Armored Group then redesignated as 17th on 20 November 1944– three months after they landed in France– the 17th AG was attached to MG Manton S. Eddy’s XII Corps headquarters and served as a tank fire brigade. The unit crossed into Luxembourg on 21 December 1944 during the Ardennes offensive and entered Germany on 3 March 1945, helped capture Frankfurt (and the stash of art treasures and gold in a salt mine at Merkers) then finished the war in Austria, linked up with Red Army units.

Following post-war occupation duties, they inactivated in Belgium on 30 April 1946.

Mad Max of Chad…and Iraq

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A very Mad Max-looking (or possibly Le Dernier Combat) scene from 24 February 1986. It shows a bush patrol (patrouille en brousse) of 3e section du 8e régiment parachutiste d’infanterie de marine (8e RPIMa) near Moussoro, Chad, doing what they could to modify their uniforms in the 120 degree F heat.

Réf. : 1 986 072 34 13, Patrice George/ECPAD/Défense

Note the FAMAS bullpup of the assistant gunner and the holstered SACM pistol of the anti-tank man. Speaking of which, the pipe is a Luchaire Defense SA Lance-Roquettes AntiChar (LRAC) model F1 STRIM 89mm rocket launcher with a 3x APX M 309 optical sight and two spare rockets at the ready.

Introduced in the early 1970s as a marginally better (but 100 percent more French) weapon than the 90mm M20 Super Bazooka, the launcher weighed 11 pounds, sans sight, with HE rounds pushing another 7 pounds a pop. Capable of penetrating 400mm of armor, the French never confirmed or denied that it was used in combat in Chad.

The French Foreign Legion used the LRAC in Iraq as they served as the far left hook of the Desert Storm ground campaign. 

24-26 February 1991 Al Salman Iraq A two-man anti-tank rocket launchers (LRAC) of the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (2e Régiment Étranger d’Infanterie, 2nd REI) sitting near a concrete hangar at the air base. Ref.: 1 991 001 239 17. Christian Fritsch/ECPAD/Defense

It was replaced by the MBDA Eryx after 1993, which is slated to be replaced by an updated 84mm Carl G.

As for 8e RPIMa, the “Chicken Thieves” (voleurs de poules) shown in the top image are still around and still specialize in light, fast-moving operations that often tend toward the desert environment, having deployed to Afghanistan (2008), Central Africa (2013) and the Sahel (2015) in recent years.

Bazooka Joes

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80 years ago this week. 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. Two soldiers of an M9 2.36-inch bazooka section blow out a Japanese pillbox at Heart Point, on Corregidor Island, Philippines on or around 19 February 1945. Note their slung M1A1 Carbines and the billowing parachute silk overhead. 

Talk about a recruiting poster! Signal Corps Photo SC 201373 by Pfc. Morris Weiner.

Some 2,050 men of the Rock Force: 503rd PIR; 462nd PFABn; and 161 Abn Engr. Bn, landed topside on Japanese-held Corregidor on 16 February 1945 to destroy Japanese gun positions and allow ground forces to close in on the facility. The unit suffered 169 dead and 531 wounded in addition to more than 210 injuries in the drop itself.

It was the 503’s third combat jump of the war, having landed at Nadzab in New Guinea’s Markham Valley in Operation Alamo in September 1943 and at Noemfoor in Operation Table Tennis in July 1944.

They wouldn’t jump again until February 1967 when elements of the 2nd and 3rd Bn, 50rrd PIR would leap out over Katum, South Vietnam as part of Operation Junction City.

They are currently part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based at Caserma Del Din, Vicenza, Italy.

Strangers in a Strange Land

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Some 110 years ago this month, a surreal scene: The 19th Lancers (Fane’s Horse) of the Indian Cavalry Corps, on the march in the snow, Northern France, February 1915.

The unit traced its lineage to 1860 when it was formed by one Lieutenant Walter Fane, aged 32, of the Madras Native Infantry as an irregular cavalry unit for service in China during what is now known as the Second Opium War. The recruits, assembled from stragglers of horse regiments disbanded after the Indian Mutiny, were made up largely of Sikhs, Pathans, and Punjabi Moslems– important as caste restrictions prevented many Hindus from serving overseas.

Fane’s unit took part in the capture of the Taku Forts, as well as the fighting at Sinho, Chinkiawbaw, and Pulli-chi-on, as well as the capture (and sack) of Peking, then became the 19th Bengal Cavalry when it returned home to more permanent service, adding the “Lancers” designation in 1874.

It served in the Second Afghan War, fought in the Battle of Ahmad Khel in 1880.

Fane’s Horse 19 B.L.’, 19th Regiment of Bengal Lancers, 1890, watercolor in the collection of the National Army Museum. NAM. 1964-12-80-1

Major-General Walter Fane, CB, himself passed in 1885 and his regiment outlived him.

Group of Native officers, 19th Bengal Lancers, a photo by Raja Deen Dayal, 1903

Armies of India, 1911 by Major Alfred Crowdy Lovett NAM 19th Bengal Lancers (Fane’s Horse), Punjabi Musalman, 1909

Shipping out as part of the Indian Cavalry Corps‘ 2nd (Sialkot) Cavalry Brigade, it fought at the Somme and Cambrai on the Western Front before transferring to Palestine in 1918, fighting against the Turks with distinction in the Battle of Megiddo. Post-war, it remained on occupation duty in Lebanon, Syria, and Tel Aviv.

Following its amalgamation with the 18th King George’s Own Lancers in 1921, the regiment became the 19th King George’s Own Lancers.

As such, the regiment fought as an armored unit with the 50th Indian Tank Brigade, 25th Indian (“Unknown”) Division, in the Arkan Campaign during WWII.

Sherman V’s (M4A4s) with B Squadron, 19th Lancers, 50th Indian Tank Brigade moving forward to support infantry near Myebon Burma – January 1945 IWM – Titmuss A D (Sgt) Photographer IWM SE 2188 WWP-PD

As part of the Partition of India in 1947, the regiment was allotted to Pakistan and today is just the 19th Lancers. Besides fighting the Indians off and on since then, it has been overseas in UN peacekeeping missions, including Somalia during the “Mogadishu Mile.”

That Belgian Chill

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80 years ago today.

Members of the 740th Tank Battalion and Headquarters Company of the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, advance in a snowstorm behind a tank to attack Herresbach, Belgium. 28 January 1945, with the help of a local.

U.S. Army Photo.

A tank and infantrymen of the U.S. Army’s Company G, 740th Tank Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, push through the snow toward their objective near Herresbach, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, Jan. 28, 1945. 111-SC-199509

For those who haven’t read of the fight between the three refurbished M4 Shermans of the 740th against the lead element of Battle Group Peiper and the 1st SS Panzer Division during the “Bulge,” you have some research to do. 

Getting Greasy

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Just 40 years ago this week.

Official caption: “Private First Class (PFC) Jose Ledoux-Garcia of Company C, 5th Battalion, 77th Armor, guards his M60A3 main battle tank during Central Guardian, a phase of Exercise REFORGER ’85. He is armed with an M3A1 .45-caliber submarine gun. Base: Giessen, West Germany (FRG), 22 January 1985.”

How about that open bolt on the M3! Note the short receiver M85/T175 (M19) .50 caliber machine gun in the tank commander’s copula, as identified by its crimped flash hider. It was distinctive for being one of the most unreliable machine guns ever adopted by the U.S. DF-ST-85-13234

It is hard to believe that only 40 short years ago, M60 Pattons and M3 Grease Guns were still on the front lines of the Fulda Gap. Both would linger on through Desert Storm.

As for the “Steel Tigers” of the 77th Armor, formed originally as the 753rd Medium Tank Battalion on 25 April 1941, they trained at three different bases in the south that have all been renamed since then and, receiving their first M4A1 Shermans in early 1943, shipped out for North Africa attached to the 45th Infantry (“Thunderbird”) Division.

Just missing the end of the Afrika Corps in Tunisia, they were soon fighting in Sicily (Operation Husky) under Patton’s command and their tanks spearheaded the first Allied unit into Messina, losing six tanks to 28 enemy tracks claimed. They fought for Naples and Rome, earned a French Croix de Guerre for the liberation of the Vosage in 1944, and continued on into Germany through the Ardennes and the Rhineland for VE-Day.

The Sherman-equipped 753rd fought in Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, Southern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe, typically in platoon and company-sized elements spread out through the 45th ID. 

Post-war, they were redesignated as the Japan-based 77th Heavy Tank Battalion, equipped with M-26s and M4A4E8s, and saw much service in Korea, earning six campaign streamers with the 7th ID.

Then came eight campaigns in Vietnam with M48s in 1969-70, equipped with M60s, continued Cold War service first with the 5th ID and then with the 4th ID, including deployments back to Germany.

Eventually upgrading to the M1 Abrams, they deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo, then moved heavily from Schweinfurt, Germany in 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, and 2012 to the sandbox in support of the 1st Infantry Division and then the 1st Armored Division.

They are one of the few Army armor units to carry a Navy Unit Commendation, on the recommendation of the Marine Corps Commandant, earned during Operation Iraqi Freedom VI-VIII in support of I MEF.

Today, the Steel Tigers remain as part of the 1st ID’s 3rd BCT at sunny Fort Bliss, Texas, but, in true globetrotter fashion, they are currently on a rotational deployment to Poland, getting some snow time in.

Their official unit motto is Insiste Firmiter (To Stand Firm) and their battle cry is “Blood on the Axe” for obvious reasons.

Touring Germany with a Chopped Down M1 Carbine

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With personal space at a premium inside the tracked metal monsters of a World War II tank battalion, guns sometimes got unofficially smaller.

Check out this great image, snapped some 80 years ago this month, of two members of the 784th Tank Battalion at a railway marshaling yard in recently occupied Eschweiler, Germany on 23 January 1945, just after the Battle of the Bulge.

(Photo: W.C. Sanderson/ Signal Corps No. 111-SC-259409/ NARA NAID 276537211)

According to the official released wartime caption, the above shows Pfc. Floyd McMurthry (in the foreground) of Canton, Ohio, test-firing an M-3 Grease gun, while Pvt. Willie R. Gibbs (in the background) of Birmingham, Alabama, test-fires a sawed-off M-1 Carbine “which he shortened with his light tank to make it easier to handle.”

Let’s zoom in on that M1 a bit.

Judging by the size of the 8.5-inch handguard on the M1 Carbine, Pvt. Gibbs seems to have whittled this gun down to about 24 inches overall, with most of the 17.75-inch barrel abbreviated. The standard M1 Carbine went 35.6 inches overall.

No word on how the performance of the short-stroke piston action Carbine was affected in the above instance, although it is known that, some 20 years after the above image was captured, American advisors in Vietnam were often chopping down their M1s to more pistol length versions. Meanwhile, “Enforcer” pistols from Iver Johnson and Universal were marketed in the 1970s-90s with barrel lengths in the 9.5 to 10.25-inch range.

But that’s a different article.

For reference, the 784th Tank Battalion, a segregated unit equipped with a mix of M4 Sherman medium Tanks and M5A1 Stuart light tanks, entered combat in Europe in December 1944 and fought its way into Germany with the 104th “Timberwolf” Infantry Division.

Company B, 784th Tank Battalion at Sevelen, Germany on March 5, 1945. The two tanks to the left and right are M5 Stuarts while the vehicle in the center of the image is an M3 half-track. Note the extensive use of M3 Grease Guns, which remained prized by American armored vehicle crews through the 1990s. (U.S. Army Photo: SC 336785)

The 784th later linked up with advancing Soviet troops on the Elbe River and spent several months on occupation duty in Germany after the war. The 700-member battalion suffered nearly 200 casualties during its WWII service.

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