Posted - 4 years 10 months ago
Latecomers to the great war - the first American tanks. Holt 75 Following the British, French and Germans, tanks and Americans were brought to the battlefields of the Great War. True, the tanks of the tank corps of the American expeditionary forces turned out to be of English and French production. The United States, which entered the war late, decided not to waste time inventing their own bicycle, but at the pace to arm the forming tank units with already tested military veh...icles. For this, heavy British "diamonds" and light French "Renault FT-17" were chosen. However, one should not think that in the USA, which at that time had a fairly developed industry, work on projects of their own tanks was not carried out, they simply did not manage to enter the battlefields before the armistice was concluded in the fall of 1918. I must say that, given the not very successful early operations involving Allied tanks on the Western Front, the initial opinion of the US military about this new type of weapon was unfavorable. Thus, the American military mission in Paris, which was entrusted with studying the use of tanks by the British and French, drew more attention to their shortcomings than to the new opportunities that the tanks offered to break the positional deadlock on the Western Front, considering it a failure. The Military Mission Report of May 21, 1917 reflected a position very similar to that of the German High Command. Both of them regarded the inability of the tank to have a decisive effect as something related to a congenital defect of the weapon itself, instead of recognizing that the failure was due to its improper use. Nevertheless, the General Commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General John J. Pershing, who arrived in France on June 13, 1917, was impressed by the tanks, and he ordered the formation of a special commission to examine in more detail the question of their application. The result of her work was a detailed report, which summarized the experience of the use of tanks by the allies and their capabilities, indicating the need to use a new weapon in cooperation with foot and motorized infantry, cavalry, artillery, aircraft. The conclusions of the commission emphasized that the tank is considered a factor that will become an important element of the war, and it was recommended to create a separate corps equipped with light French and heavy British tanks. As a result, already on September 23, 1917, the command of the American army decided to form a tank corps, the combat core of which should have been 5 heavy and 20 light battalions.
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