50th Anniversary Reunion 1st Battalion 70th Armor

 

Fifty years ago Brigade 76, 4th Brigade Mechanized, 4th Infantry Division, flew to West Germany. Four thousand soldiers left Fort Carson, Colorado, to establish an mechanized brigade on the former air base in Wiesbaden, West Germany. Two mechanized infantry battalions (one of the infantry battalions was from Fort Riley, Kansas), an armored battalion, an artillery battalion and a support battalion along with brigade headquarters moved en masse across the ocean. 

I was the commander of tank Bravo 13 in 1st Battalion, 70th Armor, the tank battalion. Within 48 hours of arriving, the brigade headed for the East-West border at Fulda.  Most of us were in Wiesbaden for two to three years training to fight the war that never happened between NATO and the Soviet Union.  

Beginning last Sunday about 20 veterans of 70th Armor returned to Fort Carson for a reunion on the 50th anniversary of our Cold War service.  

Sam Rushing, who took the lead in organizing nearly a dozen 70th Armor reunions between 2009 and this year put together an excellent event. 

We spent Monday on Fort Carson with:

A Fort Carson Museum tour

Hands-on experience in a Stryker (Armored Fight Vehicle) simulator, 

Lunch in a dining facility  

Presentations on the Stryker and weapons by a Stryker battalion.

After the day on Fort Carson we had dinner in The Airplane restaurant.  It is a 1950s vintage KC-97 refueling plane with booth seating replacing the interior of the airplane. The cockpit and the refueling boom area at the rear of the plane are intact.

On Tuesday we took the cog railway to the top of Pikes Peak.

The final event of was the reunion banquet. The speaker was Lt. Col. Jonathan Patten, commander of the Stryker battalion who hosted us on Fort Carson. Four soldiers from his unit were the honor guard for the event and joined us for dinner.  

After the dinner Sam Rushing read a letter from Col. Richard Goldsmith. He commanded 1-70th Armor for two years between 1977 and 1979. 

The next morning we left Colorado Springs on planes and in cars to destinations from Seattle, Washington, to Sturgis, South Dakota, to Kansas, Minnesota, Arkansas Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

My son Nigel and I were delighted with the event as was everyone I spoke to.

Thanks to Sam, Kirk Wood, Bill Betson and the other organizers for a great event.  

America's 250th Anniversary vs. the Bicentennial

 

My tank, Bad Bitch, on a tank trail on Fort Carson, Colorado, July 1976.

On July 4th 1976 I was in a tank in the desert training area on Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Our unit, 1st Battalion/70th Armor, just began two months of field training before we deployed with our entire brigade to Wiesbaden, West Germany.  

When we drove the tanks on roads, many of us clipped 13-star colonial flags on our radio antennas. Many of our 54 tanks and one-hundred-plus support vehicles flew the flags celebrating our bicentennial.  

I was 23 years old and excited at the prospect of living in another country.  More than that, our alert area was in Fulda on the East-West border between the two Germanys.  We were being sent as a full mechanized combat brigade of 4,000 soldiers to show America was still committed to NATO and Europe despite our recent troubles.  

Those alive during America's bicentennial will remember a nation beset by riots and terror bombings.  In 1974 President Nixon resigned in  disgrace.  In 1975, we abandoned Saigon and lost our ill-fated war in Vietnam, abandoning our allies.  Our economy was a mess with high inflation and gas shortages.  

Yet, we survived and thrived. Today we are in another series of crises with leaders far more corrupt and foolish.  We just lost another war we started (much quicker this time) but I am planning to celebrate our nation just as I did 50 years ago.

The Declaration of Independence remains the greatest and most influential political document in history.  

Happy 250th America!!

Museum of American Armor, Long Island, New York: Model Collection

 

In addition to the big collection of armored vehicles at the Museum of American Armor in Long Island, the museum has an impressive collection of scale models of World War II armor. Below are photos. 

Museum of American Armor, Bethpage, Long Island, New York

 

Thirty miles west of Manhattan on Long Island is the Museum of American Armor. This collection of mostly World War II armor and equipment is occasionally rolled out for convoys. Museum patrons can ride in halftracks, scout cars and other armored vehicles across fields in Long Island. 

Click on the web site above and you can learn about every vehicle in their collection.

Tactics, Not Just Numbers, Win Tank Battles

The Panzer I, armed with just machine guns was 

no match for any French or British tank.

The common view of the first year of World War II is that the British and French armies were routed and defeated in six weeks by a superior German armored force using Blitzkrieg tactics. 

The truth is, the invading Germans were outnumbered and outgunned by the defenders of France. They won because Erwin Rommel commanded 7th Panzer Division at the front of the invading German Army carrying out a brilliant invasion plan. The British and French had a combined 3,000 tanks, all of which had cannons capable of destroying any of the German tanks in the invasion force. 

The British Matilda tank. 

Better armed and armored than most German tanks in France in 1940

The Germans had 2,000 tanks, hundreds of them armed with just machine guns. But the Germans concentrated nearly all their armor on a 20-mile invasion front, while the British and French spread their tanks from the Swiss border to the English Channel. Rommel punched through the allied lines. He personally waded into rivers when his engineers were making bridges for his tanks. Rommel broke through the allied lines and captured huge formations. 

Without Rommel carrying out a brilliant invasion plan by General Heinz Guderian, the allied army could have stopped or slowed the German advance and dragged out the war in France. The great early success of Rommel, Guderian and the German Army led Hitler to invade Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Weapons of every kind are wielded by soldiers.  How the weapon is used, as much as the weapon itself, determines the outcome of battles.

Tanks Devour Fuel, Ammo and Spare Parts: Ukraine will be training tank crews, mechanics, and supply crews

 

M559 Goer Fuel Truck

One long night in November of 1977, my tank crew was on our third week of training in the West German countryside near the East-West border. We needed fuel. The 375-gallon fuel tank in our M60A1 Patton tank was at half full. To be combat ready, we needed to refuel.  Usually we refueled when the big M559 Goer fuel truck pulled up alongside us.  Other nights we would pull out of the line and go to the Goer.

M60A1 Patton tanks

On this night, the Goers were gone. I never learned what happened, but our only option was carrying five-gallon cans of fuel 200 meters up the hill from a five-ton truck with a fuel pod.  Two of us had to stay with the tank, while two of us carried the 40-pound jerrycans up and down the hill. We stopped at 100 gallons of fuel, 20 cans. Tanks drink fuel. We needed more fuel the next day; thankfully, the Goers were back.

German Leopard 2 Tank

I was thinking about walking uphill with eighty pounds of fuel when I heard the news about German Leopard 2 tanks going to Ukraine.  The BBC news report was talking about NATO training crews for the tank. Ukraine will also be training soldiers to fix, to resupply fuel and ammo and follow close behind the tanks with everything that a 60-ton, 1,500-horsepower tracked vehicle consumes.  

A Leopard 2 can fire on the move at up to 50 mph with its advanced electronic sights and gun stabilization computers.  It can fire a dozen cannon rounds per minute. But a Leopard only carries 42 120mm cannon rounds.  At a dozen rounds per minute, it would be out of ammo in four minutes.  To reload, the tank has to leave the battle area and go back a supply depot. 

Crew handing rounds up and into a Japanese Type 90 Tank.

At the supply point, each round is handed from a platform beside the tank or up from the ground. Each round is then handed through the loader's hatch and stowed in racks in the turret and hull of the tank. Even the fastest crew will take ten minutes or more to stow 42 rounds inside the tank. 

In a battle, a single tank can burn more than one hundred gallons of fuel, more than one hundred rounds of cannon ammunition and upwards of 5,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition. 

Abrams tanks in attack training exercise

A battalion of 50 tanks and fifty more support vehicles burns more than 100 gallons per mile of fuel. In a sustained attack it will fire 5,000 rounds of cannon ammo and a half-million rounds of machine gun ammo. If the attack covers 20 miles, the battalion will consume upwards of 100 tons of ammo and fuel in a day. All that fuel and ammo has to follow the tanks to the edge of the battle. 

Logistics win wars, said every general from Napoleon to now.  The Russians have shown themselves to be terrible at logistical support.  With these new tanks, Ukraine will get another chance to show how much better they are than the Russians, both fighting with the tanks and keeping the hungry beasts supplied.

Deutsche Panzer Museum: World War II Self-Propelled Guns

During World War II, the German Army made many self-propelled guns (SPGs) based on all of their main battle tank chassis designs: The Panzer MkIV, Panther and Tiger all had SPG variants. They used a variety of main guns. 

The Deutsche Panzer Museum displays all of the variants that could be restored by their staff.