CRITICAL THINKING
in a series of wargame training maneuvers that took place in the fields, small towns and swamplands of Georgia and Louisiana. Te exercises would test if either could live up to its own hype and prove its superiority over the other.
Unfortunately, the earliest maneuvers quickly demonstrated that, even in terrain over which they had an advantage, the horses simply could not match the speed of Chaffee’s tanks. In response, Patton, then a colonel commanding the horse unit at Fort Myer, Virginia, would reach out to Chaffee about transferring to the new armored force.
Horses would get one more chance to prove their combat worth. In September 1941, the last and largest of the maneuvers took place on 3,400 square miles south of Shreveport and in and around what is now Fort Polk. With 470,000 troops, 50,000 wheeled and tracked vehicles and 32,000 horses participating, two different “armies” were sent out to battle it out in a mock war.
In the first exercise, the horses displayed all the mobility, agility, shock and courage for which they were so famous in their battle against two divisions of tanks.
“Tanks were sliding off roads, getting stuck in Louisiana’s famous ‘gumbo’ mud, running out of gas—subject to all the shortcom- ings of motorized vehicles of the era. Te horse showed none of these deficiencies,” Letts described in “Te Perfect Horse.”
On the second exercise, Patton’s armored group, utilizing the innovative tactics of aggression, deception, speed and surprise for which he would later become legendary, managed to encircle the opposing Army, including the horse cavalry, and force their surrender three days before the exercise was scheduled to end.
Although the horse cavalry had performed admirably, the mech- anized cavalry prevailed. Te maneuvers had convinced Army leadership that tanks could easily outperform horses in provid- ing the strategic and operational speed and mobile firepower needed to succeed in a modern war. Just two months later, the U.S. finally entered the war with mechanized cavalry serving as the heart of mobile combat power. For the cavalry officers who had long advocated for a mounted force, it was a bitter moment. But dutifully, they said goodbye to their horses, hung up their stirrups and transferred to mechanized units.
CONCLUSION In the end, tanks ultimately won over horses not because they were superior in all aspects of cavalry functions but because they
https://asc.ar my.mil 69
were superior in all the necessary ones. Warfare had changed, and the method by which to achieve the mission had to change with it. As hard as it was to part with the tradition and glory of the mounted cavalry, the Army chose to follow Patton’s battle- field doctrine: “Always go forward!”
Although they would no longer again be the “tip of the spear” in combat operations, horses continued to have a few moments of glory advancing our warfighters. For example, in 2001, during Operation Enduring Freedom, a small team of Green Berets with the 5th Special Forces Group’s Operational Detachment Alpha 595, led by former cattle rancher Capt. Mark Nutsch, borrowed local horses and used old-style cavalry tactics like stealth and agil- ity to outmaneuver obsolete Soviet tanks and trucks and liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban.
Today, it is the tanks that are being questioned. In the face of 21st century battlefield tactics and technology, many believe that tanks are becoming obsolete and wonder whether they will soon have to cede their role as lead mobile combat power to drones and other unmanned systems.
Tat debate between traditionalists and modernists and those in the middle will no doubt continue, even as opportunities arise to show which platform is superior. In the end, the answer will, once again, be determined by mission, not method.
May the best technology win.
For more information on the transition from horses to tanks, go to
https://history.army.mil/Army-Museum-Enterprise/Find- an-Army-Museum/US-Cavalry-Museum and for the latest information on U.S. Army tank modernization and sustainment, go to
https://www.peogcs.army.mil/Project-Offices/PM-Abrams.
HEATHER B. HAYES provides contract support to the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center as a contributing writer and editor for Army AL&T Magazine and JANSON. She holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Kentucky and has more than 30 years of experience writing and editing feature articles and books.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
