Charles P. Clark, Jr.

The University of Alabama

Which Armor?: Cultural Gap and Military Readiness
When in 2004 Specialist Thomas Wilson asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
about the state of armor for the vehicles used by American forces in Iraq, one of his fundamental
assumptions about military technology was that its first goal was to protect the soldier. Although
Wilsons view is widely accepted in the American discussion of the place of technology in
warfare, this was not always the case. American society in the first decades of the twentieth
century gradually accepted vision of technological progress shaped by consumerist ideals, a
vision that was not fully compatible with the ways in which professional soldiers in the same
time period thought about the role of machines in war. There was a visible conflict between the
virtues of the professional soldier and the citizen-soldier, and the shape of that conflict provides a
window into the values of an era.
American attitudes about technology in the early years of the fourth decade of the
twentieth century were shaped directly by the economic developments of the preceding thirty or
forty years, and fit within a much deeper tradition of improvement and rational progress in the
American mental landscape.1 Roland Marchand deals extensively with the drive to create new
needs as the market for durable goods became saturated in the 1920s, and a sub-set of this drive
was General Motors introduction of yearly automobile model upgrades. According to then-GM
chairman Alfred Sloans memoirs, the discussion of the yearly models revolved around the
advantages to be gained from announcing technical upgrades, particularly since Sloan argued

See for example chapters seven and eight of Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, (New York: Oxford,
2007), 243-327.
1

that Henry Ford did not want to adopt the yearly model. 2 Sloans implied acceptance of the rapid
pace of technological change fit with the view expressed by Charles Kettering, inventor of the
electric starter, that nothing is constant but change. We work day after day, not to finish things,
but to make the future better. 3 A genuine desire to improve the world coincided with a genuine
desire to make money, ideas that both have deep roots in American culture. Advertising about
automobilesand the yearly model updateprovided one way in which American draftees
could think about unfamiliar military technology. 4
The soldiers who were drafted into the American army after 1940 grew up in a world in
which the newest technology was promoted as the best, and technology in general was the
solution to most ills, even when it had created them in the first place. The virtues that the
consumer society required of its citizens were different from what the military would require
from its soldiers. If, in a consumer society, the good economic citizen spends money and rewards
him or herself, soldiers are by definition required to sacrifice, though to varying degrees, for the
good of the whole. The doctrinal debates within the American army, and indeed in most armies,
after 1920 focused on how to incorporate the technologies that had made the Western front in the
Great War such a charnel house. The military establishment still viewed the individual as
interchangeable and replaceable, a view not in sync with the visions of the self promoted by
consumer society.5 Fundamentally, two worlds were about to collide in the Second World War.

Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors , (New York: McFadden-Bartell, 1963, paperback 1965). 165-167.
Life Oct. 25, 1937, 78. Ketterings invention of an automated biplane capable of dropping a 100 pound bomb had
not found an audience with the Army at the time; there were limits to technological futurism.
4
See for example Peter Schrivers, The Crash of Ruin: American Combat Soldiers in Europe during World War II
(New York: New York University Press, 1998), 69, in which he quotes soldiers comparing German tanks to the
newest Ford model.
5
See Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994),
as well as Luc Capdevila and Danile Voldman, trans. By Richard Veasey, War Dead: Western Societies and the
Casualties of War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) 43-45.
2
3

While some Americans formed their expectations and organized their mental framework
of how to be modern soldiers in 1943, and even 1944, the bulk of American forces were raised
and in training before the North Africa landings in November 1942. Before they entered combat
in large numbers, soldiers fell back on categories of understanding they had created in their
civilian lives in the preceding decade. One difference between the professional and the draftee
understanding related to the very meaning of the word modern; in civilian life the word connoted
the most up-to-date or advanced. In the minds of the young men who constituted the tank crews
this meant that their tanks were the best in the worldGeneral Patton, famous by 1942, said as
muchand that meant that they therefore had the best technical specifications. 6 Pattons
understanding had formed over a longer period, and his frame of reference included French
Renault tanks of the previous war. By that standard, even the half-developed American armored
vehicles of 1940-42 were a great improvement. The gulf of understanding between military
establishment and individual soldier threatened the success of both.
Realizing their position, some Army officers conducted an effort to explain their world to
the civilians who would comprise their recruits, manufacture their weapons, and provide the
social and cultural base for the war effort. At the same time they also debated internally over the
proper role of technology, particularly airpower and armor. 7 Educational materials for civilians
ranged from official Army publications to projects undertaken entirely by those not in uniform,
though most fell somewhere in the middle, coming from either former soldiers or civilians who
collaborated with serving officers. These attempts to bridge the intellectual gap between two
very different worlds offer clues to the mindsets of both. Both worlds worried that economic and
Marvin Jensen, Strike Swiftly: The 70th Tank Battalion from North Africa to Normandy to Germany (Novato, CA:
Presidio, 1997), 19. There is a whole other discussion on what the best specifications mean.
7
See Christopher R. Gabel, The U.S. Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941 (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1991) for some of
the contours of this debate.
6

cultural modernity in a nation did not necessarily translate to military modernity; the military
commentator for the Detroit News, S.L.A. Marshall, commented that the preponderance of
motorcars in the U.S. did not necessarily mean that those drivers were ready to operate tanks. 8
The Army concurred, noting that there was no civilian counterpart to some military jobs.
Infantryman was an obvious military-only occupation, but next on the Army list of specialties
without parallel in civilian society was tank driver. 9 Even civilian pilots would need additional
training for combat.
Recruits transitioning from the civilian world to the military often found that two worlds
used the same words with very different meanings. Something of a cottage industry sprang up
publishing books purporting to explain the world of the military to the civilian, draftee, or family
member. The know your army field of literature thus produced is more useful to the historian
for the assumptions and attitudes expressed than for its stated goal of information, much of
which is inaccurate or garbled. Perhaps revealingly, there exists no literature explaining the
assumptions of the draftee to the professional officer. The Army often co-operated with these
authors in an attempt to ensure the information so conveyed was accurate and favorable (when
the two conflicted, George Marshall directed that accuracy should prevail.) 10 Kendall Banning,
author of Our Army Today, thanked over a hundred officers by name for their advice and
assistance; among them were nine major generals, two lieutenant generals, including Willis
Crittenberger (then commanding the Second Armored Corps), and George S. Patton, Jr. (by then

S.L.A. Marshall, War on Wheels (New York: Morrow, 1941), 134-5.

Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R. Keast. The Army Ground Forces: The Procurement and Training
of Ground Combat Troops, (Washington: GPO, 1948), 8.
10
George Marshall, Informal and Off-The-Record Statement to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 13
February 1943 in Bland, ed. The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Volume III, 543.
8
9

famous for action in North Africa.)11 Addison McGhee, author of Hes in the Armored Force
Now, claimed to have served as an aide to General Patton, although he got Pattons middle initial
wrong.12
Efforts to explain the military experience had a distinctly nationalist undertone, though
arguably one imposed from below by the demands of the post-Pearl Harbor market, and the
authors were interested in making the transition to wartime appear as painless as possible.
Much of the literature stresses the similarities between civilian and military life, contributing to
the tendency of the recruits to carry over their assumptions. In part this emphasis provided a
touchstone for readers unfamiliar with the often arcane world of the military, but it also served to
allay fears of draftees and family members. One example of this trend is photo 23-0249a at the
Franklin Roosevelt Presidential library.13 Part of a series entitled A Typical Soldiers Life, it
depicts a soldier cleaning his rifle (an up-to-date M1 Garand, not the 1903 Springfield that was
still being issued in limited numbers) while sitting on his bed in his undershirt. A radio and
typewriter are visible behind him, but no other beds or other individuals appear. With a few
changes, the scene could be taken from standard depictions of the late teenager in his room,
tinkering with some gadget, rather than in a long open room filled with many other young men
preparing for war. The stress on the individual, not the group, diverged widely from most
soldiers descriptions of military life, but did fit the American ideal.
Discussions of military technology borrowed their relationship to technology from the
automobile advertisements of the day, promoting each technical advance as a qualitative
Kendall Banning, Our Army Today (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1943), ix-xii. Given the number
of soldiers thanked, the number of errors in the book is a bit disturbing. Dates are wrong, technical information is
wrong, and the list goes on.
12
Addison F. McGhee, Jr. Hes in the Armored Force Now (New York: McBride and Co, 1942), 213. McGhees
incorrect middle initial for George [S.] Patton may give some indication why he was writing books on the Armored
Force in 1942, rather than serving in it.
13
Photo 23-,0249a FDR Presidential Library website, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/photodb/230249a.gif. Last accessed 31 March 2007.
11

improvement for the user. Just as the newest model of automobile was obviously the best, the
same was assumed to be true with tanks, aircraft, or rifles, without any discussion of the intended
role of the device in question. Combined with a perception of the military as inherently
backwards and out of touch, technical perfectionism led to criticism of Army Ordnance for being
insufficiently open to new designs. In November of 1940, Life magazine published a series of
side-by-side firing tests on the M1 Garand, the Armys standard rifle, and a competing weapon
designed by Melvin Johnson. Rifle marksmanship was assumed by many to be part of the
American male self-image, so the expertise that the professional soldier could deploy on matters
of military technology was negated . According to the article the Johnson performed better than
the Garand under controlled range conditions, and appeared to pass the abuse tests as well, firing
after being buried under dirt, and a variety of other mistreatments. The article ended with the
neutral-sounding assertion that Army Ordnance stuck by the Garand. 14
Interest in the Garand vs. Johnson story was such that in a later issue the editors of Life
published five letters responding to the article. The most outraged of the letters questioned why
the Army could stand by their rifle in the face of such overwhelming evidence of its inferiority;
three other letters agreed. Only one of the five sided with the Garand, Edgar Hayesan ROTC
memberand his defense was that there was no time to re-tool away from Garands. 15 Even
Hayes accepted that because the rifle did not appear to be the most technically advanced, it was
not the best weapon, but he did understand the pressures of mobilizing for modern war. The
Garand ended up as a better weapon, if not a better rifle; it had fewer small parts and was easier
to maintain in the field, something the tests performed for the article did not gauge.

14
15

Life, 18 Nov 1940, 55.

Life, 9 December 190, 2.

Tanks were another focus for discussions of military technology, and the best intersection
between technology and perception. Aircraft were high technology, out of reach for the
average soldier, but tanks seemed much more approachable. In the literature explaining them to
the public, American tanks and tank crews were endowed with characteristics that fit within
American conceptions of themselves as soldiers, such as ingenuity and skill. Brute force was
ascribed to the enemy, although the level of sophistication in the argument naturally varied with
that of the work. There was also something of a double standard regarding cleverness. Where
the authors sympathies lay with the underdog, their tricks were usually fit into the brain over
brawn model. When the Axis powers were clever, it was usually interpreted as a sign of
deviousness or trickery, particularly from the Japanese. In general, however, writers were
reluctant to cede cleverness in the form of technical achievement entirely to the Axis, as when
McGhee argued (weakly) that In a few respects the European and Asiatic manufactures may
have the edge on the United States as gunmakers, but, generally speaking, our guns are the best
that can be put together.16 American attitudes toward military technology were marked by a
split attitude; Germany and Japan were winning and that had to be justified to an audience that
expected American technology to be the best. Since that audience was reluctant to believe the
Axis to be superior in such American areas as gun making, other factors, particularly
underhandedness had to be introduced.
Nowhere did the American ambiguity toward technological warfare in general, and
armored warfare in particular, show more clearly than in discussions of anti-tank defense. After
1939 and 1940, tanks had an unmistakable association with Germany, and while there was an
urge to imitate, there was also an urge to find a uniquely American solution. Here proponents
could rely on the Armys belief in tank destroyersself-propelled unarmored antitank gunsas
16

McGhee, Hes in the Armored Force Now, 113.

their first line of mental defense against blitzkrieg. The tank destroyer appealed to the ideals of
frontier warfare that Russell Weigley argues influenced the transition from a peacetime
constabulary to wartime army in the U.S.17 Soldiers as high-ranking as Lt. General Leslie
McNair, head of the Army Ground forces touted guns, not tanks, as the main defense against
tanks, with some justification.18 Evidence out of France suggested that French organization and
tactics had failed to stop the Germans, not their weapons. 19 Though the advocates of tank
destroyers were aware of the limitations of mobile guns without significant armor, civilian
writers often overlooked these doubts in their nationalist zeal. Kendall Banning identified
(incorrectly) two mechanized artillery pieces as tank destroyers; the 155mm M12 would convert
any tank or gun that it hits into junk and the 105mm M7 may conceivably render tanks
obsolete.20 He portrayed original tank destroyer, a half-track with a 75mm gun, as a harassing
and raiding weapon, able to attack and scurry away before other enemy tanks can take
advantage of their lack of armored protection.21 Mobility became protection in the
technological vision presented for public consumption, if not the internal military one. There
mobility was not the individual ability to avoid enemy fire, but the flexibility to respond quickly
to unexpected situations.
While the experts argued over details of anti-tank gun mobility and control, the Molotov
cocktail was another expedient, sometimes touted (especially after June 1941) as able to defeat
even the heaviest tanks, implying that the American soldier would more likely be facing such
monsters than operating them. The use of the Molotov cocktail for anti-mechanized defense
Russel Weigley, Eisenhowers Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany 1944-1945 (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990,) 7.
18
Gabel, Seek Strike, Destroy, 6. The AGF was the principal organization for troops while in the U.S.
19
See Gabel, Seek Strike, Destroy, 8-9, and Armored Force G-2 Bulletin 163.
20
Banning, Our Army Today, illustration following page 100. While the M12 would indeed destroy any tank it hit,
the likelihood of such a hit was low, given the machines role as an indirect-fire weapon.
21
Ibid.
17

promoted the use of ingenuity rather than brute force to overcome a difficulty. Destroying heavy
tanks need not involve artillery pieces, aerial bombs, or even mines in the war some authors,
especially Lt. Hugh Sears envisioned in Mechanizing our Army. The expedient of a glass bottle
filled with gasoline, easily manufactured and (according to Sears, delivered,) by individual
soldiers, was supposed to destroy the tank. 22
The idea was simple, and not without some merit; few crews continued to fight in a
burning tank. Kendall Banning labeled his illustration of a flamethrower Bad medicine for pill
boxes and tanks, but the flamethrower was not easily created in a pinch by the average soldier. 23
The Molotov was, and it was a weapon that many authors portrayed as capable of stopping the
panzers. Mechanizing Our Army made the case for the Molotov: If a soldier with this
homemade grenade can conceal himself until the tank is near him, he can then hurl the bottle
against the tank. The flaming bottle breaks, the contents ignite, and the burning fluid seeps into
the tank through numerous small openings with disastrous consequences for the crew. 24 Lt.
Sears focused on the positive, since by the time a tank was within range of a thrown weapon it
was very close indeed, closer than an infantryman ever wanted to see an active enemy tank.
Molotov cocktails made an appearance in Our Army Today, where Kendall Banning dated their
appearance to the Soviet-German conflict in 1941. Interestingly, Banning portrayed the very
simple and low-tech Molotov as ultra-modern. If German tanks represented technological
modernity, then the answer was moving forward to the ultra-modern, rather than retreating to
the pre-modern, with the implication that the United States was at or near the crest of the modern
wave. Banning admitted that the Molotov was only employed when all other defense methods
Hugh Sears, Mechanizing our Army: Close-Ups of its Latest Equipment (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1941),
20.
23
Ibid.
24
Sears, Mechanizing our Army, 21.
22

had failed, but went on to exaggerate the effectiveness of the weapon: A hit is fairly sure to
put a tank out of commission.25 The Molotov even surfaced in Hes in the Armored Force Now,
with the comment that the fierce flame gets the crew out in a hurry. 26 All of these presented
marginally accurate information in a context that easily led to wildly distorted expectations
Defeating enemy armor was only one mission of the armed forces; American soldiers
were going into combat in tanks, and so that had to be described as well. Armor posed a
particular problem of explanation in Army publicity. To the problem of making noncombatants
understand the fear and stress associated with combat was added the unfamiliar technological
environment. Kendall Banning titled his chapter on tank acclimatization A Hike in a Hell
Buggy, presumably choosing the word hike to emphasize the connection between the Armored
Force and the infantry of previous wars. Other attempts to explain the Armored Force focused
not on the machines, which were in flux and in any event subject to secrecy restrictions, but on
the experience of the selectees who went to Fort Knox for training. Captain McGhee claimed
some expertise in the field, not least by using his rank on the books cover, and mentioning his
association with the Armored Force inside. Relying on a mix of metaphors to explain the
modern ground Army to his readers, McGhee may have worried that neither agricultural nor
automotive metaphors would resonate fully with an audience divided between country and city.
Focusing heavily on the motorcycles used for scouting and dispatches, McGhee often compared
them to past cavalry mounts, suggesting in a picture caption that just as cavalrymen used to care
for their horses, Armored Force motorcyclists learn to feed and groom their two-cylinder
vehicles.27 In another instance a tank is the object of the agricultural metaphor, as a modern

Banning, Our Army Today, 34-35.

McGhee, Hes in the Armored Force, 195.
27
McGhee, Hes in the Armored Force, 89.
25
26

blacksmith repairs a tanks shoes. 28 In other places, McGhee fell into the refrain that would
become standard, arguing that since American society was motorized, it was much easier for
recruits to grasp the principles of mechanized units. 29
One of the more intriguing views of war from the inside of a tank was written from the
point of view of a competing vision of technological warfare. A tail-gunner in the Air Corps
received a demonstration ride in a light tank, and wrote up the experience in a brief article. The
article was mimeographed and found its way into the personal papers of the third head of the
Armored Force, Alvan C. Gillem. The anonymous author began with the basic assumption that
the Air Force was the Army and that all other branches were attached to support the fliers, or
to disperse Bonus marchers.30 He then proceeded to recount a visit to an Ordnance Department
post to experience a ride in a light tank. After enduring the standard speech on the role of the
Aberdeen Proving Groundthe site of the demonstrationthe visitor was directed to a smiling
Lieutenant who introduced him to another smiling young fellow, the actual tank operator. 31
Upon seeing the light tank in question (from his description it was an M2A2, called the Mae
West because of its dual turrets) the Air Corpsman thought that the machine looked more like a
hybrid farm implement than an insidious implement of modern warfare. 32 In both the case of
smiling driver and innocuous armored vehicle, he found, appearances were deceiving. 33
Comparisons to the civilian world continued, at least superficially, when the tail gunner
entered the tank expecting something like a Sunday drive, a comparison that resonated with a
society where automobiles were relatively common, but new enough that driving could still be
Ibid., 108-9.
In one instance he makes the connection direct: Most tankmen, having operated trucks and tractors in civilian
life, find it comparatively easy to master the intricacies of Armored Force Vehicles. Ibid, 178.
30
Tanks?No Thanks. Anonymous manuscript, Alvan C. Gillem Papers, Box 3, USAMHI. 1. The assumption of
the primacy of an authors own branch is common, but particularly so in the Air Corps.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
28
29

an end in itself rather than just a means to reach a destination. The contrast began immediately,
when the tank took to the weeds like a turpentined hound, and for the next ten minutes the
author claimed that he was unable to tell up from down: Between bounces and bounds, though,
I did get momentarily glimpses of the madly teetering landscape; enough to get a vague,
kaleidoscopic impression of the flying mud, choking dust screens and water spray kicked up by
the churning wheel mounts of our snorting mount.34 After comparing the tank to a bronco and a
Coney Island roller coaster, the author reported that he put on a cheerful face upon exiting so that
the next comrade in line would not be tipped off to the upcoming experience. After comparing
the two primary methods of adapting technology to warfare, the author preferred being a tail
gunner in an FB2 to furnishing the innards for a tin shuttlecock 35 Bannings writing
specifically suggested the opposite; designed for public consumption, his fictional recruit
experienced surprising smoothness at roughly twenty-five miles per hour, albeit on the
highway leading to a maneuver area.36 McGhee also suggested that the ride was relatively
smooth, though not so much from technological achievement as lack of space to bounce
around.37
In addition to serving as a consultant in the publicity campaign; the Army created its own
posters to advertise various service branches before 1942, as part of the drive to attract skilled
and motivated volunteers. Before 1942, volunteers could choose their service branch, an attempt
by the Army to compete with the Navy and Marine Corps. 38 The poster for the Armored Force is
both visually striking and historically interesting. In the background, three medium tanks
Ibid.
Ibid, 2.
36
Banning, Our Army Today, 66.
37
McGhee, Hes in the Armored Force, 40.
38
These parts of the national military establishment had fewer recruiting problems in the first years of the war, but
the Army complained that they were unfairly taking skilled manpower out of the pool before the draft had a chance
to reach them. Ultimately, the policy was dropped over concerns about siphoning the best recruits away from
combat roles, and the Army stopped giving preferential treatment to volunteers.
34
35

advance in a line, cannon firing. In the foreground, taking up almost half the frame, is the tread
of a fourth tank. On its tracks appear the words Right is Might, the only words in the main
image, while the text at the bottom encourages interested men to apply at the nearest recruiting
and induction station.39 Neatly encapsulating a basic American assumption about the moral
nature of the war, the poster also represented a subtle interpretation of the tanks role. The image
of tanks advancing across flat, open ground under a clear blue sky, not only tried to entice, but
contributed to the image of the tank as solid and protecting. Presenting tanks as Might
suggested on some level that the soldiers who served in them would be safer than those who
marched in the infantry.40 For many trainees, safe meant that they and all their immediate
comrades would be protected.
The tanks in Right is Might were at least the most up-to-date the army had to offer.
Lack of time and the need to promote the Army in terms that were likely to reach the general
public involved obscuring the improvised nature of the first mass-produced American medium
tank, the M3. Portraying the M3 as a stopgap measure produced by desperate British requests
would hardly inspire the crews who went to battle in it, so that tank became, briefly, a symbol of
American industrial power and mechanized might. Armored Force publicity photos featured the
M3 as a mainstay during the pre-combat phase, and whatever worries armored officers had about
the tank stayed out of the public view. One photo, released in April 1942, extolled the
combination of good American soldier and good American equipment as being ready to cause
a lot of headaches for the Axis.41 The M3 thus was judged a good tank, and a civilian or
inductee could be forgiven for concluding that the Army hierarchy was committed to it, although
Stu Graves, Right is Might George Marshall Poster Collection.
Which was statistically true.
41
Photo 65597(79) , FDR Presidential Library Website, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/photodb/230234a.gif. Last accessed 31 March 2007.
39
40

the Armored Force was already planning to replace it before it even entered production. Soldiers
who held that perception were likely to lose faith in their leaders if the M3 failed to prove its
worth to them in combat. One member of the 70 th Independent Tank Battalion recalled the
shortcomings of their tanks prior to the invasion of North Africa, ending with the accusation that
the Army knew about this and did nothing. 42
An April 1942 photo showed a tank assembly area with a half-track in the foreground and
ten or so M3s in the background. The caption was The irresistible roll of America's mighty new
army is already shaping world events.43 American propaganda rarely used massed infantry to
symbolize the nations power, since that conception appeared to look back to the Great War in
light of recent German victories. Although armor was portrayed less often and less prominently
than other technological means of warfare, such as bombers and warships, tanks still displaced
the infantryman in the depiction of American fighting prowess. Horses, allowable in the
previous wars image-making, were rarely seen in official releases. Kendall Banning did discuss
animals as prime movers for artillery, but in his photo section the only mule to be seen appeared
in a demonstration of gas masks for service animals.44 The image of the modern army differed
somewhat from the realities of war at the front, but accurate depictions of combat seemed
unlikely to raise the morale of worried relatives. For the soldiers who would experience combat
directly, unrealistic depictions of combat could only promote the belief that no one in the upper
echelons had any idea of the realities of warfare.
Training also had to be sold to the public as the most advanced (and therefore best)
available at the time. The early products of the military publicity mill often displayed a certain
Jensen, Strike Swiftly, 59-60.
Photo 65597(82) FDR Presidential Library website, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/photodb/230232a.gif. Last accessed 31 March 2007.
44
Banning, Our Army Today, illustrations following p 100.
42

43

light-heartedness, even when they technically accurate. 45 One Fort Knox publicity photo had as
its subject the training for multiple contingencies that tank crews received, including the
possibility of dismounted combat. The training itself was reasonable, and even a bit farsighted,
since tank crews did later dismount and fight even when their tanks were not disabled, especially
in cities. One photo from June 1942, used to convey the idea that tank crews were prepared to
fight dismounted, contrasted with the utility of the policy. In the photo, the crew of an M3
dismounted their tank, under simulated fire, with weapons that varied from pistols and
Thompson submachine guns to a Browning machine gun stripped from the tank itself. On the
top of the tank, one crewman crouchedunconvincinglywith a pistol. The photos
perspective and composition suggest a still from a low-budget movie (the sky has an unnatural
quality missing in other armor publicity photos), while the poses of the soldiers suggest the
movie misconception of combat.46 A similar photo appeared in Hes in the Armored Force Now,
but with the addition of gas masks and the suggestion that the crew would be armed with .45
revolvers and tommy guns as they eagerly dismounted to engage the enemy on foot. 47
As time wore on after Pearl Harbor, more advanced American tanks began to appear in
public, most notably the M4. Sherman tanks graced the covers of Hes in the Armored Force
Now and Our Army Today, although in both cases the internal illustrations featured a mix of M3
and M4 tanks. Both covers also featured the tanks in motion, Banning an illustrated version and
McGhee a photo (with dust flying off of the treads). Popular depictions of military technology
often focused on the American tanks mobility and the accuracy of its gun; the tanks in such a
Paul Fussells concept of the transition from light to heavy duty is applicable, though he misinterprets some of the
evidence he introduces to support it. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989), 7.
46
Photo 65599(2) , FDR Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/photodb/23-0090a.gif. Last
Accessed 31 March 2007.
47
McGhee, Hes in the Armored Force Now, 186.
45

view were usually valuable because they could go more places enemy models, not for their
formidable armor or firepower. In artistic renderings the machines were always in motion, never
static.
The American vision of technology formed in the decades before the war influenced the
assumptions young men brought into the military, and they, as well as the civilian population at
large, interpreted the role that military technology, particularly tanks, should play in light of
those assumptions. The publicity materials created in the first period of the war obscured the
great likelihood of death or injury faced by soldiers in combat, interposing a technological shield
between the nations young men and horrors of industrialized warfare. The reality of combat
was that by definition the nation asked its young men to die, and they, raised as individual
consumers, believed that they should not. In the decades since the war this technological shield
has become only more pronounced, contributing in part to the perception that an American
soldiers death is a failure, rather than a natural consequence of combat.
Images:

Photo 23-0249a, part of the series Typical Soldiers Life

Stu Graves, Right is Might, 1942.