Mechanized Infantry - History

History

Arguably, the first mechanized infantry were 36 two-man infantry squads carried forward by Mark V* tanks at the Battle of Amiens in 1918. In a battle of such scale, their contribution went unnoticed.

Toward the end of World War I, all the armies involved were faced with the problem of maintaining the momentum of an attack. Tanks, artillery or infiltration tactics could all be used to break through an enemy defense, but almost all the offensives launched in 1918 ground to a halt after a few days. Pursuing infantry quickly became exhausted, and artillery, supplies and fresh formations could not be brought forward over the battlefields quickly enough to maintain the pressure on the regrouping enemy.

It was widely acknowledged that cavalry was too vulnerable to be used on most European battlefields, although many armies continued to deploy them. Motorized infantry could maintain rapid movement, but their trucks required either a good road network, or firm open terrain (such as desert). They were unable to traverse a battlefield obstructed by craters, barbed wire and trenches. Tracked or all-wheel drive vehicles were to be the solution.

Following the war, development of mechanized forces was largely theoretical for some time, until many nations began rearming in the 1930s. The British Army had established an Experimental Mechanized Force in 1927, but they failed to pursue this line due to budget constraints and the prior need to garrison the frontiers of the Empire.

Although some proponents of mobile warfare—such as J. F. C. Fuller—advocated building "tank fleets", others—such as Heinz Guderian in Germany, Adna R. Chaffee Jr. in the United States, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Soviet Union—recognized that tank units required close support from infantry and other arms, and that these supporting arms needed to maintain the same pace as the tanks.

As the Germans rearmed in the 1930s, they equipped some infantry units in their new Panzer (armored) divisions with the half-track Sd.Kfz. 251, which could keep up with tanks on most terrain. The French Army also created "Light Mechanized" (Légère Méchanique) divisions in which some of the infantry units possessed small tracked carriers. Together with the motorization of the other infantry and support units, this gave both armies highly mobile, combined-arms formations. The German doctrine was to use these to exploit breakthroughs in Blitzkrieg offensives, the French envisaged them being used to shift reserves rapidly in a defensive battle.