Why America's Nuclear Army Failed | Pentomic

sometimes the tactics of warfare change the war of the future on an atomic faculty [Music] the 1950s were turbulent time for the us military it was an era where officials at the highest levels believed war would mean nuclear annihilation in this environment the us army was falling into obscurity left without a pressing mission as the fledgling air force soaked up most defense funding the army solution was an unorthodox concept called the pentomic army designed to thrive in a nuclear environment however this rushed concept was fueled mainly by political pressure and wouldn't survive the eisenhower presidency in this video we're going to examine the us army's pentomic infantry divisions from the political situation that created them to their tactical rationale and why they turned out to be ineffective in all battlefields but first i'd just like to thank the brigade who allow us to make videos even if youtube's algorithm doesn't like it if you want to support us and get access to a bunch of perks join up over at patreon.com battle order in the late 1950s an anxiety loomed over america following the unsatisfactory conclusion of the korean war and the growing threat of nuclear armageddon when dwight eisenhower assumed the presidency one of his main goals was to stop more koreas from happening while also reducing defense spending to do more with less eisenhower saw nuclear weapons as the solution because of their unprecedented destructive power the logic was that just having nukes was enough to prevent a general war at the time america's nuclear capability far exceeded the soviet unions so the threat of nuclear retaliation may have been enough to prevent conventional war this strategic outlook triggered a shift in the us military as the relatively new u.s air force's strategic bomber fleet was the nation's means of delivering strategic nuclear weapons its budgets soared while the other services dwindled by 1957 air force funding was almost as large as the navies and armies combined although the eisenhower administration believed that nuclear war would never actually come this still caused a fixation on strategic nuclear war whereby the enemy's combat power industry and even their cities would be wiped out by high-yield nuclear warheads for eisenhower at least it was believed that conventional warfare was dead as the traditional land war fighting branch this relegated the army to a secondary role in armed conflict if nuclear war did break out they'd at most be used for occupying nuclear wastelands and restoring order at home a force with that mission didn't need to be very well equipped or large so the army's very existence was called into question as such the army strongly disagreed with eisenhower they believed that conventional non-nuclear wars were still possible as the soviet union's own nuclear capability grew they believed the us would be far less likely to use their own nukes to counter more localized incursions like they experienced in korea or would experience in vietnam the army of course would turn out to be right but their viewpoint wouldn't be fully embraced until john f kennedy took office during the 1950s the army had to adopt a doctrine that meshed with the nation's nuclear deterrence strategy as that's what the president joint chiefs of staff and department of defense demanded but keeping with their own strategic view the army also wanted an organization that could fight conventional non-nuclear wars equally well it should be noted that although the army didn't buy into strategic nuclear war they did value tactical nuclear weapons rather than seeing them as just weaker strategic nukes they saw them as the ultimate evolution of artillery thus tactical nukes could massively increase the firepower of units while still reducing manpower but they also knew that friendly units were also likely to be targeted by the enemy's own nukes to combat the threat of atomic bombardment the most important characteristic of the new army system would be dispersion if units were widely dispersed there wouldn't be a single large target that was worth the enemy's limited nuclear capability and if the enemy did choose to nuke a unit the damage would be limited to a single subunit and not [ __ ] the division as a whole but this presented a problem because widely dispersed units were poorly suited to defending against enemy attack or themselves conducting an attack against enemy defenses thus units would also have to be highly mobile and flexible to concentrate rapidly this would require substantial mechanization aerial logistics and technologies that were not yet in service after a series of tests in the early 1950s the army implemented its new organization in 1957 there were three variants one for airborne divisions one for infantry divisions and one for armored divisions collectively the reorganization effort would come to be known as the pentomic army the biggest changes came to the airborne and infantry divisions as they were the most vulnerable to nuclear attrition the armored divisions actually didn't change that much as they had been working since world war ii to increase flexibility and combined arms integration additionally they were judged to already be mobile enough to disperse and rapidly concentrate and protect it enough against nuclear warheads armored divisions were only modified slightly with a long-term goal being to convert them into unified pentomic divisions in the 1960s changes to infantry divisions were much more dramatic before 1957 divisions were triangular consisting of three infantry regiments which in turn had three infantry battalions each with three rifle companies this was in addition to divisional artillery and other supporting elements normally in combat infantry regiments would be reinforced with divisional and core support to create combined arms regimental combat teams however by the 1950s the army saw regiments as too rigid too large and too dependent on divisional support the army wanted their basic unit to be able to keep fighting even if other subunits and divisional hqs were nuked under the pentomic system divisions were composed of five battle groups which directly replaced the regiments these battle groups were intended to fight as independent units of action with their own self-contained logistics and fire support they were small enough to not be juicy targets for nuclear attack and expendable enough that it wouldn't matter a great deal even if they were initially each infantry battle group had an hq and hq company a mortar battery serving 107 millimeter rifled mortars and four rifle companies each with four rifle platoons and one weapons platoon battle groups meanwhile had five rifle companies instead of four this design reduced the infantry division's bayonet strength from 27 to 20 rifle companies but because each company was larger the number of rifle platoons was only reduced from 81 to 80. in the field each battle group would be directly reinforced with a divisional engineer company and a six-gun battery of 105 millimeter howitzers the heaviest artillery piece that was readily air transportable infantry battle groups would also be reinforced by one divisional tank company equipped with m48 patents meanwhile at the divisional level there was heavier artillery acting in general support for airborne divisions this meant one battery of two honest john rocket artillery pieces which could carry a conventional explosive warhead or a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead the infantry division on the other hand got even more artillery this included a battery of 4 8-inch howitzers which could fire nuclear and non-nuclear projectiles as well as two batteries of towed millimeter howitzers the reorganization overall resulted in a large decrease in personnel and an increase in firepower in terms of how pentomic units would function you can kind of see where they were going with it but find pretty quickly that it was not well thought out there were two main modes for the pentamic division dispersed area defense and post nuclear exploitation to the army the nuclear battlefield would be a fluid one covering wider areas than ever before in the defense battle groups would essentially act as islands of resistance unlike previous doctrine which called for contiguous lines with maneuver units mutually supporting each other battle groups would essentially fight on their own without support from other battle groups in theory there were meant to be three to five mile gaps between battle groups new surveillance technologies most notably battle group level ground surveillance radars were meant to cover the gaps but they proved to be wholly insufficient for the task the reduction of manpower also reduced frontline strength at a time when company frontages were wider than ever in a battle group defense companies would be expected to defend 2 200 meters and platoons would have to defend 730 meters each this seriously limited platoon's ability to even communicate with each other much less support each other the separation made battle groups very susceptible to defeat in detail and made them entirely reliant on tactical nuclear weapons to protect themselves ironically though the battle groups didn't actually have their own nuclear artillery in the 1950s the davy crockett recoilless gun with its 20-ton yield nuclear warhead wouldn't reach widespread adoption until the pentamic experiment was coming to an end in the 1960s this was just one example of how pentomic units relied too heavily on equipment that wasn't yet in service the isolated nature of a battle group area defense also meant that there were no hard lines of supply if the enemy was allowed to slip through the gaps rather battle groups would rely almost entirely on air resupplies something that was far from guaranteed given airfields would be likely nuclear targets and the division had a limited amount of helicopters in a real war it's very likely that battle groups employed in this fashion would have had to employ nuclear weapons within their own position to bleed the enemy attacking was just as unorthodox for the time more closely resembling world war 1 than a modern battlefield before an attack even started a division's battle groups would have to concentrate this required a lot of mobility which in theory might in the future have been achieved via armored personnel carriers however in reality the division had no means to mechanize or motorize itself within the divisional transportation battalion was a truck company and two apc companies which were only capable of mounting a one battle group at once air assault attacks via helicopters were also an option but the divisions similarly lacked enough helicopters to move all battle groups at once so any infantry attack would be predominantly foot mobile excluding artillery units and the attached tank companies but once this concentration was theoretically accomplished the enemy's front line would be hit with nuclear weapons after the line was blown open us army units would pour through and exploit the gap the first phase of an attack would essentially be like marching through a nuclear hellscape pentomic divisions would attack in column this was highly unusual as column formation is usually what was used on the march it limits firepower forward but maximizes speed this was seen as a good trade-off because hopefully enemy defensive positions would be completely destroyed by nuclear fire there was no room for flank attacks in this doctrine as frontal assaults supported by tactical nuclear weapons were the quickest way to get to key targets in the enemy's depth now the problems with this approach were obvious firstly it required the use of nuclear weapons in the field although the army had started the 1950s by rejecting strategic nuclear war as a concept they ironically found themselves entirely reliant on nuclear weapons secondly there was really no concept of how infantry divisions would maneuver through the gaps created by nuclear weapons the military had conducted nuclear tests early in the decade that involved infantry and armored maneuver and proximity to nuclear detonations but they were highly unrealistic and not applicable at all to a tactical nuclear war in central europe and third it relied heavily on technological developments and procurement that did not yet exist although the pentana study the structure was mostly based on called for an entirely mechanized army which is what the soviets were starting to do in the late 1950s this would never actually be achieved in the us in addition to the doctrine being of dubious effectiveness for a real nuclear war the structure itself was fundamentally flawed for conventional wars as well in the search for independence and maximum dispersion the pentatonic division's span of control was insane rather than each infantry regiment commander controlling three battalions and attached support battlegroup commanders of the same rank found themselves with five maneuver companies a multi-purpose combat support company tanks engineers and an artillery battery this made battle groups unwieldy hard to control and not mobile counter to pantomics premium on mobility and flexibility further the division commander's ability to effectively control all of their battle groups plus supporting elements spread out over a wide area was questionable thus the pentamic army wasn't useful for nuclear or non-nuclear warfare it was somewhat useful for deterrence as it was at least on the tin designed for nuclear war but deterrence wasn't what the army was going for in its design it was aiming for combat effectiveness with its flaws apparent and a massive retaliation waning in popularity the pantomic army died when eisenhower left office the incoming kennedy administration agreed with the army's stance that limited non-nuclear wars were still likely as would be realized in vietnam their new flexible response doctrine resulted in the dumping of the pentomic army in 1963 and the adoption of a brigade structure similar but not identical to what we have today but that is a story for another day if you enjoyed this video check out this video where we take a look at east germany's mechanized infantry units during the late cold war we'll see you over there

Channel: Battle Order

Views: 805,438

Keywords: TO&E, structure, organization, military, pentomic, cold war, 1950s, 1957, division, rocid

Id: LrnsFmwiV_M

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021