"Greasy Automatons "and "The Horsey Set": The U.S. Cavalry and Mechanization, 1928 - 1940
Abstract
In the 1920s and 1930s, the United States Cavalry confronted fundamental questions about its identity framed within the context of intense branch partisanship and severe manpower and budgetary constraints. While it took prudent steps to maintain as powerful and modern a body of horse cavalry as possible, an intense struggle for the soul of the institution raged. Conservative officers insisted cavalry was the arm that fought on horseback. Pro-mechanization reformers proclaimed mobile combat power and not the horse to be the essence of the arm. Extremists garnered most of the attention then and since, but most cavalrymen stood somewhere in between. These men had a progressive attitude toward their arm. They understood the declining military utility of their mounts and sensed the armored vehicle's ability to replace it. Despite this generally supportive attitude, the fact remains the cavalry only made halting progress between the World Wars toward mechanization. The small American mechanized cavalry program, and the assumptions upon which it was based, ensured that advocates of mechanization could build only slowly the support necessary for their reforms. Faster change called for exactly the kind of bold, visionary leadership the interwar Chiefs of Cavalry did not provide. Faced with the unenviable task of holding together an institution under attack from without and torn apart within, the chiefs sacrificed the cavalry's future on the altar of branch unity. With the creation of the Armored Force in July 1940, the United States Cavalry ceased to be the Army's arm of mobile combat power, becoming instead a monument to the failure of peacetime military innovation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA294718
Entities
People
- Vincent J. Tedesco Iii
Organizations
- Pennsylvania State University