US Flamethrower Tanks of World War II (New Vanguard)
Language: English
Pages: 48
ISBN: 1780960263
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
American experience, from D-Day to dug-in Japanese defenders, went from British Crocodile to E4-7, USMC Satan, and the many POA-CWS (Pacific Area Operation-Chemical Warfare Section) flamethrower tank variants chronicled in this book.
The US Army and Marine Corps experimented with a wide range of flame-thrower tanks through World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters. This book will examine early efforts in the US, the ill-fated attempt to adopted the British Crocodile for D-Day in Normandy, the adoption of the auxiliary E4-7 in the European Theater, and the use of British Crocodile flamethrower units in the ETO. Although the US Army deployment of flame-thrower tanks in the ETO was problematic at best, flamethrowers were much more widely used in the Pacific theater and became ubiquitous by 1945, including an entire Army flamethrower tank battalion on Okinawa in 1945, the largest single use of flamethrower tanks in World War II. This will cover the initial attempts at the use of auxiliary flamethrowers by both the US Army and Marine Corps in 1943, the standardized adoption of the Satan flamethrower tank by the Marines in 1944, the development of main gun flamethrowers by the Marines and US Army based on the POA-CWS (Pacific Area Operation-Chemical Warfare Section) designs, and the myriad other types tested in combat including the powerful LVT-4 design using Navy flamethrowers at Peleliu in 1944. Due to the extensive Japanese use of fortifications in the final year of the Pacific war, Flamethrower tanks became one of the most important solutions in American tactics.
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Improvise. The first known effort was made on New Caledonia in the late summer of 1943 when the 754th Tank Battalion attempted to fire portable flamethrowers out of the pistol ports of their M3A1 light tanks. This was not practical because of the confined space inside the light tank turret. The fighting on New Georgia against tenacious Japanese bunker defenses invigorated the effort to develop a more satisfactory mounting, and in August 1943, the US Army XIV Corps began an effort to adapt the.
Seriously compromised by the mounting, but there was widespread recognition that the Satan was much superior to previous improvisations. The two dozen tanks were split between the 2nd and 4th 16 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Marine Tank Battalions. Each Marine regiment on Saipan was supported by a tank company consisting of 18 M4 medium tanks, reinforced with a Satan flame platoon with four M3A1 Satan flame tanks and two M5A1 light tanks. The M5A1 light tanks served as escorts.
Difficult to adapt to the more common M4 medium tank. (NARA) 21 The Navy Mark I flamethrower was designed as a pallet load that could be lowered into landing craft for beach assaults. In the event, its only use in combat was on board LVT-4 amtracs during the Palaus campaign. (NARA) flamethrower team was dispatched to the 1st Marine Amphibian Tractor Battalion on Guadalcanal, which was preparing for landings in the Palaus with its parent 1st Marine Division in September 1944. Instead of.
Flamethrower detachment of four E7-7 tanks was dispatched to Luzon and assigned to the I Corps during the fighting in the Balete Pass area in April 1945 in support of the 25th Division. The E7-7 were used against a variety of Japanese field defenses, and the flamethrower unit proved to be far more durable and reliable than most of the improvised 24 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com The four Mechanized Flamethrower E7-7s built on the M5A1 light tank were deployed to Luzon in the.
Armored Group offered a periscope flamethrower as an alternative option to the current auxiliary flamethrowers, to avoid the removal of the bow machine gun. POA-CWS developed the H1 Periscope Mount Flamethrower, M4A3, COMPANY C, 4TH MARINE TANK BATTALION, IWO JIMA, FEBRUARY 1945 The 4th Marine Tank Battalion had an energetic program to upgrade its tanks with appliqué armor and other improvements prior to the Iwo Jima landings, based on its combat experiences in the Marianas. This included wooden.