Famous Tank Battles

The 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment was the forward screen of VII Corps, but its mission went far beyond traditional scouting. This episode introduces the regiment that would become central to the Battle of 73 Easting, explaining how armored cavalry protects a corps, finds the enemy, reports contact, and fights when reconnaissance turns violent. Moving ahead of the 1st Infantry Division, the 2d ACR carried tanks, Bradley cavalry fighting vehicles, artillery, scouts, helicopters, and the communications needed to operate across a wide desert front. Listeners learn why cavalry in Desert Storm often began as a security force but became a main battle force when it met serious Iraqi resistance. The regiment’s role reveals how modern armored campaigns depend on seeing first and acting before the enemy can recover. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

The Hail Mary was the bold campaign design that turned Desert Storm from a frontal assault into a sweeping armored envelopment. Coalition forces fixed Iraqi attention along Kuwait and the Wadi al Batin while VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps moved far west, then north and east into Iraq. This episode explains how deception, geography, operational timing, and fuel-hungry armored formations shaped the famous left hook. Listeners learn why the plan was risky, how commanders intended to strike the Republican Guard before it could escape, and why desert navigation and logistics were as important as firepower. The Hail Mary shows modern armored warfare as a contest of movement, surprise, command, and sustainment across immense open distances. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

Moving VII Corps was one of the great logistical achievements behind Desert Storm’s armored victory. This episode follows the transformation of a U.S. Army corps in Germany into a desert striking force in Saudi Arabia, tracing tanks, Bradleys, artillery, fuel trucks, recovery vehicles, ammunition, and thousands of soldiers across railheads, ports, ships, and desert assembly areas. By mid-February 1991, VII Corps had launched about 900 convoys, moved more than 6,000 armored vehicles and thousands of additional pieces of equipment, and pushed roughly 340 miles into the desert. Listeners learn why modern tank warfare begins long before combat, with maintenance, supply, route control, communications, and fuel shaping what an armored army can actually do. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

The decision to send VII Corps from Europe transformed the Gulf crisis from a defensive standoff into preparation for a major armored offensive. This episode explains why President George H. W. Bush and General Norman Schwarzkopf needed a Cold War heavy corps to eject Iraq from Kuwait and defeat the Republican Guard. VII Corps had been built for a mechanized war in Central Europe, with armored divisions, artillery, engineers, logistics, and the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment as its forward screen. Listeners learn how Lieutenant General Frederick Franks inherited the task of converting that powerful but Europe-focused formation into the offensive punch for the famous western envelopment. The deployment signaled intent, scale, and a new phase of coalition strategy. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

Desert Shield was the tense race to protect Saudi Arabia before Iraqi armor could turn Kuwait’s conquest into a wider Gulf disaster. This episode follows the rapid coalition buildup, from early airborne and airpower deployments to the arrival of heavier forces, ports, depots, fuel systems, and command networks. The focus is not only on diplomacy and deterrence, but on the practical mechanics of defending a desert kingdom against a large mechanized army. Listeners learn how coalition warfare took shape, why logistics mattered as much as tanks, and how a defensive shield gradually became preparation for an offensive campaign. Desert Shield reveals the hidden foundation of Desert Storm: political permission, strategic patience, and the immense labor of moving modern combat power into place. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, set the Gulf War in motion and returned large-scale armored warfare to the center of world affairs. This opening chapter places the Battle of 73 Easting in its true strategic context, showing how Iraqi tanks and mechanized infantry overwhelmed Kuwait, threatened Saudi Arabia, and forced the United States and its allies to prepare for a major ground campaign. Listeners learn why the road to 73 Easting began months before the first cavalry troop crossed a map grid line, with oil, debt, regional power, and armored coercion shaping the crisis. The episode also introduces the Iraqi army’s strengths and weaknesses after the Iran-Iraq War. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

The final episode weighs the full meaning of Chinese Farm and the Suez Canal counteroffensive. Egypt’s opening crossing was a strategic and political success that shattered the post-1967 deadlock, while Israel’s recovery at Deversoir showed how a battered armored force could adapt, find a seam, and regain operational leverage. The campaign’s center was the savage fight for the Chinese Farm corridor, where tanks, infantry, engineers, roads, bridges, and logistics collided under extreme pressure. The war cannot be reduced to a simple Israeli victory or Egyptian defeat. It was a campaign of ambiguity: battlefield reversal on the ground, political transformation beyond it, and enduring lessons about combined arms warfare, operational tempo, and the limits of armored confidence. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

The encirclement of Egypt’s Third Army turned the end of the Yom Kippur War into a superpower crisis. Israeli forces west of the Suez Canal had cut or threatened the supply routes sustaining Egyptian troops east of the water, creating a dangerous situation involving food, fuel, ammunition, water, and medical relief. An operational armored maneuver became a diplomatic emergency involving Cairo, Jerusalem, Washington, and Moscow. The United States and Soviet Union faced the risk that a regional battlefield crisis could escalate into a Cold War confrontation. The Third Army was not destroyed in a final tank battle; it became vulnerable because mobility, bridges, and road control had turned logistics into strategy. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 338 called for a ceasefire on 22 October 1973, but around the Suez Canal the guns did not simply fall silent. Israeli armor was still expanding its west-bank position, Egyptian forces still held bridgeheads east of the canal, and both sides fought to shape the last facts on the ground before diplomacy hardened the lines. Ceasefires in armored campaigns are battlefield events before they become diplomatic realities. Roads, bridges, supply lines, trapped units, and tank positions all carried political weight. Resolution 338 linked the 1973 war back to the unresolved consequences of 1967 and transformed the canal campaign from a military contest into an urgent international negotiation. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.

The battle for Suez City on 24 October 1973 was a sobering end to Israeli armored momentum. After driving south on the west bank and threatening the Egyptian Third Army’s rear, Israeli forces attacked the city expecting to tighten their operational grip. Instead, Egyptian soldiers, commandos, militia, and armed locals turned the streets into a punishing urban battlefield. Tanks that had been effective in open maneuver struggled amid buildings, alleys, rooftops, close-range weapons, and poor reconnaissance. Suez City is a warning about the limits of armored exploitation: a successful drive through rear areas does not automatically translate into a successful urban assault. The fight denied Israel a clean final triumph and preserved an Egyptian symbol of resistance. For more military history writing and books, visit MilitaryAuthor.me, and for magazines, galleries, and a massive archive of military photos and video, visit Trackpads.com.