Tank History: "Role of Armor" 1961 US Army; The Big Picture TV-509

more at http://quickfound.net/

'THE BIG PICTURE viewers will get an opportunity in this picture to see how armor has grown from a small group of specialists to the all-important role in in today's army. Signal Corps films present an authentic report of the first tactical employment of the iron combatants. Now accepted as an essential part of the fighting team on the ground, tanks were once considered impractical and ineffective. This episode records the slow evolution of today's rugged, reliable, hard-hitting, mobile forces. Authentic combat footage shows the successful employment of armored vehicles in World War II and in Korea. An indication of what lies ahead is also given with a view of the most modern armored vehicles being tested at Army proving grounds. A substantial following of World War II and Korean veterans, as well as those readers of Armor Magazine and members of the U.S. Armor Association who review the past triumphs of armor with considerable interest, will find in this documentary film a complete story that has long been waiting to be told.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armoured_warfare

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Armoured warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war.

The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate conventional defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units.

Much of the application of armoured warfare depends on the use of tanks and related vehicles used by other supporting arms such as infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other combat vehicles, as well as mounted combat engineers and other support units. The doctrine of armoured warfare was developed to break the static nature of World War I trench warfare on the Western Front, and return to the 19th century school of thought that advocated manoeuvre and "decisive battle" outcomes in military strategy...

Modern armoured warfare began during the First World War with the need to break the tactical, operational and strategic stalemates forced on commanders on the Western Front by the effectiveness of entrenched defensive infantry armed with machine guns—known as trench warfare. Under these conditions, any sort of advance was usually very slow and caused massive casualties. The development of the tank was motivated by the need to return manoeuvre to warfare, and the only practical way to do so was to provide caterpillar traction to (machine)guns allowing them to overcome trenches while at the same time offering them armour protection against small arms (rifle, machine gun) fire as they were moving.

Tanks were first developed in Britain and France in 1915, as a way of navigating the barbed wire and other obstacles of no-man's land while remaining protected from machine-gun fire. British Mark I tanks first went to action at the Somme, on 15 September 1916, but did not manage to break the deadlock of trench warfare. The first French employment of tanks, on 16 April 1917, using the Schneider CA, was also a failure. In the Battle of Cambrai (1917) British tanks were more successful, and broke a German trenchline system, the Hindenburg Line.

Despite the generally unpromising beginnings, the military and political leadership in both Britain and France during 1917 backed large investments into armoured vehicle production. This led to a sharp increase in the number of available tanks for 1918. The German Empire to the contrary, produced only a few tanks, late in the war. Twenty German A7V tanks were produced during the entire conflict, compared to over 4,400 French and over 2,500 British tanks of various kinds. Nonetheless, World War I saw the first tank-versus-tank battle, during the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918, when a group of three German A7V tanks engaged a group of three British Mark IV tanks they accidentally met.

After the final German Spring Offensives of 1918, Entente tanks were used in mass at the Battle of Soissons and Battle of Amiens, which ended the stalemate imposed by trench warfare on the Western Front, and thus effectively ended the war...