Customer Reviews

The Iron Cavalry

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The point of writing a book on Armored warfare development is to LEARN SOMETHING we can apply today. Ralph Zumbro is a COMBAT veteran from Vietnam who fought in Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) and has a mission, knows it and then goes about enlightening us all. He begins by tracing the fact through history that man has always used a form of armored protection coupled with a mobility form to gain positional advantage. His book is priceless because he realizes this is the true of mobile, mounted essence, not ego-gratifying tank duels which wrongly pre-occupies the current generation of tankers who should refer to themselves as a practitioners of the sound traditional war-form of Cavalry. Battlefield functions stay the same, though the war forms will change as the technology changes.

Zumbro shows that throughout history the essence of Cavalry is to gain a mobility differential and exploit it to gain a battlefield effect---he shows how the Russians actually used horse Cavalry in WWII in conjunction with armored vehicles to swarm and overwhelm Germans who on foot were at a disadvantage. The Russians had their infantry in adequate numbers to effect battles positively (refer to Bolger's book Death Ground: American Infantry in Battle) ride their tanks (they do this today in Chechnya); something we refuse to do--we insist on moving infantry around in Bradley machine gun tanks which require a 3-man crew to man and can only carry 7 dismounts and wonder why with this overhead cost we end up only with a handful of "security guards for tanks" and not the decisive infantry force that can maneuver and take ground apart from their armored mounts. Zumbro shows how the Vietnames created the M113 ACAV--an all-terrain tracked AFV with gunshields to maneuver at will and dominate the swampy rice paddy terrains of Vietnam. A vehicle that dominated the fight in Vietnam and could carry a full 9-13 man Infantry squad. He then concludes with AFVs combined with helicopters for an Air-Mech combination beginning with the Soviets in 1978 Ogaden war and in a final futuristic chapter written in Tom Clancy style. The point of this all is to re-energize Armor branch to its true function--as Iron, Kevlar, Chobham Cavalry not the "land battleship" dueling madness that pervades the ranks today. The point is to win battles with armored maneuver, not duel other tanks so you can paint a "kill mark" on your gun tube.

To do this, he uses an interesting and entertaining style to motivate and enlighten rather than a dry scholarly approach that would bore everyone to death and in the end fail to sway the defeatists and nay-sayers stuck in their ways regardless of how many facts, battle won and lessons learned are arrayed in their presence. His book is full of important technotactical details which I'm constantly referring to to solve today's problems. He is an Iron thinker. There simply is no other book that better presents the truths U.S. Army Armor branch must face if it wants to be a relevent player on the 21st century battlefield.

This book gives a very good over view of the history of tanks and their tactics. I found the book to be a very good starting piont for people who would like to begin a study in armor tactics.

Mr. Zumbro was a tanker before he became a historian. The perspectives represented in this book are therefore different than than you might find in conventional history books. Also, his style is not fully developed, and the book alternates from a first person perspective to historical facts in a few chapters. Particular emphasis is paid to smaller battles and wars which are mainly forgotten or ignored by other historians. All in all, I'd recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the development of mobile armored forces, but not as the only source of information.

OK, it is a good story book, but lacks central focus. Ralph needed a better editor who could sit down and help him focus more. Some of the stories are great and in some cases would make a great book in themselves, but the writing style takes it out of the realm of serious history and relegates it to populist history; very enjoyable, but still populist history, which is what I think Ralph was shooting for.

Having read Tank Sergeant I knew this was not War and Peace. No one who is not a tanker or in the CAV will relate to his point of view well, making it a book with a limited audience, but one that tankers and anyone interested in cavalry and its history should read.

Armor, cavalry and the concepts involved in this book are real, very real and current. Cavalry, as demostrated time and time again in this book and history, is a mindset, not a set of hardware or type of vehicle. From the battle of Kadesh to the 1st Cavalry in Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, cavalry has led the way and provided the point of the spear. Ralph Zumbro has made a valiant attempt at writing a history of the modern armored cavalry and we should applaud him for that.

Read it, but don't expect it to be a scholarly work!

Unlike the previous reviews, I found this book a great disappointment. The author's writing style is horrific, meandering about without focus all too frequently. Early in the book he makes reference to the military origins of the term "fifth columns", but is way off the mark in his reference; the "fifth column" was first used in the Spainish Civil War, when four Nationalist thrusts were aimed at Madrid, and the Nationalists sympathizers in the capital fought Republicans from within (hence the "fifth" column attacking)... This jumbled syntax is evident throughout the first half of the book, which is honestly as far as I could force myself to read.