Word: td
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...TD Above Fourth...
...TD battalion is commanded by a red-faced, rednecked, reddish-mustached, beetle-browed Irishman, Lieut. Colonel James Joseph Deery, 40, who talked himself (age 17) into the Army in World War I, graduated from West Point in 1925. The battalion, first Army anti-tank outfit, was organized only two weeks before last year's Louisiana maneuvers where it raised hob with Major General George Patton's famed tanks...
...barricades) and traps borrowed from the engineers, "Molotov cocktails" learned from the Spanish, and "boom biscuits" (tank mines). At Camp Hood men learn to use all these, but most important, they are learning how to handle tank destroyers. The phrase "antitank" is disappearing in favor of "tank destroyer" (or TD...
...tank has two weaknesses: 1) blind spots; 2) slow speed. It is General Bruce's problem to figure out how destroyers can capitalize on these weaknesses. The TD's own weakness is lack of armor. Its strength is speed. General Bruce is figuring out tactics by which a destroyer can get in its dirty work with the least risk. He stands on a hill to watch half his men charge over the ground in tanks while the other half bedevil them with tank destroyers and all known anti-tank tricks. As all this goes on, Bruce...
...enthusiastic TD men, all this is kid stuff. Except for some new, secret destroyers which the General is trying out for the Army, it is all too slow. Their dream is a 65-m.p.h. gun with practically no heavy protection. If it is fast enough to outrun the tanks, they argue, it will not need the armor anyway. Conversely, slowing a destroyer down with the weight of armor only makes armor necessary. As one of the General's men says: "The idea is if Joe Louis is sitting in the corner with his back turned, you hit him behind...