Famous Tank Battles

Why 73 Easting Matters closes the season by judging the battle as far more than a tank duel in the desert. The episode brings together reconnaissance doctrine, mission command, thermal technology, Abrams and Bradley crews, artillery, aviation, logistics, training, and VII Corps’ ability to turn operational movement into battlefield destruction. Listeners learn why the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment’s...

Medina Ridge and the 100 Hours follows the final heavy blow of VII Corps as the ground campaign neared its cease-fire. On February 27, 1991, after 73 Easting and Objective Norfolk, American armored forces struck the Medina Division of the Republican Guard while Iraqi units were withdrawing, collapsing, or trying to form new defenses. This episode explains the tactical fight at Medina Ridge, the wi...

Fratricide in the Dark tackles one of the most difficult subjects in the 73 Easting and Objective Norfolk story: friendly fire during fast armored combat. This episode examines how darkness, dust, burning wrecks, thermal sight images, overlapping movements, and weak situational awareness created deadly hazards even for a victorious force. Official Army accounts link the 73 Easting/Norfolk fighting...

Objective Norfolk was the huge night battle that followed 73 Easting and is often overshadowed by it. This episode follows armored forces advancing through darkness, dust, burning Iraqi vehicles, scattered prisoners, surviving positions, and the wreckage of the earlier cavalry fight. The 1st Infantry Division drove into the remaining Tawakalna and 12th Armored Division forces, using tanks, Bradley...

The Pass-Through follows the morning of February 27, 1991, when the 1st Infantry Division moved through the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment to continue the attack against remaining Tawakalna and 12th Armored Division forces. This episode shows why 73 Easting was not an ending, but a handoff inside the larger VII Corps campaign. Passing one heavy formation through another after a violent battle require...

Four Hours at 73 Easting measures what the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment achieved before the battle ended around 1715 on February 26, 1991. Official accounts credit the regiment with destroying at least twenty-nine Iraqi tanks, twenty-four armored personnel carriers, and numerous other vehicles and bunkers, while taking about 1,300 prisoners. This episode treats those numbers soberly, as evidence of...

Fire Support in the Storm restores the guns and helicopters to the center of the 73 Easting story. The 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment’s tank and Bradley crews fought the visible battle, but artillery and aviation helped prevent Iraqi armor and guns from stabilizing the defense. This episode explains how the 6th Battalion, 41st Field Artillery fired more than 700 rounds in direct support of 2d Squadro...

Iron, Eagle, and Ghost brings the Battle of 73 Easting down from corps-level maps to the troop fights that soldiers actually experienced. This episode follows the cavalrymen, tank crews, Bradley crews, scouts, gunners, drivers, and troop commanders who engaged Iraqi tanks, armored vehicles, bunkers, and moving columns across a battlefield that kept changing shape. Eagle Troop’s fight became famous...

73 Easting is the centerpiece of the season and one of the most studied armored battles of the Gulf War. Around 4 p.m. on February 26, 1991, the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment collided with the main Iraqi defense along a north-south map grid line in a shamal dust storm. The regiment found a seam between elements of the Republican Guard’s Tawakalna Division and the Iraqi 12th Armored Division, then fo...

Past the Limit of Advance examines the risk decision that carried the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment toward its defining battle. With Iraqi artillery falling and enemy positions ahead, leaders had to decide whether stopping at 70 Easting would protect the regiment or give Iraqi forces time to recover. This episode turns mission command from doctrine into battlefield reality, showing how disciplined i...

The 70 Easting line was an invisible map boundary that became a real tactical problem in the middle of the storm. Eagle and Ghost Troops halted at the limit of advance under ineffective Iraqi artillery fire, caught between the need for control and the danger of surrendering momentum. This episode explains why phase lines and control measures are vital in desert armored warfare, where units can dri...

68 Easting was the first sharp warning that the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment had reached the Tawakalna security zone. This episode follows Eagle Troop’s early contact with Iraqi prepared defenses, bunkers, tanks in revetments, and minefields as the regiment pushed east through dust and reduced visibility. The battlefield was difficult to read: normal sight lines shrank to roughly 800–1,000 meters,...

Objective Collins marked the threshold where the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment moved from approach march into dangerous contact. This episode follows the regiment east of Objective Collins, screening ahead of the 1st Infantry Division after coming off the mine belt near the Saudi border. A shamal dust storm turned weather into a combat factor, shrinking visibility, complicating navigation, and forci...

Turn East follows the crucial moment when Lieutenant General Frederick Franks committed VII Corps to the 90-degree turn that would bring it into the Iraqi armored defense. After the western sweep, the corps had to align the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, 3d Armored Division, 1st Armored Division, and supporting formations for a moving attack with limited time for detailed staf...

Busayyah was a Desert Storm battle often overshadowed by 73 Easting, but it played an important role in clearing the path for VII Corps’ eastward turn. This episode follows the 1st Armored Division as it attacked Iraqi positions around the desert town and military area, dealing with bunkers, vehicles, defensive works, and troops that could not simply be bypassed. Listeners learn how local battles...

73 Easting could happen, the coalition had to solve the old armored warfare problem of mines, obstacles, trenches, wire, and prepared defenses. This episode follows the 1st Infantry Division as it breached the Iraqi line and opened the way for the British 1st Armoured Division and other forces to move through. The Big Red One was a modern mechanized formation, using tanks, Bradleys, engineers, art...

The ground war opened on February 24, 1991, with coalition forces attacking across a front that stretched from the Persian Gulf deep into the western desert. This episode follows the first movements of the famous 100-hour war, showing how Marines, Arab coalition forces, airborne units, mechanized formations, artillery, engineers, and airpower struck different parts of the Iraqi defense at once. Th...

The coalition air campaign that began on January 17, 1991, shaped the battlefield before VII Corps ever reached the Republican Guard. For thirty-eight days, aircraft struck Iraqi command and control, air defenses, communications, bridges, supply lines, artillery, and fielded forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq. This episode explains how airpower weakened Iraqi movement, morale, and coordination whi...

Abrams tanks, Bradley cavalry fighting vehicles, and thermal sights gave American crews a powerful advantage at 73 Easting, but this episode avoids treating technology as a magic answer. The M1A1 Abrams brought protection, mobility, stabilized firepower, and long-range lethality, while the Bradley gave cavalry scouts observation, flexibility, and its own weapons against vehicles, bunkers, and infa...

Training was one of the decisive weapons at 73 Easting, and this episode shows how that weapon was forged before the Gulf War began. The focus falls on Eagle Troop, Captain H. R. McMaster, and the hard professional culture of the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany. Listeners learn how gunnery, field exercises, maintenance discipline, radio procedures, crew drills, and mission command prepared...

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 ca...

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...

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...

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 div...

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 de...