Interview with former Marine and writer Kenneth Estes

Back in 2015 Kenneth Estes had the courtesy of accepting an interview for my blog. The interview was translated to Spanish and posted. This is the original one, conducted in English.

Kenneth Estes is a former Marine and has served in the 2nd and 3rd Marine Divisions. He retired in 1993 as a lieutenant colonel. He is the author of several books on military history and tanks, and has taught in several institutions in Europe, Middle East and US. In 1984 he received a doctorate in European history and in 1992 was named norary Legionnaire in the Spanish Legion.

Can you give us a brief introduction to your service in the US Marine Corps?

I graduated from the Naval Academy in 1969, took the basic USMC officer course [The Basic School] Aug69-Jan70, attended USMC Tracked Vehicle Officer (Tank) Course Feb-Apr70, then :

1970-71 Tank platoon commander (13 mo), 2d Tank Bn

1971-72 Tank company exec. officer (6 mo), battalion asst. operations off. (2 mo), 2d Tank Bn

1972-73 Operations off. (S-3) (8 mo), 3d Motor Transport Bn

1973    Company commander (4 mo), B Company, 3d Motor Transport Bn

1974-78 Instructor, History Dept, US Naval Academy

1978    Logistics Officer (S-4) (6 mo), 2d Tank Bn

1978-79 Company commander (9 mo), C Company, 2d Tank Bn

1979-80 Company commander (10 mo), H&S Company, 2d Tank Bn

1980-81 Operations off. (S-3) (13 mo), 2d Tank Bn

1981-83 Marine officer instructor, Duke University

1985-86 Asst. operations off (G-3) (12 mo), III Marine Amphibious Force, Japan

1986-87 Head, MAGTF concepts section, operations division, Headquarters, US Marine Corps (HQMC)

1988-89 Head, amphibious requirements section, operations division, HQMC

1989-91 US Marine Corps liaison officer, bilateral affairs officer, Office of Defense Cooperation, Madrid, Spain

1991-92 Head, international affairs branch, Office of Defense Cooperation, Madrid, Spain

1992-93 Historical Writer, US Marine Corps Historical Center,  Washington DC

1993    Retired in grade of Lieutenant Colonel

1996-01 Consultant to Marine Corps Combat Development Command

1.Research Fellow for UAE Defense Ministry, Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research.

2005 Contract Historian, 1st Armored Division, Wiesbaden GE

2006-08 Senior Research Fellow, Marine Corps University,  Quantico VA.

Ken Estes with his crew.

At the USMC Tank Officer Course, Camp Pendleton (1970), I was trained on the M48A3, M67A2 and M103A2 tanks.  This included firing the machine guns, 90mm and 120mm tank cannon and the flame projector of the M67A2. Normally each of us in that course would have preferred assignment to the U.S. Army course at Ft Knox, but only one officer per Basic School [entry level officer training] class was so detailed. However, the truth of the matter was that the USMC course was fully 'hands on' training and much more suitable, and I found out later that lieutenants attending the Armor Officer Basic Course at Ft Knox in those years did not drive the vehicles and several missed gunnery because of range weather conditions.

My tanks in 3rd Platoon, B Company, 2d Tank Battalion were M48A3s, and I was fortunate to keep that platoon for 13 months, whereas in those post-Vietnam years, an officer was lucky to have it for 3-4 months. I took my platoon on a Mediterranean deployment as part of Battalion Landing Team 3/8, and this was also fortunate as it was the last of the BLTs, for we were relieved by a MEU, larger and having an aviation component. My platoon was also the first to go on this deployment after the disbandment of the divisional antitank battalion in 1970, so I was given two more M48s to compensate for the lack of an antitank platoon with its 5 M50 Ontos vehicles. My experience levels soared because of this deployment and the training that lead up to it. For instance, we were cycled through the annual divisional tank battalion TankEx at Ft Steward GA first in line. My log shows we fired in the course of day/night crew training/qualification tables over 1200 rds of 90mm and 30,000 rds of Cal. .50 and .30 with the seven tank crews. As I left the battalion in 1972, it was going all M48A3s, turning in the heavy and flame tanks.

In 1978-81, I returned to 2d Tank Bn, which had recently upgraded to the M60A1 RISE-Passive-AOS, and these were the last and latest production M60A1 out of Detroit, except for some for the Israelis. I commanded C Company, but only for 6 months and then when the Hq&Svc Company CO was transferred, I was the senior captain and was obliged to take it over. I trained the tank company hard when I had it and we fired all weapons and maneuvered on base with night movements under passive conditions. When I had the Bn HQ tanks in the HQ Company, I qualified both crews in the day Table VIII, one as tank commander, but left the night shoot to the regular crews.

What do you consider to be the strong and weak points of the equipment (tanks) you used?

The M48 and M60 were similar in characteristics, with firepower and nightfighting upgrades important in the M60A1 we had in the late 70s. These tanks were simple to operate and roomy inside. The design was a proven culmination of trial and error since the M26/46 of 1950 and the diesel engines provided reliability that the old-timers never could hope for. The 90mm was a sweet gun to fire, very accurate, and its ammo mix made it an ideal weapon for our infantry support mission in the USMC. We did not worry too much about facing foreign armor mostly because we trained harder, shot more frequently and we trusted in the HEAT ammo to overcome most opposing armor. We also had the backup of a heavy tank company (until mid-1972) in each tank battalion, with their extremely accurate 120mm gun.

The principal weakness of these tanks was their height and I became envious of the West Germans with their low silhouette Leopard I.  There was also the problem that the USMC did not provision its tank fleet as generously as the U.S. Army, and I am speaking in terms of repair parts and overhaul cycles. But we were young, confident and aggressive, and did not know anything about the T-64 and special armors.

How was the typical training conducted (distance, targets...)?

We boresighted at 1200m, and we shot sub-caliber for crew drill, and the range shooting was all precision fire using the rangefinder: at Ft Stewart in Nov70, my crews were obtaining good first-round hit performance at 1800-2100m, maybe 60% of the time and rarely missed with the second round. It really helped that -- in contrast ot repair parts -- we had a lot of ammo for training every year, far more than what the army had, to do just annual crew qualification. OTOH, we lacked up to date ranges, reliable moving targets, pop-ups and the like, which the army had almost everywhere. I was a member of the Armor Association and read their monthly journal Armor, and just salivated over Range 80 at Grafenwoehr, for instance. On reflection, we did not practice, but understood, battlesight gunnery.  But for us the challenge was always precision firing with the rangefinder and FCS. We had a lot of confidence in it. With the M60A1, we liked the higher performance of the APDS shot compared to the old APC of the 90mm, the HEAT rounds were about the same, but larger diameter/penetration. 

Night shooting at Camp Picket.

You had to be very good to sense your shots with the hotter APDS rounds, though, and with the larger gun came more obscuration if we were in dust and sand [100% at Camp Lejeune and 29 Palms CA]. Only at the base at 29 Palms did we have anything similar to the battle runs that the army had incorporated in their training, and we only sent platoons from the E Coast that were working up for their Mediterranean deployments, and these would do a 3-day movement to contact exercise of about 60 miles with their battalions with live fire against fixed targets, also live arty and CAS. As a company commander, I was sent once as an umpire and experienced receiving a pair of 8-inch WP short rounds and an A-6 salvoed his 1000 pd bombs a bit too closely.

Did you prepare for any NBC scenarios? How did it affect crews performance?

Every unit practiced NBC conditions as individual training, but rarely did we don our masks in the field unless the aggressors sprang a lot of CS gas on us in an exercise.

You served during the Cold War, and the US Army played a critical role in NATO. Did you train with crews from other countries? What were your impressions on training/equipment? Did you notice any difference in comparison to US Army?

No experience with any as a platoon leader, except for an evening we traveled by invitation to the Italian Army base at the S. tip of Sardinia. We had landed from our ships for several days' maneuvers with two days of field firing. The Italian OIC of the base met us at the beach, impressed by our deepwater fording [a full 8 feet that day!] and I suggested to Colonel Macri [a veteran of Ariete Div in Libya, 1942] that we'd love to see his base and meet his tankers. My infantry battalion CO agreed, and off we went in column of tanks, an Italian warrant officer riding in my loader's hatch as guide. I was amazed by the collection of vehicles they had, but it was in fact a training pool for all the units on the mainland that came to Cabo Teulado to train. It was a great social event and we all traded hats with the Italians and I still have my Italian tanker's beret in my closet.

M48 at Cabo Teulado.

More serious was my encounter with W German and US Army battalions before and during exercise Bold Guard '78. PzBn 18 at Lueneberg was our host unit for a week's pre-exercise training at Munster, the German base for their Panzertruppenschule II [equal to Ft Knox in the US]. I was the S-4 of the 2d Tank Bn at this point and led the advance party to Germany, while the rest of the battalion rode shipping to offload at Brunsbuttel near Hamburg. PzBn 18 were great hosts and I spent a week with them before our ships arrived and I got busy with the offload and assembly of my battalion at Munsterlager. They showed us training going on and I learned that they practiced subcaliber shooting monthly and service firing quarterly, but this had to be cycled this way because of the 18 month conscript cycle. I became a close friend of the HQ Co commander and he took me to meet the battalion maintenance officer [a Hauptfeldwebel; the Germans used their senior NCOs very well and only 17 officers served in PzBn 18]. One day, they gave us a demonstration of their vehicles, including the new Biber bridging tank, and I and my party were able to ride and drive the Leopard IA4 with which they were equipped. They also showed me their rangefinder practice course, which we also had in our training, to practice with the coincidence rangefinder at known distance 'targets.' In this case, my hosts reported laconically that they believed that field would also be their first battle position if a NATO-WP conflict happened. I thought, 'how convenient!'

Marching in Greece. The tanks had landed in Navplion, close to Argos.

My encounter with a US Army tank battalion happened after Munster in our exercise area for Bold Guard 78.  They were making railhead offload at Eutin, Germany en route to a Reforger exercise not related to ours, and we were in our assembly area by then. I observed their offload and met their S-4, my counterpart. I could not imagine the differences when he told me that his battalion had all combinations of M60, M60A1, M60A1 AOS and M60A1RISE-Passive. What a nightmare I was glad we did not have.

Latest versions of M60 and Abrams had thermal sights. Did you have the opportunity go get acquainted? How did this affect training and fighting during the night?

We had a former company CO of mine visit the battalion in 1979 at a Camp Pickett TankEx from Quantico's Developmental Center and he set up and demonstrated the latest thermal sight on a tripod for us to see. I was amazed. I later (after retirement) drove and operated the FCS of an M1A1 at Ft Knox and saw what the final full-up system was all about.  But in 1979 we were limited to our passive 'Starlight' Gen III type main gunsight and driver's periscope, nothing for the tank commander mind you. We fired passive at our night gunnery ranges and maneuvered under passive but went with arty illumination when in the assault.

 

In the 70/80s Warsaw Pact had deployed a very large number of tanks in Eastern Europe. Did you have access to intelligence (periodicals, reports, actual equipment via Israel)?

Not as a lieutenant, when we had mostly briefings on the Israeli experiences in 1967. But I had a battalion commander in 1979 who was big on understanding the WP/Soviet threat forces and I attended the Soviet Military Power course in Washington DC and attended many briefings. When I became the S-3, I then had a higher security clearance and could get all kinds of intelligence. Before he was my battalion commander, he had been my administrative CO when I was on the Naval Academy faculty, and he then arranged a 1975 trip to Aberdeen Proving Ground and the army's Foreign Science and Technology test site for AFVs and other weapons. I went through a T-62 and BMP-1 [from Israelis] and rode the tank while my Major host drove it. Ironically, on my way out of the restricted area of the base, I happened upon the XM-1 [General Dynamics prototype] and walked over to it, received a briefing and tour of the vehicle from the GD project manager; what a day!

M60s belonging to 2° Tank Battalion.

Did the Soviet Army have any equipment that caught you eye (T-64/72/80, AT missiles?)

Well, by the time I returned to 2d Tk Bn in 1978, I knew very well that the days of our conventional tanks were almost gone and that special armor, digital laser FCS and improved ammunition were going to be required, and real soon. When I saw the T-62 in 1975 I was impressed, but my escort said, look at the BMP setup and you can imagine what they have done with the next generation T-72, because the T-62 was still an ordinary tank.

Patton class tanks served for a very long time. One of the reasons was that projects like MBT-70 were canceled. Did you get the impression the M60 was getting long in the tooth as USSR T-64/72/80?

The MBT development line of the US ended with the M60 series and it was a dead end.  I was sore when MBT70 was cancelled, but if we had invested in it, it would have been a mistake and we would have been late converting to laminate special armors. The XM-1 was a fresh start and reflected more the heavy tank development line, but with two generations of technology to salve former limitations. After all, the current M1A1 is a 70 tonner!

Training at Camp Pendleton (Caifornia).

Turbine vs diesel engine has been an ongoing debate for the last 30 years. What is your opinion? Do you think the US Army could consider a diesel version of the Abrams?

I am forever grateful that we gave up the tank diesel in the US. We had few problems with the M48A3, but something went awry in the M60s and we had all kinds of reliability issues. Not the least was the problem of shade-tree mechanics, who would not follow the op checks in the tech manual at the quarterly and annual services. Too many tanks came back to us from the battalion maintenance with obvious problems with injectors and low compression in cylinders that were not caught/corrected. We also had a period where the analog FCS was sloppy and that also had not happened with the M48s. I suspected quality control problems related to Continental being taken over by Teledyne, but I was not part of the insider engineer track. In short, I prefer the turbine, because it either runs or not. It does not labor along at half speed and torque. Same as the FCS, the laser/digital system self checks and works, or not. There is no in-between.

Recently designed tanks in Europe and Asia have included autoloaders. Do you think this will be the standard in the future? 

I can't imagine trading a trained crewman for a machine. No thanks.

Armies have moved away from massive tank engagements and become more focused in counter-insurgency. Do you think there is still a need for tanks?

The late Gen. Don Starry told me the most sensible conclusion we can have. Costs have driven numbers down in all the forces, but the capabilities must be assessed as well. A company of Gen IV tanks can do what battalions of Gen II tanks were assigned in the war planning. Nobody became focused in counterinsurgency in tanks. We know there will be a time for full-up combat and that is what we prepare for with our scarce training time. We are obliged by military culture in teh USMC to be prepared to support the infantry, in all forms of combat. The tank-infantry telephone on the rear of the M1A1 is a USMC derivative, just as happened in WWII.

As Armies become more deployable and expeditionary, do you think this overlaps with Marine's tank philosophy? 

Not much. I rarely buy into interservice rivalry, which is more an aspect of service in the Wrong Washington than at the battalion level. Marines are required to be ready at all times for amphibious operations and deployment by sea in assault shipping, not just cargo and Ro-Ro vessels and offloading at ports. Reinforcing or opening a land campaign comes part and parcel with having marine divisions and aircraft wings. Whether armies have become more deployable has yet to be tested, I would say.  OTOH, the USMC leadership sometimes gets lost in the Washington merry-go-round and varies between being too parochial and too joint. It's a tough thing in that arena and I was glad to have only one tour there.

Some countries like Spain are removing tanks from naval infantry due to cost and weight. Do you think this could also happen in USA?

It already has happened. By the time I was a major, we had 14 active and 8 reserve tank companies in 3.5/2 battalions. Now we are 2/1 battalions. The USMC fell for the 'lightness' craze long ago (c.1957) and we equipped with LAVs long before the armies (exc France, UK and S Africa) had discovered them, but as usual, we flummoxed around trying to find a mission for them. In the meantime, force reductions cost us most of our tank strength, as well as the cost of converting to the M1A1 tank. I am sorry to learn that the Infantería de Marina must lose its tanks, but those were M60A1s and I suppose the Leopard IIE will be jealously guarded by the army, and I don't know if the Marina can handle them in their landing craft.

You have written a number of books on American tanks, Marines and WW2/Korea. Do you have any ongoing projects?

I had a lot of fun with my M103 Heavy Tank and Superheavy Tanks of WWII books, and was urged during that time by Steve Zaloga to think about an Ontos book. I sold the idea to Osprey Publishing by proposing a double coverage of two similar vehicles, the army M56 Scorpion and the M50 Ontos also started by the army but ending up in the USMC exclusively. They were a curious reversion to the supposedly discarded tank destroyer doctrine of the army. I'll deliver it in early Year 16. The following year, I am supposed to deliver a German Heavy AFVs of WWII book for another UK publisher, at their behest. What needs to be said about these that is a new approach escapes me at this moment.  At the same time, I am most pleased with the publication of a revised version of my major work, A European Anabasis: Western European Volunteers in the German Army and SS 1940-1945, which just hit the streets in February. It was published as an e-book in 2003 by Columbia University Press, but I always wanted it in a print edition, as it now stands.

References:

- Kenneth Estes profile and books