The US military once tried out “battle sleds” during World War II

Italy, spring 1944. The U.S. Fifth Army had invaded months earlier, but had been stuck in a stalemate against Italian and German forces during the winter months. A breakout was needed, and at Anzio the Americans were looking for ways to decisively attack and overcome Axis resistance.

One solution: sleds. Combat sleds.

Brig. Gen. John W. O’Daniel, commander of the 3rd Division, had an idea. Why not let tanks pull soldiers over mined areas, with the added benefit of hiding Allied numbers? He came up with a proposal for 12 sleds, linked together, to be pulled by a single tank. Each berth would be made from half a torpedo shell. O’Daniel’s staff expanded on this by adding runners to reduce friction. Over the course of two weeks, the Fifth Army created 360 sleds for combat use. According to Lida Mayo’s book, The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront, they were built under a large circus tent.

“Towed by tanks, 12 at a time, they carried combat units invisibly to the front lines. Wherever a tank could force its way, the infantry could follow in their sleds,” said a World War II journal at the time, calling the concept “the modern equivalent of the Trojan horse.”

In a sense, there is logic to the concept. Being carried in this way keeps soldiers low, making them difficult targets for enemies to hit. They can be spread out, instead of hiding behind tanks for cover. Depending on the enemy’s field of view, the army could hide a portion of its troops and surprise enemies with larger numbers than expected.

Then there were the flaws in the plan. First, terrain. The sleds needed relatively smooth, unbroken ground to travel over without getting stuck. Rocky fields or dug trenches they could grab hold of even if a tank could get through. If the enemy had the high ground, soldiers in the sleds were easy targets. And because the sleds were pulled by the tanks, they faced the same challenges as tanks. Mines were a major risk; even if anti-personnel mines could be avoided, a tank could be disabled by an anti-tank mine, causing soldiers to suddenly become stuck in transit.

In the fighting at the Battle of Anzio in May, they had mixed results. According to Mayo, ‘the worst obstacles were ditches and mines which immobilized the tanks. In one regiment, a platoon of tanks and four sets of sleds were unable to get into action because of rough terrain and the loss of several tanks to mines; in another regiment, results were negligible because the terrain was unsuitable; in a third unit, towed infantry, supported by tanks, captured a strongly fortified house. Infantrymen were not enthusiastic about the sleds because they felt like “dead ducks” lying so close behind the tanks.’

The Battle of Anzio was an Allied victory, albeit a bloody one. Over 40,000 American casualties were suffered, nearly a third of the total force assembled for the breakout. But the Americans pressed on, capturing Rome in early June. O’Daniel found the sled’s overall effectiveness to be mixed and did not pursue it as a tactic. Some of the devices developed for Italy were employed in one more campaign, as the Allies advanced into southern France.

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The U.S. Army wasn’t the only one using combat sleds. Nor was O’Daniel the inventor. Other countries tried them in the 1930s and ’40s. The Soviet Red Army used cruder versions during the Winter War, with the deep snow in Finland making them useful for transportation. The Nazis tried a version too; instead of single beds, they looked more like tank-drawn carriages.

But with World War II over, the U.S. Army decided to abandon the battle sled. Instead, it focused on armored personnel carriers, which offered better protection and offensive capabilities and were less affected by terrain than the sleds. Cold War technological innovations focused more on larger, high-tech elements like fighter jets or nuclear weapons systems than on improvised infantry tactics. But the humble, flawed battle sleds went down with a mixed record.

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