In the summer of 1942, the British Eighth Army was losing the war in North Africa. Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had smashed through the Gazala line, captured Tobruk, and sent the British reeling back toward Egypt.
Among the soldiers scrambling to retreat in the desert heat were three American tanks with American crews — an improvised “detachment” that may have fired the first U.S. shots against German troops in World War II.
The Senator’s Detachment of Tanks in Libya
The Americans weren’t officially supposed to be there. Washington had not yet ordered U.S. ground forces into the theater. Operation Torch — the invasion of French North Africa — was still five months away.
But the British desperately needed tanks. Through the Lend-Lease Act, hundreds of M3 medium tanks — dubbed the “Grant” — had been shipped across the Atlantic. Alongside them were several U.S. advisers and instructors, men from the 1st Armored Division tasked with training British crews to use and maintain the new machines.
Officially, their role was to advise and instruct. Yet, the chaos of the desert war gave them an opportunity to test the machines in combat themselves.
One of the senior officers attached to the mission was Maj. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a Republican senator from Massachusetts who had taken leave from Washington to serve in uniform. Lodge was ambitious, restless, and, like many Americans in 1942, eager to see real combat against the Axis.
By June, as the battle of Gazala raged, Lodge’s tiny American unit — three M3 Grants crewed by U.S. soldiers — was folded into the British 2nd Armoured Brigade near Acroma, west of Tobruk. There, in the middle of Rommel’s offensive, they joined the fight against the Axis.
Later reports stressed that Lodge himself was not inside one of the tanks when they went forward, but the fact remained: American soldiers and American steel were suddenly part of the desert war in North Africa.
Baptism of Fire Against the Axis
Details of the skirmish are scarce. The American-manned tanks advanced with their British counterparts, trading fire in the sand and smoke of the Gazala battlefield. Some sources suggest they knocked out several German and Italian vehicles before being pulled back; others emphasize the experiment was brief, more of a test than a sustained action.
What isn’t in doubt is how unusual the incident was. Here was an American detachment — just three tanks — operating under British command against the Wehrmacht five months before the United States had officially entered the ground war in the theater.
The M3 Grant itself was an interesting design — tall, clumsy, and with its main 75mm gun fixed in the hull rather than a turret. But in 1942, it gave British units something they desperately lacked: a weapon that could pierce through German tanks and match the firepower of the Panzer III. British officers quickly learned to pair the Grant with lighter Stuart tanks, creating mixed squadrons that were deadlier than anything they had fielded before.
Lodge later praised the tanks and his men’s actions in remarks reported by Time magazine: “The men who went over from this force were the equal of anything they encountered in the desert. They came out with three tanks, and they left nine less to chase them. The tank that you call the M-3 is the match of anything in the world.”
The Grants proved their worth against most of Rommel’s armored vehicles. Even as the British and the American crews were pushed deep into Egypt, the arrival of more Grants and the new Shermans would help turn the tide at El Alamein. While the Grant would soon become outdated by more advanced German tanks, it helped secure victory in Libya.
America’s Forgotten Mission
Back in the United States, Time magazine hailed the Gazala action as the first time American troops had fought German soldiers on land. In reality, the line between “combatant” and “observer” was blurred. The Americans had gone to the desert as advisers, but the chaotic battle around them — and Lodge’s eagerness — allowed them to trade a few shots with the Axis.
The unique incident was quickly overshadowed. Within months, Rommel was halted at El Alamein, and soon after, American troops arrived in force with Operation Torch. Lodge returned to politics after President Roosevelt ordered sitting members of Congress to give up their commissions, only to resign again later to rejoin the Army in Italy and France.
The men who drove those three Grants at Gazala were lost to history, their advisor’s mission little more than a small skirmish in the largest war in human history. However, their mission helped inspire the 1943 Humphrey Bogart film “Sahara”—and later its 1995 remake starring Jim Belushi—both of which depicted an American tank crew stranded and fighting in the Libyan desert.
For a brief, desperate moment in June 1942, America was already at war in the North African desert — just three tanks against Hitler’s forces.
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