The Anti-Tank Platoon

The puzzling persistence of the 37mm anti-tank gun

Nov 21, 2025

On the island of Okinawa, Marines of a regimental weapons company hide their 37mm anti-tank gun in a shelter built to protect Japanese aircraft. (US National Archives)

This post belongs to a series about the radical restructuring of the Marine division that took place in 1947. You can find links to the other articles of this series at the bottom of this page.

The abolition of the infantry regiment necessarily resulted in the dissolution of the regimental weapons company. It also led to the retirement of one of the newest weapons in the inventory of the Marine infantry regiment of 1945, the half-track-mounted 105^mm howitzer. (As few Marine infantry regiments had received the M7 self-propelled howitzers they rated before the start of the post-war demobilization, it might be more accurate to write that the Marine Corps cancelled its program to provide four weapons of that type to the weapons company of each infantry regiment.)

Strange to say, the Marine Corps declined to subject the 37^mm anti-tank guns of the regimental weapons company to the same treatment. Despite the obvious obsolescence of this piece, the authors of the J-Series tables of organizations found it a new home in the headquarters companies of infantry battalions. To be more specific, they called for the issue of a number of 37^mm anti-tank guns to the assault platoons of each infantry battalion, thereby converting that outfit into an anti-tank platoon.

The abandonment of the half-track-mounted howitzer makes a certain amount of sense. After all, the J-Series divisions were as well supplied with 105^mm howitzers as their much larger predecessors. (Where the ratio of towed 105^mmhowitzers to infantry battalions within the G-Series division had been four-to-one, an infantry battalion of the J-Series division could, on average, count on the services of six weapons of that type.)

As a rule, moreover, the self-propelled guns of regimental weapons companies had been employed as beach defense weapons, protecting the rear areas from small craft, raids, and the possibility of counter landings. This mode of employment, in turn, owed much to both the peculiar tactics employed by the Japanese defenders of Pacific Islands and the difficulty of moving half-track carriers into the jungle- and hill- covered interiors of many islands.

The retention of the 37^mm anti-tank gun requires more in the way of explanation. The anonymous author of a Marine Corps Gazette article about the new establishments admitted that the weapon had no place on the contemporary battlefield. Nonetheless, he argued that assigning a handful to each battalion would allow the tank hunters to practice with something other than their bazookas.