Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
I would think that the most likely ways the light infantry divisions got their hands on tanks would probably be either tanks that were in storage at various depots or ones that were originally supposed to be in other units - i.e. like the grab bag of armor that the 40th got when it was reformed in the US. The small number of heavy tanks that ended up in Kenya for instance came from a shipment that was supposed to be going to Turkey but got re-purposed to go to Kenya instead. You could see the light divisions getting tanks in a similar fashion - especially considering when they were formed I am betting that they were grabbing anything they could find to give themselves some armor.
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There were tons of ships returning empty from Europe (and I guess the Middle East and Korea) throughout the war. Could some of the Armor be tanks that were deemed too hard to fix in theater perhaps requiring total rebuilds.
Now that I think about it. Given how compressed the Korean theater would be, if there is territory loss there simply might not be room for a tank that would be out of commission for 30+ days. Sending it back to the US might be more likely there than other theaters.