McGibbon, Donald Bruce: my Army recollections (November 21, 2007)

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ABSTRACT: Col. Bruce McGibbon Interviewed by: Natasha Taschuk 21 November 2007 MacPherson Library, Victoria, B.C. Name: Bruce McGibbon Birthday/Place: 1940, Bellville ON When joined the military and why: Father in Army. Joined Army in 1957. Joined because a wonderful opportunity for a college education. Into army because had eye problems and didn't see a future with the air force. Where stationed with 4 CMBG: Lahr, 1977-1979. Senior Artillery Officer, commanding officer to the 1st regiment RCHA. Rank when retired/when retired: Colonel, retired 1990. Kinds of weapons with 4 CMBG: (3:30) When I moved to Lahr to take up my position as commanding officer, the Leopard tank was just being introduced, and oddly enough, I had been director of Land Requirements 3 prior to my appointment to 4 brigade, so I had had responsibility for staffing up the new main battle tank, the Leopard. For artillery, the M-109 was in service. It was introduced in the service around about 1970, and it had replaced the105mm howitzer. And the reason for that was a superior system; heavier round, 155mm was considered to be mandatory for the type of operations we were required to conduct on the German planes. And the mobility and fire power of the M109 was excellent. It was in service when I took command and they had just done some upgrades to it at that time with respect to the loading system inside of the turrets. Training provided: (6:15) With respect to the M109, it doesn't matter what the weapon is, the command and control stays essentially the same whether it's a 105mm towed or a 155sp gun. The techniques are different, but the battle procedure is very much the same. Honest Johns/control/safety devices: (9:20) They were not in service when I was there, and they had been taken out of the service circa 1970. So although I was instructor of gunnery in Shilo, 1967-68 on missile systems, I did not deploy with the Honest John SSM system, but I was ready to go when I was in Shilo...(10:15) The Americans controlled the system and we wouldn't get our hands on them until certain...but we practiced deployment and fired the Honest John in Shilo, and I was an observer to that. So it was just basically a rocket system fired by the artillery, and the warhead we would use normally would have been high-explosive, and we would not have had access to the nuclear warhead until it was released through the NATO protocols, which were very, very carefully controlled. And our security procedures for our personnel were very high, to ensure that there was nobody in the system that didn't have the correct security clearance. Fluctuations in emphasis upon conventional vs. nuclear: (12:40) believe that the role that we played was pretty significant. When we were in Lahr, we were the strategic reserves for both the German and the American armies, 7 US corps and 2 German corps. So our role was significant. Although we were termed a brigade, so we had amour, at the time I was there we had the new Leopard tanks, M109s, good recce composition, very, very well respected professional army. So I believe that the role that we played was very significant and competent. Anything that I would've read in the newspaper at that time saying that we were not ready to go to the war was just plain wrong. We were there and we were going to do the job. We were well-manned, we had professional soldiers.. .it was a constant issue to make sure we were manned up to the right level to meet our commitments...we spent a lot of time training our soldiers, driver training, experience in the field, deployments...We normally went to the field three times a year to train, deployed to Northern Germany, to training areas there. I felt that we were well-supported by Canadian Forces. I never had a problem, though we had budgetary restrictions, I felt that the ration we were given for ammunition, for example, was as good as any other force at that time (14:40). We deployed into Northern Germany, we deployed everywhere on the big NATO exercises. We were there in number and we were recognized, we were proud to wear the Canadian flag, on both sides. I think the role we had was very important. (15:20) I think we were well-respected; of course, we had pretty good access to the Soviet plans too, and we knew that their intention if the balloon went up was to run right for the west coast of Europe, and we were there to stop them. And the biggest concern was we felt that we could stop the first assault. The second assault required special weapons because if we were reduced in strength to being non-effective, we had to devise a new capability which was basically a salt-breaker concept, which was a second-level attack, so we needed in-depth weapons. (16:40) And then the whole question of nuclear came into play, at that time, because there's no doubt that nuclear would've been used against the second assault. But everything was done to ensure that we didn't have to go down that road if the balloon went up. And like anything else in the so called Mutually Assured Destruction concept, the Soviets knew that they could not have been successful, we would 've stopped them, they wouldn't have had a chance of success. It would've been pure hell, because there would've been about three days of war, and then we would've gone nuclear. And certainly the access I had to the plans, if we had not been able to contain them, only as a last resort... (19:00) I had had briefings in Ottawa on the Soviet capabilities. ..(19:40) We had to improve our armored capability. We had pretty good access on their [Soviet] capabilities. The Soviet equipment was well advanced, but it was basically brute force...Their capability was very good, so we needed to have an equally good capability to stop them. And they were large forces, and they're going to run at you. It was the second echelon that was of concern. We could stop the first echelon; how do you stop the second echelon? So you hit them in depth. We had fairly good capability. No-doubt in my mind that it would not have been successful. Weapons 4 CMBG vs. weapons other NATO members: (21:10) I think we compared very well. M109 was pretty standard. Standard with the Germans, they had a slightly different version, they had the short shoot, where we had the long shoot, we had greater range. They had 14600m and we were 18000m range for the M109s. They had not up-gunned at that time. The Brits had up-gunned their M109s, and they had a divisional artillery with 203mm/8in which is greater punch. We were basically the same as the Germans, the Brits and the US. So the caliber was 155mm, consistent between those four countries. And the French had their own system in place. The Brits had their own tanks, the Americans had their own tanks, the Germans had their own tanks, the Canadians had the German tank. Leopard compared to Centurion: (23:15) I was the principal staff officer in Ottawa at the time. I wrote the baseline document to start the staffing for the new main battle tank, and that was written after I had graduated from staff college...(24:20) So we had a wide range of vehicles in service that needed to be replaced, light, medium, heavy trucks, over snow vehicles, which we bought at the time for our ACE mobile force. So I had the full capability and I loved working in that area of vehicles. So we knew that we had to find a replacement for the Centurion because it was clapped out, it was no longer supportable, I mean the Brits had moved on to the Chieftain, they no longer really supported the Centurion. (24:55) So let's talk a little bit about parametric approach to weapon design. Four main areas; fire power, mobility, protection, and logistics support. Let me take the fourth one, which is technically not the most important -logistics support becomes the most important if you can't support the system. Logistics support for the Centurion, although they loved the vehicle, it was no supportable. They had discarded some of their older vehicles, some of the older Centurions, they had scrapped them, and then they had to go back to the scrap dealer and buy parts back, Levy Brothers, and I just couldn't believe that. Final drives were an issue; if you don't have a final drive, your tank's not going to work. (26:25) The engines were Rolls-Royce Merlins, basically an aircraft engine, that was a great engine in its day...but it required high octane gasoline. If you're in the field and . you have to find high octane gasoline and it's not available, where do you get it, it's a special problem for logistics support....(28:40) The brakes, for example, on the Centurion, were dismal. I've been trained at a combat team commander in Gagetown, and we were using the Centurion tanks as part of our system, and if you were on a hill and lost a gear, what we call a crash gear, the driver just missed a gear, the brakes were not capable of holding the vehicle. So you were going down the slope, you were basically out of control. The vehicle was too heavy for the brakes. If you missed a gear, the vehicle went down a slope, hit a side of the hill and rolled over, then all the occupants were killed. We had an accident like that in 1970 or 1971 where a Centurion rolled over, the four occupants were all incinerated. Mainly because of the weakness of the mobility system in the Centurion vehicle. The people loved it, but the fact is it was treacherous. And I remember very well a soldier who was killed, Captain Poisson; who was on that team commander course. Vehicle rolled over, and there he went. ..(30:10) We had other tracked vehicles in the service, primarily the Mll3 family and the M548 and they were all excellent because they were supportable through the American system. I always felt that somehow we should just buy American, put a Canadian flag on it, but.. .it just doesn't make sense [to manufacture our own vehicles in Canada]. (30:50) The differences between Leopards and Centurions were well-articulated. And this first staff paper, I wrote this paper together with . my staff, in a parametric approach, and we clearly identified the need for a new main battle tank; heavy armor. The Centurion was very good from the viewpoint of armored protection. Mobility was terrible. Fire power was a basic 105mm tank gun. Logistics support was hit and miss. We were spending a fortune and the fact is there were no parts available for the Centurion. (32:20) So I prepared this large document and we staffed it around the army headquarters, and it went up the line to the senior staff, to the Deputy Chief Defense Staff, who was an air force three star general, and he marked it up personally and sent it back to me and said this is disgraceful, producing a piece of paper like this, there's no requirements for main battle tanks, blah, blah, blah. And how about the Germans? They got a fair history of making war, and they got heavy armor. They're just developing Leopard II, the Americans have the new Abrahams on the drawing board, the Brits have just produced Chieftain...all these countries have a history of understanding warfare...without armor on the ground, forget it, go home. Time passed, and then something of very great significance happened (33:30). What we were told is that the Prime Minister of the day, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, bless his heart, visited NATO, and was told, Sir, if you can't produce a new main battle tank for your brigade, take the brigade and sent it home, because this is disgraceful, you can't deploy with your old Centurion, with no logistics support, it's just not worthwhile. So overnight, the word came down, we needed a new main battle tank. So the same general who had marked up and tom up this paper of mine came to me personally at my desk, and the guys name was General Carr, and said to me, Bruce, that paper we tore up on the main battle tank replacement, where is it? I said, we you tore it up General. He said, I know I know, but where is the original. (34:30) So I dragged the original out, and he said, let's have it, because it's perfect, it fully supported the requirement for a new main battle tank, and yes, we are going to move that program now. This was in 1974. And we moved forward from there virtually overnight to move into the new main battle tank. (39:50), First of all, it's critical that we get something to replace the Centurion, I mean; it was not working for us. I mean, you couldn't deploy the brigade; it was a disgrace, a total disgrace. So we put up the options: go with Leopard I now, or wait and get Leopard II and stand the chance of going on with no logistic support with the Centurion for whatever time frame...so we never really entered a time of negotiation for the Leopard II, we just said go with Leopard I. (41:48) We did add a new fire control system called the SABCA control system, and we went through a whole series of questions.. .It was made by Hughes Aircraft in California, they produced the SABCA fire control system for us. [McGibbon wrote the paper recommending Canada purchase a new m in battle tank system in 1974 and the 3-star general came to him and told him they needed the paper back in 1976]. Replacement of Centurions in 1976 far too late?: (45:20) As an officer responsible, yeah, far too late. Centurion and Leopard vs. Soviet tanks: (49:35) Mobility, fire power, protection, let's talk about those three things. Mobility: excellent - we could really move with the Leopard. Fire power: with the integrated fire control system, the SABCA fire control system, matched up well. Now protection was of concern, we knew it was light. You gotta understand: if you add more protection, you affect mobility, it gets heavier. Chobham armor hadn't been invented by the British at that time. Basically, there are four different rounds: high explosive, HESH, squash head, and long rod penetrators APFSDS Armored Piercing Fin Stabling Discarding Sabot. So there's four different kinds you have to protect yourself against, from the top, the sides, the front, the rear, and from underneath. There's no such thing as the perfect tan1c But it's still in service today, it did the job [Leopard]. We knew that the protection was weak in some respects, but it was state of the art when it was produced in the '60s and we had it in service in the '70s. Some of the attacks which we would've faced we would've been defeated (52:35). But that's counterbalanced by saying we got a hell of a lot better tank in service today than the old Centurion. Centurion protection was, I think, better than the Leopard, but it didn't have the mobility and it didn't have the fire-power that we had with the Leopard. One on one, first of all, if you had very good mobility, they may not be able to hit us with a round...we knew that armor was light on it [Leopard]. But, WYSIWYG- What you see if what you get. ..so you're going to go with that, the decision was made. The other question is, you're not sitting with an armored vehicle, you're attacking, your defending against an attack. The Soviets were very progressive if you like, and you can point at their protection. I mean, they built big, they didn't have to worry about trans-Atlantic support or anything else. (52:54) So when you're going to attack them, there's four different ways you can attack. There's high explosive, which is basically an artillery round with a high explosive round, which is why we need the 155, heavy enough to take a track off. Any tank, you take it off, it's immobilized and you can attack further. HESH, squash-head. The way this works is basically, it hits the outside of the amour, a piece comes off and flies around and destroys the tank, it doesn't have to penetrate the armor. (53:45) HEAT (high explosive anti-tank) basically bums a whole through...the more conventional way is APFSDS round, which armored piercing, then stabilize and the principle is, after your diameter to length ratio is greater than 5.5 you can no longer just spin this stabilizer around,...you have to put fins on it to stabilize it, to stop it from rotating, otherwise it becomes unstable. What you're doing is attacking armour with kinetic energy, so the force being applied is Y2 mb2 so you're trying to get your velocity up as high as possible, so mass times velocity squared (55:15). The higher the velocity, and greater the impact. You want to get your mass up, so what's your mass? Your mass is related to the weight of your corps, which you're going to attack the armor with. And the greater the mass, the greater the force. (57:00) So the whole question of attacking Soviet armor depends on those four issues. 155, take the track off, destroy it from the top; the assault breaker concept...basically long range missile systems to attack from the top; attack from the side, attack from underneath -bar mine. So I'm taking in general terms. Serviceability of weapons systems: (58:15) Changing the engine in an M109 was four hours, first line. Leopard was something less than that. When I commanded 1 RCHA, my specialist said we can't take this M109 to the field because of the engine, and I said to him get out a set of extra large coveralls, I'll be over, and we'll do it. [Leopard change] you needed heavy equipment and you needed skill. The German design was we can change the engine, and they demonstrated that to us. (1:00:10) And you could certainly do it first line if you had to. Aging process of weapons: Well look, we bought about 127 of them, and I think we have about 80 still in service. These things will last for a long time if you maintain them. And the logistics support was programmed so they calculated their maintenance costs by saying how many miles you can drive them per year. (1:01:40) The logistics support of the Canadian Forces was structured in such a fashion that you're projection how many miles or kilometers you're going to drive it each year so that you're managing it. So we did things like we used low-beds whenever we could. A low-bed is a tractor trailer. So you drive an M-109 onto a low-bed put one Leopard on a low-bed, so you reduce your miles. (1:02:20) Keep your track mileage down by using, we moved by rail, the German rail system, we would try to keep the mileage down as low as possible so we wouldn't use up our available miles. (1:04:40) Because we had the M-113 family in service, which is diesel, bring the Leopard in service, it's the same diesel, and M-109, it's diesel. You try to simplify your logistics support system as much as possible. Whereas with the Centurion we had to have Bausers with high octane gasoline, so you've immediately simplified your logistics support. Supplies: (1:05:30) One of the real benefits of integration was that we came up with a new ...prior to integration, we had separate functions, so we had a REME support separate, we had a supply system separate. With integration, we had a new concept called the Service Battalion, and it worked far, far better than anything I had experienced previously. They were able to project the requirement, based on our usage, in other words, if you need to have special field tracks like for the M109, which is German, the Canadian Forces had the ability, and it was devolved down, to buy where it was required to bring the field track in. And because of the planning that went on, saying, you're going to drive those tracks so much per year, you're going to need so many pads, so they could project, and as if by magic, stuff would appear! (1:06:50) So the brigade support in the Canadian Forces had the ability to buy and supply to meet our requirements based on our usage rates. So as long as we lived within the usage rates...when we had run so many miles on the M109s for example, we would simply send them back to Maintz, which is the United States overhaul depot in Germany, and have the vehicles rebuilt. So the Canadian Forces basically had a very functional approach to buying where the stuff was needed, and we were well supported from National Defense Headquarters, I can say that I had visits from them saying, have you got the right kind of stuff, any questions or concerns...? Ammunition, produced in North America; ammunition was very expensive, and I believe they had the special capability to manufacture most of our ammunition in Canada, because of the high usage rates. (1:08:30) And they had a forge in Canada to build a lot of the ammunition for us, not across all ranges, but.. .I was very pleased with the logistics support that I received. There was always something that would come up, but because we had standardized with the Americans, when we needed an engine for an M113, it would appear as if by magic. (1:11:35) Across the full range of provisions, I didn't experience problems, you know, there was the odd glitch, but basically, the planning was excellent. Very professional, well done. Logistics support, I have no criticism. Role of Canada in defense of Europe: (1:13:10) Significant. Absolutely. We used to be told that, by senior NATO, SACEUR would visit us and brief the officers and say, "the role you're playing is very important, and don't let anybody ever tell you otherwise." (1:14:00) I think he [Mr. Trudeau] moved into office saying I'm going to make some significant reductions in the Canadian Forces, and he did . . . Canada's presence was essential: T/F: (1:24:30) We were a large brigade, we were staffed up to certain levels to go to war; we were operationally ready. We had to very carefully ensure that soldiers coming in had the right skill set. ..[changes to second sound clip] Ideological education by Canadian govn't: (11:30,2°d) What I've studied, I've studied myself- Marxist Leninism, I read widely.. .I'm not a military historian on Soviet capability. But I fundamentally believe in democratic society in our constitution, in our constitutional monarchy... Most significant changes with 4 CMBG: (17:05, 2nd) From what I saw in the 1960s and 1970s, first of all, the leadership was much under pressure, although our leadership in the 1960s was excellent.

Interviewer: Taschuk, Natasha

An interview/narrative of Donald Bruce McGibbon's experiences during the Cold War. Colonel McGibbon served with 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. Interview took place on November 21, 2007.

Interviewee: McGibbon, Donald Bruce, b. 1940

Rank: Colonel. Medals and Honours: Canadian Forces Decoration

In Collection:
Contributor Subject Language Keyword Date created Relation
  • Part of the Military Oral History Class collection of interviews.
Resource type Rights statement Extent
  • 2 sound recordings (MP3)
Geographic coverage Coordinates
  • 54.75844, -2.69531
  • 39.76, -98.5
  • 51.5, 10.5
  • 60.10867, -113.64258
Additional physical characteristics
  • Original sound recordings (DVF) also available.
Physical repository Collection
  • Canadian Military Oral History Collection
Provider Genre Archival item identifier
  • MD_761
Fonds title Fonds identifier Is referenced by Date digitized
  • November 21, 2007
Technical note
  • Digital sound recording in .mp3 format at 56 kbps and 22 kHz. Recorded in digital format by interviewer, technical and cataloguing metadata provided by JF and JP. Interview recorded in digital format for UVic Special Collections in 2007. Migration metadata by KD and MT.
Rights
  • This interview has been posted with the understanding that it may be used for research purposes only. Should the interviewee or their heirs have any objections to this interview being accessible on the Internet, it will be removed promptly. Contact UVic Special Collections for permission if using for other than research purposes: speccoll@uvic.ca
DOI

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