11th Armored Cavalry Regiment

History

The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment ("Blackhorse Regiment") is a unit of the United States Army garrisoned at the Fort Irwin National Training Center in California. The regiment has served in the Philippine–American War, the Pancho Villa Expedition, World War II, the Vietnam War, Gulf War and Iraq War. The 11th ACR serves as the opposing force (OPFOR) for the Army and Marine task forces, and foreign military forces that train at Fort Irwin.

The OPFOR trained U.S. Army forces in mechanized desert warfare following a Soviet-era style threat until June 2002, when the OPFOR and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment changed to portraying an urban/asymmetrical warfare style of combat U.S. soldiers are facing in operations abroad. From June to December 2003, members of the 11th ACR deployed to Afghanistan, where they helped to develop and train the armor and mechanized infantry battalions of the Afghan National Army. These specialized units would defend the Afghan capital during the country's constitutional convention. In January 2005, the 11th ACR deployed to Iraq. The 11th ACR was not reorganized under the U.S. Army Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS), though it has been reorganized under CARS' replacement, the U.S. Army Regimental System.

Text from Wikipedia: 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, CC BY-SA 4.0, lightly trimmed.

Wars and campaigns

From Wikidata (CC0).

Key dates

1. 1901
   The regiment was constituted on 2 February 1901 in the Regular Army as the 11th Cavalry Regiment, and was organized on 11 March 1901 at Fort Myer, Virginia.
2. 1906
   The 2nd Squadron deployed to Cuba, 16 October 1906, as part of President Theodore Roosevelt's Army of Pacification.
3. 1943
   The 11th Tank Group, later 11th Armoured Group, whose HHT was constituted on 19 July 1943 in the National Army, was a completely separate organization from the 11th Armoured Regiment / 11th Cavalry, a tank group/armoured group headquarters, not a regiment.
4. 1951
   On 1 April 1951, the regiment was reactivated as the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, as part of the build-up for the Korean War.
5. 1964
   In 1964, the 11th ACR returned to the United States and would be bound for Vietnam within two years.
6. 1967
   From January until 18 May 1967, the regiment conducted three major search and destroy operations.
7. 1982
   On 1 June 1982, Command and Control Squadron was redesignated as Regimental Combat Aviation Squadron (RCAS) and officially as the Combat Aviation Squadron (provisional), 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and nicknamed "Lighthorse".
8. 1991
   The Blackhorse Regiment deployed an aviation task force on 10 April 1991 to Turkey for Operation Provide Comfort, an operation to support the Kurdish relief effort.
9. 2009
   On 20 October 2009 President Barack Obama presented a Presidential Unit Citation to troop commander Captain John B. Poindexter and all veterans of A Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Cavalry for their heroism along the Cambodian border on 26 March 1970.

Dates and events quoted from the same Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Records that place someone with this unit

A unit history doesn't name everyone who served. These records do:

• Morning reports and unit rosters: access (National Personnel Records Center)
• Search Army morning reports, 1912–1946 (National Archives Catalog)
• Unit and organizational records held in St. Louis

More history

• U.S. Army Center of Military History
• Wikipedia: 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment