3:73th Armor

The 3rd Battalion, 73rd Armor Regiment (3/73 Armor) traces its lineage to World War II, where the 73rd Tank Battalion served with distinction in the Pacific Theater. Reactivated and redesignated several times, 3/73 Armor became unique in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the only airborne-qualified armor battalion in the U.S. Army, assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. Equipped with the M551 Sheridan light tank, the unit provided parachute-deployable armored firepower and participated in operations such as Just Cause in Panama and Desert Storm in the Gulf War. The battalion was inactivated in 1997 following the retirement of the Sheridan and changes in Army force structure.