Major General Carlos Brewer (5 December 1890 – 29 September 1976) was a United States Army officer who commanded the 12th Armored Division during World War II. After training the 12th Armored Division, he was not permitted to command the division in combat due to his age, so he requested his rank be reverted from major general to Colonel so that he could become an artillery officer in the European Theater of Operations (ETO).[1] He innovated the method of field artillery targeting used in World War II, and implemented triangular organization of divisions.
Carlos Brewer was born on 5 December 1890 in Golo, Kentucky[2] and attended West Kentucky College in Mayfield, Kentucky, until he entered United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York in 1909, graduating 15th in his class in 1913.[3]Many of the graduates of the West Point Class of 1913 later became general officers, including Alexander Patch, Douglass T. Greene, Geoffrey Keyes, Willis D. Crittenberger, Charles H. Corlett, Paul Newgarden, William R. Schmidt, Robert L. Spragins, Louis A. Craig, Selby H. Frank, Henry B. Lewis, Henry B. Cheadle, John E. McMahon, Jr., Richard U. Nicholas, Robert H. Van Volkenburgh, Robert M. Perkins, William A. McCulloch, Francis K. Newcomer, Lunsford E. Oliver and Henry B. Cheadle.
Upon graduation from West Point in 1913, Brewer was commissioned as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 3rd Field Artillery at Fort Sam Houston, serving along the Texas border until 1916 during the Mexican Revolution. In March 1916, he went with the 4th Field Artillery to the Panama Canal Zone. From August 1916 through 1921, he taught in the Department of Mathematics at the USMA, missing out combat during World War I.[4] In 1920, he was promoted to major and, from 1921 through to 1924, he went to the 8th Field Artillery in Hawaii.[4]
Brewer studied at the Advanced Course at the United States Army Field Artillery School at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, in 1926–1927, and then graduated at the top of his class at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth (1927–1928). He went back to the Field Artillery School in 1928 and taught in the Gunnery Department, becoming the Director of the department.[3][4] His immediate predecessor as head of the Department of Gunnery, who was also an instructor when Brewer took advanced coursework there, was Jacob L. Devers, who would remain a lifelong friend and later prove providential in the course of his career.
The Artillery School's most innovative work came with the creation of the fire direction center during the 1930s under the leadership of its Director of Gunnery, Carlos Brewer and his instructors, who abandoned massing fire by a described terrain feature or grid coordinate reference. They introduced a firing chart, adopted the practice of locating battery positions by survey, and designated targets with reference to the base point on the chart. In the spring of 1931, the Gunnery Department successfully demonstrated massing battalion fire using this method.[5]
During his period as Director of the Department of Gunnery, [Brewer] developed the technique of fire direction with a central fire direction center in the battalion which proved very effective in World War II. This procedure permitted the massing of fire of all the divisional artillery on a target that one battery had adjusted on, or on a target that the division commander had designated, in a matter of minutes. One big advantage of this central fire control is that a few specialists can perform the necessary technical operations for the entire battalion. As a result of this development, the division commanders were generally well pleased with the artillery support in World War II.[4]