By the end of the war with Germany, Soviet cavalry returned to its pre-war nominal strength of seven cavalry corps, or one cavalry corps per each tank army. The CMGs of the period (one Tank Corps and one Cavalry Corps) were regularly weapons of choice in operations where terrain prohibited the use of fully deployed Tank Armies. The last CMG action in the war took place in August 1945 during the invasion of Manchuria. General Issa Pliyev's CMG, marching to Peking across the Gobi Desert, was actually manned by Mongolian cavalrymen – four Mongolian cavalry divisions in addition to one Soviet cavalry division, plus five mechanized brigades with heavy tanks. They were opposed by the horsemen of Inner Mongolia who fell back without fighting. Replacement of horses with armored cars in British cavalry began in 1928. Over the following eleven years all regular mounted regiments stationed in the United Kingdom, other than the Household Cavalry, were motorized, and their horses sold or allocated to other units. Mechanised cavalry regiments retained their traditional titles but were grouped with the Royal Tank Regiment as part of the Royal Armoured Corps established in April 1939. British troops in the Mediterranean theatre of war continued the use of horses for transport and other support purposes. The horses used were from local as well as imported sources. As an example the Sherwood Foresters infantry regiment, relocated to Palestine in 1939, brought with them a thousand English horses. Two mounted cavalry regiments were already present in this region. Lack of vehicles delayed planned motorization of these troops well into 1941. In 1942 the British still employed 6,500 horses, 10,000 mules and 1,700 camels, and used local mules in Sicily and mainland Italy. Empire troops, notably the Transjordan Frontier Force and the Arab Legion, remained horse-mounted. All 20 Indian cavalry regiments were mechanised between 1938 and November 1940. The last British mounted cavalry charge occurred on March 21, 1942 when a patrol of sowars of the Burma Frontier Force encountered Japanese infantry - initially mistaking them for Chinese troops - at Toungoo in central Burma. Led by Captain Arthur Sandeman of The Central India Horse (21st King George V's Own Horse), the BFF detachment charged and most were killed. The United States economy of the interwar period quickly got rid of the obsolete horse: national horse stocks were reduced from 25 million in 1920 to 14 million in 1940. In December 1939, the United States Cavalry consisted of two mechanized and twelve horse regiments of 790 horses each.