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The Chieftain's Hatch: Undergunned in Italy

Дата: 16.01.2018 21:05:16
Quote First, what book of yours?  I got the Firepower one and its fantastic, is that the one to which you are referring or is there another I missed?

The_Chieftain: Can Openers:   

Quote When we get to Bloody December and the fight for Ortona, we are talking about rubble and street to street fighting with Fallschirmjäger with vast anti tank resources, including a new improvised one dropped from balconies onto the top of passing tanks.

The_Chieftain:   If you missed them, you may be interested in these two articles about Ortona. One and Two  

Quote 1) Do you think the HE round of the 75mm being more highly valued (in the type of fighting that was occuring more and more as the deserts of africa were exchanged for house to house fighting) than 76mm AP might have been a factor in reticence to change?

The_Chieftain:   Although it is frequently quoted as a deciding reason as to why so many 75mm tanks were retained, I have not actually seen any documentation to support this. Remember that the original intent, both from the US and apparently Fifth Army, was to replace all 75mm tanks with 76mm tanks. That the 75mm was a better HE lobber is unquestioned, but the 76mm wasn't god-awful either: You certainly would notice if one fired at you. Later, Gillem, who replaced Devers, decided upon a ratio of 75mm and 76mm tanks to be fielded, but I'm not sure if that was based on HE-lobbing or simply production numbers: I conclude that there seemed to be little need to churn out Shermans at the continued high rate, using up money and material, and the number of 76mm tanks actually produced in the end was substantially less than that of 75mm tanks. Ergo, a mix was almost mandated.  

Quote 2) The Ford engine seems more important than the 76mm from my reading of that message - can you elaborate a bit on why please? 

The_Chieftain:   They don't explain, but you're talking about a 40% increase in horsepower and easier maintenance. Since the function of the tank is to get the gun where it is needed, arguably it is more important than the gun improvement. Gun-power deficiencies can be mitigated by better mobility.  

Quote Why is the M4(105) not mentioned at all?  It would seem mixed platoons of a 76mm, 105, and 2 75mms would be an ideal balance instead of this "battalion at a time" system.

The_Chieftain:   There was, by the end of the war, a proposal to have a tank fleet of only 76mm and 105mm tanks at the platoon level, instead of keeping the 105s at company and battalion. However, I suspect it wasn't brought up in this context because the 105mm tank had a very definite role as an assault gun, and as a result anti-armor capability wasn't really important enough to worry about. With the 75mm tank, it was.  

Quote ​I don't buy that analogy whatsoever. When you may have only seconds to line up a shot on a tank that appears from no where or one that is hiding in a ambush position "firing at weak-spots" because your gun is so lame is totally impractical and near impossible in these situations. You take the fastest shot you can because it might be your azz otherwise. Chieftain you should know this. The German "elephant" commonly fired from cover in a dug in positions in Italy or even from caves and railroad tunnels to hide it from arty and air attack it was so big and the German panthers "shot trap" wasn't so easy to hit on the first shot and in fact the Germans pretty rapidly changed out that turret for one that had none.   

The_Chieftain:   The fact that the Germans fixed the shot trap does seem to be an indicator that they thought it was a problem which was worth fixing. Especially since it didn't cost them very much to fix it, so why not? There doesn't seem to be much alternative in the 'how to kill a big German tank' department. Either you can do it yourself by point-and-shoot, or you need to come up with creative ways of doing it. Point-and-shoot, though vastly preferred, wasn't particularly reliable in all circumstances, so the fact that the US was winning implies that they came up with more complicated ways of getting the same result. Can you blame the US tankers for wanting an 'easy mode'?  

Quote Chieftain, it is interesting to note that most of the pictures that accompany your article are of German tanks knocked out by aircraft.  Note the extensive damage to the tops of the German tanks and lack of penetration holes in the side/front of the hulls.  Notice the Tiger pulled off to the side of the road with its barrel pointing upward?  Yeah, those German tanks were taken out by aircraft.   If I were in a tank with a 75mm gun, I'd call for airstrikes too.

The_Chieftain:   Well, I have not seen any information as to the cause of those specific losses, although aircraft are known to be highly over-stated in their effectiveness against armor. However, your last line rather makes the point. There is a saying that the most dangerous thing on the battlefield is a guy with a map and a radio who knows how to use them. All US tanks had maps, and they all had radios. An effective weapon is used against the opposition and the opposition is removed from play. That it just happens not to have a '75mm' designation doesn't matter to the knocked-out enemy.  

Quote  am not sure whether these numbers are correct, or not. According to author Zaloga and SHAEF, the losses of 5th Army (Sicily, Italy) amounted to 1,414 tanks, tank destroyers and self-propelled guns, including 1,171 M4's until May 15, 1945. The number of "80" killed tankers does not sound believable.

The_Chieftain:   Page 56.  

Quote A certain LTG Leslie McNair, CO, Army Ground Forces (nowadays known as Training and Doctrine Command, the boffins responsible for training and equipping soldiers and units deploying overseas) held that tanks were to support infantry, and as such only needed a competent HE capability (the short 75 of your basic M4 Sherman in this case) 

The_Chieftain:   No, the 75mm was chosen as much for its anti-armor capability. Remember that at the time of its introduction, the weapon carried by the heavy tank destroyers was also a 75mm. It was as good as the US could build at the time, and the development timeline for the M4 indicates there was always an attempt to increase anti-armor capability of the tank.  

Quote For instance when the 6 pounder began development the British tank board basically ignored any notion of mounting it on one of their new tanks. The 6 pounder development team in fact decided to go against orders and came up with a version that could be mounted on tanks anyway, which was only accepted after great reluctance and howls of complaints from the frontline over the inadequacy of the 2 pounder.

The_Chieftain:   That wasn't as important to the timeline, though. 6pr was designed and the MkI approved in 1939. It did not enter production, however, even in the towed configuration, until November 1941, about a year and a half after Dunkirk. Such was the demand for lots of guns immediately, that they simply couldn't afford to change over.    On the matter of optics, it is not incompatible to say that German optics were of better quality whilst saying that US optics were of better use. Even if the bush or tank is fuzzy in the Sherman, being able to spot the fuzzy thing first and put a round into it just on general principles will soon solve the question of whether it's a Panzer or actually just a bush.  Further, in cases when it's very obvious that the target is a tank, fuzzy or not, clarity takes a very definite second place to target acquisition. See first, shoot first, win. Quite why the Germans refused to put roof sights on their tanks is completely beyond me. I guess they didn't stop to ask "Why did the Americans and Russians stick these on the roof?". After all, a Panther's gunner in a turret-down position gets a wonderful-quality image of the piece of dirt fifteen feet to his front.  

Quote A RAC (Royal Armour Corps) tank casualties survey for the NWE theater from 1945 displays that burns were still an apparent problem for British tank crews in 1945, as it (table 56) displays that  ... "it is thus apparent that the problem of burns in tank crews is very much the same now, as it was in the desert in late 1942 and there is likely to be little use in our reiterating Chute's widely read and discussed remarks on their prevention. Suffice it is to say that if a means of preventing minor burns in tank crews could be found, it would reduce the non-fatal casualties sustained inside vehicles by something like a fifth."

The_Chieftain:   It is of note, however, that burns were a problem for all tanks. British medical report did observe that Sherman crewmen were actually slightly less likely to suffer from burns than those of other vehicles.  

Quote Considering how much time ( the speed of the development can be described with the terms "slow" , "casual", "partially unfocused" ) had been put into the mentioned series, it's probably safe to say that a higher amount of 76 mm guns and generally more capable guns (ie. 90 mm) and more capable platforms (90 mm TD designs) could have been made available and made available earlier, if the developers had not wasted so much time on projects that didn't have a future, and if ordnance and the other involved parties had not argued/struggled as much. Quite a few tankers' lives could have been saved, if they would have possessed better equipment.

The_Chieftain:   I'm not sure quite how correct that statement is. There are two slightly different issues. One is over the perceived need for the better gun, the other is of the practical reality of the better gun. The guys in the US believed that the need would be met by the 76, this was wrong. However, the development timelines don't seem that bad. The 76mm was developed quickly enough, and first stuffed into a tank in Summer '42. It sucked, but they were working on it. The 76mm TD implementation was not withheld, that entered production Summer '43, and the tank, which is inherently a more complicated thing to make than a TD, followed only six months behind.    As for engagement ranges in NWE, I would remind you of the existence of these charts.

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