Myths of American Armor
Дата: 11.06.2015 08:50:09
Strumpoo1, on Jun 10 2015 - 19:04, said: Chieftain - While I agree with you that American armor has
taken a very bad trouncing as far as quality perception goes, I
disagree somewhat on the current trend of downplaying of
German tanks at least on survivability in battle (reliability is
another story). How do we not take into consideration the
numerous accounts of Allied tankers give when facing German heavy
and medium tanks in the actual war zone? While I think that
all of us bookreaders and historians are great for thinking about a
subject and analyzing the "details" after the fact, the eyewitness
accounts should hold great import too, correct? It is
possible to read many stories on how Allied tanks bounced
numerous shots (more than 10) off of Tigers, Panthers, and the
German heavy TD's. Many of the pentrations made on them were
made after inexperienced German crews turned their tanks to flee
our forces instead of keeping their tanks facing the enemy or when
our experienced tank crews used their numbers to flank and kill.
Veterans to this day talk about their combat
exploits and how they shot and shot at a German tank to no avail
only to wait for the German to target and destroy their tank or
their friend's tank. It is also possible to hear from the
German side of things from their veterans, they did not fear
the American tanks themselves, only the numbers of them that were
fielded and their reliability (great strengths to have in war).
I also believe that some of the German tank downplaying
comes from the point in the war where American tanks were
fighting the best of the German heavies and mediums. During
this time the German war machine was in its death throes. The
crews were depleted, the machines beat up, and the resources to
field them properly (with supporting troops, air power, and
artillery) gone. I think if our tank crews
had to face the German Army that the Russians had to
fight against earlier in the war, the losses of our armor may have
been quite staggering. Do we take
into account veteran's accounts of battle? Or do we just say
"they exaggerate everything" and refer to test and proving ground
results when coming to our armor conclusions? Just
wondering how you feel on this? The_Chieftain: You'll note that I never really addressed the German
vehicles, except to point out that Panther was unreliable at Kursk,
Tiger I didn't show up all that often, Tiger's armor was a bit
better than Sherman's, and that the US forces seemed capable of
killing cats when encountered in the NATO/Med. They were quite
capable vehicles, when they showed up. Veterans accounts
have to be taking into battle, but eyewitness accounts are also
notoriously unreliable. (Certain high-profile recent police
shootings come to mind as a current example). As much as possible
they should be verified. When, however, talking about the results
of the experiences of the field troops vs the test results, one
seems to find that the field troops didn't seem to care that the
figures said that they shouldn't be able to kill Tigers,
Ferdinands, etc. They managed it anyway. Example, Anzio. 191 Tank
Battalion knocked out fifteen panzers, including six Tigers, at the
cost of seven Shermans. Absolutely the allied tankers had to
respect the enemy's capabilities, but the reality was that reality
is far less forgiving to a tank's armor than test results. As
an aside, I noted in the Archives one document from Fifth Army
saying that they weren't too worried about Ferdinands because
they'd just ricochet off the ground in front of them and go into
the belly.
Myths of American Armor