The US Army Tests Firefly

The_Chieftain:   Unfortunately, so is the 76mm's superior accuracy. Now, I happen to believe that, from the dispersion figures, 17pr APCPC is accurate enough for general purposes, if not as good as 76mm.  Much as 76mm APC is powerful enough for general purposes, if not as good as 17pr.  However, if you are to base your argument on the basis of certain limited situations which would make it so the M4 76mm likely would not kill, but Firefly would likely get the kill, you must also accept certain other limited situations, such as engaging a fleeting, moving target at distance.  M4 76mm's better accuracy, ease of lay and adjustment, and rate of fire will similarly result, in those rare enough circumstances, in the M4 (76) occasionally getting tank kills which the Firefly would not. Overall, I submit, it's something of a wash, with a slight nod towards Firefly. Once HVAP came along, that wash becomes a definite nod towards the 76mm tank. As a design, as the engineers drew up and built the thing and taking into account the targets it faced, I submit 76mm was at least as good a tank killer in general WWII terms (Frankly, I think better), and only in certain very specific circumstances would an end-of-war Firefly crew be the one better off, circumstances which rarely presented themselves.   As an overall tank, there's little argument in favour of Firefly.   As for -reputation-, the question is if one should confuse the tank's design with the administrative decisions behind fielding it. Reputations usually have a grain of truth behind them, but rarely the whole story. Firefly was the best tank-killing tank fielded in combat by the Allies in June 1944. There's no two ways about it, there was nothing else the Allies fielded which was even close (except TDs). Or, if you want to put it another way, "When the Western Allies finally met the Panther, Firefly was the only Allied tank present which could meet it on more or less even terms".   This is all true, and, combined with a wargamer's insistence on looking at penetration charts, created the reputation. But this is because of the thousands of M4(76) built by that stage, nobody thought they might want to bring a single one along with them. This created a second reputation: That of the tank destroyers. "American tanks couldn't handle the tanks, so relied on Tank Destroyers to do the job". Despite the fact that the TDs fired exactly the same projectiles as the 76mm M4s, so if the TDs could do the job, it stands to reason that M4 76mm could do it as well. Basically, due to the administrative decisions of commanders, 76mm M4 was never given the opportunity to establish a reputation for itself. This has little to do with its inherent comparative capabilities or its design.