Rants and Death Traps

SirBlackmane, on Oct 19 2014 - 21:47, said:   I do in fact love the Sherman tank itself, and its many, many variations (especially the Firefly), and appreciate its tactical flexibility, but stating it was a match for Tigers and Panthers is unrealistic.  The simple fact is that it was, for its time, an excellent mid-weight combatant, but due to a flawed tank combat doctrine that refused to develop heavier tanks the Sherman found itself forced into many unfavourable matchups.  I apologize if I seem overly critical, but the one of the underlying (and oft-touted) points of Death Traps was that certain commanders were happier to wastefully spend American soldiers' lives rather than spend the time and money developing an effective heavy tank.  If you wish to prove that this is incorrect (which the underlying concept is in fact true, even if the specifics espoused in this particular book are not accurate) then I would ask for a better argument than "The route that the US Army had gone, with the equipment they had, and the tactics they had, was working." from the people responsible for hamstringing regular Tank development.  Yes, they were winning, and did eventually win, the war, but thankfully that was not done on the basis of individual tank performance.


Slash78, on Oct 20 2014 - 00:41, said:   Was the US on the right track?  Yes.  Post-war develops emphasized the need for medium tanks over heavy tanks.  That being said, it's ironic that TD Command dared boost about how well armed and well off the US Army was as a whole when they were an unneeded redundancy that prevented better armed tanks from reaching the field earlier.  Plans for a 76mm gun armed Sherman predated the tank every seeing combat.  It was believed by Ordnance and Armored Command that a 76mm gun armed tank was desirable no later then mid-1943.  While the 76mm gun in the M35 mount proved less then desirable, there was an attempt to get the "M27" into production in July 1943 and a Sherman with the same turret shortly after that.  Both were blocked by AGF (ie, McNair) because TD Command had just got their "ideal" Tank Destroyer, the M18, into production with the very same gun.  A 76mm armed medium tank was seen as an unwanted redundancy with no perceived "battle need".  And McNair wanted 3-inch towed AT guns because of the false economy they would bring.  (A gun that was considerably less flexible than a SP mount and was wholly undesirable in the opinion of the Infantry).      


Quote 3-inch Armed tracked TD by mid-1942. 3-inch Turreted TD by late 1942/early 1943 (this happened due to McNair, so he wasn't all bad) 90mm armed TD sometime in 1943 76mm Armed Medium tank mid-1943 or shortly after 90mm Armed Medium early 1944


Quote Except all the replacements weren't crap.  I can understand not wanting to send the T23E3 over to Europe after July 1944 because a lack of trained maintenance personnel, though why did the Army produce them starting in November 1943 and still have absolutely no one that could do maintenance on them.


Quote Likewise the issues with the T25/T26 were well know, yet from from the prototype, through limited production in February-April 1944 and even until full production started in November 1944, none of the problems were fixed.  Because they were unfixable?  Or because AGF kept kicking the can down the road and fixing a design that AGF didn't want (though Armored Command lobbied for) was a low priority?  In fact it wasn't fixed until M26s were rebuilt into the M46 starting in late 1949.


Quote As for the 76mm armed Shermans, yes, they sat in England until it was painfully obvious they were needed.  The excuse is that none of the commanders wanted them.  Of course not.  None of the US armored units that fought in Normandy fought in any campaign since Sicily (ie, any battles in nearly a year).  And that's not counting freshly trained divisions that hadn't fought at all to that point.