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RichTO90

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  1. This is truly getting irritating. Are you being deliberately obtuse to be annoying? Or trolling? THEY. I.e., the U.S. Army/Armored Force DID. NOT. WANT. A. TURRETLESS. TANK. To them, the term "turretless tank" was an oxymoron. They did not fundamentally care that it saved money or manufacturing effort, since the money was already allocated and the manufacturing plant was being built and soon would be ready to go. It had the "effective gun" they wanted, the 75mm "HE thrower", and it had a turreted 37mm "hole puncher". They did not care that it be lighter, lower, or have less internal volume, or a smaller crew. Those were all irrelevant. What was relevant was: 75mm, turret, medium tank, HE and AP capability, now.
  2. Sorry, I was not clear. Yes, we do have detailed strength and loss reports for U.S. units (and British for that matter). On a daily basis for losses and an aggregated ~weekly basis for write offs (U.S., monthly for the British). We do not have that for the Germans, except fragmentary and mostly monthly for this period, and 10-day reports for March-April 1945. Nor will we ever have them, since they no longer exist. So we can look at the data we do have and that we can compare, or we can sit on our hands and say that the Germans only lost tanks because they ran out of gas or broke down but were otherwise the most effective tanks in the world. Why are we assuming? We know exactly how the Germans reported because fragments of those records exist. At the strategic level, the OQu OKH compiled 10-day reports from each theater of war (Oberbefehlshaber) that covered on hand, operational, and allocated and in route. Divisions, brigades and separate battalions reported status monthly with detailed reports of on hand and operational as of the date of the report and - sometimes - losses during the month. At the army-level, reports were daily, typically by unit for on hand and in repair. Total write offs were more periodic - in HG-C for example, 10. Armee reported write offs about every three days on average. The office of the Inspektur der Panzertruppen also reported periodically on strengths, losses, and allocations. All of these records are more or less intact and more or less specific. For example, many of the OKH and Inspektur der Panzertruppen reports simply gave breakdowns as "Panzer" and "Sturmgeschuetz: without specifics. Reportage of strengths was usually as Ist, Einsatzberiet, and Instandsetzung - total on hand, total operational, and total in repair. Complicating matters, those in repair were further broken down into short term (less than 10 days) or long term (10 days or more), the later of which frequently of which were not reported, since the nominal "10 days or more" usually meant never. Why, yes, gee, thank you so much for educating me again. Yet again, we know the operational readiness for American and British armored units typically on a daily basis. In some case we also know the repair turnaround times for jobs. Yes, they did. We do not have those reports, except in fragments. Why do you believe they exist? have you done the research looking for them and compiling them? Newsflash, I have. OTOH, we do not "need such numbers from US side". We have them. This has been explained to you and I have already given you some examples of the data we do have to work with.
  3. The fundamental alternatives they had was: 1. Build the Medium Tank M2. The infrastructure and funding was there for it. It would not have a 75mm. 2. Build an interim tank that was a modification of the M2. It would have a 75mm gun in a limited traverse, but the required turret would be limited to a 37mm. 3. Do nothing and wait until 3Q42 - two years - before the U.S. Army had Medium tanks. What do you pick?
  4. Because the 37mm had almost identical "hole punching" ability at expected battlefield ranges as the 75mm at the time. Putting it in a turret gave it the capabilities of a turreted tank with a 75mm gun. They did not want a casemated 75mm assault gun. That was not a tank insofar as they were concerned. It was also not an "inferior 37mm". It was as good a 37mm as anyone else's in that category. This has been explained a couple of times. I am not sure what you are missing?
  5. No, he didn't. It was Lee who pushed to help solve the replacement problem by converting black service troop volunteers. The issues with the ETOUSA Ground Forces Replacement System were not really the fault of Lee but were endemic to the Army's system, which it only reflected. Lee actually worked pretty hard to solve as many of the systemic problems as possible, but he could do nothing about the flow of replacements to the ETOUSA any more than he could control the flow of replacement tanks and artillery ammunition. Quite a bit of his relevant staff's time (the GFRC, the AFV&W Section, and the Artillery Section) were spent on trying to prove to Headquarters ASF that shortages even existed.
  6. Sigh... Okay, I really should be finishing writing my book, but let's see what we can find as a direct comparison. As of 1 June 1944, Ob.West probably had 12 StuH - all with StuG-Bde 341. They received nine more in July, which probably went to StuG-Bde 902. Now they had 21. None were received in August and 25 in September. Then 46 in October and 12 in November. So they had received 104. Losses recorded were zero in June, July, August, and 21 in September, but it is evident that the September figures included losses in June-August (341 lost all 12 and received 17 on 19 September). Thus, at the end of September, they had 25. Gains in October were 46 and losses were 33. Net gain of 13 to 38. Gains in November were 12 and losses were 8. Net gain of 4 to 42. Note that all of these figures assume just deliveries and total losses. They do not include broken down and damaged in repair, which at any one time for many units exceeded 50% of on hand. A weapons system that is not on the battlefield is not effective. The StuG-Bde was a corps-level asset, meaning that ideally, there would be about one Zug of StuH available per division in a corps. Three for a division. Given the numbers, a German corps in Ob.West would have considered itself like to have on average a single StuH per division. And that may be generous. In American practice, on average there would be about ten M4(105) per division (two infantry division each with a tank battalion and an armored division in a corps). In that sense they were ten times as effective as the StuH, simply because they were there.
  7. Not really in the context of the time. The 37mm was considered at battlefield ranges as being as good a "hole puncher" as the 75mm. It was also turreted, which was considered important for situational awareness and combat effectiveness. It was designed in August 1940 when it was realized that the Medium Tank M2 with only the 37mm was probably inadequate. It was also known they were about a year away from being able to produce a design with a 75mm gun in the turret. DTA was already being built to produce the M2 in large numbers, so the answer was to build an interim tank as a simple conversion of the M2 - so simple that it never received a T designation. Yes, it was a result of speed.
  8. In this case the "adequate methodology" is completely dependent on the available data. Find better data and you can create a more adequate methodology. Have at it. Good luck! 😁
  9. That is an evaluation of the German logistics, maintenance, and repair system rather than of the actual combat system. Please do not attempt to "educate" me on something that was my profession for twenty-plus years. I am aware of the limitations of the data but given the data will never be better - the German on hand versus loss data is pretty piss poor except for overall Panzer and StuG/StuH numbers and even then is spotty - you have to deal with what you have. The best surrogate I know of is what I gave. It tends to show that the Medium Tank M4(105) was a pretty effective weapons system in its role as an "assault gun", which was slightly different than the German one. It proved so effective that most recommendations were for a large increase of its numbers in the late war and postwar organizations that were proposed. I am not sure why if the recommendation was to increase the number of M4(105) - a typical suggestion was to replace the Light Tank Company in the Battalion with them - they would have been considered ineffective or otherwise not an effective weapons system?
  10. Nope, but German production>HWA acceptance>deployment time was considerably less than the roughly four months for the U.S. Probably around a month from the data I know. In any case, the American loss rates are unit on hand/loss, not acceptance+shipments+on hand, which is what the German data is. That means the German rates are actually lower than what a direct comparison would show.
  11. Yeah...so you are going down the rabbit hole that Ueberpanzern only get lost when they run out of fuel or breakdown.
  12. Sure. And despite that they continued to manufacture the Panzer III with 3.7cm KwK through October 1940 and rebuilt them through March 1941. They did? They thought the Germans were building heavy tanks with 75mm guns. Which is why they began the development of their own tanks with 75mm guns. Meanwhile, the 37mm was seen as perfectly adequate for the role it was intended in light tanks and armored cars. They put a turret with a 37mm on the Medium Tank M3 because it gave them a turret and a gun expected to be able to handle most armor it ran into.
  13. Murph, J.C.H. Lee played ZERO role in tank design decisions. None. Zip. Diddly-squat. He was a logistician and did as well as he could under the circumstances of the limitations put of the SOS ETOUSA by Headquarters ASF. The one real issue he cannot be absolved of is his decision to move Headquarters COMZ to Paris at the height of the September supply crisis. The tank design decisions were made by Barnes and his staff at Ordnance Chief of R & D and later by the OCO-Detroit.
  14. Yes, sorry, I just got distracted and didn't put in the earlier dates and missread the dates I did give. For 31 December 1943-31 May 1944 when they finally started monthly reporting, it was 57 total lost: 52 on the Ostfront and 5 in Italy. April was 22, May 8, June 16, July 80, August 44, September 86, October 93, and November 35. So 441 for the eleven months. Acceptances by the HWA in the same period were 863, so just over half of acceptances were losses in the same period. Prior acceptances in 1943 were 204, so at best they had a 40% attrition rate during that period.
  15. Ah, the old "if it ran out of gas/broke down and could not be repaired, then it was not really a "loss"" argument? Sorry, but that is specious. Combat effectiveness depends on inflicting casualties at a higher rate than losing casualties. Combat effectiveness is being able to replace losses at the same or nearly the same rate as losses occur. The Germans were unable to do either. The attrition rate of the StuH-42 was very high compared to that of the M4(105) - about seven or eight times higher, which is a pretty good indicator of their relative effectiveness, especially given they served the same functionand in relatively similar proportions.
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