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Posted

As in the British one, we 'Muricans have had a history of really, really bad tanks, mediocre tanks, and one or two really good ones.  Let us discuss both design and employment philosophy which drove tank design for US tanks.  

I think that the dead hand of the Infantry/Cavalry rivalry did US tank designs no favors, plus the dead hand of Leslie McNair, who did the US Army a great service by getting himself killed, and therefore moved out of the way for clear thinkers to take over.  Plus the artillery wanted to take over tanks as well.  The idea that tanks fought infantry, and tank destroyers fought tanks was a supremely BAD IDEA, and we can blame McNair and to some extent Marshal for this abortion.  

The Sherman while not a great tank, was a good tank, needlessly handicapped by the intransigence of both McNair, and the Ordnance Corps, when the Sherman could have had a 90mm turret early on.  

What are your thoughts?

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Posted

The late entry in the war probably helped a bit on fielding relatively advanced tanks in the US armed forces.

Posted

Why?  He kept the 76mm tube off of the Sherman, decided that the M-26 was "not needed" etc, etc.  

Posted

What are the bad and mediocre US tanks? 

The light M2/3/5 were good, the M24 was better.

The medium M3 was not that great but it was an emergency/stopgap design.

The medium M4 was a lot better than it's reputation. The delay of the 76mm is unfortunate but also understandable given the sterling performance of the 75mm in 42/43.

The heavy M26 had issues but it was a bit rushed into service and they were resolved with the M46. Essentially a perfected M26 with a new destination.

 

Posted (edited)
14 minutes ago, Murph said:

Why?  He kept the 76mm tube off of the Sherman, decided that the M-26 was "not needed" etc, etc.  

IIRC armoured force rejected the version 1.0 of the 76mm gunned Sherman. It had the 76 in the original turret, was ready in 42 already but AF didn't want it because the much bigger breech made the interior of the turret very cramped.

That and the so far fine performance of the 75 lead to it's rejection and the design of a new turret. And by mid 1944 several hundred of these version 2.0 were in the UK. They made it into France sometime after the invasion where the lack of APCR ammo severely limited the performance of the gun. 

 

PS: More APCR and advanced HEAT for the 75 would have been nice. The final German 75mm HEAT ammo penetrated ~100mm IIRC. 

Edited by Markus Becker
Posted

I agree HEAT would have done wonders.  Plus they wanted a gun, that while not really good at armor vs armor, had a better HE round than the 76mm which was, in retrospect, a very bad and short sighted decision.  Once the T23 turret was designed there was no real reason to NOT put a 76mm gun with better ammo on the Sherman.

Posted
39 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

What are the bad and mediocre US tanks? 

The light M2/3/5 were good, the M24 was better.

The medium M3 was not that great but it was an emergency/stopgap design.

The medium M4 was a lot better than it's reputation. The delay of the 76mm is unfortunate but also understandable given the sterling performance of the 75mm in 42/43.

The heavy M26 had issues but it was a bit rushed into service and they were resolved with the M46. Essentially a perfected M26 with a new destination.

 

The mediocre M2/M3 tanks with riveted armor, no intercom system, and a squirrel rifle for a gun were mediocre to bad in 1941/1942 any time after that it was criminal to put a 37mm on any tank.  As for the M-3 Lee/Grant, they were a compromise and as with many compromises they did nothing really well, plus they were so tall they were easily spotted.  Plus the placement of the 75mm meant they had a hard time going hull down and actually using the 75mm gun.

 

I actually think that the US M-48A3 and later tanks were pretty decent vehicles once they got diesel engine, with the M-60A1 RISE Passive and later tanks actually being decent to good tanks.  The Kitsap M-47 was never used in combat so there is not a good record of its use by US forces.  

 

Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Murph said:

The mediocre M2/M3 tanks with riveted armor, no intercom system, and a squirrel rifle for a gun were mediocre to bad in 1941/1942 any time after that it was criminal to put a 37mm on any tank.  As for the M-3 Lee/Grant, they were a compromise and as with many compromises they did nothing really well, plus they were so tall they were easily spotted.  Plus the placement of the 75mm meant they had a hard time going hull down and actually using the 75mm gun.

The light M2/M3 were, well light tanks of the mid 1930s in origin. 

In 1941 the 37mm gun looks ok to me in a light tank and that's before I take a look at the 37mm armed Pz.III/35/38 that Germany used in the invasion of the USSR. And those weren't used as lights but as MBT. 

The medium M3 was but a blip on the American radar screen: in by Operation Torch, on the way out by the end of it. An episode of about half a year. 

Edited by Markus Becker
Posted (edited)

German equivalent to M3 light was the Panzer II and Panzer I. Soviet was T60 and T70. The problem wasn't the tank, the problem was that light tanks went obsolete fast in ww2. We designed an excellent one in Tetrarch and barely used it. By 1944 you had M24 which was excellent basically, though I still think the berries had the right approach to recce with Puma.

I think the only thing you guys got wrong was putting your best tank guns on tank destroyers, and making them so poorly armoured.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted
2 hours ago, Murph said:

 I think that the dead hand of the Infantry/Cavalry rivalry did US tank designs no favors, plus the dead hand of Leslie McNair, who did the US Army a great service by getting himself killed, and therefore moved out of the way for clear thinkers to take over. 

McNair's responsibilities extended far beyond issues pertaining to tanks.  

 

 

Posted
3 hours ago, Murph said:

I agree HEAT would have done wonders.  Plus they wanted a gun, that while not really good at armor vs armor, had a better HE round than the 76mm which was, in retrospect, a very bad and short sighted decision.  Once the T23 turret was designed there was no real reason to NOT put a 76mm gun with better ammo on the Sherman.

The 75 was all there was available 1940 and it was ok against armor as late as 43.

Now if they had realized that Panther was replacing Pz.IV, not Tiger....

Posted

Good point.  Although the 90mm turret was available in 43 which would have made the Sherman a really good tank.  They also had the whole Light vs Medium tank thing going on, which was sort of a left over from the Cavalry/Infantry dueling pre-war.  By 1943, the M3/M5 light tanks were essentially useless, and the M-24 which replaced them, was an alright tank, but again handicapped by the 75mm short gun, and a gasoline vs diesel engine.  The M-41 Walker was a better tank, which also could have been upgraded to a 90mm tube.  

 

Jacob Devers was hot on the improved Sherman, and the M-26 Pershing, but Ordnance and the other usual suspects derailed it till it was almost too late.

 

Posted

One hurdle to the US design is shipping the tanks over an ocean in meaningful numbers. Germany didn't have to take into account of shipping panthers across an ocean. So M26 maybe couldn't be expediated without faster improvements to shipping infrastructure for the heavier tanks.

Although M26 seems to be called "underpowered". Trading the whole lot of M4s with M26 may have noticable mobility reduction of the units at large.  

 

Posted (edited)

Stuarts were decent recce vehicles which was how the British used them once they had enough medium tanks to replace them as cruisers.  Being light and comparatively plentiful, they served reasonably well in the Pacific until enough Shermans were available.

Please, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got the impression that rather than being used as a fast company of cruisers/I tanks per doctrine, US tank battalions used their light tank company as  a recon company, a role Stuarts were good at.

Edited by R011
Posted

M5s continued to serve through the whole Pacific, and yeah, in that recce role, thus not applied to try to fill in the role that the M4 picked up. So the use of M5s didn't disappear as more M4s arrived, just the M3s were filtered out, except for flamer Satan M3s. An example of both M5 lights and M4 mediums used together was a battle that took place in San Manuel In January '45 where the M5s where on recce brought along a couple of M4s for support.

The M8 GMCs seemed to have had a handy role in mountainous parts of Okinawa like how those were used in Italy.

Posted

Much of the criticism stems from 20/20 hindsight. Any army responding to the emerging threats of Japan and Germany had to guess which formula would work best. The US diversified, delivered imperfect designs quickly and in numbers, then settled on a good design with the Sherman, and above all, managed to keep production numbers (and the training of new crews) high.

Germany was defeated within three years after the US landed in Tunisia, at a point when the Axis powers and their affiliates (save for neutral countries) controlled pretty much the entire European continent.

Even if the US Army had adopted the 76mm gun early on, would it really have made such a big difference? Don't think so. Investing that energy in 75mm HEAT rounds, as already suggested, would have paid off much bigger dividends.

Posted (edited)

Well, I think the tank development trends between Germany and Japan during the 1930s were very different.

The two main tank work horses for Japan used in the Pacific War were the Type 95 Ha-Go (1935) and the Type 97 Chi-Ha (1937). Both were designed with the Asia mainland in mind, particularly the Manchuria area. Going south into the distant jungles and islands was not what they had in mind at the time. 

From the US/Euro perspective, emphasis is on the Pacific island battles like Guadalcanal and Saipan. So there seems to be a thinking out there that the Japanese tanks were intended to be light for island Jungle warfare. That's not so. Economizing the design was a constant factor with IJA. The Type 97 Chi-Ha was in competition with the Chi-Ni, an even smaller/lighter tank with a 1 man turret. The Chi-Ha won because the Second Sino-Japanese war started. Without that war starting, the more economical Chi-Ni quite likely would have won the contract.

Edited by futon
Posted
1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

Much of the criticism stems from 20/20 hindsight. Any army responding to the emerging threats of Japan and Germany had to guess which formula would work best. The US diversified, delivered imperfect designs quickly and in numbers, then settled on a good design with the Sherman, and above all, managed to keep production numbers (and the training of new crews) high.

Germany was defeated within three years after the US landed in Tunisia, at a point when the Axis powers and their affiliates (save for neutral countries) controlled pretty much the entire European continent.

Even if the US Army had adopted the 76mm gun early on, would it really have made such a big difference? Don't think so. Investing that energy in 75mm HEAT rounds, as already suggested, would have paid off much bigger dividends.

+2.

Posted
19 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Thats quite curious, Id always assumed the small size was to help it in places like Burma. But it makes sense.

Even the Chi-Ha Shinhoto (47mm gun upgrade version) was the result of not thinking southward but upon the realization that Japan needed a tank capable of combat against other tanks. That realization occurred from the border war with the SU in the summer 1939. 

Posted
3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

...Investing that energy in 75mm HEAT rounds, as already suggested, would have paid off much bigger dividends.

I am not sure if there would be capability to make decent HEAT. US and Soviet postwar HEAT ammo benefited tremendously from their nuclear program, in particular explosive lens formation theory, and even then it took until mid-late '50s to get useful tank HEAT.

Posted
19 hours ago, futon said:

One hurdle to the US design is shipping the tanks over an ocean in meaningful numbers. Germany didn't have to take into account of shipping panthers across an ocean. So M26 maybe couldn't be expediated without faster improvements to shipping infrastructure for the heavier tanks.

Although M26 seems to be called "underpowered". Trading the whole lot of M4s with M26 may have noticable mobility reduction of the units at large.  

 

That is a very valid point, but putting the 90mm turret on the Sherman would have made a huge difference from 1944 onward.

Posted
15 hours ago, R011 said:

Struts were decent recce vehicles which was how the British used them once they had enough medium tanks to replace them as cruisers.  Being light and comparatively plentiful, they served reasonably well in the Pacific until enough Shermans were available.

Please, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got the impression that rather than being used as a fast company of cruisers/I tanks per doctrine, US tank battalions used their light tank company as  a recon company, a role Struts were good at.

I want to say you are correct in this.

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