American tank design philosophy

So what was it caused American tank design philosophy to shift from quantity>quality to quality>quantity? Most American armor before the M1 Abrams, (and perhaps the M-60) seemed to make performance sacrifices to accomodate for easy production... However today America seems to be adopting Germany's tank doctrine of 1939, expensive, high-tech, high-maitenance tanks superior in every possible aspect...

It was probably a number of things...

Cold war competition and the desire to have the best technology...

The difficulty of out-producing the Russian tank industy without, sacrificing production of consumer goods

The desire to reduce collateral damage which large numbers of poorer weapons tend to achieve...

The desire to reduce production costs, perhaps smaller numbers of quality vehicles is the cheaper option

 

Demographics and the lack of conscription.
Since there are (relatively) fewer people joining the army the thinking is that these few should be equipped as well as possible (also works for the air force as well, etc.)

 

Was this really the German tank design doctrine in 1939? German tanks were poorly standardized and complicated machines, that much is true, but compared to the tanks of other nations they were poorly armed and armoured as well. They hardly seem 'superior in every possible aspect'.

It would make more sense to say that this quality-over-quantity doctrine took hold in Germany after about 1941. However, throughout the war, the real workhorses of the German army (the Panzer III, Panzer IV and StuG III) were constantly being upgraded with improved standardization.

 

as someone pointed out, only the PIV was in production on both the last and first day of Germany's war..

I am not sure the the T34 was in production on 1 September 1939

 

It was first put into mass production in September 1940.

 

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I've read somewhere that the U.S tank manufacturers got switched in 1940 from railways workshops to car manufacturers , as being more capable to mass produce ,
any truth to that ?

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Here is a link to the US 90 mm M36 Jackson

http://afvdb.50megs.com/usa/90mmgmcm36.html

Note the manufacturers..

Fisher Tank Arsenal
Massey Harris Co.
American Locomotive Co.
Montreal Locomotive Works

They omitted Buick

 

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Thanks stonewall , and the south shall rise again !!


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No, as per Stonewall's post, locomotive and railway car manufacturer's were heavily engaged in allied tank production. THe automobile industry was brought in because they couldn't produce the huge numbers being demanded. The auto makers were rightly considered experts at mass produciton. Note that Ford and GM were also involved in airplane manufcaturing.
I didn't know Montreal was involved in M36 production!

 

US TD designs were not flawed.

They did not fail in the event.

Every time they were called upon to do what they were actually designed to do - defeat a German armor attack - they did so. The only exception is Kasserine, where the purpose built TDs were not yet available and halftrack mounted French 75s were used instead. Those "purple heart boxes" were indeed inadequate - though only marginally more so than German Marders.

The simple reality is that the second half of WW II was not conspicuously filled from end to end with successful German armor attacks against US forces. In fact, every time they tried it, they got their heads handed to them. The closest they came to a success was the Bulge, due to surprise, and there they had all of one week of initiative. A week still marked by outsized losses of entire KGs. And tactically, the largest scoring arm on the US side were the SP TDs.

The reasons the SP TDs outscored full tanks were simple. They were better armed. Only a third or so of the Shermans had 76mm or 105mm main armament, most had the old short 75mm. A third of the TDs had 90mm and the rest all had 76mm. They also had more APCR ammunition than the tanks - and the US 76mm with APCR was quite a respectable tank killer.

The TDs also had a purely defensive doctrine and dedicated recon assets, and better situational awareness when used as intended. In other words, a Panther running around buttoned in US rear areas with little idea where the defenders are, is not superior to a TD informed by the infantry and the M8s and the jeeps where the beastie is. (In fact a Panther is at its best defending in a spot with 2 km long lines of sight - but then that isn't the TD occasion is it? And in fact they had to attack in fog or at night and in poor terrain, to avoid allied fighter bombers).

There were limitations of the TDs. They just weren't in tank vs tank fighting or their doctrinal role. The Germans frequently had little armor at all, and were usually on the defensive. And clearly it is better to have a full armored top, and full loads of HE, and full MGs, if you are attacking gun and infantry defenses.

As for armor protection, the full US tanks were better protected than the TDs, but not enough so to shrug off shots from the German tanks or heavy PAK. Only the weakest German types were range limited - to about 900m, hardly a short distance - against the improved Sherman models (and then only the hull - the turret remained vulnerable even at longer ranges). Against a Panther or Tiger main gun, forget it, there was no difference to speak of. Either would be penetrated if hit.

Only a handful of Sherman jumbos are exceptions to this.

Now, would it have been better to have gone to war exclusively in Easy Eight Sherman 76s with abundant APCR? Sure. It also would have been better to have gone to war in 1939 with Panthers. But this isn't saying very much, now is it?

Also, the Germans took as long to up armor and upgun, and went through the same design progressions as the Americans, pretty much. They just got started earlier.

The Stuart looks like a laughably light "cavalry thinking" tank. But is in all respects superior to the 37mm model Pz IIIs or the Pz 38s of 1940. In fact, in 1940 the average German tank was a Pz II. And the Germans were still trying to fight T-34s with Pz 38s in Operation Uranus (their encirclement at Stalingrad), the same time as Torch.

The Germans realized the need to upgun Pz IIIs, but the quartermaster stuck them with 50L42s because he didn't see the need for 50L60s and the former was farther along in the design process. Then they took another year to realise that neither 50L60 nor 75L24 was adequate against T-34s, and to switch all III chassis production to turretless StuGs, in order to accomodate a long 75. In the meantime they made do with Marders as TDs while the tanks had breakthrough and exploitation roles.

The Panther debuted at Kursk, still teething badly (80% out of action in the first 2 days), which was 3 years and 10 months after the invasion of Poland, and 2 years after the Germans saw the T-34 that inspired and seemed to require it. The first Pershings reached the ETO in early 1945, 3 years and 3 months after Pearl Harbor, and 2 years after the first encounter with Tigers at Kasserine.

The bottom 1/6 of the German AFV fleet throughout the entire war was lighter than a Pz III (I mean Pz II and Pz 38 chassis), and the middle 2/3rds were Pz III and Pz IV chassis. Only the top 1/6 were heavier. The Americans and Brits on the other hand fielded 40% up gunned vehicles to counter those heavies (TDs, Sherman 76s and 105s, British Fireflies). The Allies also having numbers, they actually had an upgunned AFV for every AFV facing them, light or heavy.

Of course the best German tanks were better than anything the western allies had. The Panther was actually made in quantity and was as good as the post war Pershing (better mobility, actually), and in most respects the equal of even a JS-2. But they were not the whole German fleet. Most of the war (and the entire time they were winning), over half of the force even to the end of the war, the Germans were in vehicles in no way superior to the Sherman and TD mix.

(In case everybody forgot, Shermans remained operational and effective through 1973, though of course upgunned by the Israelis).

The best tank designs during the war were the Panther (easily the best all around) and the JS-2. The best in the immediate post war was the British Centurion.

As for US tank design thinking, the single biggest consideration was shipping space and after it, mechanical reliability (the bane of interwar tank designs, and everybody but the Germans early war designs as well). The Sherman is tall and thin to fit easily in freighters and to drive through their cargo doors, not because it is thought to be a tactically effective shape, for example. Not a design consideration the Germans had to deal with.

FWIW. I go on about all this because this thread strikes me as a cliche fest of common revisionist nonsense.

 

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Welcome jasonC , glad to see you in full form !

As for tanks performances , since it was catch up between the belligerents , and considering the long lead times to start and switch mass production
it's pretty obvious that sometimes a forces would have less than optimum machines ,
it happened to all of them at some times or other !
Also there was no consensus on armored warfare , the war was changing faster than people could think , everybody talk about tank versus tank but in 44 , shoulder fired AT were going to be the biggest treat to the tanks and nobody saw that one coming !

the thread was intended rather to work out the particular factors guiding U.S. tanks design and production , I've never heard of shipping considerations , that's interesting and make sense in a quartermaster sort of way , a factor must have been the avaliability of steel ,the stuff was rationned and dolled out on a need basis , heavier tanks meant less tanks at a slower rate ,
I believe that a good basic design , at the time , evolved and the U.S. mass produced it ,
To link to the critical armor mass subject , the U.S. army had to build armor divisions and supply allied with large quantity of machines , until the armor mass had been created , better tanks were not even an issue
it was shermans or nothing , the early alternative would have been to manufacture allied design under licence ,
the mind boggle at the thought of U.S. produced J.S.II ( re-designated Jackson or logan !? )
it was a production race , in early 44 , everybody could see the insufficiency of shermans but the only remedy was some upgrades and mods , quantity was going to make the difference plus air power

from canabridge upthread
"There was a huge conceptual flaw, primarily fueled by the head of the US Army Ground Forces commander, General Leslie McNair (an artilleryman) and the previously mentioned cavalry minded officers and the new fanged tank destroyer proponents, headed by Gen Bruce Roberts.
Tanks were seen to be an exploiting force, only committed once the infantry had created a break, They were then to engage in traditional cavalry roles of disruption and pursuit. Enemy armor was to be avoided and dealt with by the TDs. The TDs were similarly flawed in they were to be lightly armored and deal with enemy breakthroughs with speed and ambush, as an antidote to a 1940-41 style panzer attack. McNair then twisted early reports from North Africa to suit his view that towed anti-tank guns were the best means of dealing with enemy tanks, and ordered half the TD battalions be converted to towed gun battalions. No one seems to have put much thought about dealing with enemy armor counter attacking the offensive exploiting armor forces (the role the Tiger was designed for). As a result, as well as logistics and transportation, the US ended up with relaitvely lightly armed and armored tanks and TDs."

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Two distinct whole sets of issues, those you raise yourself and the conventional revisionist slams of McNair, which were popularized by Dupuy and mostly reflect his quite erroneous views of the war and his near worship of the Germans. Plus some contemporary "crank" views of glorified mechanics slanging the brass.

First the issues you raise. Yes there was a competitive cycle in tank design and the standards ratcheted upwards throughout the war. What most tend to overlook is how late the US is to the party, and how dominated by events in the ETO in the final year of the war, most assessments of US force structure and doctrine tend to be.

When M3 Grants, themselves clearly understood as stop gap measures before Shermans arrived, first reached British troops in the western desert, they were overjoyed to at last have a tank that outranged "the German panzers" - which meant Pz III H and early J with 50 to 60mm fronts, armed with 50L42 guns. The Brits had actually preferred even the Stuart to their own Crusaders (and earlier Cruisers), as faster and mechanically more reliable. It 37mm pop gun was at least equal to the 2 pdr they had been using up until then.

Shermans, on the other hand, when they first saw action (at El Alamein), were the best tanks on the field. The Germans had less than 10 Panzer IVs with long 75 by then, and those still with thin armor that could not stop a short 75 round at range. They didn't even have many 50L60 Panzer IIIs or Marders.

Understand how that "plays" back in the US during the design cycle. They get reports from the Brits at the front that the Sherman has solved all the design problems of the Grant and is clearly better than all opponents.

When the US sees action itself in Tunisia, they learn that Tigers exist. They also see the clear insufficiency of halftrack mounted TDs, and field M10s during the campaign. The Germans have a couple dozen Tigers in Tunisia, whole thing, with most of the force mixed IV longs and III longs. The IV long has a superior gun to the Sherman, but inferior armor, and they about match.

The entire perception that US tanks are woefully underprotected is mostly because the German guns are so good. A Sherman has as much frontal armor protection, slope effects included, as a Tiger I. It has as much side protection as a Panther, pretty much. The same is true of Russian T-34s. The T-34 is rightly recognized as a revolutionary and well protected tank, when it is less protected than a Sherman, simply because it gets that rep by being around in 1941 and 1942, before the Germans are upgunned.

By mid 1943 the Germans are upgunned. (A sixth or so of the fleet is remaining 1942 model stuff, that is all). They have ceased production of any AFV mounting less than a 75L48, and are turning out up to a quarter with significantly more powerful guns (88L56, 75L70, and 88L71). The only tanks that count as well protected against guns of that effectiveness are a handful of the thickest Churchills, specialized Jumbos, and the JS series. A copy of Panther main gun was considered a fully effective tank main armament by the Israelis as late as 1973, facing T-62s. There simply isn't any prospect of anybody realistically fielding an AFV force that is protected against such "hammers" during the war. A few specialized heavies perhaps, the main fleet, no way. The German fleet wouldn't meet that standard either.

The key design and production point to understand in all this, is that the Sherman 75s in huge numbers are *already made* by the time this becomes obvious. Sherman production takes off in early 1942. By mid 1943, tens of thousands already exist. What are you going to do with them? Melt them for scrap?

See, the Russians are losing 20,000 tanks a year in battle. So their older tanks just evaporate. The US doesn't lose half that number in the whole war, and virtually all the losses they do take come in the final year.

The US is switching M3 chassis to Priests and armored bridges and armored recovery vehicles. But M4s already built are going to be used.

The next thing to understand is no, steel is not a bottleneck for tank production. The US turns out 86,000 tanks, some of them light, none over 40 tons. That means less than 3 million tons total. It is building, I kid you not, 60 million tons of shipping over the same period. Steel goes to shipping. There isn't even a rate determiner in factory capacity to make tanks. They simply can't use the tanks they actually have.

Tank crews are scarcer throughout the ETO campaign than tanks are. And tanks are so abundant, thousands remain in the states and others in reserve parks in England. The US is providing a few thousand to Russia and well over 10,000 to the Brits. But the US tank fleet in the ETO and MTO combined never exceeds 10k at any time. US losses are less than that figure too.

What is scarce is neither steel nor produced tanks, but shipping space to get it all to theater, and the total force to use them all effectively. The number of ADs ramps over the war in several waves, but it isn't Shermans available holding them back. Every extra AD needs to be moved to the theater and then backed continually by hundreds of tons per day in POL and ammo etc. As well as tricked out with thousands of specialists.

The overall US bottleneck is shipping. Despite making 60 million tons of new stuff - over 50 million of it merchant shipping. Partially this is due to the early success of the U-boats - they sink 20 million tons - but mostly it is the vast distances, huge commitments in every category of item, and the way extra carrying ability only gradually pays back. By which I mean, a ship that lives from late 1941 to early 1945 gets in 3.5 years of hauling, but one launched mid 1942 only "produces" 2.5 years, and one launched in 1943 only 1.5 years, etc. Meanwhile the fleet was at its smallest in the early years that contribute the most, because that is when the u-boats were rampant and ship production had not yet ramped up etc.

On the demand side, you have to feed Britain (literally), ship 7% of Russian output to Russia as LL, supply Britain's construction industries, feed India, run the war in vacant Africa from both ends of the Med, with hauls clear around Africa because the Med isn't open to east-west traffic until mid 1943, send millions of men to the UK, build up and supply tens of thousands of planes there, raiding the Reich daily, send thousands of men literally half way round the world to remote south Pacific islands where there is nothing but sand and coconuts, and for the first two years do all of the above while cumulatively losing a third of the ships doing the hauling.

Shipping as a bottleneck means everythings real "opportunity cost" is measured in tonnage of thruput from A to B. A tank that takes up twice the freighter room can be had for the asking, but only by giving up 2 tanks that fit more easily. Just saying "use more shipping space" is impossible. Meanwhile, they do not know how long the war will last or how high armor losses will be, and consequently do not know how many tanks they can use or will need.

In the event, losses are low and the war short, and they are left with tanks coming out of their ears. But they had to make the bulk of those tanks in 1942-3.

Were there still errors made in all of it? Yes. Two stand out. One, they were slow to upgun the entire fleet to 76mm. They knew that some German tanks required them, but until Normandy just how outclassed a plain 75 Sherman could be was not appreciated yet. With reason - they hadn't seen the heavies before in any numbers. Closest it gets is Anzio in February of 1944. But there the failure of armor is due to the mud and high force to space, not tech specs. (I mean, the place is a moonscape, a continuous wet crater field touching rim to rim, deluged with HE).

That error is usually laid at McNair's doorstep, with some but not much justice. Three or four different disagreements are all conflated, on only one of which McNair was actually wrong. He was not wrong that TDs were the way to stop armor breakthroughs (there weren't many to stop, but stop them they did). He was not wrong that a Pershing would come too late to matter and via shipping would have to be traded 2-3 to 1 for Shermans - and that was the only serious uparmored option. He was not wrong that the right role for ADs was breakthrough and exploitation, not fighting enemy tanks. He should still have approved faster upgunning.

The second error was one that very few understood at the time. It was the inadequacies of the 76mm itself when using plain AP. Standard specs all showed it fully capable of penetrating Panther turret fronts and any plate of a Tiger I. And inside 400 yards it did. But from 500 yards to abotu 1500, where the equations said it should penetrate, it instead routinely failed due to round shatter, against German face-hardened plate. The solution to this was to use APCR - tungsten core ammo. Worked fine. And there was no tungsten shortage or production shortage preventing plenty of it from being fielded. But they did not realize it was needed, that the 76mm with plain AP was failing, until detailed investigations after Normandy. Shortages of APCR continued some time after that because it took time to make and ship more etc.

Additional minor examples would be wet ammo stowage or improved flotation from wider treads etc.

These were typical teething problems, in no way different from Germans trying four different ways to get a III chassis AFV to work before settling on the StuG III with 75L48, or continually uparmoring III and IV chassis vehicles until they got 80mm fronts more or less adequate against Russian 76L42 at medium range, etc.

As for the point about infantry AT being a big killer late in the war, it mostly just reflects the successful handling of the other, greater threats. The Germans just don't have all that much armor to send west. Large waves of it are faced in Normandy and later in the Bulge. Outside those two periods, each less than 2 months long, the German armor force in the west is numerically pathetic. The Germans had excellent towed PAK designs, but with their poor late war mobility (horses and wagons, fuel limits, trucks needed for PDs not IDs) and massive allied HE arms (air and arty), towed guns are not very effective investments.

There wasn't any realistic armor solution against HEAT warheads with 4 inch diameter. Not with period tech. It takes modern layered ceramic armored, developed only in the 1960s by the Brits, to defeat that sort of threat with armor.

The threat is also easily overstated. The Germans fielded nearly 300,000 Panzerschrecks and literally millions of Panzerfausts, but awarded all of 14,000 infantry tank killer medals for the whole war. The very low kills per fielded system are a direct result of their entirely inadequate range and low inherent accuracy.

But I deny that in early 1944 "everyone could see the deficiency of Shermans". One, they did not see it and two, they didn't see it because it was not there. A tank is not deficient because the most upgunned opponents it faces can penetrate it at range. A tank does not have to be impenetrable to be effective. Few ever are. The effect of full armor is instead to reduce the effective number of enemy weapons, each then being dealt with in the usual combined arms or exchange off ways, along with local odds and hitting where not expected etc.

An easy 8 Sherman 76 with APCR is not a deficient tank in any respect, in even late WWII. A plain Sherman 75 without wet stowage and with narrow tracks, is by mid 1944 a somewhat deficient tank. But by the same standard, so is a StuG III or a plain Panzer IV, its equals, which between them are half the German AFVs in Normandy.

The illusion comes from comparing the bottom half or so of the US fleet with the top third (if not the top sixth) of the German fleet.

Easy Eight Shermans were perfectly adequate main battle tanks in the Korean war. When upgunned further, they were perfectly adequate main battle tanks in 1956, 1967, and 1973, for the Israelis. Eggshells with hammers, perhaps, but that is par once people start upgunning. Until Chobham armors, upgunning (including improved ammo types of course) always beats uparmoring, usually in short order.

Now I will address the Dupuy slander, to the extent it isn't already addressed above in the McNair discussion. The claim is that there is some
"huge conceptual flaw". But relative to what is never actually stated. The reality is, it is a conceptual flaw compared to an imaginary standard set up decades after the fact by Dupuy, which itself cannot withstand rational scrutiny, and is based on a systematic underappreciation of actual US achievements and overrating of German ones. Not to put too fine a point on it, the huge flaw won the war and its supposedly flawless ideal replacement lost it horribly.

In another bit of irony, the supposedly flawed US doctrine involved is largely a slavish copy of German midwar doctrines that are routinely praised as masterful combined arms, often by the exact same authors.

"Tanks were seen to be an exploiting force"

This is straight out of Guderian. It was also Russian practice from late 1942 on and rightly seen as a sign they had mastered the essentials of modern mobile combat.

"They were then to engage in traditional cavalry roles of disruption and pursuit."

While it is true some cavalry minded officers (including that armor sluggard Georgie Patton) thought in these terms, it was in fact a typically *British* attitude, and not widespread in the US armor commands. The US learned far earlier than the Brits that modern ADs must be forces of *all* arms. The standard of artillery - armor cooperation reached in the US ADs put even the Germans to shame, for example, while the Brits didn't get into the same league (if they ever did) until mid 1944 at the earliest.

In addition to all arms cooperation, as opposed to sending tanks on independent cavalry raids, the US ADs also stressed destroying enemy forces with simple firepower. As in 7 heavy machineguns per rifle *platoon*, as in up to 81 105s per division (a third of them Sherman 105s), as in an attack technique consisting in blizzards of direct and indirect HE followed up by small probe. Um, where is all that in the cavalry playbook, again?

"Enemy armor was to be avoided"

This was German doctrine - hit where the enemy is thin - since 1917 infiltration tactics. It was Russian doctrine on dealing with superior German AFVs from midwar (JS-2 units were breakthrough specialists and were explicitly told to avoid head on smash ups with German armor e.g.). It is also just combined arms common sense.

Sometimes, of course, the enemy armor has to be attrited to the attack to proceed. But what was the expedient the western allies actually reached for in these cases? HE blizzard, that's what. They used their overall logistical superiority. Their superior air forces. Their well netted and spotter plane directed artillery. Not because those arms are particularly good tank killers (they were thought to be much better at it, at the time, than they actually were). But because they are entirely assymmetric - you hit him and he sits there and takes it. And that is just blindingly obvious combined arms.

"and dealt with by the TDs."

Actually, TDs were to deal with *attacking* enemy armor. When the US is attacking, it is to pick spots not well covered by enemy armor (and then use concentration). The enemy armor can then pick its privies or it can attack something. It it attacks something, you block them with TDs. Which, again, worked fine every single time.

"TDs were similarly flawed in they were to be lightly armored"

This slander, spread by Dupuy, has only one historical event to back it up - Kasserine. At Kasserine, very thin TDs actually did fail, because they were not even dedicated 76mm armed SP TDs, but mere ad hoc mounts of short 75s on halftracks, vulnerable to artillery, slow to get into position and hard to lay and aim, and easily KOed by even 50L42.

But that was the last time the 75 halftrack TDs were the principle kind. By the next fight, even still in Tunisia, there were M-10s available. Which immediately did fine. (El Guettar I am talking about). And every single German counterattack after that, TDs stopped handily, outscoring their heavier German opponents with ease.

After Salerno, the TDs were the highest scorers breaking the German counterattack about a week after the landing. When Lehr counterattacks the US sector in Normandy in early July, they lose half their armor in half a day and fail, and it is TDs that score the highest, and outscore attacking Panthers in absolute terms. (The German commander remarks that hedgerows are poor terrain for the Panther - the reality is inside 400m a TD kills a Panther if it shoots first, and a buttoned Panther in the middle of the US defensive zone is quite unlikely to know about the M-10 before the reverse). Mortain is beaten by 2 battalions of SP TDs, along with air and arty and an AD. The air claims all the kills but operations research does not back them up. Almost all the actual holes are made on the ground by heavy AT from guess who? At Arracourt, the Germans attack in morning fog to avoid Jabos, and wind up knife fighting Hellcats at point blank range. The best they ever do is trade off evenly, and often they lose outright. In the whole September period, the Germans see all the counterattacking new Panzer brigades smashed to bits in days, with precious little to show for it.

In the Bulge the Germans actually get the initiative for a whole week, by using a 2 panzer army scale instead of a 2 KG scale. So look at the Elsenborn fight. You will find the tank killers are artillery and bazookas to a degree, sure, but that the SP TDs outscore absolutely, score highest for the number of weapons present, and decide the key attacks by showing up in battalion strength. (When dozens of 90mm tank destroyers take up positions in an arc behind a slope, the Germans with all of 40 remaining AFVs are not getting over said slope).

In the wider fight, you find a few AT mines, blown bridges, a handful of engineers frequently holding up a powerful German column. But you also find case after case of "then a few TDs drove up. They destroyed the lead German tank, and..." followed by 50-100 German AFVs stuck in another traffic jam. Does this happen because a TD needs to be invulnerable to enemy weapons to function? No. It happens because a sighting differential and a gun that kills whatever it points at are the key factors in tank defense. Aka ambush, bushwhacking, etc. A defensive stance plus a gun that kills anything is simply effective, period, full stop.

So the TDs do not fail. You can't find the mythical Dupuy insinuated incidents, from one end of the war to the other, in which a German armor attack supposedly succeeds because the TDs that are supposed to stop it are too thinly armored to stand up to them. One, there isn't anything thickly armored enough to take actual hits from a Panther, short of a battlecruiser anyway, and two, as long as you see and shoot first and have an effective gun, you don't need to be.

There are examples you can point to of TD failure in WW II ETO or MTO, but they are underuse failures not non-performance failures. As in a whole TD battalion that fires indirect as extra SP artillery for the whole Italian campaign - for lack of any German armor to fight! Or TDs pressed into service as extra assaulting tanks against infantry and gun defenses, that have to improvize overhead cover to drive through artillery fire in a forest. But these are not what Dupuy is alleging when he says TDs are a failure because they are too thin.

What he is trying to say is the US did not have Jadgpanthers or SU-100s, and could not waltz up to hull down Tigers and Panthers and blow them apart at will without any fear from the replies. But then the truth is even Jadgpanthers and SU-100s *do* have something to fear from the replies of such powerful guns, and nobody had any meaningful numbers of such things, certainly not before it was all basically over in 1945, anyway.

Is an SU-100 a more capable item than a Jackson? Undoubtedly. But not by enough to make any huge difference to the outcome of the war, or even any month long battle. Such things are decided not by tech specs but by forces fielded and broader maneuver. A useful TD needs to have a sufficient hammer, and a Jackson, Achilles, or Firefly are perfectly sufficient for that.

(In fact, a Jackson is probably better at it than say and ISU-122, because of superior ROF and the turret. The better armor on the ISU still isn't enough to stop bumpkis, given the lightning bolts the Germans are throwing).

So, Dupuy is comparing a theoretical misgiving about US designs that actually worked fine in the field, to a standard set by an entirely different German design philosophy for TDs. That German design philosophy only made sense, though, because it was possible to neutralize with sufficient armor the still large portion of weaker short 75s and Russian 76L42s in the allied arsenals. A Jagd-70 is superior to Sherman 75s or T-34/76s. But this does not mean the US had the option of making its own version of a Jagd-70 that would be equally superior to Panthers or Tigers. You just won't stop their much more powerful rounds (10 million joules muzzle energy, vs. around 3 million for the older 75s). It is not within reach, so it is a mistake to invest heavily in trying to get there. Much better to get sufficient firepower (something better than those older 75s etc) and numbers.

"McNair then twisted early reports from North Africa to suit his view that towed anti-tank guns were the best means of dealing with enemy tanks"

Actually, that was again German doctrine, and there was no twisting involved. When Rommel beats Matildas in 1940, he is a genuis of combined arms. When Rommel smashed whole brigades of Brits playing "tank cav" in the western desert, he does it with gun fronts, and it is combined arms genuis. When the Russians stand on the defensive at Kursk and use layer after layer of dug in ATGs and minefields, it is brilliant attrition strategy - somewhat marred by over aggressive counterattacking by tanks, prematurely, that gets lots of them killed.

But when McNair reads about all of the above and concludes that gun fronts are the best doctrinal answer to concentrated enemy armor, he is supposed to be some sort of ignorant boob. I mean, everyone knows that the way you really fight concentrated enemy armor is by mindlessly mashing like on like in straight ahead attrition, right? Err, unless you have Wehrmacht envy, then you just magically have a force of pure Panthers and Tigers, and kill 14 to 1 or 14 to 0 and win. You can tell that works because the Germans won the war. Oops.

Dug in PAK work better than halftracks mounting French 75s because they have superior stealth. But actually, a fair portion of the German early and mid war successes with gun fronts stemmed from poor combined arms cooperation on the part of their enemies (especially Brit Armour, and Russians). The way you counter a gun front is to inundate it with artillery, long before you attack with tanks.

There are still occasions when the gun front idea worked for the US. Some in Salerno e.g. The US version that worked better, though, was the howitzer based HE storm, "surging" the rounds per gun from an entire corps worth of guns on a single axis for hours to days. This strips the Germans of infantry and so of combined arms, as well as disabling many tanks that try to bull through it or ride it out. This works late in the Kasserine period, at El Guettar, at Gela, at Salerno, at Anzio, at Mortain, late in the Arracourt fight, and at Elsenborn. That is well over half of all the German armor attack attempts in the entire MTO-ETO period, facing Americans.

As for the allegation that no one put much thought into protecting exploiting US armor from German tanks, it is moderately reasonable as a call to upgun the Sherman fleet to 76mm guns and give them some APCR. But on its face it is extremely misleading.

When US armor actually broke through, which happened quite a few times, it romped for all the reasons McNair forsaw and Patton proclaimed. (The McNair bashers never like to bring up that Patton agreed with him entirely on the breakthrough role of armor). They simply don't fail due to any imaginary incapacity of entire ADs to deal with the superior German types.

E.g. when 2nd AD pushes through the Cobra gap, it fights against elements of a dozen German divisions in less than 48 hours, including the fresh 116th Panzer. It is nowhere even checked, it cleans their clocks, it runs rings around them. In the Lorraine, the Panzer brigades try to check exploiting US (and French, using US equipment) ADs, by using their superior Panthers against the inferior US short 75 Shermans. The Panzer brigades get their heads handed to them.

How? Piecemeal employment and overconfidence. Tactically offensive stance negates superior frontal armor. Inferior tactical intel from driving buttoned deep into an allied defensive zone. Allied air cover.

On one occasion, most of a Panzer brigade is slaughtered in a day by a single French combat command. They get caught in a village in a valley along a river, with Jabos overhead, two French task forces at 120 degrees from each other each with 105s using HEAT and plain 75s from Shermans. If the Germans crawl above the horizon the guy with a flank shoots them. If they stay below the 105s toss in HE all day and the Jabos work them over. About the same thing happens to what is left of the 2nd Panzer at Celles during the bulge, only difference being by then some of the US tanks have 76mm and they have TDs along.

And they always have TDs along. The ADs all have their TD battalions, those are not so separated they don't work together. A platoon or a company in this TF or that. The last waves of ADs arrive with pure 76 Shermans, others are getting them as replacements etc.

The usual next charge is the death traps nonsense about how awful it was to be a US tanker. Always conveniently leaving out that the causalty risk per combat position was only a third as high for the tankers as for the armored infantry, who were themselves marginally safer than the riflemen of the IDs. (The reason, obviously, is that the leading cause of death and wounds - like 70% plus - was artillery shrapnel, and tanks give full protection from it).

If you look at a typical US tank battalion unit history, you will find the early arrival indepedent battalions supporting the IDs in the Normandy hedgerow fighting had the worst time of it, losing up to 3/4 of their initial tank strength there. The ADs lose little because they are mostly off the line until the breakout. Then the next big losses come in the Bulge, any battalion that was in it losing half to three quarters of initial strength there, too. For the rest of the war, though, they all lose maybe one tank per week on average - typically to faust or AT mine at a single roadblock, occasionally several at a time to hidden PAK they never see.

The revisionists tell us the US vehicles sucked and the doctrine was stupid, but there is no question whatever the US armor force dramatically outperforms say the Russia, which had technically superior equipment in gun and armor terms, and higher odds. US armor losses for the whole war are around what the Russians lose in 6 months. They go farther with lower achieved local odds and dramatically lower losses. Then we get to hear paeans to enlightened Russian deep battle operational thinking, and are still supposed to think McNair, Patton, Abrams, and company were all poltroons.

It is all a total crock.

 

Jason, maybe you need to turn off the the scathing ridicule for everyone else's opinion, you actually make very good points, but the whole tone tends to turn one off.
If you look around the forum a little you'll find a large number of supporters of the Sherman and Allied performance in general as well as afairly large number who don't buy into the German superiority/admiration society.
McNair's opinions of the TDs, and his preference for towed guns is not revisionist or from Dupuy, it's a fact and backed up by his orders to have half the TD battlions formed with towed guns. The US Army was not actually pleased with the TDs, Patton and others felt that a tank was the best weapon to fight another tank. To it's credit the US Army recognized the flaws and quickly set about correcting them, but it was a flawed concept in the beginning.

 

There is nothing in what you say not already well known to all participants in this debate. But it is indeed Dupuy who made all the claims about TDs being ineffective because of their poor armor. See his appendices to his book on the bulge, or the US army in WW II webpages based on them. Which was in fact cited in the first post in this thread (that is Dupuy appendix material, in that second link).

The claim is nonsense, no matter who makes it. The TDs did not fail.

If you read the actual reports of the TD commanders themselves or their unit histories, or any other detailed narratives of the occasions when German armor actually counterattacked American forces, their stellar performance is abundantly clear (and, incidentally, the gross failings of overly aggressive German armor doctrine are, as well).

Now, it is true the army was less than satisfied with separate TDs after the war, but the reason is emphatically not that alleged by Dupuy and his followers. The army saw systematic under used of TD formations. Largely due to the fact that the US spent 95% of the war attacking the Germans, not the other way around.

Just as the huge AAA establishment had been planned when everyone was afraid of the Luftwaffe (reading too many sensationalized newspaper accounts of it) and was too large in the event for a threat that had evaporated, the TD force arguably carried less than its weight in the offensive fighting, simply because it had been designed to counter "Blitzkrieg", and the Germans were not strong enough to mount one anymore. But unlike the AAA, the Germans came close (e.g. Bulge) and tried on many occasions (Alsace, Lorraine, Mortain, etc), and the TDs did exactly what they needed to do and had been designed to do, by making all such attempt abject failures.

As for your recommendations on tone, I suggest you go back and read all the others in the thread, and think of them as addressed directly to an officer responsible for the creation of the TD force or who served as an active participant in them - who in fact saved the backsides of all around them whenever the Germans attacked, as planned - and then come back and lecture me about who is being disrespectful to whom.

 

US TD doctrine was flawed notwithstanding the good work done by the TDs. The US would have been better served with tanks with better armor and more powerful guns rather than a seperate TD force. The emphasis was on speed and the TDs were defenisve in nature. Given the fact that the US was attacking for most of the war, the TDs were not the best solution fo the army.
Dupuy is not the only one (I hadn't looked at the links) to have ever claimed that the TDs weren't the most effective vehicles ever designed. I tend to agree with jeagur that they were essentially SP AT guns. I have indeed read many unit histories and US Army analysis of theTDs and the I agree with teh general consensus, the US TD doctrine was flawed. The fact that the TDs were able to destroy German armor doesn't mean that they were the best answer to the problem.

 

"The US would have been better served with tanks with better armor and more powerful guns"

Say, M-1 Abrams? What tanks with better armor and more powerful guns?

The only other tank even possible - besides Shermans I mean - during the time frame of the war would have been Pershings. If rushed to the utmost, you might have had a modest crust of a thousand or so as special heavies by late 1944 or early 1945, at the expense of roughly 3 times as many Shermans left out of the fleet. They would still be teething, especially in automotive terms - it took a year to shake them out in Korea and they remained underpowered until the M-48 design of 1952. Which might have made the field by oh about mid 1946 if the push had been urgent enough.

What difference would those have made? Hardly any. War already won.

The only sensible thing they might have done sooner and better is upgun to 76mm on the Shermans, 6 months to a year earlier than they actually did. As it was, there were 76mm Shermans in Normandy, but not many of them. (Plenty of Fireflies in the Brit sector though).

So, next question. The Sherman 75s that were clearly entirely sufficient in 1942 and helped the Brits and won the fight for North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy - what should have been done with them? Should they have been dropped in the drink? Because they were all already built before there was any reason to even want a 76mm gun on them.

Shall we apply the same reasoning to the German fleet? 2/3rds of their force for the entire war were Pz III and Pz IV chassis. What a waste! Should have dropped them in the drink to make Panthers, right?

It is nonsense, the only shred of truth to it is that it would have been useful to upgun the Sherman fleet faster. As it was they had several times as many upgunned vehicles - TDs, Sherman 76s, and Sherman 105s - by the Bulge as the Germans had uparmored types for them to fight.

Would dispensing with the TD force had led to faster upgunning of the Sherman force? No. The rate determiner was not 3 inch gun production, it was (1) already having fully produced short 75mm Shermans that had already been shipped to Britain and (2) not seeing the need for upgunning everybody until after the hard fight in Normandy. How is not having a TD force supposed to address either of those?

As for that lovely "given the fact that the US was attacking for most", um, isn't that kind of a success and a good thing? Isn't it also kind of the result of all the German attempts to change that, failing? Isn't the sort of thing one can't exactly count on in mid 1942 when the Germans are slashing through southern Russia and the headlines are all about the revolution in military affairs created by their new tactics and technical means, and the US force structure is being planned, and every factory retooling and raw materials plan is being hammered out?

And no, the focus was not on speed. There is exactly one variant TD of which that is true, the Hellcat. Hellcats dramatically outscored their German opponents - which in case everybody forgot, is exceptional in any weapon system and especially so on a side winning through odds. Jacksons are not built for speed, they are built for hitting power - that hammer 90mm. M10s were built for hitting power too, just earlier, so they clear a lower bar in that respect. And that is why they were drawn down to a third of the TD battalions by the time of the bulge, as more M36 and M18 became available. The 76s are kept effective by adding APCR.

"they were essentially SP AT guns."

Duh. So is a third of the late war German fleet, in case everybody forgot.

Is the US the only one not putting everything into full tanks? Gee, let's look.

The Germans take their largest production line (III) and switch it entirely to making SP guns with worse armor than a Sherman and a gun no better than a US 76mm. Why? Because they need AFV numbers and anything with a hammer is extremely useful. That they also outrange early T34s is a plus. When T34-85s come out, they do not stop making StuGs. Does anybody come along and argue, they never should have made Panzer IIIs to begin with (they only conquered Europe in Pz IIIs, and lost it in Panthers), or StuGs late, but should instead have fought the war exclusively in either Panthers or their shirts? Nooo.

The Russians drop all light tank production and switch the lines entirely to making SP guns with worse armor than a Sherman and a gun actually weaker than a US short 75. Why? Because they need AFV numbers an SU-76s are at least worth something, while 45mm main armament tanks are not, after midwar. They can support infantry attacks against gun and MG defenses etc. Does anybody come along as argue, it wasn't the best solution to have SU-76s and they should instead have had all SU-100s, perhaps from 1942 on? Nooo.

It remains a crock.

 

Yes that last point true, but you omit the fact that that is reflected in German armor losses... The Russians were losing 23,000 tanks a year, but they were destroying 8,000 tanks a year... That is a 3:1 ratio, which the western Allies at least failed to outperform... Statistically the Soviets performed no worse than the allies when it came to tank warfare, and they pulled it off, as you say against larger odds... Often it was the allies who had the poorest armor kill ratio (See the Desert war, some sources quote 8:1 Germany's favour) a number comprable even to the worst months of Russian '41...

Lets analyse...
The Germans lost approximately 1,100 tanks of all types in France/Germany post 1944, to all causes... This is out of a total of ~1,400 tanks deployed over a perior of time in which no more than 1,000 tanks were ever present on all fronts bar the Russian front... Lets be generous, and say that the DAK lost all 390 tanks deployed in the Desert war... Lets be really generous and say that the total amount of German armor lost in all other theatres except Russia, to all causes was 3,000...

On the Eastern Front, we have 7500 German tank losses in 1943 and 7600 in 1944, each year accounts for over double the amount inflicted by all other combatants in the entire war, and that is given the generous 3000.... The number of German armor lost to non-Russian forces throughout the entire war is more likely in the vincinity of 2,000

P.S. I didn't see any scathing ridicule, I thought your analysis was quite interesting... Particularily the point upon Shermans being built with cargo width specifictions in mind... never thought of that

 

I have often seen it said that the Sherman was continues and heavy tank development was not pressed as urgently as it could for the simple reason that you can ship more medium tanks then heavy tanks. And, if I remember correctly, Danyel once came up with the fact that the cranes on Liberty Ships would not have been able to cope with the weight of a heavy tank.

Sherman width, particularly those big flat sides, may well have derived from shipping considerations (though I have never seen this idea put forward before), but the height comes from the orginal engine mount.

 

JasonC:
Welcome to the boards.
Some interesting perspectives for sure.
As to the comments about the width of a Sherman chassis and the relation to shipping considerations...
the same was somewhat true of German panzers as well. The Tigers had special-width transport track as they were too-wide for railroad flatcars.
It seems quite logical that these considerations would be factored into the original design-specs.
Or not.

Tim

 

Smeghead - your claims about lower German tank losses in the west do not withstand scrutiny.

They sent 2200 AFVs to Normandy and fewer than 200 make it back out of France 2 months later.

There are timing issues in their TWO returns, because they do not write off as lost until Septmember in some cases, tanks that permanently left running status back in June or July. But they were KOed in Normandy all the same.

Then they send nearly 500 more AFVs west to hold at the west wall, in the form of divisions sent from Italy, the panzer brigades, etc. Nearly all of it lost rapidly in the Lorraine fighting (and some up around Aachen, Market Garden, etc).

Then they send 2000 AFVs west again for the Bulge and Alsace counterattacks, and lose at least half of it in a month and a half.

So the claim that only 1100 German AFVs are lost in the west is simply false. It is more like 3-4 times that figure.

There is no evidence the Russians have a better exchange ratio than the western Allies, and the US in particular. Total US mediums lost in Normandy are under 1000, for example. Similar in the Bulge.

There are periods when the US is losing tanks in the west at a significantly higher rate than the Germans, but it isn't exchanging off the armor sent at worse than 3 to 1 ratios. On the contrary, it happens when German tank losses are practically zero because German AFV strength is practically zero, and the US is still losing the regular dribble to PAK and infantry AT and mines, etc.