Transcripts For CSPAN3 Design History Of The M4 Sherman Tank During WWII 20171123

Game as over 100 million players worldwide. The new York Military Affairs Symposium hosted this 90minute event. [ applause ] Nicholas Moran enlisted in the reserve Defense Forces in 1997. He joined the United States army in 2000 and was commissioned as an army officer in 2002. He then spent one year in iraq as a tank platoon leader and later a oneyear tour in afghanistan. Nicholas moran is also a graduate of the u. S. Army and general staff college. Nick has been working as the San Francisco bays wargaming americas inhouse tanker and historian since 2012 and has the nickname of the chieftain. Might want to remember that. His first book on the development of Tank Destroyers is scheduled for release in the first half of 2018. Nick is known for written articles and reviews of tanks inside and out. Lots on youtube called inside the chieftains hatch, or this video cast on cspans American History tv. Ladies and gentlemen, Nicholas Moran. [ applause ] unfortunately, up as high up as it goes. Good evening okay, so, todays talk is on world war ii procurement or as the sherman is as it was. Its not a good title, but the best i could come up to when asked by rob, hey, can you give us a talk. Im going to do the obligatory shoutout first. We are a commercial enterprise. If you are interested in tank games, world of tanks is great. It is not a realistic simulation. So on that i would like to thank you for inviting me out here, because ive seen some of the other speakers that have spoken here, and my god, there are some high end personnel. I dont have any letters after my name. I do not teach at a university. I work for an unrealistic video game. So id like to thank them for taking the gamble and bringing this guy out who has no history whatsoever to give you guys a talk. However, despite the disreputable background as far as the academics are concerned, i do promise you that everything is either sourced from the archives or is as accurate as i can make it. Im hoping this thing will actually come across. Well see. If cspan cant hear me, im sure theyll make a mention. So, the background. Initially i was asked to come here and do my myths of american armor talk, and i had to think about it, its on youtube. If you want to listen to it, go to youtube, google it, youll find it. In this i took some of the common conceptions about the m4 medium tank and basically said, look, these are the common conceptions and they are wrong. But because i had already given a talk, look, lets modify it a little bit and go instead of how good was the tank, well go with why is the tank the way it is. So thats the theory behind this. Now, i dont know your knowledge level. Again, some of the speakers ive heard you hear on the podcasts are very high end. But every now and then its good to just go back to some of the lower levels and make sure that the fundamentals are still good. So, audience participation question number one. The rifle is the m1. What was better out in service . As a rifle. Pretty much nothing. You can make an argument maybe for the 44, but that wasnt as common. The m1 was probably the best piece of equipment of its type in the world and the u. S. Produced it. What was a better fighter than the mustang, better destroyer, better carrier than the essex, better artillery fuse than the vt . We had the best. All right. Landbased fighter. Or the noncombat stuff. No other country had the handy talky. The cckw, deuce and a half, higgins boat, some say it won the war, some people say the jeep won the war. The victory ship, putting these things out in two weeks flat. The record, i think, was six days in california. So you can go on and on. With a couple of exceptions, the other countries had their areas of expertise. We didnt touch the british with topography and the radar and so on, british had us. Germans had a few advantages and so on and so forth, but as a general rule, anything that the u. S. Went to war with was the best in the world that was out there. What happened . How did we go from the best at pretty much everything to this . Im going to argue that actually we did not get it wrong. And that there were very specific decisions made in the u. S. As to why the m4 ended up the way that it was and over the course of the next hour or so, ive been asked to keep it to less than 60 minutes. I dont think ill make it, but ill try. Hopefully, you guys will get an understanding of the levels of thought that went into the design process. So, audience participation question number two. Hands up for the chicken. Who votes the chicken . Who votes the egg . All right. In 2006 the university of norwich concluded it was the egg. However, that finding was later reversed by the universities of sheffield and warwick in 2010 in a paper entitled structural control of crystal nuclei by an egg shell protein. Current scientific thought, therefore, suggests the answer to the chicken or egg question is the chicken. I bet you learned something this evening, my mission is complete. Now, why do i ask . Any guesses . Sir . Looking forward in history versus looking back in hindsight . Okay, so how would that apply to this talk . Most people are going by the information of the sherman by looking back and hearing what people are saying about it as opposed to looking at it as the moment its being designed. That is an excellent point. That is not the answer to this question, but it is actually a very good point, and i was mentioning earlier how i was talking about british Army Operations in northern ireland, which to an extent i lived through, but then did an assessment last year for the army and its very interesting the different perspective depending if youre involved in the matter or dealing with it after the fact objectively. Sir . Its a process. Which comes first, both developed at the same time, feedback loop to separate the one from the other. Youre getting there. Chicken and the egg at different times were the same thing. Its a continuous process with creation of the egg. But its actually the same thing. That is deep. That is very deep. Here are your chicken and here are your egg. On the left side is a symbol for Army Ground Forces. These are the guys that develop doctrine they equip the force. On the right hand side is the bomb of Ordinance Branch. Ordinance branch are the guys who developed the equipment. So the question is, should doctrine match the technology that is being created or should technology be geared towards meeting whatever the doctrine requires . So, heres your next question, audience participation question number three. Who thinks that doctrine drives the technological design . Who thinks that the Technology Drives what the doctrine does . Okay, few more people. Who doesnt care . Okay, so this is barnes. Ive referred to him as the mad scientist. He believes that he knows better than everybody else what the army needs. And to quote him for those of you in back that cant read. It is not well understood that tactics are usually written around a weapon. First, Field Operations ordinarily do not generate ideas leading to new materiel for the exploitation capabilities of the weapon. For these reasons its necessary for Ordnance Department to get the help of those services in determining where the weapon best fits into battleField Operations. So, if you talk to ordnance, Technology Drives doctrine, and its kind of hard to argue the fact, well, how can you know how to use a machine gun if you didnt know such a capability exists . However, this is what Army Ground Forces thought. The bottom line here is that Army Ground Forces will draw up the specifications and they would then be submitted to ordnance and ordnance would then Design Equipment to match what Army Ground Forces wanted the equipment to do. And the quote is from the written history of Army Ground Forces. I have a picture up there, granted in 1940 Ground Forces didnt exist as an entity, but well leave that aside. If youre curious, just to be clear, users saying they are in charge, developers saying they are in charge. Both have actually reasonable arguments. If youre curious, this is the process today. And i have had to learn this as part of my majors course and i am very glad im not involved in procurement. This is the armys side of it. If you can understand this, youre a better man than i, but the bottom line is, in todays military it is driven by the operational needs, not by the technology. So you start off with an operational needs statement, such as for example the strikers in new york. This came from the fields. Second brigade said we need vehicles with a cannon capable and then the engineers went and built them a vehicle with a cannon and got fielded. Such statements did exist in world war ii. For example, one i saw said we want a device we can fit on to a tank so when its driving along at least 15 miles an hour it will detect a minefield before it hits a mine. We havent really gotten to that today, but these requests were being fielded from the field to ordnance and a lot of times ordnance did develop materiel. So ordnance thought they were in the lead, agf thought they were. So if you go back to the start before the u. S. Joined world war ii you could see what Army Ground Forces said the equipment of the army was, and it was terrible. Basically, the u. S. Was starting from scratch. So reduced to its simplest terms, the problem is to determine the kinds of equipment which will be needed most and could be manufactured in the required hundreds, thousands, or millions in time to be of use. And, again, thats a quote from agf. Note in time to be of use. You have a water fight, cant be waiting around for the Perfect Piece of equipment. In 1940 in a lecture the then thief of ordnance, Major General c. M. Wessen estimated that the development of a major item of materiel required a minimum of three years from requirement to fielding. Now, in war they cut that down to usually one and a half to two years. Sometimes even as little as one. And this timeline generally matches with the development of any piece of equipment developed by anybody else. The british, the germans, the russians, about one and a half to two years. Yes, audience participation question number four. In one word each, what are the two biggest problems facing the United States as it prepared to fight world war ii . Logistics . Production . Production, logistics. Shipping . Shipping. Time . You guys are very close, bouncing around the right idea. Isolation . Bingo. The two problems are called atlantic and pacific. There we go. Anything which is being built to fight is going to be fighting many thousands of miles away and a couple of oceans from your nearest factory. It has to get there, and when it is there, it must also be sta sustained. This means as few parks break as possible, ship the spares, and all the consumables like pol, petroleum, oil, lubricants across the ocean. Not unlike the germans, who could if they had to do a complete refurb, they could ship it back to the factory, or so could the soviets if they had a need to. We could not. Anything we sent over was there to fight until it was either discarded or destroyed. So major repair in the u. S. Is not an option. And you have to think about the entire chain from the factory floor to the battlefield. Heres an example of one of the problems. In 1948 there were 12,122 flat cars in the United States which could carry a persian tank. In may of 48 they had an exercise and wanted a battalion, it took 40 days to collect all the flat cars. That was in 48. If you go back to 42, how many flat cars were capable of carrying a 45 to 50ton tank and Everything Else that had to be carried to get to the ship . And then when you got to the shipyard, you have liberty ships that weve been building once every ten days. What is the lifting capacity of a liberty ship crane . If you make these 60ton monsters, can you actually get it to the fight . Arguably, you probably could, but in sufficient numbers to make to have an effect . So, again, in the simplest words, what use is having the best equipment in the world if you cant get it to the fight, or if it breaks down . No use. Just wasted all that shipping and effort to get a tank overseas just to see it break down and sitting in a motor pool or wherever. So thats some of the basic problems. So lets get down to some of the nuts and bolts. So, again im going to quote Army Ground Forces. Agf established two general criteria for the development and approval of new equipment. First is genuine battle need. It was reluctant to initiate development of any equipment not considered essential to increase combat efficiency. It tended to oppose development of new equipment, which though perhaps desired by the men in the field, was not absolutely essential and might prove to simply be a luxury or excess baggage. This was a clear cut policy of general mcnair, one which he often emphasized. It was eventually adopted formally as War Department policy. So who determines battle need . Who determines what is an essential piece of equipment versus what is luxury equipment . So one school of thought said the theater commanders. The other school of thought said that the decision should be centralized in the u. S. Who thinks they went with theater commanders . Who thinks they went with centralized decision in the u. S. . You are all wrong. [ inaudible ] i see where youre going, but we will have so many personnel, we will have so many tanks, the actual nature of the tanks and improvements to them was not centralized. I shall explain. So the reasoning from the idea behind the guys who wanted to centralize the decision was that theater commanders might be too strongly influenced by the limiting local conditions of their own tactical situation to exercise proper overall judgment. Which seems a little bit distrusting in the reasoning of four star generals. They also believed recommendations were colored by the combat soldiers natural attachment to Reliable Equipment with which they were familiar. So basically they were worried that the troops in the field were very happy with what they had and would not request additional equipment. There is some evidence to support this. For example, witness 6 Armor Division in october of 44 who reported they received no 76 millimeter tanks and had no particular desire for any. The 75 had gotten all the way across france. Why rock the boat . What they had was working. Now, the War Department and to a large extent mcnair went with the former view. They did not produce and ship materiel overseas unless the end users were asking for it. So even if the guys in d. C. Thought this was a great tank and it should be shipped overseas, they asked the commanders in europe and north africa. If they said no, the equipment did not go overseas. So the second criteria, reliable performance in combat. This standard, sometimes referred to as battle worthiness, meant that the equipment having been proved capable of performing the function for which it was designed was sufficiently rugged and reliable to withstand the rigors of combat Service Without imposing excessive problems of maintenance. Excessive problems. The thing will break down. It will happen. And now there is perhaps a sub category, which i would call immediate capability. Army Ground Forces was willing to accept sub capable equipment if it was the case of that or nothing, but it still had to be reliable. Cases in point there will be your Tank Destroyers m3 or m10. So the situation of tanks. So what we have here is an m2 medium the u. S. Started the war with. As you can see, needs a fair bit of track tension here. The u. S. Had at the time what harry yadi has called the cult of the machine gun. The infantry were owning the tanks. The calvary had combat cars. Basically tanks, but anyway the infantry were quite interested in the tanks ability to deal with enemy infantry. As you can see how did i do that . Machine guns everywhere, defl k deflecked deflectors on the back here that would shoot down into the trench you were walking past. The 37, that was an antitank gun and it was trained for antitank capability. Because somebody figured out if we have a tank, they might bring a tank and we have to be able to kill their tank. But the main weapon was the machine gun. And this tank was limited to 15 tons by policy because that was the average weight of an American Railroad bridge at the time. Or road bridge, im sorry. So, in 1939 the u. S. Conducted a series of tests to determine if machine guns or a 75millimeter round would be more effective at killing infantry. Survey says, 75 millimeter. Good to know. But what theyve done is added a 75 into the hull of an m2 medium. And it should start perhaps looking a bit familiar. Then this happened. This photograph taken, the germans very quickly overrun france. And a couple of lessons are taken by the u. S. From this. Firstly, a 37 millimeter is not going to cut it in the antitank role. Forget it, you need something bigger. Fortunately, they had already tested the 75 millimeter. Fantastic. The second problem, and this is where the lecture is going to take into a fork into two tracks and they created Tank Destroyers as a result. Why the sherman was the way it was, but also briefly about the tds. So, solution, build m3s. So take the m2, take the 75, add a new turn on it, couple more gadgets and gizmos and youve made an m3. Nothing in this tank is particularly new. Its always improving on something that they know already works and this is the sort of thinking which will dominate Army Development and procurement for the next while. They built detroit arsenal. If you dont know who he was, look him up, probably the most important man in the war. He talks with chrysler and together they build the detroit tank plant. Initially the army only wanted 350 m3s. The problem was that the russians and the british were in such demand for these tanks that they couldnt stop producing m3s to switch over to the m4, so they built about 6,500 of them. Something similar to happen with the six pounder. The british six pounder was developed before world war ii, but after the fall of france they realized we could either not produce antitank guns or just build a two pounder. The british went with what they had ready to go. Soviets the same. T34 was supposed to be replaced with new suspension and so on and so forth. Didnt happen. Germans invaded, well go with what we have. So there were gradual improvements on the m3, stabilizers, heavy duty bogeys, the multitank engine bank, some came with cast hulls, so the army is getting experience with a cast hull tank. Of interest in terms of design, barnes was not in favor of keeping the 37 millimeter. He was happy enough to go with a turretless tank, but infanrtry demanded the 37 be retained. So thats why we still have a 37. So, the i said this was going to break in two different directions. Then you had the question of how do you stop these, because what was happening, of course, was not working. The idea of having antitank guns with the front line with the infantry was not working, and the solution was you had to cut these off for loss. Theres no way you could put enough antitank guns to stop a concentrated army attack. The solution was to have mobile rapid antitank guns to meet the enemy attack at the point of penetration and the idea was these will beat up all the tanks. Hence you have the Tank Destroyer branch. Purely defensive organization. If you look at the manuals, look at the doctrine, they were never to be used in the attack. And not everything was a Tank Destroyer if it was a toed antitank gun. That could be an antitank gun. I have a video on it, as well. If you google on my youtube channel, which explains the difference between an antitank gun and the Tank Destroyer. So this is the other problem that the u. S. Had. This was the thinking of antitank technology at the beginning of the war. Can you throw rifles and b. A. R. S into a tank track to stop it . This is my favorite photograph ive ever found in the archives. It is a declassified photograph of an antitank rock. Which failed to stop the tank, and you can see where the tank sheered the rock. You also add molotov cocktails, caliber 50s, the u. S. s antitank systems were a little lacking. Fortunately they eventually selected the 37 millimeter, kind of taken from the germans, not exactly, but they bought a couple to look at before they built the 37 and started to place these in construction in 1939, so a little bit late to the party. So now you have the question do you want these fast mobile antiTank Destroyers, do you want them to be towed guns or really, really fast . Yes, i know, thats a cromwell, but go with it. And the thinking was that these towed antitank guns would be very hard to spot, the master of the tank. Mcnair used the comparison of Coastal Artillery versus battleships, which apparently the u. S. Navy didnt believe in that either, because their battleships engaged Coastal Artillery, and the fact these are much, much cheaper than tanks. Im going to come back to this a couple of times, but money was a really big problem for the army procurement. Buy war bonds, do this, we need money to fight. So if you could make a cheap destroyer, thats better for the army than an expensive Tank Destroyer. In the end, bruce won out. All the Tank Destroyers will be mobile and self profell propelled. This is back in 1940 or 41. So what i got here is a couple of examples of designs just for the light platoon of the Tank Destroyers. And so we have a t2, got a t14, sorry, thats a t2e1, all designed to get a 37 millimeter into the fight. These are also good motor carriages. T33, t22, t21, and an m3. Many different designs were tried out to fit the requirement, the doctrine requirement. So of interest, this Tank Destroyer was not approved for production, but armor force liked it and it got turned into the ma greyhound. The final winner was the m4. The t31, cargo threequarter ton, mike on the back, and was selected for production not because it was the best, but because it was the first in the other requirements. Actually turned out others were better vehicles, but again you had to have something in the field to fight the enemy. This was it. So there were a couple of other issues, but it was developed as the m4, then somebody realized hang on a second, weve just invented the m4 tank, so they renamed it the m6. They were sent to africa, were singularly useless, and immediately withdrawn from service. But the idea behind this is to show the swarms of masses of development that was going on to meet one single tactical requirement, which all costs money. Back in tank land, the m6. Whoever got the memo of renaming the m4 didnt get the same memo. 60 tons, three and a half inches of armor and threeinch gun, which at the time was considered to be the biggest gun anyone in the world was trying to put into a tank. Turned out not to be, but that was the thinking. Also a coaxial 37 millimeter and 1,000 horsepower radial engine. Transmissions, hydraulic, electric, and so on, but did use a horizontal volley Suspension System. You cant see it. I refer you back to the earlier issues about flat cars and ship cranes. Besides, the problem was it didnt work anyway. So the head of armored force looks at this and says due to the prms weight and tactical use, no requirement in the armored force for a heavy tank. The increase in the heavy tank does not compensate for the heavier armor and also they were preferring to ship the tanks. And that was assuming they could actually fix the problems in this, which they never did. So the m4 it is. And note they still have all the machine guns at the front. Havent quite gotten rid of that idea. Youll see holes for the fixed firing machine guns, which are completely useless, but the americans kept them anyway for a while. The thing about this, two things to note, i guess, its all about reliability and sustainability. So everything in here has been done before. The engine was used and known to work for the m3. The Suspension System known to work for the m3. 75 millimeter, known to work for the m3. There were improvements, gearbox, stabilizer system in the gun and so on and so forth. The other thing is, how easy is it to maintain it . So these are bolts. You simply unbolt the front of this tank and the front comes off with your final drives and your transmission. Very easy to maintain. Suspension if you have a problem with your Suspension System, there are 16 bolts. Undo the 16 bolts, swap it out, youre done. Try doing that in the t34 or panther or whatever, nowhere near as easy. Now the second thing is that everything fits from the factory and the british tank mission guide, mcleodross, made mention in his book to never, ever seeing a vice in an inch near his workbench in the u. S. Factories, because the only reason you would have a vice is to hold a piece of equipment while you were modifying that piece of equipment to make it fit. If you do your job right in the first place, you wouldnt need a vice to make your part fit. Everything that left an American Factory was to specification and was completely interchangeable. Now, if you compare it with, lets say germany, go on youtube, find a video by john parshell, navy guy, but somehow got roped into doing this tank talk about the construction techniques in a german factory in world war ii and everything was made to suit the tank. If they try the piece, didnt fit, lop a piece on or weld a piece on. The tank is also reasonably well armored, so the front slope, people say the t34 had front slope tanks, you know, american tanks, but thats a sloped front. And if you take into account the thickness of the armor and a slope, almost as thickly armored as a tiger is. 12, what, one centimeter in the difference. This is actually pretty tough tank and 75 will kill pretty much anything on the battlefield. Its also very easy to drive. Its ergonomically sound. Ill come back to that. However, like anything, it can be improved. And the tanks that left the factory in 45 are completely different from the tanks that were in the factory in 42. And so they sent it out to the field but reports start coming back and they are glowing from the british. The tanks m4 have made a great impression on everyone and the troops are thrilled with them. The long gun is magnificent both in accuracy and penetration and the sights are a considerable improvement on the ground. Users are giving unstinted i cant do the english accent, sorry, you have to imagine. Users are giving unstinted praise to all american equipment, particularly m4. Some of the irish guards maybe, which embodies all desired improvements except ideal gunsights. Would stress again its vital we receive earliest large numbers m4, regardless of the availability of tools and spares, for which we are prepared to wait. So this tank was working, doing well, but room for improvement. The the primary site is up here. The linkages between the gun and the site were a little bit wobbly in the repair kits, so the solution was you add a new telescope. You now have a more accurate site. Something that i dont know what they were thinking, there was no hatch for the loader. And it took them nine months to figure out how to drill a hole in the roof. If there is one thing that you look at at the sherman of 1942 and it stop its from being hands down the best tank in the world, it is the lack of a hatch here. They also had a little bit much armor. Minor improvements. You see people complaining about german tanks suffered a multitude of changes. The americans did the same thing. We change or tanks rapidly. We just made them standardized when we did it. So moving on to guns. The 57millimeter was not invented here. Youll hear that argument. The americans are very proud people. They dont believe that anybody else can make anything better than the americans can. This is patently not true. What powered the p51 mustang . The rolls royce. They did a better engine than we the sixpounder was the same. The American Army looked and it its better than we have, lets make it. So the idea was well, can we put this into a tank, into this t49. The idea was you have a high velocity which made it more accurate. Made it slightly harder hitting. Higher rate of fire. It was lighter. All these wonderful good things about the 57. But Tank Destroyer branch said hang on a second, at over 500 meters the little light ram will lose its penetration, the 75 is still better. Armor force say hang on a second f were shooting a round, were degrading our capability to kill infr infantry. So the 57millimeter fell out of service not because it was far or anything, but just because it didnt work. So the replacement of the 3inch gun mounted which was another interim vehicle. The branch did not want Something Like this. He wanted something that was about as hard hitting as a tank but much, much faster. Much more mobile. But you have a war to fight. The t49 69 70 was still in development. M10 it was. As an interim vehicle it had to be cheap. Theres no motor in this vehicle. Theyre trying to keep the costs down. Again, its using the same sprocket wheels, the same engine in the back as the m4. Theyre trying to take proven equipment and make their vehicles with that. The problem with the 3inch is because you couldnt put it into a sherman. They tried. The initial requirement was put a 3inch gun into the sherman. It was too heavy. Didnt work. They had to wait until Something Else came along. That Something Else is a 76 millimeter. So what happens was you had new alloys were created. You can either make the same type of gun for half the weight or you can make a bigger gun for the same weight. Compared to the 3m, the 76 was half the weight. Thats why you got that little divergence there. So the general, head of Armored Forces was identified by way of telephone call. Its fascinating in the arkie archives, you find actual transcripts in the archives. It had to be important enough to have somebody listening in and typing. He had a couple questions. The 50 question is how long is it . Im going to quote here. The only thing that worries me a l little bit is this isnt going to throw aus off in our present set up. Im anxious to get m4 tanks with anything so we can go to fighting fighting. Weve got a war to fight, we cant wait, wait, wait for this new dwem evelopment to come out. They wait, wait, wait, we have this new panther and we got our asses kicked and the panther broke down anyway. Once he had that question out of the way he had other questions like how many rounds can it carry, how heavy are the rounds . Ammunition capacity is a repeating them in the archives. It was a stated policy that if you needed more punch to punch through armor, the first choice of action is to increase velocity and only if that wasnt good enough would he move to a larger caliber. This meant with a larger caliber, you can carry fewer rounds, you had a slower rate of fire, the round was less accurate because it was slower. It was a huge thing. Youll see it time and time again. However, by the middle of 1942, summer of 42, Ordinance Branched the designers managed to stuff the 76 into an m4. It passed all the tests. The gun technically fit. It didnt break the tank when it fired. It generally hit what it was aiming at. Fantastic. It was a rush. They wanted 1,000 of these to partake in the invasion of north africa. By 1942, the biggest nastiest german had was a 4. So this is the case of the army wanted bigger equipment just in case the opposition came up with something bigger. Unfortunately, armored force finally got ahold of one and they tested it themselves as the end user. They concluded that i dont care what you engineers say. Yeah, it may technically work, but you dont have to fire this damn thing. It is incredibly cramped inside. The crews could not make the most of their tank. The sites were a little bit unsuitable. Fundamentally it was too cramped to be effective. Armored force rejected it. Said try again. Give us a proper tank. Off the Ordinance Branch it went. Audience participation question number five. Yes, you are not off the hook yet. What do these vehicles have in common . [ inaudible question ] you are correct. Who said that . You saw my other talk, didnt you . Yes. You did. [ laughter ] but he is quite correct. These were all tanks that were a approved for production and they also built a factory just to build these things. Then once it was approved and the contracts were signed, they realize we dont need these or we dont want them or whatever. This was a heap of rubbish. That didnt work. This ill come back to and that they couldnt figure out a point for it. So they built in that entire factory that they built in iowa or illinois, they built six prototypes and seven production models. Isnt that great stewardship of the taxpayers money . So they invented what was called the special Armored Vehicles board also known as the palmers board. This met in late 1942. Its purpose was to look at all the various different designs that were being created to meet individual requirements like an armored car, a Tank Destroyer, a light tank. And they started off with, like, 19 vehicles and they cut it down to maybe four. They were ruthless about it. Yeah, its got promise, but we cut it out. Well focus on this instead because we think thats an even better promise. And again, this comes down to a case of were spending man hours, were spending dollars, were spending steel which we cannot afford to squander because were trying to win a war. In the meantime we are still helping out the british. This is assault tank t14 it. Uses some of the developments of the m6. It likes kind of vaguely shermanesque. The british didnt really want this. They said were going to build whatever the other one was. You americans, can you build one that will fit the job . And so the americans built one. Actually, they built two. Lets build one for ourselves. Well try it out since we built it anyway. And does it work . The answer is no. There were fumes in the fighting compartment, cramped conditions. This machine gun had a tendency of breaking the gunners arm. There was suspension problems. This things was not fightable, not sustainable. Thats why the t14 never showed up to the fight. But they are still helping out the brits. This is a british crusader in ft. Knox. And the u. S. Did test these not because they wanted to see should they build it locally. But to see what design features were actually good idea that they hadnt thought of themselves. Such as lets say the turret motoring the matilda. A british guy called Alex Richardson was present for the demonstration of the german counterparts and they didnt do well. To quote his letter, these tanks have made us a laughing stock out here. The cromwell has had a variety of troubles and it was mad only sending out one of each. The americans are indifferent to what happens to them and the rolls royce man is most unhappy and he wants them withdrawn as soon as possible. Were undoubtedly the worlds word salesmen. I apologize for my lack of english accent. Down underneath here, and i have this online, and that was a month long 2,000 mile test that they drove these tanks all over england on roads and then a lot of mileage off road. To get an idea of what this is in england, to get from the very bottom of england to the top of scotland according to google maps is 700 miles. They went from the bottom of the waurnt country to the top and then back to the bottom. 2,000 miles. And note how the amount of specialist man hours is half to maintain the sherman versus maintaining the british tanks. Now, the ordinance tested things i wont say to destruction, but they tested them a lot. I ran into a report of Tank Destroyer archives that over a 2,000 mile course the average speed of an m10, a1 is one mile an hour less of that of an m10. This is doubtless vital important information, but they tested it. Did any german vehicle do a 2,000 mile endurance test before they put it in production . Given what happened to the panther, i am going to guess no. I found a report for the m18 stating that a lock washer, i dont know what lock washer is, but a lock washer on the transmission seemed likely to fail by 4,000 miles. So it needs to be redesigned before the m18 is put into production. Its one of those thread washers that you screw your nut on to and it just hold its in place. It cant be that hard to repair it. But because it might fall before 4,000 miles, redesign the tank. So i had a couple of other quotes, but for the interest of time im going to hold back a little bit. A couple of excerpts anyway. It is evident that the commander of a unit equipped with shermans can be confident of taking 99 of its vehicling into battle. At any rate enjoying the first 2,000 miles of her life. If equipped with centaurs it was also observed that the crews and support personnel would be better rested. So if a cromwell is driven from a to b and breaks down you have to take the time to stop and repair it, either the crew, themselves or the maintenance guys which means they dont get their rest. When they get to their motor pool, all the cooks are still a wakes. In terms of the amount of man hours, not only raw man hours, but the effectiveness of those man hours, the american tanks reliability was key because you made huge gains in efficiency, both combat and personnel. So american tanks were tested in the deserts of california and the snows of alaska. And the takeaway here is they worked. I cant overemphasize this enough. A battalion was a battalion when it got where it was going. And if you were a unit, lets say you were an Infantry Division and you were relying on support of your attached tank ba t talion, you knew that every company in your infantry unit would have tank support. It wasnt a case of okay, a third of the tanks broke down so charlie company, youre out of luck, youre going to charge that german position without a tank. Again, it went to a ridiculous level. You go to the ordinance archives and its box after box of the effects of mold on rubber in the pacific theater. And every individual component, the fuel pump will be subjected to a battery of tests. Even once the tank was approved for production, there will still be qa. Youll come across a report that says test report of chrysler tank m 4 serial number, which you just randomly took off the line and tried it out to make sure the Quality Control was exactly what it was supposed to be. So sustainment. Again, youve got the whole thing. Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics. Another vehicle that won the award. On the road, its called a 2. 5 ton truck. On the road its rated to carry five tons. The red ball was completely on the road. Thats 255 gallon cans or 1250 gallons of fuel. A one ton trailer will carry an additional 40 cans. Brings us to 1,450 gallons. Of course, the americans tested all this. This chart, which i guess youll have to get online for a bigger image, is fuel and Oil Requirements per 1,000 miles for a company of 17 medium tanks. And each barrel represents 100 gallons. So in other words, one will move a tank 100 miles, one single truck of fuel. And red ball had 5,500 trucks rolling at once. So that gives you an idea as to, a, just how much fuel tanks suck. And b, how efficient the m4 was at all that fuel which had to be shipped. Again, youve got to get it from wherever it is to the refineries, from there to england, then along the pipeline to ocean, and then into five gallon cans and then shipped over. Every piece of this requires energy and power. It requires personnel to man th them. It requires trucks. It requires mechanics to maintain the trucks. It requires ships to maintain the trucks. To carry the food for the mechanics who drove the parts to get from you see where im going. Maintenance. The German Military suffered a capacity problem. With the tiger 1 into production, for every ten they built one additional transmission, one additional engine. And so the germans had this massive parts shortage and you put armed guards on to supply trains because the units will be stealing the parts. That stage raids to get their spa spare parts. Mechanics will be dispatched to rail stations and if theyre waiting for their parts to arrive, theyre not repairing tanks. Americans did not have this problem. And again, look at the video where the center for military history, you have a pamphlet on german tank maintenance. By way of comparison, id mentioned this is how you take off the transmission on an m4. Undo the bolts. Pull off the front. Leave it to the side. Get another one. Put it on. A couple hours. A panther, you have to take off the roof of the hull. You then have to pull out the drivers position, the radio mans position, the radios which are kind of in the middle halfway down. You look at my video youll see. Just go to look at my panther video. Part three im going to drive and you see all the bits around the driver that have to come out before the transmission can be pulled out back up through the roof. Your three mechanics here are going to repair one german tank in the amount of time it takes three mechanics to repair two or three americans. Now, granted, this heavy welded armored front is really tough to get through. But in the large scheme of things, is it worth the additional hassle of having your tanks down . Because again, your tank may be the best in the world, but if it is down for maintenance, it is not contributing to the battle. If it is not contributing to the battle, why have a tank . Also, these things had to be general le replaced after about 1,200 miles. Again, we have the sherman at least 2,000. Whether or not the tank survives to get to 1,200 miles is another matter entirely. The t23. This is where it really sours the army. Generally in 1943. You take a tank with a 76millimeter gun. You should have a better tank. The m4 is now in serious production. Theyd met the immediate requirements, can we improve. So the t20 had issues with the transmission, the t22 had problems. The t23 had an electric drive which was wonderful. It would spin on a dime, go backwards, go forward. You could control the entire tank. In theory, this tank could drive and fight with one man. In theory. You wouldnt want to. The low profile, whats not to like . After a demonstration in april of 1943 to generals, it was agreed to build 250 of these as an initial production run. And ordinance promised that all the issues would be fixed. In hindsight about 50 of them would be up gunned, but well come back to that. When they showed up, armored board starts testing them and a number of problems were found. Some of em thrp small things. Like the tallest gunner, when he was sitting in the seat could not see the site because the sight was too high. Some were easy fixes. Some were not. The m4e6, now, again, go what can best sustain the war in 44. You have a choice. You can refine and improve the m4 which you new would be available in numbers or you could take a gamble. Go with what could potentially be a better tank, the t23 which still had some bugs to work out but it may not work or may not be available in the required numbers. You are gambling with the entire future of the world here. You can perhaps understand them being a little bit cautious. And as part of the overall progression, we now have 76millimeter gun. You have a steeper front slope which simplifies production and also makes bigger hatchets thats easier to get out of. Wet stowage which changed the burn rate of the tank. You cant see it, but you had a better vision up here to see the opposition. This was all done very, very quickly. The idea of putting the t23 turret was march of 1943. The finished e6 was in aberdeen. By september of 43 it was decided that all factories would stop producing 75millimeter tanks for the army and bij by january of 44, with a few exceptions, but the problem was that all these tanks are now being produced. In january of 44 they have to get them overseas competing with Everything Else like trucks and fuels and ammo and Everything Else, medical equipment, and they also seem to be a nice to have. Remember that luxury versus essential . The 75millimeter army was killing everything it came across including tigers and panthers in italy. There was a fine detail in there which i may not have time to get to, but generally speaking, the 75 was working. So the americans who were about to invade france go oh, we have a couple hundred of these 76millimeter gun tanks which means a new line of supply is necessary for the ammunition. We have to retrain our tankers who are already good shots with the 75. We have to retrain our loaders. Why bother with the hassle . Its not worth it. So they left the 76 in the uk. In hindsight this is what is known as a oops. It made sense at the time going back to your point. Fifth army, the guys who were winning saying give us all the 76ers we can get. Were killing this but its costing far too much hassle to do it. There was another minor issue. Since there was no particular indication that the 76 could do the job if the 75 couldnt, they didnt spend any building ammunition. They had other things to do with the tung sten. It was used for making machine tools. In hindsight a bad decision. They should have developed an ammo just in case. Benefit of hindsight. If there is any one single flaw, you should have developed h flap, you should have issued it. The other thing is the e8. Audience participation question number six. What is the advantage to having narrow tracks and why did the u. S. Build them . Sir . [inaudible] correct. The difference in weight between a 16 inch track and a 21 inch track is a full tongue. Thats an additional tongue that the drive wheel at the front has to haul around to get the tank to go to the same speed. Plus your hinges are longer and each hinge has an amount of resistance in it as well. It actually made a lot of sense to go with the narrower track. In hindsight again, perhaps not the best decision. So the solution was the easy 8 suspension, the horizontal volume which had been tested earlier. This isnt a new idea. They actually tried a whole series of different suspension types. You look at all sorts of weird pictures. They went with this thing they tried before. Wider tracks. And the result, if you put everything together, is the m4 a3 which is commonly and incorrectly known as the easy 8. The sherman went on to war and the shermans would see service. I think paraguay just brought them back into service, two of them. It was arguably the definitive and best sherman. You do have the question of protection. This is not atypical. A lot of crew men would add armor on to their vehicle. Another thing to consider is any addition of armor only adds weight but creates a false sense of security without actually providing material additional protection. Was such that existing armor almost needed doubling. Additional protection afforded longer ranges by slight increases of armor would hardly justify the additional weight and subsequently increase load on engines and suspension. Youre a tank crew man. You figure out these german 88s and 75s are punching right through my sherman, i must do something to make my sherman tougher and you put sandbags or concrete or whatever it is. Is a sandbag going to stop an 88 . Is your transmission going to be happy with the extra two tons of sandbag that you just put on your tank . And both the jugermans and the American Engineers looked into it and said the way it comes from the factory is the way its supposed to be. They go back to the t23. Then the ninemillimeter gun. The tank battalion were given t23. 300 hours of maintenance for every they calm p wime up wi list of 26 must fixes. If they fixed it, armored force would say fantastic, well fix it. The armor said we cant fix all 26, but we can fix most of them and then you can send those overseas. Army ground force was not enthusiastic. We dont like it but for you well let the commanders in europe know we have 150 of these lightweight tanks and they can use it if they want. By the way, were sending them our copies of the test reports. Nobody took them up on it. Correction. Initially the responses were good. But then they read the test reports and that was the end of it. Im going to slip over that slide. Bottom line, nobody really wanted the 19millimeter tank initially. Again, size of ammunition or whatever. But ordinance and general barnes was so determined that he knew that this was a tarnk that woul win the war that he asked the british actually, he designed the tank to take the 17 pounder. The theory was if the british liked the tank, the british would order and once the tarng w tankz w was now in production his design would be produced. The british ended up going with the sen tur ran tank which is arguably a better decision. Army Ground Forces tested, it doesnt work, it keeps breaking down. Ive gone into that in detail elsewhere. Td lessons. Toad td are better man mobile tds. That was the lesson that they learned. Hough, in practice it didnt work because in north africa they werent tacking the allies werent doing much of the attacking. The guns were much smaller, so on and so forth. Ill skip over the t53. Ill mention that the 19millimeter jackson was not wanted because, again, it wasnt the fast mobile Tank Destroyer and nobody had a need for the 19millimeter gun. However, there was a change of heart and by july of 44 they decided to classify it. This is what they really wanted. The crews didnt want this. Barnes wanted this. He want today for his doctrine. The crews look at this and say my god, its got no armor, i could get a pick axe and punch through this. In the end, it got a reputation for killing tanks. With the same 76millimeter gun that the sherman had. So the sherman was quite capable of killing tanks as much as the m18. So what was the m4 good at . Well, first it was there as already mentioned. It was reliable. It worked. You knew it would do what it was supposed to. Heres an example of design. The gunner in all three of these tank system watching you. Panther, panther four, sherman. Which one is better at ambushing the enemy . And its a simple design. I dont know why the germans did not put a roof mounted site on their tanks. The first tank to fire in an engagement wins four times out of five. Hes going to get the first shot off. Then theres ergonomics. This is the inside of a pan ter. To get that round out im crouched down like this. Im kind of manipulating the round. On the m4 im sitting down on my chair very comfortably, down, up, in, down, up, in. Highly comfortable. Survivor rates. Sherman is a death trap. I go over this again in greater detail inform the entire war, armored force loss that many. In all of north africa, sicily and italy, 80 tankers were killed. Which if you think about the reputation is amazingly low. Part of the reason for it is how easy it is to get out of one of these. In my video i have what i called oh my god, the tank is on fire test. How quickly can i get out of the tank if it is on fire. And with the m4, the hatch is right above you. Pop it up. Out you get. And you look at the panther doing this or the tiger and hes getting out like this. So a very, very survivable tank. Very, very versatile tank. You could do anything with this thing. Rejected developments, 17 pounder. I can go on about this forever. But the bottom line is the americans didnt think it was a good idea. In hindsight im not sure it was a good idea. They would have been better off actually building the 76. But they didnt. Infrared, oh, the germans had infrared. Well, the americans had infrared. They realized it didnt work. When the germans tried it, they realize today didnt work. The difference was the germans realized it didnt work after they spent the time and effort putting it in the field. This is a target range timer which basically applies lead to horizontal lead to your gun. This is an odograph. If youre in the middle of north africa, how do you know where you are . This is basically a moving map. You set the start position and the tank figures out where its going. Not battle worthy. Great idea. The americans were winning to develop an experiment and try. If you could not rely on your equipment, the troops will understand have confident in the equipment and theyll stop using it. And whats the point . Troops who were confident in their equipment will fight better. And everything that the american armor forces used to go overseas was reliable. And the end result pretty much is the proof is in the pudding. So again, the important thing, if i you could just finish with one sentence shall we say. It is important to note that the m4 together with every other piece of equipment in the army is built to win a war as quickly and effective as possible. The military as a whole is organized and equipped to do as much as possible to defeat the enemy while protecting u. S. Lives. The m4 was not built to face off in tank duels. At least not purely face off in tank duels. A lot of people look at the sherman and compare it tactically to a german tank. Some people will look at it operationally. Few will look at it strategically. If the grand scheme of things, the designers dont really care or did not care 70 years ago what the folks today on internet would be complaining about penetration values and armor values for war gaming statistics or things like that. All they wanted to do was build an effective vehicle that would win the war as a again, ill use the word effective. As effectively as possible. In that i would argue the m 4 did exactly what it was supposed to do. End of. What are your questions . [ applause ] for one of the tanks, please leave the tank related question for after this. This q a is on the design. Its well known that engineering had to be done at the production site. The production workers have to be able to talk to the engineers and back and forth. This wasnt done in wartime. The engineers were state side and then the production people were the ones doing the fighting. Was that the major problem that there wasnt adequate communication between the engineers and the people in the field . A bit of both. The developments decision did send personnel to the field units. Even barnes would go on fact fining tours. They would fly to north africa and ask whats going on themselves. They would also do surveys by mail. Theyll send a telegram. These are a list of 25 questions we have for you. What are your responses . Theyll field those back as well. As well as sending lace on personnel over. There was always communication. Thats how you realize that the sites are wonky, or hey, we need this. The problem seems to have been a lack of realization even at the using level of what was required. Ill go back saying we dont want any 76millimeter tanks. Probably the raeason theyre saying that is they never met anything that needed a 76 millimeter gun. If they dont realize what they need need, it doesnt matter how the communication is. The problem is barnes wanted technology that was not battle worthy, that was not reliable. Thats probably where your distinction failed. Both sides were fighting. Theyre both talking to each other. I think if theres any conflict, that is where it is. Im going to ask a question raised by your presentation as far as what the two biggest problems were for the u. S. Going to war. That was the atlanta and the pacific. The book wars a racket and one of the things ive always raised about american needing to go to a foreign war is that any enemy that attacks us, they can attack us but never wage a war against us. The reason is youve got the lines of supply and the logistics of crossing the atlantic and the pacific. In your time in the military and studying military history, have you ever heard an other that defeats that with regards to Strategic Planning for war . As to why we should not be more of a defensive nation versus an aggressive nation . Doesnt that go back a little bit to the where was the money going during the hard times in the 30s . S it was going to the navy. If the priority was to defend the u. S. Territory, the navy was the organization that was going to do it. So i have not heard any argument saying that yes, the opposition can come attack us on land andov and over throw us once theyve gotten to the navy. Is that where youre going . If you have the coast guard tlrks, theres really no need. If youre not able to sustain that attack for any period of time as far as wage the war against the United States. Theres no country in the world that could. And if they were going to have a sustained attack that was a war, it would have to come from canada or mexico, nowhere else. The short answer to your question, i have not seen anything that would possibly argue against that. And even to support it, look at operation sea lion. 24 miles to get across the english channel. Theres no way the germans could sustain an invasion like that. They will have a significant issue with it. Thats assuming they could even come up with a plan. Just getting to the fire fly, there was a demand i would imagine that there must have been a demand in the American Army for something at least similar to the fire fly. I know in normandy, the famous story that one fire fly took out six panthers with seven shots in five minutes. And then with the tiger, they should have known that the germans were going to attempt upgrading the tiger as well. Wasnt that a case, as far as the fire fly or something similar to it where i dont know what commanders were saying we dont need the upgrade, we dont need the extra firepower, but i know troops, i know people in armored reg jeiment whose said y needed it. Theres two problems here. I need for a bigger gun was certainly identified and there were two solutions to it. One of them was a 76 and the other was a 90. And if you look at the weight and the size of the gun, the actual equivalent to the 17 pounder is the 19millimeter. Ordinance tested the side by side with the 90 and they decided the 90 was actually the better gun. Which i think is substantial the correct move. The difference is that the british stuffed their 17 pounder into a turret that the american Armored Forces thought that the 76 was too big for. So if the americans thought the 76 was too big to effectively fight this fire fly, what would the 17 pounder do . Again, this is people looking at the outside, not on the inside. If you look at how a gunner is situated in the fire fly, his right hand is here. His head is here. His left hand is down here. With the elevation trying to get on to target. Ooi done ive done a video on fire fly. The rounds are huge. Im going to come to part two. Yes, the fire fly knocked out six tanks in five minutes. How many times did a sherman with a much high are rate of fire destroy seven panther 4s . In three minutes. Or more likely, six machine gun nests in three minutes. And fire fly really sucked as a tank. If fire fly was it generally sucked as a tank. The other problem from the American Perspective was we acknowledge they need a bigger gun. What we didnt acknowledge is the bigger gun they were building is not big enough. They didnt realize that until they put it into combat. Then you had the eisenhower quote saying you told me they would kill everything and now im being told it wont knockout a damn thing which in reality is not true which german tanks got blown up by american tanks. Not easily but the americans managed it. This goes back to a bigger question of how is systems are systems. The m4 goes around the size. Look the 76 tanks destroying panthers which they should not have done. So the fire fly in itself, not only was cramped, but you also have the problem that nothing else in the american system uses 17 pounder ammo. On the converse side, the british are going nothing in our army uses a 76. So thats why they started the rearmorment program. We wanted a bigger gun not your bigger gun. The one exception is the american production of about 100 fire f fire flies at the end of the war. The question is why did the u. S. Make these . First i mention ed the capacity. Youre now adding an ammunition supply line system for 100 tanks. What good is 100 tanks going to do for the entire u. S. Army . I think this was actually purchased for other armies to use. There is other history for this. The polish brigade started off with fire flies. They ended the war with 76 millimeter tanks because they actually got their supply of replacement tanks from the americans. And so if the americans had fire flies that they had gotten from the british, they could replenish their allied units with the correct type of equipment. The biggest single purchaser was the u. S. Military, u. S. Government. But they bought them to give to the danish and dutch and everybody else. Thats kind of a long wined way of saying fire fly did not suit the americans. What did suit the americans turned out not to be good enough until they got a reality check and they started building the m36 or the 90 or the f flap ammo which never really made it. If the author of death traps were here, what would you say to try to change his mind or to debate him . My other question is if the u. S. Military had gone ahead and produced the pershing and not the sherman, what kind of problems do you think would have happened on the battle field . The problems would be similar to the problems of panther. We saw how good panther was in its introduction in combat. Why would we expect that pershing would be any different . You would have lots of vehicle that were broken down. They could work, but you had limits. America captures the bridge. The bridge is damaged. The infantry, crossover, fantastic. They need tank support. There happen to be pershing. It cannot cross the bridge. The sherman can cross the bridge. How long does it take to build a baby bridge to class four versus to class five. The engineers in tank design as well. They would always pass around the logistics. Hey, armored force want this tank, do you guys have a problem with it . The transport guys would say yeah, but it wont fit through a british railroad bridge. Will this thing hold the weight . So with pershing, you would have a lame duck. Obviously as technology and time developed to get to korea, its a different matter. To answer your first question, all these tankers that you keep meeting that say this is a death trap, how many of them were not dead . [ laughter ] the problem is that the entire premise is based on confirmation bias. His job was to repair destroyed tanks. All he sees are destroyed tanks. Destroyed american tanks. He does not see the tanks that were not destroyed. He does not see the german tanks that were destroyed because why would he see them. So hes making his perception on a small sub set, not a complete sub set of the data thats available to him. Now, whether or not i could actually convince the man who at the time would have been maybe 90 something years old that hes wrong, you just smile and nod and let him keep thinking i guess. One question on the famous funny used at d day, is that those tanks but also obviously the dd tanks, is that was that part of kind of initial design . The sherman was designed for those kind of attachments . No. Theres actually a pretty good book about hobart. I cant remember the name of it. All it is is about hobart and his command of the 79th. The thing to remember, these funnies did not start with the sherman. They started with usually valentines. So the ideas were worked out with british tanks and then they were modified. And there were funnies from church hill as well. But they took the sherman because thats the next tank that was being built and said well, can we do the same thing with the sherman and the answer was yes, we did, because it is such a wonderful tank. Just a quick question. How much of an advantage did the power character traverse on the sherman . A lot. You may not have seen t i juit,t published an article last week and ive got another one coming out tomorrow about the average combat range correction. Not the average. The medium combat range. If you are defending, lets say you have a line of tanks, youre going to have a couple hundred meters between each tank. If you have a tank there and another tank 300 yards over there, that is a 60 degrees that youve got to cover which means youve got to have a nice big wide optic which the sherman had and youve got to be able to traverse from here to here really quickly because fire fights are over very quickly. Again, the first person to shoot usually wins. Four times out of five, first person to shoot will win. Youve got the sherman gets over on a flank shot of the panther. Hell get the shot off before the german tank will reply back. So yes, very important. Sir, exnsg. Excellent, informative and exciting talk. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. One minor correction. Gordon welcmman said that the americans were better in crypto and radar, slightly better than the brits, but the brits were slightly better in magic, ew and sonar. I stand corrected. Question about going from why we didnt have armored cars. We had the combat cars. Why we really didnt have armored cars. Theres a famous tank commander movie where the tank commander barks where they show depict an urban battle. And the shermans defeat some tylers wi tile tigers with some armored cars because they were better for german warfare. My question is armored cars were very good in urban warfare and we had the combat darcars. Why didnt we go into the armored cars. The combat car was a work around. By law the cavalry corp could not have a tank. In terms of armored cars, the u. S. Arm took a fair look at armored cars as primary car vehicles as well. There was a vehicle called the trackless tank which was a big eight by eight. It was being tested about 1941. Initial testing was very good. It was fast. It was quiet. Had all the advantages of an armored car. But the there were some again, the reason why, until very recently, armored cars were not as prevalent, when it came down to general purpose combat, urban terrain was not as common back then as it is today. Today 70 of the population. Back then it wasnt the case. You had to have your tank capable of going off road very, very well. This is why the Tank Destroyers, but they never got to the same level of mobility as a tank. As for the armored cars, i can only assume the same thing. They had the stewart. The british liked their armored cars. I dont know why. Ive not looked into it. I tend to agree that because the end result was we won or whatever we made was appropriate, but then again your argument that in the procurement process you look at the logistics and you look at the liberty ships and you look at the rail. Thats not an argument. Because the argument is what you got at the end result is when you go into battle. And so yes, the m4 is adequate. But there are battles lost because it was inadequate. Operation goodwood. Operation torch. These battles were lost. If youre going to end the war sooner, youve got to win those battles. So whatever was decided upon way back when, its not an argument to say you cant put it on a rail line and its not an argument to say you cant put it on a ship. You make them fit the tank. Because you understand that theres 88s out there and that theres bigger tanks. Intelligence should have known that. So to say that its good enough, no, it isnt. The end user, ive got a couple. One, i dont know if torch is really a loss. Goodwood i would argue did not fail because of the tank design. It failed because due to manpower issues. The british simply did not have enough infantry. It was not montys first ideal plan, but the british army was out of infantry. They had to send tanks in unsupported. With the unfortunate and inevitable consequence. He made a gamble that the opposition werent as heavily enforced as they were. He didnt have a choice. He had to make the attack because goodwin was the decoy for cobra. What when it comes down, yes, the person in the tank at the time probably does not care about all the logistical things that ended up with him being there. There are two counters to this. One is that the general surveys that the American Tankers had, but the american surveys basically said we can handle the amount of armor we have. We need a better gun. Which in the case of goodwood it was 88. A little bit more armor probably wouldnt have made enough difference against 88 anyway. The other point is yes, its not very fair for the tanker to say sorry, its fine for the tanker to say i wish i had more armor, i wish i had bigger gun. How about this buddy over there who was an infantryman, whats his argument . Why cant the army build us tanks that are light enough that we can get two tanks here so that not only does joe have a tank, i also have a tank . So i dont see i dont see how you can say that one position is the position of the tanker is better than the position of the person in charge of the u. S. Actually trying to ship these things overseas. Is it unfortunate for the guy there . Yes, it is. Is it still the better decision . We can happily argue. If you come to the dinner afterwards, i will happily continue to engage you on this one, but well move on to another question. How uniform was the ammunition given the different situations, the tanks were fighting . The well, as near as i can tell, it was pretty uniform. The projectiles were the same. Just the casings were different. The projectiles for the armored piercing round for the 75, there were a couple different theres an interesting, i put it on my facebook page. There was a photograph of the report to the armored force and they wanted to know how effective the apc ammunition was, what were the reports coming back from the field, are we suffering a shortage, is it working and the report, and this was in april of 45, said that our problem is that our tanks havent found any enemy tanks to shoot at. It is possibly an exagricultuge but i dont know if i can answer the question other than there was sufficient ammunition of all types except for h fap which had not been designed in july of 44 and only once they said oh my god, we need better hitting did the ordinance brand say aha, policy number one, higher velocity. How do we get a higher velocity . Lighter weight shot. They design it very quickly. They design it in a month flat and the prototypes are being tested. Still too late. That brings it back to the earlier question. That was one they could have fixed and they could have give them a better tankers and gun but they didnt. Again, im saying this not knowing about what other uses they had. Could you have afforded to not stand up another factory with tools . I dont know. My personal opinion is they could have fixed that ammunition problem skpb givand given them gun. You mention ed survive ability. Obviously rather did the planners ever get into sloped armor . Did that ever come up with them . Okay. I refer you to the front of this sherman. Is it sloped . [inaudible] not as sharply, no. But it is thicker to compensate. So the effective armor between the t34 and sherman is almost to the millimeter the same. Now, the side armor is not sloped on the sherman. It is sloped on the t34. This bripgs yngs you to a coupl problems. You have less room inside. The other problem is that youre making the tank really, really big but you dont have very much room inside the tank because of all the armor. Where do you put your fuel and ammo and spare parts . The sherman, and if you look at a modern tank, a modern tank is like a sherman. Its sloped in front, but even the soviets have given up sloping on the sides. It just was not worth it. Good evening. Good evening. Im thinking about the kaliopy. You see pictures and they dont carry many rockets. Were wasting a tank for a handful of rockets. The germans are using half tracks. The russians are using trucks. What was the theory about putting these rockets, you know, on top of a tank as opposed to another lighter easier to produce vehicle . The answer to your question is i have no idea and i fully agree with you and i have found reports coming back into the archives basically saying why are we doing this . It must have made a good sense to somebody. I do not know who that somebody was and i dont know what they were thinking. Im sorry. As somebody who has several versions of sherman in his miniatures collection, thank you for a great presentation. The tanks may have been the same, but the way the Armor Divisions were structured was not and that varied even within the United States army and obviously with other armies. Just talk about as the tank was the building block, talk about how the armored divisions were structured first within the u. S. System and then the heavy Armor Divisions versus the lighter ones compared to some of the other nationalities that fought. Im im not sure im actually able to im technical guy more than a doctoral organization guy, which i probably shouldnt be because i am a major lieutenant colonel. Um, the thing i will say with the u. S. Tank use philosophy is you had the two divisions. The tank battalion was designed to do the punking. They used the same tank for both roles. I guess you can make an argue amount the british came up with the cruiser tanks, infanry tanks, did the u. S. Get something wrong here by not having different tanks for the two different roles . I think this brings us back to the whole logistical question if we could build a heavy tank that worked, which they couldnt, because they tried. But if they could, would they have shipped them overseas . I dont have an answer to that. I dont feel confident going into details of when you move from a Light Company to three Medium Companies and so on standing up here. I would need to get my books. In the 1940s, the standard American Railroad flat car with a 50ton car. That was the basic building block. That was the state of the art cart for the time. There were cars lesser in capacities. How did that cause a limited contributed to this design . The document i found in new york was talking about the future of tank designs. It stated, if my memory is serving on the correct quote s that these 12,000 cars were of sufficient capacity and width to carry the m26. I dont know why you would have a narrower than standard flat car, but apparently they did exist otherwise the branch wouldnt have sent both. The Ordnance Branch believed they did not have sufficient capacity to support sufficient deployment of heavy tanks in the 1950s, let alone in the 1940s. Thank you. [ applause ] this is weekend on the cspan networks, saturday, former president ial speechwriters for president s nixon to obama. Sunday, 6 30 people, how your impacts our health. On book tv, Daily News Caller Foundation Christopher Bedford on his book, the art of the donald lessons from americas philosopher in chief. And on sunday at 11 00 a. M. Rebecca frazier and her book the mayflower on American History tv on cspan tv, saturday at 8 50 eastern, mat ewe restall. Sunday at 9 10 p. M. , the Ground Breaking of the bright b. Eisenhower momentum rorlle this weekend on the cspan networks. Cspans student Video Documentary Program is under way. Students cross the country are busy at work and sharing their experience with us through twitter. Its not too late to enter. Our deadline is january 18, 2018. We are asking students to choose a provision of the u. S. Constitution and create a video showing why its important to you. Its open to all middle school and high school students. 100,000 in cash prizes will be awarded. The grand prize of 5,000 will go to the student or team with the best overall entry. For more information, go to our website, studentcam. Org. During world war ii, the Army Air Corps First Motion Picture Unit produced over 300 training films. The unit was composed entirely of industry professionals and many featured hollywood stars, such as james stewart, ronald reagan, clark gable. And van heflin. Next on American History tv the Audrey Amidon and Heidi Holmstrom shows the efforts on these archives. Today we are broadcasting live from the National Archives building in washington, d. C. Welcome