Inside and out. Lots on youtube called inside the chieftons hatch. Inside the chieftons hatch. Or theres this video cast on cspans American History tv, ladies and gentlemen, nicholas moran. Unfortunately, thats about as high up as it goes. Good evening. Oh, boy. So todays talk is on world war ii procurement and why the sherman was what it was. Thats the best i could come up with when i was asked to give a talk. War games and tanks are the people that asked me to come out here. If youre interested in tank games, world of tanks is great, its not a reisraelirealistic s, so on that i would like to thank them for inviting me out here. And i have high end personnel. I do not have any letters after my name. I do not teach at a university. I work for an unrealistic video game. 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 in here is either sourced for the archives 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 they will mention it. The background, initially i was asked to come here and do my myths of american armor talk. I had to think about it. Its on youtube. If you want to listen to it, go to youtube. Google mitts of American Army and youll find it. I do some of the Common Misconceptions and basically said, look, these are common and they are wrong. Because i had already given a talk, i said lets modify it a little bit and instead of how good was the tank well go with why is the tank the way it is. Thats the theory behind this. I dont know your knowledge level. Again, some of these speakers ive heard here on the podcast are very high end, but every now and then its good to just go back to some of the low 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, common service, than the m1 as a rifle . Pretty much nothing. You can make an argument maybe for the 44 but it 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, a better destroyer than the garing, a better carrier than the essex, a better artillery fuse than the vt . We have the best. Landbased fighter. [inaudible] or the noncombat stuff. No other country had the handy talky. The cckw, some people say the higgins boat won the war. Some people say the jeep won the war. The victory ship. The record i think was six days in california. You can go on and on. With a couple of exceptions, the other countries had their own areas of expertise. We didnt touch the british with topography and some of the radar. The british had us. The germans had a few advantages 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 we actually did not get it wrong and 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 try 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. Audience participation question number two. Hands up for the chicken. Who votes the chicken . Who votes the egg . 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 an egg protein, indicates that the answer to the chicken or egg question is the chicken. I bet youve learned something this evening. My mission is complete. Now, why do i ask . Any guesses . Sir . [inaudible] looking forward in history versus looking back in hindsi t hindsight . How would that apply to this talk . Most people are looking back an hearing what people are saying about it as opposed to looking at it at the moment it is being designed. Thats an excellent point. Its not the answer to this question but it is a very good point. I was mentioning earlier talking about british Army Operations in Northern Ireland which to an extent i lived through but then i did an assessment last year for the army and its very interesting the different perspectives if youre involved in the matter or dealing with it after the fact objectively. Sir . [inaudible] youre getting there. [inaudible] thats deep. That is very deep. Heres your chicken and heres your egg. On the left side is a symbol for army grand forces. These are the guys who develop doctrine. They equipped the force. On the righthand side is the bomb of Ordinance Branch which 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 . A few more people. Who doesnt care . This is who i refer to as the Mad Scientist of the u. S. Army. He comes up with wonderful designs and pieces of equipment and believes that he knows better than anybody else what the army needs. To quote him, it is not well understood that tactics are usually written around a weapon. Field operations normally do not generate ideas leading to new material. A new piece of equipment must first be produced, for example a machine gun, before the tactics can be devised for the weapon. For these reasons its necessary for the Ordinance Department to take a strong lead in the development of new equipment and to get the help of those services to determine where the weapon best fits into battlefield operations. So if you talked to ordinance, Technology Drives doctrine. Its kind of hard to argue the fact that, well, how can you know how to use a machine gun if you didnt know that such a capability exists. However, this is what army grand forces thought. The bottom line here is that army grand forces would draw up the specifications and they would then be submitted to ordinance and ordinance would then Design Equipment to match what army grand forces wanted the equipment to do. The quote is from the written history of army grand forces. I have a picture of him up there. In 1940 army grand forces didnt exist as an entity but well keep that aside. If youre curious, we have the users saying that theyre in charge. You have the developers saying that theyre in charge. Both have reasonable arguments. If youre curious, this is the process today. Ive had to learn this and im very glad im not involved in procurement. This is the army side of it. If you can understand this, youre a better man than i. But the bottom line is that in todays military it is driven by the operational needs, not by the technology. So you start off with lets say an operational needs statement such as for example the 30 millimeter strikers that are now fielded in europe. This came from the field, the second brigade said we need vehicles with a cannon capable of engaging mps. Then the engineers built them the vehicle. Such operational need statements did exist in world war ii. For example, there was one i saw that says we want a device that you can fit onto a tank that when its driving along at at least 15 Miles Per Hour it will detect the mine field before it hits the mine. Now, we havent really gotten to that today but these requests were being fielded from the field to ordinance. A lot of times ordinance did develop material which met the requirements of the fielding force. But again, i digress. The bottom line is that ordinance thought they were the head. Before world war ii, you can see what the equipment of the army was and it was terrible. Basically the u. S. Was starting from scratch. 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. Again, thats a quote from agf. Note in time to be of use. You cant hang around waiting for the Perfect Piece of equipment. In january of 1940, in a lecture before the army industrial college, the then chief of ordinance, Major General westin estimated that the development of a major item of material 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. This timeline generally matches with the development of any piece of equipment developed by anybody else, the british, germans, 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 . Production . Logistics . Shipping . You guys are very close. Youre bouncing around the right idea. Isolation . Bingo. The two problems are called atlantic and pacific. Anything being built to fight is going to fight many thousands of miles away and a couple of oceans from the nearest factory. It has to get there and when it is there it must also be sustained. This means you need to have as few parts break as possible in order to reduce the need for spares to be shipped over, the need to ship those spares and then youve got all the consumables like pol across the ocean. Note also that unlike the germans who could if they had to do a refush on a tank, they could ship it back to the factory, so could the soviets. We could not. Anything we sent over was there to fight until it was discarded or destroyed. Major repair in the u. S. Is not an option. 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 flack cars in the United States that could carry a persian tank. In may of 48 they wanted to get a battalion from fort knox to kentucky. It took 48 cars. How many flack cars were capable of carrying a 45 to 50ton tank and Everything Else that had to be carried to get to the ship . 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 the 60ton monsters, can you actually get it to the fight . Arguably you probably could but could you get them in sufficient numbers to have an effect . 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 gets to the fight and then it breaks down. No use. You just wasted all that shipping, all that effort to get a tank overseas just to see it break down and sitting in the Third Armor Division motor pool or wherever. Thats some of the basic problems. Lets get down to some of the nuts and bolts. Im going to quote army grand forces. Agf established two general criteria for the development and approval of new equipment. The 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 clearcut policy of general mcnair, one which he often emphasized. It was eventually adopted formally as War Department policy. Who determines battle need, who determines what is an essential piece of equipment versus what is a luxury equipment. One school of thought said the theatre commanders. The other school of thought said that the decision should be centralized in the u. S. Who thinks they went with theatre commanders . Who thinks they went with centralized decision in the u. S. . You are all wrong. [inaudible] i see where youre going on that. That was done centrally, yes, but once it was set up we will have so much personnel and tanks, the all nature of those tanks, improvements to them was not centralized. I should explain. So the reasoning from the idea behind the guys who wanted to centralize was that theatre 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 vague reasoning of four star generals. They also believed that theatre commander recommendations from colored by the combat soldiers natural attachment to Reliable Equipment with which they were familiar. 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 six Armor Division in october of 44 who reported that they had 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 material 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 criterion, 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. Again, excessive problems. The thing would break down, it will happen. There is perhaps a subcategory which i would call immediate capability. Army Ground Forces was willing to accept subcapable 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 is an m2 medium that the u. S. Started the war with. You can see it needs a fair bit of track tension here. The u. S. Had at the time what is called the cult of the machine gun. The infantry were owning the tanks. The calvary had combat cars. They were basically tanks. The infantry were quite interested in the tanks ability to deal with enemy infantry. As you can see, machine guns everywhere, deflectors on the back here so you fire out. It would deflect off this and shoot down to the trench that you were walking past. The 37, that was an antitank gun and trained for antitank capability. 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. Road bridge, im sorry. So, in 1939, the u. S. Conducted a series of tests to determine if machine guns or a 75 millimeter would be more effective at killing infantry. Survey says, 75 millimeter. Good to know. What they have done is added a 75 into the hull of an m2 medium. It should start perhaps looking a bit familiar. Then this happened. That is a photograph taken. The germans very quickly overrun france. 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 roll. You need something bigger. Fortunately, they had already tested the 75 millimeter. Fantastic. The second problem this is where the lecture is going to take a fork into two tracks. They created Tank Destroyers as a result. So were going to talk about not only why the sherman was designed the way it was but briefly about the tds. Solution, build m3s. You take that m2 and that 75 and add a couple more gadgets and youve made an m3. Nothing in this tank is particularly new. Its always improving on something that they know already works. 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 this ka nudson man is, look him up. He talks to chrysler and together they built the army detroit tank. 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 to the m4, so they built about 6500 of them. Something similar happened with the six pounder. The british six pounder was developed before world war ii, but after the fall of france they realized we can either not produce antitank guns or we just built a two pounder. The soviets were saying the t 34 was supposed to be replaced by the t 34 m. It didnt happen, germans invaded, well go with what we have. So there were gradual improvements on the m3 in the form of new stabilizers. 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 that 75 millimeter. Infantry who at the time still was in charge demanded that the 37 be we takretained so thats still have a 37. I said this was going to break into two different directions. Then you had the question of how do you stop these pansers. What was happening obviously was not working. The idea of having antitank guns with your front line, with the infantry, was not working. The solution was you had to cut these off for a loss. Theres no way you could put enough antitank guns to stop a concentrated armor attack. The solution was to have mobile rapid antitank guns that could meet the enemy attack at the point of penetration and the idea was that these would beat up all the tanks. Hence, you have the Tank Destroyer branch. If you look at the manuals, the doctrine, they were never to be used in the attack. Not everything was a Tank Destroyer. I have a video on it as well. If you google on my youtube channel, it explains in greater difference the difference between an antitank gun and a Tank Destroyer. 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 bars 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. You can see where the tank sheered the rock. You also add molotov cocktails, the u. S. Forces were lacking. They 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 droirs, do yestroyers want them to be tow droiestroye or really fast. The thinking was they would be really hard to spot, the master of the tank. Mcnair used the comparison of Coastal Artillery versus batt battleships which apparently the u. S. Navy didnt believe in that eith either, and the fact that these were 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. Hey, buy war bonds, do this, we need money to fight. So if you can make a really cheap Tank Destroyer thats better than an expensive Tank Destroyer, but in the end, the head of the Tank Destroyer branch won out. For the record, the chief of infantry said the best weapon to kill a tank was another tank. This was back in 1940 or 41. What i got here is a couple of examples of designs just for the light platoon of the antiTank Destroyer companies. The light platoon was to be equipped with a 37 millimeter. So we have a t2, a t14, a t8 all designed to get a 37 millimeter into the fight. These are also good motor carriages. T33, t22, t21 and m3. Many different designs were tried out to fit the requirement of we must have a selfpropelled antitank gun. This is an example of the doctrine developing the development. This Tank Destroyer was not approved to development and it got turned into dma greyhound. The final winner was the m4. It was a fargo threequarter ton, the 37 on the back. It was selected not because it was the best but because it was the first in the other requirements. The t8 and the t14 were better vehicles, but again, you had to have something in the field to fight the enemy. This was it. There are a couple of other issues but it developed as the m4. Then somebody realized, we just invented the m4 tank, this will get confused, so they renamed it the m6. They sent it to africa where it was singularly useless and removed from service. This was so show what was going on to meet one single requirement, which all costs money. Back in tank land, the m6, whoever got the memo about we naming the m4 dependent gidnt same memo. This was considered to be the biggest gun anybody in the world was trying to put into a tank. It turned out not to be but that was the thinking. You have a little co axial 37 millimeter and 1,000 horsepower radial engine. Different transmissions, hydraulic and electric, but it did use a horizontal suspension system. Now, i refer you back to the earlier issues about flack cars and chip cranes and besides, the problem was in testing it didnt work anyway. The head of armored force said, look, due to its tremendous weight and limited tactical use, there is no requirement in the armored force for a heavy tank. The increase in the power of armament of the heavy tank does not compensate for the heavier armor. Also, they would prefer to ship two 30ton tanks instead of one 60ton tank. That was actually assuming that they could fix the problems in this which they never did. So the m4 it is. Note they still have all the machine guns at the front. They hadnt quite gotten rid of that idea. If you look at the front of every m3 youll see holes for the mixed guns which are completely useless but the americans kept them anyway for a while. There are two things to note. Its all about reliability and sustainabili sustainability. Everything in here has been done before. The engine was used and known to work for the m3. The suspension system, the 75 millimeter, known to work for the m3. There were a couple of other improvements. The other thing is how easy is it to maintain it. These are bolts. You simply unbolt the front of this tank and the front comes off with your transmission, very easy to maintain. Suspension, if you have a problem with your suspension system, there are 16 bulleolts,o it, swap it out, youre done. Now, the second thing is that everything fits from the factory and the british tank mission guy, g mccloud ross, made mention in his book as to never ever seeing a vice in the u. S. Work bench in the factories. The only reason you would have a vice was to hold a piece of equipment while you were modifying it to make it fit. If you did 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 would fit was completely interchangeable. If you compare it to, say, germany, go an youtube and find a video by john parchal about the construction techniques in a german factory in world war ii and everything was made to suit the tank. They would try the piece. If it didnt fit, theyll 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 and american tanks didnt have it. Thats a sloped front. If you take into account the thickness of the slope, its almost as thickly armored as a tiger is. Theres like one centimeter of a difference. This is actually pretty tough tank. The 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. So they sent it out to the field. Reports start coming back and theyre 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 sites are a considerable improvement on the ground. Users are giving unstinted i cant do the english accent. Users are giving unstinted praise to all american equipment, particularly m4, which embodies all desired improvements except ideal gun sites would stress again its vital we receive earliest numbers, regardless of the availability of tools and spares for which we are prepared to wait. So this tank was working. The first problem was the primary site, the linkages. The primary site is up here. The linkages were a little wobbly. The solution was add a new telescope that pops out here and you now have a more accurate site. Something that i dont know what they were thinking. There is no hatch for the loader. It took them nine months to figure out how to drill a hole in the roof. If theres one thing that you look at the sherman of 1942 and it stops it from being hands down the best tank in the world, it is the lack of a hatch here. They also added a little bit of applique army, minor improvements. You see people complaining about german tanks suffered a multitude of changes on the production level. The americans did the same thing. We changed our tanks rapidly. We just made them standardized when we did it. Moving on to guns, the 57 millimeter was not invented here. Youll hear that argument, oh, the americans were a proud people, they you could say xenophobic. They dont believe that anybody else can make anything better than the americans can. This is patently not true. What powered the p51 mustang . A rollsroyce. The six pounder was the same. The American Army looked at the six pounder and said thats a better antitank than we have, lets make it, and they made a 57 millimeter m1. The idea was can we put this into a tank, this m7 or t49 Tank Destroyer. The idea was you have a high velocity which made it more accurate, slightly harder hitting, higher rate of fire. It was lighter, all these wonderful, got things about the 57, but Tank Destroyer branch said hank on a second. At over 500 meters. The light round loses penetration, the 75 is still better. Armored force says wait a second, were degrading our capability to kill infantry. So the 57 millimeter fell out of service, not because it was foreign or anything like that but because it didnt. The replacement, the three inch gun mounted on the m10 which was an interim vehicle. The general 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. The t49 67 70 was still in development. So m 10 it was but it had to be cheap. Theres no traverse motor in this vehicle because theyre trying to keep the costs down. Again, its using the same bogeys, sprok et wheels, the same engines in the back. The problem with the three inch is that you couldnt put it into a sherman. They tried. The initial requirement back in 1941 was put a three inch gun into the sherman, but it was too heavy, didnt work. They had to wait until Something Else came along. That Something Else is a 76 millimeter. What happened was you had new alloys created and you could 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 three inch, the 76 was half the weight and the 19 millimeter was the same weight. Thats why you got that divergence there. General devers was notified by way of telephone call. Its fascinating in the archives, youll find actual transcripts of the telephone calls. Devers had a couple of questions. The first question was how long is it. Then the only im going to quote here. The only thing that worries me a little bit now is that this isnt going to throw us off on our present setup so we can get to fighting. Im anxious to get m4 tanks with anything in them so we can go to fighting. If youve heard the phrase, perfect is the enemy of good enough, weve got a war to fight. We cant wait for this new development to come out before we go. Guess what happens to the germans at kursk. They wait, wait, aha, we have this new panther, and we got our asses kicked, and the panther broke down anyway. Once he got 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 theme 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 then move to a larger caliber because this meant that with a larger caliber you could carry fewer rounds, you had a slower rate of fire. The chances are it was less accurate because it was slower. Ammunition was a huge thing. It will come up time and time again in the archives. However, by the middle of the 1942, Ordinance Branch, the designers managed to stuff the 76 into an m4. They sent it to Aberdeen Proving Ground and 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. And they wanted 1,000 of these things to partake in the invasion of north africa. The thing to remember is that by 1942, summer of 42, the biggest, nastiest thing the germans had was the m4. The army wanted something in case the opposition came up with something bigger. Unfortunately, armored force finally got ahold of one and tested it themselves as the end user. They included i dont care what you engineers say, yeah, it may technically work but you dont have to fight in this damn thing. It is incredibly cramped inside. The crews could not make the most of their tank. The sights were a little unsuitab unsuitable, too cramped to be effective. Army force rejected it, said try again, give us the proper tank, and off the Ordinance Branch went. Audience participation question number five. Yes, youre not off the hook yet. What do these vehicles have in common . [inaudible] you are correct. Who said that . You saw my other talk, didnt you . You did. He is quite correct. These are all tanks that were approved for production and in the case of the m7 on the right, they actually built a factory just to build these things. And then once it was approved and the contracts were signed, they realized we dont need this 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 and this met in late 1942 and its purpose was to look at all the various different designs that were created to meet different requirements like an armored car, a Tank Destroyer, a light tank. 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 this has even better promise. Again, this comes down to a case of were spending man hours, spending dollars, 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. These are some of the developments of the m6 and it looks vaguely shermanesque. The u. S. Didnt want this for the same reason that they didnt want the m6 but the british wanted an assault tank. They said were going to build an excel yor and whatever the other one was. You americans, can you build one that will fit the job. So the americans built one actually, they built two. Lets build one for ourselves. Does it work. The answer is no. There were fumes in the fighting department, cramped conditions. They are still helping out the briggs. This is a british crusader in test in fort knox. Thats an american crewman. The u. S. Did test these not because they wanted to see should they build it locally but to see what design features are a good idea that they hadnt thought of themselves. A british guy called Alex Richardson was present for the demonstration of cromwell, like the sherman counterparts. It didnt do well. To quote his letter back to the u. K. , 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 politely indifferent to what happens to them, and the rollsroyce man is most unhappy and he wants them withdrawn as soon as possible. We are undoubtedly the worlds worst salesman. Again, i apologize for my lack of english accent. Underneath here and i have this online. The chieftans hatch operation. That was a monthlong, 2,000 mile test that they drove these tanks all over england on roads and a lot of mileage off road. To get from southampton at the bottom of england to the top of scotland, according to google maps, is 700 miles. And note how the amount of specialist man hours is half to maintain the sherman versus maintaining the british tanks. The ordinance tested things a lot. I ran into a report in the archives that over a 2,000mile course the average speed of an m10 a1 is one miles an hour less than an m10. Did any german vehicle do a 2,000mile endurance test before they put it into production . Given what happened to the panther, im going to guess no. I found a report for the m18 stating that a lock washer i dont know what a 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. A lock washer is one of those threaded washers that you screw your nut onto and it holds it 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 his vehicles into battle at any rate during the first 2,000 miles of their life. On the other hand, if you are equipped with cromwells, he might be in a continuous state of anxiety as to whether enough of his tanks can reach the battlefield to carry out the normal tasks expected of his unit. It was also observed that the crews and support personnel would be better rested so if a cromwell breaks down on route, you have to take time to stop and repair it which means that they dont get their rest. Then when it finally gets to the motor pool, the cooks are still awake waiting to feed the crews after they get there. 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. American tanks were tested in the deserts of california and the snows of alaska and the takeaway was they worked. A battalion was a battalion when it got to where it was going. It wasnt most of a battalion or a full battalion which had to stand down for maintenance. Some might say other countries would have to do. If you were a unit, lets say infantry division, and relying on support of your attached tank battalion, you knew that every company in your infantry unit would have tank support. It wasnt the 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. You go into the ordinance or chives a archives and its box after box on the mechanics of mold on rubber. And every individual component, the fuel pump would be subjected to a battery of tests. Even once a tank was approved for production, there would still be qa. You come across a report saying a test report of chrysler tank serial number 55887 which was randomly taken so make sure Quality Control was still what it was supposed to be. Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. Another vehicle that won the war, the cckw. Its called a two and a half ton truck but on the road its rated to carry five tons. Thats 255gallon cans or 1,250 gallons of fuel. A oneton trailer will carry an additional 40 cans. Brings us to 1,450 gallons. And of course, the americans tested all this. This chart which i guess you have to get online is fuel and Oil Requirements per 1,000 miles for a company of 17 medium tanks. Each barrel represents 100 gallons. In other words one cckw will move a company 800 miles, one single truck of fuel. Red ball had 5500 trucks rolling at once. So that gives you an idea as to how much fuel tanks suck and how efficient the m4 was on all that fuel which had to be shipped. Again, you have to get it from the refineries to england, then along the pipeline under the ocean to get to france and then into fivegallon cans and shipped over. Every piece of this requires energy and power. It requires personnel. It requires trucks, mechanics to maintain the trucks, ships to carry the spare parts to maintain the trucks, ships to carry the spare parts 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 significant capacity problem. You could either make new tanks or they could make spare parts for the old tanks. When the tiger one went into production, they also built one additional transmission, one additional engine. So the germans had this massive parts shortage and you put armed guards onto supply trains because the units will be stealing the parts. They would stage raids to get their spare parts. Mechanics would be dispatched to the rail stations to stake their claim and if theyre waiting for parts to arrive, theyre not repairing tanks. Americans did not have this problem. Again, look at johns video where the center for military history, a pamphlet on german tank maintenance. The u. S. Bought spare parts and they all fit. Bycomparison, under the bolts, pull off the front, get another one, put it on, done. A couple of hours. To a panther in this case, 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. Just go look at my panther video and you can 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 rare one german tank in the amount of time it takes to repair two or three americans. 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 . Again, your tank may be the best in the world but if it is down for maintenance its not contributing to the battle. If its not contributing to the battle, why have a tank. Also they had to be generally replaced after about 1200 miles and again we have the sherman at least 2,000. Of course, whether or not the tank survives to get to 1200 miles is another matter entirely. T23, this is where ordinance really sours the army on the pershing. 1943, the first of the t20 series shows up. You take a tank with a 76 millimeter gun, a lower overall silhouette than the m4, you should have a better tank. The m4 is now in serious production so they met the immediate requirements, can we improve. The t20 had issues with the transmission. The t22 had problems. The t23 had an electric drive which was in theory wonderful. It would spin on a dime, go backwards fast, forward. Very mobile. You could control the entire tank. In theory this tank could drive and fight with one man. In theory. You wouldnt want to. Whats not to like . After a demonstration in april of 1943 to generals mcnair, devers, somerville and marshall, it was agreed to build 250 of these tanks as an initial production run. Ordinance promised that all the issues would be fixed. In hindsight about 50 would be upgunned. Well come back to that. Armor board starts testing them and a number of problems were found. Some of them were small things like the tallest gunner when hes sitting in the seat could not see through the sight because the sight was too high. Most would be easy fixes, some would not. Well come back to this. The m4 e 6 simplified production, increased ergonomics and fire power. You can either try to refine and improve the m4 which you knew would be available in numbers or you could take a gamble. Go with what could potentially be a substantially better tank, the t24 which still had some bugs to work out, but it may not work or may not be available in the required numbers. Youre gambling with the entire future of the world here. You can perhaps understand them being a little bit cautious. As part of the overall progression, we now have 76 millimeter gun on the t23, a steeper slope, bigger hatches, and to make up for it, they made the front a bit thicker. Wet stowage which changed the burn rate of the tank from average to this thing almost never burns. Again, that was a result of testing. You had better vision to see the opposition. This was all done very, very quickly. The idea of putting the t23 was in march of 1943. The testing was completed and the design was approved in september. By september 43 it was decided that all factories would stop producing 75 millimeter tanks for the army aby january of 44 with a few exceptions of contracts that had already been ordered. The problem was that all these tanks are now being produced in january of 44 and they still have to get them overseas, competing with Everything Else thats going overseas. They also seemed to be nice to have. Do you remember that luxury versus essential . The 75 millimeter army was killing everything that 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 we have a couple hundred of these 76 millimeter gun tanks which means a new line of supply is necessary for the ammunition. We have to retrain our tankers, retrain your loaders, why bother with the hassle. Its not worth it. So they left the 76 in the u. K. In hindsight, this is what is known in tactical terms as an oops. But it made sense at the time, going back to your point. Fifth army, the guys who are winning in italy, they were saying giving us aulll the 76s can get. There was another minor issue and that was the tungsten shortage. Since there was no particular indication that the 76 could do the job if the 75 couldnt, they didnt spend any tungsten building ammunition. They had other things to do with the tungsten. It was used for making machine tools, lots of different things. In hindsight perhaps a bad decision. They should have developed the ammo just in case. Benefit of hindsight. If theres any one single flaw i can point to in the u. S. Armys tank production, they should have issued it. The other thing is the e8. Yes, youre still not off the hook. 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 16inch track and a 21inch track is a full ton. Thats an additional ton 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. So 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 suspension, the horizontal volume which had been tested earlier. Again, this isnt a new idea. They tried a series of new suspension types. They went with this thing that they tried before, wider tracks. The result is the m4a3 suspension success which is commonly known as the easy 8. The definite sieve sheive sherm to the korean war. It was arguably the definitive and best sherman. You do have the question of protection. This is not atypical. A lot of crewmen would add on armor onto their vehicle. To quote army grand forces, another point to consider is that any slight addition of armor to existing thickness only adds weight but creates a false sense of security without actually providing material additional protection. The pen tray tif power of large caliber tank and antitank weapons was such that existing armor would almost need doubling in order to provide real protection with medium ranges. Additional protection afforded at longer ranges would increase load on engines and suspension. Youre a tank crewman. You figure out these german 88s and 75s, theyre punching right through my sherman, i must do something to make my sherman tougher and you put sand bags or concrete or whatever it is. Is a sand bag going to stop an 88 . Is your transmission going to be happy with the extra two tons of sand bag that you just put on your tank . Both the germans and the American Engineers looked into it and said, no, the way it comes from the factory is the way it is supposed to be. Only patent enforced. Im being told im running out of time. To go back to the t23 and then the 19millimeter gun, the t26. The result, 300 man hours of maintenance for every 800 hours of operation. Absolutely unacceptable. They came up with a list of 26 must fixes. If the ordinance fixed it, ar r armored force would say, fantastic, well send them overseas and declare it battle worthy. Ordinance said we cant fix all 26, but we can fix most of them and then you can send those overseas. Army Ground Forces was not enthusiastic. They said, okay, look, we dont like it but for you well let the commanders in europe know that we have 150 of these 76 millimeter 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 skip over that slide, go to this. T25, t 26, i have a lot of this online and the other videos. Bottom line, nobody really wanted the 19millimeter tank initially. The size of ammunition, whatever. But ordinance and general barnes was so determined that he knew that this was the tank that would win the war that he asked the british actually he designed the tank to take a 17pounder. The theory was if the british liked the tank, the british would order the pershing pershing, and now the tank was in production, then his genius design would be produced by the army because of the fact that hes already breaking them. Army Ground Forces tested it said it doesnt work, ive gone to that in detail elsewhere. Toad tds are better than mobile tds, that was the lesson they learned, however, in practice it didnt work because they werent attacking they werent doing much of the attacking, the guns were much smaller and so on and so forth. Ill mention that the 90 millimeter jackson was not wanted because again it wasnt the fast mobile Tank Destroyer and nobody had a need for the 90 millimeter gun. There was a change of heart and by july of 44 they decided to type classify it, this is what they really wanted, the crews didnt wanted this, barnes wanted this. Its got no armor, i could get a pickax and punch through this, one unit actually mute kneed, they did not want the m18. That said in the end, it got a reputation for killing tanks with the same glun that the sherman had. So the sherman was quite capable of killing tanks as much as the m18. What was the m4 good at. It was reliable. It worked, you knew it would do what it was supposed to, the gunner in all three of these thanks is watching you. Which is better at ambushing the enemy. And its a simple design. I dont know why the germans did not put a roof manneded 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 the panther, to get that crouched down like this im manipulating the round on the m4, sitting down on my chair, very comfortably, down, up, in. Down, up, in. Highly comfortable. Now, survival rates. Sherman is a death trap. In the entire war, armored force lost that many tankers killed, the entire war, in all of north africa, sicily and italy, 80 tankers were killed. If you think about the reputation, is amazesly low. Part of the reason for is is how easy it is to get out of one of these. I have the oh, my god the tank is on fire test. How quickly can i get out of the tank if its on fire. With the m4, the hatch is right above you, pop it up, out you get. You look at the panther and the command commanders doing this about and the tiger is getting out like this. A very survivable tank, very versatile tank. Flame thrower, you could do anything with this thing. Rejected developments, 17 pounder, i can go on about this forever. The bottom line is, the americans didnt think it was a good idea. Im not sure it was a good idea. They would have been better off building the 76, but they didnt, thats why the fire fly has reputation. The americans had infrared. They just realized that it didnt work. When the germans tried it, they realized it didnt work. The germans realized it didnt work after putting the time and effort on to the field. This is a target range rifle. If youre in the middle of north africa, how do you know where you are. This is a moving map, you set the position. Not battle worthy enough, great idea the americans were willing to experiment and develop and try. If it was not guaranteed to works troops will not have confidence in the equipment, and theyll stop using it, and whats the point. Troops who are confident in their equipment will fight better, everything that the american Armored Forces used to go overseas was reliable. The end result pretty much is the proof is in the pudding. Again the important thing, if i can finish with one sentence. Its 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 effectively as possible. The military as a whole, is organized and equipped to do as much as possible to protect u. S. Lives. The m4 was not built to face off in tank duals. At least not fuel face off in tank duals. A lot of people look at the tactic, some people will look at it operation ali. Few people look at it strategically. And in the grand scheme of things, designers dont really care or did not care 87 years ago. What the folks today would be complaining about penetration values and armor values for war gaming statistics or things like that. All they wanted to do was build a vehicle that would win the war as e23ek9ively as possible. The m4 did skashlgt lexactly w supposed to do. What are your questions fp. For world of tanks, please leave those questions until after this. Its well known engineering has to be done at the production si site. 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, 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 endeavors would go on fact finding tours. They would ask whats going on themselves. These are a list of 25 questions we have for you. What are the responses. As well as just sending liaison personnel over. There was always a communication thats how you realize the sites are wonk can i or hey we need this. The problem seems to have been a lack of realization even at the using level of what was required. We dont want any 76 millimeter tanks. And probably the reason that theyre saying that is because they never met anything that needed a 76 millimeter good. If the people dont realize what they need, it doesnt matter how good the communication is with the designers. Barnes was always going, we want a bigger mobile engine. He wanted technology that was not battle worthy. Not reliable enough. Thats probably where your distinction failed. Both sides were fighting for the same they were talking to each other. Just talking from different perspective, if theres any conflict, thats where it is. Thank you. I want to ask a tangen tal question. What are the two biggest problems for the u. S. Going to war. That was the atlantic and pacific. Wars a racquet. One of the things ive always raised in talking about americas need to go to foreign war is that any enemy that attacks us, they can attack us, but they can never wage a war against us. The reason being, you have the lines of supply and logistics crossing the atlantic and pacific. And to the north of canada and mexico and the south. In your time in the military and studying military history. Have you ever heard an argument that defeats that with regard to Strategic Planning for war. As to why we should not be more of a defensive nation . Doesnt that go back a little bit to where was the money going during the hard times . It was going to the navy, because they realized that if priority number one 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 yes the competition can attack us on land and overthrow us. Is that where youre going. The fact is that theres really no need. Youre not able to sustain that attack for any period of time. To sustain that attack for any period of time as far as wage of war against the United States, theres no country in the world that could. If you were going to have a sustained attack that was a war, it would have to come from canning de or mexico, nowhere else. The short answer i have not seen anything that would argue against that. Even to support it, look at operation sea lion. The german attack of 24 miles to get across the english channel, no way the