Okay. So todays talk is on world war ii and why the sheryl man is as it was. Thats actually not a very good title but the best i could come up with when i was asked by rob, hey, will you give us a talk. I will do the obligatory shoutout, they are the people that asked me to come out here. We are a commercial enterprise. If you are interested in tanks, it is not a realistic simulation. On that, i would like to thank the nine mast for inviting me out here. Ive seen some of the other speakers that have spoken here. My god, there are high end personnel. I do not have any letters after my name, i do not teach at the university. I work for an unrealistic video game. Id like to thank them for taking this gamble and bringing this guy out who has no history what stover give you guys a talk. However, despite the disreputable background, as far as the academics are concerned, i promise you everything here is either sourced from the archives or as accurate as i make it. Im hoping this thing will come across. If cspan cant hear me, im sure they will make mention. The background. Initially i was asked to come and hear my midst of american armor talk. If you want to hear it go find it. I took some common conceptions. I said, look, these are the common conceptions and they are wrong. Because i had already given the talk, well modify it a little bit. Instead of how good is the tank. Thats the theory behind this. I dont know your knowledge level. Some of the speakers ive heard you here on the podcast are very high end. Every now and then its good to just go back to some of the low levels and make sure fundamentals are still good. Audience participation question number one. The rifle is the m1. What was better as a rifle . Pretty much nothing. You can make an argument but that wasnt as common. What was the better fighter than the mustang. A better carrier than the essex . We had the best. No other country had it. Some people say it won the war. Some say the jeep won the war. The other countries had their own area of expertise. As a general rule, anything that the u. S. Went to war with was the best in the world. It was out there. What happened . How did we go from the best at pretty much everything to this . Im going to argue that we did not get it wrong. There were very specific decisions made in the u. S. As to why the m4 ended up the way it was and over the course of the next hour or so, ive been asked to try to keep it to less than 60 minute, i dont think ill make it, but ill try. Hopefully youll get 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 . That finding was reversed in 2010. In paper entitled structural control of crystal nuclei by an egg shell protein. Current scientific thought indicates the answer to your chicken or egg question is the chicken. I bet youve learned something this evening. My mission is complete. Why do i ask . Any guesses . Sir . Okay. How would that apply to this talk . Most of the people are going by the information by looking back to what people are saying about it as opposed to looking at the moment its being done. That is an excellent point. Thats not the answer to this question, but it is a very good point. I was talking about british Army Operations in Northern Ireland to an extent i lived through. Its very interesting the different perspective involved in the matter or if youre dealing it after the fact objectively. Sir . Youre getting there. Thats deep. That is very deep. Here are your chicken and here are your egg. On the left side is symbol for army grand forces. These equipped the force. On the right hand side is the bomb of Ordinance Branch. Ordinance branch are the guys who developed the equipment. 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 . Okay. Who thinks that the Technology Drives what the doctrine does . A few more people. Believes he knows better than everybody else what the army needs. To quote him for those of you who cant read. Its not well understood that tactics are written around a weapon. Thus Field Operations do not generate ideas leading to new material and new piece of congresswomen must first be produced such as a machine gun before the tactics can be devised for the exploitation capability ies of the weapon. Its necessary for Ordinance Department to take a strong lead in the development of new equipment and get the help of those services in determining where its been best fit into battleField Operations. If you talk 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 Ground Forces would draw up the specifications and then be submitted to ordinance and ordinance would then Design Equipment to match what army grand forces wanted the equipment to do. I have a picture up there. We have users saying theyre in charge and developers saying they are in charge opinion both have reasonable arguments. This is the process today. Im very glad im not involved in procurement. This is the army side of it. You start off with an operational needs statement. This came from the fields. The second brigade said we need vehicles. Then the engineers went and built them a vehicle with the canon. Such operational need statements did exist in world war ii. It was one that said we want a device that you can fit onto a tank than when its driving along and 15 miles an hour it will detect a mind field befoe it hits the mine. If you go back to the start before the u. S. Joined world war ii, you can see what Army Ground Forces said and it was terrible. The u. S. Was starting from scratch. The problem is to determine the kind of equipments that will be needed most and manufactured in the hundreds, thousands or millions in time to be of use. Thats a quote. Note in time to be of use. You cant hang around watsing for the Perfect Piece of equipment. In january of 1940 before the Army Industrial College the chief of ordinance estimated that the development of a major item and 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 time line generally matches with the twodevelopment of piecf equipment by anybody else. 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 sustained. This means as few parks break as possible in order to reduce to need to ship spares over, the need to ship the spares, and all those consumables like pol, pet role, 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, from ft. Knox to ft. Campbell, the other end of kentucky. 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, 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. Were going to talk about not only why the sherman was designed 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 happened 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, so the army is getting experience with the 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 infantry who at the time was still in charge, 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 sheared 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 propelled. For the record, the chief of infantry said the best weapon to kill a tank is not a tank. 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. The light platoon was to be equipped with a 37millimeter. The heavy platoons would get the 75. So we have a t2, a t14, sorry, a t2e1, and a t8, designed to get a 37millimeter 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. Of we must have a selfpropelled antitank tank. 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 not to confuse it with the m6 didnt get the 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 enormous 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 two 30ton tanks instead of one 60ton tank. 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. If you look at the front of every m4, youll see holes for the fixed firing machine guns, which are entirely 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 gun sights. 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. First, primary sight, because the primary sight is up here. The linkages between the gun and sight were a little wobbly, so the solution was you add a new telescope that pops out the side here, a coaxial telescope, you now have a more accurate sight. Something 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 our 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. 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 . The rolls royce. A british engine. They did a better engine than we did. And the sixpounder was the same. The American Army looked and it its better than we have, lets make it. They made the 57millimeter m1. 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 if were shooting a round, were degrading our capability to kill infantry. So the 57millimeter fell out of service, not because it was foreign or anything, but just because it didnt work. So the replacement of the 3inch gun mounted on the m10, 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 you couldnt put it in 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 threeinch, the 76 was half the weight and the 90millimeter was the same 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 archives, you find actual transcripts of telephone calls in the archives. It had to be important enough to have somebody listening in and typing. You dont get that today, i dont think. He had a couple questions. The first question is how long is it . Im going to quote here. The only thing that worries me a little bit is this isnt going to throw us off in our present set up. So we can get to fighting. Im anxious to get m4 tanks with anything in them so we can go to fighting. If you have heard perfect is the enemy of good enough. Weve got a war to fight, we cant wait, wait, wait for this new development to come out. Guess what happens to the germans. 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 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 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 come up time and time again in the archives. However, by the middle of 1942, summer of 42, Ordinance Branched the designers managed to stuff the 76 into an m4. They sent it to the 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. It was a rush. They wanted 1,000 of these to partake in the invasion of north africa. By 1942, the biggest nastiest thing the germans had was the panther 4, which the 75 millimeter sherman was quite capable of dealing with. 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 sights 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 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. I talked about earlier. 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 an assault tank t14. Uses some of the developments of the m6. It likes kind of vaguely shermanesque. The u. S. Army did not want this thing for the same reason they didnt really want the m6. The british didnt really want this. They said were going to build the excelsior, 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. Inaccessible components. 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 test in ft. Knox, thats an american crewman. 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 motor in the matilda. They looked at it, pretty good idea. A british guy called Alex Richardson was present for the demonstration of the german counterparts and they didnt do well. To quote his letter back to the uq, these tanks have made us a laughingstock 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 worst 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 country to the top and then back down around for the same amount of distance. 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 vehicles into battle. At any rate enjoying the first 2,000 miles of their life. If equipped with centaurs it might be in a continuous state of anxiety as to whether enough of his tanks might reach the battlefield to carry out the normal task expected of his unit. 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 finally get to the motor pool, are 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. 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. It wasnt a full battalion which then had to stand down for maintenance, which some other countries would have to do. And if you were a unit, lets say you were an Infantry Division and you were relying on support of your attached tank battalion, 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 m4 serial number 26548, which you just randomly took off the line and tried it out to make sure that the Quality Control was still 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. Cckw. On the road, its called a 2. 5ton 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 oneton 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 17tank m41a company 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 them. It requires trucks. It requires mechanics to maintain the trucks. It requires ships to maintain the trucks. Requires ships to carry spare parts to maintain the trucks 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 spare tanks for the old tanks. 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. They would stage raids to get their spare parts. Mechanics will be dispatched to rail stations to steak their claim. 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. The u. S. Brought spare parts, they brought lost of them, and they all fit. And tanks were rarely down for long. 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. Done. A couple hours. A panther in this, 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 generally 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 on the pershing. Generally in 1943. You take a tank with a 76millimeter gun. A lower overall silhouette than the m4, 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 in theory wonderful. It would spin on a dime, go backwards, go 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. 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 them were small things like the tallest gunner when hes sitting in the seat could not see through the sight. The sight was too high. Most would be easy fixes, some would not. Well come back to this. So this would increase ergonomics and increase firepower and survivability. 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 knew would be available in numbers or you could take a gamble. Go with what could potentially be a substantially 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 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 tongusten. 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 germans 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 came up with a 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 tank that would 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 tank was now in production his design would be produced. The british ended up going with the centurion 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 the crews didnt want it. He wanted it for his doctrine. He said, i could get a pick axe and chap through this. They got a reputation for killing tanks with the same 76 millimeter gun that the sherman had. The sherman was quite capable killing tanks as the m 14. What was it good at . It was reliable, worked, you knew it would do what it was supposed to. Heres an example of design. The gunner in all three tanks are watching you, panther, panther 4, sherman. Which one is better at ambushing the enemy . Its a simple design. I dont know why the germans did not put a roof mounted sight on their tanks. But the first tank to fire in an engagement wins four times out of five. Hmm. He will get the first shot off. Then ergonomics. This is the inside of a panther, still from a video. To get that round out im crouched down like this, manipulating the round in. On the m4 sitting down in my chair very comfortably, down, up and in. Survival rights. Sherman is a death trap. In the entire eu war they lost that many tankers killed the entire war. In all of north africa, sicily and italy, 80 tankers were killed. You think about the reputation, amazingly low. Its amazingly how easy it is to get out of these and i have my, 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 out and get out like this. You see thilm getting out like this. A very survivable versatile tank. You can do anything with this thing. Projected developments, i can go on about this forever. Bottom line, americans didnt think it was a good idea. Im not sure it was a good idea in hindsight. They would have been better off building the 76. They didnt, why they have a reputation. Germans had infrared. The americans had infrared. They just realized it didnt work. When the germans fired it they realized it didnt work after they spent the time and effort putting it into the field. Then it didnt work and they took it off. This is a target range timer, basically it applies horizontal lead to your gun. This is an otograph. If youre in the middle of north africa, how do you know where you are . This is a moving map. The tank figures out where its going by the compass and odometer. Not battle ready enough. Great idea. The americans were willing to develop and experiment and try. If it wasnt guaranteed to work, if you couldnt rely on your equipment the troops would not have confidence in the equipment and stop using it. Whats the point . Troops who are confident in their equipment will fight better. Everything the american armor forces used was reliable. The end result pretty much is the proof is in the pudding. The important thing, finish one sentence, shall we say, it is important to note 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 defeat the enemy while protecting u. S. Lives, so on. The m4 was not built to face off in tank duels, not purely face off in tank duels. They look at the sherman and compare it tactically to a german tank. Some people look at it operationally. Few people look at it strategically. In the grand scheme of things, designers did not care 70 years ago about penetration values and armor values for war gaming statistics or things like that. All they wanted to do was build an effective vehicle i used the word effectively again. In that i would argue the m4 did exactly what it was supposed to do. End of. What are your questions . For all the tanks folks, please leave any tanks questions for after this. This q a is on the design. Its wellknown that engineering has to be done at the production site because the production workers have to be able to talk to the engineers and back and forth. This wasnt done in wartime, the engineers were stateside and 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 Division did send personnel to the food units and even endeavors go on fact finding tours and ask whats going on in interviewing folks and do surveys by mail and send a telegram and say, hey, these are a list off 25 questions we have for you, what are your responses and feed those back as well, as well as sending liaison person permanently attached. Theres always communication, the sites are wonky or, hey, we need this. The problem seems to have been a lack of realization at the using level what is required. I go back to six armored saying we dont want 76 millimeter tanks and probably because they never met anything that needed a 76 millimeter gun. If people dont realize what they need it doesnt matter the communication with designers. They were always going we want a bigger gun and mobile engine. The problem is he wanted equipment not battle worthy enough. Thats probably where the distinction failed. Both sides were both talking to each other but just talking from different perspectives. If theres any conflict, that is where it is. Thank you. Im going to ask a tangential question raid by your presentation as far as what were the two biggest problems for the u. S. Going to war, that was the atlantic and the pacific. General butler wrote the book war is a racket. One of the things i always raised 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 youve got the lines of supply and logistics of crossing the atlantic and pacific to the north of canada and mexico to the south. In your time in the military and studying military history have you ever heard an argument that defeats that with regards to Strategic Planning for war as to whether we should not be more of defensive nation versus progressive nation . Doesnt that go back to where was the money going during the hard times in the 30s . It was going to the navy. If priority number one of the military was to defend the u. S. Territory, the navy was the organization that was going to do it. I have not heard any argument saying that, yes, the opposition can come attack us on land and overthrow us, once theyve gotten past the navy. Is that where youre going . No. The fact is that to have an 18wheeler in the coast guard, you might be able to attack but cant sustain that attack for any period of time, as far as waging war against the United States. Theres no country in the world that could. If they were going to have a sustained attack that was war, it would have to either come from canada or mexico, nowhere else. The short answer to your question, i have not seen anything that would possibly argue against that. Even to support it, look at operation sea lion, the german attack of what is it 24 miles to get just across the english channel, no way they could sustain an invasion like that either, the royal navy would have a significant issue with it assuming they could come up with plan. Just getting to the firefly. Yes. There was a demand, i would imagine there must have been a demand in the American Army for something at least similar to the firefly. I know in normandy, theres the famous story that one firefly took out six panthers with seven shots in five minutes. And then with the tiger, there they should have known the germans were going to attempt to keep on upgrading the tiger as well. So wasnt that a case, as far as the firefly 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, people in armored regiments said they needed it. They did. Theres two problems here. The need for a bigger gun was certainly identified. There were two solutions to it. One was a 76 and the other was a 90. If you look at the weight and size of the gun, the actual equivalent to the 17 pounder is the 90 millimeter. The ordinance tested it side by side with the 90 and decided the 90 was actually the better gun, which i think is substantially the correct move. The difference, though, is that the british stuffed their 17 pounder into a tourette that the american Armored Forces thought the 76 was too big for. So if the americans thought the 76 was too big to effectively fight this firefly, what would the 17 pounder do . This is people looking on the outside from the inside. The firefly, his hand is here and head is here and left hand is here with the elevation trying to get on the target. Ive done a video on the firefly. The rounds are huge. You only have five to hand and they take forever to load. I will come to part two in a moment. Yes, the firefly knocked out six tanks in five minutes. How many times did a sherman, with a much higher rate of fire, destroy seven pounds of force, in three minutes. Or more likely, six machine gun nests in three minutes and firefly really sucked as a tank. Firefly was a tank kill bitter generally sucked as a tank. The other problem from the american perspective, they acknowledge we need a bigger gun. What they didnt acknowledge the bigger gun they were building was not big enough. They didnt realize that until they put it into combat and then had the famous eisenhower quote the ordinance are telling me the 76 will kill everything and now youre telling me it wont knock out a damn thing, which actually in reality is not true as evidenced by the fact that lots of german americans got blown out by german tanks. Its a system of system. Artillery is obscuring the panther while m4 goes around the side. Look at an example of 75 tanks throwing panthers which they should not have done. The firefly in itself, not only was cramped, but you also have the problem 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. Thats why they started the Rearmament Program as well. We want a bigger gun but dont want your bigger gun because it doesnt fit with our logistical supply. The one exception is 100 fireflies the end of the war. The question is, why did the u. S. Order these to be made . Theres a couple of interesting problems. First, as mentioned, the capacity. Youre now adding a 17 pounder ammunition supply line system to your entire army for 100 tanks. What good is 100 tanks going to do to the entire u. S. Army . I think this is pie pohypothi think the polish army ended the war with 76 military tanks because they got their supply of replacement tanks from the americans. If the americans had fireflies in the depots they had gotten from the british they could replenish their allied units with the correct type of equipment. This is speculation but it has happened. The biggest single foreign purchasers of the centurion was the u. S. Government but they bought them to give to the danish and dutch and everybody else. Thats a kind of longwinded way of saying firefly 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 m 36 with the mind or h vac ammo that manufacturer made it in large numbers but there werent large tanks to shoot at in the first place. Thank you. Hello. If Belton Cooper was here, the author of death trap, what would you say to try to change his mind or debate him . My other question is if the u. S. Military had gone ahead and produced the pershing and not the sherman, what type of problems do you think would it have produced on the battlefield . The problems of pershing were the same as panther. We saw how good panther was in combat and why should we expect pershing any different. You would have lots of vehicles broken down. Theoretically they could work. The americans capture the bridge and the bridge is damaged. The infantry cross over, fantastic, they need tank support. There happen to be pershings on the far side. The pershing cant cross the bri bridge but the other can. The engineers had a veto in tank design as well. They would pass it around to logistics, hey, armored force want this tank, do you guys have a problem with it. Transport guys look at the dimensions and say, yeah, but it wont fit through a British Railway bridge and the concern was bridging capacity, would it hold the weight . Pershing, you have a lame duck in a few circumstances is far better than a sherman and most circumstances would not for the level of combat going on at the time. As technology and time develops you get to korea and it doesnt matter. To answer your first question, what would i sell, all these tankers you keep meeting that say this is a death trap. How many of them were not dead . [ laughter ] the entire premise is based on confirmation bias. All he sees is destroyed tanks, destroyed american tanks. He does not see the tanks not destroyed or the german tanks destroyed because why does he see them . Hes making his perception on a small subset, not a complete subset of the Data Available to him. Whether or not i could actually convince a man at the time maybe 90 something years old hes wrong, you smile and nod and let him keep thinking, i guess. One question is on the famous funnies, dday, which is, ive read, is that those minefield dangerous, was that part of the initial design the sheryl man was designed for those kind of attachments . No. Theres actually a pretty good book about hobart. I cant remember the name of it. Its yea think, all it is about hobart and his command of the 79th. The thing to remember, these funnies started with valentines. The ideas were worked out with the british tanks and modified. There were funnies from churchill. There were churchill funnies, but they took the sherman because its the next tank being built, can we do the same thing with the sherman . The answer was, yes, we can because its such a wonderful tank. A quick question, how much of advantage is the power travers on the sherman . A lot. You may not have seen it. I just published an article last week, i have another one coming out tomorrow, about the average combat range correction, not the average, median combat range. Average is 700 yards. Median is actually about 300 yards. If you are defending you have a line of tanks, you can have a couple of hundred meters between each tank. You have one over there and another 300 yards over there, that is a 60 degree slew you have to cover which means you need a nice big wide optic sherman had and travers 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, the first person to shoot will win. Sherman gets over on the flank shot of the panther, hell get the shot off before the german tank will reply back. Yes, very important. Sir, bob perillo, 10th fleet, excellent, informative and exciting talk. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. One minor correction, Gordon Welchman said the britt the americans were better in crypto and radar, slightly better than the brits, but that the brits were better slightly better in azdec and magic and 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 are defeat some tigers with some armored cars because the shermans were better for urban warfare than the tigers. My question is armored cars were very good in urban warfare, and we had the combat cars, why didnt we go into the armored cars . The combat car was simply a workaround. By law, the cavalry corps could not have a tank. They had a tank and refused to call it a tank. Combat car. In terms of armored cars, the army looked at it it as well. There was a vehicular called the trackless tank, tested about 1941. Initial testing was very good. It was fast, quiet, had all the advantages of an armored car, but there were some again, the reason why until very recently armored cars were not as prevalent, when it came down to general purpose combat our urban terrain was not as common as today. Today, 70 of population are in urban terrain. Back then it wasnt the case. You had to have your tank capable of going offroad very are well. This is why the wield Tank Destroyers, i showed you a few of them. They went all the way up to 3 inch guns. A lot of Tank Destroyers but never got to the same mobility as a tank. Why they never went anywhere. As for the armored cars i can only assume the same thing. They had the stewart and chafee. The british liked their armored cars, i dont know why. Ive not looked into it. I tend to agree that, yes, because the end result was we won, ergo whatever we made was appropriate. Your argument in the process, you look at the logistics and liberty ships and the rail. Thats not an argument. The argument is what you got at the end result when you go into battle. Yes, the m4 is adequate but there are battles lost because it was only adequate, operation goodwood and operation torch, these battles were lost. If youre going to win the war sooner, those battles were lost. Whatever was decided way back when its not an argument to say you cant put it on a rail line or ship, you make them fit the tank because you understand theres 88s out there and theres bigger tanks, you should have known intelligence should have known that. To say that its good enough, no, it isnt. The end users, i have a couple. One, i dont know if torch is really a loss. Goodwood i would argue did not fail because of tank design, it failed 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 and had to send tanks in unsupported. With the unfortunate and inevitable consequence. He made a gamble the opposition werent as heavily enforced as they were. He didnt have a choice, had to make the attack because goodwin was a decoy for cobra. The person in the tank at the time probably does not care about all the lo gigistical thi that ended up with him being there. The american surveys, i have not seen a british one, the american surveys said we can handle the amount of armor we have, we need a better gun. In this case of goodwood, it was 88. A little more armor probably wouldnt have made a difference against 88s anyway. That argument is academic. The other point, yes, its not very fair for the tanker to say its fine for the tanker to say, i wish i had more armor and a bigger gun. How about this is buddy a kilometer that way an infantry gun about to charge a machine gun nest, why cant the army build us tanks light enough to get two tanks here not only does joe have a tank, i also have a tank. 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 in the u. S. Actually trying to ship these things overseas. Is it unfortunate for the guy there . Yes. No two ways about it. Is it still the better decision . Maybe not. If youre going to come to the dinner afterwards i will happily continue to engage you on this. Well move on to another question. Thank you. How uniform was the ammunition, given the different situations, the tanks were fighting in . The as near as i can tell, it was pretty uniform, the project tiles for 3 inch and 76 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, 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 of apc . Is the working . This was in april of 45, said our problem is our tanks havent found any enemy tanks to shoot at. Again, i put this up on the facebook page. It is possibly an exaggeration. I dont know if i can answer the question other than with sufficient ammunition of all types except for hvap, not designed in july of 44 and only once said, oh, my god we need better hitting the ordinance brand say, ahha, higher velocity over bigger gun. How do we get higher velocity . Lightweight shot, how do we do this . Thomason, develop this. They designed it in a month flat prototypes being tested. Still too late. To the earlier question, that was one they could have fixed and given the American Tankers a better gun but they didnt. The American Tankers would have been justifiably going, why didnt you think this. Im saying this not knowing the uses of the tungsten produced tools . I dont know. My personal opinion is they could have fixed the ammunition problem and give them a better gun. You mentioned the end of your talk about survivability and the crews were talking about survivability rather than being brewed up. Did the planners ever get into sloped armor . Did that ever come wake up them . Okay. I refer you to the front of this room. Is it sloped . Not as sharply, no, but it is thicker to compensate. The effective armor between a t 34 and sherman is almost to the millimeter the same. The sidearm more is not sloped on a sherman. It is for the t34. This brings you to automat coup problems. Because of all the armor. Where do you put your fuel and ammo and spare parts . You look at the modern tank and the sherman was sloped on the sides because it was not worth it. Yes, good evening. Good evening. Im thinking about the coliapathy. You see pictures of them. Germans were using half tanks. What is the theory about putting it as a lighter easier to produce vehicle . The answer to your question, i have no idea and i fully agree with you. I have found reports in the archive basically saying, why are we doing this . It must have made good sense to somebody and i dont know who that was. Im sorry see. As somebody who has several version of sherman to his miniature collection, thank you for a great presentation. The tanks may have been the same but the way the armors divisions structured was not and differed with the United States armies and other armies, talk about how the Armored Divisions were structured first within the u. S. System and heavy Armored Divisions versus the other later ones compared to some of the other ones that fought. Im not sure im actually able. Im a technical guy more than doctrine organizational guy which i probably shouldnt be. The thing i will say with the u. S. Tank philosophy, you have the difference between the Armored Division and independent tank battalions. The tank battalion was designed to do the punching. They used the same tank for both roles. I guess you could make an argument. Germans had heavy tanks and medium tanks and russianed had heavy tanks and medium tanks. Did the u. S. Get something wrong here by not having tanks for the two different roles. If we could build a heavy tank that worked they couldnt because they tried. If they could, would they have shipped them overseas . Im not sure there is an actual answer to that. Im sorry, i dont feel confident going into the details when you moved from a Light Company to three Medium Companies and so on, standing up here, i would need to get my books. Okay. In the 1940s, the standard American Railroad flat car with a 50 ton car, that was the basic building block, that was the stateoftheart car for the time. There were cars with lesser capacities, how did that car limit to this design . All i know is that the document i found in the archives, theyre actually talking about the future of heavy tanks, this document is actually written in about 1950. It stated if my memory is serving on the correct quote is that these 12,000 cars were of sufficient capacity and width to carry the m 26. So i dont know why you would have a narrower than standard flat car. But apparently they were they did exist because otherwise the Ordinance Branch would not have said both Weight Capacity and width. Either way, the bottom line was the Ordinance Branch did not believe they had sufficient flat car capacity in the u. S. To support significant deployment of heavy tanks in the 1950s let alone in the 1940s. Thank you. [ applause ] news and policy issues that impact you coming up tuesday morning, a discussion of the republican Tax Reform Bill Congress is set to pass this week with Laura Davidson and reuters correspondent amanda becker. Be sure to watch it live at 7 00 eastern tuesday morning. Join the discussion. 75 years ago in june of 1942, the United States sank four japanese aircraft carriers at the battle of midway a decisive victory that changed the course of world war ii in the pacific in pearl harbor. Up next, navy bet vans who participated in the battle of midway talk about their experiences hosted by the American Veterans center, this is 50 minutes. My name is tim holbert, im the executive director of the American Veterans center. This is our 20th event. We want to thank the maiden memorial, great partners. My thing to kick things off with all the students with us this weekend, i really encourage you to take all of this in from where we start with veterans of the battle of midway 75 years ago through 45 years of American Military history. This is our past and your future and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Make the most of it. Id like to welcome admiral frank thorpe to say a few words of welcome before we get started. Good morning. Welcome to the navy memorial. As you all know, our mission here is to honor, recognize and celebrate the men and women of the sea services, past, present and future. And to educate the American Public about your service. Its actually a tremendous honor for us to be here. On a day like today we use the term sea services. Were all in it together. I think these gentleman right here represent the idea of being all in it
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