An officer. He spent one year in iraq as a platoon leader and later a oneyear tour in afghanistan. Nicholas moran is also a graduate of the u. S. Army command and general staff college. Hes been working as San Francisco bays war gaming americas in the house tanker and historian since 2012 and has the nickname of the chiefton. Might want to remember that. His first book on the development of Tank Destroyers is scheduled for release in the first half of 2018. Nick is known for articles and reviews of tanks inside and out. Lots on youtube called inside the chief tans hatch. Or there is there is this video cast on spanns American History tv. Ladies and gentlemen, nicholas moran. [ applause ] thats about as high as it goes. Good evening oh, boy. Todays talk is whitey sherman as it was. Thats not a very good title but it was the best i could come up when i was asked, hey, will you give us a talk. So im going to do the obligatory shoutout. The people who paid for me to come out here. We already commercial enterprise. If youre interested in tank games, its great. Its not a realistic simulation. On that, i would like to thank the organization for inviting me. Ive seen some of the other speakers who have spoken here and theres some highend personnel. I do not have any letters after my name. I do not teach for 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 from as far as the academics are concerned i do see that everything in here is either sourced from the archives or is as accurate as i could make it. Im hoping this thing will actually come across. Well see. If spann cant hear me im sure they will make mention. So the background. Initially i was asked to come and do my midst of america talk. Its on youtube. If you want to listen to it, google myths of American Army and youll find it. In this i took some of the common conceptions about the m4 tank and to an extent the pershing and said look these are the common perceptions and they are wrong. Since id already given the talk, well go with why is the tank the way it is . So thats the theory behind this. I dont know your knowledge level. Again, some of these speakers, ive heard you hear on the podcasts are very high earned, but every now and then its good to go back to the low levels and make sure that the fundamentals are still good. So audians participation question number one the rifle is the m1 durant. What was better out in service, Common Service as a rifle . Pretty much nothing. You can make an argument maybe but that wasnt as common. The m1 was probably the best piece of equipment of its type in the world to and the u. S. Produced it. What was a better fighter nan the mustang . A better destroyer than the gearing, a better carrier than the essex, a better artillery fuse. We have the best. [inaudible]. All right. Land based fighter. [inaudible]. Or the noncombat stuff. No other country had the handy talky, the cckw, deuce and a half. Hashtag enspoke won the war. Some say the tank won the war. The record i think was six days in california. So you can go on and on with a couple of exceptions. I mean the other countries had their own areas of expertise. We didnt touch the british with cryptography, the germans had a few advantages, so on and so forth. But as a gem 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 that at pretty much everything to th this . Im going to argue that actually we did not get it wrong and that there were very specific decisions made in the u. S. As to why the m4 ended up the way that it was and over the course of the next hour or so, ive been asked to keep it to less than 60 minutes. I dont think ill make it but ill try. Hopefully youll get an understanding of the levels of thought that went into the design process. So audience participation question number two hands up for the chicken. Who votes the chicken . Who votes the egg . Hmm. All right. In 2006, the university of norich concluded was the egg. However, that was reversed in 2010 in a paper called structural control of crystal nukely ie by an egg shell protein. Current scientific thought therefore indicates that the answer is the chicken. So i bet youve learned something. My mission is complete. Now, why do i ask . Any guesses . Sir. [inaudible]. Ok. So how would that apply to this talk . Most people are going by the information of the sherman by looking back to hearing what people are saying about it as opposed to looking at it at the moment. That is an excellent appointment. That is not the answer to this question. But it is actually a very good point. I was mentioning earlier how i was talking about british operations in Northern Ireland which to an extent i lived through but i did an assessment last year for the army and its interesting, the different perspective whether youre involved with the matter or dealing with it after the fact objectively. Sir . [ inaudible question ] youre getting there. The chicken and the egg. [ inaudible ] the same thing. Change this process from the creation of the egg to the chicken. Its actually the same thing. That is deep. That is very deep. Here are your chicken and here are your egg. On the left side is a symbol for Army Ground Forces. These are the guys who develop doctrine that equipped the force. On the righthand side is the bomb of the ordinanancordnance. Should we match the technology or should technology be geared toward whatever the doctrine requires . So heres your next question, audience participation question number 3 who thinks that doctrine drives the technological design . Ok. Who thinks that the Technology Drives what the does. Ok. Few more people. Who dont care. [inaudible]. So this issed thattian barns. Ive referred to him as the Mad Scientist of the army. He believes he knows better than anybody else what the army needs. To quote him for those of you in the back cant read. It is not well understood that tactics are written around a weapon. Thus, Field Operations ordinarily do not jen race ideas leading to new materiel. Mp gun must be developed before the exploitation of the weapon. For these reasons its necessary for Ordnance Department to take a strong lead in the development of new equipment and then to get the help of those services in determining where the weapon best fits into battleField Operations. So if you talked ordnance, Technology Drives doctrine and 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 about Army Ground Forces thought. The bottom line here is that Army Ground Forces would draw up the specifics and they would then be submitted to ordnance and order nabs would then Design Equipment to match what Army Ground Forces wanted the equipment to do. The quote is from the written history of Army Ground Forces. I have a picture up there. The Ground Forces existed as an entity but well leave that aside. If youre curious, just to be clear, we have the user saying theyre in charge, the developer is saying theyre in charge and both are reasonable arguments. This is the process today, if youre curious. I have had to learn this as parts of a majors course and im very glad im not involved in procurement. This is the armys side of it. If you can understand this youre a better man than i. But the bottom line is 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 a 30 millimeter strikers that are now being fielded in europe. This came from the field, the second brigade said we need a canon capable of engaging the mps. Then they built a weapon with a cannon. Such operational needs statements did occur. One wanted a device that you can fit on to a tank. When its driving at 15 miles an hour, it will detekt the mine field before it hits the mine. These requests were being fielded from the field to ordnance. Lot of times ordnance did develop materiel that met the failing objectives of the force. If we go back to the start, before the u. S. Joined world war ii you can see that Army Ground Forces said 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 needed most and can be manufactured in the required hundreds, thousands, or millions in time to be of use. And again thats a quote from agf. Note in time to be of use. You cant hang around waiting for the Perfect Piece of equipment. In january of 1940 in a lecture before the Army Industrial College he estimated that the development of a major item of materiel required a minimum of three years from requirement to fielding. Now, in the ex genesis of the war they cut that down to usually one and a half to two years. Sometimes as little as one. This matches with the development of any piece of equipment developed by anyone else, the british, the germans, the russians, about one and a half to two years. Yes. Audience participation question number 4 in one word each what are the two biggest problems facing the United States as it prepared to fight world war ii. [inaudible]. Production, logistics, shipping. You guys are very close. Youre bouncing around the right idea. [inaudible]. Bingo. [inaudible]. 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 factor. It has to get there and when it is there, it must also be sustained. So this means that you need to have as few parts break as possible in order to reduce need for spare parts to be shipped over. Youve got the consumables, like pol, petroleum, oil, lube cant across the ocean. Note also that unlike the germans, who could if they had to do a complete refush on the tank, they could ship it back to the factor, so could the soviets if they had need to. We do not. Anything we sent over, it was there to fight until it was discarded or destroyed. So repair for the u. S. Is not an option. You have to think about the entire chain from the factory floor to the battle field. Heres an example of one of the problems. In 1948, there were 12,122 flat cars in the United States which would carry a pershing tank. In may of 1948 they had an exercise. They wanted a battalion of they are r per shings. It took 40 days to collect the flat cars. That was in 1948. If you go back to 42, how many flat cars were capable of carrying a 45 to 50ton snank and Everything Else that had to be carried to get to the ship. Then when you got to the ship yard, you have liberty ships that with weve been building one every 10 days. What is the lifting capacity of a liberty ship koreacrane . Arguably, you probably could but could you get them in sufficient numbers to have an effect . So again, in the simplest world, what use is having the best equipment in the fworld you cant get it to the fight or if it gets to the fight, it breaks down. No use. You just wasted all that effort to get a tank overseas just to see it break down and sit in the 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 gem criteria for the development and approval of new equipment. The first is genuine battle need. It was reluctant to develop any equipment not considered essential to increase combat efficiency. It the ended to oppose the development of new equipment, which, perhaps desired, was not absolutely essential and might prove to simply be a luxury or excess baggage. This was a clearcut policy of gem mcnair. It was eventually adopted as War Department policy. So who determines battle need . Who determines what is an essential piece of equipment versus what is a luxury equipment . So one school of thought said the Theater Commanders. The other school of thought said the decision should be centralized in the u. S. Who thinks they went with Theater Commanders . Who thinks they went with centralized in the u. S. You are all wrong. [ inaudible question ] i see where youre going on that. That was done centrally, yes, but once it was set up, we will have so many personnel, so many tanks. The actual nature to have those tanks with kbrooichlts to them was not centralized. I should explain. So the reasoning from the idea behind the guys who wanted to centralize decision was that Theater Commanders might be too strongly influenced by the limiting local conditions of their own practical situation which seems a little distrusting in the reasoning of four star generals. They also believed that Theater Command or recommendations were colored by the gas 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 Information or additional equipment. And there is some evidence to support this. For example, the Armored Division in october of 44 who reported they had received no tapgs and had no particular desire for any. The 75 had gotten all the way across france. Why rock the boat if what they had was working . The War Department and 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 kai tear on, 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 it was rug ed to meet the rigors of war. The thing will break down. Forget it will happen. Now there is perhaps a subcountry 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 m 3 or m 10 Tank Destroyers. So the situation of tanks. So what we have is an m 2 medium that the u. S. Started the war with and it needs a fair bit of track attention. The u. S. Had what has been called the cult of the machine gun. The infantry were owning the tanks. The cavalry had combat cars. Them basically tanks. And they were interested in the tanks ability to deal with enemies. As you can see how did i do that . Machine guns everywhere, deflectors on the back. It would deflect and shoot down the trench that you were walking past. That was an antitank gun and it was 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. The main weapon was the machine gun. 15 tons by policy because that was the average weight of an american rr bridge at the time road bridge. Im sorry. In 1939 the u. S. Conducted a series of tests to determine if machine guns or a 75 millimeter round would be more effective. Survey says 75 millimeter. Good to know. But what theyve done is theyve added a 75 into the hull of an m 2 medium and it should start looking a bit familiar. Then this happened. That is photograph taken near sedon. 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. Forget it. You need something bigger. Fortunately theyd already tested the 75 millimeter. Fantastic. The second problem and this is where the lecture is going to take a fork into two tracks and they created Tank Destroyers as a result. Were going to talk about why the sherman was designed the way it was but also about the tds. Solution, build m 3s. You take the 7 a 5 and the m 2, add a new tour et on it and youve made an m 3 tank. Nothing is new on this tank. Its improving on something they know will work. This will dominate for the next while. They built arsenal. If you dont know knudson, look him up. He talked with chrysler and they built the army tank. Initially they only wanted 506. The problem was that the russians and the british were in such demand for these tapgs that they couldnt stop producing m 3s to switch to the m4. So they built about 6500 of them. Something similar happened with the six pounder. The british six appointed every was developed before world war ii but after the fall of france they realized, we can either not produce them while we tool up or we just build a two pounder. The british went with what they had ready to go. The soviets, the same. It happened the jer maps invaded, well go with what we have. There were gradual improvements in the form of new stabilizers, the chrysler multibank engine tank. Some came cast huls, so the army is getting experience with a cast hull tank. Of interest, bamps was not in favor of keeping the 37 millimeter on the turret. He was taken to go with a turret si. 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 pansers, because what was happening wasnt working. The idea of antitank guns was not working. And the solution, as i go past a couple of hidden slides, was you figure you had to cut these off for loss. There was no way you could put enough antitank guns to stop a concentrated bomber attack. The slulgs was to have mobile tank guns that could meet the attack at the point of penetration and the idea was these would beat up all the tanks. Hence you have the Tank Destroyer branch. If you look at the manuals and the doctrine, they were never to be used in the attack. Not everything was a Tank Destroyer. That could be an antitank gun. I have a video on it as well if you google my Youtube Channel which describes the difference between an antitank gun and a Tank Destroyer. This is another problem of the u. S. 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 found in the archives. It is a declassified fofana of an antitank rock which failed to stop the tank. You can see where the tank sche sheered the rock. The u. 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 and constructed them in 1939. A little late to the party. Now you have the question, do you want these fast mobile antiTank Destroyers, do you want them to be towed guns. But go with it. The thinking was that these towed antitank guns will be hard to spot. They will be the movieser of the tank. They used the comparison of battleships versus coastal the artillery. And the fact that these things are much, much cheaper than tanks. You didnt feel im going to come back to this a couple of times. But money was a big problem for the army procurement. Buy war bonds, do this. We need money to fight. If you can make a cheap Tank Destroyer better for the army than a really expensive tank retroyer. But in the end, the head of the branch won out. All the dank destroyers will be mobile and self propelled. The chief of up fan tri said the best weapon to kill a tank was another tank. This was in 40 or 41. What i got here is a couple of examples of designs just for the light platoon of the Tank Destroyer companies. And the light platoon was to be equipped with a 37 millimeter. And so we have a t 2, a t 14, a thats a t 8. All designed to get a 37 millimeter into the fight. These are also good motor carriages. T 33, t 22, t 21 and an m 3. Many different designs were tried out to fit the requirement. The doctrine requirement of we must have selfpropelled antitank gun. Of interest, this Tank Destroyer was not approved for production but the army liked it and it turned into the army gray hound. The final winner was the m4. Its the t 21, a fargo three quarter ton. Got the mike on the back. Selected for production not because it was the best but because with it was the first to meet allel requirements. It turned out that the t 8 and t 14 were better vehicles but you had to have something in the field to fight the enemy. This was it. Developed as the m4. Then somebody realized, hang on a second, we just named the m4 tank. So they came up with the m 6. They sebltd it to africa where they were deemed incapable and were withdrawn from service. Masses of development was going on to meet one single tactical requirement, which all cost money. Back in tank land, the m 6, obviously, whoever got the memo about renaming the m4 didnt get the same memo. 60 tons, three and a half inches of armor and a three inch gun which at the time was considered to be the biggest gun anybody in the world was trying to put into a tank. It tushld out not to be, but that was a thing. You have a 37 millimeter and thousand horsepower radial engine. Very simple transmissions. There was a hydraulic, an electric, so on. But it used a Suspension System. You cant see it. I refer you back to the earlier issues about flat cars and ship cranes. It didnt work. So devers, the head of Armored Forces said look, due to its tremendous weight and limited tactical use there is no requirement in the army for a heavy tank. The increase in the power of the armament does not except for the heavy armor. And that was assume they could 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 every of them, theyll be holes they were useless but the americans kept them, anyway, for a while. There are two things to note. Its all about reliability and sustainability, so everything in here has been done before. The engine was used and known to work for the m 3, Suspension System, the 75 millimeter, known to work for the m 3. There were a couple of improvements, a new gearbox, a new stabilizer system, so on and so forth. How easy is it to main tape it . These with bolts. You simply up bolt the front of this tank and the front comes off with your final drives and your transmission. Very easy to maintain. If you have a problem with the tension system, 18le bolts to swap out. Try doing that in a panther or a t 24. Its not easy. Everything fits from the factory. The british tank guy made mention in his book of to never ever seeing a vice in an engineers work bench in the u. S. Factories because the only respect you would have a device is to hold a piece of equipment while mod fiving that piece of equipment. If you did your job righting 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. If you compare it with, say, germany, go on youtube, find a video by john parshall, the navy guy, about the construction techniques in a german factory in world war ii. Everything was made to fit the tank. If it didnt fit theyd weld a piece on. The tank is also reasonably well armored so the front slope oh, the t 34 had front are slope tanks. American tanks didnt if you take its into account, its almost as thickly armored as a tiger is. Theres like one centimeter difference. This is pretty tough tank. It will kill pretty much anything on the battlefield. It is easy to drive. It is 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 tapgs that were in the factor in 42. The reports start coming back and theyre glowing. From the british, the tanks have made a great impression on everyone and the troops like them. The long gun is accurate. The sights are considerably better on the ground. I cant do the english accent. Users are giving unstinted fries all american equipment, particularly m4. Maybe the irish guards which embodies all desired improvements. Would stress again we receive rerliest large numbers of m4 regard lest of loss of tools. Room for improvement. The first problem was the primary site. The linkages, because the primary sight is up here. The link ajs from the gun and the sight. The solution you add add new telescope that pops out the side here, having a more accurate sight. Something i dont know what they were thinking. There was no if hatch for the loader. It took them nine months to you to drill a hole in the roof. If there is 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. Armo armour. Minor kbrooichlts. German tanks suffered a multitude of changes. The americans did the same thing. We changed tapgs rammedly. Moving on to guns. The 57 millimeter was not invented here and youll hear that argument. The americans very proud people, they are or you could say deano phobic. They dont believe anybody else can make anything as well as the americans can. That is patently untrue. The british made a better engine than we did. The six pounder was the same. The American Army looked at the six pounder and said better antitank mp than we have. The idea was the idea was could we put this into a tank, into this m7 or t49 Tank Destroyer. The idea was that you have a high velocity which made it more accurate, 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 round loses penetration, the 75 is still better. Armor force said if were shooting a round were degrading our capability to kill infantry so the 57 millimeter fell out of service, not because it was foreign, but just because it didnt work. The replacement the 3 inch gun mounted on the m10 which was another interim vehicle. General brews in Tank Destroyer branch did not want Something Like this, he wanted something as hard hitting as a tank but much faster and more mobile but you have a war to fight. The t49 67 70 was still in development. So m10 it was, but as an interim vehicle it had to be cheap. So theres no turret traverse motor in this vehicle because youre trying to keep the costs down. Again, its using the same bogies, same sprocket wheels, same engines in the back as the m4. So theyre trying to take proven equipment and make their vehicles with that. The problem with the 3 inch was that you couldnt put it into a sherman. They tried. The initial requirement in 1941 was put a 3 inch gun into the sherman but it was too heavy, didnt work, they had to wait until Something Else came along. And that Something Else with a 76 millimeter. So what happened was you had new alloys were created and 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 3 inch the 76 was half the weight and the 19 millimeter was the same weight. Thats why you got that divergence there. So general devers was notified of the 76 by a telephone call. You will find transcripts in the archives. You dont get that today i dont think. Devers first question was how long is it . Then the only and im going to quote here the only thing that worries me a little bit now is that this isnt going to throw us off in our present setup to 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 the phrase perfect is the enemy of good enough. We have 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, we have this new panther and we got our asses kicked and the panther broke down anyway. So once you have that question out of the way then he had other questions like how many rounds can i 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 with a larger caliber you could carry fewer rounds, had a slower rate of fire, the chances are the round was less accurate because it was slower. Ammunition was a huge thing, you will see it come up time and time again in the archives. However, by the middle of 1942, summer of 1942 Ordinance Branch the designers managed to stuff the 76 into an m4 turret. They sent it to Aberdeen Proving Ground and it passed all the tests. Technically fit, didnt break the tank when it fired, it generally hit what it was aiming at. Fantastic. And there was a rush. They wanted 1,000 of these things to partake in the invasion of north africa. By 1942, summer of 42 the biggest nastiest thing the germans had was pan zer 4 which the 75 millimeter sherman was quite capable of dealing with. The army wanted bigger equipment just 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 and they concluded that i dont care what you engineers say, yeah, it may technically work but you dont have to fight in this damn thing. It was incredibly camped 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 it again, give us a proper tank and off the Ordinance Branch it went. Audience participation question number 5. Yes, you are not off the hook yet. What do these vehicles have in common . So youve got [ inaudible ]. You are correct. Who said that. You saw my other talk didnt you . You did. But hes quite correct. These are all tanks that were approved for production and in the case of 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 them or we dont want them or whatever. This was a heap of rubbish, that didnt work, i talked about earlier, this i will come back to and that they couldnt figure tout 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 palmer board, and this met in late 1942 and 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. They started off with like 19 vehicles and cut it down to maybe four. They were ruthless about it. Yeah, its got promise but we cut it out, we will focus on this instead because we think this has even better promise. And, again, this comes down to a case of were spending manhours, spending dollars, spending steel which we cannot afford to squander because were trying to win a war. Now, in the meantime we are still helping out the british. This is assault tank t14 and it uses some of the developments of the m6, you can see it looks vaguely shermanesque. The u. S. Army didnt want this ng reason they didnt want the m6. The british wanted an assault tank. 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, we will try it out since we build 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 were suspension problems, inaccessible components. This thing was not fightable, not sustainable, thats why the t14 never showed up to the fight, but they are still they are still helping out the brits. This is a british crew sausader 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 were a good idea that they hadnt thought of themselves, such as the turret traverse motor in the mathilda, they said thats a pretty good idea. So a british guy called Alex Richardson was present for the demonstration of centor and crumbwell and they didnt do well. To wrote his letter back to the uk these tanks have made us a laughing stock out here, the crumbwe will has had a variety of troubles. The americans are politely indifferent to what happens to them and the rolls royce man is most unhappy and wants them withdrawn as soon as possible. We are undoubtedly the worlds worst salesmen. And, again, i apologize for my lack of english accent. Down underneath here and i have this online, google the hatch operation dracula, that was a monthlong, 2,000 mile test that they drove these tanks all over england on roads and then a lot of mileage offroad. To give you an idea of what this is in england, they get from South Hampton to scotland, according to google maps is 700 miles. They went from the bottom of the country to the top of the country, back down the country and around for the same amount of distance. 2,000 miles. Note how the amount of specialist manhours 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 in the Tank Destroyer archives that over a 2,000 mile course the average speed of an m10 a1 is one mile an hour less than 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 into production . Well, given what happened to the panther i am going to guess no. I found a report for the m18 stating that a lock or a lock washer, i dont know what a lock washer s 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 co d production. Its one of those threaded washers that you screw your nut on to and it holds it in place. It cant be that hard to repair it. But because it might fail before 4,000 miles we redesigned the tank. I had a couple of other quotes for dracula but for the interest of time im going to hold back a little bit. But a couple excerpts anyway. It is evident that a commander of the unit equipped with shermans can be confident taking 99 of his tanks into battle for the first 2,000 miles of their life. On the other hand if you hear equipped with crumbwe will or centor he might be in a state of anxiety as to whether his tanks would reach the battlefield to carry out the tasks expected of his unit. It was also observed that the crews and support personnel would be better rested. If a crumwell breaks down en route, you have to get the crew or the maintenance guys. Then they get to the motor pool all the cooks are awake waiting to feed the crews after they get there. In terms of the amount of manhours, not only raw manhours but the effectiveness of those manhours, the american tanks reliability was key because you made just huge gains in efficiency both combat and in personnel. So american tanks were tested in the deserts of end joe, california, and the snows of alaska. The take away is they worked. I cant overemphasize this enough. A battalion was a battalion when it got to where it was going, it wasnt most of a battalion and it wasnt a full battalion which then had to stand down for maintenance which some other countries had to do. If you are a unit, lets say you were an 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 a case of, okay, a third of the tanks broke down so, charlie company, you are out of luck, youre going to charge that german position without a tank. And, again, went to ridiculous level of detail. You go into the ordinance archives and its box after box of the effects of mold on rubber in the pacific theater. Every individual component, the fuel pump would be subjected to a battery of tests and even once the tank was approved for product there would still be qa. You will come across a report saying test report of tank m4 serial number 26548 which they just randomly took off the line and tried it out to make sure the call control was what it was supposed to be. So sustainment, again, youve got that whole thing, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. Another vehicle that won the war, cckw. On the road its called a 2. 5 ton truck but on the road its rated to carry 5 tons. Thats 255 gallon dance or 1250 gallons of fuel. A 1 ton trailer will carry 40 cans brings us to 1,450 gallons. Of course, the americans tested all this. This chart which i guess you will have to get online for a bigger image is fuel and Oil Requirements per 1,000 miles for a company of 17 medium tanks. Each barrel represents 100 gallons. So, in other words, once cckw will move a m4 a 1 company 100 miles one single truck of fuel. Red ball had 5,500 trucks rolling at once. That if i was 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 the refineries to england, then along the pipeline on to the ocean to get to france and into 5 gallon cans and 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 carry the spare parts to maintain the trucks, it requires ships to carry the spare trucks to maintain the trucks to carry the food for the mechanics. You see where im going. Maintenance the German Military suffered a significant capacity problem. You could either make new tanks or make spare parts for the old tanks, when tiger 1 that entered production they built one additional transmission, one additional engine. So the germans had this massive parts shortage. You put armed guards on to supply trains because the units would 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 their parts to arrive theyre not repairing tanks. Americans did not have this problem. Oh, and, again, look at john parshalls video, a pamphlet on german tank maintenance, u. S. Brought spare parts, lots of them and all fit and thanks were rarely down for long. I 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, down. A couple of hours. To a panther in this case, it was the same as a few other vehicles, 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, again, if you look at my video youll see. Db to look at my panther video, you can see all the bits around the driver that will v. To come out before the transmission can be pulled back up through the roof. Your three mechanics will repair one german tank in the time it takes them to repair 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 . Again, your tank may be in 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 and, again, we have the vermin at least 2,000. Now, of course, whether or not the tank survives to get to 1200 miles is another matter entirely. T 23 and this is one of the this is where ordinance really sours the army on the persia. January 1943 the first of the t series tank shows up. You take a tank with a 76 millimeter gun, lower overall silhouette than the m4, you should have a better tank. The m4 was now in Series Production so they had met the immediate requirements can we improve. So the t20 had issues with the transmission, t22 had problems, t23 had an electric drive which was in theory wonderful, would spin on a dime, go backwards fast, forwards, in theory this tank could drive and fight with one man. In theory. I mean, you wouldnt want to. Whats not low profile. Whats not to like . So after a demonstration in april of 1943 to generals mcnair, devers it was agreed to build 250 of those tanks. Ordinance promised all the issues would be fixed. In hindsight about 50 of them would be upgunned but we will come back to that. When they showed up armored board again starts testing them this details 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 of them would be easy fixes, some would not. We will come back to this. So the m4 e6 was a series modification to simplify production, increase ergonomics and increase firepower and survivability. Now, again, go with what can best sustain the warren 44. You can refine and improve the m4 which you knew would be available in numbers or take a gamble. Go with what could potentially be a substantially better tank, the t 23 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. As part of the overall progression we now have 76 millimeter gun on the t23 turret, a steeper front slope which simplifies the production and also makes bigger hatches easier to get out of, more room inside and to make the front a bit thinger. Wet stowe analogy which changed the burn rate of the tank from average to this thing almost never burns and that was as a result of testing. You cant see it but had better vision to see the opposition and this was all done very, very quickly. The idea of putting the t23 turret was march of 1943. The finished e6 was an aberdeen being tested by june, the testing was completed and design approved in september. By september 42 it was decided that all factories would stop producing 75 millimeter tanks for the army by january of 44 with a few exceptions such as lend, lease, or marine corps tanks or contracts that had already been ordered but your problem was that all tanks are being produced in january of 44 they still have to get them overseas, competing with Everything Else thats going overseas like trucks and fuel and ammo and personnel and rifles and Everything Else, medical equipment, and 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 ferdinands and tiger 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 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 in technical terms as a whoops. But it made sense at the time going back to your point. Fifth army the guys who are winning in italy they were saying give us all the 76s we can get. Now, there was another minor issue and that was the tungsten shortage. Since there was no particular indication that the 76 couldnt do the job if the 75 couldnt, they didnt spend any tungsten building hvap ammunition, they had other things to do with the tungsten, it was used for making machine tools, lots of different things, and in hindsight perhaps a bad decision, they should have developed the hvap ammo just in case. Benefit of hindsight. If there is any one single flaw i can point to in the u. S. Armys tank production i would say you should have developed hvap, you should have issued it. Now, the other thing is the e8 and, yes, youre still not off the hook. Audience participation question number 6. 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 fulton. 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 easy 8 suspension, horizontal volume which had been tested earlier in the heavier tanks. So, again, this isnt a new idea. They actually tried a whole series of different suspension types. Look up weird pictures but they went with this thing that they tried before, wider tracks and the result if you put everything together is the m4 a 3 because that was the preferred engine, 76 horizontal volume Suspension System which is commonly and incorrectly known as easy 8. The definitive vermin went on to korean war and the she are plans would see service, i think, paraguay just brought them back into service, two of them, famously, again, the israelis and it was arguably the definitive best sherman. Now, you do have the question of protection and this is not atypical. A lot of crewmen would add on armor on to their vehicle. So quote Army Ground 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 tra testify power of large caliber tank and antitank weapons were that they would need doubling to provide protection. Additional protection afforded longer ranges. It would increase load on suspension. You are a tank crewman, you figure out these german 88 and long 75s punching through my sherman, i just do something to make my sherman tougher, 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 2 tons of sandbag that you just put on your tank . And 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. And only patton enforced, actually. The assault tank ive been told im running out of time so im not going to go into e2. Go back to the t southeast 23 and the 90 millimeter gun the t26. The 785th tank battalion were given t23s. They came up with a list of 26 must fixes if the ordinance fixed it armored force would say fantastic, well send them overseas and declare them battle worthy. The ordinance said we cant fix all 26 but we can fix most of them and you can send send those overseas. Army Ground Forces was not enthusiastic. They said, okay, look, we dont like t but for you we will 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 and go to this. T25, t26 i have a lot of this online and in the other videos. Bottom line, nobody really wanted 90 millimeter tank initially, again, size of ammunition or whatever. But ordinance and general barons was so determined that he knew that this was a tank that would win the war that he asked the british actually, he designed a tank to take 17 pounder and the theory was if the british liked the tank the british would order the pershing and once the tank was in production his genius design would be produce tds by the army because the factories were already making them. The british went with the centurion tank which was arguably a better decision. Army grand forces tested the pershing, said it doesnt work, keeps breaking down, we dont want t ive gone on to that in detail elsewhere. Td lessons, toed tds are better than mobile tds according to north africa. Well, that was the lesson that they learned, our, in practice it didnt work because in north africa they werent attacking the allies werent doing most of the attacking the guns were smaller. I will skip over the t53. I will mention that the 90 millimeter jackson was not wanted because, again, there was it wasnt the fast mobile Tank Destroyer and nobody had a need for the 90 millimeter gun. However, there was a change of heart and by july of 44, june 44 they decided to type classify it. This is what they really wanted. The crews didnt want this, barns wanted this for his doctrine. The crews looked at this thing and said its got no armor, i could get a pick ax and punch through this. One unit actually mutinied they did not want the m18, but that said in the end it got a reputation for killing tanks. With the same 76 millimeter gun that the sherman had. So the sherman was quite capable of killing tanks as much as the m18. So what was the m4 good at . Well, first, it was there as i already mentioned, it was reliable, it worked, you knew it would do what it was supposed to. Here is an example of the design. The gunner in all three of these tanks is watching you. Panther, panther 4, sherman. Which one is better at ambushing the enemy . And its a simple design. I dont know why the germans did not put a roofpointed sight on their tanks but the first tank to fire in an engagement wins four times out of five. Hes going to get the first shot off. And then theres ergonomics. This is the inside of a panther, still from a video. To get that round out im crouched out like this, kind of manipulating the round in, on the m4 im sitting down on my chair very comfortably down up and down up in. Highly comfortable. Now, survival rates. Vermin is a death trap. I go over this again in greater detail. 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. Which if you think about the reputation is amazingly low. Part of the reason for it is how easy it is to get out of one of these things. In my video i have the what i call the oh my god the tank is on fire test. How quickly can i get out of the tank if its on fire. The m4 the hatch is above you, pop it out and out you get. You look at the panthers and the tiger and theyre getting out like this. So a very, very survivable tank, very, very versatile tank. Flame thrower. You could do anything with this thing. Radio jekted developments, 17 pounder, the bottom line is the americans didnt think it was a gd idea. In mind sight im not sure it was a good idea. They would have been better off actually building the 76, but they didnt, thats why the firefly has a reputation. Infrared, oh, the germans had infrared. Well, the americans had infrared, they just realized that it didnt work and guess what, when the germans tried it they realized it didnt work, the difference is the germans recognized it didnt work after they put the time and effort of putting it in the field. They took it off. This is a target range timer which basically applies horizontal lead to your fun. This is an otograph, if you are in the middle of north africa how do you know where you are . This is basically a moving map. You set the start position and the tank figures out where its going, not battle worthy enough. Great idea, the americans were winning to develop and experiment and try, but if it wasnt guaranteed to work, if you could not rely on your equipment the troops will not have confidence in the equipment and they will shop using it and whats the point . Troops who are confident in their equipment will fight better and everything that the american armor forces used to go overseas was reliable. The end result pretty much is the proof is in the pudding. So, again, the important thing lets finish with one sentence, shall we say. It is important to note that the m4 together with every other piece of equipment in the army is built to win a war as quickly and as 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 duals. At least not purely face off in tank duels and a lot of people look at it tactically. They will look at the sherman and compare it tactically to a german tank. Some people will look at it operationally, few people look at it strategically. And in the grand scheme of things the designers dont really care or did not care 70 years ago what the folks today on internet 4 would be complaining about penetration values and armor values for wargaming statistics or things like that. All they wanted to do was build an effective vehicle that would win the war, again, i just the word effectively, as effectively as possible. In that i would argue the m4 did exactly what it was supposed to do. End off. What are your questions . [ applause ] oh, for world of tanks folks please leave any world of tanks questions until after this. This q a is just the on the design. Its well known that engineering has to be done at the production site because the production workers have to be able to talk with the engineers and back and forth. This wasnt done in wartime, the engineers were stateside and then the production people who are 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 field units and indeed even barnes and deverv would fly to north africa and ask whats going on themselves and interview folks. They would also do surveys by mail, these are a list of 25 questions we have for you what are your responses and think would feed those back as well, as well as just sending liaison personnel over that were permanently attached. There was always a communication, thats who we realized that, hey, we need this. The problem seemed to be a lack of realization even at the using level of what was required. Again, i will go back to 6 armored saying, look, 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 gun. So if the people dont realize what they need it doesnt matter how good your communication is with the designers. So barnes was always going we want a bigger gun, a more mobile engine. The problem was that he wanted technology that was not battle worthy, that was not reliable enough and thats probably why your distinction failed. Both sides were fighting for the same they were both talking to each other, they were just talking from different perspectives and i think if there was any conflict that is where it is. Thank you. Im going to ask a tan jennings question raised by your presentation as far as what the two biggest problems were for the u. S. Going to war. That was the atlantic and the pacific. General butler wrote the book war with a racquet and one of the things that 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 is that you have the lines of supply and the logistics of crossing the atlantic and the pacific, canada, mexico and 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 why we should not be more of a defensive nation versus an aggressive nation . Doesnt that go back a little bit, though, to the where was the money going during the hard times in the 30s, it was going to the navy because they realized that if priority number one for the military was to defend the u. S. Territory, the navy was the organization that was going to do it. So i have not heard any argument saying that, yes, the opposition can come attack us on land and overthrow us once theyve gotten past the number. Is that where youre going . No. To have anything more than a coast guard theres really no need because you need to be able to attack but you are not able to sustain that attack for any period of time. Youre not able to sustain that attack for any period of time as far as waging war against the United States. There is no country in the world that could. And if they were going to have a sustained attack that was a war, it would have to 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 and even to support it, look at operation sea lion, the german attack of what was it 24 miles to get just across the english channel. There is no way the germans could sustain an innovativasion that, the royal navy would have a significant issue with that is correct thats assuming they could even come up with a plan. Yes, just getting to the firefly. Yes. There was a demand i would imagine that there must have been a demand in the American Army for something at least similar to the 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 they should have known that the germans were going to attempt were 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, i know people in honor regiments who said they needed it. Theres two problems here. The need for a bigger gun was certainly identified and there were two solutions to it, one of them was a 76 and the other was the 90 and if you look at the wait and the size of the gun, the equivalent to the 70 pounder is the 19 millimeter. They decided that the 90 was the better gun. Which i think is substantially the correct move. The difference, though, is that the british stuffed their 17 pounder into a turret that the american Armored Forces thought that the 76 was too big for. So if the americans thought the 76 was too big to effectively fight this firefly what would the 17 pounder do . Now, again, this is people looking at the outside not on the inside. If you look at how a gunner is situated in the firefly, his right hand is here, his head is here and his left hand is down here with the elevation trying to get on to target. Ive done a video on vier fly. The rounds are huge. Youve only got five of them to hand and they take forever to load. Now, im going to come to part 2 of this in a moment, but for every time we see, yes, the firefly knocked out six tanks in five minutes. How many times did a sherman with the much higher rate of fire destroy seven pan zer 4s in three minutes or more likely six machine gun nests in three minutes and firefly really sucked as a tank. If firefly was a tank it generally sucked as a tank. Now, the other problem from the american perspective, though, was they acknowledge we need a bigger gun, what they didnt acknowledge was that the bigger gun they were building was not big enough and they didnt realize that until they put it into combat and then you had the eisenhower quote, hey, ordinance are telling me the 76 millimeter will kill everything and now were being told it wont knock out a damn thing which actually in reality is not true, as is evidenced by the fact that lots of german tanks got blown up by american tanks. Not necessarily perhaps but the americans managed it. This goes back to the bigger question of how its a system of systems. Artillery is obscuring the panther while the m4 goes around the side. Look at iroquois has an ample of 75 tanks destroying panthers which they should not have done. So the firefly in itself not only was cramped but you also have the problem that nothing else in the american system uses 17 pounder ammo. On the converse side the british are going nothing in our army uses a 76. So thats why they started the Rearmament Program as well. We want a bigger gun but we dont want your bigger gun because it doesnt fit with our logistical supply. The american production of 100 fire flies at the end of the war and the question is why did the u. S. Make order these to be made. And there is a couple of interesting problems. Firstly, as mentioned, the capacity. You are 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 . And i think this is hypothesis, but i think this was actually purchased for other army ceus, there is other history for this. The polish brigade started off with fire flies, they ended the war with 76 millimeter tanks because they got their supply of replacement tanks from the americans. So if the americans had fire flies in the depots that they had gotten from the british, this he could then replenish their allied units with the correct type of equipment. Now, this is speculation but it has happened like the biggest single foreign purchaser of the centurion was the u. S. Military or u. S. Government. But they bought them to give to the danish and to the dutch and to everybody else. Thats kind of a longwinded way of saying that 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 started building either the m 36 or the 90 or the hvap ammo which never really made it in large numbers but then, again, fortunately there were not large numbers of heavy tanks to shoot at in the first place. Hello. If Belton Cooper was here the author of death traps what would you say to try to change his mind or to debate him . My other question is if the u. S. Military had gone ahead and produced the pershing and not the sherman, what kind of problems do you think would have resulted on the battlefield . Second question first. The problems of pershing would be similar to the problems of panther. We saw how good panther was in its introduction in combat, why would we expect that pershing would be any different. You would have lots of vehicles out there which are broken down, theoretically they could work, but even then you had limits. America captures the bridge at ramagan, the bridge is damaged, the infantry cross over, fantastic, they need tank support. They call up there lab to be pershings on the far side, the pershing cannot cross the bridge, the sherman can cross the bridge. How quickly does it take an engineered unit to build a bailey bridge to class iv versus to class 5. Bridging the engineers had a veto in tank design as well, they would always pass around the logistics and engineers and so on, hey, armored force want this tank, do you guys have a problem with it and the transport guys would look at the dimensions and say, but it wont pass a British Airway bridge. The request big question was would this thing hold the weight. With pershing you would have a lame duck which in theory in a few circumstances would be far better than the sherman but in most circumstances would not for the level of combat that was going on at the time. As Technology Developed to get to korea thats a different matter. To answer your first question what would i say to cooper, all these tankers that you keep meeting that says this is a death trap, how many of them were not dead . And the problem is that the entire premise is based on confirmation bias. His job was to repair destroyed tanks. All he sees are destroyed tanks, destroyed american tanks. He does not see the tanks that were not destroyed. He does not see the german tanks that were destroyed because why would he see them . Hes making his perception on a small subset not a complete subset of the data thats available to him. Now, whether or not i could actually convince the man who at the time would have been maybe 90 something years old that hes wrong, you just smile and nod and let him let him keep thinking, i guess. One question is on the famous funnies used at dday which is i have read those mine fail tanks, the dd tanks, was that part of the initial design, like it was the sherman was designed for those kind of attachments. No. Oh, okay. Theres actually a pretty good book about hobart, i cant remember the name of it, but its like yay thinking and it is about hobart and his command of the 79th. The thing to remember these funnies did not start with the sherman, they started with usually valentines. So the ideas were worked out with the british tanks and then they were modified. And there were funnies from churchill as well, there were churchill funnies, but they took the sherman because thats the next tank being built. Can we do the same thing with the she are manned and the answer was, yes, we can, because it is such a wonderful tank. And just a quick question. How much of an advantage was the power turret traverse on the sherman . A lot. You may not have seen i just published an article last week and i got another one coming out tomorrow about the average combat range correct, not the average, the median combat range. The average is 700 yards, the medium was 300 yards and if you are a defending lets say you have a line of tanks, youre going to have a couple hundred meters between each tank. If you have a tank over there and another tank or antitank gun 300 yards over there, that is a 60 degree slue that you have to cover which means you need to have a nice big wide optic which the sherman had and you need to be able to traverse from here to here really quickly because fire fights are over very quickly. Again, the first person to shoot usually wins. Four times out of five, first person to shoot will win. You have the the sherman gets over on the flank shot of the panther or whatever, he will get the shot off before the german tank will reply back. So, yes, very important. Bob porillo, ex nsg 10th fleet. Excellent, informative and exciting talk. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. One minor correction, Gordon Welchman said that the brit the americans were better in crypto and radar, slightly better, than the brits, but that the brits were better slightly better in as tech and magic ew and sonar. I stand corrected. Than the americans. Question about going from why we didnt have armored cars. We had the combat cars, why we really didnt have armored cars. There is a famous tank commander movie where the tank commander barks where they depict an urban battle and the shermans 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 . Well, the combat car was simply a work around because by law the cavalry corps could not have a tank. They had a tank they just refused to call it a tank, it was a combat car. In terms of armored cars the u. S. Army took a fair look at armored cars as primary combat vehicles. There was a vehicle called the tractless tank, big 8 x 8 being tested about 1941 and initial initial testing was very good, it was fast, quiet, had all the advantages of an armored car, but the there were some again, the reason why until very recently armored cars were not as prevalent when it came down to general purpose combat urban terrain was not as common back then as it is today. Today 70 of the population are in urban terrain, back then it wasnt the case. So you had to have your tank capable of going offroad very, very well and this is why the wheeled Tank Destroyers and i just showed you a few of them they went all the way up to 3 inch guns. There were a lot of attempts at wheeled Tank Destroyers but they never not to the same level of moment as a inc. At that so thats why they never went anywhere. As for the armored cars i can only assume the same thing, they had the stuart, they had the chafee, the british liked their armored cars, i dont know why, i have not looked into it. Yeah, i tend to agree that, yes, because the end result was we won, so ergo whatever we made was appropriate, but then again, you know, your argument that in the procurement process you look at the logistics and you look at the liberty ships and you look at the rail. Thats not an argument because the argument is what you got at the end result is when you go into battle. So, yes, the m4 is adequate, but there are battles lost because it was only adequate. Operation good ward, operation torch, these battles were lost. If you are going to end the war sooner youve got to win those battles. So whatever was decided upon way back when, its not an argument to say you cant put it on a rail line and its not an argument to say you cant put it on a livery ship, you make them fit the tank because you understand that theres 88s out there and theres bigger tanks. You should have known that intelligence should have known that. So to say that its good enough, no, it isnt. The end user a couple one, i dont know if torch was really a loss. Goodward i would argue did not fail because of the tank design, it failed due to manpower issues, the british simply did not have enough infantry. It was not montes first ideal plan, but the british army was out of infantry. They had to send tanks in unsupported and with the unfortunate and inevitable consequence. He made a gamble that the opposition werent as heavily enforced as they were. He unfortunately lost. He didnt have a choice, he had to make the attack because goodward was the decoy for cobra. Any way, yes, the person in the tank at the time probably does not care about all the logistical things that ended up with him being there. There are two counters to this, one is that the general surveys that the American Tankers had and i have not seen the british ones, the american surveys basically said we can handle the amount of armor we have, we need a better gun. Which in the case of goodward, as i said, it was 88. A little bit more armor probably wouldnt have made enough difference against 88s any way so that argument is a little academic. The other point s yes, its not very fair for the tanker to say sorry, its fine for the tanker to say i wish i had more armor, i wish i had a bigger gun. How about his buddy over there, a kilometer that way who was an infantryman about to charge a machine gun nest. Dammit, why cant the army build us tanks light enough so we can get two tanks here, not only does joe have a tank, i also have a tank. So i dont see i dont see how you can say that one position is the position of the tanker is better than the position of the person in charge in the u. S. Actually trying to ship these things overseas. Is it unfortunate for the guy there . Yes, it is. No two ways about it. Is it still the better decision . I would argue not. If youre going to come to the dinner afterwards i will happily continue to engage you on this one, but we will move on to another question. Thank you. How uniform was the ammunition given the different situations, the tanks were fighting in . Sn well, as near as i can tel it was pretty uniform. The projectiles for the 3 inch and the 76 were the same, just the casings were different. The the projectiles for the armor piercing round for the 75, there were a couple different i put it on my facebook page, there was a photograph of a 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 it working . And the report and this was in april of 45 said that our problem is that our tanks havent found any enemy tanks to shoot at. Again, i put this up on the facebook page. It is possibly an exaggeration but the i dont know if i can answer the question other than there was sufficient ammunition of all types except for hvap which had not been designed in july of 44 and only once they said, oh, my god, we need better hitting, that the ordinance brand say policy number one higher velocity. Higher velocity over bigger gun. How do we get higher velocity . Lighter weight shot. How do we do this . Tungsten. Lets develop this. They designed it in a month flat and the prototypes were being tested. Still too late and that, again, brings me back to the earlier question, that was one that they could have fixed and they could have given the American Tankers a better gun, but they didnt and the American Tankers would have been justifiably going, why didnt you think this . And, again, im saying this not knowing about what other uses the tungsten had. Could you have afforded to not stand up another factory with these tungsten produced tools . I dont know. But my personal opinion is they could have fixed that ammunition problem and given them a better gun. You mention at the end of your talk about survivability and mentioned that the crews were talking about survivability obviously rather than being brewed up. Did the planners ever get into sloped armor . Did that ever come up with them . Okay. Thank you. Again, i refer you to the front of this room. Is it sloped . [ inaudible ]. Not as sharply, no, but it is thicker to compensate. So the effect of armor between the t34 and sherman is almost to the millimeter the same. Now, the side armor is not sloped on a sherman, it is sloped on the t34, this brings you to a couple problems, firstly your turret ring is smaller, you have a smaller turret, you cant put as big a gun in it or you have less room inside. The other problem is that the youre making a tank really, really big but you dont have very much room inside the tank because of all the armor, where do you put your fuel, a. M. Know, spare parts . So the sherman and if you look at a modern tank, a modern tank is like a sherman, sloped at the front but even the soviets by the t 55 have given up sloping on the sides because it just was not worth it. Yes. Good evening. Good evening. Im thinking about the coliape. They dont carry very many rockets. Were wasting a tank to fire a handful of rockets, the germans are using half tracks, the russians are using trucks. What was the theory about putting these rockets you know, the coliape on top of a tank as opposed to a lighter, easier to produce vehicle . The answer to your question is i have no idea and i fully agree with you and i have found reports coming back into the archive basically saying why are we doing this . It must have made good sense to somebody, i do not know who that somebody was and i dont know what they were thinking, im sorry. As somebody who has several versions of shermans in his miniatures collection, thank you for a great presentation. The tanks may have been the same, but the way the Armored Divisions were structured was not and that varied even within the United States army and obviously with other armies. Just talk about as the tank was the building block, just talk about how the Armored Divisions were structured, first within the u. S. System and then the heavy Armored Divisions versus the other later ones and then compared to some of the other nationalities that fought. Im im not sure im actually able im a technical guy more than a doctoral organizational guy which i probably shouldnt be because i am a major lieutenant colonel. The thing i will say with the u. S. Tank tank use philosophy is that you had the difference between the Armored Division and the independent tank battalions. The Armored Division was the exploitation force, the tank battalion was designed to do the punching. They used the same tank for both roles. I guess you can make an argument like lets say the british came up with cruiser tanks and infantry tanks, the germans had heavy and medium tanks as did the russians. Did the u. S. Get something wrong here by not having different tanks for the two different roles and i think this, again, brings us back to the whole logistical question if we could build a heavy tank that worked which they couldnt because they tried, but if they could would they have shipped them overseas . And im not sure there is an actual answer to that. So im sorry, i dont feel confident in going into the details as to, you know, when you moved from a Light Company to three Medium Companies and so on. Standing up here i would need to get my books. In the 1940s the standard American Railroad flak car with a 50 ton car that was the a 50 car, that was the basic building block. That was the state of the art car for the time. There were a lot there are cars with lesser capacities, how did that cause limited to this design . All i know is that the document i found in the archives, and theyre talking about the future of heavy tanks. This document was written in about 1950. And it stated, if i memory is serving on the correct quote, is that these 12,000 cars were of sufficient capacity and width to carry the m26. So i dont know why you would have a narrower than standard flat car. But apparently they existed because the Ordnance Branch would not have said both. The Ordnance Branch did not believe they had sufficient capacity in the u. S. To support significant deployment of heavy tanks in the 1950s, let alone in the 1940s. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. I had fun. Coming up on American History tv on cspan3, a look at guns and weaponry throughout u. S. History. First a conversation on the history of gun regulation in america. Then the author of a book titled gunfight the battle over the right to bear arms in america. A conversation on the origins of the National Rifle association. American history tv on cspan3 exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend, coming up this weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war, the 1863 richmond bread riots where women protest inflation and the scarcity of food. And sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern, four films from the 1940s and 50s profiling industries affected today by the coronavirus pandemic. And at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, the nixon administrations native american reforms, the restoration of native lands. Exploring the american story, watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. Now a conversation on
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