"Why did Americans not have StuGs?" Topic
95 Posts
All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.
For more information, see the TMP FAQ.
Back to the WWII Discussion Message Board
Areas of InterestWorld War Two on the Land
Featured Hobby News Article
Featured Link
Featured Ruleset
Featured Showcase ArticleA more wintry portrayal of German Riflemen with Greatcoats II.
Featured Workbench ArticleMinidragon been building and painting his own army for Flames of War for a while now.
Featured Profile ArticleThe Editor heads for Vicksburg...
Featured Book Review
Featured Movie Review
|
Please sign in to your membership account, or, if you are not yet a member, please sign up for your free membership account.
Pages: 1 2
Winston Smith | 14 Aug 2018 8:28 a.m. PST |
You know what I mean. Something equivalent. Is the Grant Lee kind of sort of equivalent? |
Winston Smith | 14 Aug 2018 8:28 a.m. PST |
You know what I mean. Something equivalent. Is the Grant Lee kind of sort of equivalent? |
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 8:40 a.m. PST |
Both the US and British & Commonwealth forces used tanks in the infantry support role. The Germans and Russians chose to produce assault guns. Both come with trade offs. A tank is more flexible, but assault guns have lower silhouette and thicker armour than the same weight tank. Also assault guns are cheaper to produce and less to maintain. No need to worry about keeping a traversing turret in working order. My understanding of the Lee/Grant is that it was a stop gap design until they could get a cast turrret big enough to house the 75mm gun. |
thosmoss | 14 Aug 2018 9:08 a.m. PST |
The M10 Hellcat was roughly equivalent in theory as a Stug – given the role of tank destroyer. Turreted instead of low silhouette, so trade-offs abound. |
Martin Rapier | 14 Aug 2018 9:17 a.m. PST |
The Stug was originally designed as a self propelled infantry gun, the closest allied equivalents were the British 3" and 95mm armed CS tanks, and the US 75mm HMC and 105mm Shermans, which were all "artillery tanks". If you can afford to build thousands of turreted vehicles, why bother with turret less ones? |
donlowry | 14 Aug 2018 9:22 a.m. PST |
The U.S. was able to produce turreted tanks and TDs in such quantities that it was not necessary to resort to turretless self-propelled ATGs or assault guns. For instance, what the U.S. called an assault gun was a Sherman with a 105mm howitzer in the turret. Also, U.S. doctrine didn't see the need for large-caliber SP ATGs until late in the war, and even then it was able to fit a 90mm gun in a turreted TD. While the original StuG III was intended as an infantry support weapon (actually manned by artillery troops, IIRC), it was soon converted (by giving it a high-velocity gun) into a cheap tank-substitute, extending the life of the Panzer III chasis that was too small to carry a high-velocity 75mm (or larger) gun in a turret. |
Thresher01 | 14 Aug 2018 9:52 a.m. PST |
The Grant and Lee were very marginal, at best, so……. I think they learned from that. We did produce the M7 Priests, though they weren't used the way the StuGs were, most of the time. |
miniMo | 14 Aug 2018 9:55 a.m. PST |
StuGs were a cost-cutting measure with benefits. US didn't have to worry about that much cost-cutting. |
coopman | 14 Aug 2018 10:27 a.m. PST |
The Priests were the US equivalent of the Wespe or Hummel, self-propelled artillery. The M10 was more like a turreted Marder (open-topped). Grant/Lee tanks had a high profile and were easier targets than most other medium tanks. I believe that I read/heard somewhere that the StuG family was the most numerous of all the AFVs produced by the Germans. They were quite useful. |
Big Red | 14 Aug 2018 10:29 a.m. PST |
If the Sherman's 75 was a marginal ATG by 1943/44, for its size it was still a very good HE weapon. |
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 10:44 a.m. PST |
StuGs were a cost-cutting measure with benefits. Not really. Stug production was started in 1939 when Germany wasn't doing any cost cutting. It was designed from the start to be turretless. Being an infantry support weapon the thicker armour and low silhouette were an advantage and a fully turreted weapon no big advantage. The M10 Hellcat was roughly equivalent in theory as a Stug given the role of tank destroyer. The Stug wasn't primarily a tank destroyer. The adoption of the longer gun gave it a useful dual purpose weapon, but it served mostly in Stug brigades attached to infantry divisions for supporting infantry in the assault. |
Patrick R | 14 Aug 2018 10:52 a.m. PST |
The Germans were looking to produce a self-propelled artillery piece and put a 75mm on a Panzer III chassis. Later versions were upgunned to a long 75mm give it better AT capability or a 105mm howitzer. They had some advantages like being cheap and easier to produce than tanks and this is where the Germans fell into the trap to think StuG was just as good as a tank, sure they had the advantages of an excellent gun, good armour and low profile, but in running battles against tanks they were extremely vulnerable. The Soviets also built similar vehicles, but continued to use them as support weapons or anti-tank guns. The US could build far more Shermans than the Germans produced of most marks put together. Every infantry division would have a tank and TD battalion attached, they didn't need a "cheap" tank replacement like the StuG. Guderian recognized that trying to equip panzer divisions with StuG's was a mistake as it was an excellent shoot and scoot vehicle or support weapon, once you try to fight like tanks you quickly find out why they have a turret. So the answer is that thanks to Detroit the US didn't need a "cheap, corner-cutting mobile gun platform to replace tanks if necessary." They did try the concept, mounting 75mm on M3 light tanks and a host of weird self-propelled gun designs until they figured an M10 would do the job. And then they realized that the TD concept didn't work either. We don't see that many self-propelled guns in the post-war era with exceptions like the German Jagdpanzer and the Soviet ASU 57 and 85. |
miniMo | 14 Aug 2018 10:53 a.m. PST |
The cost-cutting is why they later got cranked out in such high numbers though and replaced Pz.IVs in a battalion of each tank regiment. |
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 12:17 p.m. PST |
The cost-cutting is why they later got cranked out in such high numbers though and replaced Pz.IVs in a battalion of each tank regiment. Again not really. I can find very little evidence that Stug's were substituted for Panzer IV's in Panzer regiments, with the exception of the battalions in Panzergrenadier divisions. The SS Panzer divisions had a Stug battalion in addition to the PzIV's and Panthers. For the last few months of the war Stug's and Jagdpanzers were substituted for PzIV's in Panzer battalions of Panzer divisions, but that wasn't cost cutting it was because Panzer IV production had tailed off, with only one factory still making them and their weren't any to fill out the companies. |
Starfury Rider | 14 Aug 2018 12:42 p.m. PST |
Stugs do turn up in Pz Regts, though not a uniform issue. The intended reorganised Pz Div of 1943 (also termed the Stalingrad Divs) was supposed to have three Bns in its Pz Regt, one each of PzIV, PzV and Stugs. None of the ones earmarked for this set-up (14th, 16th and 23rd from memory, always dangerous) and instead there was a contraction of the PzIVs and Stugs allotted. There was to be a single Bn of two Coys PzIV and two Coys Stugs, with a Panther Bn following later. I've a vague recollection of 9th and 10th SS Pz Divs doing something similar in early 1944. Stugs were used by Anti-tank units, in both Inf Divs and some Pz Divs and GHQ level units; Assault Artillery, which as mentioned who they were first designed for; Pz Gren Divs as their sole 'tank' Bn; some Pz Regts, either as part of the hybrid PzIV/Stug Bn, while there are plenty of references to them being fed into Pz units as replacements; and probably somewhere else I've forgotten about. No desperate need for Stugs when the factories are churning out equally versatile M4s and there are lots of separate Tk Bns and Indep Armd Bdes, depending on your Army, to support Inf Divs with both HE and AP. Gary |
emckinney | 14 Aug 2018 1:06 p.m. PST |
Bureaucratic infighting. The infantry wasn't allowed "tanks" in the Wehrmacht, but self-propelled artillery was a different thing. Like the US Army today having attack helicopters because they aren't allowed fixed-wing attack aircraft. |
PzGeneral | 14 Aug 2018 1:13 p.m. PST |
The M-10 was the Wolverine. The M-18 was the Hellcat. |
Mark 1 | 14 Aug 2018 1:31 p.m. PST |
As has already been mentioned, the StuG was not developed to be a cheaper, lower profile, more heavily armored tank. None of that thought process went in to the creation of the StuG. The process was that the infantry branch said they needed an artillery piece that could accompany infantry as they advanced in to the attack. They were not allocated any tanks. In the German army ALL tanks were reserved for the tank (Panzer) divisions. The artillery branch, wanting to protect their role supporting the infantry, responded to the infantry branch needs by asking manufacturers to propose an armored self-propelled vehicle to carry their then-current infantry gun (the short 75mm IG). The only place where anyone looked at how a StuG compared to a Pz III was at Alkett, when they said "Hey, we already have this Pz III tank thing going pretty well, let's build a self-propelled assault gun to meet this new requirement from the artillery on the same chassis." Alkett used their existing chassis, to propose a vehicle that met the requirements from the artillery branch for a self-propelled assault gun. Those requirements did not say it should be "cheaper because it doesn't have a turret" or "lower profile so it's harder to hit than a Pz III" or "put more armor on it with the weight savings of not using a turret". They just said "75mm infantry gun, on a fully tracked armored vehicle." In truth the Pz IV would have been a superior answer to the German infantry's needs. Or even the Pz III, which did not carry the 75mm gun at that time, but clearly could (witness the Pz IIIn). But the infantry could not get either Pz IIIs or Pz IVs … they were not allowed to buy them. Everything else was an ex post facto rationalization. Kind of. Except not quite. Because once it was in production, and in use, the feedback that lead to progressive improvements and eventually expanded production did indeed have components of "it costs less than a turreted tank" and "we can put a bigger gun on it / heavier armor on it". So by the end of the war, it is entirely reasonable to say it was used as much as it was because it was cheaper than a tank, and carried a bigger gun and more armor than the same chassis could carry if it had a turret. And BTW the same was true with the Marders, the "Hetzer" (Jagdpanzer 38t), and the StuG IV (maybe a bit less so with the Jagdpanzer IV). There was no "if we take the turret off of this tank, we can put a bigger gun on it" thought process in evidence. Rather, it was "hey you industrial firms, give us a proposal for a fully tracked tank hunter using this particular gun." The individual manufacturers put together the vehicle designs based on whatever they had as a working chassis. Because they didn't have a turret big enough to carry it, they didn't propose putting it in a turret. By the time the US Army was actually scaling up for the war, it had a far more rationalized development and procurement process. It had gotten over it's "you can't have tanks, only we get tanks" inter-branch nonsense. By the time of the M2 Medium and Light tanks, the infantry, artillery and cavalry branches did not go out to industry to get their own fully tracked fighting vehicle. In the US Army the armored branch had responsibility for guiding the development of tanks to serve their own requirements, and those and the infantry and cavalry branches. And the designs (the M4, for example) belonged to the US Army, not to an individual manufacturer. Infantry requirements were included in the specs of the tanks, and infantry volumes were included in the tank procurement programs. And the components could be used for self-propelled artillery pieces, or tank destroyers, regardless of which manufacturer was chosen to build which vehicle. Or so I've read. -Mark (aka: Mk 1) |
Blutarski | 14 Aug 2018 1:41 p.m. PST |
Stugs were substituted for tanks in certain Panzer regiments later in the war. See Jentz on this point. One such division I can recall off the top of my head was 26th Panzer in Italy during the latter part of 1944. FWIW. B |
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 1:42 p.m. PST |
The intended reorganised Pz Div of 1943 (also termed the Stalingrad Divs) was supposed to have three Bns in its Pz Regt, one each of PzIV, PzV and Stugs. The only divisions to get that, from memory, were Grossdeutchland and the SS Panzerdivisions, but I think they had the Stugs first before getting a Panzer regiment added and of course other goodies like a Tiger company or in GD's case a whole battalion. some Pz Regts, either as part of the hybrid PzIV/Stug Bn, while there are plenty of references to them being fed into Pz units as replacements; and probably somewhere else I've forgotten about. I am away from my books at the moment so can't check Panzertruppen, but my recollection is that up until late 44 Panzer battalions remained pretty much purely tanks. It was the Bulge onwards where you see mixed units with PzIV's and Stugs or sometimes a composite Panther/PzIV battalion and a Stug Brigade or PzJgr battalion substituting as the missing Panzer battalion. These were all expedients and not official TO&E changes. |
Patrick R | 14 Aug 2018 2:27 p.m. PST |
Some panzer brigades had StuG or Panzer IV/70 instead of regular Panzer IV. Allegedly Hitler saw reports that StuGs achieved more kills than the Panzer IV and insisted on it being replaced by the Panzer IV/70 expecting that the more effective gun would make it even better. At some point the replacement system was starting to break down and anything became a tank : "If it looks like a tank, it will be used as a tank", official or not. And fudging the TO&E was an established practice, see also the liberal use of Panzer IIIN in Tiger Battalions to make up numbers. |
Mark 1 | 14 Aug 2018 2:42 p.m. PST |
The M-10 was the Wolverine.The M-18 was the Hellcat.
Yeah … not quite. The M10 was the M10. (Note: No hyphen in US Army model designators in WW2.) The full name was: 3-inch gun, motor carriage, M10. Frequently called M10 GMC (for "Gun, Motor Carriage", the formal term for a tank destroyer. Not for "General Motors Corp."). During WW2 it had no other name in US Army service. Even informally, I have never seen any inference that someone called it a "Wolverine". That seems to be entirely a post-war, and even more so a very recent adder. It is possible that the British referred to the M10 in their service as "Wolverine". But unlikely. The British did not tend towards animal names -- that was a Canadian tendency. And the Brits already had a name for the M10 -- they "Achilles". Some post-war hobby sources seem to attribute that name to M10s modified to carry the 17pdr, but wartime sources indicate that those were referred to at the time as "M10 Fireflies" or even "Achilles Fireflies" (the term "Firefly" being a reference to any and every vehicle modified to carry a 17pdr, and in no way limited to the "Sherman Firefly"). The M18 was also just the M18. The formal name was "76mm Gun, Motor Carriage, M18". Also known as the "M18 GMC". Note: the 3-inch gun was a different gun than the 76mm gun. It fired different ammunition. The two guns had almost identical performance, so from a wargaming perspective they may be interchangeable, but they were by no means interchangeable in US Army service. The M18 was one of the few US Army vehicles that actually got a nickname during the war. Car makers tried very hard to keep their names relevant and in front of consumers during the war, when they were not allowed to build and sell cars to the public. When they got the contract to build the M18, Buick did an ad campaign to tell the future car buying public all about this wondrous vehicle they were building.
There does not appear to ever have been an Army process devoted to coming up with a nickname for the M18. If the Army had taken a whack at it, it is highly doubtful they would have chosen a name that the Navy was already using for their new fighter. But the advertising team at Buick evidently had no such qualms. It does seem that the term "Hellcat" was occasionally used by the press during WW2, and may have even been picked up by some of the individual soldiers in ETO. But I've never seen it used in any sort of US Army documentation. My father was in the Tank Destroyers, and he never spoke of the "Hellcat" to me, even though the M18 was the WW2 vehicle that impressed him the most, and that he spoke of to me the most. -Mark (aka: Mk 1) |
Lee494 | 14 Aug 2018 3:04 p.m. PST |
Lets make this simple. Moving past the original design criteria correctly outlined in prior posts, The StuG resulted from the desire to put as big a gun as possible on a given hull. The only way to have a gun that exceeded the size turret ring a hull could handle was to make it a turretless "StuG". No way a Pz III was going to take a turret with a 75mm l/48 gun. The US on the other hand had no problem fitting its largest gun, the 90mm, to either the M10 or M4 hull (IIRC this was the M36 B1) so there was no need to design an entirely separate turretless "StuG". What intrigues me is why the US didn't turn out tons of 90mm M4s once they proved it could be adapted to fit. The Israelis certainly managed to upgun it with success. Cheers! |
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 3:30 p.m. PST |
Mark that is not the way I thought it happened, but I can't check my books as away at the moment. From memory the design of the Stug was proposed by Manstein in 1935, long before all the battles about who should control the Panzers had been fought. Remember the Light Divisions were created for the cavalry and there were always independent Panzer battalions not part of the Panzer divisions. Who should control Stugs was decided after the design had been finalised. It was Daimler-Benz who had the design contract, but handed it over to Alkett. The height was specified as no more than the average infantryman, which rather precluded a turret. You are right though that there was never any consideration of it being a cheap poor man's tank. Neither was it designed to "get around" a Panzer ban on the artillery, rather it was designed for the role envisioned. As for the US procurement being more rationalised one could argue that the design of the M4 was compromised by it having to be both an infantry support tank and a tank for the armoured divisions. The British had seperate I Tanks and the Soviets and Germans had assault guns. Which was the better approach? Probably no right answer. In the grand scheme of things other factors are more important than choice of vehicle for infantry support. As for German tank destroyer designs there seem to be 2 different threads running through. First is the "we have this tank that is no longer viable, what can we do with the chassis to make full use of the existing tooling". That lead to the various Marder designs. Second was the drive to put heavy guns onto better armoured chassis than the mid war designs had which lead to the various Jagdpanzer designs. |
Wackmole9 | 14 Aug 2018 3:45 p.m. PST |
|
Fred Cartwright | 14 Aug 2018 3:57 p.m. PST |
t28 super heavy tank Great looking vehicle! |
Starfury Rider | 14 Aug 2018 4:02 p.m. PST |
You know I thought I'd been down this road before! TMP link The PzIII in the 1942 Tiger Bn were definitely part of the Dec42 KStN and were deleted with the superseding Mar43 issue (I think Jentz notes one Tiger Bn still on the mixed format by Kursk?). Similarly the fourth Coy of the Pz Bn in the short-lived Pz Bdes of 1944 was intended to be SdKfz162. Gary |
Lion in the Stars | 14 Aug 2018 5:09 p.m. PST |
What intrigues me is why the US didn't turn out tons of 90mm M4s once they proved it could be adapted to fit. Because that would have stopped Sherman production as the factory(s) making the turrets re-tooled. |
Thresher01 | 14 Aug 2018 7:54 p.m. PST |
Plus, development lagged behind the need for them, as it most always does. By the time they got serious about upgunning, and uparmoring our tanks, or making new ones, the war was pretty much won. The M26 barely got into the fight, very late in the war, in penny-packet numbers. A pity the US Army didn't get it a year sooner, but that would have probably slowed production way down, as they switched over to the newer models, and as history haw shown, it really wasn't needed at that point. I do suspect some American tankers and their families would disagree with that conclusion, however. |
Fish | 14 Aug 2018 11:36 p.m. PST |
By accident I just watched this 15 minutes ago: YouTube link He claims (I haven't checked) that StuG had racked more kills than any other AFV in the German Army. Also, wasn't one logistical reason behind assault guns (instead of tanks) towards the end of the war the very real shortage of ball bearings since the Allied bombings specifically targeted ball bearing factories?
|
langobard | 15 Aug 2018 1:55 a.m. PST |
Taking a slightly different approach: when you look at how powerful the US artillery was in WW2, did they really need dedicated assault gun batteries? My understanding of StuG origins is that it was an infantry support weapon, basically to provide aid to infantry attacks, BUT was originally designed at a time when the Germans were looking at France (and the Maginot line) as their main battle problem. The US was facing different tactical problems, and frankly, the artillery support that they provided their forces was so overwhelming that I doubt they saw either a need or a use for dedicated assualt guns when their traditional tube armed units were doing such a great job. |
Patrick R | 15 Aug 2018 7:05 a.m. PST |
link Here you can find some actual archives which talk about names. The problem with the M26 is that, again according to the archives, the tank was not operational before late 1944, and I said in an earlier post if they had sent them earlier, then every other post on this forum would be about the horrible scandal that the US army had dared to send an unreliable vehicle into combat that was too heavy for most bridges, caused some major logistics problems and everyone would agree that upgunning the Sherman to a 90mm gun would have been far better. Now for upgunning the M4, they tried the 3-inch gun, but that was too big and would make it impossible for the crew to operate effectively. They found that they could fit a 76mm in the slightly larger T25 turret and that they could fit an entire T26 90mm turret on an M4. But they noticed that this program would not be ready before the M26 started being shipped to Europe, so it was seen as unnecessary. |
Keith Talent | 15 Aug 2018 8:18 a.m. PST |
"Also, wasn't one logistical reason behind assault guns (instead of tanks) towards the end of the war the very real shortage of ball bearings since the Allied bombings specifically targeted ball bearing factories?" The schwienfurt raids targeted ball-bearing production, this being identified as a logistical choke point in the German war effort. A, the raids weren't particularly effective. B, Unknown to the Allies, Germany had massive stockpiles of ball-bearings, and they never ran short of them. |
Legion 4 | 15 Aug 2018 8:40 a.m. PST |
Yes, the US had the T28 and the UK the Tortious both turretless, but were never deployed AFAIK … link |
Blutarski | 15 Aug 2018 10:19 a.m. PST |
Germany was also sourcing large quantities of ball bearings from Sweden. B |
Marc33594 | 15 Aug 2018 10:26 a.m. PST |
From memory the design of the Stug was proposed by Manstein in 1935, long before all the battles about who should control the Panzers had been fought. Not bad from memory Fred but it actually goes back further than that. From "Sturmgeschutz & Its Variants" by Walter J. Spielberger: "The development of self-propelled vehicles, initiated under contract by the Reichswehrminiterium in 1927, also provided for the design of a 77mm cannon on a maneuverable fully-tracked vehicle. The vehicle and weapon were partially protected by armor. With this, the concept of an infantry escort gun was rekindled from the World War I." The program was shelved in 1932 due to other plans for motorizing the Army which seemed more urgent. From the same source: "In a memorandum to the Chief of the General Staff and the Commander in Chief of the Army from von Manstein (later promoted to Genralfeldmarschall) suggested in 1935 to revive the concept of the Infanterie-Begleitbatterien (infantry escort batteries) of the first World War. He envisaged the solution to his proposal in the form of the armored self-propelled gun for the direct support of the infantry. He coined the phrase Sturmartillerie (assault artillery)…" There is also a translated copy of Abt.Nr. 890/36 g. Kdos done on 8 June 1936 by von Manstein outlining the use of such weapons. Unfortunately I can not find this translation online, only a copy in the original German |
N0tt0N | 15 Aug 2018 11:33 a.m. PST |
Just curious, why would the infantry support artillery design requirement lead to heavier armor rather than the typical SP gun approach? Just sneaky procurement by the infantry? |
Mark 1 | 15 Aug 2018 11:33 a.m. PST |
Plus, development lagged behind the need for them, as it most always does.By the time they got serious about upgunning, and uparmoring our tanks, or making new ones, the war was pretty much won. I don't think I would characterize the issue as development lagging behind the need. Rather, it was perception and articulation of the need that seems to have lagged behind. US Army Ordnance had a working 76mm Sherman by the end of 1942. The Armored Board didn't like it or want it. US Army Ordnance had a better 76mm Sherman by the end of 1943. Volume production began in January of 1944. This is well before the Soviets had a working T-34-85. 100 of them were shipped to the UK for the D-Day landings. They were left behind because none of the in-theater commanders wanted the hassles of putting up-gunned Shermans in their units. Ordnance began development of a 90mm armed TD in October of 1942. The TD Board didn't want it. But Ordnance continued with development anyway, and the first prototypes of what was to become the 90mm GMC M36 were completed in September of 1943 -- well before the Soviets had their SU-85. Initially it was rejected for production because all the 90mm guns it would use were already planned for use in TANK production. AGF changed their mind in October of 1943, and approved production of 300 units. Hulls were completed by January of 1944, with production of finished units (with turrets and guns) taking place from April. ETO was not interested, despite Ordnance efforts to show of the firepower of the 90mm gun in test firings in the UK. The contract was expanded, but only to 600 units, in the spring. It was not until July of 1944 that ETO began to understand that they needed heavier guns, and the contract was quickly expanded to 1,400 units. The first M36s were issued to units in ETO in September. The story of the development of the M26 is even more convoluted, and can't be described as a side-story in one posting. But the heart of the matter was not development lagging behind. It was recognition of the need lagging behind. On the one hand you have Ordnance trying to stay ahead of the game. They developed tanks with 76mm guns in 1942, and 90mm guns in 1943. But then, they also developed tanks with 75mm guns with auto-loaders, and electric transmissions, and lots of propeller-headed tinker-toy projects. That is the nature of development. You try stuff. What they needed was a consistent voice telling them what was useful, and what was not. But on the other hand US Army combat experience in Tunisia and Sicily pointed towards the Sherman being just fine with a few minor adjustments. So the mantlet was improved, and applique armor was applied over the ammo racks, and a loader's hatch was added to the turret, and eventually a new hull was developed that was both easier to produce and provided improved crew survival by facilitating exits through better hatches and moving ammo out of the sponsons to water-filled racks below the turret. Ordnance developed all of those things too, and they went into production because that's what the front line commanders wanted. But the up-gunned stuff didn't go into production because no one wanted it. Until August of 1944. Then everyone wanted it RIGHT NOW, and GD it why didn't you do it before? And in September the deliveries started, but GD it way didn't you do it before? Oh, and by October nobody wanted it anymore, they wanted more 75mm armed Shermans and some Jumbos please and those 105mm Assault Gun Shermans are just the thing can we please have some more of those … until in December suddenly GD it why don't we have more 90mm guns?!? See it takes time to build stuff. And (for the US in particular) it takes time to ship the stuff that you build. And if you're not sure what to build, so you ask the guys who use it what they need, and they can't make up their minds, or change their minds every 3 months, it's really hard to give them what they need. What intrigues me is why the US didn't turn out tons of 90mm M4s once they proved it could be adapted to fit. Because that would have stopped Sherman production as the factory(s) making the turrets re-tooled. Sherman production was already winding down by the summer of 1944. And most of that production was using new turrets anyway. Production of 75mm Shermans was winding down by by the end of 1943. About the only Shermans in production by the summer of 1944 were the 105mm M4 and M4A3, and the 76mm M4A1, M4A2 and M4A3. Of these, only the 105mm Shermans used "Sherman" turrets. The 76mm Shermans (and the few hundred 75mm armed Sherman Jumbos build in the Spring of 1944) used turrets designed for the T23 prototype tank. So changing turrets evidently wasn't too big of a deal. If they had decided in the summer of 1944 to build lots of Shermans with 90mm guns, they would have had two possible ways to go. 1) The path of an M36 TD turret on a Sherman hull (the M36B1 TD). The Armored Board was sure to reject this. The turret armor was too thin on the sides, it was open-topped (although a roof kit could be provided, it was still essentially an open-topped turret with a hat on it), and it had no co-axial MG, which was a sure fail for a tank, as tankers generally found the co-ax MG to be the most commonly-used weapon in the vehicle. 2) The path of a T25 turret on a Sherman hull. This turret was a bit heavy for the Sherman, but it was within the range of reason for a stop-gap hybrid. The problem was that this turret was not in production. Putting it into production, in say September of 1944, would have meant deliveries to ETO in about March of 1945. By that time there were already 200 M26s in ETO. Why would a Sherman, with less ammo and reduced automotive performance compared to other Shermans, and less armor compared to Pershings, be better than 76mm Shermans with HVAP ammo, or Pershings? The T26 turret (from the Pershing) could fit, but it was just too heavy (having 25% more armor), unless the Armored Board and AGF and ETO would accept a substantial degradation in automotive performance (as with the Jumbo). This was not in the cards. The deliver timeline would have put them in theater in perhaps February of 1945, a timeframe in which it was expected that Pershings would become available. And it would have meant diverting Pershing turrets to make Shermans, which did not appear to be a superior solution to making Pershings. Or so it was thought. I think the only path by which the US could have done better would have been if the front line forces had spoken with a consistent voice in 1943 that they needed better guns. Ordnance could deliver, but not if no one knew what they wanted. -Mark (aka: Mk 1) |
Blutarski | 15 Aug 2018 3:19 p.m. PST |
Mark You may be interested to read the following paper. The author (a young master's degree candidate) did a very deep dive into BuOrd archives and turned up some interesting facts and time-lines on T20/T23/T25/T26/M26 and T71/M36 development. The Wrong Track: Errors in American Tank Development in World War II, Jacob Fox, James Madison University link - - Re "voices" Barnes (BuOrd) and Devers (TAC) and the Brits doing on the scene reporting from Tunisia, as well as reports in from Italy and from the Eastern Front all emphasized the constant German tank improvements and stressed the great importance of upgrading Allied tank quality. The Brits, for example, were prepared to place quantity production orders for the T20 in 1943. These reports and entreaties were ignored by the stateside AGF bureaucracy. Not a pleasant story. B |
Patrick R | 15 Aug 2018 3:55 p.m. PST |
"Crews in the M4 Sherman tank thus suffered extreme casualties in the fight to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi Germany" Between mentioning Belton Cooper as one of his main sources and apparently being unaware that less than 1500 Tankers were killed In NW europe and only 80 (eighty) were killed in Italy (figures which include casualties occurred while on duty outside the tank) Comparing this to infantry casualties or bomber crews, seems to me the real death traps were M1 Garands and B17 bombers … Tripping over your own preconceived notions in the first paragraph is not a pretty thing. People still make the assumption that M4's were drowning in a sea of enemy tanks and had to wade through hordes of panzers whereas in reality the vast majority of M4 engagements were against infantry, anti-tank guns and AFV's that could be easily taken out by a 75mm. For every shot of AP M4's fired 11 HE shells and many thousands of .30-06. It is a delusion to believe that a proper tank for the US army should have been a heavily armoured tank-murdering tank. This reminds me of somebody who called Creighton Abrams, "Cretin Abrams" for not wanting to switch to a 76mm M4, because it was so obviously a much better tank !!! There are two possibilities, one being that Abrams who was in the thick of it more than once was indeed utterly incompetent and didn't understand what any armchair historian or wargamer could planly see or maybe the guy actually knew more than most people believe they think they know better than say somebody who was out there in the field … Yes demand for guns did shift, there were some calls for better guns when they encountered Panthers in Normandy, but once the Germans had lost most of their tanks the 75mm proved much handier because they were almost always engaging infantry. It wasn't until December when they faced a whole new batch of Panthers that they wanted 76mm and 90mm guns. "German response to this problem was quite unlike the usual U.S. Army reaction: swift and thorough" It took them over three years to get the Tiger ready ! Panther took over two years (and it still wasn't reliable !), upgrades to Panzer IV (putting in a new barrel took a little over a year ! Ordnance anticipated needs and had solutions ready in 1942-1943 before the upgrade cycle of other armies were still getting out of bed … Oh wait, I must have forgotten that anything German is automatically better ? BTW did this guy get his master ? If so, somebody should ask their money back !!! "The U.S. Army did not see a problem that the Germans had superior tanks because AGF doctrine stated tank versus tank combat as rare and not the intention of tanks in battle to begin with." Wrong interpretation that can be demolished by simply examining tanker manuals. The doctrine was that Tanks were an offensive weapon that should not be tied down in attempts to counter enemy attacks unless absolutely unavoidable because that was the job of the Tank Destroyers. The manual clearly gives indications on how to engage enemy tanks, not how to avoid this ! " it would be difficult to find anyone who argues that the Sherman was better than its adversaries in a one on one match in 1944." I will argue that the Sherman was a competent combat vehicle because I rate on many more factors than merely being able to kill Panthers and Tiger. It's like saying Woody Allen should be given an "F" for all his work because he wouldn't be able to fight one round against Mike Tyson. It's monomanic myopia. "Cooper blames the higher ups in the Army, mostly Patton among them, who stuck to old Armored Force Doctrine stating that tanks were not meant to fight other tanks" he [Patton] had stated to a visiting Ordnance officer, just after the Battle of the Bulge, "Ordnance takes too God Damn long seeking perfection at the expense of the fighting men, and you can tell that to anyone at Ordnance." THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT: ON BEACHHEAD AND BATTLEFRONT by LidaMayo Patton was never involved in any decision making regarding which tanks were to be put into service. Belton Cooper saw some terrible things, but he only saw destroyed US tanks, had he seen only destroyed German tanks what opinion would he have had of them in such a case ??? |
donlowry | 15 Aug 2018 6:07 p.m. PST |
once it was in production, and in use, the feedback that lead to progressive improvements and eventually expanded production did indeed have components of "it costs less than a turreted tank" and "we can put a bigger gun on it / heavier armor on it". So by the end of the war, it is entirely reasonable to say it was used as much as it was because it was cheaper than a tank, and carried a bigger gun and more armor than the same chassis could carry if it had a turret. Exactly. What it was designed for in the first place was not the same thing that caused it to be produced in such quantities and used as a substitute for tanks. |
donlowry | 15 Aug 2018 6:08 p.m. PST |
BTW, excellent post, Mark! |
Lion in the Stars | 15 Aug 2018 7:36 p.m. PST |
Just curious, why would the infantry support artillery design requirement lead to heavier armor rather than the typical SP gun approach? Just sneaky procurement by the infantry? It definitely started out as sneaky procurement by the infantry. You also have a much lighter vehicle without the turret, so you might as well up-armor the hull back to standard PzIII weight. The Israelis did the same thing with their Namer APC, which apparently has better armor than the Merkava IV. |
Blutarski | 15 Aug 2018 8:24 p.m. PST |
With all due respect, Patrick, I think you are doing the author a disservice your description of his treatment of the Belton Cooper material; I trust that you did note his referral to Zaloga, Williamson Murray and other historians for balance. The fellow also deserves credit for his good research work in the BuOrd archives. Your reference to the famous Patton quote is a case in point. BuOrd may indeed have appeared to have been the culprit to Patton from his remote and out-of-touch position as a combat commander in NWE, but, it is manifestly evident (to me at any rate) that the true cause of delay in delivery of new and improved tanks lays indisputably at the feet of AGF, which staunchly obstructed and/or slow-walked every effort to advance development and production priorities. The author relates a forceful story based upon names, dates and BuOrd archival document references in the second half of his paper; if you have not read that far into the paper, I recommend that you consider doing so. The official BuOrd history you referenced above pretty much supports his argument. Some related comments - 1 Some people argued for a more heavily armored tank. But the basic demand was for a heavier, with many pressing for the 90mm as early as 1943. BuOrd supported development of a 90mm Sherman (which was refused by AGF), then a 90mm T20-T26 (which was obstructed and slow walked to the point that only a paltry few barely reached the ETO in the final few months of the war, along with a simultaneous push for the 90mm T71 (which ultimately required the personal intervention of Genl Marshall to unjam the bureaucratic roadblocks). 2 The author, insofar as I can find, made no statements at all quantifying personnel losses only tank losses. His figure of "over 1600 tank losses between June and August of 1944" was foot-noted as having been taken directly from Zaloga's "Armored Thunderbolt". 3 I recommend "ORO-T-117 Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II, by Coox and Naisawald. According to them, total ETO tank casualties in 1944-1945 from all causes for US + British + Canadian armies = 6,757, of which approximately 2,925 were write-offs. The number for the US Army alone = 4,257 tank casualties, of which approximately 1,745 were write-offs. Coox and Naisawald defined a tank casualty as - "Any tank unavailable for a firefight or for movement in a battle area. Immobilization, whether soon repairable or not, might result from an enemy weapon, friendly weapon, accident, mechanical failure, capture, self-destruction, bogging or abandonment. No armored cars, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns, or motor transport, were considered." ORO-T-117 is a pretty "data dense" document and I'm not nearly done mining it. I posted the web link to it on the latest Sherman tank thread if interested. FWIW.
B
|
Patrick R | 16 Aug 2018 12:01 a.m. PST |
I'll sum up my rebuttal : 1) Far too many people seem to think the M4 problem can be reduced to "MOAR GUNS !" because they are under the assumption that the Sherman's main task should have been to kill Panthers almost at the exclusivity of every other type of action, which is at best considered a "side-job" to murdering every German tank in sight. 2) The US army was constantly attacking sometimes over difficult terrain against serious odds. And while they did suffer high tank losses the claim that this killed huge numbers of tank crews seems to be contradicted by the casualty reports, even if M4's were being lost this does not translate in actual crew losses, Zaloga, that hack as some people call him has been working on German tank casualty rates to bury the myth that everything the Germans did was a walk in the park and the nightmare was wholly on the Allied side. 3) Belton Cooper's work is a harrowing first hand experience of what happens when you inevitably get into combat. He makes mistake upon mistake when he tries to be any kind of authority on the logistics and decision-making process at the highest levels. I attribute this to "GI Hearsay" that got repeated over and over until it became holy scripture. 4) Referring to point 1) the M4 high casualty rate is always (unconsciously) attributed to tank kills, whereas artillery, mines, AT guns, Panzerfaust etc are rarely brought up, it's the perpetual duel between M4's and Panthers that has become the standard starting point and dominant narrative when discussing tanks, THOU SHALT MAKETH A TANK THAT WILL KILL THINE ENEMIES' TANKS, THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A TANK THAT CAN DO OTHER THINGS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER ! When we look at say, the data for Germany fighting France in 1940, they have about 150K casualties and lose about 800 tanks over a period of six weeks. The US army loses 500K men and 7000 tanks in little under a year. Now in 1940 a third of German tanks don't even have a proper gun and the opposition isn't really that much better off, French AT numbers and doctrine is inadequate, by 1944 the Germans have vast experience in dealing with tanks, better tanks, they have the AT matter settled and they still fail to wipe the floor with the Allies as they did with the French or the Soviets in 1940 and 1941, so if we allow some applause for the Germans to win battles using Panzer I and II tanks, why do we damn the US for using a tank which has a considerable INHERENT combat potential and proved itself to be a versatile combat vehicle available in substantial numbers ? So where are the minimum 2 million casualties the Germans would have caused in 1944 with five years of combat experience and vastly superior equipment ? How come the US army didn't lose at least 22,000 tanks to conform to the German track record of 1940 ? And I'll spare you the losses if we take the figures for Barbarossa. Does the side-effect of creating a target-rich environment for the enemy maybe contribute to the high loss rate, especially when we see the British consider them to be disposable ? But then again the Allies should have lost so many more men and equipment. Somewhere the assumptions and expectations of the peanut gallery don't seem to add up in face of reality. There is a simple answer, the Germans were losing, and even when defending they were not doing too well because at this point the Allies had figured out how to operate properly and defeat the Germans. 5) The author does make the explicit claim that US tankers suffered massive losses (making it sound almost as bad as the first Day of the Somme) but then does not even bother to address the point or even consider that the assumption that the US Army was massacred on a regular basis by superior German forces (again pulled from his narrative) might be even slightly erroneous and that only a more powerful tank would have solved the problem, though we know that the M26 was not wholly reliable, it did fight a Tiger 1 in an encounter and, ironically lost, it could not cross most bridges and it could not be delivered to Europe until they installed heavy duty cranes in the port of Antwerp that served until the 1970's to unload said tanks. Again, it's very easy to make a statement "they oughtta" until you notice the fine print involved. Those metal hoops mounted on M4's were a highly important chain in the logistics chain, but because this has nothing to do with blasting away at a Panther with a 90mm from your deployment line, it's not important. 6) In absolute terms the Sherman found itself short-changed when facing German tanks, but they were rarely blasting away at each other at 100 paces over open terrain. It was often a game of bushwacking or units stumbling upon each other and not rarely the guys who manned 75mm M4 tanks became mean bastards who would rather drive two miles the long way to shoot a Panther in the behind than to blindly charge at it. Soldiers who are baffled by an enemy usually end up dead and the survivors who have more than one brain cell learn and adapt. The tankers found that their turrets were often much faster than that of enemy tanks or the turn rate of StuGs, Zaloga has a list of where tanks tend to be hit and it's more often than not the flanks. Maybe you're not used to this in your games and people stand off, exchanging fire until the Germans emerge unscathed and then butcher the rest of the troops on the table. But that doesn't mean your experience is the same for the troops in the field … The M4 is not a wonder tank, but it had quite a few virtues of its own that people gloss over or consider irrelevant that made a huge difference in reality. 7) I won't say the author did not do his research, but he based it on faulty assumptions that he didn't see. Once you do this, you end up mining only the data that supports your thesis and tend to ignore those that don't. It's called Bias and though I am not a university professor, I would have expressed my doubts in his assumptions and asked him to at least consider the broader picture. Same for Belton Cooper, he saw horrible things and while he probably was honestly making his claims, he never saw the US in action beating Germans into a pulp or the German side of losses. |
Darrell B D Day | 16 Aug 2018 1:44 a.m. PST |
A fascinating thread that shows the best of TMP; an informed debate with cogent arguments from many viewpoints, all conducted with a vigour that does not desce into acrimony. Well done to all contributors and I'm so pleased to read such a well informed defence of the M4. Without any of the depth of knowledge exhibited above, I've always contended that the M4 had to be the best all-round tank of WW2. That's merely an opinion not based on in-depth research and I hope some of the more knowledgeable contributors keep this fascinating topic going. DBDD |
Andy ONeill | 16 Aug 2018 2:19 a.m. PST |
It's very difficult to come up with a best tank for ww2. Partly because they changed so much over the 6 years. Eg the pz 4 was there in 1939 and still viable in 1945. Do you give extra credit for early starters or do you go for the centurion? The Sherman was certainly at least adequate. Delivering a working "better" tank early enough to make a difference would have required a highly improbable set of decisions an a LOT of luck.
|
Marc33594 | 16 Aug 2018 6:10 a.m. PST |
Sherman production was already winding down by the summer of 1944. And most of that production was using new turrets anyway. I must respectfully disagree with you on this Mark. From a low in the first quarter of 44 Sherman production ramped up again, it didnt continue to wind down. The following are the production numbers, by quarter, for Sherman production: 42-01 12 42-02 296 42-03 2,670 42-04 5,039 43-01 5,708 43-02 6,053 43-03 5,771 43-04 3,713 44-01 1,894 44-02 3,356 44-03 3,654 44-04 4,275 45-01 4,076 45-02 2,687 45-03 30 |
ScoutJock | 16 Aug 2018 7:44 a.m. PST |
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the use of M12 GMC 155mm guns in the assault gun role using direct fire to destroy bunkers on the Siegfried Line. Hardly a true assault gun but very effective. |
Legion 4 | 16 Aug 2018 7:50 a.m. PST |
Regardless, a turretless vehicle like a STuG, SU85, etc. is quicker and easier produce. But obviously a turreted AFV is generally a "better" design, i.e. LOS/FOF, etc. |
Pages: 1 2
|