"The M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer" Topic

"Even before Nazi Germany's declaration of war on America on 11 December 1941, the U.S. Army was coming to terms with the need to adapt its arsenal and operational doctrines to the evolving European battlefield. Having witnessed the rapid advances of armored and mechanized forces in the German Blitzkrieg across Poland, the Low Countries, and France, War Department planners, including the future commander of Army Ground Forces (AGF), Lesley J. McNair, set out to amend a strategy based around static and localized anti-armor defense beginning in the latter stages of 1940. Within a year, the conclusion that mobile, massed anti-armor operations should be employed to counter armored attacks had been adopted after doctrinal endorsement from Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. However, as German panzers tracked further into Eastern Europe, refinement of the tactics and development of the vehicles with which to blunt the new method of warfare still lagged. Despite flaws in its doctrine and weapons developed to counter the panzer threat, the Army was well on its way toward developing its Tank Destroyer Force and several tank destroyer systems, including the M18 Hellcat, by the time the United States entered World War II.

The origin of the M18 dates to these first few weeks before the United States' entry into World War II, when, on 27 November, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew D. Bruce assumed command of the Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center at Fort Meade, Maryland. Bruce, a respected planner from the War Department's G-3 section, immediately set out to develop a vehicle fast enough to maneuver around the flanks of enemy columns to attack from the rear, and with enough killing power to distinguish it from the infantry support oriented tanks like the M4 Sherman…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Interesting article. I've always liked the Hellcat despite its shortcomings

Glad you enjoyed it my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

It is a neat little tank destroyer.

Basically a paper tiger from the armor standpoint, so you'd need to be very good, or very lucky as the crew of one of those to survive against heavier tanks.

Best to try to lay an ambush, and then "shoot and scoot", if you want to live.

Basically a paper tiger from the armor standpoint, so you'd need to be very good, or very lucky as the crew of one of those to survive against heavier tanks.

Best to try to lay an ambush, and then "shoot and scoot", if you want to live.

Well, that's exactly what they were supposed to do!

Yep, sucks though, if you get it wrong, and/or the enemy is on the ball, and spots you first.

Virtually no protection at all. I was surprised to read the front armor was so thin. I always thought that arc had a bit more protection there.

I always thought of them as a mobile anti-tank gun.

Wolfhag

McNair was ultimately a disaster for the US military in WWII his insistence on tank destroyers instead of upgraded tank design. The M18 is another example of his failed approach and put the US a generation behind others in tank design.

The downside, so much harder to conceal than a conventional anti tank gun.

The upside, if you are spotted at least you can get out fast. But in an offensive campaign…ie most Allied warfare in second half WWII, that was not the idea of course.

German Panzerjagers proved highly effective as so heavily armed and armoured….and defensive weapons.

American tank destroyers, for a lack of many big German armored attacks, usually got split up into platoon-sized formations and assigned as infantry support or even as self propelled artillery. However when they did get the chance to operate in their designed role-defense against enemy tanks-they often did very well.

McNair was ultimately a disaster for the US military in WWII…

Well, on the one hand I might throw back that McNair (Army Chief of Staff 1940-42) had relatively little to do with the Tank Destroyers other than agreeing to the formation of the TD Command in 1940. And I might suggest that for tanks and tank destroyers one might look more deeply at the impact of Devers (CO of the Armored Force 1941-43), Bruce (CO of the TD Command 1941-45) and Barnes (Chief of R&D, Army Ordnance).

And on the other hand, we might also consider that US TDs were very successful in destroying enemy armor. And that there was nothing in either TD doctrine or Tank doctrine to prevent tanks from carrying guns that were equally useful against tanks, or to suggest that "tanks don't fight other tanks".

I find the criticism of McNair among armchair historians to be particularly unjust. He was the key player in development of overall US Army doctrine in the pre-war period, making him perhaps the most significant player in architecting the US Army of WW2. He is also the highest ranking US Army officer to be killed in the war. He deserves a far better place in history than "a disaster".

One needs only look at the US Army in WW1, vs. WW2, to see how much of a disaster he was NOT.

In WW1 the US Army arrived in Europe begging rifles from Britain, grenades, artillery, planes and food from France, and tanks from both.

In WW2 the US Army PROVIDED rifles to Britain, and artillery, planes, food, tanks, boots, coats, gasoline, radios and a host of other war materials to 5 allied countries.

No other army in history has even gotten close to what the US Army did in 1940 – 1945.

In 1939 Poland had a bigger and better equipped army than the US had. And we all know how well they did against the Germans.

By 1940 the US had produced all of about 100 medium tanks -- over a period of 20 years! And those were so useless that France, knowing their own army's dire need for modernization and expansion, turned them down.

Yet by 1942 the US was producing more medium tanks in a month than Germany was producing in a year. Producing not only enough tanks to build and equip a million-man strong expeditionary force to fight on the other side of the world, but also building enough tanks to support 5 allied nations as well. Building tanks that were, unquestionably, the most robust and reliable tanks in any army, whether used in the Arctic, the Sahara, or the jungles of New Guinea.

And by the way McNair was also responsible, to about the same extent he was for tanks and tank destroyers, for ensuring a US Army equipped with M1 rifles, the 105mm howitzer and 155mm "Long Tom" gun, the "Deuce-and-a-half" truck and the "jeep", the "handy talkie" and "walky talkie" radios, and a dozen or two other key pieces of kit that allowed the US Army to go from laughable start to world military power in 2 years.

Yeah sure, go blaming him for tank destroyers. But don't give any credit for having enough of the world's best rifles, or new artillery, or radios, or C- and K-rations. Ponder how many horses the US Army could have rustled up to move their supplies in ETO in 1944, etc. etc. etc.

So before you go off about what a disaster he was, consider where the US Army would have been without him.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)