Thursday, October 30, 1941. A Change In Material Circumstances

 

On this date in 1941, T-34s began to appear in action in numbers for the first time.

In other technological, if you will, news, Northrup received a contract for one full-scale mockup, and one actual flying experimental example, of its flying wing design.

Northrup XB-35 experimental flying wing bomber.

The revolutionary design would not fly until after the war and would not see adoption until modern stealth technology arrived, at which time Northrup's design would reappear, evolved, as the Northrup B-2 Spirit.

At Tula, the Germans attempted a pitched massive assault but Soviet forces, some of which were militia, turned them back in spite of suffering heavy losses.  The Soviets used anti tank guns and anti-aircraft guns in the effort.

The Germans and Romanians commenced the Siege of Sevastopol.  It would take the Axis forces until July to take the city.

Charles Lindbergh spoke to an anti-war rally crowd of 20,000 in Madison Square Garden.  His speech was very harsh on Franklin Roosevelt, whom he accused of attempting to draw the United States into war and of using dictatorial measures.

USO Camp Shows commenced on this day in 1941, as discussed in the link below:

Today in World War II History—October 30, 1941

A u-boat damaged the USS Salinas, a U.S. Navy fleet oiler, but the vessel managed to escape without sinking.

Pearl Harbor, October 30, 1941.

Monday, June 23, 1941. The first modern tanks.

This was, obviously, D+1 in Operation Barbarossa.

German Armor in the early days of Barbarossa.  This tank is a Panzer III, one of the more modern German tanks at the time and would remain in production into 1943.  By this time it had already been really made obsolete by the Panzer IV, which had a larger more effective 75mm rifle as its main gun.  Only about half of the tanks that went into Russia in June, 1941, were IIIs and IVs.  It was By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-185-0139-20 / Grimm, Arthur / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5410249

Acting U.S. Secretary of State Sumner Welles stated on this day:

If any further proof could conceivably be required of the real purposes and projects of the present leaders of Germany for world-domination, it is now furnished by Hitler's treacherous attack upon Soviet Russia.

We see once more, beyond peradventure of doubt, with what intent the present Government of Germany negotiates "non-aggression pacts". To the leaders of the German Reich sworn engagements to refrain from hostile acts against other countries--engagements regarded in a happier and in a civilized world as contracts to the faithful observance of which the honor of nations themselves was pledged--are but a symbol of deceit and constitute a dire warning on the part of Germany of hostile and murderous intent. To the present German Government the very meaning of the word "honor" is unknown.

This Government has often stated, and in many of his public statements the President has declared, that the United States maintains that freedom to worship God as their consciences dictate is the great and fundamental right of all peoples. This right has been denied to their peoples by both the Nazi and the Soviet Governments. To the people of the United States this and other principles and doctrines of communistic dictatorship are as intolerable and as alien to their own beliefs as are the principles and doctrines of Nazi dictatorship. Neither kind of imposed overlordship can have or will have any support or any sway in the mode of life or in the system of government of the American people.

But the immediate issue that presents itself to the people of the United States is whether the plan for universal conquest, for the cruel and brutal enslavement of all peoples, and for the ultimate destruction of the remaining free democracies, which Hitler is now desperately trying to carry out, is to be successfully halted and defeated.

That is the present issue which faces a realistic America. It is the issue at this moment which most directly involves our own national defense and the security of the New World in which we live.

In the opinion of this Government, consequently, any defense against Hitlerism, any rallying of the forces opposing Hitlerism, from whatever source these forces may spring, will hasten the eventual downfall of the present German leaders, and will therefore redound to the benefit of our own defense and security. Hitler's armies are today the chief dangers of the Americas.

We have no intent of making this the "World War Two Day by Day Blog".  Indeed, this blog is still focused on the 1890s through 1920, but we are noting notable events that occurred 80 years ago, just as we do when we hit them that happened 50 years ago.

We note that is noting a couple entries that will appear here today.  The first is actually an advertisement email I received yesterday from that vender called At The Front which specializes in World War Two reproductions of clothing.  Their focus is on reenactors, which I am not, but I'm on their email list and indeed their blog, which is not often updated, is one of the ones that's linked in on this site.  The advertisement read:

 

Barbarossa

80 years ago today, the Germans made a grave error, disregarded the results of their own war games and many intelligence assessments and invaded the Soviet Union. A little less than 4 years later, T-34's were in Berlin. The consequences of their decision to attack are still affecting much of the world to this day. The early battles in the East are often brushed over in the history books as quick and relatively easy German victories, often due to the studies having been written in the 50's and 60's by former Wehrmacht officers working for allied historical departments. With the opening of the the Soviet archives in the 1990's, more recent works have been able to shed more detail on the subject and it's now clear that the Wehrmacht had a much rougher time of it and the Soviets were often far less incompetent than previously thought. Twenty years ago, during a rough Winter (the tickets were cheap.), I visited Stalingrad. It was the kind of weather where your face freezes the moment you walk outside. Studying the War for years is one thing- but standing on Mamayev Hill in January adds a perspective that no books or films can offer. At the museum, the granny guarding the displays looked at me indifferently until we told her I had come from the US to see how Russia won the War. Talk about the royal treatment...I got to meet the director, look at anything I wished, and got invited over for tea. No veterans were available, but everyone there had parents or grandparents who had been in the battle. It was an interesting trip. For those interested in the Eastern Front, among the best are the works by David M. Glantz.

I haven't read Glantz, but those who have read him often make similar recommendations.

I note this as what is noted here deserves some consideration. The typical story you hear is that the Germans simply ran over the Soviets up until winter hit in 1941.  It seems, now that we know more, that isn't really true.  We do know that the Germans took absolutely massive casualties in Barbarossa, something we'll discuss further in a moment.

Anyhow, on this date in 1941 the Germans encountered the KV1 and T34 tanks for the very first time.

Early KV1

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1941

The Germans encounter the KV1

The Germans were still advancing, and doing very well at it at that. By the end of this day they'd advanced up to fifty miles in some locations, which in military terms is a very rapid advance.  But they were taking heavier casualties than generally believed outside of German circles at the time, and they were finding that Soviet equipment was much better than they expected. The Germans were not unfamiliar with Soviet equipment, but had been fooled by the overall poor performance and quality of equipment used by the Soviets in the Winter War and the 1939 invasion of Poland.  

Among the rude shocks were the quality of new Soviet armor.

The Germans destroyed a massive amount of Soviet armor in the early days of Barbarossa, but a lot of it was of the prior generation of Soviet armor that was being phased out. For that matter, the Germans were still extraordinarily dependent on their early generation of armor themselves and all of their armor was light compared to what the Soviets were just starting to introduce.  The KV1 and the T-34 can be regarded as the first modern tanks in history, and the T-34 was the best tank of the war.  Regarding an encounter with a T-34 that occurred on this day, a German field report would note:

Half a dozen anti-tank guns fire shells at him, which sound like a drumroll. But he drives staunchly through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster... It is remarkable that lieutenant Steup's tank made hits on a T-34, once at about 20 meters and four times at 50 meters, with Panzergranate 40, without any noticeable effect.

New Soviet armor from the beginning of the "Great Patriotic War". The two tanks on the right are T34s, models of 1940 and 1941 respectively.

Indeed, new Soviet armor was a massive leap ahead of anything anyone else was deploying in every respect.  It's armor protection was superior and the guns heavier.  The tanks clearly outmatched anything anyone else had.  The only problem was that it was brand new, and the Soviets were in the process of reorganizing their armor deployment strategy.

The battles of Brody and Raseiniai, both German victories, commenced on this day.  Brody was a Ukrainian battle, and Raseiniai a Lithuanian one.  At the latter, a single KV1 or KV2, in a battle that was much like that depicted in the move Fury, held up the entire German 6th Panzer Division for a day.

The Germans took Vilnius, the city that had been contested just after World War One between the Poles and the Lithuanians.

It should be noted that a person can take this too far.  A lot about the Soviet defense in these early days was disorganized, a mess, haphazard and ineffective. The Soviets took many, many, more casualties than the Germans did.  Soviet losses were outsized and massive, including armor losses.  Indeed, that was in part because the Soviets were just in the process of switching to a massed armor doctrine, like that used by the Germans, from a dispersed armor doctrine, like that used by the French (and which ironically would be partially implemented by the Germans).

Even that, however, revealed a long term German problem.  The Germans had to win quickly, which right then they were doing, which probably, in their minds, justified the high losses. The Axis had invaded the USSR with 3,500,000 troops.  The problem was, even at that point, the Soviets had over 5,000,000 men under arms, a massive increase from the year prior.  The Germans committed over 5000 aircraft to Operation Barbarossa and destroyed nearly 4,000 Soviet aircraft on the first two days, but the Soviets start the war against the Germans with over 14,000 aircraft themselves.  The Soviet losses, however, were so high in aircraft in 1941 that virtually their entire airforce was destroyed.

Again, none of this is to suggest that early German operations weren't a giant success against the Soviets.  But the success had to be complete and total in 1941 in order to be retained.  And now they were learning that the Soviets had surpassed theme in armor, and by a large margin.

The Soviets, on this day, reorganized their military command and recreated the Stavka, or central military command, which had not existed since Tsarist times.

Hitler took up quarters at the mosquito infested "Wolf's Lair" in East Prussia for the first time on this day in 1941.

That's interesting in and of itself as the construction of the East Prussian fortress suggests that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he know that the war against the Soviets was going to be a long one. The facility operated as an eastern based command center and was built to sustain any kind of attack.  Building a fortress to withstand an attack doesn't make a lot of sense unless you expect to be attacked.

Slovakia declared war on the Soviet Union.  The Provisional Government of Lithuania formed in anticipation of receiving its recognition from the advancing Germans and their allies, and regaining Lithuanian independence.  It would last only a little after a month until Lithuania was simply incorporated into the occupied German territories, slated for future German colonization.  

Eastern Herzogovina rebelled against Italian occupation and against the collaborationist government there.  It had been inspired to do so by the German invasion of Russia, with the Orthodox Russians being the traditional protectors of the Orthodox Serbs.  It's interesting to note that, of course, this assumed early on a German defeat at the hands of the Russians, which was correct, but which would in no way occur so rapidly as to be able to allow the rebels to hold out until the Russians arrived.  And, moreover, it failed to take into account that while Russia continued to look upon the Serbs as people in their sphere of influence, the government in Moscow was hardly sympathetic to Orthodoxy.

75th Anniversary of the March 6, 1945 tank duel in Cologne

Canadian Special Operations Forces troops and American Rangers on parade. How are you going to tell them apart? Berets everywhere.

An odd thought occurred to me yesterday after posting this item, for which I've reset out the photograph below.

But Wait Once Again, the Canadian Special Operations Forces Pink & Green service uniform. Was Lex Anteinternet: But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the ...

 Canadian soldiers of the Canadian Special Operations Forces marching past sailors and airmen of the Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.  This Canadian Army photo is about the only one available to illustrate the new service uniform of the unit which is distinctly different from the Canadian Army's in cut and color.  It's odd to realize the extent to which an American uniform is adopted here by a military that really doesn't like to be confused with American services as everything about the uniform except for the beret and the insignia recalls an American World War Two item. It's also interesting to note the extent to which World War Two uniform items have been either retained or brought back into use by various armies. . . indeed nearly every army that fought in World War Two.

Now that the U.S. Army, in late 2018, did what the Canadian Special Operations Force did in 2017, how are you going to tell who is who when they're in their pink & green uniform?

It won't be easy, at a distance.  And headgear has a lot to do with that.

Now, with the American uniform, troops are authorized to wear the wheelhouse cap or the garrison cap, but they're also authorized to wear the beret.

Now, as I've commented on it from time to time, I'll be frank on what everyone already knows.  I hate berets. They're just silly headgear. But I will concede that they look sharp in some military applications. And those applications, in my view, are in other armies, not the American Army.  Americans don't know how to wear berets and they look weird when they do.

But they've come into U.S. use and they don't seem to be leaving anytime soon, unfortunately.  In fact, beret coloration is expanding.

While I know that I've posted on it before, I'll briefly recap here, so that my comments above make sense.  The U.S. Army first used berets in 1956 when the Special Forces started wearing them in a green coloration that soon came to identify them. That first use was unauthorized but it soon came to be approved.

Special Forces troops in 1956 before the wearing of the beret was authorized.  These were obviously private purchase and lacked the stiffner that later U.S. berets featured.

The color was "Rifle Green" which is a color the British also had used for awhile, but not for commandos.  It was really close, however, to the British "Commando Green" which was worn by the Special Boat Service, one of several British special forces units created during World War Two, albeit one that was part of the British Marines.

The similar coloration was no doubt intentional as the British really brought their style of beret, which is generally what the U.S. and Canada both use, into military use when it adopted berets early in World War Two. The French had been wearing a differently pattern for a long time for their mountain troops, the Chasseurs Alpine, but that pattern is both huge and distinct.  By going with the British style beret and the dark green color, the Special Forces were intentionally adopting the British coloration and use.  That other British units use green berets of other shades was apparently not noticed or, because there was no intent to adopt berets for general use at the time, simply not worried about.

It's odd, however, that tan or khaki wasn't chosen, as we'll see.

Special Forces Warrant Officer in blue dress uniform wearing the Special Forces Rifle Green colored beret.  Note the crossed arrows that are the symbol of this branch.

Canada, it might be noted, also has a green beret in a dark shade, that being Canadian Forces Green.  It's issued to every soldier in the Army who doesn't wear a different shade, in keeping with the post World War Two effort of the Canadian Army to have a distinct looking uniform.  In their current dress uniform, therefore, they look just like U.S. Army members of the Special Forces back when the U.S. Army Class A uniform was the Army Green Uniform.

Oops.

Anyhow, the U.S. Army adopted the black beret for general use when berets went Army wide.  We've discussed this before but this upset Rangers who had worn it unofficially in Vietnam, as had tankers in the 1970s.  The tanker use actually also relied upon the prior British use going back to the 1920s, which was ironically copied soon thereafter by German tankers, in adopting black berets, something that probably reflected the grime present in armored vehicles.  Canadian tankers also wear black berets, leaning on the British pattern.

German Panzerjaeger in 1989 wearing a black beret of the British pattern.

Indeed, British tankers were the first to wear the type of beret that has spread to general military use.  It came about due to British tankers being exposed to French Chasseurs Alpine during World War One and deciding that their headgear would be handy for use in tanks.  The British didn't like the giant French beret however, and redesigned the modern beret based on its style but using the Basque beret size, for a new pattern.  The resulting beret is smaller and closer fitting than the American and Canadian ones.

The U.S. Army beret is in fact really close to the Canadian one but we never quite got the shape and size right.  Some American troops, for that reason, buy the Canadian ones aftermarket, as they look better.

U.S. Army private shortly after the black beret was first authorized.  The cut of the American beret has never been quite right.

This, therefore, meant that there was also a time when Canadian tankers in dress uniform looked identical to American regular soldiers of all branches, save the Special Forces and the Airborne, in dress uniform.

The Airborne of both nations, we'd note, was different as the United States also went with the British maroon beret for airborne, after the black beret came in, which the Canadians had been doing ever since World War Two when their troops served with the British airborne, who had adopted that color in one of the worst choices for military headgear of all time.  It was particularly bad as red stands out and the British airborne had a very strange practice of wearing their berets in combat, which was very ill conceived.  Canada doesn't have many paratroopers however so confusion would be unlikely, and the British beret looks quite a bit different when worn by a British soldier.

Brigadier General of the 82nd Airborne when the Army Combat Uniform was in use.  It's photographs like this which show why the Army had adopted the pinks and greens as use of a combat uniform for a portrait shows that your dress uniform is really disliked.

All of this really upset Rangers who had unofficially had a beret at one time only to have the color co-opted by the Army for everyone.  To rectify that situation, the Army adopted the tank beret.

Ranger Colonel in the ACU uniform with the tan beret.

And that's where we get back to our point.

The tan beret, like the green beret, went back to World War Two British commandos for inspiration, in this case the Special Air Service, the commando branch of the World War Two British Army (well. . one of them anyhow).  They use that color and have since World War Two.

So does the Canadian Special Operations Forces, for obvious reasons.  So does the Australian SAS.  So did the Rhodesian SAS.  In other words, everyone inspired by the British, have done the same.

Which means that American Rangers in the new Army Green Uniform will look just like the Canadian Special Operations Forces commandos in theirs.

Odd.

Well not quite identical.  Or maybe not.

The Army is authorizing Airborne units to wear World War Two style russet paratrooper boots with their pinks & greens. The Canadian Special Operations Forces did the same in 2017.  Will that extend to Rangers?

I don't know.  But if it does, and I think it likely, that has to be a bit aggravating to the Canadians who got there first.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

As we've discussed every other sort of beret in use by the U.S. Army we ought to mention the new Security Forces Assistance Brigade, which is a military advisory group.

They wear brown.  It's supposed to symbolize mud, i.e., "boots on the ground".

This is also the color, fwiw, worn by British cavalry units, or at least a couple of them, so there's obviously no intent to follow the British here.  However, it was also the color used by Rhodesian Selous Scouts, which is a bit awkward.

One thing we noted here is that the Canadian Special Operations Forces are not a branch of the Canadian Army, but a separate force made up of members of other branches of the Canadian Forces.  We also noted that the Canadian Forces in general have a beret and that originally the troops of the Special Operations Forces at one time wore the beret and insignia of the units they were drawn from, much like European mercenaries once did (oops).  This same practice, we'd note, is sort of done now by the U.S. Security Forces Assistance Brigade in reverse.  It includes members of the Air Force who wear that beret when serving with it.

French Chasseurs Alpine wearing their distinctive enormous blue beret.  They also have a dress white giant beret.  Blue is the same color worn by French air commandos.

Indeed, the Air Force has its own set of berets, some of which lean on the Army's colors.  Air Force pararescue men wear maroon berets, which recalls the British Airborne's use of them and which is also done by the U.S. Army's airborne.  They also use a scarlet beret for combat controllers for some reason, which is odd.  That same color is the traditional color of the British military police who have worn a scarlet cap for eons and who now wear a scarlet beret.  Canadian military police also wear a scarlet beret. In spite of that, the USAF policemen wear a dark blue beret.  Oh well. The Boy Scouts at one time also wore a scarlet beret.  Dark blue in British use is now the general issue beret, like the American black, for everybody who isn't otherwise issued one of the many colors they issue, replacing the khaki colored (OD) beret of World War Two in that use.

French Marine paratroopers (its complicated) wearing British style maroon berets.  French Legionnaires wear green berets in all uses.  French soldiers often wear remarkably inconsistent uniforms and this is an example.  The soldier on the left is carrying a French pattern bayonet and wears combat boots that are based on the old U.S. M1943 type.  The soldier on the right is carrying a bayonet of a different pattern that resembles one for a Soviet AKM.  His combat boots are also two buckle boots but are of a different pattern.

Bizarrely, USAF Special Operations Weather Technicians have their own beret, and it's pewter grey.  And Survival Operations and Escape specialist wear a sage green one.

USAF Survival and Escape specialist wearing a sage green, British style, beret.  Note how closer fitting it is compared to the typical U.S. Army beret.

And their Survival Escape and evasion specialists wear a sage green beret for some reason.

Navy Seal, Vietnam War.  The Seals have never had an official beret, but obviously at least a few of them wore them unofficially back in the day.

All of which is more than a little confusing.

Battle of Hamel, July 4, 1918

British soldiers depicted in Hamel in March 1918, prior to their withdraw from the town in the German 1918 Spring Offensive.

On this day in 1918 Australian and American soldiers jointly attacked and took the French village of Le Hamel in northern France.

The attack was a meticulously planned combined arms attack featuring the innovative use of the fast (for the time) British Mark V tank and air support from the RAF.  It was also a joint operation, under the command of Australian General Sir John Monash, featuring primarily Australian infantry but heavily augmented by units of the American 33d Division and supported by a creeping barrage using British and French artillery.

The attack was well planned by the experienced General Monash and provided an learning example of new combined arms tactics.  It was not without its problems, however, in that the American troops were somewhat reluctantly supplied and when supplied were directly attached to Australian units at the small unit level, something the American Army did not approve of.  The American Army had approved the use of troops of the 33d Division for a raid, not an outright assault.  Indeed, fewer troops of the U.S. 33d Division were supplied at first than initially promised and when the Australians were further supplied with U.S. troops prior to the battle some were withdrawn upon General Pershing learning that they were being assigned out to Australian formations at the company level.  The augmentation was partially needed by the Australians due to the thinning of their ranks by the Spanish Flu.

The assault technically commenced at 22:30 on July 3 when British and French artillery opened up simply to mask the noise of the deploying tanks.  A harassing artillery barrage commenced again at 03:02 which caused the defending Germans to anticipate a gas attack, for which they accordingly masked.  The RAF went immediately into action at that time and deployed fighters as light bombers, with each assigned pilot flying at least three extremely dangerous pre dawn flights.  The infantry assault commenced at 03:14 with American units showing their inexperience by advancing into the allied creeping barrage.

Allied objectives were calculated by Monash to require 90 minutes and in fact took just 93.  The Australians began to resupply the successful units with tanks and the Royal Australian Flying Corps immediately commenced areal photography in order to produce new maps.  The RAF, for its part, participated in resupply operations by dropping some supplies by parachute in a brand new technology which was, of course, necessarily limited by the nature of the aircraft of the time.

The Germans reattacked, using storm troopers, at 22:00 and were initially successful.  A flanking Australian attack, deploying grenades and clubs, reversed that and the shocked Germans retreated.

The battle was significant for a number of reasons.  For one thing, it was the first signficant use of an American division, partially, that was made up of National Guardsmen, in the case Guardsmen from Illinois, which was what formed the 33d Division.  Beyond that, it was a spectacular example of clear thinking in a meticulously planned combined arms attack using every new and old arm in the Allied arsenal successfully and also using forces from four different armies.  Beyond that, it showed that Allies had not only withstood four months of German assaults but were more than capable of going into at least limited offensive operations at this time, tactics which sucked up German storm troops, upon which their success now depended, who were shown to be capable of being beaten. Indeed, Australian troops in the action showed an offensive spirit so pronounced that they were willing to resort to the most primitive of weapons.

If you were thinking, hey, I think I recognize that. . . "Lex Anteinternet: The M26 and its children"

while you were watching or reading the news, perhaps its because you had previously read Lex Anteinternet: The M26 and its children:  

And you recalled this part of that:

The M60 "Patton".

 

M60s at Ft. Carson, 1986

Maybe.

Anyhow, the news articles on this story show how widespared the old M60 really is.  Even the Reuters article about Germany cancelling updates on Turkish Leopard IIs due to their user by Turkey in Syria featured a photo of an M60 in Syria.

The M26 and its children

A thread about the evolution of American Armor.

More specifically, it's about the M26 Pershing and her daughters, a great series of tanks.  Perhaps the best series of tanks every made.

M26 being ferried across the Rhine at Remagen.  It's odd to see it in this photograph as it does not appear to be a large tank by today's standard, even though it was at the time.  It's very modern suspension is quite visible in this photograph.

 The M26 Pershing

We just posted about the M4 Sherman, noting that it was a much better tank than its many naysayers would have us believe.  Those naysayers often decry that "the US never developed a tank as good as the Tiger or Panther".

Those critics are flat out wrong.  The US developed a tank better than the Tiger or the Panther.  It just didn't get very many of them overseas during World War Two and it couldn't have, unless we were planning on fighting the war into 1946, which would have been pretty bad planning.

But that doesn't mean that we didn't get M26s into action, and that they weren't better than any of the German tanks they contested.  And they did contest them.

The M26 Pershing was the best, if imperfect, American tank of World War Two and, accepting that it was deployed only in very small numbers, perhaps the best tank of World War Two fielded by any nation (and noting that I'd otherwise give that position to the T-34/85). 

The record of the Pershing in World War Two combat speaks for itself, limited thought it is. It also shows that the era of modern tank combat had arrived.  And that's important to recall.

People who like to dump on the M4 Sherman are accidental fans of the M26, as they essentially argue that the US blew it by not focusing on the M26 earlier than it did and that it didn't get them into action sooner.  We've' addressed that in our other thread and we'll simply note that this is just flat out unrealistic.  

The M26 wasn't a fully developed design, in part because we were focusing on the Sherman, by the time it was fielded in  1945 and in fact it still bore the experimental designation of "T26" at that time. That it was fielded was due to the shock of the Battle of the Bulge in which an earlier, in theater, decision not to deploy Sherman's with the 76mm high velocity gun, even though they were available,m proved to be a mistake.  That mistake resulted in the U.S. Army in the Europe immediately reversing that decision and it also lead to an immediate desire that T26s be made available.  They were, but only in very small numbers.  The US's decision to concentrate on the M4 meant that the M26, while still being developed as its developers believed in it, wasn't really as far along as it could have been.

In spite of what M4 naysayers may think, the US actually never stopped trying to advance its tank designs during World War Two. As we've already discussed, the US went rapidly through tank series during the war. While I didn't cover it in the M4 Sherman thread (and I should have) the Sherman was the "M4" as it was the fourth model of medium tank to be adopted by the United States following the outbreak of the crisis.  The M3, which came before the M4, and which was built in large numbers and fielded well into 1943 in North Africa, and at least as late as 1944 on the Eastern Front (by the Soviets, of course) actually replaced the M2, of which there had only been eighteen built since it had been adopted in 1939.

The officially adopted, but barely produced, M2 medium tank.  Note that this tank fielded the type of drive and suspension associated with teh M4 Sherman.

While conditions and demands meant that the M3 quickly yielded to the M4, and the M4 remained the main American tank throughout World War Two, the US actually did begin to design a replacement for it nearly as soon as it was fielded. That resulted in the T20, T21, T22 and T23 experimental modes, all of which leaned on the now well established M2/M3/M4 type suspensions and all of which featured high velocity 76 mm guns.  While any one of them was probably a little better than the M4, none of them were all that much better.

 T20.

T23

The T23, while never adopted, was significant in that it began to have features, in smaller scale, that the M26 would later have, including a significant cast hull.  Following work on the T23 a new design was worked on keeping some of its features, and throwing away others, that resulted in the T25 and the T26.

Almost a M26, the T25, which retrained the older suspension design.

Both the T25 and the T26 recognized the reality of the new German cat tanks and the need for a heavier tank with a larger gun.  While coming out of a "medium" tank design program which was designed to replace the M4, both were considered heavy tanks at the time and sported a massive 90mm gun, a gun much larger than anything any western tank had used before. Fans of the M26 and enemies of the M4 point to this as proof of what the US could have done late war with tanks, and to some degree they're correct.

That puts me on both sides of an argument, of course, but those who claim the US was ignoring the larger new German tanks are flatly wrong.  The US had by late 1943 recognized the need for a tank with a heavier gun. But that was late 1943 and frankly the ability to field such a tank during the war itself was doubtful.  The Army pressed on with development of the T25 and T26, coming to focus on the T26 which had a completely new suspension, but that was done with the knowledge that fielding such a tank during the war was likely going to be unnecessary and difficult to accomplish.

Nonetheless, it was in fact done.  The T26, as the T26, was fielded late war following the Battle of the Bulge during the general panic over German cat tanks.

People who aren't impressed with this should keep in mind that the US went from the M2, depicted above, to the M26 in six years.  That is, the US went from adopting an inadequate medium tank at the start of the war too a good one, to its effective intended replacement, a fully modern tank, in just that short of time.  That's frankly amazing. Some other countries, it should be noted, also rocketed along in tank development, the Germans being the only really comparable example, but no other nation faced the daunting task of trying to do this while supplying its other principal allies and shipping everything it made over the oceans.

Following the Battle of the Bulge, about twenty T26s were shipped to Europe.  Not many, but they wold see action.  Interestingly, twelve were sent to the Pacific where they were deployed to Okinawa for the battle there, but were not offloaded until after the fighting was over. As a result, those twelve Pacific M26s were the last deployed in the war (and after the official adoption of the tank as the M26) but they didn't see combat. the ones deployed to Europe, however, did, including the one single "Super Pershing" that was deployed.

The very first M26, or rather T26, to see action against a German tank was a tank nicknamed Fireball.  It was overseeing a roadblock with it was ambushed by a Tiger.  The encounter went very badly for the M26 which was hit three times and put out of action by the first shot, which had been fired from only 100 yards away.

Two of the Pershing's crewmen were killed in the encounter, with the Tiger's first shot going through the machinegun port in the mantlet.  The second actually hit the gun barrel causing the round in the barrel to go off and distort it.  The third shot bounced off the tank.  After that, and perhaps emblematic of the problems the German's faced, the Tiger backed up and became entangled in debris, putting it self out of action. The Pershing was repaired and put back in action in just a few days.

 The unfortunate M26 "Fireball", which was hit and put out of action by a Tiger on February 26, 1945, to the loss of two crewmen. The tank was hit three times by the Tiger, being put out of commission with the first shot.  The third shot bounced off the M26. The Tiger put itself out of commission due to mechanical failure immediately thereafter.  Fireball was returned to service on March 7, having been repaired.

Disabled Tiger I that had the distinction of knocking out a M26 Pershing, the first Pershing to be knocked out in combat, even though the M26 was a better tank. After achieving that, this tank became disabled and had to be abandoned.  German tanks were frequently disabled.

Almost at the same time, however, one M26 put one Tiger and two Panzer IVs out of commission in the same town.  Unlike the first encounter, the victorious M26 was not put out of action by mechanical failure and the loss to the Germans of their armor was permanent.

The most famous M26 action came on March 6 in a heavily filmed encounter in Cologne in which a M26 engaged a Panther in a tank duel.  In that instance, the Panther had been laying in ambush and destroyed a M4 Sherman's when the M26 was called over from a street over.  The following then occurred as recalled by the M26's gunner:

We were told to just move into the intersection far enough to fire into the side of the enemy tank, which had its gun facing up the other street. However, as we entered the intersection, our driver had his periscope turned toward the Panther and saw their gun turning to meet us. When I turned our turret, I was looking into the Panther's gun tube; so instead of stopping to fire, our driver drove into the middle of the intersection so we wouldn't be a sitting target. As we were moving, I fired once. Then we stopped and I fired two more shells to make sure they wouldn't fire at our side. All three of our shells penetrated, one under the gun shield and two on the side. The two side hits went completely through and out the other side.

The same day, however, a M26 was put out of action by a German 88mm self propelled anti tank gun, a type of tank destroyer, at Niehl, which was near Cologne.  Following this event, near Cologne, M26s knocked out a Tiger and a Panzer IV.

Sent overseas as a "heavy tank" the M26s next saw action at Remagen, where they were used for artillery support.  Their large size presented a problem in getting them over the river, however, and they ultimately had to be ferried across. They did not see action against enemy armor in that battle.

M26 acting as artillery support at Remagen.

Even as the M26 was proving itself in action in Germany, a new variant of it was introduced, in a single example, in the theater, that being the "Super Pershing".  This new variant of the T26 featured a more powerful 90mm gun and additional armor.  This new variant was actually designated to replace the M26 even thought the M26 had only just started to see service.  Only a single example made it to Europe, however, and only twenty five were made prior to the order being cancelled due to the war's end.

 M26 "Super Pershing"

The T26E4 Super Pershing was clearly a more advanced tank than the  T26, although part of this recoil system was external on the turret and therefore vulnerable.  Interestingly once it arrived in Europe it was actually up armored in theater, making it an even more heavily armored tank than it was designed to be.  The single Super Pershing destroyed three tanks before the war ended, with one claimed to be a Tiger by the crew.

Following this, twelve were shipped to be used in the battle for Okinawa, but none of them were landed prior to the battle ending.

The results of armored development in World War Two demonstrated that what the original concept for the M26 had been was correct.  Following the war, it was reclassified as a medium tank, which it had always really been. The concept of it as a heavy tank was due to tanks like the Tiger being conceived of that way, but in reality, the Tiger and the Panther were simply the next generation of tank.  A person can debate it, but we'd regarded the T-34 as the first modern tank.  If it wasn't, then the Tiger was.  The M26 was the first American modern tank, and it was a good one as further developments would show.

It's common to take the position that the U.S. Army did nothing but sit on its hands between World War Two and the Korean War, but as we've already shown, this just wasn't true.  If it was, there wold have been no tank development by the US at all following the war, but in fact the opposite was the case.  The results of late war fighting had shown that tanks had entered a new phase. The US had a tank in that class, the M26, but it set about working on an improvement. In the meantime, the US withdrew from service all of the M4s that were not equipped with high velocity 76mm guns and US armor consisted of M4s so equipped along with the M26.  The US had just over 2,000 M26s at that time.

The M46 Patton

The designed replacement for the M26 was the M46 Patton.

M46 Patton in Marine Corps Service in Korea, Korean War.

The M46 Patton was in fact the M26 Pershing with improved engine and transmission.  Originally it was classified as the M26E2, but ultimately re-designated as a new tank entirely, even though it was clearly an improved M26.  As the improvements, which included a new bore evacuator, were principally designed to address mobility problems with the M26, the M46 would in fact replace the M26 in combat in the Korean War.

The service of the M26 and the M46 in the Korean War is very much worth noting.  The tank proved nearly completely invulnerable to the T-34/85, the most modern of the Soviet made T-34s.  The projectiles fired by the M26/M46 proved so potent that they would go completely through T-34s.  In fact, the M26 and M46 proved to be overkill for the T-34, which was remarkable as the same design had never met that fate with any German tank.  By and large the Patton's and Pershing's were withdrawn from service in Korea after the war became a static fight there in part because they simply weren't needed.  Indeed, while it's surprising, the M4 with the 76mm gun proved to be a match for the T-34/85 in Korea.

So, from the 1945 to 1955 time frame, the U.S. had fielded a tank that was better than the best of the late war German tanks and, as it turned out, better than the best Soviet tank, the T-34/85, which is arguably the best tank of World War Two.  The M26 and M46 never had the opportunity to take on the Soviet heavy tanks, which were in a truly very heavy class, and its not known how they would have done against them, but there's reason to suspect that they would have done well.

Of course, the Soviets hadn't stood still in this period.  By the late 1940s they were working on what would become the T-55, a tank they introduced in the mid 1950s. Bet that as it may, throughout the 1950s the T-34/85 accounted for 88% of Soviet tank production. The US was far ahead.

 Soviet T-55. The design had been standardized by 1946, and it went into service in 1949, but the tank still made up only a small part of Soviet tank production in the 1950s. The Soviets ceased production of the tank in 1981 and it remains in service in large numbers around the world today.

M47 Patton

Even as M26s were rebuilt to the M46 standard, another development was occurring to the tank which would see the turret of the M26/M46 replaced with a new design, which was fielded as the M47 Patton.  Closely based on the Pershing and featuring its chassis, the tank was in fact a new design with a new turret and therefore differing appearance.  The turret design would be one familiar to later American tankers.

M47

Still called the Patton in honor of General George S. Patton of World War Two, the M47 was the first US tank to be designed since the interwar period and it was introduced in 1951.  It was supposed to replace the M4, the M26 and the M46.  Over 8,000 were built, but developments were happening quickly and it was in fact soon supplanted in U.S. service by the M48 Patton.

M48 Patton

 

South Korean Army M48, March 1987.

The third US tank in a row to be named in honor of Gen. Patton, the M48 featured the new familiar Pershing chassis but omitted the bow machinegun, the first main U.S. tank to make that omission.  It was in fact an entirely new design, obviously based on the old M26 lineage, and was an enormously successful tank.

M48 Patton in South Vietnam.

The M48 would be the principal US tank in the late 1950s and go on to see heavy use by the US and its allies for many years.  It was the tank the US principally used in Vietnam.  The last variant of it, the M48A5, was sufficiently close to its successor, the M60, that it was up-gunned to the 105mm gun the M60 used and it can be very difficult to tell the two apart.  Indeed, the M48A5s actually replaced the M60 in service with the US Army and South Korean army in Korea in the late 1970s, showing how close they really were.

M48A5, equipped with a 105mm gun and much resembling its successor, the M60.

Before we can go on to the M60, and why it came about, and what its story is, we have to first, however, deal with the M103.

The M103

M103

Following World War Two a lingering feature of tank design was the heavy tank.  The modern heavy tank was really something that entered into combat in a serious way with the Tiger.

Heavy tanks certainly preexisted the Tiger, but the Tiger was really the first heavy tank to feature prominently in a serious way on the battlefield.  While the Soviets had prior heavy tanks, the Tiger was something that they immediately began to design to counter, resulting in the "Joseph Stalin", i.e., the "IS" series of tanks, starting with the IS 1.

IS 1 prototype.

Following the IS 1 the Soviets rapidly upgraded their heavy tanks.  The IS 1, with an 85mm gun, was very quickly replaced by the IS 2 which was similar but which fielded a 122mm gun.  The 85mm gun was instead used in the T-34/85.  The IS 2 was made in significant quantities during World War Two and was supplied to the Red Chinese following the war.  However, even by the war's end the IS 3, a new heavy tank, had been introduced.

IS 3, which featured the archetypal sauce pan turret that would be featured on generations of post war Soviet tanks.

The IS 3 was introduced in 1945. Following this the Soviets continually upgraded their heavy tanks until introducing the last variant of it, the T-10 (originally the IS 8) in 1952.  The T-10 had the characteristic appearance of post war Soviet tanks and was distinguishable in appearance only by its large size.  Like its predecessors, it featured a 122mm gun.

Concerned about the Soviet heavy tanks, the US set about designing its own heavy tank to counter it and came up with the M103.  The M103 was essentially a super sized tank in the M26 lineage.  It had heavy armor and a 120mm gun.  While it had mechanical reliability problems, it was competitive with the T-10.  It never saw action.

The M60 "Patton".

 

M60s at Ft. Carson, 1986.

During the 1950s and 1960s it increasingly became obvious to the United States and the Soviets that the era of heavy tanks was really over and that armies were better off just fielding a main battle tank. The US, in keeping with this development, went to working on an improvement of its existing medium tank line and introduced the M60 in 1960.  It went on to replace the M103 and mostly replace the M48, but as can be seen final variants of the M60 were very close to it in design and remained in use along side of it.  The M60 remains in use around the globe today, although not by t he United States.

M60 in Germany.

The M60 featured a 105mm gun, replacing the 90mm used on the M48s, and featured a larger turret resembling that which had been used on the M103.  It proved to be a very capable tank and was widely used in combat by armies supplied by the United States, as well as by the US.  It remains a front line tank in many of the world's armies today, although not in the US Army which replaced it, over a long period of time, with the M1 Abrams

M60 in Germany in 1985.

The Soviets in this period were not standing still, and in 1961, the same year the M60 was introduced, they introduced the T-62.  The -T-62 was an improvement on the T-55 which had never been able to supplant the T-34/85 in the 50s and which remained in production along with the T-62. The T-64 was soon augmented by the T-64. Both of these tanks featured larger guns than their predecessors.

 T-62 at Nellis Air Force Base

T-55s, T62s, and T-64s have all seen action against M60s and M48s around the globe.  Their good tanks to be sure, but the American tanks have more than stood their design ground against them.

The Leopard I

The Leopard I?  That's a post war German tank.

 Later variants of the Leopard I in Germany.  This one has been up armored. The original Leopard Is were fairly lightly armored.  Let's see, six wheels that look remarkably like the six on all of the Pershing descendants. .. rear sprocket drive like the Pershing and its descendants, roller wheels to support the treads up on top (not visible here. . . . hmmm.

Yep, it is.

Inclusion of the Leopard I here is going to make its fans angry, but the Leopard I resembles the M48 more than it does any German tank of World War Two, something that isn't true of all post war German equipment.

One of the most famous of the post war tanks, the Leopard I came in after West Germany had been equipped with M47s and M48s.  Wanting to field its own design, West Germany first worked with France to come up with a tank design and then abandoned the pursuit. Going on its own, it came up with the Leopard I.

 Earlier variant of the Leopard I with a cast turret that looks remarkably like that on a M46/M47/M48.

You will not be able to find (or at least I couldn't) anything that will claim that the Leopard I was based on part on the Pershing tank chassis and the M47 and M48 tanks.  But the similarities are remarkable.  Most notably the chassis is nearly identical. something that departed enormously from all prior German tanks.  The original turrets were also remarkably like those of the period M48s.  Perhaps, just perhaps, there was no influence, but that would certainly counter they way they looked at the time of their introduction.

The M88

While the M60 is now gone from U.S. service, the Pershing's story nonetheless lingers on in the form of the M88 tank retriever, an armored crane designed for recovering disabled combat vehicles.  It continues to feature the original M26 chassis and there's no sign of replacing it anytime soon.

Conclusion. . . a real armored success.

For some reason, not only does the M4 Sherman get no love, American armor, save for the M1 Abrams, tends not to either.  It's odd.  It's been consistently good from the very onset.

Certainly the M26 was.  It's basic design was reworked and reworked from 1945 onward and it was always better than its opponents.  A real unacknowledged success.

The M4 Sherman gets no love. . . but it should.

 M4 (not M4A1) version of the Sherman tank prior to the elimination of the dual forward firing machineguns that are very rarely sen in photographs.

Listen to this presentation from modern tanker Nick Moran and you'll know why.  It's excellent:

Nick Moran on C-Span on the M4 Sherman.

And then consider his individual presentations on M4s:

Not that it matters.  M4 haters are going to believe all the myths about them as its fun to do.

Okay, I know that some thing that this blog never looks at anything more recent than 1917, unless its really recent, but as people know we stray outside the lines here all the time, and we recently did so with our excellent (if I do say so myself) expose on myths of the Korean War.

In that we addressed the much maligned M4 Sherman tank. Indeed, in the context of the Korean War I've been a bit of a M4 critic myself, but I've conceded in that post that the stats just don't bear up the idea that the M4 was a horrific piece of junk that got  all of its crews killed in Korea.  Indeed, the stats show that the M4 was taking on the T-34/85, which I regard as the best tank of World War Two (Moran does not) and besting it.

And stats are hard to ignore.

But people do anyway.

Now, as I'll note below, I think there some explanations to that which somewhat modified that story, but in general  I agree with Moran's opinion, as is obvious, but I didn't come to it through Moran.  I've long held the opinion that the M4 was a good tank and frankly the best the US could have hoped for during World War Two.  But Moran did add factors to it, such as the ability to load the tank on ships easily, that I had not considered.  My opinions has long been based on something else.

Sherman's function, almost all the times.

The German tanks it opposed were often broken down.

A broken down tank is a worthless hunk of scrap steel.

Nonetheless there are zillions of articles, blog entries and some books that roundly condemn the M4 Sherman.  It's interesting, inf act that there are those who will post the question "why is it so routinely condemned" while other actually act as if they're breaking  new ground on some story.  Consider, for example, this recent article on something called "Military History Now".

Tank Busting – Blowing Up the Myth of the Mighty M4 Sherman

by MilitaryHistoryNow 12 September, 2017 • 21 Comments

“The Battle of the Bulge exposed deficiencies in the M4 so glaringly obvious, what became known as the Sherman Tank Scandal would be splashed across front pages all over the Allied world.”

By Christian M. DeJohn

THE SHERMAN TANK — who hasn’t cheered it in Hollywood epics like A Bridge Too Far, Band of Brothers, or The Pacific? Just when all hope seemed lost, a column of Shermans arrives in the nick of time to save embattled American soldiers. Great cinematic moments like these are spot on, aren’t they? The Sherman was the tank that won the war, right?*

Well, not exactly.

According to British historian Sir Max Hastings, “no single Allied failure had more important consequences on the European battlefield than the lack of tanks with adequate punch and protection.” The Sherman, he added, was one of the Allies’ “greatest failures.”

Well, with all due respect to Mr. DeJohn, and to Sir Max Hastings, one of my favorite military authors, "bull".

 USMC M4A3R3 on Okinawa. The M4A3 had both the 75 and the 76 (which was really a 75) high velocity gun.  This photo provides a good illustration of the way the US had to approach tanks.  It's not like the Germans or the Soviets needed to put tanks on a postage size Pacific island after hauling them half way around the world, is it?

Okay, let's discuss the Sherman a bit.

Before we do, however, let's get a handle on the state of tanks, in very general terms, before World War Two, and into it.

Now, this isn't going to be a "history of tanks, 1919 to 1945".  That would be a 300 page text at least.  No, by general, I mean general.

Generally, there'd been a lot of experimentation with tanks in the decade leading up to World War Two, but the US wasn't one of the nations that was doing the experimenting.  Indeed, our best tank designer of the period, J. Walter Christie, didn't receive any contracts for tanks in the US, or at least none of note.

 You have to love this photograph of J. Walter Christie, famous tank designer.

Now Christie,  like Ferdinand Porsche, was a mechanical and automotive genius, not a tank designer per se, but like Porsche, he turned his attention to tanks.  Heck, it was an interesting fast moving field, so why not?

He worked on neat tank designs all through the 1920s and 1930s and never received a US contract.  His big success, sort of, was the T-34, which did use his suspension, and if you look at it is pretty obviously a Christie tank.

U.S. T3E2 tank.  Nope, we didn't adopt that.  Nor would there have been a really good reason to either.

Soviet pre war BT-7 light tank.  It's a Christie

As this would suggest, while we were basically ignoring tanks, European nations were not, and a lot of various tank designs were out there.  Some were good, some were bad, and hardly anyone really had a concrete idea of exactly how tanks would really be used in the future.  Probably the Soviets had the best grasp on it, quite frankly, leading up to World War Two.  Some American cavalrymen, who basically lacked tanks, grasped it as well.  And Heinz Guderian really grasped it.  He was a German.

German Schnelletruppen, fast troops, who were used to develop German armor tactics before the Germans had armor.

Guderian, and others developed mobile tactics but they really lacked tanks.  It was only in the final run up to World War Two did the Germans acquire really functional tanks.

The Germans started to build tanks by the mid 1930s, but as they had none, and as their production capaciity was very limited, the tanks they built were of limited type and really not all that useufl in real combat.  The first one, the Panzerkampfwagen 1, established the design for most German tanks for the rest of the war, but it only fielded a machinegun for a gun.  Pretty useless.  

Panzer I in Noraway.  Basically, it was a tracked armored car, not a real tank.

The Germans new the Panzer I wasn't great, and rapidly developed it into the Panzer II. But htat tank also was a really light tank.  It was a real tank, however, and the chassis established the basic chassis for most that would come after that. And the first thing to come after it was the Panzer III followed by the Panzer IV

 Panzer IVG.

No matter what people like to think, it was the Panzer III and the Panzer IV, which sported a 75mm gun, that were the real German tanks of World War Two.  They grossly outnumbered anything else thet Germans used, tank wise, and constituted the real armored threat posed by the Germans.

Burning Panzer IV

They were also the basic foundation for nearly everything else that was tank like, or sort of tank like, that the Germans used. As this isn't a history of the zillions of tank like things the Germans used (and I've omitted captured Czech tanks entirely, I'd note) I'll not go into that, other than to note that no matter what an American, English, Canadian, or Soviet soldier was likely to encounter, in terms of German armor, it was probably based on the Panzer III and it likely carried a 75mm rifle at hte most.

And it was a good design.

But it wasn't as good as the T-34. And it wasn't as good as the M4 Sherman.

Indeed, even the rather weird American design the M3 was regarded as pretty effective against the Panzer III and IV, and it doesn't look like it should be.

The M3.  It's weird.

Now, I'm not really going to sit here and praise the M3, which was a real throw back as a design, with its strange side mounted 75mm gun.  About the most that can be said for it, in my view, is that its armor protection was pretty good and that its gun worked well.  But what the real story is on it is that the US, Christie or no, was staring pretty much from scratch and that was a good thing as it turned out.

And it was a good thing as it spared the US from what European nations had to go through.  They all had tanks, but nobody really knew exactly how they'd' be used, so there was, in some countries,  like France, a plethora of tank designs combined with bad doctrine, or in others, like Germany, barely adequate tanks (at first) with good doctrine.

 M3 in British use.  The British used the M3 in combat more than the US, as the M3 was rapidly being replaced by the M4 by the time of Operation Torch.  Be that as it may, the US did still field M3s in North Africa and the Soviet Union used them at least as late as Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history.

Being an industrial giant, the US was able to skip the nifty but fairly useless light tanks that were supposed to be battlefield fighters (as opposed to scouting tanks, which are also really light) and go right for the useful medium tanks.  That meant we skipped the Christie suspension, for good or ill, and went for a chassis design that was used first in numbers in the M3 (and was first used in the M2 medium tank, a very rarely US tank that was around only in very small numbers very briefly).

 M4 in use by training crew, Ft. Knox. This photo was taken prior to any US tank action during World War Two.

Unit training with M3s and M4s.

Now, as noted, the British, who ended up using it more than we did, liked the M3 but it was rather obviously a throw back. But soon came the M4.  And the M4 was a really good tank.  It wasn't perfect, but it was really good, and for the most part it had the advantage on its real opponents.

M4A1 in North Africa.

The Sherman was highly transportable, something that was important in a global war.  It came equipped with a 75mm gun at first, which was perfectly adequate for taking on the Panzer III and IV.  It had good armor protection, at least as good as the flat armored Panzer III and IV it took on, and it was extremely mechanically reliable, which no German tank ever was.

 Common early cast hull production version of M4A1 Sherman.

So what about all the stories to the contrary.  Wasn't it a horrible flaming  nightmare?

No.

Tank combat is a horrible flaming nightmare.

That contributes to the myth of the M4 being a bad tank, and almost everything you hear about the M4 being a bad tank is, in fact, a myth.

Armored combat is incredibly horrific, if you are in it.  If your tank is penetrated by an enemy projectile, and any tank can be, the net results is a shower of molten steel inside the tank followed, in all probability, by a horrible flaming death.  If you have any doubt, I suggest you view the long version of the M4 and M26 duel with a German Tiger in Cologne, late war.  You can see a dazed Sherman crew escaping from a destroyed tank and you can watch a German tank commander burn to death on a Tiger, a tank that some tank fans think is a fantastic tank. 

Not pretty.

And given that, and given American expectations, the general belief is that any American tank ought to be 100% impervious to anything bad happening to its crew.  But that's not warfare.

Now, the Sherman was not a perfect tank.  It had a very high profile for one thing compared to the Panzer III and Panzer IV.  But it could and did match those tanks in combat and really was a better combat tank than  they were. And most German armor was made up of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.

But not all German tanks were IIIs and IVs, and that's contributed to the myth.

The Panzer III and Panzer IV served the Germans really well throughout the war.  However, on the Russian plains, after the Soviets got their act together, they were no match for the T-34 which not only was a great tank from the onset, it was improved continually by the Soviets throughout the war.  Tanking a basic  Christie light tank design and ramping it up massively, the T-34 was the first really modern tank.  It was revolutionary and nothing the Germans had was a match for it. So they reacted.

Disabled Tiger I that had the distinction of knocking out a M26 Pershing, the first Pershing to be knocked out in combat, even though the M26 was a better tank. After achieving that, this tank became disabled and had to be abandoned.  German tanks were frequently disabled.

In fairness, one of the reactions, the Tiger tank series, had been in development since before the war, and its design showed it.  But the T-34 made its fielding imperative.  The second reaction, the Panther, was a pure reaction to the T-34 and superficially resembles it in a bulbous fashion.

Panther knocked out in the Battle of the Bulge.

Panthers and Tigers were a huge problem for Sherman's and were particularly a problem for the original M4A1.. They grossly outgunned the original version of the Sherman which made it quickly plain that the 76mm gun which had been available, but basically not fielded, should have have been fielded. The 76mm gun was much more capable of taking on the armor of the German cat tanks than the 75mm, which basically wasn't.  And the Sherman was grossly outgunned by the excellent 75mm gun on the Panther, let alone the massive tank destroying 88mm gun of the Tiger.

It should be noted here, however that even the Germans weren't really capable of keeping up with the Soviets. The T-34/76 came out in 1940 with a 76mm gun.  35,000 of them were made.  In 1943 the Soviets introduced the T-34/85, of which 55,000 were made.  So even the highly celebrated Panther, which came into service the same year as the T-34/85, did not sport a gun that was as big as Soviet tank, but only sported one that was as large as the high velocity M4 Sherman.  FWIW, during the Korean War the M4 Sherman, by which time only the "Easy 8" variant equipped with the 76mm high velocity gun, routinely bested the T-34/85, although that can be explained in more than one way.  Also, as otherwise mentioned here, the later variants of the T-34 and the Sherman were basically identical in terms of armor thickness.

Anyhow, the British had anticipated German armor advances before they were fielded, which is why they'd adapted the Sherman to a heavier British 75 gun before the US really fielded them. That tank, the Sherman Firefly, wasn't perfect either but it proved fairly adept at taking on the heavier German tanks.

 Sherman Firefly, with its obviously much larger 76mm gun.

Moran, I'll note, doesn't like the Firefly.

But I do.

Anyhow we should have no doubt.  The Tiger and Panther were fully modern tanks.  If the T-34 isn't the first modern tank in the world, they surely are. The M4 wasn't.  It was a good World War Two generation tank.







So let's talk numbers.

Eh?

Yes, numbers.  Numbers mean a lot.

There were 1,347 Tigers built and about 6,000 Panthers. There were around 180,000 T-34s built, however.  About 50,000 Sherman's were built.  About 6,000 Panzer IIIs were built.  About 8,500 Panzer IVs were built.

 Loading a Sherman in the United States for shipment.  If you can't ship them, they don't do much good.

M4 on transport.  This tank has just about enough room to be shipped and that's about it.  It's  not like this ship was going to take on a M26.

While I hate to go down this road, there were also 6,406 M10 tank destroyers built by the US.  This takes us down a weird road, however, because if I discuss these quasi tanks, then I have to mention things like the German  Sturmgeschütz III, which is a type of turetless tank destroyer, of which 10,000 were built.  And it wasn't alone.  There was also the very heavy Jagdpanzer (hunting tank) of which slightly over 400 were built on the Tiger chassis.  And the US also built the M36 (about 2,300) and the M18 (2,500). The reason that I mention them is that Sherman's would have to tank on the Sturmgeschütz III while German tanks encountered the various American tank destroyers.

M18 in Germany, 1945.

M36 Tank Destroyer. the M36 fielded a 90 mm gun, giant for the time.  Most people would think this was a Sherman, as it has a Sherman hull.  But it isn't (and the turret has an open top).

M10 in Italy.

This tells a pretty significant story, but not a very clear one.

And what it basically tells us is that there weren't all that many Tigers, but more Panthers than you'd suspect, but also a lot of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and things based on Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.

There were also a whole lot of T-34s. And as the Germans were fighting a whole lot of Soviets who were using a whole lot of T-34s, as well as Sherman's (yes, they used Sherman's) and M3s (even as late as Kursk) the Germans had massive constant armor demands in the East.

Which doesn't mean that there weren't armor demands in teh West as well, but the US, UK, Canada and Free French had a lot of Sherman's, as well as a selection of smaller numbers of British tanks (the British never stopped producing their own designs, even as they used large numbers of Sherman's).

Added to that, as Sherman's almost always worked, and a very high percentage of German tanks were broken down at any one time, the number becomes much more skewed.

So, yes, it would have been much better if all Sherman's had been equipped with the high velocity 76mm rifle by 1944.  And it would have been better yet, in a magical world, if just as many M26 Pershing's had been been available as M4s in 1944, but that requires a complete suspension of reality and technology.

 Canadian Ram Mk II, early variant.  Those who like to play "should have" with American tank production fail to appreciate that even though the United State's industrial capacity was vast, it was still sufficiently limited that the United States had to rely on Canada in part to help build adequate numbers of Shermans. Granted, that was in part because the Sherman was used by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, people who imagine that the US should have been making something else fail to appreciate that the US couldn't actually manufacture all the M4s required.  Beyond the Ram, at least the UK had special variants, with Canadian and American hulls, that were uniquely their own.

Which brings us to this uncomfortable point.

If you are an infantryman in France in August, 1944, and are looking out at field where two or three German tanks show up, and maybe one is a Tiger or Panther, would you rather have one or two, or even three, M26s show up, or ten M4s.

I think the answer that is pretty obvious.

And chances are high, even in that scenario, that the M4s will not be knocked out.  If some are, and war is about killing, let's not fool ourselves, it's probably not going to be more than two, and unlikely to be three.  And all the German tanks are likely to go down.

And that's really the calculation that had to be made.  Lots that worked well all the time, and were adequate almost all of the time, or very few that worked most of the time, and were super all of the time.

Well what about the claims cited by the opponent of the Sherman in the article cited above, that being:

Certainly, the Sherman was a decent design, simple to build in large numbers and maintain, easily transported, adaptable to multiple roles and mechanically reliable. But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armour protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three.

Well, not so much, unless you are operating in a perfect world.

In terms of firepower, okay.  But you can blame the Army in Europe, not the tank's designers, on that.  Prior to June 6, 1944 the Army had designed  a version of the M4 that was as well gunned as any tank on the battlefield except for the Tiger.  The Tiger did indeed have a super heavy gun for the time, an 88, but it was also a heavy tank that didn't have eto be shipped by sea and it was not a paragon of mobility.  Indeed, the Tiger depicted above is a typical one.  It put itself out of action.

But  the US could have fielded a M4 with a 76mm gun, and ultimately did.  The British did as well.  And, and often forgotten, the US fielded three quasi tanks in addition to the  Sherman, and those tanks had no other role other than to hunt tanks.  The Sherman's role was to be a tank, and while in the popular imagination tanks only fight other tanks, that's never been true.

Armor protection?

The Sherman's armor protection is as heavy as the  T-34/85's, and the T-34/85 was the best tank of the war.  Even at that, the Army did introduce an up-armored variant of the M4, that being the M5, but it didn't stick around all that long.  Anyhow, the Sherman was more heavily armored than supposed, which bring us to the uncomfortable truth hat, armored with the good rifles of the late war period, any tank could turn another into a flaming oven.

Mobility?

Oh please.  The Sherman was more mobile than any of hte heavier German tanks.  And it actually worked almost all the time.  Most of hte German tanks sat around unworkable, and hence not very mobile, most of the time.

Well, what about

The U.S., Dr. Weigley noted, went all through the Second World War refusing “to develop, until too late to do much good, heavier tanks comparable to the German Tigers and Panthers, let alone the Royal Tiger or the Russian Stalin.

This is not true either. In fact, the US developed a tank that was better than the German cat tanks and probably the equal of the IS 1, but perhaps not the IS 2.

It'd have been great if the US could have fielded thousands of M26s.  For that matter, it would have been great if the US had introduced the B-36 during World War Two, and perhaps the P-80. But that's a fantasy.

In reality, there wasn't any way to ship thousands of M26s to Europe unless we were going to land on the continent in the spring of 1945, at which time we wouldn't have had to fight Tigers and Panthers at all, as we would have been met with T-34/85s in Normandy.  The entire concept that we could have fielded heavy tanks  in numbers just flatly wrong as it ignores production and shipping realities.

Which brings us back to the reality of combat.  People get killed.  And death in combat is violent and shocking.  It was far better to have that 50,000 Sherman's than maybe 10,000 M26s, or 5,000, or however fewer it would have been.  Is that comfort for anyone whose relative was killed when an 88 from a Tiger hit a Sherman?  No. But it might be for the infantrymen saved when rounds from three or four Sherman's went into a single Panther.

The prefect is the enemy of the good.  The M4 wasn't perfect, but it was better than it gets credit for being, and the best under the circumstances.

 M4A3(76)W HVSS Sherman being used a a field piece during the Korean War.  If the M4 was such a bad tank, inadequate to take on the German cat tanks, how come it routinely bested the T-34/85, the best tank of the Second World War, and one that had a larger gun than the M4A3(76), the final version of the standard US version?

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*I wonder if the author of these statements saw any of these films.  In none of them do a "column of Sherman's arrive in the nick of time" to save anyone.

Indeed, in A Bridge Too Far Sherman's are shown being fairly easily knocked out by anti tank guns, something that is fairly realistically (and rarely) portrayed in this film.  Sherman's are shown in thsi film, which is a highly accurate portrayal of the actual events of Operation Market Garden, as Sherman's were actually used by the British.  German tanks are shown in the film, but are not shown in action against Sherman's (which didn't happen much in that engagement), but are portrayed as being correctly fearsome (and are portrayed as contemporary German Leopard IIs).

In Band of Brothers Sherman's are depicted in a tank for German armor engagement, but frankly fairly accurately.  The problem here is that, most of the time, Sherman's were in fact more than good enough for the job, naysayers or not.

And in the Pacific, well shoot, darned near any allied tank was more than a match for any Japanese tank.  Sherman's, as well as M2s, were used in the Pacific and they were more than a match for anything the Japanese had to offer. . . in spades.