Tanks

On Sherman Tanks, and Museums.

Posted on by jccarlton

Around Christmas, The Tank Museum at Bovington released a video about the Sherman tank. I will link to the video below the fold. The video purported to be about the evolution of the Sherman tank. I thought, oh great, this should be good. After all, Bovington has the oldest extant Sherman and a good selection of the various versions of the tank, as well as at least one Grant. The video should be informative. Instead, the presenter, Chris Copson went down a path that no one handling a tour for a museum should, a path that had things in it that were not factual. I have given tours at the little switch tour museum as a volunteer and I had two goals when I did. They were to be as accurate and factual about what I was talking about and provide a level of entertainment. I didn’t always succeed on the latter, but I made an effort where the former was concerned. Whoever wrote the script for the video missed that and went with a story, that while entertaining, was wrong.

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Another Post On The Sherman Tank

Posted on by jccarlton

Recently the debate started again on the Sherman tank and the ‘Ronson(German)’ or ‘deathtrap(US?)’ smear that has gone on apparently since the war about the deficiencies of the M4 medium tank. When the smear started is a bit of a mystery, but I’ve seen the smear go right back to when American tanks started to appear in combat in 1942. The defining theme about the US Army was that the Ordnance Dept. Army Ground Forces or Armored Force leadership and all the people in American tank development were idiots for not anticipating the big German cats in France in 1944 and that got a lot of American GI’s killed. I discussed some of that in a previous post here.
https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/was-the-us-army-really-stupid-during-ww2/
Here’s a typical example of the smear.
https://ss.sites.mtu.edu/mhugl/2016/10/18/m4-sherman-tank/
And another same old, same old.
https://ihffilm.com/allied-sherman-tank-pt-1-blunder-or-wonder-weapon-essay-by-blaine-taylor.html
https://ihffilm.com/sherman-tank-pt-2-improvements-d-day-v-e-day-1944-45-essay-by-blaine-taylor.html
Another one.

For the record, most tanks in WW2 were not Diesel powered, because in WW2 Diesel engine technology was not up to producing compact powerful engines that would fit in tanks. See below for videos of German tanks that killed their crews.
In any case the same things keep getting repeated, over and over again, and like the diesel-gasoline engine issue the people that parrot the same crap over and over can’t be bothered to get it right.

Perhaps the most notorious book about the incompetence of the US Army is Death Traps by Belton Cooper.

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German Tank Manufacturing Strategy In WW2

Posted on by jccarlton

 

A while back I created a post about the American tank design and development strategy.

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/was-the-us-army-really-stupid-during-ww2/

Having looked at the winning side, I thought that I would look at the losing side and show why, in the end the Germans strategy comes down to “how to do it  the wrong way.”

Germany’s design strategy was rather different from the evolutionary development strategy pursued by it’s enemies.  The Wermacht started the war with tanks that, while small were adequate for the jobs they called upon to do.

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Not Making The Wrong Choices

Posted on by jccarlton

This interesting article on the M6 tank showed up on my Facebook timeline.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/04/11/little-known-us-wwii-m6-heavy-tank-40-made/2/

The M6 is one of those military options that the US Army pursued and then dropped.  Through 1940 and the beginning of the war the US Army initiated these various armored vehicle and self propelled gun project as stopgaps and in response to evolving doctrine. As the war progressed and these various vehicles proved to be redundant, the programs were reduced to a barely sustained level and then canceled altogether.  So if the question is ever asked why the US didn’t design a heavy tank, the answer is that they did. Then the Armored forces decided that the gains were not worth the resources.

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Was The US Army Really Stupid During WW2?

Posted on by jccarlton

 

If you see any discussion about the US Army during WW2 you will quickly hear that the US Army couldn’t pour sand out of a boot with instructions on the heel.  The choices of just about every piece of equipment will be bitterly criticized aggressively.  You would honestly come to the conclusion that the US Army was just able to win the war because of accident or sheer overwhelming production. The Chieftan debunks much of that here.

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