Harry Yeide

American commanders really thought the 76mm gun would kill all German tanks and were shocked to find out otherwise. Before D-day, ETOUSA turned down an offer to get the M36 delivered pronto. This was not the result of hubris but of bad information provided by Ordnance. Events in Italy probably left commanders feeling secure, as well. M10s handily dispatched Panthers, Tigers, and even Ferdinands at Anzio. What was the difference? In Normandy, our guys had to attack often hidden, better armored, and better armed German tanks. At Anzio, the Germans were the ones to expose themselves. Also by then, American crews were experienced warfighters, whereas most of the men in Normandy were engaged in OJT. As I have argued before, those two factors (tactical situation, experience) are historically more predictive of outcome than the technical strengths and weaknesses of the AFVs. At Rocherath during the Bulge, for example, the 741st Tank Battalion--equipped entirely with 75mm Shermans in companies A-C (Dog had M5s)--beat the crap out of a 12th SS Panzer Division Tiger battalion. The whole TD doctrine issue, I think, gets blown out of proportion. The warfighters figured out the flaws almost instantly in North Africa and pretty much ignored the doctrine thereafter. On the tank front, several things were going on (largely ignored by Belton Cooper): -- Most Shermans were in separate tank battalions, and their job was infantry support. The 75mm HE round was more effective than the 76mm HE round, and infantry commanders wanted most tanks to keep the 75mm gun. Even in the armored divisions, by the time the Americans hit the West Wall, tankers spent most of their time supporting infantry. -- M4A3E2 Jumbos, which achieved the holy grail of armor thickness comparable to that on German tanks, got knocked out with great regularity. Armor was no panacea gainst high-velocity guns, or anybody in the 140 degrees or so of arc who could get a flank shot on you, or anybody from the front who could whack the side of your rotating turret, or.... The Americans trashed a good number of "better" German tanks, for that matter. -- HVAP ammo did allow the 76mm gun to kill Panthers, at least, from the front at typical combat ranges. HVAP became available shortly after COBRA. The problem was not in the thinking--it was getting the ammo to the crews. -- The Sherman was part of a warfighting package and cannot be judged outside of that context. The package, less we forget, worked. Cheers!

Actually actually, the slow traverse on the M10 was due to its manual traverse mechanism. The M18 had a powered traverse system that was so fast that gunners had to make the final tweaks using the manual backup. (The M36, which also had a honker counterweight but also a powered traverse system, should have a faster turret rotation speed than the M10.) The M18's speed was due mainly to the fact that its armor was almost notional--the M8 Greyhound had better protection up front! The Army concluded after the war that the M18's speed had proved essentially irrelevant on the battlefield. Of course, that was the ultimate conclusion (weird, in its way) about tank destroyers, too, and the last TD battalion was gone by November 1946.

According to George Forty's "US Army Handbook," as of 15 July 1943 there were four 105mm guns in each battery of the three light artillery battalions and four 155mm guns in each battery of the medium artillery battalion. All battalions had three firing batteries. In contrast to the infantry division structure, the armored field artillery battalions used six-gun batteries. Cheers.

Michael: Your careful skepticism is well taken (as witnessed by this entire thread!), but I did not mean to imply that the 4th AD did NOT install .50s in the co-ax position. The US Army tolerated a remarkable degree of equipment customization by line units. I have not looked hard at the armored divisions, but there are great examples among the separate tank battalions. The 709th, believe it or not, cut the muzzle brakes off captured or disabled 88s and welded them onto their 76mm Shermans because of the disruptive blast produced by the first generation of those guns. The 750th poured several inches of concrete onto the glacis of their Shermans (I have many photos showing that). So, who can say? Cheers.

I just received the following from a query I sent to John Walker, who was a platoon commander in the 750th Tank Battalion: "As to the 50 cal machine gun on the tank. For the most part it was of little use to us. Because of its location, it was very awkward for the tank commander to fire standing in the turret. Under some circumstances, you might fire it standing outside on the deck of the tank, but this was very rare. On a few occasions, infantry riding on the tank might also fire it. But again, its use was very limited."

FWIW, I've been through the AARs and many of the S2 and S3 journals of every separate tank battalion that fought in the ETO, and none mentions converting the co-ax in those units to the .50 cal. Cheers

TD crews used their AA .50-cal machine guns against ground targets frequently because they had little else (there are many reports in TD outfit AARs of crews having to beat off infantry attacks with Tommy guns, carbines, and grenades). Many battalions began independently remounting the .50-cal forward or adding a second MG by late in 1944. ETOUSA on 1 Feb 1945 ordered the installation of supplemental MG mounts on the turret fronts of all M10 and M36 TDs in Theater. That was never accomplished fully. I am doing a brute-force review of the Signal Corps combat footage available at NARA. There is a fair amount of footage involving Shermans, and one routinely sees the .30-cals in use. I have yet to see the .50-cal fired, but if I do I'll capture a frame and post it here. Cheers.

AARs from American separate tank battalions (the infantry support tanks) indicate that the .50-cal was rarely used against ground targets. Tank commanders did, in fact, routinely enter battle with their heads sticking out of their hatches because of their need to see the battlefield adequately. Many were shot in the head for their trouble, and one War Department lessons-learned brochure observed that the turret around the commander's hatch was typically scarred by near misses after a firefight. As a rule, therefore, it was plenty dangerous without exposing onseself enough to use the .50-cal. The Sherman, moreover, had two well-protected .30-cals. A tank battalion might expend between 50,000 and 100,000 rounds of .30-cal ammo during a single day, and crews could stack thousands of extra rounds on the floor of the tanks. By contrast, the vehicle carried only 600 rounds of .50-cal ammo, so even when used, the weapon had only a limited supply of bullets. I have read one POW interrogation report that indicated that the reason German soldiers feared the .50-cal so much was that "it doesn't wound, it kills." Cheers.

Thanks for the tip. I still owe you a big one for calling my attention to the first set. I'm just wrapping up a book on the TD Force, and having the disks saved me untold time and annoyance in running off to the Green Book set at the National Archives, which is the only complete set I know of around here. Cheers.

Have the best of both worlds! If you create a scenario in CMBO for May 1945, check the "Patton was right" box, and your American troops can roll right into CMBB. On to Moscow!

I'll keep reading it if you keep reading it!

"It is criminal of our High Command to order attacks at daylight without considering how the early morning sunlight may affect our gunnery. The problem of the sun in our eyes must certainly be evaluated since it gives an unalterable advantge to the enemy." Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward, quoted in "Notes of Major General Bradley on Visit to 1st Armored Division," attached to memorandum AG 370-Y, "Notes on Operations of 1st Armored Division," 2 April 1943. Note that the Americans were inevitably attacking eastward at dawn. I have never seen complaint like this regarding Europe, however. Cheers, Harry

Before I resend, they are just D-day maps from which you can create your own terrain. The files total about 2MB. Still want 'em?

Volker: Omaha Beach tactical invasion maps (1:2500) are on their way via e-mail. Cheers.

Actually, when it comes to American tactics, the infantry support tanks began to use "massed" tank action (a mass is relative--say a full platoon insted of a section or even an entire company at one time) MORE frequently as the campaign in Western Europe wore on. The theory was just what one experiences in the game: a bunch of tanks has a better chance of overwhelming the defense. The tank-infantry-artillery team worked so well because it could work so many different ways depending on the situation. Cheers.

As much as I love JasonC's posts, the best answer this time for RL probably would have been, "It depends." At least for the Americans, pre-existing tank-infantry doctrine appears to have exerted at best a passing influence in the ETO once the shooting started. Flexible problem-solving was the key. American AARs demonstrate that sometimes leading with tanks was genius, and sometimes disaster. The other guy might have an 88, or he might have a bunch of machine guns, or he might have both. People guessed wrong with some frequency, which is one reason guys got shot up. One can discern rules of thumb that might hold most of the time under certain limited circumstances. German troops defending villages on the Roer plain where the 747th Tank Battalion was engaged, for example, tended to have more machine guns than AT weapons, so American soldiers learned to rush with tanks to clean out the MG nests on the edge of town and follow with infantry to take the town itself (panzerfausts!). In other areas at the very same time, there were so many AT guns and automatic weapons and losses were so high that the Americans decided to attack at night when neither was capable of hitting at a distance. It depends...

The use of Commonwealth armor to support US infantry was not at all rare, and British flail tanks worked with US armor on more than one occasion. I am not aware of any cases of US armor directly supporting British or Canadian infantry in northern Europe, but US tanks did work with the Belgian Brigade in the Peel marshes.

Boy, you miss a few days on the board, and look what happens. Congrats, Wild Bill! And the more players for CM VII, the better. Cheers.

I was looking today at the US Forces, European Theater's 1945 study "Tank Gunnery" and noted two issues addressed that have arisen before in this forum. First, the Army said that most units did not use the stabilizers on the Shermans, although it claimed that a few did with good results. The Army blamed the lack of use largely on a supposedly inferior model used in training in the US that soured tankers on the apparatus. The study also flatly asserts that the Germans had developed infra-red searchlights and sights for tanks by the end of the war, although it offers no indication that such hardware was ever used. The study is available at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Cheers.

AARs indicate that US tank crews engaged in infantry support used WP heavily. It was a favored means, for example, for clearing out houses that the Germans had fortified. In one interesting case, tankers assaulting the forts holding out around Metz after the city had fallen pumped hundreds of rounds of French-made WP through the embrasures daily until the defenders gave up, many suffering from burns. Marvin Jensen claims in Strike Swiftly! that the 70th Tank Battalion received orders to stop using WP rounds against living targets because the Germans had claimed this was a "chemical weapon" under the international rules of war. I have not found any reference to such an order in official records, however. Cheers. [ 09-02-2001: Message edited by: Harry Yeide ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges: In Zaloga's book on the Sherman, he states that in the second week of June, divisional commanders were given a demonstration of the Sherm 76, but no one wanted them because the troops hadn't trained on them. Then Patton agreed to accept some if they were put in a separate battalion. After Patton agreed, some other Generals also agreed to accept them. So it seems realistic to infer from this that there were no Sherm 76s until July '44. That would correspond with other stuff I've read as well.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The separate (i.e., infantry support) tank battalions began receiving or deploying with 76mm Shermans in August 1944. That month, the 70th, 746th, and 749th TBs drew 76mm tanks--17 each in the first two battalions, and a single vehicle in the last. The 774th TB entered battle that month entirely equipped with 76mm Shermans. Most of the battalions that landed on D-day, however, did not begin to receive 76mm tanks until December-January. Cheers.

Keep in mind that Army Ordnance told everyone that the 76mm gun would kill anything the Germans had, and it wasn't until Normandy that the rude surprise took place. It's no suprise at all that the brass did not want a bigger gun when the experts told them the 76mm would do the job. And with HVAP, it basically did. Some tank battalions began receiving extremely limited supplies of HVAP by September 1944.

Does anybody know a source of a decent PUBLIC DOMAIN picture of a Tiger I? Would anyone like a digital version of a remarkable US Army Signal Corps photo of Jagdtigers driving in to surrender after the fall of the Ruhr Pocket? Cheers.

I remember that someone posted some great groggy info on German tanks knocked out in Normandy, including the number that burned. I've tried searching on three separate dates, but I never get a reply. Does anybody remember who did that when? I'd like to track the details and source down. hanks and cheers.

Reports on tank gunnery and the separate tank battalions issued in May 1946 by the General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, confirm that the assault gun Sherman variant lacked power traverse during wartime. Cheers.