Myths of American Armor. TankFest Northwest 2015

I'm on a bit of a crusade there is a lot of what we know to be true which is true only because we saw a mass media or because you're on a web form and somebody else said something and you would assume it is correct it is truth by common knowledge and unfortunately Wikipedia is terrible for that even published authors have this problem that they know this guy is reputable so if he says something then it must be true and they they never go back and check the source and there's a whole series of things that if you look if you dig into them you realize hang on a second is this actually true I one of the famous ones with General Patton were the Germans afraid of General Patton and everybody says it you got the movie you've got a bridge too far you got the car low desta biography the Germans were afraid of General Patton then Harry yo goes into the German archives about two years ago and discover the most of the German generals never heard of them a big blow to the patent ego so it's this sort of thing that just because we know it's true I'm not going to say question absolutely everything you hear yes the sky is blue and if you have issue with some of what I'm going to show you I will feel free to defend my position later so Who am I why should you care well hey I'm an armor officer this means nothing it's one of the things I hate on internet forum is I'm an Abrams tank er and I'm telling you that the Sherman and whoa what is that going to do the price of fish at least you know one end of a tank from another and perhaps some tactical stuff you can you can apply but generally speaking it means nothing what is more important is that wargaming my employer spends lots of money to send me to archives to go dig in original source material so I fly to DC the National Archives to go to the museum around the world I talked with other reputable historians so about 90% of what I'm going to show you today I have seen in the original source documentation this isn't me making stuff up this is me looking in the archives and saying this is the case okay so dramatis personae people that you probably need to know the names of that may or may not come up as we go through this the first one is jake Devers he was a commander of the armored force for most of world war ii he took over from Chafee after he died he was our artillery man he was the youngest general in the army in 1940 and he was responsible for the organization and the doctrine and the training and equipping of armored force which at the time wasn't a separate branch like it is today but they effectively made it a semi independent branch just make life easy all right Leslie McNair another artillery man supposedly the bad guy in many stories oh yeah McNair was an artillery man he believed that the artillery was best used to kill tank but denver's was an artilleryman that he did not agree to artillery his branch is nothing to do with this he was in charge of army ground forces his job was the training organization and organization and equipping of all US army ground forces that went overseas he had a huge task in front of him Jolyon barns so if if McNair is the bad guy Barnes is the mad scientist he was the head of the R&D division of ordnance branch and he basically had his finger in the development of every piece of equipment that the army ground forces used unfortunately he was of the opinion that he knew better than the field forces what they needed and although he was very creative and very pushy and he's able to get a lot of stuff developed his opinions weren't necessarily correct all right so a couple other names here not so important general Gilliam took over from from Devers after Devers left by the time he came into being in armored force he didn't have much influence because by this point by mid 43 the force that would fight the war had already been created and equipped and the other bloke to bear in mind is General Bruce he was the head of the tank destroyer branch and he was laser focused on equipping the tank destroyer forces for the role that was given to him so he wanted the m18 hellcat nothing else anything else was a distraction all right so just for for knowledge the army was split after 1942 into three groups army air forces they wanted to be independent Army Service pull forces formerly disturbances supply they were the people who acquired the equipment and ordnance branch is part of them and finally army ground forces they included the infantry board the armor board the tank destroyer board and so on so that's your background myth number one names of vehicles Sherman Hellcat Wolverine jumbo honey priest and so on usually you will hear this said as the US Army never named it the Sherman or the British came up with general Stuart all right so it's not off with the British names most of these myths do have a kernel of truth behind them so according to David Fletcher the British tanker story in a bobbington the person responsible for giving a lot of the German a lot of the general names to American tanks was Winston Churchill who couldn't tell a number from another and he want the good names there was a proviso it was specifically instructed that when he referred to a tank such as grant on the right or Sherman on the left do not call it General Sherman or General Grant because there might actually be a real General Grant and he didn't want to get him confused the novel British names are names that were attributed to the British but in fact were not Wolverine is a very common one for the m10 tank destroyer the British called it an m10 the Americans called it an m10 in early forty-five the British decided to come up with a name for it Achilles and that applies both to the three inch and the 17 pounder gun people think it's just a 17 pounder the Canadians we thought maybe the Canadians called it Wolverine because the Canadians came up with animal names they came up with the Grizzly they came up with the RAM and so on note the Canadian War Museum got back to us said we didn't call it Wolverine nobody has a clue where the name started Jackson the British named a general Jackson the British never used it why would they give it a name honey the Stewart was such a brilliant tank to drive the British called it a honey Fletcher came back with a very interesting comment this can to be in a British name to us honey is a sticky thing that comes from bees and you buy at the health food shop to say that this is a honey as in this is a good thing as an Americanism so even if the British did use it they got it from the Yanks all right the American names the Americans were the people who with General in front of their names in late 1944 ordnance branch general burns included put out an order stating that the following names will be assigned to vehicles and the document is there I have this on line if you if you want to look at some of my articles it's called The Chieftains hatch so just google the cheapest house you'll get there and it says General Sherman for the m4 it says General Jackson for the m36 it was the US Army that came up with the general names especially for the ones that weren't already in use like Jackson like Chaffee like Pershing Ronson is questioned you're familiar with the fray the Sherman's were known as Ronson's because kept that like Catching Fire was a lights first time every time the problem is that ransom didn't use that logo until the 50s there was at one flick and it's lit in the 20s but the other problem is that your average trooper the GI use Zippos not Ronson's so we're not quite sure where that came from it either lastly not everything with a 76 millimeter is an easy 8 there's a for whatever reason you see a 76 millimeter you see horizontal suspension system it's an easy 8 true the horizontal suspension system is the easy 8 program the 76 millimeter is the easy 6 but you never hear a called an easy 6 for reasons completely unknown ok myth 2 tanks for infantry support weapons or exploitation weapons and not anti-tank all right so you hear the one you hear dealer you her both and this is again something close to the truth-- being taken out of context the armoured division its role was indeed exploitation once the hole was punched the armored division will go Ranma rotting killing whatever is found whatever it found could include tanks the lines were to be punched by the infantry divisions the infantry divisions had tank battalions assigned to them so the role of those tank battalions was indeed infantry support now if you're an infantryman you're attacking forward and there's a German tank shooting at you you will want something to destroy that tank this is part of the infantry support role and a 75 millimeter was selected for the m3 medium because it was good at handy tank work this never changed now us doctrine was not so stupid to think that just because we didn't want to fight enemy tanks the enemy wouldn't bring any along so I have a quote here from one of the field manuals can't read it but I'll read it out for you of em 1733 of 1942 tank versus tank action CFM 17 attacking tanks frequently encounter hostile tank units unexpectedly and other times they may be required to attack hostile tanks deliberately this is in the doctrine this is the Rinne manual you're a tank you kill tanks this leave the tank destroyers to take the destroyed is ridiculous there's never attack the story around when you need one anyway okay it's all about McNair this is the first time we're going to talk about McNair frequently postulated that the reason that US tanks did not do well against other tanks is because AGF and the artilleryman also Devers did not believe the tanks were best used to fight tanks this is true he did have some very specific opinions on the subject he did not let his opinions overrule the advice of those beneath him so although he very well may have written it is a waste of a tank to fight a tank he did not stop his subordinates who wanted anti-tank guns on the tanks from having those tank anti-tank guns actually in the case of Pershing he overruled his own Department he didn't want the Pershing but he said look the decisions made we're going to support the troops in the field who want this tank secondly he did not write doctrine doctrine for armored forces written by armored force doctor for tank Astoria branch was written by the tank destroyers down in Camp Hood Texas he came up with the concept of the tank destroyers as an anti-tank system but that was it he certainly never said anything that at least that I can find in writing saying that a tank should not be capable of fighting another tank which brings us on to myth number three tank destroyers and I have a Wikipedia quote here it says US Army Doctrine held that tanks did not find other tanks but supported the infantry or tank destroyers destroy tanks and tanks destroyed everything else no I suspect this is a case of people drawing the wrong conclusion from the name it is a tank destroyer ergo bingo hit the storage tanks and that means that everything else it doesn't say it has to be exclusive tank destroyers are the best thing at destroying tanks that doesn't mean to say nobody else can okay so I've already showed on the tank manual that the tankers thought that they should be capable of fighting tanks did the tank destroyer branch think the tanks should be capable of fighting tanks and to that we go to FM 18-5 so here's a couple of things about tank destroyer doctrine firstly it is purely defensive the tank destroyer was something if the Germans attack then the tank destroyers units after so written in the in the FM is italicized tank destroyers ambush hostile tanks but do not charge or chase them which is fine if you're defending what if you're attacking you can't do tank destroyers were held in reserve even in the offense tank destroyers were held in reserve so that meant if you met a tank when you're attacking anything but a tank destroyer is supposed to kill that tank that you meet hey coming infantry it could be artillery c'mere plays anything else could be another time later on when you're attached to a tank division there the tank story of manual states since the armoured division can meet strong armored attacks with effective organic weapons tank destroyers may execute secondary missions instead what are the organic weapons that a tank division has thanks so even a tank destroyers thought that tanks should fight tanks okay let's go on to the next one Pershing could have come earlier you're going to hear this one if they have made the right decisions person could have been the main American tank at d-day maybe a cobra wouldn't have been a good idea so I'm going to get one thing out of the way first belt and Cooper's book death traps makes the claim that the reason we did not have Pershing so is because General Patton did not like it there's a couple of problems here firstly death drops is a great book I highly recommend it as everything you read it is not a historical work it is a memoir where he got the idea that Patton had any influence in tank development nobody knows suffice to say not true no matter how many times you hear it elsewhere because it's a commonly seen book and it gets cited a lot okay so that deals without let's move on to McNair so you'll also hear McNair didn't one person because it was a tanky killing tank well no I've already discussed that he did not let his opinions stop tank development what he did do was he actually authorized experimental development just not production now why so if you can see this or not what do these vehicles have in common one of them is a 3-inch gun motor carriage m5 attack destroyer one is the medium tank m7 one is the m4 Sherman with the 76 millimeter in a quick-fix turret and the last is the medium tank t23 all from 40 to 43 era so what do you guess is what do they all have in common they were prototypes what else they were all approved for service they were ordered in the thousands the m7 they built a factory in Indiana purely for the m7 then after all these orders were placed they realized that the tank sucked and they didn't make them and this was a complete waste of money man-hours and resources army ground forces was not going to put anything into production unless they knew a bloody well worked so here's a teaching point July 1943 somebody near the front what am I looking at a panther what's special about these Panthers they're broken down the Panther was pressed into the into service very quickly before they knew if it worked some figures 204 panthers were sent to curse six destroyed themselves just getting to the fight by 9th of July 28 Panthers were lost including those six by the 10th of July so is about a weekend of the 204 Panthers 81 non-combat damaged Panthers were in to repair were in to repair shops with a reliability rate like that you can understand perhaps why the US Army didn't want to have that kind of tank needing its charge across France so was McNair right to not approve Pershing to go overseas well this is a scan of a document dated December 44 29th of December it is a report of the heavy tank t26e1 which is a developmental version of the person at that time it says the armored board concludes that the heavy tank t26e1 as tested is unsatisfactory and not battle worthy because of the many defects which are listed in appendix D which you can get out doesn't December 44 they've already been through Normandy in France they know that there were issues with the Sherman's dealing with German tanks the Battle of the Bulge was in full swing and here's armored board going this tank sucks we don't want zebra was a zebra was a test case general Barnes who said if we can get this tank into the field the troops will love it and I will be vindicated we'll build thousands of these things pushed and push and push for about a year and a half to get the t20 series overseas army ground forces replied in March 44 these tanks have not been tested by service board it is not known whether they are fight of all or fit to be put into combat this headquarters does not view with favor the idea of making any combat zone a test agency I love the way they used to write back in the 40s even the private soldier had a way with words you don't get today suffice to say zebra was finally a compromise we'll test out a couple overseas as well as at home not a popular move but it was something that Barnes achieved this you're probably just going to have to get online it is a timeline of events simply because the screen is too small there's a timeline events for Pershing's production it's started production in May 43 sorry the simple concept the proposal was May 43 the first one actually showed up for testing in February of 44 and d-day by this point is only four months away 2,500 a little more than Jeremy 45 what what is important is that an initial production of 250 for development was requested in January of 44 before the first one even showed up for testing they ordered 250 because they figured they might need them just in case and they were hoping that would work zebra the first 20 tanks off the production line that went to Germany and yeah they did go to Germany they were built in January 45 out of that 250 there is no way that a reliable person could have been built sooner than January or 45 so if you hear anybody saying you could have had an earlier tank not happening or at least if he did it was not going to be one that worked so a final note in addition to armored force not like in the Persian the engineering branch said we don't want it it's too heavy it can't cross any of our bridges and indeed when they cross Remagen only the m force could cross the Pershing's were left behind the transportation Corps didn't want it because it was too wide for the railroads and when he got the Korea so many of them broke down that the army replaced its m26 is with Sherman's and m-46 is but in her the Marines kept there's all the way through because there were suddenly whole metric ton of spare parts that the Army did not need anymore alright myth mine Sherman's at low velocity 75 due to h-e capability or doctrine so the way this one go the Americans like 275 because I had a higher H each arge again there is a little bit of truth to this the 75 is doing sterling service against Panzer 3s and Panzer force in North Africa but the US Army always assumed that they might need something bigger so this is an early 76 millimeter m4 Sherman what year do you think this photo was taken earlier 42 when was the first time anybody met a tiger okay again another timeline I'll just go back so the Sherman was selected as a new tank in September 41 also in September 41 before the first Sherman had been built they started the program to install an anti-tank gun it was going to be the three inch the 3 inch anti-tank gun was just too damn heavy it would not work in the Sherman so they mix it for a while in spring of 42 they developed the 76 millimeter is seen on the Hellcat is it much lighter gun you can put it into a Sherman fantastic so they put the 76 into the m4 Sherman turret that small little m4 Sherman turret army says our ordinance says yes it works mechanically it works we approve it it will be tight classified we'll build a thousand of them and send them to North Africa for the invasion armored board says hang on a second we haven't tested this yet and they put a hold on it armored board tests the 76 millimeter Sherman and rejects it as being unfit for service it is too cramped the recoil man still work well the optics are are unsuitable it sucked so they officially go around killing it in paper in April 43 fortunately in March of 43 our mad scientist general Barnes got the idea put the g20 to return onto the m4 chassis and that started the e6 program which gave us a 76 it was approved for production in August of 43 I should actually point out that in July of 43 with one Panther first showed up anywhere and that wasn't that wasn't that was in Eastern Europe plans were finalized in September 43 and all 75-millimeter production would stop in January or 45 I'd be look at it says this type well this factory will turn over to 76 and this month this factory will turn over and so on they had always wanted the m4 to have a high-velocity cannon doctrine like anti-tank or anti infantry had nothing to do it they wanted a hole puncher by May of 44 thereby 276 millimeter servants in England waiting to cross into Normandy the tank battalion commanders did not want them they didn't see any purpose in changing their logistical requirements through new training the 75 millimetre tanks that they had were killing Panthers they were killing Tigers in Italy what was the problem so they left him behind although even in October 44 6 armored said we have no 76 moment Sherman's we don't want so on a similar level Firefly Sherman was best Sherman and the reason that the Americans didn't use a 17 pounder was because it wasn't invented here no ok so ordnance branch the mad scientists did a lot of experimenting with foreign equipment not necessarily so that they would build it locally but to see what sort of technology or ideas were useful and could be used in American production so in early 44 they bring a 17 pounder from overseas and they put it up against their own new anti-tank will gun the 19 millimeter and in a side-by-side comparison test in 19 millimeter water which makes sense and it was also very suitable for the Americans because they're already making 90 millimeter tubes and ammunition they didn't have to set a production line for 70 banner and so on the catch was I was in the towed anti-tank gun mode not inside a tank after the invasion in Normandy people started realizing hang on a second 275 isn't doing what it should against Panthers so you will hear about the test at a Signia and Bawa where they basically put a panther at the end of the line to shot it with a 75 shot at 170 mashaallah 176 and the foot and the conclusion from the first test was that none of these can reliably punch through the front of a panther oops they develop HFF the high-velocity armour-piercing round a fly a couple over more Tacitus igni the 17 pounder could punch through a panther at about 500 yards with regular ammo and in theory about two kilometers using sable rounds the problem was that you couldn't hit the broadside of a barn from inside with a saber even the british army said anything over 500 yards forget it as an experiment the Americans took one Firefly turret that fired 18 rounds at a 6x6 target 1,000 yards and they just came they couldn't hit it once they gave up so we'll save this we'll save the ammo for armor penetration tests the 76 millimeter would hit first time every time and it was just as powerful as the APC BC round at the 17 pounder had after the war there was the armored board decided let's do a test we'll take it in 476 we'll take a firefly and we'll take a Pershing side-by-side test we'll see which is best and the main problem with the 17 pounder there are several again this test is all on line on the Chieftains hatch and you can read all the results for yourself but the bottom line was at 17 pound it was too cramped to be an effective fighting machine and it was if you look at the gunner was kind of like this sorry no other way around here is like this trying to hang and if you remember that 76 millimeter in that small turret was rejected the 17 pounder is a much bigger gun so you can imagine what the armored force thought of that when they saw it but the end result was that the Firefly conversion was considered to be the least desirable tank so why does Firefly have the reputation but the answer is because the British actually brought ball from day one in normally the British had a 17 pounder on a tank the Americans had 275 if you wanted a punch a hole in the front of a panther the only thing you had in the entire Northwest theater do it really would be maybe the tank destroyers or a Firefly this doesn't mean the fire flower is the best tank it just means who is the best tank that they brought but as far as tanks go the 76 ei was the better all right and last thing about real-world effects this is a turf taken again it's online from a British assessment of how good these tank guns are and you will see for example that against the front upper plate of a panther the 17 pounder sable will punch through with 2,500 yards and the 76 th map at 950 the problem is that I remember you can't say anything at 1,000 yards let alone two and a half thousand so a lot of modelers welder war gamers will go this thing will punch through 190 millimeters of armor this only punches through 110 and if you can't hit it what does it matter the other question is what was the real-world effect when he did hit let's say you had gun number one will punch 290 millimeters gun number two will punch through 160 millimeters and the toughest German tank had 150 millimeters they're gonna punch through unless you get a Yank tigre which case nobody's going to punch through so the bottom line was there wasn't anything that the 76 millimeter couldn't do better in real-world effects than the 17 pounder right next min it took five Sherman's to kill a cat you're gonna hear this a lot yeah you needed the panther was so tough that you need to have kind of two guys here to surround and the other three will go around aside okay the clip is actually from fury ah that tiger attack scene it's done personally I think the 76 is would have done better to just sit back and plink they wouldn't punch through the on the other hand I found a manual the other day that said that if you are out range let's say you got an eight hundred yard gun range and the enemy has a sixteen hundred yard gun range charge preferably from the Sun yeah work today it's also pointed out that Tiger duels are very rare Steve's a Logan did some hunting around but in Northwest year between d-day and the fall of Germany in 1945 guess how many times American tankers meant Tiger ones for too many the answer is three the first time the Sherman's won the second time the Pershing lost and the third time the Tigers were getting loaded onto flatcars so it wasn't really a fair fight that's it you got them everything is a tiger here's the problem is that you look at a panzer 4 with the blocky superstructure and the muzzle break you think it's a tiger because it's why you're most afraid of and when the thing is aiming at you you aren't going to be sitting there taking copious detailed notes going well let's see it's got a slightly rounder muzzle right you know so everything was a tiger everything was reported as a tiger did never happen so where does this myth come from well in real world performance our core is a case in point Germans attacked with about 260 vehicles about 100 of them were campers general I then Colonel Abrams was defending with mainly 75 millimeter tanks the finals for the the Americans lost about 20 Germans and the Germans lost about 80 Panthers how did this happen well frankly the Americans were better tankers but they were able to they were able to maneuver correctly with all the supporting arms this isn't the other thing people forget it's not just tank a vs. tank beats its tank a with artillery and infantry and airpower whatever else vs. tank be against the infantry and artillery and air power it doesn't work that simply in fact the only air support for the first day at our Corps was a bloke by the name of bazooka Charlie who flew around in an l-3 cub that had six bazookas mounted under the wings it was too cloudy for anything else is weird gentlemen look him up it's kind like that British guy who went into battle wielding a claymore in a bow and arrow is Matt yeah Matt Matt was it magic Churchill how is his name he's the only combatant known to have killed an enemy with a bow and arrow in World War two the French trained gentlemen he used to ride home on a train after the war and just before he got off the train station he'd fling his briefcase at the train window then somebody finally asked what he doing well that's that's my backyard I just didn't one had to carry the backbone okay so after the war both the US and the Britain US and UK militaries did some assessments and be scientific about this they concluded that the winner of a fight against a Sherman or a panther was usually whoever fired first which has a couple of pieces of sense to it firstly you are not going to open the firefight unless you are in a position to advantage to begin with secondly once you do get the first shot off you are usually calm and collected and the guy on the receiving end is having a significant emotional event so his return shot is likely to be rushed and hurried and we'll miss anyway while you are reducing off your first one if you want actual mathematics the Americans estimated that a Sherman was an average three point six times more effective than the Panther the British concluded that they wanted a two point two to one advantage and Barrowman usually three to one is considered good for an attack so what did the myth come from how many tanks would that if the American armies tend to deal with a tank at machine-gun nest how about a world war one captured light tank one no the answer is five a platoon was five tanks that is the smallest tactical unit on the battlefield you don't go anywhere a one or two times you go ran as a platoon so it doesn't matter what you were going up against there is one one Panther well that's let's bring up to five tank to find you're not going to say oh it's only a stinker shots hey Joe we don't need you in your body well we'll make this fair the book says three to one well you know you go to platoon oh yeah there and then again is you come up against a platoon of enemy tanks you bring a company of your dangler an American tank company is about 17 18 tanks so you're still keeping a five to one ratio not because you need five to one but because diamond is what you bring all right myth number eight the Sherman was a deathtrap surely that one can't be a math Kenneth that one is indeed on fire but wait there's more okay there are two days here one is an early model M full one is a tiger which one has the thicker frontal Armour how many people say the Sherman how many people say the tiger how many of you wondering wants to catch with this apparently easy question well here's your answer the Sherman's got two inches the Tigers got four okay nothing unexpected there let's look at it from another angle three point six for the Sherman four to four point three for the tiger why sloping of armor you'll see that the Sherman's armor aspect the two inch version is sloped at about sixty degrees the tiger is nearly verticals between eight and eight and ten this means that the Sherman has almost as much frontal armor as the tiger does this is not bad the difference was the gun the Tigers gun was much better than the Sherman's that's why he had the effect derivative effectiveness but not everything on the battlefield was a tiger not every gun was an 88 the 50s the 75 they would bounce off a Sherman more often than off so once he got hit you then have to get out how do you get out of a tank so these are videos that I have a lot I do online tank reviews again though for inside the Chieftains hatch on YouTube and there is usually much mirth amongst the audience as I try to get in and out of these things so the one on the top left is a t-34 to get out of a t-34 you have to unscrew the latch kick it forward screw it back into place and then you climb out through the front that's if you're the driver if you are the assistant driver you have no hatch at all except this tiny little thing in your feet or you wait for somebody else to get out the comet the cruisers there you have to kind of go into straight words and it took me about two minutes to get into this thing you get in straight then you kind of scoot to the right and yo it's terrible the one on the bottom left is a tiger one same thing the hatch is here the seat is here so you kind of gotta scoot in sideways but all right Sherman the hatch is right above you it's spring-loaded so oh my god the tank is on fire open out a t-34 I mean you're out of the tank for the t-34 drivers even got his hatch open I do thirty four in there look for yourself but they did burn right sort off if you shoot anything enough times it'll burn and a burning tank cannot be repaired so just because the enemy have gone out of the tank doesn't mean that you should continue to shoot it so that the enemy cannot recover the tank later so about the depend depend on the unit 50 to 80% of Sherman's were found burned on the battlefield it's about 80 percent for a Panzer for the cause of the fire was usually the ammunition not the petrol engine and that was the same cause as on Panthers and t-34s and pretty much anything else the saving graces of the American ammo was fairly slow to catch fire so we'll kind of fizzle a little bit before you get the actual configuration so combine that with the fact you got a pretty easy hatch to get out you can actually get out of the Sherman pretty quickly and then you get the wet stowage tank so they decided to put the ammunition in protective bins the burn rate went down to about 5 or 10% so what's the final effect so these are figures from the Adjutant General's report the final report on the war according to the army they deployed 757 thousand infantrymen overseas all those 120 thousand were killed at 140 thousand that's 18 and a half percent of all riflemen overseas were killed now you'll hear the the airplane guys got that the most dangerous job in the world war two was to be a bomber crewman to a point yes we drilled down fourth ID had a 700% casualty rate in a row in the rifle ranks as the entire division killed seven times over for imagery tankers forty-nine thousand five hundred and sixteen enlisted tankers were sent overseas 1500 and seventy four were killed three percent versus eighteen and a half percent for the rifleman if you want a death trap Terry an m1 garand now there are a couple of caveats one is that there are no officers in the armored section because all our officers or infantry or artillery the other caveat is that the dead four tankers includes people weren't even in the tank at a time that they were killed usually between 1/2 and 1/3 of all tank crewmen were doing something outside of the tank either sensor duties or maybe they got out of the tank and there were machine gunned as they were going home okay so how about a vehicle comparison so a couple of figures with different types of tank so u.s. first Army between 6 June and 30th of November 456 tanks dead 129 killed as 0.28 dead per tank or 0.6 one wounded the British they did an assessment of their own they provide an interesting comparison because they had not only Sherman's but they also had Cromwell's comets and a few other things they lost 106 Sherman's 63 ki which is 0.6 per tank almost twice as much as the Americans the Cromwell the the British designed ones about the same 0.56 per tank and the wounded was one per tank so you're more like in a British unit you're more likely to be killed in an achievement slightly but more likely to be wounded in a British tank now why is the British one substantially higher than the American one well the answer is British didn't wear helmets about 40% of ki-84 tank crews were for the head and you look around the British more the Berets in the tank not a good long-term survival strategy but either way you're no worse off in the Sherman now if you're in the t-34 I found figures for the Polish 4th armored brigade they lost 1.8 people per tank right myth number nine tactical air kills tanks this is a personal favor for places like this so here's a question for you what was the Western Allies most effective ground attack aircraft tornado Thunderball yeah the drug typhoon none of the above their fighters aaron ground attack aircraft their fighters that were pressed into a ground attack role they were not designed for the role and their performance suffered accordingly these are ground attack aircraft the il-2 Sturmovik which is yeah that one there the HS one two nine they were designed for the role they were good at it in fact the HS one to nine became the first aircraft to ever stop an armored attack without any grand force involvement at all that squadron of them swooped on some t-34 is near Bolger grad kill the quarter of them the other interesting thing is that the the Allied Pilots didn't want to be ground attack aircraft quoting the British Worman Air Ministry the assignment of fighter units to the fighter bomber role struck a heavy blow to the self-esteem of those pilots first assigned such duties after you get the fighter talk mentality I don't care about those guys on the go the most important thing in a war is a guy on the ground with a rifle it's not a tanks not an airplane it's a rifleman yeah so some of the Air Force guys never figure that one out alright so some figures too significant events that the British had what they call the operational research groups these were guys who went around after the battlefield and they counted kills and they try to assign who killed what so looking at the two battles for lab Elaine and more time more time the 7th of the 7th of August was known as the day of the typhoons because you're just aircraft of the aircraft coming in attacking the Germans there were about 500 missions from by tactical arrogant on that day alone at Berlin 17 tanks killed claimed 27 a claimed damage in actuality that killed three and a damaged six okay warehouse one off let's look at more time the Britain's this is an interesting actually comparison between the kill categories that the British and Americans claimed so the Americans claimed they killed 69 tanks and the British claims they actually killed eight the Americans claimed that they probably killed eight and the British claimed they actually killed 35 so obviously the American pilots are a little bit more generous than the British work chances are 35 damaged and so on and so forth how many did they really kill nine and there were 11 constructive lost crew lost abandonments if they didn't know if the Assessor did not know what caused the kill to give it to the airplanes so they're claiming a hundred and fifty kills almost between probable and actual that killed 20 tactical air did not have any significant practical effect against x another example Battle of the Bulge aircraft claimed 64 tanks they killed four that is not to say that tactical air was useless and absolutely was not it could be critical but in a different manner it wasn't that it was go to killing tanks you could kill the support structures you could kill the truckers and most importantly you had the morale effect so if you're the German guy you see airplane after airplane coming at you with rockets you didn't care if it didn't hit you you were not having a good day where is it for you American or the British and you see airplane after airplane bombarding the enemy with rockets you going oh this is going to be a cakewalk let's go lads and they would win so critical not in the way people think okay so this brings us more or less to the Q&A portion just to conclude US Armed Forces the victim of bad press it is so I mean of all the planes of disappointment and so on but the only one that actually is important and holds water is that the Americans did not bring HVAC for the 76 millimeter into Normandy and again this is because they just didn't think they needed it they were telling Panthers and Ferdinand's and tigers in Italy the 75 was doing the job it was not until you to that very specific set of circumstances that were no that was normally that the deficiency of the 76 and 75 really became available and the other thing again it is a piece of a huge machine the tank was designed to be part of the army not just a tank force with the artillery with the aircraft with the infantry and in that respect it performed flawlessly it was very reliable you could depend on it to get to wherever was going and he knew what it could do when it got there except Normandy so the reputation for Sherman's inefficiency basically comes from when a medic at a panther because it wasn't a tiger one maybe a tiger - these things were so rare as to be basically irrelevant so you saw the the the entire us last 1400 tanks of all sorts in Western Europe for something that blew open a German looked at it sideways they lost that one six as many tanks as that say the Germans built Panthers Sherman's were not that they were very very good piece of equipment

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 1,310,546

Rating: 4.8662701 out of 5

Keywords: world of tanks, Tank myths, Armour, History

Id: bNjp_4jY8pY

Length: 46min 20sec (2780 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/martellus]

I love some good chieftan videos

this is great

[u/rollingRook]

summary for anyone who couldn't watch:

a common theme through these is general McNair, who, in the speakers opinion, seems to have been unfairly criticized by the perpetuation of these myths.

myth #1: tank names. TLDW: some of the names like 'firefly', 'sherman', 'wolverine', etc, have dubious, misattributed origins.

myth #2: american tanks were infantry support weapons, not meant to fight other tanks. TLDW: this is close to the truth, but misleading when taken out of context. American planners knew that shermans would encounter german tanks as part of their exploitation role.

myth #3: tank destroyers were the primary tool for destroying tanks. TLDW: Tank destroyers are the best at destroying tanks, but that doesn't mean that other tools weren't capable. Additionally, TDs were typically held in reserve, used for defense.

myth #4: pershing could have come earlier. TLDW: Americans were pretty serious about testing and reliability, which is what caused the delays.

myth #5: shermans had low velocitity 75mm due to doctrine/HE capability. TLDW: problems were technical and logistical.

gotta run now, might get to the rest later...

myth #7: it takes five shermans to kill a tiger: This one was really interesting! there were only four encounters on the western front of a sherman/tiger (panthers were often mistaken as tigers). the combined arms tactics of the US army almost always gave them an advantage over any panthers they encountered. Additionally, a platoon of tanks contained five shermans, and since it was the smallest deployable unit of shermans, any time the armor was called, for any task, would require five shermans.

myth #8: sherman was a death trap: the shermans sloped frontal armor gave it about as much armor as a tiger. Also, the sherman was much easier to exit than other tanks of the era. interesting fact It was much better to be in a tank then infantry, as tankers faced about a 3% chance of being killed, while general infantry faced about a 18% chance of being killed (going off rough numbers).

myth #9: tactical air killed tanks: air to ground kill-estimates were greatly inflated by the air division. Air was very effective, just not against tanks.

Ultimately, I came away from this show with much greater respect for the Sherman. It's been unfairly maligned by media portrayals today.

[u/defeatedbird]

This is fantastic.

A must-watch for anyone interested in the history of American armor.

[u/wan2tri]

I would think there were actual exceptions though in the tank destroyer doctrine (for obvious reasons).

I've posted a picture over at /r/MilitaryPorn of an M18 Hellcat here in the Philippines firing on the Post Office (one of the last buildings held by the Japanese, actually) during the last few days of the months-long Battle of Manila. I would guess it was there by necessity LOL, as the M4 Shermans are too busy elsewhere. I would think this is because there were really barely any tank units during the battle anyway. IIRC the 1st Cavalry had to provide the bulk of tanks, the other two divisions only had a tank battalion each.

Still, a lot of commenters over at that subreddit were a bit surprised that there was an M18 in the Pacific.

[u/EngineArc]

Great video, thanks kindly!

[u/Gribbley]

Some of the things he said in this seem to disagree specifically with the guys that did the Think Tank.

Shame he didn't mention these at the time, given that he was the moderator. Maybe it's just a matter of emphasis.

[u/ownage99988]

His deadpan humor kills me.

[u/Cpt_Fubar]

Great video, as always, just wished he would have some help or training with his graphs and presentation in general.

[u/AssaultPlazma]

Anyone know why the US didnt go forward with plans to possibly mount a 90mm gun on the Shermans or at least mate the Pershing turret with the Sherman hull?