US Tank Destroyer History

hello everybody and welcome to guess I'll call it a webcast for lack of anything better call it so here's the background last year you will have noticed most of you that I went up to flying heritage collection or do they talk on myths of American armor and this actually seemed to go around rather well and to the extent that I was asked to go back up again and give another talk this year which I duly did the difference was that we didn't have a spare cameraman around to record it so we decided well why not see if we can do this by I sort of a web cast and there's some positives and negatives in one of the positives is that because I have a little bit more time to think I'm going to make fewer verbal errors and it's one of the things I hate doing is I reading from prepared notes no verbatim because they're boring is all heck and similarly I don't like reading what's on the screen on the PowerPoint because well most of you can read English and there's no point in my reading it for you but this does mean that some occasion I get something slightly wrong so for example in the talk I said for with regards to the honey named for the Stuart that even if the British used that they got it from the eggs and I was a step of the tongue under the under the moment I mean I don't doubt I don't deny that the British use a term but they did get it from the eggs even Robert Christmas book and if you've haven't seen it since if I should put up a couple of notations annotations on to the video stated yeah my driver got because he was hanging around with a with Texan one of the advisers that came with the came with the Stewart and of course I get a write in the text and the written article but not on a moment so it is less likely of that sort of thing going wrong here the downside is that this is going to flow quite as well I actually kind of enjoyed talking to people but they know at the bottom line this is an attempt at redoing in this talk that I gave up at fhc in 2016 because tell you whatever it into it why not want to get a slightly bigger audience enough hundred odd people that sat down in front of me so that's pretty much the background to it and so on with this slideshow such as it is and as you can imagine it's on tank destroyers what was your first clue and the reason I picked it was because I happen to have the documentation on the drive and you know I've bad finished my two two volume tome on thanks Troy development and still looking for an editor and publisher if anybody's interested so I I had it ready to yeah why not dive into it it's subject a little bit about it's not as fascinating as myths of armor having a chat with down snowy they're saying yeah anything with myths or top ten in it it's going to be it's going to spread like wildfire this is going to be a little bit more recent Eric probably less popular demand but what hey the information is good and I'm sure some of it at least will come as news to you so I might we'll start off with the first slide and the successful failure why do I call it that well I mean there's not really any denying that the tank destroyers were a bit of a waste as evidenced by in short order after the war they got rid of they were abolished as a branch on the other hand is also no denying that they did their job they worked they killed things in much better ratios and they lost so to that extent they were also at success as for the logo I hear a lot of people saying it's a Hellcat or a panther it's not it's a cougar how do you know that you may ask and the answer is we got the documentation and if I just bring it up in my other screen here I'm started doing a split screen so I can read the notes September 28 1942 following shoulder sleeve has been approved yadda yadda a cougars face in black with markings in red eyes whiskers and teeth and white crunching a blanket a black tank crunching is a doctrinal trauma verily and it is nonspecific as to the type of tank but there you go anyway it's a cougar so that sets that one to rest okay so this slide you will have seen before if you saw my my previous slide show and it the answers are exactly the same if you are one of the few people watching this who has not seen the myths of armor I am a tanker by trade all the rank a major right now National Guard and as I said last time this means nothing whether or not I know how to operate Bradley's and Abrams on the bottom battlefield is of limited relevance when it comes to doing research on World War two tank destroy development and the plus side for me though is that my civilian job is that I work as effectively a researcher historian for a computer game company and although you probably should not learn your tank history from the computer game you may as well learning from Hollywood or Wikipedia anyway I do do a lot of digging in archives and anywhere else I can so that's who I am so on with the show and this slide and the next one its purpose is to make you think about the difference between TDS as they actually weren't Edie's as a lot of people think of them so what we have here of for vehicle for pieces of equipment they all saw combat duty in World War two with the US military three of them are tank destroyers one of them is not which one you see if it was a live show I'd be asking people and given their guesses so I'm afraid all I can do is give you a couple of seconds to think about it okay so here's your answer top right corner the four pieces of equipment are the 37 millimeter gun motor carriage m6 the 57-millimeter gun m1 the 3-inch gun m5 and the 75 millimeter gun motor carriage m3 of those the top right corner the 57 was not a tank destroyer with an anti-tank gun and you may think what was it if between anti-tank gun is 57 millimeters and an anti-tank gun and that is three inches well welcome back to that in a moment so we go into the next slides in this kind of reinforces the point now this is the reverse of the four vehicles posted here one of them is a tank destroyer which is the tank destroyer dddddd have a think about it you're probably particularly confused by the two at the bottom that look very very similar to each other how can one let her go but we know that once it tanked destroyed right cm10 well the answer is that the one tank destroyer out of those four is the one on the bottom right top left if you're curious it's a deacon it's a 57-millimeter or correction a 6 pounder on a truck chassis effectively the tube and a port a is a top right corner or port ease and people called bottom left is gun anti-tank quick firing 3-inch on self-propelled mount m10 that's with the British collar and on the bottom right corner 3-inch gun motor carriage m10 yes they are both m10s but why it's one a tank destroyer in one is not well the one on the bottom left is a self upheld anti-tank gun it is physically exactly the same piece of hardware the difference is that it is crewed by roll artillery and categorize as an anti-tank gun used as an anti-tank gun in anti-tank regiments complete with also towed six pounder and 70 mono guns whereas the American m10 is a tank destroyer using tank destroyer units so what I'm getting at between these two slides is a tank destroyer is not a piece of hardware per se it is a mode of use and that's I think one of the first things people have got to get their mind around a lot of people get wrong the thing a type Destroyer is a piece of equipment so how do they come back so here is the military problem-solving model it is no longer apparently in the manuals I couldn't find it but it is a logical sequence of events that militaries have use it is American military to come up with a solution to a problem and there are seven steps you can see them there so step one is to define the problem and the problem as demonstrated is illustrated by this photo the photo I think was taken you set off during the German invasion of the French and Low Countries and as you can see you got a bunch of armor 38 t's mark to mark 4 I think that is there and it's supporting assets logistics infantry and so on and so forth and what was obviously happening with these things were making merry running right around the French and the British and you know generally making a mockery of their defence plans this concerned the Americans somewhat because the French and the British were considered to be quite competent organizations those militaries so hmm ok obviously this is the problem is that they are charging through and this is how they they generally defend it at the time you had a we had your defensive line of infantry and maybe fortifications interspersed with anti-tank guns and the enemy would attack probably with infantry in there as well into this line of anti-tank guns by way of reference the French had an issuance of anti-tank guns again these are big like 25 millimeter 40 cent millimetre about one gun every hundred metres was their typical average basis of issue and that was considered to be enough to stop now the average attacking force well here's the problem that was the ideal in actuality this happened and they'd simply isolated or made redundant a number of the anti-tank weapons and defenses by use of a barrier or whatever you want to call it the bottom line is they focus their firepower in one small poor unfortunate area and the anti-tank defense is there simply we're going to get overwhelmed let me know get him I knock out one or two but you ain't gonna win so that was the standard method of anti-tank defense and it was proven to be on unsatisfactory and what's worse is this was the standard of anti-tank thought of the US military at the time and I wrote this one up it's if you googled the chickens hatch rifles versus tanks the US military was so devoid of good anti-tank weapon systems that they were literally were trying to think of anything they could do to stop enemy tanks to include the concept of throwing things in the tracks and as you can see they sacrificed a number of small arms and machine guns did not work very well on the right hand side you have a Declassified photograph of an anti-tank rock and the rock lost it got chopped up into two pieces so what you see there is the remains of the rock after that half of it was crushed off okay yeah they also had Molotov cocktails and a caliber 50 machine guns which in fairness was a pretty good weapon against most armored but not a proper tank eventually they decided that okay we need a proper gun they selected the 37 millimeter they basically copied the thing off the Germans and put it into construction in 1939 that's not a great start point for your anti-tank defense on the plus side at least they get to start from scratch you don't have very much invested into already extant solutions so here's the problem statement as I would have viewed it and again I should be clear this is an ace ample analysis of how you get to the end result of the tank destroyed this is not the thought process for bottom of what what's going on I haven't actually seen the original text on it but you bear with me the bottom line though is saying whatever the actual verb which being used by McNair and anybody else this is your problems how to see what's army with the resources it has stopped these German assaults when you standard reputable forces of France and UK have failed and there was an additional problem the US Army was not really very clued in about tanks to begin with because they didn't have very modern very many modern wants to play with and not very many officers knew very much about modern tanking now that said they were very willing to try things out hence he had the Louisiana and Carolina maneuvers all right so step two through our process gather facts and make assumptions so your first assumption is that you're not going to be distributing armor anymore I can have Pennekamp packets you're going to concentrate all your armor in one location for that hard punch as opposed to the spread fist as they put it and the second assumption is that you can't build enough anti-tank guns to distribute everywhere to prepare for the German attack of the enemy attack wherever it happens to come there's just not the resources to do it therefore the conclusion would be that any German attack will beat you lines you will not unless you really damn lucky really really good you're not going to stop them they will attack in a place of their choosing they will overwhelm you and they will break through you can argue if that is a good assumption or a worst-case assumption but given what happened to the French and you're in the build a British is not a bad place to start so step 3 define your end state establish criteria so the end state as I would see it German attacks defeated US forces prepared for follow-on operations which is standard army blather modern army loud but this generally gets the point across and your criteria one must be an efficient use of resources ahead of time and what I mean by ahead of time is a whatever you are bringing the fight you've already built and trained and deployed all this stuff and you also can't you know you don't want to be too expensive in terms of manpower material once it's done so develop possible solutions what I did at this point in the presentation I just went around the audience and say well throw me some idea is how would you actually deal with this problem and you know what they came up with few answers somewhere sensible enough somewhere brand-new ideas but okay so for the sake of the exercise man I came up with a couple so option one meet enemy tanks with your own tanks meet enemy tanks for massed anti-tank weapons you can read these there's various different options you know they get the job done all right so step five you analyze and compare them well was your analysis if you choose option one meet the enemy tanks with your own tanks or lose the positives we already have tanks from okay maybe not great ones but we're making more and we're also making ones with anti-tank weapon systems the m3 medium with the 75 the 37 just wasn't cutting it anymore but we got new tanks coming and this also means that the simplifies your training and equipment because everybody's going around with tanks now he was sort of a neutral in your tanks are equal your tanks are probably about the same level as the enemy tanks so you just kind of button heads and where's your relative advantage that you're pushing and the reasonably mobile that they'll get there eventually and the downside tanks are not attacking if you're doing this and they will not be available for the attack until they've recovered they've repaired their damage they've restored they've rested them they've done their maintenance and if you believe that the purpose of the tank is to attack this ain't so great so let's try the next one meet the enemy tank with master anti-tank weapons well here's a couple of positives firstly it's cheaper than the time because the towed gun is much much cheaper than a than the tank is and tow guns are very good at killing tanks they can also be the fastest to react because they are light they are mobile you tow and behind the Jeep at 40 miles an hour downside this takes additional manpower and additional equipment so all these guys that you have Manning these anti-tank weapons are not doing anything else isolate them okay well here's a positive you're not trying to kill tanks you're avoiding direct contact well the problem though is that you need to have the space to let the pocket form they can then get behind or you the other bottom is really that you have to attack somewhere in order to isolate them and if they've done their due diligence and they've got good flank guards and so on actually may not work another options destroy the supporting assets yeah you can get the general idea here so there's always a positive and a negative or is almost always a positive and negative with any course of action you choose to deal with the problem another negative action with obstacles is after you got to watch them you can just place an obstacle they take a very long time to build right anyway I digress these were the sorts of thinking that you can imagine that the guys in 1940 were doing so what my base is they decided to go with option to meet the opposition with mass anti-tank weapons so the enemy would charge through that burst through the poor unfortunate sods over here and the remainders will keep going at which point mass anti-tank weapons would go to meet them you know you've written off these guys but there wasn't anything to do by anyway what you can do though is you have your master firepower just ready to concentrate and deal with the enemy and that is the that's the basic of the tank destroy doctrine in a nutshell and that's what they did they had to select and distributed and equip tank destroyer units now they want to the day firstly had to make an independent arm out of it both the infantry and the artillery were fighting over who gets to control this asset armored forest curiously didn't want to have anything to do with it because armored force very offensively minded their job is to exploit the breakthroughs run run riot around the enemy's rear areas catch them off guard flank attacks the word anti-tank defense was defensive and not in the mindset at all so just the two two two sides were arguing the infantry artillery and the end result was Sothis we're not going to give it to either of you were going to make an independent arm we'll call it the tank destroyer branch and force it was so in charge was a guy by the name of Andrew Bruce ten Ekron but by the end of the obviously was general Major General his background graduated Texas A&M in 1916 and shipped overseas to France as a provisional lieutenant Irish what a provisional lieutenant is with us what he was commander the machine gun battalion in second ID and fought Navy one of his major engagements he came back with the Distinguished Service Cross Legion of Honor Croix de Guerre with two palms and a star couple other decorations minor things basically the man was a fighter quite aggressive so they gave him this reactionary force to play with tank destroyer command was activated in November of 41 so where to start what did he want this is the sort of thing that Bruce wanted really fat oh there we go rocket-powered tanks really fast things that would get to the point of penetration very quickly with gun and boosters kind of laser focused on this concept and it's really only one vehicle that he absolutely wanted but we'll get to that a little bit on the other hand this one McNair wanted McNair course ahead of army ground forces not at the time a GF hadn't been created but he's up there in the in the chain and what we have here is a 90 tank gun it's believed it's a pack 40 German anti-tank gun in an open field now I went over McNair a little bit in the previous talk and he was a man of influence and he was a man of strong opinions he was not the ultimate decision-maker it's an important thing to note now however it's a dog a melon let me read a couple of his quotes when the armored vehicle faces the anti-tank gun the combat is essentially a fire action between a moving gun platform in plain view and a small carefully concealed stationary gun platform now we say small because back in 1940 they were small the huge anti-tank guns like the 17 pounder in the 88 you know they weren't really contemplated the point the struggle is analogous to that between ships and Shore guns and there is no question that shore guns are superior so much that the ship does not accept such a contest again it would appear he was not talking to the US Navy very much because that's exactly what the US Navy did a couple of times during the war if the gun out matches the tank and then not only is the gun superior to the tank in the anti-tank defense but employing armoured units against other armored units positively should be avoided whenever possible the gun supported properly by troops should defeat hostile armored units by fire and free the friendly armored units for actions against objectives which are vulnerable to them so again he's looking at the economy save the tanks for the offense or another quota is certainly it is a poor economy to use a $35,000 medium tank to destroy another tank when the job can be done by a gun causing a fraction as much defriend the armored force is free to attack more proper target the enemy force as a whole so again this is McNair is putting his two cents in now bear in mind this was completely not what Bruce wanted Bruce wanted vehicles and so Bruce effectively went to general Marshall and got Marshalls support and one tank destroyer branch would be vehicle-mounted so the overall organization of a tank destroyer battalion and this particular organization lasted until 43 at which point to realize it was completely over manned we needed the manpower somewhere else and they reduce it by about 25 percent mainly by removing security forces and anti-aircraft cannons and the gist of it is that whoops excuse me you start off with your HQ company with its signals maintenance and transportation sections our platoons there are three anti-tank companies your tank destroyer companies one platoon was light and that had two sections to two guns each a at the aircraft section and a security infantry section the other two platoons in the company were heavy gun platoons again two sections of two with anti-aircraft and infantry so these are very robust little organizations although for basis of comparison and infra do battalion was 916 personnel the numbers the 600 series tank destroyer battalion were going to be associated with the infantry units and the 700s were going to be associated with armored units didn't end up being that way but that was the thinking in issue so what do you equip them with and this is where we start looking at the large amount of vehicles the tank destroyer branch tried out in the search for a vehicle I seem to recall if I did the hey Ken riders over thirty five types of tank destroyer trial so you start off in May of 41 and a stripped-down vehicle Jeep Bantam I guess was being tested for bliss by first Cavalry Division Colonel DQ Jones and he designed a pedestal man for the 37 millimeter gun known as a Jones mount that's it on the bottom right corner there on the T 2 e 1 the t2 was Aberdeen's version of the same thing but the 37 millimeter on the Bantam Jeep and is up at the top left corner of the both failed because by the time you add the crew and the ammunition and gun and so on you're half a ton over the cargo capacity of the truck you know quarter ton truck and you're putting a 3/4 of a ton on it and it was it a bit too unstable to be used as a platform anyway so another try was the swamp buggy that's one of the bottom left it's the t8 it's a Ford one and a half ton truck and it worked out reasonably well once the bugs such as the cooling were worked out but the t21 was accepted into services the 37 millimeter gun motor carriage and that made the swamp buggy irrelevant similarly top right corner you have the T 14 it's going to be the T 13 as well which was a forward-facing variant that one never got built only the T 14 and it's based on the three-quarter ton Willis 6x6 of which if I recall they built about 13 in the end and actually work quite well and arguably was even better than the m6 which was eventually adopted but by the time this is done in mid 42 it was deemed ill-advised to continue with a 37 millimeter gun program and we already had 37 millimeter tank destroyers why do we need another one that wasn't the end of it though other 37-millimeter GMCs the t-33 top left that was based on the four three-quarter-ton and it was acceptable for use but again you have the m6 already in service got there first so why bother then there was a series of armored cars or at least five entries the two I've shown here the t22 over the top right and the t43 down at the bottom left says armored car t21 over there was after it's abandoned by tank destroyer branch they they gave it over to see if it could be an armored car and so these were the attempts at an armored mobile tank destroyer with the 37 now the problem was again 37 and this going to starting to fall out of favor can you amount of 57 came to question and the answer was no as an aside the t20 to top right went around to the other agencies this is pretty common a vehicle would you say buy armored force or by artillery branch would be sent around to the other agencies just to see if they wanted it and the t22 found its way to armored force they insisted on a couple of modifications he turned it into the t20 to e1 they liked it and they accepted it for service as the m8 armored car aka the greyhound the 37 on the bottle right on the white Scout car that was an attempt by the cavalry course the vehicle is large ungainly less mobile than the t21 it was armoured which was that the only positive tour really and your final winner the m6 it's actually the t21 gun motor carriage was the trial designation it's a Fargo 3/4 ton 37 on the back and it was select a mini because it was the first one to meet all the requirements and remember tank destroyer branch were in a hurry they had just been created the war is now pretty much going to happen and they needed something now and so the first guy that met did all the checkboxes that's the winner so the worst emissions were cooling but there was also a parts commonality with the quartermaster Corps vehicles so hey we'll take it the 37 was fully manual as they had to open the breech block after firing and it entered production in early 42 as the 37 millimeter gun motor carriage m4 then somebody new US Army figured out the calling everything by the same m-series designation was getting a bit confusing so the m4 got turned into the m6 so it's not confused with the m4 medium and that's why the m5 light came after the m3 light they were sent to Africa and they were found to be singularly useless that was the end of the light the tune now the heavy platoons there was a slightly easier problem to solve the half-track was already accepted he was apparently a pretty good vehicle and it was capable of carrying a 75 motor gun in this case the M 1897 a4 first started in July of 1941 the program was standardized by November 41 this is one of the early gun shield designs suffice to say it didn't pass muster not eventually you end up with the m3 gun motor carriage and this basic was to hold the fort until the next generation of tank destroyers had come along a slightly less stopgap it was still considered front-line equipment until march of 44 when finally the m18 was adopted and that was the impetus to get rid of the m3 as soon as they could by early 43 also they started run out of em 1897 and they developed a new tank destroyer program called the T 73 which is basically the same thing with the Sherman's more modern gun but by then better vehicles were becoming available now it's worth noting that the tank destroyer had the same gun as a tank and this goes back again to the whole tanks are not designed to fight tanks rubbish the if that was the case why would they give the tank is good a gun as a tank destroyer and this basically was the pattern to follow for the for the whole of the war the the tank was always they were always trying to get the same tank short gone into the tank and indeed that's part of the reason why the tank destroyer fell out of favor by the end of the war anywhere was the point anyway the armored force tried out with the m3 say they liked them in the artillery as self-propelled artillery and it was why they were originally sent over there but that's what they use them as and they they really liked the idea of the self Abell guns thought maybe they could use them as assault guns but had no use of them in the anti-tank role they why you've already got a tank which is good enough but because they like the self of artillery concept that's kind of gave the impetus to the m7 how its motor carriage the priest and all the other self repel guns that followed so there you go yeah one of the progenitors of the lot so now they have something in service great they're out the door they're in production let's see can we get something a little bit better and the 57 was brought to their attention that British six pounder and this seemed to be the perfect replacement for both the 75 and the 37 it had a number of various advantage and the one was it's relatively lightweight especially compared to the 75 the rate of fire was definitely higher than the 75 yeah and you also by the way carried a lot more ammunition and ammunition capacity was very important thing for the US military at a time and sort of as a requirement it's not thought about very much but it really was you see in New Yorker it's a lot of discussion can we afford to do this bigger gun at the risk of having smaller ammunition the muzzle velocity was much higher this allowed for a a flatter trajectory more chance of a hit and it also had greater penetration than the 75 and the glass did have a smaller signature the blast from the muzzle wasn't as big fantastic this is great so they started the 57-millimeter projects working our way around top left key 44 this is the t-33 chassis they took the 37 often added the 57 in a nutshell it was too much gun for the chassis and they had no room for the ammo and crew anyway so that died by April of 42 Buick were given the task of coming up with a tracked gun motor carriage initially was going to be the T 42 37 millimeter but that was nixed before it even began because there was a 37 the t49 doe started showing a bit of promise and it basically used the same turret as the m7 light tank and you look at in million your initial reaction is no but you realize it is the same design just welded not not cast and it also had a roof fire was very fast independent suspension 53 miles an hour showed promise we'll come back to it in the meantime I was also figurative that a half track man would actually get to the front of first so another expedient was a t 48 that's one of the bottom center that took the 57 off of the t44 I'm plunked it onto an m3 gun motor carriage at least that was the idea it actually took a bit more tweaking than anticipated but what it was done it worked and was considered superior to the m3 gun motor carriage and the British and Soviets started buying them by the score not the Americans and the reason was they discovered that the 57 wasn't as good as they thought it was and if I will quote from one of the archive documents it also appears from the information that the 57-millimeter APC projectile if and when developed will still be inferior to the 75 millimeter projectile at ranges in excess of 500 yards it believe that most tank destroyer action will be at ranges of over 500 yards decisions made by the sake orders regarding standardization at the 57-millimeter for tank destroyers were based upon the assumption that APC ammunition has been developed in view of the information they're available it is believed that there is nothing to be gained by continuing development of the 57-millimeter gun as a tank destroyer weapon its only advantage over the 75 is in the time of flight of the projectile and that advantage is more than offset by the lack of armor-piercing characteristics at ranges of over 500 yards size around a complication of supply the available 75 millimeter guns may be used pending development of suitable bands for the 3-inch gun and larger guns so again that this would these weren't the only projects that the three-inch we'll get to in a bit but that was already on the way and the issue with the smaller lighter round he said it loses velocity faster so although it may very well have had a higher penetration capability up close at long range not so much the 75 kept the momentum now that's not to say it was in any way a bad gun and it became the standard US Army anti-tank gun and was issued to the anti-tank companies of the infantry units and saw plenty of service again no the US Army actually had anti-tank units not just tank destroyer units there there is that huge distinction there the anti-tank unisom there they were up with the infantry and they were you know this gives some chance of the front line and also they were useful if you're not facing the concentrated assault but just local counter-attacks or whatever absolutely have your anti-tank gun along with you so in the meantime let's try to three-inch let's start at the bottom with the t1 and this dates back to December 1940 CLE track suggested a 75 millimeter carrier on the basis of its tractor used by the Army Air Corps ordinances added what a three-inch gone on it the tractor could do 45 miles an hour and the three-inch was a good gun with a it was going to have a good are kaffir by the time they were through while they ended up with what's the great gun the speed had dropped the 35 miles an hour maximum and dropped rapidly on curves and it had neither to space nor protection for the crew and equipment as well as structural issues with the weight being carried I saw my first cleat rack actually only about two weeks ago and I was astounded as to how small this thing is and I look at this going where and earth did they think they were going to put a 3-inch gun on this suffice to say it took a year and a half in this program it was officially accepted as the m5 for anybody really gave it approval and pretty much as soon as I said we'll call it the m5 and build it this granted the other two vehicles up there at the T 24 top left the T 40 top right these were attempts to make a tank destroyer out of the m3 medium T 24 was a stopgap for the m5 but the t 24 proved to be just bad as impossible the rework was so significant that they renamed it as the t 40 and they they put 50 of them on order until it was discovered that they only had 28 of the m1918 guns available but this was going to be accepted as the m9 tank destroyer branch should not want them for combat thought they might be useful for training but eventually was just too much hassle and they wouldn't be built any faster than the t35 anyway so we go to the t35 and well not much needs to be said about this one you get all sorts of information on the m10 somewhere else but basically you start off with a thinner m4 a whole new bow gun and around turret that's your t 35 a lighter angled hull t35 e1 and after the first couple of pilots they put a hexagonal turret on there to give the the crew more working space this went off to Africa it was gleefully received as a dramatic improvement over the m3 half-track tank destroyer Center were really little bit less gleeful about it however because they still wanted the really rapid mobile thing and this frankly it wasn't very much more mobile than a regular tank so they go back to the search for mobility over the top-right t27 and that was attempt to make a smaller 75 millimeter GMC then just to have the half track and it's basically a Studebaker chassis with a 75 plunked on top it's just too light for the gun top-left t66 now that took the t 1981 armored car chassis added the 75 millimeter turret and this turret was actually identical to that found on the t 67 gun motor carriage when that came around the tracked one in the end the vehicle was found very capable was stopped for two reasons firstly it was deemed unlikely that the 75 would really meet long term tank destroyer branch requirements and the second problem was that the US was mucking around with far too many vehicles at the time and some rationalization was required remember all this R&D cost money and time and man-hours and things that the u.s. didn't think it could really afford so they set up what was called the special vehicle board which is also known as the Palmer board after they Officer Commanding and this board was a death knell for a number of projects that you know they may be good project but something better was out there or a more efficient use was out there in the t66 is one of these things that fell by the wayside bottom Center is a t-55 and it was based off the cook interceptor which is basically a wheeled APC they shoved a 3-inch into it and it's actually is a small vehicle that the the stick to the right is a six foot tall stick so it says not really a very much taller than I am the t-55 II one was a even smaller and meaner version looks more square and angular than this one does but again the program was cancelled for two reasons firstly thank destroy abroad required cross-country mobility at least equal to that of a tank and it was ultimately was a wheeled vehicle and wheeled vehicle suspension technology hadn't gotten to the level that it has today and secondly it economically wasn't all that great anyway so that went away and of course there were also track designs going on the t67 was basically earlier t49 with a 75 and it's worth pointing out that the designations for this vehicle changed not in sequence with the changes to the vehicle because just changed in the equipment doesn't change the designation actually have a go through ordinance committee meetings and they'll do it for you so you will see reference for example to the 76 millimeter gun motor carriage t49 in the archives which effectively is the t 70 is the m18 predecessor around 1940 to late 1942 they decided to move the vehicle to torsion bars 76 millimeter and that will become the t 70 the m8 gun motor carriage was tank destroyers unofficial designation for what was officially known as 78 75 millimeter gun m3 on m5 light tank chassis or so something like that this was an attempt originally to up come the light tank firepower in early 43 but TD branch got a hold of it to see if it could be used as a field expedient tank destroyer until the m18 showed up and they decided that okay yeah there are some increases mobility over the m10 but it's too cramped and sacrifices firepower because again he got the 75 versus the 3-inch and most importantly it didn't seem that by the time they made the required changes that were getting to service any faster than the T 70 would anyway so that fell by the wayside and similarly the t-55 and t-62 other attempts to turn the m3 into tank destroyer suffice to say it was another victim of the polymer board and was being cramped and small anyway I mean look at his specifications in your first questions where the devil do you put all the ammunition now of course things were happening in the real world and this photograph from el guitar it's actually fascinating photographing for think about it el guitar was one of the few times of tank destroyer battalion met a German armored force in the manner in which it was designed to meet them so 57 German vehicles went forward and defending were 31 of the m3 half-tracks 5 of the 37 millimeter dog fargo's and 12 m10s showed up and if you look carefully at this photograph you'll see in the background is an a panzer 4 in the middle are the wrecks of the half-tracks and up front is what's left believe it or not that's a tiger now by the time the battle was over the tiger didn't look like that was subsequently demolished with with charges for some reason I don't know what but these have tracks with the 75 s and a couple of 3-inch guns they stopped this attack that was led by Tigers and this is part of the reason that tigers and Panthers didn't cause massive amounts of panic at home is that we were meeting them and we were killing them yes there are easier ways to do it but but they died the final result the Germans lost 52 with 57 the Americans lost almost all the half-tracks 27 of them and five of the M tens again lots of vehicles were lost but they were cheap compared the cost of a half-track compared to the cost of these honest-to-god tanks like Panzer fours and tigers the economy of force was in the tank destroyers favored it worked just as soon as regina designed to now one of the problems though was that the tank destroyer guys were being a little bit overly aggressive and the aggression actually came from the manual the way the manual is it could be misinterpreted for the troops to be a little bit more aggressive than perhaps they should have been and a later version of the manual innate in 1944 de-emphasized the aggressive verbage so that the tanks would no longer be charged by the tank destroyers as they were however more commonly the issue of tanks versus anti-tanks was settled by the towed guns and as you were probably all very well aware the reports coming in from North Africa particularly from the British was that the towed anti-tank guns were causing havoc with the attacking armoured forces that be baited into the anti-tank gun into the pack front whatever you want to call it and this was proven to be music to McNair's ears because he'd say oh look it is it is now in in evidence that the towed anti-tank gun is the master of the tank so with this desert environment being learned they decided they can convert half of the tank destroyers to toad tank destroyer battalions yay so after went the arrow fifth was the only towed unit to go to Italy and they were miserable they achieved very little they were perpetually mired and eventually they ended up converting to the m18 and they're famous for having the big white numbers on the back corners of the m18 and this lesson with driven home in Normandy as well when you're attacking towed guns just don't work well especially were attacking over bad terrain let alone attacking period so by after Normandy the lesson was driven home we would like to reconvert back to vehicles please that's inert but we're not done no no not not down in there not down in Texas can't pull it so by January 42 there were reports coming in of the flak 18 on a half tract and the question was well if they can use this big anti-aircraft gunner it's a cell propelled anti-tank gun why the heck don't we do the same thing with ours we got a 90 millimeter there 88 scenes you'll work for them and scenes will be effective so the result they built on an m4 and was the t53 it was low and the gun was powerful and you can see the relative height of the vehicles here um or was it the crew configuration look at the top left it's absolutely ridiculous you got two crewmen you know one is underneath the vehicle getting the ammunition one is so functioning to get the ammo from bottom of the vehicle the top of the vehicle by the time you put the gun shields in place it's huge and gun depression was also limited to only negative five which wasn't really deemed great somebody in charge it said well okay we can fix this and then build 500 and if we're building let's make it anti-aircraft capable as well so that developed into the t53 e1 and this had a central mount for the gun it had outriggers system at the bottom center of the picture there tank destroyer branch were not amused they had no interest in a dual purpose weapon system the vehicle still wasn't really any faster than the tank and it wasn't any light or ammo mobile than a tank and the increase in firepower didn't seem to be worth it because the 3-inch gun was killing pretty much anything that I met in practice and when ordnance branched I've seen the minutes of this meeting ordnance branch presented the actually I think copied it on to one of my articles ordnance branch me talks nineteen millimeter I think is the name of the article so they they presented the vehicle to Bruce and he was not happy and he viewed this as another expedient that was being forced upon him taking time taking resources away from the t70 that he wanted that that tank destroyer needed thanks Roy branch so finally that's exactly what he got the ideal tank destroyer small fast and hard-hitting fantastic well these are some of the opinions of the MA team once it went to showed up I think a couple you can read it but just the m10 has been favorably commented upon because of its armor thickness what at one problem which is probably not considered but it was an issue is that the thing looked like German vehicle because I had big independent road wheels long gone with a muzzle brake so there was actually some concern is there a lot of friendly fire but other opinions you know an m10 will not save this crew from all shots but will give them a better than even chance we were not winning the ass man to sacrifice themselves use uselessly but that is what a t70 is compared to other weapons systems available and one tank destroyer battalion the 8th 35th flat refused to convert from the m10 to the m18 we're going to come back to it of a thing a little bit later on so in the meantime a new role emerged and the go back to my notes page Lieutenant Colonel Barney was an artilleryman he was in the 776 tank destroyer battalion and he decided well why don't we see if we can fire these guns in the indirect role and indeed most guns most rounds fired by the tank destroyer battalion as they were indirect they had small ranch with a long range and they complemented the artillery units fairly well if you if you recall from operation think tank Harry idea was saying that they found that the 3 these 3-inch shell had almost the same blast effect as 105 but did not creator the roads that they plan on using of course there was a downside and that is increased barrel where and on the vehicles but if you're going to use it now at this point of course 76-millimeter has now entered service and tank destroyer branch now as two types of round that it needs to that need to supply the 76 and the 3-inch so the thinking was well can we make a lighter vehicle than the m10 or lease on the with ammunition commonality and the t-72 is one up at the top left corner which ya tweaked I think was a t20 one-third you thin it out you stick to 76 millimeter on that and then he put it on top of the m10 chassis but in the end it was observed that well the m18 was entering production to replace the expedient the stopgap m10 anyways why bother and besides if we really have to use an m10 chassis just stick the m18 turret on the vehicle instead maybe grant there so bottom right corner is a picture of the m10 with the m18 turret no gun I don't believe in that was ever fitted but what if we need a bigger gun anyway and this was a result of ordnance branch tinkering starting a late 42 now you remember what I said about barns in the previous video is that he knew better than the ground troops what they needed and sometimes he was flat wrong but on occasion he had a point so he starts playing around with the 90 millimeter tank destroyer branch were not impressed the 3-inch 76 is perfectly fine thank you very much and the m10 chassis is too heavy and slow anyway because hey we got the m18 now this is what we want similarly army ground forces didn't want it because why we funding another vehicle that is just going to be ordered and canceled like half the other tank destroyers that we for we've approved if nobody wants it I eat thank to Tory branch we ain't gonna build it but Barnes persisted the upshot of it was by September 43 the viewpoint had changed and there was more of a push to get the t71 which became the m36 built even at the cost of m10s but there is still no great demand for the type from Europe then the vehicle hadn't even been tested yet eventually Thank You story branches started okay maybe this thing does have a purpose but for the secondary role of concrete bunker busting now it is being remembered that by this point in the war the the reality on the ground had been realized that tank destroyers are actually being used for roles not just what tank destroyer doctrine said scum basically says again tukoji ID our local commanders weren't that stupid they weren't going to leave things with personnel and guns and tracks sitting in the back just in case the opposition did something which becomes a problem later on but that was the thinking so secondary roles became officially authorized for the for the tanked stories to include as assaults and fortifications and the 90 millimeter was considered to be rather useful at this together with a reasonable armor but there was still no requests for the 90 millimeter from Europe until July of 1944 at which point it was will take every 90 millimeter gun we can get please now you can make the you can have a huge argument over the battle need philosophy but the bottom line was that was there as a bit of a sideline this is the T 86 T 86 3087 can remember which this is basically an amphibious version of an M 18 and instead of just having the pontoons the swimming device is attached around it this was designed from the ground up the whole is a watertight hole with shafts for propellers and so on and so forth it was categorized as an amphibious motor carriage as opposed to the GMC of the m18 but I just put it there for a dove out of curiosity and also had a stabilizer eventually fitted so what actually happened with the tank destroyers well as I said the locals the commanders were not stupid enough to leave these things sitting around they were unused weapons could have any purpose the problem was that after they had started distributing the tank destroyers here there and everywhere when the Germans did attack they did no longer had the constituted tank destroyer battalion tanks for a company to go deal with the problem they they had they would then have to go to all the different sub units as a hey do you mind awfully can we get our guns back please so in the end result the tank destroyer doctrine was almost never used again because the these environment was such and it was very conducive for it there I think twice once and once in now Africa once in Europe that did a tank destroyer unit per se actually get together so after the war what happened the a series of surveys were requested and these are you know responses to the surveys of the opinion of do we want to have a separate armored force do one have separate tank destroyer force and so on and look at the signatures they got Bradley Hodges lightning Joe callings met Ridgeway Gilliam was of course the head of armored force and after after Devers went to Europe and if you look at the actual text of it we bring this up a little bit in size hopefully you can read it Bradley's opinion no advantages placing tank destroyer weapons in a separate branch with powerful guns now being placed in tanks the mission the president performed by self-propelled high-velocity artillery you know it's relevant Hodges tank the story should not be a separate branch they should be part of the arm employing them through a if he had a slightly different idea he just wanted to abandon the branch with no problem with the equipment he didn't approve of it for a coordinating function Gilliam um tank DD have been tackling knowledge I'm sure you can be Evans doridori's one very good when I can't remember who actually wrote it Collins is very simple the best tank destroyer is another tank which way at the same way the tank can do everything the tank destroyer can do and more if the infantry needs more eighteen weapons just include them a new organic structure of the tank include into the organic structure tanks said there's actually about forty of these things in your archives and you can imagine what the general was always let's get rid of tank destroyers is a separate branch so did they work though and this is for the eight twenty thirty D battalion this is not a typical score sheet I should add and actuality the score sheets tended to be they were still don't get mode they were still in the favor of the tank destroyer units and I actually had a couple of other typical ones written down summarized into a loss a piece of paper and it's not on my notes here but look at the couple of things point that come tonight come to know immediately firstly unified four thousand rounds direct fire and thirty three thousand indirect now that actually is pretty typical ratio vehicles destroyed a hundred and eleven including they say eighteen mark sixes I'm not sure where guess I probably look it up so they lost 53 people to get 111 vehicle 111 tanks plus 13 Iraq are 13 SPG's which basically means sturmgeschütz and so on and so forth to do all this they lost five m10s the three inch guns the 18 of them that were lost that was at more time they were part of that group that was sent to stem the German attack and Andy let me look at it that's that's a pretty good ratio now again that is one of the that is not a typical that is at the high end but even at the low end they were giving better than they got so in as much as a tank destroyer battalion was or tank destroyers were effective on a per vehicle basis shall we say that they weren't fine and the other thing to take away is that even today we still have tank destroyers we just don't call them tank destroyers we are now called the mobile mobile anti-tank system self-propelled anti-tank systems and they could be service vehicles such as Toro shown there there are also tracked ones this brought the Chinese type 89 just got removed from service replaced by another wheeled gun TD the missile systems they'll have 80 the m9 and one ITV that those are all effectively tank destroyers lightly armed armored systems with a gun or weapon system capable and after monster kicking air tanks even even the the attack helicopter you see there the 864 battalions that is as close to the tank story concept for the cold war as you were ever going to get you were going to get a battalion these things that were highly mobile could swarm to the enemy armored assault and destroy outside for the fact that this is a rotary wing aircraft which doesn't have the sustainable this is the persistence of a tank destroyer unit I to actually sitting in place the concept though is I'd absolutely identical go somewhere fast meet the opposition destroy them and then go somewhere else really fast and it was always a supplementary role so that is us basically the end of it though so the last slide was what are your questions obviously in a webcast that isn't going to be a something we can do directly however I do respond to comments on YouTube so feel free to throw in a couple questions in there and I will get back to them as best I can so thus ends the lesson and I guess we'll see if I can do another one I guess the question is what on earth do I know a lot about that I have resources to learn about that hasn't already been covered so well I think about that I figure I got a couple of months for the next one so I hope you found that someone formative it wasn't a total waste of your hour and five minutes and take care

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 505,161

Rating: 4.8857374 out of 5

Keywords: Tank Destroyer History, Tank Destroyer Doctrine

Id: 7ho8TU_JpoI

Length: 65min 30sec (3930 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/outamyhead]

I do like listening to the Chieftain's history lessons.

[u/Emro2k]

AT rock bundle, £99 on EU

[u/IndirectCell]

When will they showoff the tractors? :O