Admittedly longer after the civil war but related to the idea of names from leaders in that period. When the M8 Automatic Gun System was type classified in 1995 it was named the Buford. I was not aware, at the time, of any concern about naming it after a Union general. It’s role was even to be part of the 82nd Airborne stationed at a fort named after a Confederate General, Benning. The only reaction I remember was Buford probably deserved a vehicle named after him. I never heard a peep about the name for the system it was intended to replace either, the Sheridan. Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley campaign could have made him pretty divisive in the South.
Well I was a tanker and it’s not uncommon to go further and anthropomorphize our tanks including giving them personalized names*. All those blows to the head inside the turret may warp us. Still, tankers tend to be in the single digits for percent of total personnel so your numbers still work.
The Wikipedia M10article states “The M10 is often referred to by the nickname “Wolverine”, but the origin of this nickname is unknown. It is possibly a postwar invention.” For British use “A nickname used within the Department of Tank Design for both the 3-inch and 17-pounder versions was Achilles; the name was not used by troops during the war.” The Achillesarticle states “The name “Achilles” was officially a designation applied to both the 3” gun and 17 pounder versions (as Achilles I/II and Achilles Ic/IIc respectively) but was little used during the Second World War; at the time, the vehicle was called 17pdr M10, or 17pdr SP M10, or even occasionally, “Firefly”. It has since become identified almost exclusively with the 17 pounder version."
I have seen copies of a couple of wartime documents in which the Achilles name was used, but it was rare, even for the 17pdr version. British armoured vehicles of WW2 suffered from multiple naming systems* in use in parallel for most of the war, and which designation was used seems to have depended on the preference of the person filling out the war diary, strength return, or other document.
Steve Zaloga may very well be right about the origin of the Wolverine name. My source was a decades-old article which referred to a post-war Canadian Defence document referencing the original wartime proposal. A few years ago I tried to track down any documents in the Department of National Defence archives referencing proposals for Canadian M10 production, but without success. As the name fits into the Canadian wartime system of using Canadian wild animal names, it seemed possible that it may have originated in Canada and then been adopted by Chrysler, or it may be solely a Chrysler invention with no Canadian link at all.
*For example the Crusader tank of North African fame was also known as the Tank, Cruiser, Mk VI and the A15.
US Army units were deliberately composed of men from all across the US (so that a unit being wiped out wouldn’t unduly affect one locale), so I call Urban Legend on this one.
Depends on the time and place the unit was formed, really. A regiment that existed pre-mobilization draft (Pre-1940) and had not yet needed many replacements or augments could still have a largely geographic recruiting core. (But yeah, most likely just a cool story)
You have “everything” in quotes; I don’t think it’s a figurative notion. A guy I grew up with got some kind of commendation medal during the invasion of Iraq as a USMC forward air observer (not sure what the actual title is, but he’s a pilot who was in the weeds with the infantry), for coming up with the idea of refueling the Marine attack helicopters with the tank and truck fuel up with the troops, rather than having them fly all the way back to their helicopter bases. It meant that the helicopters could stay on station for support calls something like 40% longer.
If “everything” didn’t run on JP-8, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with that idea.
That wasn’t strictly true in WWII. The ‘mid numbered’* Army infantry divisions were activated National Guard divisions and had state or regional identities at least originally. The 30th Infantry Division was composed of National Guard units from the Carolina’s, Georgia and Tennessee.
The regional flavor was diluted in most of those units somewhat while they were training, especially for the many US Army divisions which didn’t enter combat until 1944 (the 30th for example entered combat on D+4 in Normandy). Then replacements of combat casualties further diluted them because there wasn’t from replacements once they entered combat, because the replacements were from all over (the 30th for example cumulatively suffered almost 17,000 casualties included wounded who returned to duty, more than 100% of a divisions’ official strength).
However here we were originally talking about tanks, which were not organic equipment to infantry divisions. The armored divisions and independent tank battalions, which became de facto but not officially organic permanent attachments to infantry divisions, were raised nationally.
Anyway the M3 Medium Tank, aka Grant/Lee by the British but almost never called that by the US armored units, was not used very much by the US Army in combat. The main use was in the 13th Armored Regiment of the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia, though also by the 193rd Tank Battalion attached to the 27th Infantry Division in the invasion of the Gilberts in late 1943 in the Pacific. All of those tanks were ‘Lee’ tanks in British parlance, with the standard US turret not the enlarged one specially made for the British, ie ‘Grant’ tanks. M3 Mediums were more widely used for training though.
*the block of numbers from 26 to around 45 in WWII though not all numbers were used.
Actually if you look you’ll see I had it in emphasis asterisks everything. The kind of case you mention is a reason it’s advantageous for lots of different equipment to be able to use the same fuel. But the reason you want everything to use it is so you can do away with any logistical supply line at all for any other kind of fuel. As long as even motorcycles or small piston engine drones burn gas, there has to be a separate supply line for gasoline, however small.
In WWII the US Army didn’t want to have a separate supply line for diesel fuel, since it wasn’t practical to build a vast fleet or diesel trucks rather than the existing vast production of gasoline trucks, and trucks vastly outnumbered tanks. But of course the Soviets got by with diesel tanks (their own, and M4A2’s accounted for virtually all their lend lease M4’s* also) and gasoline trucks, and the British had a significant number of M4A2’s also alongside other gasoline tanks and trucks.
*which they also didn’t call ‘Sherman’ but ‘Emcha’, substituting the letter “ч”, cha for “4” in M4.
The kind of case you mention is a reason it’s advantageous for lots of different equipment to be able to use the same fuel. But the reason you want everything to use it is so you can do away with any logistical supply line at all for any other kind of fuel. As long as even motorcycles or small piston engine drones burn gas, there has to be a separate supply line for gasoline, however small.