What would have happened if Patton had been turned loose?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I think that if Patton had said this, his *troops * would have replied “Fuck this, we wanna go home.”

I think a key lessor of WW2 is that the U.S. government couldn’t just decide to declare war on someone for no obvious reason. I mean, it took Pearl Harbor for the country to enter WW2, didn’t it? Without a blatant Soviet provocation, there’s no way the American public or the American military would have consented to another war.

Plus, don’t underestimate the importance of “honor” in 1940’s America. Pearl Harbor enraged people as much as it did not because it was such a devastating strike, but because it was a sneak attack from a country not at war with the U.S. 1945 America still thought of the Soviets as their allies, and you don’t stab an ally in the back.

22

I’m not going to disagree with the view that taking on Russia would have ended in tears, however the issue about tanks is not as clear cuts as it appears.

By this stage of the war, the Russians had decided not to re-equip their tank units with better designs - production was what it was all about - and to them it did not make sense to divert resources into stronger tanks.

Russian tanks were becomong outdated, the Panther had reliability problems but was better in battle than anything the Russians had, there were too few of them.

The King Tiger again was too few and not reliable, but was more than a match, and the Elefant was not mobile enough, however it too was more than a match for Russian tanks.

Thats the German tanks, but in the meantime, the allies had developed the Comet and Firefly, and were literally only months away from putting the Centurian into service when the war ended.

The firefly was able to take on the German tanks, and would certainly have been capable of dealing with all but the Russian IS2.
The Comet was very closely related to the Centurian, so close that you could consider them simply differant models of the same thing.

The Centurion went on to dominate tank battles right through to the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973 - albeit with upgrades to the gun and fire control.

In other words this tank was probably the most effective tank for around 20 years, and that includes dealing with all the cold war Russian tanks.

Not enough of these available?, well you have to consider that in 1945 an order for 800 of them was placed, and this was for the modified up-armoured MkII version. The MarkIII followed not long after with its stabilised and significantly more powerful gun.

This is all by way of saying that Russian tanks by 1945 were not all that, they would have been seriously outgunned and outclassed, and nothing that Russia produced in the decade after the war would have been capable of challenging that.

When you start to look at air power, the differance is just as big, by than the Allies were bringing jets into service, the Russians did not have a heavy bomber capable of taking the war to the Axis, and their fighters were heavily outclassed by both British, but especially US aircraft.

Throw in a few nukes, takes away the previous material support of Russia by the US and things stack up more closely than it might first appear.

Lots more blood, on both sides, mostly Russian, but still the logistics would have eventually worked in their favour.

23

^
The bit about tanks is completely untrue. The Russians hads the IS-22, a tank which was the superior of all German tanks except the King Tiger.

24

I take it you mean the IS-2, with its 122mm main gun.

It had its disadavantages which allowed the Axis to take advantage, especially the low firing rate.

True the IS-2 had a larger gun, but to say that it was superior in all respects to the Tiger I is misleading.

It certainly wasn’t a massive leap in performance differance, the Panther certainly matched it in battle, except of course in terms of reliability.

A big gun does not necassarily mean great penetrating power, or great range, the Tigers could penetrate the IS2 armour at greater ranges due to higher muzzle velocity, and they had a firing rate that was at least twice as fast.

The Axis consistantly took out Russian tanks at a rate of 6 to 1, but it was never enough, rates of production, reliability and mobility along with supply and support are just as important, and on those things the T34 wins out, but in terms of sheer fighting capacity, the destruction rates speak for themselves.

The Axis lost much of its heavy tank capacity for lack of fuel, parts and breakdowns than by losses in direct action.