Unfortunately, the trump factor of air power just wasn’t true in Western Europe except for odd occasions (the only one that springs to mind is the bombing at Mortain in 1944). The rest of the time, communications between Allied ground and air forces just weren’t up to rapid response times, so you’d get examples like Wittman’s Tiger unit decimating a British column, or entire brigades held up by a few assault guns and concealed 88mm anti-tank guns. 2nd SS Panzer Division made it from the south of France to Normandy with barely a scratch thanks to the inability of Allied air forces to really hit it hard.
To add to what detop said about the M26 Pershing: Belton Cooper wrote an excellent book about his experiences as a maintenance officer with the 3rd Armored Division in NW Europe in 1944-5, “Deathtraps, The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II”.
Synopsis here: http://www.presidiopress.com/catalog/wwII/DeathTraps.htm
He mentions a demonstration to top brass of the M26 early in 1944, where Patton dismissed the need for the M26 over the M4 Sherman. Although Cooper’s language is very restrained, he makes it pretty clear that he believes Patton was responsible for vetoing the early introduction of the M26, and that this tank could have been made available in large numbers in time for D-Day.
Patton liked the Sherman for its mobility. The M26 had similar mobility problems to the Tiger and would not have fit in well with Patton’s tactics. Rommel and Guderian are always talked about as the kings of maneuver but both thought Patton to be their equal. Patton thought himself to be their superior. Just as the Tiger failed as defensive weapon, the Pershing would have failed as an offensive weapon in a war of maneuver, at least in patton’s opinion. He was a big fan of the Sherman’s mobility and history bears him out that it did work. Only one tank in history has proven to be reliable, fast, well armored, and equipped with a weapon superior to its rivals’ and it took 1970’s technology to combine all these features in one vehicle.
Woah. The Sherman was quite a good design, but inadequate for tank-tank combat. All models were woefully undergunned until the (British) Sherman Firefly and the (US) M4A3E8 (IIRC), which were produced far too late to prevent the massive tank losses of 1944. It may have been a great design for mobile warfare, but that’s not much use in the bocage of Normandy or German forests. Plus, the Sherman’s ability to ‘brew up’ easily made it vastly unpopular with the Russians who used it, and the size made it a nice fat target.
I don’t want to disparage those who fought in them, and I’m not saying it was a bad design at all – but it never really got the chance to be used the way it was intended. I’d have to say that the T-34/85 was by far the best Allied tank, and while the Sherman was the best the Western Allies managed, I think the difference in quality is sizable.
Why didn’t the allies make a decent tank in WWII?
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Because they didn’t define what a “decent tank” was in time to get it into production in quantity. Remember that the Germans defined the Blitzkreig, and thus the pattern of offensive tank use for the beginning of the war. I believe the US had the idea of “cavalry tanks” and “infantry tanks” designed to different concepts (and no tank corps per se until 1940!), but not tank-for-tank-warfare until the Sherman was built off of M3 Lee/Grant chassis.
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Because they chose not to make such a tank. The thought pattern was that existing tanks (once the M4 Sherman was in production) were “good enough” --although later German improvements seem to have proved them somewhat wrong-- and that to ramp up production for a different model would have resulted in an overall tank shortage for projected needs. The thought seems to have been that it was better to have enough mediocre vehicles instead of not enough of the good ones. As long as conscription and press censorship were in effect, this seems to have been workable.
Some points.
As someone has already alluded to, shipping was a concern. The US could simply ship more light tanks than heavy tanks.
By ‘43 when the Shermans’ problems were being discovered we had already tooled the factories to make all the other equipment to meet the levels defined by Shermans. Landing craft were being built to carry a tank of the Shermans’ size and weight. Our temporary bridges were also matched to Shermans. The list goes on and on. So not only would we have to retool factories to make different tanks. We would also have to retool to make all of the support equipment. So the US decided to refine the Sherman rather than make a new system.
And in actuality an end of the war Sherman (one built in '45 with all the advances including the better fuel storage, and 76mm cannon) was a good opponent against the tanks they were likely to face. The Shermans weren’t fighting Tigers, King Tigers or Panzer Vs on a daily basis. They were almost always facing smaller lighter earlier models. And they generaly outnumbered them 10 to 1.
Could the US, should the US have built a better tank? Aboslutely. But there were valid reasons why they didn’t. It wasn’t seen as being a vital problem. Retooling would reduce production not only of tanks but of a lot of other equipment the tanks would depend on. And then we would have ended up with much fewer tanks on the battlefield as the ports in France could only handle so much tonnage a day.
Despite getting off to such a horrible start with the Matildas and Cruisers, the British eventually got quite good at tank design. The Americans suffered for not having the specialized tanks (“Funnies”) like the mine-clearing tanks, hedge-cutting tanks, and flame-throwing tanks (the last for some reason was used by the Marines in the Pacific, but not the U.S. Army in Europe). I have heard it claimed that Omaha Beach would have been much less bloody if the Americans had had some Funnies to support them, although I think this is questionable because, while the Funnies would indeed have been life-savers if they could have reached the beach, they might very well have been swamped in the high seas just as the Shermans were.
The British shot themselves in the foot at the beginning of the war with Not Invented Here syndrome; they had excellent tank designers who were deliberately suppressed by hard-core traditionalists. Percy Hobart, for instance, was relegated to the Home Guard!
sewalk: “Patton thought himself to be their superior.” LOL - GSP may have had his moments of self-effacement, but I doubt thought himself inferior to anyone :D.
Unfortunately, a general’s notion of a good tank (easily transportable, mobile) is quite different from a tanker’s notion (big gun, big engine, thick THICK armour).
From a pseudo-Darwinian viewpoint (oh, I know evolution is not a perfect analogy here ;)) better designs in smaller numbers could be, as noted, be swamped by poorer designs in larger numbers (“The more you use, the less you lose” - Field Marshal Slim). Is a hyena a “better” predator than a lion? Depends on what criteria you’re using. A lion would certainly win a one-on-one fight, but a pack of hyenas can drive a solitary lion from its prey.
All the major WW2 participants had produced, by war’s end, an effective battle tank. And each was widely used in the post-war period (JS-3 for the Soviets, Centurion for the British [JS-3 and Centurion didn’t see combat, but were on their way to the front when the war ended], M26 for the US, even the Panther was used post-war [by the Czechs & the French, IIRC], despite its “political incorrectness”).
Danimal - absolutely right, Hobart, JFC Fuller et al were treated like pariahs by those with less “progressive” views. Unfortunately, people like Guderian did listen to them!
Volume, baby, volume.
Although, I always wondered why volume worked for tanks, but not for planes like the jap zero…well, maybe it did for a while.
My perception is that when people brag about the Zero, I call it junk compared to well armored, strong engined P38s and Corsairs.
But when people make the ‘German tank is better arguement’, I revert to the need to produce and move many tanks to many areas.
I am arguing from both sides of the fence.
Are we saying that if the Japs could have built huger numbers of Zeros that they might have maintained control of the sky?
Seems to me that quality/power/armor has some merits given the air superiority of the US planes. So doesn’t this hurt the US arguement that numbers were more imnportant that German tank toughness?
Tanks and planes are different. Operator skill makes a much bigger difference in air battles than in tank battles. Given equality in equipment, the best tank crew in the world is going to die if they go into battle at a 5:1 disadvantage. The same cannot be said for aircraft engagements. The nature of the engagements also contributes. Given equal equipment, a pilot can often escape an attack and live to fight another day. Tanks have much less chance of withdrawl given the same sircumstances.
Read Panzer Commander by Hans von Luck. I’ve read several other biographies on both sides. I know that for sure by the Ardennes offensive German tanks were only moving on overcast days or by night.
The 2nd SS Panzer Division made it from the South of France to Normandy because there weren’t a lot of Allied aircraft flying around in the middle of France, something to do with a lack of Allied air bases there.
The lack of communications hindering true close air support remains correct, mind. The Germans’ choosing to travel at night during the Ardennes offensive sounds to me like common sense; why risk an air attack, regardless of how effective they are? And 2nd SS reached a lot further north without being hit hard than the middle of France.
I’m not arguing that air power is ineffective, but it was just not refined enough during the big tank battles of Normandy to justify a lack of development in effective tanks, or at least in effective tank gun design (which, IMHO, was the single greatest weakness of Allied tank design – a powerful gun would have left the Allies with some of the best tanks around).
Agreed.
To get back to the OP, the Germans were in a lot more tank battles than the US, and that gave them the experience to build better tanks. Kind of answering the question backwards.
According to a show I saw on the History Channel, German tanks were at a strong disadvantage when fighting in the woods, because of their lower maneuverability and longer barrels compared to the American tanks. The long guns got caught against trees more easily. Of course, woods aren’t exactly great terrain for a tank battle to start with…
Despite the M4 Sherman’s well documented failings, it was an admirable piece of work. German tankers, while contemptuous of it’s fighting characteristics (they called them “Tommy Cookers”, due to it’s tendancy to “brew-up”. Americans called them “Ronsons” because “It lights every time”), they greatly envied it’s ease of maintenance, reliablility, and durability. German all-metal tracks had to be replaced roughly every three hundred miles, while a Sherman could go a thousand or more on it’s rubber cushioned tracks. Likewise, the Germans feared the sheer numbers of tanks they’d have to face. It didn’t matter how many M4’s burned under their guns, there were always more looking to out-flank and kill the German tank from behind.
In the bocage and heavy woods, the Sherman’s short 75mm main gun actually proved an advantage, as the gun could traverse to bear on targets that the German long-barrelled high velocity/high pressure 75s and 88s couldn’t engage due to interfering trees and hedgerows. There are documented cases of Geman tanks being outflanked and defeated by single Sherman tanks that were manuevering within 100 yards of their victim, simply because the long-barrelled weapon wouldn’t clear. Hell, during the fighting around St. Vith in the Battle of the Bulge, a Greyhound scout car armed with a 20mm gun killed a Tiger I because the Tiger couldn’t bring it’s main gun to bear while the Greyhound ran up behind it and shot it’s engine all to hell (Clark of St. Vith). Speaking of Bruce Clark, there’s a guy who put the Sherman to it’s best use. Fighting as part ot the 4th Armored Division, under Patton, he out-blitzkrieged the Germans, using the Shermans high speed and reliablilty to create massive penetrations into the German rear areas, often finding himself 20 or more miles in enemy’s rear.
While it would’ve been nice to have a better tank, the Sherman and it’s contemporaries got the job done.
Where the hell is ExTank?
I don’t think the Japanese ever had a major numerical advantage.
As sewalk has pointed out, individual skill means more in air combat.
The Japanese started out fine against a surprised and shocked enemy, but Japanese pilot skill degraded rapidly as the war went on. Pilots were getting killed and there wasn’t nearly the sort of replacement system like the Allies had.
Furthermore, while the finer Japanese pilots were individually terrific fliers, the Americans they faced were much more advanced in terms of team combat. The Japanese pilot early on was s samurai warrior best suited for one-on-one duels; American pilots, by comparison, were religious adherents of fighting as a team. The results were predictable; you will get screwed pretty bad if you don’t fight as a team even if numbers are equal. Combining that with the poor quality of pilots Japan produced later in the war, I find it unlikely that more Zeroes would have helped very much. And you’re right; they WERE inferior to later planes like the Hellcat. Aerial combat in the second half of the war was a slaughter; you don’t often hear of battles with names like “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”
That doesn’t really apply to the Germans; their tankers, equipment and tactics were as good as anyone’s. More tanks (Assuming more fuel and ammo to use them) would have made a difference.
But when people make the ‘German tank is better arguement’, I revert to the need to produce and move many tanks to many areas.
I am arguing from both sides of the fence.
Are we saying that if the Japs could have built huger numbers of Zeros that they might have maintained control of the sky?
Seems to me that quality/power/armor has some merits given the air superiority of the US planes. So doesn’t this hurt the US arguement that numbers were more imnportant that German tank toughness? **
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That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day!
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I’m pretty much out of my depth on most of this discussion, but I can respond to someone’s question about why American tanks used gasoline engines; it was because the Navy had priority on diesel fuel for its ships. The Marines did use some diesel Stuarts in the Pacific, but of course they could use the navy’s diesel stores.
Thanks Rocketeer. I also assume that 1940’s diesels were hard to start in winter, and having a single fuel type had to have helped with logistics.
I’m also way out of my league on this thread, much more so than you, I’m sure.