Customer Reviews

Faint Praise: American Tanks and Tank Destroyers During World War II

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Since the US was the world's largest producer of cars and trucks, and during the Second World War also made excellent aircraft, it has never been clear to me why the Sherman Tank, the main battle tank for the US during the Second World War, was so inferior to the German Panthers and Tiger IIs. The author explains that the US military learned the wrong lessons from the Battle of France; they concluded that tank vs. tank battles were rare, and that tanks were mainly to be used against infantry and other soft targets. The Sherman was designed to be, at least for a tank, mechanically reliable, light enough to cross most bridges designed for car and truck traffic, and cheap. Huge numbers of them were manufactured. To deal with enemy tanks, tank destroyers, which were antitank guns mounted on a tank-like chassis, but lacking much armor, were developed. The shortcomings of this approach was not made clear until 1944, when the US for the first time came up against large number of first rate German tanks. American tank crews soon found that they could only destroy German tanks by getting very close; before they could do this, the German tank, with a larger gun and heavier armor, would often destroy the American tank. A good fictional discussion of the problem can be found in the novel "761," which is about an African-American tank group during the war. This book is excellent for anyone interested in armored combat during the Second World War.

This book is the best one I have read describing the root causes of our tank failures in the last year of World War II. It also discuses the options that the US had to provide tanks with the 90 MM gun. If the US had been able to provide large numbers of tanks with 90 MM guns by late summer of 1944 it would have considerably reduced American tank losses and increased the confidence level tankers had in their vehicles.
The author goes on to say that while the 90 MM gun was an improvement, it did not initially have ammunition that worked effectively against the highly sloped armor of the Panther tank. New ammunition specifically designed to penetrate the Panthers sloping armor was made avilable in March 1945 in the form of the T33 shot. Considering that captured Panthers were available for firing tests in the fall of 1943, this ammunition should have been available much earlier.
A few basics that the author missed. The 90 MM M3 gun used on US tanks and tank destroyers in WW II was designed for a maximum powder pressure of only 38,000 psi. Other contemporary guns were designed with powder pressures of 47,000 psi such as the British 17 pounder antitank gun introduced in 1942. The British mounted the 17 pounder on 700 American supplied Shermans. If the 90 MM gun had been designed with a powder pressure of 47,000 psi, muzzle velocity could have been increased by 200 feet per second. This change was made shortly after the war ended.
In addition, the army immediately started a program to provide a more powerful engine for the under powered M26. This was an even greater necessity for the much heavier so called Super Pershing. The replacement engine was the 1790 cid, 810 horsepower Continental V12 which replaced the 1100 cubic inch, 500 horsepower Ford V8. Development and tooling times for new engines was at least as great as that of new guns and ammunition and therefore also should have been started earlier. There were several V12's that could have been used, the Chrysler 1568 cid 650 HP, the Ford 1649 cid 770 HP or the Allison 1710 cid 870 HP but none of them were put into production.
If a person has a strong interest in this topic I would strongly recommend the books by R. P. Hunnicutt on the Sherman, Pershing and Patton and Heavy series tanks.