WW II Armor ????

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

WRONG, again, PS, most US crews were NOT scraped off the inside....US tank crews on AVERAGE suffered ONE KIA per knocked out tank....the four REMAINING crewmen with ONE replacement, usually put in to start as a BOG, would return to battle TODAY in an M4 repaired YESTERDAY. I BELIEVE that was one of the LOWEST per tank lost casualty rate of the war for any combatant,,,,ANOTHER "myth..." SORRY to shake your core beliefs!

That wasn't my point, Polish, and it is irrelevant whether it was one man killed or a whole crew. Can you imagine the psychological toll exacted from those crews after loosing a crewman (or crewmen) to German fire, then returning to the fray only 24 hours later? The point, however, is that crewmen were lost--unnecessarily lost--because the M4 was insufficiently armored to resist the high-velocity German cannon fire, or the Panzerfust, for that matter. Those tanks could have been better built and they should have been.

Granted, the M4 had its advantages, particularly its ease of repair and its greater speed. Hell, Polish, there are some cases where a bow and arrow has an advantage over a .30 MG, but, once again, that is not the point. My basic point is that we COULD have done much better, but chose not to. We had prototype tanks that were at least as good as the German armor, but we didn't built them in quantity, insisting instead that quantity will overcome quality. That turned out to be true, of course, in the long haul, but I still say the cost was much too high for the return, especially when building a more effective tank was essentially only a matter of factory retooling, something we could have done quite easily. We built something like 50,000 Shermans during the war, while the Germans only built around 1300 Tigers, and even fewer Tiger IIs and Panthers, overall around a 40:1 ratio. Quantity does indeed have a quality all its own, assuming you don't count the cost in lives.

[southernshooter]

Don't make em like they used to

[polishshooter]

I beg to differ, PS (OK, I don't have to BEG, really... )

But exactly WHAT "other and better" designs are you talking about?

The M26 was rushed into production as FAST as it could have been, and those that were rushed into action before Remagen were the ONLY ones available, there was NO effort to delay them or stop them!

There were NO other viable US medium designs! We DID design a "heavy" concurrently to the M4, a really ugly slow and weak one, that the first batch before we canned it we offered to the Russians and they said "No thanks!"

Remember, the BIGGEST problem our heavy industry had was casting a turret ring and turret that could handle even a 75mm gun! THAT was the main reason for the sponson mounted 75 in the M3 Grant and Lee.

So you think we SHOULD have made the same mistakes the Germans and British did and retool every six months, and NEVER get the bugs worked out of a new design, much LESS turn out any significant numbers, all to pursue a PERFECT tank? Since when was concentrating on an easily produced, simple design, that COULD be produced by the tens of thousands, that just incidentlaly, DID THE JOB, and WELL, a BAD thing for a country in total war?

Yes, I guess we if we had bacon we could have had bacon and eggs if we had some eggs!

Much LESS the fact that we had to have tens of thousands of them NOW, in MANY different theaters 3000 to 9000 miles away from where they were produced!

It was "dance with the girl you GOT," "run whatcha brung," "The 'Perfect' is the ENEMY of the 'Good,'"or as Patton said, "Do the maximum damage to the enemy WITH THE WEAPONS AT HAND in the shortest period of time..." And again, I'm sorry, the M4 was a SUCCESS at that....what else can be said.?

I respectively disagree, we would NOT have been able to build a "better" tank in time to fight with NOW. And like many "modern" weapons "systems", the M4 turned out to be a WONDERFUL bed for "upgrades..."

Granted the M4 and M4a1 as turned out in 1942 was NOT a "great" tank, with a gun based on the 1917 75mm howitzer (which was itself a direct copy of the French 1897 howitzer!)(and the EQUAL of the Russian 76mm of the T-34!), and such limited armor. (AND the very first 300 of them just happened to kick Rommel's ass AND save Montgomery's at El Alamein!)

BUT except for the "early" M4s and M4a1s THAT WERE STILL IN ACTIVE SERVICE (tell me how many GERMAN tanks produced in 1942 were still RUNNING in 45, as TANKS? I have a picture in a book of a "Headquarters Co." M4 with the M3 style suspension (ealiest type!) parked in GERMANY in 1945! STILL in service!) the M4s that were actually facing German armor in Europe were in effedt TOTALLY NEW tanks! Better armor, better sloped armor, wet storage of ammo, better sights, more powerful 75mm, and later with the 76mm and 105mm howitzer, faster, wider tracks...


The M4 design did NOT remain static! EACH run was different and BETTER.

No PS, you are making a BIG mistake underestimating the M4.

You HAVE to remember the "Germanophiles" immmediately after the war who worshipped anything the Germans made or did as "Superior," coupled with US Army Generals trying to UNDERCUT our own tanks to get beigger and better ones to face the percieved new superiority of the Soviets, our new enemy, who bought into the "myth" that it was juyst NUMBERS and not QUALITY that beat the Germans...


It WASN'T, (it HELPED, but it was NOT just the NUMBERS.) It was the PERFECT tank for the PERFECT Combined arms Armored Doctrine, AT THAT TIME...


(Convinced YET? )

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

The M26 was rushed into production as FAST as it could have been, and those that were rushed into action before Remagen were the ONLY ones available, there was NO effort to delay them or stop them!

Polish, did you forget to refill your prescription for lithium chloride perhaps? You seem to be having delusions again? Just kidding, just kidding!

No, I believe you will find that that the M26 was not "rushed into production as fast as it could have been," Polish. The M26, which mounted a 90mm high velocity gun and had far better armor, was given a secondary priority. Think about it for a second, Polish. You seem to be contending that the country which could design and build an atomic bomb in less than four years and could turn out a complete Liberty ship in 24 hours, could not build a simply factory or factories to turn out a new tank design quickly enough for it to be of value. Sorry, I don't buy that at all. We could have done it if we wanted to, but decided for reasons of exingency not to do it.

I would also argue that the basic mistake was made much earlier when we decided (at Patton's strong urging) to go for a medium tank and not a heavy tank as our Main Battle Tank. I grant you, the medium tank does have its advantages under some circumstances (as long as it doesn't have to fight heavy tanks), but we desperately needed a heavier tank--with a 90mm gun and heavier armor--at least in addition to the mediums, if not in place of them.

Now, the original argument, as I recall, was whether the Tiger was a better tank than the M4. Almost everything you've said simply tends to support that basic premise. The Tiger, overall, was better in terms of its effectiveness in the kill zone and its ability to withstand attack. It had its own difficiencies, of course, just as the M4 did, but there is no denying the fact that in any situation where the odds were not overwhelmingly in favor of the M4 in terms of numbers, the Tiger kicked butt and took names.

I don't underestimate the virtues of the M4, Polish. History is history and in the long run, the M4 unquestionably did the job it was designed to do, i.e., defeat Germany. I simply feel a better tank than the M4 would have made that job much easier and much less costly in terms of lives.

[polishshooter]

NO NO NO!!! Repeat after me!

ALL HEAVY TANKS in WWII WERE FAILURES! The Tiger I WAS defeated by M4s, the Tiger II was simply tracked INSANITY for a war in Europe!

Do we have to go through this AGAIN? Pay attention, if you EVER say it again, I MAY have to make you WRITE it 100 times until you REMEMBER it...

ANY campaign in Europe is an exercise in RIVER CROSSING. Whether you are advancing on Berlin, or attacking FROM it, from East OR West! I forget the actual numbers but it is STAGGERING. Something like every 10 K is a MINOR North-South river, fordable EXCEPT in the Spring and Fall, every 20 K is a MAJOR NS river fordable only in the SUMMER, every 50K is a MAJOR NS river not crossable at ALL without at least rudimentary bridges or assualt boats, and every 100k is a river needing a MASSIVE bridge or ELSE a MAJOR amphibious assault with LANDING CRAFT!

So build a TANK that is TOO HEAVY for 80% of the bridges in Europe????? Too heavy for Available LANDING CRAFT??? (And we KNOW how good the GERMANS are at LANDING craft, DON'T we??? ) It is INSANITY! WHY do you think the Germans (AND also the Russians!) spent so much time trying to make SCHNORKLES for their Worthless Tigers and JS IIs and IIIs??? BRIDGES, man, BRIDGES.

The NEXT most important thing in warfare after LOGISTICS....which is THE most important thing, NOT "Gun size," and "armor" or even the NUMBERS of ANYTHING...


THAT is why the Germans COULD NOT USE Tiger IIs at the Bulge! Those propaganda photos we see all the time of Joachim Pipers "Tiger IIs in the Ardennes" were actually used as EVIDENCE at Nurenburg to PROVE Piper couldn't have been at Malmedy! NO BRIDGES NEAR MALMEDY COULD HOLD THEM! They were NOT used in the main thrust! At ANY time! Saw a LITTLE action in the south of the bulge, as an AFTERTHOUGHT.

BRILLIANT! Lets make gas guzzling behenoths (incidentally when we are running out of fuel!) that we CAN'T USE in our last big gamble counterattack because they are TOO BIG AND HEAVY!


PLUS they were TOO slow, and had TOO slow a turret speed, BESIDES being unreliable....SORRY! The Tiger was NOT a "better tank" than the M4! PERIOD!!!!!

The Panther MEDIUM was, and COULD do what a Tank was supposed to do! Which is fight and MOVE. A TIger was ONLY good as a stationary PILLBOX in AMBUSH. A GOOD Pillbox, but so was the Char B1 Bis!!!! MOBILE ARMORED WARFARE IS NOT WON BY PILLBOXES!! The PANTHER was the BEST tank Germany had during the war. PERIOD. I find it ODD you also seem to ignore IT and instead profess the virtues of the worthless TIGER. It was the ONLY tank to give us any real problem, and if IT was perfected and produced in numbers, it MAY have affected the outcome of the war. On BOTH fronts! NO amount of Tigers could have done THAT!!!! And every worthless TIGER produced was about 2-3 Panthers NOT produced. BRILLIANT!!! I guess we need to Thank God for the Tiger!


The M26 was ALSO a "Medium" for the SAME reason! THANK GOD we didn't make a "Heavy!" (Actually we TRIED in 42, and it SUCKED so we abandoned it, AGAIN, THANK GOD!) (AND there are CONFLICTING sources on the M26, only a FEW claim it was NOT "rushed." I believe if you read MORE sources than the guy who hated Shermans because he had to REPAIR them), you will find MOST of them agree that it WAS "rushed," the problem was in the turret...we HAD gotten the 90mm into battle in the M36 and M36B TDs by that time (incidentally, on M4 Chassis, but the turrets were open, small, cramped, and only had 1/2" armor with a LARGE counterweight bustle on the back...we had TROUBLE casting turret rings large enough and strong enough to hold an effectively armored turret AND have room to fight inside! )

What you are probably refering to that everyone has "morphed" into "Patton fought the Pershing and the 90" is PROBABLY the ACTUAL meeting of the Generals before Normandy where Patton and others were shown the M4 with a 76mm, and DIDN'T WANT IT. WHY? Because the 75 had PROVED it could handle the Tiger I in Africa, and in Sicily, and it threw a better HE round, (which is ACTUALLY the round fired most by tank in any battle!) than the 76mm, and the difference in velocity and AP was NOT worth the extra logistical nightmare of supplying two types of shells to the front, on the eve of the invasion. What changed Patton's mind and everyone elses after Normandy was PANTHERS not TIGERS. The 75mm AP DID bounce off of the well sloped Panther armor, that was on tanks that could MOVE and just MIGHT be used in counterattacks (mobile warfare!) against the flanks of our armored thrusts! But the 76, ESPECIALLY with the "hypershot" COULD penetrate BOTH Panthers and Tiger IIs FRONTALLY. WHich is WHY 50% of all M4s HAD them not LONG after Normandy!


What WAS available that we may have missed was the 17 pounder that the British had already mounted to some of THEIR M4s, the Firefly, which WAS a match for ANY German Tank! (M4 "detractors" also conveniently forget THAT too... ) But it was understandable, considering the LAST time the Brits "sold" us on a "superior" gun, the 6 pounder! PLUS there was the same consideration of ammo, the Brits would not have been able to produce enough for all, and we would have to tool up from scratch.

And incidentally, PS, American production WAS pretty much AT FULL CAPACITY. We would NOT have been able to build AND find the MANPOWER to run ANOTHER tank factory/factories to tool up at that point, and STILL maintain M4 production. SO stop building M4s, right? Great, then we probably would have had NO tanks to fight with in Europe! REMEMBER, the first 2 years of the war MANY decisions were made becasue of manyfacturing capacity! Don't make DEs even though we are LOSING the battle of the Atlantic because we have to make landing craft, and later VICE VERSA???? There are LISTS of such decisions, stuff badly needed put off for other priorities, American production capability was the BEST, but was NOT "unlimited!!!"

And for every "Atomic Bomb" manufacturing success I can give you a matching colossal FAILURE. How about American TORPEDOES??? How about American Jet aircraft designed in WWII? How about the fact that our most successfull fighter had to have a BRITISH Rolls-Royce in-line engine DESPITE all our experience with all types of engines and the Allisons????? How COME our very own invention, the Bazooka, was outclassed by our enemy's COPIES in months, and we could never actually seem to improve on it until after the war? How COME it took us 4 or 5 tries before we came up with a FLAMETHROWER that worked in '43, when the rest of the world had them in WWI???? I could go on and on!!!


By the way, how many GERMAN tank designs were, or even COULD be, upgunned retroactively, sometimes IN THE FIELD, THAT MANY THAT FAST at any time during the war? Just wondering.... Throw into the mix uparmoring, even in the FIELD, and changing the entire suspension system to the new designed HVSS system (which you and other detractors ALSO ignore...you know you Sherman denigrators argue like LIBERALS, IGNORE The FACTS, just keep repeating "conventional wisdom" even AFTER it's refuted... ) on EXISTING tanks in depots just behind the lines? Sorry, the M4 was the BEST here AGAIN....

And you are not EVEN considering SHIPPING. Don't FORGET the "Battle of the Atlantic" was not WON until mid-1943! As late as February -March 1943, it was STILL touch and go. And we were ALREADY building up for Overlord, much LESS committed to Africa/Sicily.

WHERE ARE THE BOTTOMS to ship THREE TIMES the tonnage of Heavy tanks overseas just to get the SAME numbers of tanks into battle????? Even IF "Heavy Tanks" WERE better, which we have proved they were NOT.


And the Russians? They DUMPED the JS II and JSIIIs right after the parades, and stuck with the T-34/85 until the T54/55 MEDIUM was developed...


NO. The Tigers of ANY stripe were FAILURES, ESPECIALLY for Germany! On BOTH fronts!


There is a REASON the M4s and T34s broke through and EXPLOITED the Germans rear at Falaise Pocket, and Operation Bagration, there is a REASON the war was over relativel quickly after Overlord, and after the Russians crossed the Dnepr, the same reason REASON the Germans were SUCCESSFUL using LIGHTER tanks than their enemies in 1939 through 1941!!!


MOBILITY. AGILITY. FAST MOVEMENT. Hit them where they AIN'T.


Building tanks that are "Invulnerable to frontal fire" but are effectively IMMOBILE?



A Maginot Mentality on TRACKS....at BEST...


No Ps, I can't let you get away with it, the M4 series of Tanks WERE the BEST design of World War II, for what Tanks are INTENDED to do.






WIN WARS.

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

ALL HEAVY TANKS in WWII WERE FAILURES! The Tiger I WAS defeated by M4s, the Tiger II was simply tracked INSANITY for a war in Europe!

Polish, do you by chance come in contact with large amounts of heavy metals in your work? I was just wondering . . . They do have medications these days that will take care of that problem and the delusional behavior that sometimes accompanies their ingestion.

Your logic does not seem consistant, Polish. If heavy tanks are so useless in Europe, why did we build the M48, the M60, and finally, the 65-ton M1, all of which were designed to fight in Europe? Any tank design has both its advantages and its disadvantages. I would argue that building the M4 medium tank might be best compared to the British building of battlecruiser designs during and after World War I. On paper they appear to be an excellent compromise--armor sacrificed for speed--but in practice they were simply too weak to stand up in a slug fest with true battleships. Witness the Hood v. Bismarck fiasco in 1941.

You're using a "red herring" falacy here in a logical sense, Polish. I've never said we should have relied only on a heavy tank, but rather that we should have had a heavy tank in addition to the mediums for the tasks appropriate to it. The medium tanks worked well enough for many tasks, particularly infantry support, which is the way we actually used them most of the time. My point is that when Tigers or Panthers were on the prowl, they were inadequate because armor and armament were insufficient to meet the threat. If priorities had been adjusted we might have had fewer M4s, but that difficiency would have been more than made up by having heavy armor to meet the German threat.

[polishshooter]

First, You are wrong on the M47, M48, M60, AND the M1....they are ALL type classified as "Mediums..."

The M26 Pershing WAS type classified as a "Heavy" during production, BUT was reclassified as a "Medium" after the war, and directly led to the M47, which WAS a Medium.

We have ONLY made ONE "True" Heavy, the M103, which we STARTED developing in 1947, had all kinds of problems, the Army dumped it as soon as the M60 was developed, and the Marines nursed their few "hand me downs" until 1970 or so...but "typical" of the genre, it was also a "pig."

The Brits also had similar results woith their Conqueror series....


Now granted, in the 60s until present, the distinction is blurred, into only TWO classes, "Light" or "Main Battle Tanks," but if you look at just WEIGHT, MOST "Modern" MBTs run in the 60 ton range today, not the 70-75 ton range of the Tiger II. AND carry 100 to 120 mm guns, and better armor, but whats MORE important, can MOVE.



As per "meeting the German Tigers and Panthers on the prowl..." (And I'm glad to see I've FINALLY dragged you kicking and screaming towards the excellent PANTHER and away from the POS TIGER, which incidentally was INCAPABLE of "prowling" ... ) (AND that "prowling" was not what tanks were DESIGNED to do ANYWAY...)


I have to ask WHY????


The LAST thing you Tiger lovers ALWAYS ignore is that Tank vs. Tank battles in Western Europe, (Hell, in the EAST as well after the Dnepr...) were not ONLY RARE, but WERE STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT TO THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR!!!!

I give our leaders CREDIT for the foresight and for not succumbing to the hysteria and retooling for our OWN worthless heavy behemoth that WAS NOT NEEDED!!!! Check it out!

MOST SHERMANS WERE LOST TO AT GUNS AND PANZERFAUSTS.

MOST RUSSIAN TANKS AFTER KURSK WERE LOST TO AT GUNS AND PANZERFAUSTS. (And 40mm guns from The Stuka, Messerschmidt, amnd FW tank killer Fighter bombers...)


That's an UNDENIABLE fact, PS.

So if ANYBODY is constructing a "Straw Man," it is you!

We should have built a Heavy tank JUST IN CASE we met German Armor on the field of battle, even though we know that happened RARELY at best!


AND you forget we ALSO had pretty darn decent TDs, WITH 76mms with Hypershot, AND 90mms, AT NORMANDY, that WENT UNUSED in their intended role BECAUSE Tank vs. Tank was so actually soi RARE.

DID they EVER meet, YES, and the advancing at speed in the open on the roads M4 ALWAYS suffered against any dug in German Armor lying in ambush, whether it was Hetzers, Panzer IVs, or Tigers, but USUALLY it was 75mm TOWED AT guns!!! But the POINT is the Panthers and Tigers did TOO the FEW times the roles were REVERSED, and they faced dug in hull down M4s, M10s, M36s, and out towed 76mm and 3" AT guns!!! That is PURELY the result of attack vs. defense!


Did they suffer in built up areas? Yes, but ALL tanks did, (how far did the Panzers get at Stalingrad?)(and mainly only against 14.5mm AT rifles, 45mm AT guns, and molotovs???)....and we overcame THAT pretty well with the Dumbo heavily armored M4A3e2s!!!!


And you ALSO forget "Combined Arms," Our Artillery was the BEST of anyone's in the war, the ENTIRE war...TOT barrages were INVENTED by us in Europe...the Germans COMPLAINED through the Swiss that our artillery was "unfair..." Our Jabos CONTROLLED the air, and took out heavy tanks (just bigger stationary targets, with EASE.) Fit the TANK to the DOCTRINE, not the DOCTRINE to the TANK!!!!



No, you are just DEAD wrong. We did NOT need a "fantasyland" heavy tank to face the Germans, and if we did, it would have been a MAJOR mistake!!!

I repeat, for the DOCTRINE we used in Europe, the M4 series of Tanks were ABSOLUTELY the best!!!



Our M4s MAINLY fought against INFANTRY...just like you SAID for MOST tanks, and believe it or not, that makes the 'Dual Purpose" rapid firing 75mm a PRETTY darn good choice so maybe Patton and the OTHER tank Generals before Normandy were actually RIGTHT????



I KNOW "Germanophiles" who think the Germans even made better TOILETS than anyone else HATE to have their beliefs, so fostered by so much Nazi propaganda and "conventional wisdom" over the years, shaken to the core, BUT you really have to take a deep breath and admit it....


The Germans lost ALL initiative when they GAVE up, not ONLY by force, but by CHOICE as well, the doctrine of "Blitzkrieg," right about 42,which WORKED even with INFERIOR smaller tanks that were MOBILE....

...and from then on produced CRAPPY WORTHLESS OVERWEIGHT JUNK (except for the Panther,) that were valuable ONLY in the DEFENSIVE, and the ONLY design that COULD have returned them to the offensive was unreliable, not produced in quantity because so MUCH time and resources were spent on the worthless Tigers and even HEAVIER crap...REMEMBER also, German industrial production actually INCREASED (look it up!) despite our bombing offensive, so there is NO reason they could NOT have made as many Panthers as they did PZKW IIIs and IVs!


As WELL as admit that the Americans ACTUALLY took the "Blitzkrieg" to a much higher level of "Combined Arms" and RAMMED it down the Germans THROAT, just as PLANNED on the sand tables at Knox and the maneuvers in Louisiana in 41 and 42, using the Tank they INTENDED to use from that very TIME....that did WELL in THAT war-winning role!!!!


Go ahead, PS, there is NO shame in "seeing the light!"


Now GRANTED, there is ONE area where our arguments are in "parallel universes."

YOU are trying to argue ONE Tiger versus ONE Sherman, and I refuse to go there! Why???

Because WHAT M4 are you TALKING about? The M4a1 with the CAST hull? The M4 with the WELDED hull? The EARLY M4 or M4a1 with the M3 suspension and the M2 75mm? OR the ones with the VVSS and the M3 75mm? Or maybe the M4a3e2 Dumbo with the M3 75? Or the Dumbo with the 76mm? IF a "Regular" M4A1, was it BEFORE the "Wet" storage of ammo, or after, and BEFORE the "applique ammo," (remember there were TWO types of IT too) or after? Or are you talking about the M4A1 (105) with the new 47 degree glacis and the extar armor and the HEAT rounds? Or are you talking about the "Easy 8s" from 44 on with the 47 degree glacis, the HVSS, the extra armor and the 76mm? All of them RUNNING by the way.....

And what TIGER are YOU thinking of? The pristine one from the propaganda films? Or the one with the mud stuck in the interleaved wheels and torsion bars that froze last night so they have a FIRE built under the hull so they have a chance to move it before the M4s or T34s race up and pop it at their liesure? The NICE looking artist's rendition in EVERY Armor book that breathlessly extolls it as AWESOME POWER? Or the more common one ABANDONED on the side of the road because of the broken teeth in the weak transmission?


I am arguing DESIGN and SERIES versus series....and I can't lose! The M4 DESIGN and SERIES is superior to EVERY German design fielded in any numbers, and series, EXCEPT MAYBE the Panzer IV which soldiered on in many variants, in high numbers, and was MAYBE a MATCH of the Sherman in MOST categories except mechanical reliability...and it WAS a little small, the later variants with heavy armor and the heavy HV 75 MM was JUST a little too heavy for the chassis...which led to breakdowns.


The PANTHER had potential, IF they could have worked out the bugs, AND stopped making Tigers and Maus' and even BIGGER crap and put everything into IT.


Sorry, in YOUR mind you are comparing a GREEN crew in the EARLIEST M4 at Kasserine, to the most EXPERIENCED SS crew from Kursk in a NEW Tiger facing each other ALONE at 100 paces at high noon on Main Strasse in Hammelburg...



FANTASY, pure FANTASY...

[17thfabn]

The Sherman was one of the best tanks of 1942. It was out classed by the late war German panthers and tiger II tanks.

Fortunatly even in 1944 and and 45 the most common armor for U.S. troops to face was the pzkw IV which the Sherman was a match for, and various self propelled guns and assault guns that the Sherman could best with ease.

Attacking in close country any tank is at the disadvantage. In the battle for Normandy German tanks in hull down position could pick off large numbers of attacking U.S. & U.K. Sherman tanks. Dug in German anti-tank guns were also a big threat. The best German towed anti-tank gun was NOT the famous 88mm. The German 75mm towed anti-tank gun had almost the same penetration as the 88mm, although once through the 88mm would of course do more damage. But the 88m was a BIG gun. The German 75mm was much more manageble in size, allowing it to get in and out of action more quickly, and could be conceled more easily.

I wonder how common h.v.a.p. was in 1944-45? The late war Sherman with a 76mm gun firing h.v.a.p. was on much more even ground if it had to face the German "cats", the tigers and panthers.

I think the key defect of the Sherman was it's weak 75mm gun (from an anti-tank prospective). More than three times as many Shermans with 75mm guns were built as ones with the 76mm gun.

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

First, You are wrong on the M47, M48, M60, AND the M1....they are ALL type classified as "Mediums..."

Ah, reduced to semantics, are we Polish? OK, if you can logically justify calling a 65-ton tank packing a 120mm smoothbore cannon as a "medium" tank, then be my guest. Hey, maybe we should classify the M1A2 as a light tank. Maybe then Kennedy would keep his lip buttoned and Congress would allow us to build more of them. I also think that, using your logic, it would be much more reasonable to classify the Sherman as a light tank since the 75mm, low velocity gun that most of them mounted was about as light as you could get and still call it a tank. Yes, Polish, I know about the Stewart with its 37mm cannon, but that wasn't much more than a glorified peashooter mounted on a track.

But consider also that even conceding for the sake of argument that the Sherman was a good medium tank, why not build the damn things strong enough to reasonably resist the weapons mix they were likely to encounter? Armor on the Sherman was a joke. German high-velocity weapons went through it like tissue paper. To make matters worse, the Shermans burned like rice paper nearly every time they were hit. It was no accident the troops nicknamed them "Ronsons" since they would light every time! I still say, there was no excuse for that kind of failure with American equipment. We could have done much better and we should have.

By the way, I'm really enjoying this argument.

[polishshooter]

Me too! ESPECIALLY since I sense some movement (not MUCH, but SOME ) from your otherwise set in Prussian Granite opinions! But that is the MARK of a good Historian, always open to "new research..."

The MAIN reason they lit up more easily than any other tank (other than the M3 Stuart, M3 Grant/Lee, the M5, the M24, the M8 and M20 armored cars, the half-tracks, ALL the Tank Destroyers, etc.,as well as ALL the EARLY Russian tanks pre-T-34) was that they were fueled by GASOLINE. THAT may have been a big mistake, but that was a US Army decision, the M4A2 Diesel was the FIRST official modification (the M4 and M4A1 were produced simultaneously. Well not really, the "Cast" hull M4A1 was produced FIRST, the "Welded" hull "M4" was actually produced AFTER the "A1" version because of the problems with the early welded hulls (all US tanks prior to this were riveted)...which incidentally is ANOTHER piece of trivia you can bet a buck on! )

The Army made the decision that it would stick to Gas only so they would not have to ship 2 types of fuel over seas, and probably not have enough of EITHER. In light of the fuel shortages holding up Patton later, this MAY have been a good decision, plus don't forget at the time they were making the decision it was the "Happy Hunting" seasons for Uboats off the coasts, and tankers were seen burning and sinking by the naked eye from the beaches all over the east coast daily....who KNEW we would virtually defeat the Uboats by July 43? By that time, it was too late to switch, and we had too many gas models already in the fight.


BUT the US Marines took ALL diesels they could, because the landing craft all were diesels, so fuel was available, and the Navy used very little gas except aviation fuel anyway (which is why the Packards on the PTs took aviation gas...) THEY didn't burn anywhere near as fast as the gas ones...(That is ANOTHER problem with "generalizing" about Shermans...there WERE so many models!)


The irony is we also gave the A2s to the Free French and Free Polish, so we ended up having to carry diesel for them ANYWAY across France, but not as much as if we needed it too....

That was NOT a design fault of the M4 series, but a command decision of the US Army!

The armor question WAS addressed through changing the angle of the glacis in 1944, and the "applique" aftermarket armor kits. (But the pictures of a lot of late war M4s with all the ADDITIONAL jury rigged concrete, sandbags, and logs, as well as scrap metal, welded on, spoke VOLUMES, even though the biggest threat at that time was Panzerfausts.)

I will give you that the silhouette was too high and too good of a target, and that explains also the inability to give it enough slope which is more important for armor than thickness (Which is also probably why the 75 DID kill Tiger 1s frontally, that VERTICAL glacis on the Tiger was actually an obsolete design when introduced... ) That is ONE design feature I never figured out why they couldn't have changed...it was high because of the original Radial aircraft engine powerplant, BUT the design was changed pretty early, and few actually had the radial...MOST had two Ford V8s side by side, so you would THINK they could haved lowered it and given it a better slope at the same time....and not slowed production much....although that monstrous 4 pack of Chrysler V6s (FIVE in some M3 Grants!) needed all the room they could get....


But you have to be careful also of all the "spectacular" stories of Shermans "Brewing up" with the ammo catching fire so fast too...that WAS an early problem, which was discovered in Africa, but the wet stowage of ammo introduced in 43 and incorporated into ALL models after that (but not retrofitted if I remember right,) reduced "collateral brew-up" substantially.


17th, YES 3/4s of all M4s had 75mm, but MOST in Europe at the end had 76mms. Interestingly however, most commanders at the time agreed the BEST armored platoons was "mixed." Two with 76mms, and 3 with 75s, the 75 was STILL considered to be the best HE gun of the two, against infantry...better HE round, and faster rate of fire. (I never figured out WHY the 75 had a better HE round than the 76, but I've read that in MANY sources....) The only thing better was an M4 (105) or two backing you up!

Yeah, the hyper shot (HVAP) round for the 76mm could handle ANY German armor, the crime was we didn't have enough...I've read that ANY tank at ANY time in the war that had 5 round of it at any time was considered LUCKY, most tanks at any time had only TWO rounds. The Tank Destroyers and AT guns got most of them (which is why the Hellcat supposedly killed more Panthers and Tigers than ANY American AFV in Europe with the same gun!)

Now that was a US Doctrine that was flat out wrong, SORT of, that only TANK DESTROYERS would fight enemy tanks, tanks would only fight INFANTRY. (ANOTHER reason they didn't think the 75 was insufficient!) Tank Destroyers most of the time were used for Infantry support since there were so few opportunities to fight German Tanks, and they REALLY got chewed up in close infantry support missions, especially in the cities, with open turrets and turret armor that could be pierced by a heavy MG...THOSE guys were the ones that were REALLY the brave ones....

And 17th is absolutely Correct! NEVER doubt a "Cannon-cocker!" That is ANOTHER trivia question that you can make money on! EVERYBODY knows that the German's MAIN Anti-Tank and artillery piece was the "dreaded 88," right?


NOT. MOST 88s were used just as DESIGNED, as fixed AA guns, incidentally usually manned by WOMEN assigned to the LUFTWAFFE. Relatively FEW of the AA "dual purpose" guns were used as anti-tank guns, the direct sights were NOT that good, (but at least they had them and trained crews with them, not like the Brits and Americans) and they were WAY too high on the AA mount so they made GREAT targets and couldn't be hidden very well, which is how most AT guns were used....Rommel was fond of them though as AT guns, mainly because he didn't HAVE any 75s yet in the Low countries, and few if any in Africa, and the 37 and 50mms bounced off the Matilda 2s...so at Arracourt he stopped the only British counterattack in '40 that MAY have worked with them, and used them again in the desert in the open far enough away so the Matildas couldn't hurt them with MG fire, since the 2 pounder didn't fire HE...only the 25 pounder could cover them until they could close...Rommel was MAIN German to use them as dual purpose.

It wasn't until 1943 that the Germans actually made a REAL low mount shielded wheeled AT gun out of the 88, but most of THEM went east, and they didn't make many of them, the commanders were always yelling for more.

And while MOST veteran GIs will tell many stories of being "shelled" by "88s," (I've talked to SEVERAL WWII combat vets who have told me this!) they were virtually NEVER used as indirect artillery. They had such a propaganda reputation during the war that EVERY incoming artillery round was an "88" to a GI under fire, but in reality, the Germans had really good 75mm, 105mm and 150mm howitzers like everyone else...the "88" "tree bursts" and bombardments that we read about all the time in WWII books were PROBABLY from 75, 105 or 150 standard, and incidentally, probably HORSE DRAWN, field guns...



Which is ANOTHER reason I don't understand the "glorification" of the German "War Machine" in WWII. HOW do you waste that much time, resources, and production building worthless TIGERS and TIGER IIs when the BULK of your Infantry is still WALKING and the BULK of your artillery and supply system motive power still runs on OATS??????

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

I sense some movement (not MUCH, but SOME ) from your otherwise set in Prussian Granite opinions!

Then you are having delusions again, Polish. Have you considered psychiatric help? Lie down over here on the couch and let ol' Herr Doktor Pistolenschutze assist you. First of all, how long have you had these paranoid delusional Germanophobic feelings, Herr Polishshooter?

I've stated repeatedly that the M4 Sherman tank did indeed have its virtues (some, a few). The historical record speaks for itself on that issue. As an infantry support weapon, it was probably the best tracked vehicle any of the combatants fielded during the war, and that indeed was its primary use and purpose. My only point is, and has always been, that it was inadequate in virtually all battlefield encounters when it faced German-built armor or AT artillery. The M4's armor was too thin, its silhouette looked like the Roman Coliseum on tracks, it burned far too easily (and yes, that is mostly because of its gasoline engine, a design mistake the Germans didn't make), and, most of all, that POS, low-velocity 75mm peashooter it carried as a main gun which was out-ranged by nearly everything the Germans used.

OK, let's approach this argument from another direction. For the sake of argument only, let us assume that a medium v. a heavy tank was the best overall solution given the conditions likely to be encountered in Europe. I don't believe that is necessarily true, but let us assume so for the moment. Given that then, why the hell didn't we build a better medium tank from the outset, or at least substantially modify the existing design in light of the empirically demonstrated problems the M4 had? Yes, I know we did finally make some changes, but most of those came far too late to make any significant difference. Armor could have been made much stronger and thicker, and I believe a more powerful engine could have been designed to compensate for any additional weight and then better shielded to minimize the fuel-flash problem if we had to use gasoline. Most of all though, arm that rolling pile of scrap metal with a main gun that would penetrate something more substantial than some camp follower's knickers! Even if we had to stay with a 75mm gun to fit it into the cupola (which may be true), arm the tank with a high-velocity 75 that could at least equal the range and penetration capabilities of the German weapons. If all else fails, capture a German 75mm gun and back design it to fit the M4. I think the main reason we didn't was simply because we had LOTS of M4s and quantity has a quality all its own, assuming one does not count the cost in lives.

[polishshooter]

PS, do you consider AT ALL that just in case MOST of your "conventional wisdom""assumptions" about the supposed "deficiencies" of the M4 were WRONG, or at least "overblown,"andJUST PERHAPS the armor was NOT that bad, and the gun was NOT that bad against german Armor and WAS superior against soft amd light armor and fortifications, and it didn't burn any MORE than expected, and then feed in the facts about which we AGREE, that it WAS easy to produce, and it WAS the most mechanically reliable tank of the war, and it WAS the only tank that could fire ACCURATELY on the move, and it WAS faster than most German stuff, and it COULD run longer with less maintenance than any other tank...


Do you EVEN entertain the possibility that if all THIS is true that MAYBE you answered your own question?



I TOO once believed ALL that you say, I TOO was in AWE of the Tigers...but what led me to DEEPER research and contemplation was one simple thought....that SAME poor design fought the BEST Russian stuff as late as the 1980s in Israeli service, with essentially the SAME armor, the SAME powerplants, but YES with a 90 and then later a NATO 105 gun....and I TOO at first thought, Oh well, the Israelis could beat the ARABS in Renault FT-17s...


But then you consider that YES in 1948 it would make SENSE, the Israelis probably could only GET Shermans....and they took all KINDS of polyglot stuff to make ANY "army..."

But this was 1980 for Go's sake, when I watched a Battalion of Super Shermans advancing through the Golan Height AGAIN towards Damascus, LEADING the M-60s and Centurions! At the SAME time T-34/85s were only in USE for training and in the third world guarding airports of cheap despots!

THAT'S when it hit me, kind of like the M2 Browning, the 1911, the Jeep, the P-38 can opener, the Mosin Nagant ....NO "inherently flawed" and "inferior design" remains in FRONT-LINE use that long, if it AIN'T good...


That was my "Epiphany" on the M4, which casued me to go back and REVISIT not only what I had read before, but as much OTHER tank stuff as I could find....and it was a FUN ride getting here!

It also helped to read that an Israeli M4 Super Sherman took out a Syrian Panzer IV in the Golan Heights in the 1970s, which was FITTING, even more so because the Syrians had demonstrated that they KNEW how to use Nazi armor, as a PILLBOX.... )





And incidentally, Life is MUCH easier and sleep comes MUCH easier when you realize answers to otherwise DISTESSING questions like you raise...are right under our NOSES...and are really NOT that complicated in the end...


We didn't build a BETTER tank than the M4 series for WWII...because we DIDN'T NEED TO. It did, and continued to do to the end, a FINE job for us in EVERYTHING it did! (EXCEPT maybe face a dug in Tiger or Panther FRONTALLY. But as you always seem to forget, of course, RARELY happened....)

BTW, just for the record, the M-26 "Pershing"was "rushed" into service not because we NEEDED it to fight the GERMANS, but only to face the RUSSIANS....or at least make them THINK we could....)

[Xracer]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

I will give you that the silhouette was too high and too good of a target, and that explains also the inability to give it enough slope which is more important for armor than thickness.......That is ONE design feature I never figured out why they couldn't have changed...it was high because of the original Radial aircraft engine powerplant.......

Well, here's a little trivia for you guys......American tanks were high in order to afford enough room inside for the crew.....because they were narrow.

And they were narrow because??????

The width was limited by the size of railroad tunnels. Most of our tanks were built in the interior of the U.S. and had to be shipped to military bases and ports of embarkation on the railroads.........and American railroad tunnels were all of a standard width.

OK guys......now you can continue flogging your dead horses.......

[polishshooter]

X, so RIGHT! Which the GERMANS "solved" by making their "too wide" Tigers and Panthers, which also coincidentally were designed KNOWING that they were incapable of extended road marches without excessive mechanical wear and subsequent breakdowns, AND too heavy for WHEELED transporters and prime movers to move, with the typically too complicated GERMAN answer (OF COURSE kamerade, ze RAILS vill be the main vay ve vil GET them to ze combat!! ) of having to make TWO sets of tracks, a "transport" set and a "Combat" set, AND made the outer interleaved bogies REMOVABLE just to make them FIT the railcar width.


Of course ignoring the fact that it would take HOURS to reinstall the combat tracks and bogies, BY A DEDICATED REPAIR UNIT, not the tanks crew, to get them ready FOR combat when they got there, plus the little mentioned fact that (Oh yeah, ve KNEW...ve know EVERYTING ) that the RUSSIAN railway guage was DIFFERENT than GERMAN guage, so the very area INTENDED for these tanks to operate either negated this little design feature, OR meant THOUSANDS of troops and slave laborers would need diverted just to REBUILD rail lines to transport them any distances...MUCH LESS the fact that that JUST IN CASE air superiority was lost, or partisans just MIGHT be operating behind the lines, there would be NO RAIL LINES AVAILABLE?!?!?!?!


Superior German Tank engineering my @SS!!!!


Not ONLY did those very "inferior" M4s FIT on railcars in the US, they also FIT in any European RR tunnel they were ATTACKING through, by the way, UNDER THEIR OWN POWER on their SUPERIOR tracks DESIGNED for road marches, and generally repairable BY THE CREW if any maintenance or breakdowns occured!!!!





Yep, we have to APOLOGIZE for winning the war with such"inferior tanks" that only won because they were so MANY Of them....BULLPUCKY!

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by Xracer

OK guys......now you can continue flogging your dead horses.......

But X, those steeds will get up any day now and continue the race (invading Poland again, no doubt ). Polish has assured me of this!

Polish, you know, down Texas way, they sell the stuff you're peddling by the truckload and use it for fertilizer.

Originally Posted by polishshooter

We didn't build a BETTER tank than the M4 series for WWII...because we DIDN'T NEED TO.

Hmmm, an interesting comment that, Polish. If the Sherman M4 was so superior, why is it then that in 1943 the U.S. was forced to revise its tank TOE because losses were so high they outpaced our ability to replace them? Another little tidbit lies with, as you like to point out so well, the cold hard statistics. The Third Armored Division, which began the Normandy campaign with 232 M4 tanks, saw 648 of its Shermans destroyed in combat, with another 700 knocked out of commission before being repaired and returned to service—a cumulative loss rate of 580 percent. Casualties among tank crews also skyrocketed, producing an acute shortage of qualified personnel. By late 1944, the Army was sending newly arrived infantrymen into combat as replacement tank crews. Some of these recruits received only one day of armor training before being dispatched to the front in their M4s. The M4 was a "superior" tank, Polish? If so, I shudder to think what would have happened with a lesser one. Perhaps we would all be shouting, "Heil dem Furher!"

[wolfgang2000]

I promis you that if the bean counters had to go into combat with the Sherman it would have had better armor and gun.

You can quote all the stats in the world, but every WW2 tanker that I've seen interviewed, when asked if they would rathered a sherman or a tiger, they pick the tiger. That was both US and Brit. tankers. Stats don't mean nothing on the cutting edge.

[polishshooter]

And just like in ANY war, a substantial number of GERMAN tankers at many stages of the war, ESPECIALLY from 1944 on, would have told you they WISHED they had a Sherman rather than their broken down Tiger or Panther, or while dreaming of the "good old days" of Panzer MOBILITY instead of sitting in ambush waiting for a couple of lucky shots before they DIED or SURRENDERED. Of course AFTER the war, probably NONE would say that...

And while many ISRAELI tankers in Shermans may have preferred facing the Syrian, Jordanians and Egyptians in an M60 or a Centurian, they would rather have been in the Super Sherman than a T55!

I would be surprised if ANY US tankers in the war would have NOT said they wanted the bigger gun and the armor of a Tiger or a Panther, that in fact is a STUPID question, who WOULDN'T???? BUT I guarantee you they would want that ARMOR and GUN on a SHERMAN chassis, with a SHERMAN gyroscopic sight, with a SHERMAN engine, SHERMAN transmission, and SHERMAN tracks! NOT on a German one!!!


THAT information is the "misinformation." Those same soldiers will ALSO probably tell you that all the artillery they ever received was from "88s!" I've taked to MANY verterans! And EVERY armored formation they ever faced was SS! BEWARE of anecdotal information, it cuts BOTH ways....

While soldiers CAN be the BEST sources of information about the war and their experiences, they can ALSO be the WORST sources of Historical fact....

It AIN'T statistics...it's the FACTS. The M4 and M4A1 and variants were the BEST we had, and our best was BETTER than "good enough" for MOST demands of US Armored Warfare in WWII, and SUPERIOR in just about ALL the other ratings over ANY other WWII tanks EXCEPT in Gun and armor....and the while the 75mm was ALSO "good enough" for most uses, the HV 76mm was only SLIGHTLY outclassed by the Germans as a tank gun...

The FACTS remain that US (and British) soldiers in M4s WON THE WAR, and the "myth" of the idea they won it MERELY on nymbers FIRST appeared after the war from GERMAN military writers trying to "explain" away the defeat of their OBVIOUSLY superior tanks....

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

And just like in ANY war, a substantial number of GERMAN tankers at many stages of the war, ESPECIALLY from 1944 on, would have told you they WISHED they had a Sherman rather than their broken down Tiger or Panther

Polish, where are you getting such information? Maybe it's true, but that's not what I've read from accounts written after the war by German tankers. You suggest these men were prevaricating for political reasons, but why should they? The war was over and most of them just wanted to forget it. True, the Tigers and Panthers did break down, but so did the Shermans. We just had a much more efficient and well-supplied support staff to repair them, especially after the Normandy landings in 1944, and what is far more important, the fuel to make them run (at least most of the time). When the shell meets the armor, I'd sure rather have thick German steel around me than the tin-foil thickness the M4s possessed. It's also kinda nice to know that if you shoot back, your round will penetrate the enemy's tank before he's even in range to shoot at you. The ragheads found that out the hard way at 73 Easting in the first Iraq war. No, Polish. It just won't wash. German tanks were not perfect by any means, but taken as a whole, they were--tank for tank--far better than the Shermans.

[polishshooter]

Oh , do you mean the (how Morison aptly refers to them) the "Post-war Alibi Papers" of the German Generals and "Honorable" German Officer's corps?

What do you EXPECT???


I'm talking of the MANY accounts of WARTIME German soldiers (the FEW experienced tankers that were LEFT) who DID envy the American and Allied equipment, and DID complain of the breakdowns, fuel consumption, and DID "towards the end" reminisce about the "Blitzkrieg years" and WISH they had equipment that could still do that, not ONLY the fuel!!!


Haven't YOU read any of the accounts of Germans complaining about "Fuel leakage," "fragile transmissions," "lousy ammo" (OK, the slave labor had something to do with THAT...)the MAYBACH was ALWAYS an issue, they NEVER got that right, always at LEAST "one size" too small for the size of whatever AFV they put it on!)

You tell ME. Would you REALLY rather be on the side with all the otherwise PRISTINE Tigers and Panthers "abandoned" on the side of the road with MINOR breakdowns, or in the column of MOVING M4s driving AROUND them ALWAYS advancing towards WINNING the war???? The PICTURES at the end of the war especially, but ALSO many times at the BEGINNING and MIDDLE as well tell a story. Heck, even the Panzer IIs and IIIs in Africa and Barbarossa had no "maintenance" record to be PROUD of! Hell, the ENTIRE war was an adventure for German Tankers every morning just to see if their stuff would START.

YES you see the OPPOSITE, OCCASIONALLY, but if EVER the Germans are rolling through a column of American, British, or Russian (after Stalingrad) stuff , the Allied stuff was obviously KNOCKED OUT. But The photos of KNOCKED OUT columns of US stuff is MATCHED at BEST, and I would say SURPASSED by many times, of US tanks advancing through columns of KNOCKED OUT German stuff!

And I've read several accounts even RECENTLY about the "interleaved" getting disabled by just MUD, much less FROZEN Mud. I'm SURE that the panzertruppen whose job it was to get up at 3:00 EVERY morning to start and tend the BONFIRE under the Tiger or Panther just so they MIGHT be able to respond to a daybreak attack always wondered why the SHERMANS and T34s, never needed THAT.

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

Oh , do you mean the (how Morison aptly refers to them) the "Post-war Alibi Papers" of the German Generals and "Honorable" German Officer's corps?

No, not those, though I have read them as well. I was referring to accounts I've read by common soldiers who served as tankers during the last year or so of the war. I agree, the stuff published by the officers and high ranking Nazi Party officials is mostly BS. I thought Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich was particularly obscene. Doenitz's Ten Years and Twenty Days was better and more balanced, but even he was trying to justify his actions more than write an accurate historical account.

In more recent years there have been some interviews done of surviving tank crewmen and they have universally said the Tiger, for all its faults, was a far more solid weapon than the Sherman taken overall. Whether it is true or not is debatable, but most of those interviewed blamed the faults more on Germany's failing logistical support system than on the tanks themselves.

[JohnGerald]

I must refer y'all, with greatest respect, to John Mosier's "The Blitzkrieg Myth" in which he provides impeccable data for his conclusion that, except for the T 34, all WW II tanks were poorly engineered. The conclusions he reaches on tactics and the actuality of the battle events are controversial, but thought provoking.

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by JohnGerald

I must refer y'all, with greatest respect, to John Mosier's "The Blitzkrieg Myth" in which he provides impeccable data for his conclusion that, except for the T 34, all WW II tanks were poorly engineered. The conclusions he reaches on tactics and the actuality of the battle events are controversial, but thought provoking.

I definitely must take a look at Mosier's books, John. Thanks for mentioning him on this and other threads. It sounds like he may have some interesting thoughts.

[JohnGerald]

His conclusions are controversial because "accepted" history was written by the Brits and French, he claims, who were trying to whitewash their abysmal political and military decisions. His data, at least insofar as I have the same texts, are valid, but regardless, he makes one think, which is a useful habit, IMHO.

[polishshooter]

Yeah, but you have to BEWARE Historians with an "agenda," does he have any grudge AGAINST the Brits or French that you can recognize?

I'm not sure I buy COMPLETELY the fact that the Histories were written by the British especially to whitewash their war record.

One of the FIRST books I read on WWI in High School was "The Donkeys" which was a study of the FAILURE of the British High Command AND political leadership in World War I, written by a British Historian, that was SCATHING about the lack of British "initiative" and traced through memos and writings of the Gemerals how they just fed British troops into the meat grinders of the Somme and Paschaendale long after it was obvious to anyone that they were going nowhere.

He also did hatchet job on British civilian war planners on many aspects, the main one I remember is the "shell shortage" that directly caused many unnecessary British deaths on the battlefield. I BELIEVE it was written in the 40s or 50s...maybe earlier...but then again probably NOT right after the First war, which would maybe HELP your point, Hhhmmmm.

Thank you for reminding me of it, I think I still have that book around here somewhere, I may have to reread it!

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

Yeah, but you have to BEWARE Historians with an "agenda," does he have any grudge AGAINST the Brits or French that you can recognize?

I entirely agree, Polish. One must look for a possible agenda with any book that profoundly challenges established facts unless there is awfully good evidence to back it up. Revisionist historians abound of late, most of whom are out to make a name for themselves, the truth be damned. I don't know about that guy because I have not yet read his work, but it is well to be cautious.

Ever read The Marble Man by Thomas Lawrence Connelly, Polish? It's a Revisionist view of Robert E. Lee. He had the unmitigated effrontery to attack Marse Robert, the Saint of the South! Actually, it is a pretty well written book, but it is a highly unbalanced and wholly negative interpretation of Lee.