M-10 Wildcat?

I haven't checked properly, but weren't both M10 & A1 manual traverse? (Maybe power fitted to 17pdr British jobbies?)



Though it's nice to speculate on up-armouring (or top-armouring) M10s, If you stroll around the technical manuals' illustrations and compare them to M4 ones, it quickly becomes reasonably obvious despite external similarities that the M10 is a rather plainer beast than a fully formed tank. All about getting that substantial gun into a useful spot.
Probably quite important to not try too hard to mentally turn them into 'weakly protected tanks' - they're artillery pieces that happen to have built in mobility and a bit of protection.
One of the reasons I've always tried to stick to the 'SPATG' terminology, as I think it more useful/precise, and creates less confusion than 'TD'.

 

yes manual traverse, but it looks like it was pretty easy to do. Video says it had side periscopes?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXaypTAjsec

 

Easy does not mean fast.

Periscopes? Does this surprise you? Few people want to stick their heads over the armor when being shot at.

 

side periscopes or 90 degree turning ones?

 

I am pretty sure the British 17 pdr M10s were manual traverse as they were converted from 3" armed M10s by replacing the gun and recoil system.

That distinction was made at the time, and the training and procedures were very different. For example, the commanders of British SP Anti Tank gun units did not command from a gun, but either on foot or from a scout car. This encouraged a different tactics with a lot more sneaking about. E.g. the detachment which KO an otherwise well sited panther by firing through a thick Norman hedgerow at an invisible target.

However, in battle the detachments often found themselves in positions where they were being expected to fight in then same way as tanks. The first M10 knocked out in Normandy by a tank was in the duel on the afternoon of D-Day between the Staffordshire Yeomanry's M4s and 22 Panzer Regiments Mk IVs.

One M10 no 1 found himself on the start line with the infantry and no supporting armour in an attack on a Norman village. At H Hour he could not quote doctrine and refuse the request to support the infantry, and acted as a close support tank blasting houses.

One the Italian front the M10 was used far more as an assault gun and at least one report claimed TDs were more use than the US infantry regimental cannon companies.

 

I think merely a reference to sighting periscopes beside the gun.
One side long range, the other 'open' or 'reflex' for short range work.

 

Notice the light colored rectangle above the loaders head? That is the top of one of the turret periscopes. They were the same as mounted in tanks.

 

All that adds weight. Weight increases ground pressure and requires more motive power, which means more powerful and larger, heavier engines, which adds weight, which...

See the problem? It is the conundrum all armored vehicle designers face.

While fitting the 3" Gun into the Medium Tank M4 proved more problematic than first imagined, the real problem for US tank designers in World War II was the lack of powerful, compact, lightweight engines to power their designs with. Add to that the engines they originally chose, the de-rated aircraft radials produced by Wright and Continental, were prioritized to Air Corps use. On top of that, there was zero dollars to spend prewar on specialty engine development and wartime spending did not result in anything better than the Ford GAA until after the war ended.

The Ford GAA was the preferred Army engine for tanks, but there were never enough of them, and they were really only powerful enough for the 35-ton late war Sherman. When put in the T26 "Pershing" they were under-powered and unreliable.

 

I checked with my CMBN game and it positively has one looking off to the side
http://picturehost.eu/uploads/92322b4cd1dbc5b11a11bc6bb26a6893_use.png clearer pic

 

That is a screen shot from a game. There were no corner-mounted vision periscopes such as that on the M18. The periscopes in the driver and co-driver hatch rotated for visibility to the side.

 

Does the screen shot also show nuts/bolts holding the armour in place? lol...Someone needs to have a talk with those game designers.

 

The armor was welded on. However the TD designers were unsure if additional armor would be needed. So they installed those nuts and bolts to add additional armor plates. https://youtu.be/oudWxid-Dms?t=8m36s

 

we are not talking about the m18

 

A US propaganda film on the M10 said it was nicknamed the "little beauty" and that was from mid-1943.

 

Ah, of course. In that case, yes, the M10 and M10A1 had a corner mounted periscope on the driver's side. It was awkward to use and did not provide much additional visibility.

 

Great discussion! I think what often gets lost in the discussions about US tank destroyers and their doctrine is that the German threat when the doctrine was formulated was not the threat they would meet when they were deployed.
In the early war the panzer force was rampaging with lightning speed across Europe, Russia, and the middle East. If this has still been the case when US forces entered the conflict then the TD force would have had the most effective vehicles in the world at combating it.
It turned out that by the time US forces got to North Africa the Germans had lost the initiative and enormous German armored offensives were, for the most part, a thing of the past.
The tank destroyers, being a part of the artillery arm, had by this time a bureaucracy of its own. Not to mention some fine vehicles and excellent crews. The US army was going to find a way to integrate them. The final result was the tank, infantry, tank destroyer team which was ultimately pretty successful.

 

In the prewar years the US military tended to emphasize the defensive capability of it's role and weapons as well (marketing B-17s as anti ship weapons for instance). The TD doctrine was a pretty decent defensive doctrine especially if you have ground you are willing to give up.

 

Sorry, but this is a misconception shared by many. The Tank Destroyer Command was NOT a part of the "artillery arm". And it was partly because of the wrangling between the Infantry and Artillery over control of the antitank mission that Marshall directed its creation as a separate command. In that sense, it was similar to his decision regarding control of tanks in the Army - both Infantry and Cavalry were wrangling for control without actually facilitating doctrinal growth on the issue, so Marshall directed the creation of the Armored Force separate from both branches.