M3 Grant / Sherman Were Not That Bad!

No, its not and I shouldn't have expressed myself that way. I apologize for that. However, after saying that, you remain confused regarding German doctrine and terminology.

Yes that is the correct translation and it is roughly equivalent to the 3" M5 Gun. However, the Pak40 in a Panzer or Jagdpanzer was a KwK40 - Kampfwagenkanone or combat vehicle gun. In the Sturmgeschuetz it was the StuK40 or Sturmkanone or assault gun. All the same guns, different mountings. The same for the 3" M5 Gun. In the M10 GMC it was the 3" M7 Tank Gun. Modified, in the Medium Tank M4, it was the 76mm M1A1 Tank Gun. All the same guns (effectively), different mountings.

The German Panzerjaeger - antitank troops - included all towed and SP guns in divisions and in non-divisional (Heeres) units. Late war, the SP Panzerjaeger became known as Jagdpanzer - the vehicles - but the units were still Panzerjaegers. In the US Army the sole difference was divisional antitank troops were always towed and 57mm or smaller, while everything larger - towed and SP - were non-divisional Tank Destroyers.

Your distinction between Panzerjaeger and Jagdpanzer (Jagdpanther is the name of a Jagdpanzer based on the Panther chassis) is incorrect, which is leading you to a skewed assessment. All Panzerjaeger were mobile, which for the Germans meant they were Schnelltruppen. That simply meant they were motorized (albeit some Schnelltruppen were actually horse cavalry). Some were towed, some were SP, and some were mixed towed and SP.

Tactically, towed German Panzerjaeger were employed exactly the same as towed American divisional AT and non-divisional TD was. Tactically, SP German Panzerjaeger (Jagdpanzer) were employed exactly the same as non-divisional SP TD was.

Technically, it was a call made by George Marshall. [SIZE=12pt]The new antitank doctrine was developed after General Marshall, who was probably heartily tired of bureaucratic bickering between the Infantry, Field Artillery, and Cavalry over who would be in charge, decreed that a “small planning and exploring branch” be established in the G-3 office of the War Department General Staff to solve the problem. On 15 May 1941 the Antitank Planning Staff was established under Lieutenant Colonel Andrew D. Bruce. After experimenting with the new units in the Carolina Maneuvers of October-November 1941, the decision was made to rename them Tank Destroyers and proceed with organizing them as a non-divisional pooled army asset. This was all months before McNair became head of AGF under the Marshall reorganization of the War Department. Bruce based much of his initial thinking on McNair's ideas developed when he was tasked with experimenting with AT doctrine in 1937 and then writing the new doctrine at the C&GSS in 1939. However, Bruce went far beyond McNair's original intent and emphasized "offensive" action, which confused a lot of people, because the TD doctrine was offensive fire action, not closing with the enemy a la infantry and armor.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Anyway, in May 1943, McNair "pushed" what the field commanders appeared to want, which was a heavy towed gun. It did dovetail with McNair's prejudice against SP artillery pieces, which all artillerymen had, and it theoretically reduced manpower requirements because fewer maintenance personnel were required...albeit the towed battalion was larger personnel-wise. Was it a problematic decision? Yes, but it was also the decision desired by field commanders and nobody is recorded as having complained about it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Anyway, I hope you don't mind if I point out your illogical conclusion. You say the "army needed both" [towed and SP AT guns]. McNair's decision gave them it. Where's your beef?[/SIZE]

 

Man, haven't seen that in a while, I think I have a copy squirreled away somewhere. At least poor Davies has been dead for years, so I doubt he'll come after you for copyright violation.

Mind you, I much prefer Lexikon der Wehrmacht.

 

More directly related to the discussion at hand WRT McNair is still Baily's Faint Praise, which is sadly long out of print and very expensive when you can find a copy. It is the best analysis of the complex subject of the interactions between Ordnance, the Armored Force, Army Ground Forces, and Army Service Forces regarding tanks and tank destroyers bar none. He is evenhanded and factual WRT the personalities involved and recognizes just what worked and what didn't and why. Masterful, which is why it is so little known, it simply doesn't fit into the accepted narrative that McNair was a stupid poopy-face, American tanks wouldn't fight tanks, and Tank destroyers were a uniquely stupid American idea that never worked.

 

Actually, quite early in the ETO (Normandy) the TD battalions (towed or not) were attached to divisions and remained part of that division through the entire campaign. One can find exceptions - the Corps might move a TD Battalion temporarily from one Division to another for a particular fight, but largely the practice was to remain in one Division. One wonders whether the death of McNair opened the door for that?

I hate to use Wiki as a source, but the following is largely true. I disagree that towed 3" AT (TD) guns were "never really effective" because they were extremely effective in in any number of defensive engagements. Mortain comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesley_J._McNair

 

I would be hesitant to ascribe everything deemed positive after his death dependent upon his death, and if we brush him with every shortcomming, must we not also give him credit for each success prior to his demise? In that same wiki entry as I recall he was tasked with implementing some courses of action having come from Marshall's desk, yet we are not criticizing Marshall with equal zeal.

Bottom line American military leaders were groping, if not in the dark, at least in murky conditions in trying to fashion a large army to go to war. Like their Anglo allies they made some mistaken assumptions early on about how to fight and win that war, and like their Anglo allies the Tommie and GI payed with their blood to learn from their mistakes.

 

Sorry, but I didn't say a thing about the attachment status of non-divisional battalions and I am unclear how you think that makes a difference? Nor did the death of McNair have doodly-squat to do with it; experience gained in Italy did. I'm beginning to think McNair must have been quite a bogeyman to do all these things.

Yes, Wiki can be problematic. The quality of the authors vary considerably, they are anonymous, and their conclusions are often crafted as absolutes in a subject which is often anything but. As you, and I earlier (La Abbaye Blanche and St. Barthelemy are the two principle engagements of the "Battle of Mortain" where the towed 3" TD were engaged) noted, the 3" was effective sometimes, but its lack of mobility proved more problematic than expected.

 

That is pretty much the common conclusion reached by the US oriented authors of the 15th Army group Military Encyclopedia from the Italian campaign and the Royal Artillery in North West Europe. The 15th Army Group wrote "Occasionally, AT guns were used effectively in initial stages of offensive actions, as assault guns, to penetrate stone houses, reduce pill boxes or bunkers, or to thicken artillery preparations. Most often in offensive action, AT guns were not used, and supporting TDs and tanks were used as assault weapons." by 1945 the British were using a mix of (57mm) 6 Pdr and SP 17 Pdr guns, Many 17 Pdrs detachments became infantrymen. The Guards Armoured Division used 21 Anti tank Regiment as an all arms battle-group.

The encyclopedia had a lot more to report on whether TD and tank battalions should be organic to divisions or attached. They report the findings of a series of commanders conferences reflecting differences of opinion, but, unsurprisingly came down in favour of rejecting organic armour or TD battalion because they were wasted if not an impediment in much Italian terrain.

There is always a tension between the central military authorities and schools and the pragmatic experiences of field commanders. At the start of the war McNair was in a strong position to say what was to happen. As US troops gained expereince and the reputation of field commanders grew, their opinions mattered more, as did the pressure to have a different solution for different theatres.,

 

True enough. I see it as the perennial fight between the high command and the field commanders. You see similar issues on the German side - in every army.

I think the difference, in that time, was the simple distance between Washington and Europe. There was much more of a disconnect between Marshall and his field commanders and say, the British General Staff and their field commanders. It wasn't like any of those field commanders had the opportunity to sit down and discuss anything with Marshall over some whiskey, like a British officer might with members of the General Staff or even Churchill in one fashion or another.

McNair was the man appointed to make such decisions. Any requests, recommendations, etc, were funneled through him. You can see him as a conduit or a closed valve, and most officers held the latter view.

 

Oddly enough, the General Board established by USFET after VE Day came to exactly the opposite conclusion. They eschewed the TD concept entirely, but recommended organic armor - tanks - be incorporated into the infantry division as organic elements both at the divisional level (a tank battalion) and at the regimental level (a tank company replacing AT Company).

 

True, but there were national/ institutional differences in the way that different armies tackled this issue.

The US Army had expanded from a tiny professional core. It had to do things by THE book. There could be no other way. The 100 division Victory Plan Army was optimised to fight the Germans - in North West Europe, the only place where there could be a show down between the Wehrmacht and the fully mobilised US Army. Anything else was a sideshow or a diversion.

The British had a long tradition of sending ill equipped expeditions to some far flung corner of the world and expecting local commanders to find a solution. It was normal to improvise and develop an Indian, African or wherever it was solution. It was normal to disregard direction from those who had not got any sand in their shoes.

 

That's a good observation, but it doesn't really apply to decisions like which ordnance to manufacture back in the home country. I'll just point out that the Brits had quite a few Fireflies by D-Day, but the US had no 76mm Shermans. That shows (to me at least) far better communication between the field and London than the US field had with Washington.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsaQdYmTPtY
At min 04.50 a german Panther crew-member says: "For us, the Sherman was a weak opponent (or easy target). They could shoot at us, we don't care."

I know, these documentary are ridiculous and so on, but this is an opinion of someone who experienced the reality.

Battle of the Bulge was in december 1944 and at that time, the usual Sherman wasn't state of the art anymore. But it didn't matter, there were so much of them and they were reliable.

 

The Brits, as I already noted - you must have missed it - had 109 Sherman 17pdr and the Americans had 113 M4 76mm. The difference was the British elected to use them almost immediately and didn't worry about training issues with them. The Americans did, so withheld issuing them. Furthermore, British issues had begin in early April, while the first available for issue to the American forces were early May, so there was less time. By late August though, there were about 300 Sherman 17pdr with British units and about 250 M4 76mm with American.

There is the not so minor distinction too that "London" was at most a few hundred miles from both the arsenals the Sherman 17pdr were converted in and the units they were issued to. "Washington" OTOH was about 3,700 miles from "London" and the units the 76mm were issued to, and also 1,000 miles or so from where they were manufactured.

More seriously though is the issue of communications and miss-perceptions. There was - at least initially - very little liaison between the theaters of war and the Technical Services with regards to QM and Ordnance equipment. The AFV&W Section was set up by ETOUSA to fulfill such a role in the absence of doctrine for one, but otherwise, much of the technical intelligence and lessons learned were passed through technical channels - Ordnance in the field told Ordnance in CONUS what was needed...from the point of view of an ordnance officer and not necessarily from the point of view of what the guys at the pointy end wanted. This huge planning oversight is highlighted by the activities of the New Weapons Board, which took a traveling roadshow of new stuff to show off to the troops, first in the MTO and then in England from February-March 1944. They then took back afterwards the assessments of the troops for what worked and what didn't, what was wanted and what wasn't. In other words, the Technical Services pushed new ideas forward, based on what they thought was needed, rather than soliciting ideas from the front and then figuring out what was needed.

Much of that began to change in the aftermath of the New Weapons Board show and as the realities of the war in NWE seeped in. The response was good and on certain items very rapid - from the identification of a requirement to the first fielding of the 76mm and 3" HVAP for example, only about six weeks elapsed - but tanks were a different matter.

BTW, none of that was the fault of McNair, it was a fundamental oversight in the organization of the War Department and Army Staff. Rightly, if there is a blame it should be placed on Marshall or his G4.

 

No, he wasn't. McNair was the Commander of Army Ground Forces. He was responsible for the organization and training of all ground combat and combat support forces in CONUS and then preparing them for overseas movement. The various combat arms though were responsible for their own doctrine and requirements and then for testing and approving equipment and arms designed for their requirements. Then, Army Service Forces was responsible for approving (or not) production of a particular item, liaising with the War Production Board to coordinate priorities.

So, Marshall directed the creation of the TD Force in November 1941, which reported to McNair at AGF after AGF was created in March 1942. Much of the TD doctrinal ideas did stem from McNair's AT development 1937-1939, but the TD doctrine was produced by Bruce and his staff. The design of the GMC was the result of requirements promulgated by the TD Force, approved for test and development by the Ordnance Committee (with representatives of every Arm and Service participating), then tested by Ordnance, service tested by the TD Board, and then if accepted, presented to the ASF for approval for production.

Yes, different offices could nonconcur anywhere along the chain, which could slow things down as justifications went back and forth, but usually for good reasons. The classic - and classically misunderstood example - is McNair's nonconcurrence with Ordnance's request for approval for production of 500 T26E1 tanks...in September 1943, before plans for them were even completed, five months before the first pilot was completed, and eight months before engineering and service tests were completed, which showed it wasn't ready for combat, requiring modifications, which meant the first production examples were available 14 months later.

 

It does indirectly.

It was far easier for the British innovate with special equipment or even organisations because of the culture of local improvisation. It was easier for the British to implement the Firefly quickly because they were quite used to the idea that it did not matter how the rest of the army did it. The British added a range of engineering AFVs and improvised an assault gun brigade for D Day from obsolescent tanks crewed by spare Royal Marine detachments and Gunner and armoured corps replacements. They supported an alphabet soup of private armies.

The US was that bit more centralized and bureaucratic and it had to be that way for the reasons I mentioned. The US army system was streamlined to put units into the field to do things by the book. E.g. oit would have been hard for the US Army to have adopted Hobart's funnies to support the seaborne landings on D Day. Without commitment from the centre it would not have been easy to maintain a caravan of vehicles that weren't in the system. Where would the spare parts come from? Who would train the mechanics, drivers and gunners?

The US wasn't that far behind in deploying the 76mm M4. One issue which delayed it was that the 76mm gun had a problematic development, while the 17 Pdr was readily and enthusiastically accepted by the British Army. The 76mm gun was associated ammunition problems and underwhelmed. By contrast the 17 Pdr was seen as the solution to the Tiger 's debut was at the Battle of Medenine where the German attack was broken up by anti-tank guns.

It is also worth noting that the British deployed more 17pdrs than just on the firefly. The British up-gunned as many of their M10 SP anti tank guns as they could with the 17 Pdr.

 

Note that Devers, the head of Army Ordnance, had to go over McNair's head to get the Pershing kick-started. There were also delays and obfuscation by McNair to get the 76 into production. The Brit Firefly was kind of a sequel to all of that - their Sherman's were being retro-fitted with the rather awkward 17 pounder with many problems. It was an ungainly gun to stuff into a Sherman turret; awkward to load, awkward for the crew to maneuver around, but the necessity was there so they didn't wait for the US to get moving. They improvised and overcame.

Really though, it was an old school vs new school clash. You had the McNair school who thought of armor as part of the infantry and a new school who saw armor in the same way the Germans employed it - the breakthrough element supported by infantry.

 

I'll take your word on that. Certainly the British were more innovative than the US. They also had the advantage of being longer in the war. Those who solved problems had been given greater authority and those who couldn't keep up were flying a desk in the quartermaster corps. This didn't begin to happen in the greater US forces until Normandy. That may be a factor in the bureaucracy you mentioned - the officers were still unproven and thus not trusted. Better to do it by the book.

 

Perhaps I am mistaken, but the 'greater innovation' demonstrated by Britain stemmed from a need to get the most out of what was available whereas the US could 'build' itself out of any shortcomings perceived.

Excellent discourse Gent's well done!

 

Sorry, but no, Devers was not "head of Army Ordnance", he was the second Commander of the Armored Force until May 1943 when he replaced the Commander of ETOUSA, LTG Andrews who had been killed in a plane crash in Iceland. Devers was CG ETOUSA until December 1943 when Ike came in, whereupon he moved to 15th AG as assistant CG and then to 6th Army Group as CG. After the war, before he retired, he was CG AGF. He requested 250 Medium Tanks T26 as "assault tanks" for the invasion in September 1943, which sparked Barnes attempt to get 500 authorized, which is what McNair nonconcurred on. The caveats continue to apply though. THe T26 wasn't even finished as production drawings in September, it was first completed at the end of January as a pilot (the first of 40), but wasn't in production until November 1944. When Devers moved to the MTO, Ike was queried whether he wished to continue the request for 250, which he did. Marshall then entered the fray and order the production for 250 be confirmed, which meant zero since he also told Ike then it would be at least nine months before that production could begin. The whoe McNair, "kick-started" business is irrelevent.

Nor did McNair "delay" or "obfuscate" the 76mm. There is an interesting conversation between Devers and Barnes regarding it, which shows some of the confusion. THe "delay" was because Devers and the Armored Board hated the initial M4A1 (76mm) design and passed on it - McNair had nothing to do with that. However, while the new design, using the T23 turret was developed to solve the problems the Armored Force had with it, the first production 76mm were snapped up by the TD Command for the M18 GMC...early bird and all that when production priorities exist.

The Sherman 17pdr (it was never a "Firefly" officially, that codeword was for an entire series of vehicle developments involving the 17pdr and other weapons) development began in mid 1943 as a fall-back in case the Comet and Challenger were failures or delayed, which was a good thing, since they were. So it was simultaneous with the US Army Ordnance development of the final 76mm-armed Medium Tank M4 with the T23 Turret.

McNair NEVER thought of the "armor as part of the infantry". Rather, he advocated for the Seperate Tank Battalion as support for the Infantry Division, ALONG WITH the Armored Division for breakthrough and exploitation. However, if you can provide some proof for the opposite POV I'd be interested.

 

A couple of more or less pedantic points (who me pedantic?)

Of course Britisj improvisations in some case weren't British...much of the development of the AVRE was due to a Canadian. And the improvisations sometimes nearly went off the rails...the Royal Marine Support Groups nearly became LCT-based coastal monitors because the "obsolescent tanks" originally were going to be chained in place without engines...then some Pommie suggested maybe leaving the engines in them might be a good idea.

The 76mm Gun development wasn't problematic, it was very straightforward, and quite a neat design. American Ordnance design capabilities WRT guns was just fine (albeit conservative) but their experience in putting the guns into tanks was very limited. The result was the first foray with putting the 76mm into the Medium Tank M4 was a failure after two tries fitting it into the standard turret. It took fitting the modified T23 Turret onto it to make the thing work. The 3" and 76mm were also believed to be solutions to heavier tanks like the Tiger and Panther and development began in the same time frame as the 17pdr, but it was the propellant and projectile that proved problematic, until the wartime experience directed development of the solution, which was fielded just in time for the end of the war.