Myths Of American Armor With Nicholas Moran

Yes sir. You were quite clear that you were "cherry picking" the rifle ranks.

From the video...

"if you drill down, the 4thID had a 700% casualty rate in their rifle ranks. Tha...The entire division killed 7 times over for infantrymen."

Sorry, but that is pretty much stating that the 4th ID lost, through KIA, the division's strength seven times over.

Meanwhile, the 4thID suffered about 22,225 combat casualties(some 5,000 KIA & DOW), and 35,545 total(battle & non-battle) casualties. Even going by the 4thID's total casualties of 35,545 that is still only 2.52 times the entire division and nowhere near your claimed seven times...Let alone being the entire division "killed" seven times over.


This is what my post was pertaining to.

 

I noticed it in the film but I have to say when looked at in the light of the explaination above it can be seen as correct. The problem is loose wording. The 'riflemen/Infantrymen' and '700%/7 times over' wording leaves room for challenge.
I have years of experiencing dealing with challenges over semantics!

 

As I read back, "killed" is a misstatement, and should be casualties, I'll annotate the video. The joys of speaking off-script. But the rifle ranks of 4th ID were certainly the highest rate of casualty I've seen of any job or organization in the US military.

 

Yes, the 4th ID had the highest percentage(252%) of total casualties in the ETO, followed closely by the 9th ID with 240%. Rounding out the top 5 were the 1st, 29th, and 3rd...Each one having suffered over 200% total casualties.

 

By the way, welcome to the forum. I really enjoy your work.

 

Thank you for the correction. I had already assumed that you really meant overall casualties, but just got swept along in the flow of your spiel. I used to teach and sometimes I did the same thing.

Thanks very much for joining, I liked the video and I am impressed by the material you have on your website. You have a reference there to a 75mm heat round M66 being tried against a Panther in the July 1944 Isigny tests. Am I correct in believing that the M66 you refer to was the same round developed for the 75mm howitzer? I had wondered if that round would chamber in an M3 75mm gun, and apparently it would indeed. It's disappointing to hear that it didn't add much against the Panther's glacis. The question of the M66 was discussed by me on another board. There's a reference there to Gordon L. Rottman as well. http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/44148-75mm-howitzer-ammoheat-for-sherman-tanks/

 

NEWS at 11:00
This just in- A New Heavy Hitter In Town:

MrT accuses The Chieftan of "cherry picking", just before the weigh in.

Back to regular programming.

 

dp

 

I have notced a tendency for Zaloga to accept the given that UK tank & crew losses were higher than the USA and I believe this latest film clip is also of that opinion-the higher Commonwealth crew casualties being due to the lack of helmets. The quoted US tank crew loss per tank is rather lower than the tables I have seen.

OR0-T-117 Table XX for US 1st Army used a sample of 274 medium tanks and gave a 50% US casualty rate. 171 KIA and 466 WIA.
The UK sampling from the same source gives the UK a lower average casualty rate of 36%

The Sherman table used on YouTube to show higher UK caualties is taken from WO-205-1165 (Table 10 page 26) and it uses 3 types of casualty. Killed, wounded and burnt. It states that where a man has been both burnt and wounded he appears in each category.

Clearly the 'evidence' is patchy and can only give us an estimate but that aside it proves that the Ronson/high crew losses is indeed bunk.

I find the ronsons myth alive and well and in the majority on gamer forums. This is a random quote from a current gamer forum thread where it is being hinted that the Sherman loss record has had 5000 knocked out tanks erased:


As we get told that Allies lost so few tanks, how can it be that US can't keep up the steady stream of new tanks? That doesn't fit at all in "how it is allways told it was". And when you go and try to seach for information where all that 49k M4's went., you might find a gap about 5k+10k M4's wich seem missing somehow.

He then says on other topics:


How often have I found by now that "TheChieftain Hatch" came to the same conclusions like me!

 

I'll take another look, but as I recall for whatever reason the casualty figure rate was only calculated for tanks which actually suffered a casualty. Tanks KO'd without casualty weren't in the figures, so I added them back in, and deleted the tanks which had no known figure for casualties.

If a man was both burned and wounded, they were split between the two columns in halves, not counted twice. This explains the '1/2' figures in the table, you'll note that the 'total casualties' was a tally of killed, wounded and burned. This also matches with the much clearer description of tabulation found under Table 11.

 

Cooper didn't get the full picture. As CO of a maintanance unit he was where all damaged tanks went, so his war experience was a never ending stream of damaged M4. Had he been in an other army he'd seen lots of damaged T-34, Cromwells or Panthers.

Besides, the M4 was never meant to be immune to 75mm high velocity guns, so one can't fault the tank for not being immune.

 

i can only watch long vids during my "non-premium" hours (or whatever they call it) so as not to exceed my bandwidth for the month. So, I FINALLY sat down this morning and watched the video. Really excellent!

 

"The first tanks shipped to the Soviet Union in 1941-42 were the M3A1 General Lee and the M3A5 General Grant, equipped with gasoline-powered engines. Stalin complained openly to Roosevelt about these early American tanks in his personal correspondence, writing, "U.S. tanks catch fire very easily when hit from behind or from the side."

Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the ussr and the Presidents of the usa and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-194S (Moscow:Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957)

 

The fires were caused mainly by ammunition ignition and thus the soviet 'experts' were barking up the wrong tree!

 

The Stalin 'quote' in full:


July 1942.


I consider it my duty to warn you that, according to our experts
at the front, U.S. tanks catch fire very easily when hit from
behind or from the side by anti-tank rifle bullets. The reason is
that the high grade gasoline used forms inside the tank a thick
layer of highly inflammable fumes. German tanks also use gasoline,
but of low grade which yields smaller quantities of fumes
hence, they are more fireproof. Our experts think that the diesel
makes the best tank motor.


On this date the UK had not even received its frst Shermans.

http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/11/11/soviet-opinion-on-lend-lease-us-tanks/

January 1943


on the question of 1943 delivery of American tanks I report:

1. In 1942, we recieved two types of tanks from America: M3 Light and M3 Medium. Apart from that, 26 tanks M4A2 (medium type tanks) made it to the USSR with convoy 19.
2. In combat, a number of major issues appear on tanks M3 Light and M3 Medium, reducing significantly their combat quality.
3. The main issues are the following:

a) the tanks start burning easily when penetrated by shells
b.) large dimensions with significant number of vertical armor plates make these tanks easily damaged from enemy anti-tank artillery fire of even very small calibers
c) little durability of the aircraft-type engines, installed into tanks
d) it’s impossible to shoot the sponson-mounted 75mm howitzer of M3 Medium tank, when the tank is in hulldown position, as the howitzer is located on ground level. It is also impossible to shoot two frontal machineguns that way for the same reason.

These issues of American tanks were reported to you in July 1942. Based on this I consider it pointless to buy M3 Light and M3 Medium in America further. Instead of them we should buy the M4A2 tanks in the same numbers:

 

Well, from 1943 on, every german tank has a 75mm high velocity gun.

I'm not so sure if Patton had no influence in tank production and design. On the german side, Guderian told, what was needed, and it was done, if possible.
The Mk III was fitted with a 50mm gun or the Mk IV re-entered production in 1944.

 

Correct, the Stalin letter is just the only actual mention of the myth I knew was cited, though I'm sure there are others.

 

Interesting that the Soviets found the US Engines to lack durability but pretty much every one else seamed very happy with them. Was this just a guess by his "experts" or was something else going on?

 

Where the Wright radials detuned to use lower octane fuel when they were used in tanks? If not, maybe the Soviets didn't have ave gas for them which lead to problems. I thought the ones that went to Russia got mostly GMC diesels anyway