All-In [29889]

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Military Pron - Tank Playas

Aug 25, 2021, 4:08 AM

The last poast covered the primary players in the WWI tank game, the British and the French. But by WW2 that had changed. The French got knocked out early, the British used a lot of American tanks, and countries like Japan and Italy...well, you already know what Churchill said about Italy.

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Here’s some more wisdom

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Ok Winston, just for you!

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So the new boys in town, and the only countries with sufficient production capacity to be playas, were Germany, the US, and Russia. And that’s who we’ll focus on.

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Although there were hundreds of different types of tanks that made it to combat, they were nearly all based on just a few chassis. Like, 2 for America, 2 for Russia, and 6 for Germany.

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No really, it’s true. Read on.

Over in America, Patton and the cavalry arm of the army had their design loophole, the “Combat Car”, and they made the most of it.

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It’s not a tank, GD it! It’s a car. A Combat Car.

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A Combat Car?

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Which brings us to our S.C. state connection. In 1940 the US had squat as far as tanks go. Two decades of neglect left us with about 20 so-so tanks, and a few hundred crappy tanks that were at best WWI caliber. By contrast, Russia had about 20,000 semi-modern tanks.

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Patton didn’t think too much of the Russians, saying “I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of a #####, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”

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Say What?

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But the writing was on the wall, and we were headed towards war, with Russia as our "ally". So Lesley McNair (you might remember him) started getting us as prepared as possible, as quickly as possible.

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Tids were inspirational back then, too

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But beyond jigglynormous tatas, army training included the Tennessee Maneuvers, the Louisiana Maneuvers, and the Carolina Maneuvers. All large scale mock battles to prepare our troops and test our arms. The Carolina Maneuvers reached from Charlotte to Cheraw, and Patton himself led his division in SC, even capturing the “enemy” commander in the fight. How’s that for an S.C. connection? Patton not only slept here, he drove his tanks here.

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The US Army, fighting fake Germans, and chiggers, in the S.C. pine forests

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Patton commanded the 2nd Armored Division, shown as 2AD, between Chesterfield and Cheraw.

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And all that training was good timing by McNair, too. Just 4 days after the Carolina Maneuvers concluded, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

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Goodbye, Isolationism

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But back to that loophole and our “Combat Cars”. The M1 and M2 were our first real tanks we didn’t buy from the French, and we based them on a British Vickers design of all things.

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Here’s the Vickers, a good little tank and an inspiration for many other tanks.

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Here’s our M1, with a couple of machine guns. Look oddly similar?

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And our M2, with machine guns in 2 turrets. The troops called this model the “Mae West”

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I wonder why?

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Then we improved it to the M2 to an M2A4, which actually had a gun. A tiny 37mm, but a gun nevertheless.

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But all those were training tanks that never saw combat.

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The Russians borrowed the same Vickers design we did and used it to develop their own T-26. See the resemblance? The T-26 was a nice little tank. Its 45mm gun was larger than most any other tank had at the time.

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But its failing, like it was for most nation's tanks, was the lack of a radio. The Germans didn’t defeat half of Europe in 1939-1942 with better tanks, they did it with lesser tanks, but superior doctrine and command control.

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Traffic control. It’s a big deal. In rush hour, or in war.

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Just like radar gave England the edge in the Battle of Britain by allowing the Brits to always be at the right place st the right time, so to the radio gave the Germans that edge on the ground.

Having a radio or not is like a football game where one team can talk to each other and the other team can’t talk to each other. It leads to lop-sided results.

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The most important German tank on the field of battle...the Command Vehicle. Radio Central. That goofy cage around it is the antenna.

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The Poles used the British Vickers as the basis for their 7TP (7 ton, Polish) too. A good idea, or design, gets around.

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Our next fully American tank was the M3, our first combat ready tank. By this time Europe was at war and all the silly gyrations over “tank” vs. “combat car” went out the window.

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The US Army was back in the tank business.

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The M3 Light Tank was a really good one for its time, and the British loved it so much they used it in the desert against Rommel. The Brits called our version the M3 Stuart (Like J.E.B. Stuart). They called their version the M5 Honey, like, you sweet thing, you)

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As odd as it seems, it was the British who named all our tanks after Civil War personalities. Officially, they were simply the M-series to the US Gov’t.

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J.E.B. Stuart, the man. Look at that plumed hat. Yeah! C’mon!

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Stuart, the tank

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But as good as the Stuart/Honey was for a late 30’s inter-war tank, it was no match for Germany’s third and fourth generation tanks. We were always one step behind the bad guys.

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The first generation German Mark I tank that beat Poland

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The second generation German Mark II tank that beat France and the Low Countries; not with size, firepower, or armor, but with speed and skill. Punch a hole in the line, race through.

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The German Mark III tank that almost beat Russia, and was kicking British axx in the desert.

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In the desert, an 37mm American gun on the M3 Stuart/Honey was no match for the newer 50mm German gun. But the Germans didn’t have an answer for the British Matilda II either, till they pointed an anti-aircraft gun down instead of up. Resourceful.

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The Matilda II – A mobile Rock of Gibraltar. And about as fast. 3 inches of armor (that’s as long as your index finger)

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This gun could kill anything that moved from miles away. And there’s not much to hide behind in the desert. The much feared 88mm. And rightly so. That sucker could punch a hole through any tank, right up till the end of the war in 1945.

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So the Brits were in trouble in the desert and sent us the word that they needed better tanks. Fortunately we had a chassis already designed, called the M3 Medium tank. Why? When we had an M3 Light tank? I don’t know. Just a love of confusion I guess.

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So you have the Light Tank, M3(M5), and the Medium Tank, M3. But besides the naming confusion, the real problem was that we didn’t have a turret designed for a bigger gun yet. So, you end up with this Frankenstein.

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We just slapped a big 75mm gun on the side, and put our little 37mm gun in a turret on top. Clunky, but it worked, as long as you could point your big gun forward. We liked our radios in the turret, and the Brits called those the M3 Lee.

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The Brits liked their radios in a box outside the turret so their crew had a little more room. Plus, their turrets were a little more spacious. They called that the M3 Grant.

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In the end, the Brits decided they needed everything they could buy, so they took Lees and Grants, and anything else we would give, lease, or sell to them.

Learning from all those lessons in the desert, by the time we hit the beaches in Normandy, we had our newest, best tanks designed. The M4 Sherman, which was really the M3 Medium chassis with a spiffy 75mm gun in a turret. That was even bigger than the German’s 50mm gun. Take that you lousy Hun!

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So that’s it for 90% of American tanks in the war. The M3/M5 Light Tank, and the M3/M4 Medium Tank. Two Chassis.

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But the Germans had been working hard too. Not only did they have their Mark IV tanks outfitted with 75mm guns, they also had Mark V tanks with extra long, and extra deadly 75mm guns, and a Mark VI tank with that killer 88mm gun. Bad news for us.

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A German Mark IV

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A German Mark V. The famous “Panther” panzer. A great design, stolen in part from their lessons fighting the Russians.

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Just like we stole camo, helmets, and assault rifles from the Germans, the Germans stole tank designs from the Russians. This is the famous T-34, the tank that saved Russia. See the resemblance to the Panther? The T-34 and the KV chassis were the backbone of the Soviet Army. Two chassis.

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A German Mark VI tank, which had actually been in development for years and preceded the Mark V. It was known as the “Tiger”. Very famous, and very deadly.

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Professor Porsche had a prototype Tiger tank too, but his design lost out to the Henschel version above.

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He did Ok with car designs too

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And finally the Mark VI Tiger’s bigger brother, the Mark VIB King Tiger. With an extra long, and extra deadly 88mm gun.

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Technically the Tiger and King Tiger tanks were heavy tanks, the Marks III-V were medium, and the Marks I-II were light, but none of that matters when you are getting shot at.

And that’s it for German designs. Six chassis, Mk I – Mk VI.

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But our immediate problem when we hit the beaches of North Africa, Italy, and France was that the M4 Sherman was a fast exploitation tank, and not a front line buster. Both we and the Germans, and eventually even the Russians, used aircraft and artillery, instead of heavy tanks, to break through the enemy front.

So we didn’t even HAVE a heavy tank till 1945. That sugged.

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German Ju-87 Stuka Dive-Bomber.

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German Artillery

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The Russian God of War – Bigger Artillery

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American Firepower – the 155mm Long Tom

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Both the Tiger and King Tiger were line holders, not fast exploiters. By the time they were in action Germany was on the defensive. They were both very slow, and heavy as he77, and would crush almost any small bridge they tried to cross, but they were stand-off killers.

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The Tiger II. Very impressive looking, and quite deadly. Great for propaganda photo ops too.

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Just park them in the bocage or on a hill, and let them do their dirty work. So, kind of a mismatch for our little M4 Sherman. Luckily, we had a lot more tanks than they did, and once we were on the loose running across France we had a distinct advantage.

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A Tiger I, left and an M4 Sherman, right. I know which one I’d rather be in, one-on-one.

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So those are the basic tank models for the European combatants in WW2. Two American chassis, two Soviet chassis, and six German Chassis...and a fuqton of variants and spin-offs.

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German panzer development, from the tiny Mark I to the whopper Mark VI.

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American Tank Development. If you discount the pre-war M1, M2, and the M3(M5)s we sent to the British, our chart looks like this.

Pretty simple. We used M3’s in the desert with the Brits, and M4’s in Europe. How’s that for streamlining and focus? Henry Ford would be proud. You can have any type of tank you want, as long as it’s an M4 Sherman. We built 68,000 medium tanks. 50,000 of them were Shermans.
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The Russian tree is even simpler. If you take away their pre-war designs and a few late-war heavy tanks, their tree looks like this.

The ubiquitous T-34. Savior of Russia. Plus a sprinkling of KV’s.

Talk about streamlined. The Russians built almost 65,000 medium tanks during the war. 64,500 were T-34s.
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Next time we’ll cover other tracked stuff, like tank destroyers, assault guns, and motorized artillery. All the same chassis, and all related to the tank, but not quite tanks themselves.

Then we’ll look under the hood. That’s where it gets really fun. How do you build these suckers?

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……….Thanks to all for reading!

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Military Pron - Tank Playas

That last picture got me feeling some type of way.***

Another good installment!

That was a much better use of time than what I’m

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