"The Story of Tanks"

[SuperComrade]

 

It is a curious historical anomaly that the United States, for generations the greatest steel producer on the planet, the nation that invented the airplane and a staggering array of other technological marvels, never managed to design and build a good tank before the M1A1 Abrams of the 1991 Gulf War.

[Priory_of_Sion]

You don't see someone like Glantz writing about the T-34 because he probably knows that there are people who know more on armor than himself and he is likely to make mistakes. 

 

I'm trying to think of a "bad" American vehicle that saw service. Stuart wasn't great and then the M26/46 and M47 weren't stellar but I wouldn't call them bad. The rest seem to be top notch. 

[SuperComrade]

Maybe the M2 Medium

[LostCosmonaut]

The M551, but that's a bit of a special case.

[Belesarius]

I wouldn't rate the M60A2 all that high either.

[LoooSeR]

Somewhere Jeeps_Guns_Tanks screemed "SHERMAAAAAN!!!!" randomly.

[Tied]

 

 

 

[Sturgeon]

This guy is just writing outside his area. He mostly writes about the Revolutionary War. I have no idea whether he's a good RW historian, but he sure as hell shouldn't be writing books about tanks.

[EnsignExpendable]

Stuart wasn't great

 

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Man, I'm going to buy this book so I can give it terrible reviews, what an asshole.

[Walter_Sobchak]

Man, I'm going to buy this book so I can give it terrible reviews, what an asshole.

Holy hell, I bought it and am about a quarter of the way into it.  Its terrible.  I almost wonder if its a parody?  It's like every bad stereotype of US WW2 tanks and Wehraboo wankery all rolled up in a blanket of poor writing and completely false facts.  Lets marvel as just how wrong this paragraph is:

 

Probably no incident in World War II demonstrated the stopping power of a superior tank as graphically as the exploit of Michael Wittmann, the commander of a Tiger tank who encountered a British armored column near Bayeux, France. Attacking alone, Wittmann and his crew knocked out the lead Sherman with his first shot and the last Sherman in the column with his second. Rumbling down the column, he proceeded to destroy nineteen Shermans, fourteen half-tracks, and fourteen Bren gun carriers in five minutes.

[Meplat]

So it sounds like a wehraboo wankbook.

[EnsignExpendable]

Jesus, what? Nearly fifty vehicles in five minutes, that's a shot every 6 seconds, pretty sure that's peak ROF for a Tiger to begin with.

[Khand-e]

You dare question the skill of Superior Teutonic Crewman?!

[Walter_Sobchak]

This paragraph is so wrong it will probably make Jeeps pull out his hair.

 

In May 1940, with war raging in Europe, the entire U.S. Army could muster a mere 464 tanks, and these were parceled out to various infantry divisions. Only after the Nazis had demonstrated the awesome power of the armored division did the Army finally create one. The tanks produced for these divisions ranged from awful to mediocre. The M-3, known as the General Lee, was so badly made that even a near miss from enemy guns would spring rivets from its armor plate, sending them whistling around the interior of the tank like lethal bullets. Its eleven-inch track was too narrow, so it was easily mired by mud. The turret, perched on one side of the body, could not rotate a full 360 degrees, an almost unbelievable deficiency in a tank by that time. Its thirty-seven millimeter gun was a joke. The British improved the M-3 by adding a seventy-five-millimeter gun in a sponson; they named their version the General Grant. It was still quite inferior.

 

Oh, and later he adds that: Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles for the Americans. Wittmann, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war - with 119 victories on the Russian front alone - was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944.

[Sturgeon]

Does anyone have a fork? Reading that made me want to poke my eyeballs out and poach them.

[Meplat]

 

This paragraph is so wrong it will probably make Jeeps pull out his hair.

 

In May 1940, with war raging in Europe, the entire U.S. Army could muster a mere 464 tanks, and these were parceled out to various infantry divisions. Only after the Nazis had demonstrated the awesome power of the armored division did the Army finally create one. The tanks produced for these divisions ranged from awful to mediocre. The M-3, known as the General Lee, was so badly made that even a near miss from enemy guns would spring rivets from its armor plate, sending them whistling around the interior of the tank like lethal bullets. Its eleven-inch track was too narrow, so it was easily mired by mud. The turret, perched on one side of the body, could not rotate a full 360 degrees, an almost unbelievable deficiency in a tank by that time. Its thirty-seven millimeter gun was a joke. The British improved the M-3 by adding a seventy-five-millimeter gun in a sponson; they named their version the General Grant. It was still quite inferior.

 

Oh, and later he adds that: Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles for the Americans. Wittmann, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war - with 119 victories on the Russian front alone - was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944.

 

This has to be a troll, how on earth did this bolus get published?

[Sturgeon]

I'm putting big money on this guy not being a great Revolutionary War historian, either. 8|

[Walter_Sobchak]

This has to be a troll, how on earth did this bolus get published?

Its not a print book, it's a kindle only book.   

[Meplat]

Its not a print book, it's a kindle only book.  Kinda like Chuck Tingle.  

So Kindle /E-Books are the new vanity press?

 

Okay who does the guy list as references, and is "4Chan" in that list?

[Tied]

 

This paragraph is so wrong it will probably make Jeeps pull out his hair.

 

In May 1940, with war raging in Europe, the entire U.S. Army could muster a mere 464 tanks, and these were parceled out to various infantry divisions. Only after the Nazis had demonstrated the awesome power of the armored division did the Army finally create one. The tanks produced for these divisions ranged from awful to mediocre. The M-3, known as the General Lee, was so badly made that even a near miss from enemy guns would spring rivets from its armor plate, sending them whistling around the interior of the tank like lethal bullets. Its eleven-inch track was too narrow, so it was easily mired by mud. The turret, perched on one side of the body, could not rotate a full 360 degrees, an almost unbelievable deficiency in a tank by that time. Its thirty-seven millimeter gun was a joke. The British improved the M-3 by adding a seventy-five-millimeter gun in a sponson; they named their version the General Grant. It was still quite inferior.

 

Oh, and later he adds that: Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles for the Americans. Wittmann, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war - with 119 victories on the Russian front alone - was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944.

 

[EnsignExpendable]

References? The only way you could write something that wrong is if you wrote it completely from memory after sampling the medicine cabinet.

[Khand-e]

 

This paragraph is so wrong it will probably make Jeeps pull out his hair.

 

In May 1940, with war raging in Europe, the entire U.S. Army could muster a mere 464 tanks, and these were parceled out to various infantry divisions. Only after the Nazis had demonstrated the awesome power of the armored division did the Army finally create one. The tanks produced for these divisions ranged from awful to mediocre. The M-3, known as the General Lee, was so badly made that even a near miss from enemy guns would spring rivets from its armor plate, sending them whistling around the interior of the tank like lethal bullets. Its eleven-inch track was too narrow, so it was easily mired by mud. The turret, perched on one side of the body, could not rotate a full 360 degrees, an almost unbelievable deficiency in a tank by that time. Its thirty-seven millimeter gun was a joke. The British improved the M-3 by adding a seventy-five-millimeter gun in a sponson; they named their version the General Grant. It was still quite inferior.

 

Oh, and later he adds that: Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles for the Americans. Wittmann, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war - with 119 victories on the Russian front alone - was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944.

 

 

 

......

 

 

 

[Walter_Sobchak]

Allow me to continue:

 

In the final analysis, tanks could be stopped only by better tanks. Planes could hurt tanks, but air superiority could never be assumed. In the Battle of the Bulge, German tanks struck with ferocious impact in weather that grounded the Allied air force. For the record, General Lesley J. McNair, who trained the American Army that fought in World War II, went to his grave denying this principle. “It is poor economy to use a $ 35,000 tank to destroy another tank when the job can be done by a gun costing a fraction as much,” he said in July 1941.

 

Now, maybe I am a bit too sensitive, but it seems a poor choice to use the phrase "went to his grave" when talking about Lesley McNair.  "Went to his grave" implies he hung on to his beliefs long after everyone else had changed their minds about an issue.  McNair was killed by friendly fire during Operation Cobra in July of 1944, so he never really had much of a chance to look back and ponder tank tactics in the ETO.  

 

 

[Donward]

The British added the 75mm sponson gun, huh?