AmmoSgt
Posts: 1002
Joined: 10/21/2000
From: Redstone Arsenal Al
Status: offline
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just to be a little bit perverse ..i must take exception to the statement in part .. first the Tech to build the tanks ..The Germans were ahead by about a full year thru most the war on the technology to make turret rings that could handle the load of both gun and armor ..IIRC it had to do with alloys and ring race hardening and being able to make enought high quality stuff to support the other elements of production .. The US had the M-6 Heavy which I see very little info on and i think that was in '41 and just as surely and the Ordnance Department thought That repeating rifles were a BAD Idea in the Civil War and thought that Machine Guns were wasteful in WW1 .. they were to swift on the uptakeof what we call common wisdom in World War 2 ... but the Germans didn't start out mounting 88's they had 75l 24's!!! 20mm !!!! real short 50mm not really set up for Killing T-34's ...
Experience in making any weapon of war, and finessing a feature, in some subtile way maybe, even an arcane way to the man on the street , to turn it into a powerful advantage , however obscure to the untrained eye , so it could be a war winner only comes with time and Trial and error ( probably something like making and programing a war game )
The Germans had about a Year's lead in that 'X Factor" in Armor and maybe 6 months in Aircraft.. The US had about a 55 Year lead in making aircraft carriers .. and that makes about as much sense as the tank tech lag..except for "what if" situations
The will to exploit very complex technology , which starts with being able to generate usable power , steam /electrical, to machine tool manifacturing, to resourch allcation, to skill of workforce ,to ad infinitum , is what gets the end product on the Battlefield I don't have any references handy but check out the US M-6 heavy tank IIRC 60 tons 4+ inch armor 3" at gun with coaxle 37mm about 5 MG's full traverse Turret and in 1941 ... I think i am real close on those specs .. and some were made .. I haven't a clue how many or how fast they could go or anything else .. so .. it 's not just tech and not just unit experience .. it has a lot to do with what was a ctually at any given battle
I see alot of ratios of how many and what kind of tanks would be at a battle .. what i don't see is, what would be the ratio of Infantry to armor for any Given side,,, most battles would have to be pretty much tankless fights for the germans ( perish the thought, but..) maybe even for the Americans , but other factors come into play .. 251's were somewhere around 16,000 for the whole war all varients ( US made more DUKW's than that, something like 24,000) .. one could ask just as easily why didn't the germans build more halftracks .. my off the wall Guess would be about 20-25 Infantry divisions per tank division for the Germans and 80% of those would be unsupported by mechanized transport horses or walk and pick it up at the BahnHof ... and hundreds of thousands of horses were killed ..I have no Idea how many were used .. The US didn't use horses ..made the descion to be fully mechanized 600,000 2 1/2 ton trucks 400,000 jeeps .. this may have factored into tank production decisions, something like 150,000 halftracks ( check that, i don't have that number handy)
Mr White said it best " The Americans saw the Shermans as a combined arms tank" and it was combined with both quanity and in a good many cases superior quality ..
arty there ! i said it :)
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"For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary periods, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which
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