A different armored doctrine

As the title says a different armor doctrine is developed and Mcnair's tank destroyer doctrine is shelved or thrown out. Instead it's formed around being a step ahead and being better than the competition?

What other alternative doctrines could be used instead?
How might this effect tank development up until present day?
Just how might US Army tanks be like in world war two and beyond?

Ok curve-ball time :) How's about pushing things back a bit? Christie manages to convince the Army, (Patton was a fan after all :) ) that super-fast, lightly armored, (and armed getting a 37mm let alone a 47mm into one of those chassis is... questionable) 'tank' is the way to go and that's what the US enters WWII with. Build a doctrine around that and towed AT guns maybe?

Randy
 
Ok curve-ball time :) How's about pushing things back a bit? Christie manages to convince the Army, (Patton was a fan after all :) ) that super-fast, lightly armored, (and armed getting a 37mm let alone a 47mm into one of those chassis is... questionable) 'tank' is the way to go and that's what the US enters WWII with. Build a doctrine around that and towed AT guns maybe?

Randy

Yes and the US Army will plucked and roasted like game bird in north Africa and in the Far East. An American T-54? A big a very big maybe. The US army disliked the Christie tanks way too vulnerable.
 
Don't forget the Sherman was a pretty good all-round tank, it fired a useful HE round and its gun was perfectly capable of dealing with Panzer IIIs and IV's. It ONLY fails against Tigers and Panthers and even then they were able to out fight them and it wasn't the case of 5 Shermans for 1 Tiger, far from it in fact.

The WAllies were usually somewhat behind the curve. For the Brits it was hamstrung by the slowed pace of development and then re-armament pre-war and doctrinal issues combined with the Invasion Panic. The US had to build its armoured forces from the ground up and had several competing ideas but precisely zero experience with modern tank warfare, their last experience with tank combat being the US army's FT-17s in 1918. Because of this and other factors the UK and US were usually a bit late with what was basically the right tank for the right time.

Had the Cromwell come out into proper service in late 42/early 43 with the Comet entering service in Summer 44 then the British would have had tanks that could challenge their German rivals, and the Comet was easily a match for the Panther. The US dedicated itself to churning out the M4 in huge numbers having evolved from the M2 then the M3 into the M4 which was a good tank, but if they had put it out with skipping the M3 Grant/Lee family then it would have been a world beater.

Also don't forget that tank combat in the West was an entirely different beast to that in the East. There wasn't the big open stretches of largely empty terrain for long range guns to really work their magic, that only happened in North Africa and then it was about defensive and repost style battles. I honestly don't think that a US heavy tank would have made much of a change. The M6 by all accounts wasn't much of an improvement over the Sherman, and had the same gun and later a longer 76mm gun, so its little in the way of improvement.




These are good vids, probably oft linked but still worth watching.
 
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Well according to the vid they developed one in 41 but the US army found it to be too cramped and there was issues with the recoil and optics so they said no thanks to a 76mm gun until 44. So yes they could have put a higher velocity gun on the Sherman from the start if they were willing to compromise on its reliability and habitability but they were not.
 
Stubbornnes and politics played a part in US tank development. Britain had to deal with pre war doctrines, poor supplies and battlefield decisions and long nearly fruitless testing.
 
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