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In OTL Adna Chaffe, the father of the US armoured corps died of Cancer in 1941 at a relatively young age of 56. Patton is one of the most well respected (and for many in the forum the best) commander of the USA forces in WWII for his hole in Algeria and in the battle of the France, especially for the eight army in the battle of the Bulge and his staunch anti communist values, in many ways being one of the "models" of the american officer, jacket, helmet instead of cap and a cigar, just liek Macarthur and his oversized uniform and smoking pipe. But let's say that Adna Chaffe does not develops cancer and remains active, being assigned the roles that Patton had OTL while Patton either serves under Chaffe or got alternative but less important roles. What could have gonne differently?

I can think of two major things, first Chaffe had a longer therm sight for the armed forces, back in 1927 he proposed the mechanization of the american army and many saw the fall of France as the confirmation of his theories. Maybe with him being active and taking part of the planning of the Operations Torch, Husky and the D day we could see more APCs and less tanks for the american side.

The second part is the Shermann tank. There are a lot of myths of the Shermann tank and I'm not a specialist by any mean; however I know that Patton had some influence on the US tank doctrine and he believed that there was not a necessity to use in great quantity heavy tanks like the Pershing, a decent Shermann tank would be enought and that is what he got with the Shermann M4A3. Could Chaffe instead of Patton in the command had another tank Doctrine? Maybe the USA tank forces are more similar to the wehrmacht formations with heavy tanks being escorted by medium tanks, or Chaffe could use the fact that the US wartime produces greatly surpasses the German one and build a army of heavy tanks. The M26 Pershing became the main american fighting tank and many possible wehraboos turn into USaboos instead since they love heavy tanks.

What do you think?
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