Early M26 Pershing

Let's say all the circumstances for the Pershing to be put into action a year or so early occured. What effect would it have on the European theater, if any?
 
Americans get to Berlin, lose casualties unnecessarily, and East Germany still goes to the Russians. America and Britain get a victory parade in Berlin, though.

Outside of Germany, Patton might have made it into Prague, maybe even Southern Poland, but it was already assigned to the Russians anyway. So this TL is OTL, with some more American victory parades for the new tanks to roll in.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Americans get to Berlin, lose casualties unnecessarily, and East Germany still goes to the Russians. America and Britain get a victory parade in Berlin, though.

Outside of Germany, Patton might have made it into Prague, maybe even Southern Poland, but it was already assigned to the Russians anyway. So this TL is OTL, with some more American victory parades for the new tanks to roll in.


OR
D-day is delayed for a year while the U.S. produces a whole new generation of LCT and LST capable of handling the M-26 and the transports for the tanks.

As a result the Soviets take ALL of Germany before following war-time agreements and allowing the Western allies to take their occupation zones only after stripping everything of cash or military value from Germany. This allows the USSR to develop the ICBM 1st, reach the Moon and establish the first space colony by 1972.

Gotta watch out for the logistics. No good having a better tank if you can't land it on the Continent or a tank that is 50% more difficult to kill if you can only produce then 1/3 as fast. That is what the Reich did with almost every new weapon. Didn't work out too well IIRC.​
 
They are deployed in small numbers between the Normandy campaign and crossing of the Rhine, similar to the German Tiger battalions.

(I think the US tank destroyers were also independent battalions.)

There slowness and lack of battle testing isn't going to see them replace the M1 immediately after Overlord. Plus the fact that the WAllies had determined that it was easier to devote the trans-Atlantic shipping space to the Shermans being pumped out of Detroit means that earlier M 26 can't be deployed in large numbers.
 

burmafrd

Banned
What it takes is a decision to replace the Shermans with the Pershing- which should have been done. Now the timeline is a little shaky but that is because the Pentagon nevermade it a priority. By mid to late 1943 it is clear to anyone with a brain that we need to upgrade from the Sherman due to the German advanced tanks. But as usual the Pentagon is out to lunch and misses it.
Had the Pershing been made a priority there is no reason that it could not have been made in sufficient quantities to replace the Sherman in the weeks after the invasion when we started bringing in tanks in large qtys.
Had the decision been made in the middle of 1943 that gives you a full year to get the design and fumigate it and get production going. Our production capeablilty was immense; all we needed to do was retool the plants making the shermans one by one to pershings. By late 1943 we had 10,000 shermans parked in lots in the US waiting to be shipped over seas. We would only need to delay that production a few months in order to replace them with Pershings.
Even accounting for battle losses the actual number needed for the US divisions in France was relatively small. Even by mid Sept the actual tank strength in shermans in France was only about 2000. even having double that number onhand or in the pipeline only gives you 4000.
There was no logistical or technical reason why it could not have been done.
If someone is going to bring up weight I remind them that many shermans had several tons of armor added to them and those came very close to the M26 weight.
 
Actually I think a more likely outcome would be the war dept retooling to build the jumbo shermans or even sending out kits to convert the shermans in the field into the upgunned models. This would have a similar results to sending out large numbers of pershings, but be much more practical.

REally when considering all the other factors going for the western allies, they really don't need a Pershing tank in large numbers, an upgraded sherman would have done the job almost as well when complimented with allied air superiority, better tactics, more reliability, higher top speed(were the jumbo shermans still faster?), and vast numerical superiority.
 
its a waste of resources since the sherman is easy to build. Just improve it. Do what the brits did, put a high velocity 17pndr gun into the sherman so it can knock out the german tanks at reasonable ranges (sherman firefly).
logistics are a huge factor after dday...
think patton's army burned a lot of gas storming through france... imagine trying to refuel massive fleets of pershings. shipping space and tonnage is at a premium, like stalin said quantity has a quality all its own
 

Markus

Banned
D-day is delayed for a year while the U.S. produces a whole new generation of LCT and LST capable of handling the M-26 and the transports for the tanks.

As a result the Soviets take ALL of Germany before following war-time agreements and allowing the Western allies to take their occupation zones only after stripping everything of cash or military value from Germany. This allows the USSR to develop the ICBM 1st, reach the Moon and establish the first space colony by 1972.​

Always with them pessimist waves, CalBear?!? ;)

Let´s see. Can you fit a 76mm or 90mm gun into an M4: Yes, you can!
Even if you don´t, 75mm gun armed M4 will be fine for the initial assault, M26 can be shipped in later using Liberty ships unloaded in captured ports. Where does that get us:

Tanker 1: Tiger, 3 o´clock!
Tanker 2: Gr8! Let´s go kill it!

Not exactly the kind of tiger feaver from OTL. :D

And last but not least, with few Tigers and relatively few Panthers being made the US does not need many M26. Hell, if they put the 76mm M4 and the M36 into production sooner they don´t need an M26 at all.
 
Americans get to Berlin, lose casualties unnecessarily, and East Germany still goes to the Russians. America and Britain get a victory parade in Berlin, though.

Outside of Germany, Patton might have made it into Prague, maybe even Southern Poland, but it was already assigned to the Russians anyway. So this TL is OTL, with some more American victory parades for the new tanks to roll in.

The Soviets will get Berlin first,no matter what. It has massive propaganda value and Stalin will do whatever it takes to take it. Maybe we'll even see some border skirmishes-T-34/85s vs. Pershings?
 
it would go poorly for the pershings

the western armies generally eschewed tank vs tank combat preferring to locate german tanks then call in air and artillary strikes in order to knock them out

whenever there where tank vs tank encounters in the west it generally went well for the germans not due to the tanks themselves but due to their expertise in armored warefare (villers bocage, battle axe take your pick)

imo if the pershing was used at dday and beyond as the main battle tank it would take the allies actually longer to cross the rhine. the pershing needed a longer logistical tail than the sherman and a great many bridges could not hold its weight and as mentioned before it consumes more fuel. the germans never successfully conducted major offensives with the tigers and panthers because they where too big to use anything other than main roads and consumed too much fuel for major advances.

the tigers and panthers where only great in defensive operations because their thick armor and long ranged guns would allow them to knock out allied tanks from more or less static positions without great risk to themselves
 
Gotta watch out for the logistics. No good having a better tank if you can't land it on the Continent or a tank that is 50% more difficult to kill if you can only produce then 1/3 as fast. That is what the Reich did with almost every new weapon. Didn't work out too well IIRC.[/LEFT]

I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to me like the Allies really used Shermans as anti-tank platforms.

After all, they had the strategic bombers hitting the plants making Tiger tanks, the tactical bombers hitting the ones in the field, the artillery shooting some up, and tank destroyers for any survivors.

So why build Pershings?
 
the germans never successfully conducted major offensives with the tigers and panthers because they where too big to use anything other than main roads and consumed too much fuel for major advances.

that's a stretch. when Panthers and igers were introduce in large numbers Germany was on strategis defensive (few exceptions though). Tiger bns were only once used as they were intended, that is bn level, operating as a whole unit, on the offensive, as means to achieve breakthrough. That was in Hungary. Otherwise they were used on the defensive or understrength. hile fuel was a problem mechanical troubles were even bigger problem. i recomend reading "Sledgehammers, trenghts and flaws of Tiger battalions in orld war II" by hristopher Wilbeck for details. He examines cases of employment of Tiger bns and results and you can see that significant part of Tiger losses were due to breakdowns and ack of suitable recovery vehicle. this was far bigger problem then fuel.
 
i wasnt saying they wherent useful weapons systems its just they couldnt conduct the sort of long ranged offensives of 1940-41 or american drive through france
see the blitzkrieg myth by john mosier. tigers where individually superior to allied tanks but to what end, it couldnt advance more than a few dozen miles even on full tank of gas in combat situations. if it had to cross a bridge it would be one of the more fearful moments in a tankers life or even in modest rain in russia it couldnt go off the roads because it would sink in the mud due to the high gross weight. logistically it actually needed its tracks changed just to be transported. the very high weight created strain problems on the engines, transmissions, suspension systems, and everything in between
they would have been better of just copying the t34 like guderian suggested in 1941
 
i wasnt saying they wherent useful weapons systems its just they couldnt conduct the sort of long ranged offensives of 1940-41 or american drive through france
see the blitzkrieg myth by john mosier. tigers where individually superior to allied tanks but to what end, it couldnt advance more than a few dozen miles even on full tank of gas in combat situations. if it had to cross a bridge it would be one of the more fearful moments in a tankers life or even in modest rain in russia it couldnt go off the roads because it would sink in the mud due to the high gross weight. logistically it actually needed its tracks changed just to be transported. the very high weight created strain problems on the engines, transmissions, suspension systems, and everything in between
they would have been better of just copying the t34 like guderian suggested in 1941

true. IMO Germany would be better off by not building Tigers but concentrating on Panthers. Once kinks got ironed out it was a very good achine
 
Let's say all the circumstances for the Pershing to be put into action a year or so early occured. What effect would it have on the European theater, if any?

A lot of what happened after D-Day was political and logistical. However, I predict far lower losses among tank crews due to a) far better armour and b) far better gun. Notice that most allied tank losses weren't due to german tanks, but to german AT and infantery. More armour would be more welcome than a better gun.

Fewer losses would lead to more experienced crews, more daring attacks/probes and less need to transport new tanks (and crews) to the front. The Pershing was actually lighter than the german Panter, so the number of bridges the Pershing could use should be too limited in the number of bridges / roads it could use.

Fewer dead american/british tankers, earlier adaption of "use the best, not the good enough"-mindset and different Hollywood movies after the war. But not much more - the war was more or less over when the Pershing could reach battle. Both IOTL or ITL.
 
Let's say all the circumstances for the Pershing to be put into action a year or so early occured. What effect would it have on the European theater, if any?

1. An understanding and acceptance of the flaw in 1940s US armored doctrine, that tanks in fact do fight other tanks.

2. The knowledge that the PzV was NOT going to be organized into seperate battalions like PZVIs but make up half og the authorized strenght of the Panzer Divisions. From what we had seen that was the common understanding until Normandy.

3. Confirmation that the 76mm was NOT going to be able to handle the frontal armor of the PzVs and PzVIs. Oops, that's what the Ordance folks had been saying and were provided WRONG only after D-Day (and I think COBRA).

4. Solutions to the strategic log issues of getting them to the ETO (shipping, trains/rail, fuel usage, crappy engines etc)

5. Acceptance by the Commanders in the field that they were needed.

Assume all of that and maybe you have enough M26s in England on June 5th to field one battalion of 50-60 to each of the Armored Divisions (16 I think) waiting to come ashore. Infantry Divisions still get M4s (now maybe more then one Bn per division).

If we have them and the Brits don't (no M26s for all the armor attacks around Caen), no change until during/after COBRA. Once the breakout starts, they start to break-down (bad fan belts). Attack slows/stalls earlier due to comnbined breakdowns and greater fuel usage.

Nice for the Bulge Counter-attack, but not many in that AOR along the line on Dec 16th.

Second exploitation across Germany spring of 45, same results as the dash across France, lots of M26s on the side of the raod while M4s charge ahead.

As has nbeen stated before, a better solution is a better armed (90mm) and armored (Jumbo) version of the M4.
 

Blair152

Banned
Let's say all the circumstances for the Pershing to be put into action a year or so early occured. What effect would it have on the European theater, if any?
In Europe, it would have outgunned the Tiger. In the Pacific, it would have outgunned any tank the Imperial Japanese Army had that was still capable of running.
 
In Europe, it would have outgunned the Tiger. In the Pacific, it would have outgunned any tank the Imperial Japanese Army had that was still capable of running.
Hell, the damned Shermans outgunned everything the Imperial Japanese Army had!
 
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