Lesley McNair either dead or retired by WWII

so as many people know, the Sherman tank was the main tank of the US army during WWII, and what not quite as many know is that the US army had a tank that was comparable to heavier German tanks of the time in the M26 Pershing tank. And what even fewer but still quite a few people know is that the Pershing tank was held back in developement so that the Sherman could be more widely manufactured, and that this was a result of US doctrine which favored using anti-tank guns and tank destroyers to fight tanks rather than other tanks, which was the strategy of one General Lesley J. McNair who was GHQ chief of staff and the commander of Army Ground Forces.

Now what would have happened if Mr. McNair had been killed in WWI, died of Spanish Flu, or maybe just decided to go into civilian life before WWII? Could you see large numbers of Pershing tanks facing off against German Tigers and Panthers in France and Western Germany? Or was the war department dead set on sending american soldiers to fight on unequal terms against Wermacht tankers?
 

burmafrd

Banned
The wizards in the Pentagon figured the Sherman was good enough and that trying to upgrade to the pershing was something that would cause hold ups in other programs and was not important enough to do so.
It was thought- and correctly so- that we would over whelm the German tanks with numbers and our air support. Of course that rather cold calculation also doomed thousands of US and allied soldiers to very bad deaths in burning Shermans.
 
I was under the impression that the pershing was held up due to the "counter-blitz" strategy devised by McNair to use tank killers to fight tanks rather than tanks themselves, also I tend to think that if whoever would have his job instead favored the pershing, it would have been developed earlier.
 

burmafrd

Banned
To this day its not really known how much McNair had to do with that decision. However it is known that no combat veterans had any real input into the decision. that by itself is enough to brand all those involved with a large red hot poker!!
 
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