What if the US build more M-10, M-18's , and M-36 then M-4 tanks

So if the US had build Tank Destroyer's instead of Tank's in WWII How would that of changed the War .
M-18's of "A" Company, 612th Tank Destroyer battalion in1944.

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Hmm. So, this would imply an even stronger emphasis on the idea that tanks are there to support the infantry, while tank destroyers take out enemy tanks?

Well... the US Army would be in for an even nastier shock when they run into PzIVs and Panthers. Other than that - being no military expert - I don't know.
 
Hmm. So, this would imply an even stronger emphasis on the idea that tanks are there to support the infantry, while tank destroyers take out enemy tanks?

Well... the US Army would be in for an even nastier shock when they run into PzIVs and Panthers. Other than that - being no military expert - I don't know.

Why would they be shocked the M-10 could take out the PzIV and Panther
and the M-18 could run around them and kill them . The M-36 could take out the Tiger with its 90 mm Gun .
 
The largest problem with the M-36 is that it wont be available until late 1944. So until then M-10 and M-18s. Hopefully someone solves the problem of the roof, which i think would be the primary reason that they would be shocked. Im seriously thinking right now why they didnt think that it wouldent make the tank hunter vulnerable.

Now if they could accelerate production, development and deployment of the M-36 then the allies will be able to fight on even terms, able to take out any German tank (forget tanks, pretty much anything Germany had) from a distance, decent protection, a roof (well sometimes), easy to produce and deploy to overwhelm with numbers.

Well nearly anything would be better than the Sherman, honestly the TDs were more like tanks than tank hunters, maybe im just too used to the casemate look.

Might see some changes in the 1948 war, both the Arabs and Israelis were using surplus, which would most likely include the American tank hunters, and possibly during the later wars we could see a up gunned Super Jackson.
 

Larrikin

Banned
Why would they be shocked the M-10 could take out the PzIV and Panther
and the M-18 could run around them and kill them . The M-36 could take out the Tiger with its 90 mm Gun .

And an infantryman with an anti-tank rifle could take out the M-10, M-36, and M-18. As could a PzII with its 20mm. As could every light anti-aircraft gun in the Luftwaffe's inventory, and every major German tank could take them out from as far as they could see them.
 
And an infantryman with an anti-tank rifle could take out the M-10, M-36, and M-18. As could a PzII with its 20mm. As could every light anti-aircraft gun in the Luftwaffe's inventory, and every major German tank could take them out from as far as they could see them.

One has to take into account that both armies eschewed tank vs tank combat where they could. That Tigers would shoot the hell out of Shermans should be expected, you are talking about tanks that where in two different classes medium tank vs heavy tank

the comparable vehicles to the Sherman where the Panzer MK 4 and the T-34. The Sherman's armor was not notably worse than a Panzer MK 4... its main issue was that its 75mm and 76mm cannon variants lacked the punch of the Pak 40 and KwK42 high velocity 75mm guns of their German counterparts

Guderian correctly points out that tanks are more useful weapons of war than assault guns.

The Sherman's main two faults for service in its class are
A: The gun, which could be remedied by rearranging the turret configuration for a 90mm piece or just borrowing the high velocity British 17 pounder anti tank cannon

B: Crew training, there is significant and numerous anecdotal evidence that Sherman crews where just tossed into the frying pain with very little familiarization or time to run exercises with their unit... there is a HUGE difference between a green tank crew in a Sherman with little or no combat experience in Normandy vs a Panther or Panzer MK 4 crew with years of service in Russia to their credit.

To make the armored forces perform better, besides training and improving the M-4, the war office would just need to not stone wall the Pershing tank which could serve the same mission profile as the Tiger and the IS-2
also it would have helped if the infantry themselves had anti tank guns capable of knocking out a tank (57mm was no longer sufficient in '44)... the Germans by that point had numerous high velocity 75mm's and 88mm towed pieces that freed up their armored forces for other adventures than protecting the infantry
 
Guderian correctly points out that tanks are more useful weapons of war than assault guns.
Complete noob question, but is there much difference in an M36 and a M-4 with a 90mm? The M36 actually had more armor on average than the M-4 (except on the top, but when artillery hits the top it pretty much screws anyone). For Russia and Germany using assault guns as tank substitutes did not end well because of the casemate design, but American tank hunters had turrets making them more useful then their Soviet and German counterparts.
 
Complete noob question, but is there much difference in an M36 and a M-4 with a 90mm? The M36 actually had more armor on average than the M-4 (except on the top, but when artillery hits the top it pretty much screws anyone). For Russia and Germany using assault guns as tank substitutes did not end well because of the casemate design, but American tank hunters had turrets making them more useful then their Soviet and German counterparts.

The M-36 was an excellent weapon, comparable to the Jagdpanther if not superior in some aspects... but you didn't see the M-36 till the very end. The M-10 lacked the armor and overhead protection you would want to see in a AFV of its size and mission profile. The American doctrine for employing the M-10 originally was for them to break up mass German Panzer attacks and stand off at long range firing volleys.

The problem was by 1944 the Germans didn't employ mass amounts of armor in small areas very often but instead relied on the kampfgruppen system where mixed battle groups (including a company of armor) did the heavy lifting, so there where not many mass attacks to break up. The Germans and Russians expected their assault guns to slug it out with tanks so when they could, they armored the hell out of them and made them survivable and able to operate in concert and in the role of a regular tank

The American's with the thinner armor found out that German tank guns had superior range and could knock them out from 4 kilometers and that they where insanely vulnerable to man portable anti tank weapons (panzerschrek)

The assault guns becomming such a prominent part of the German armored forces had very little to do with Guderian. Between Dec '41 and Spring '43 he wasn't on active service, having been fired for a spat with Kluge. He was at best an observer as some officers who where friendly with him came by and briefed him on developments, but generally he was bedridden with a severe heart attack, and stomach problems for nearly all of '42

When he became chief of mobile troops in '43 the assault guns where allready predominate so he tried to make use of them since it would be a disaster to stop the production lines to switch them to tanks. He notes in his memoirs that the MK 4 with the long barrelled 75mm was a perfectly satisfactory weapon and he was stunned that in all of 1942 only 800 of them where produced. He got into a blazing row with Jodl and the armaments industry that wanted to discontinue the MK 4, put the final stock of turrets into the atlantic wall and just get by with assault guns and tigers till the panther was ready (it wouldn't be a truly effective vehicle and have its teething problems worked out till mid '44)
 
More M10s and M18s make no significant difference. The performance of their 3" guns and the 76mm found on later models of the M4 are essentially the same given that the same ammo is being fired. Most of the HVAP went to TD units vice tank battalions. So, you get much of that same effect by arming M4s with 76s earlier and maing more HVAP bullets, Still left with an issue of the 75mm had a better HE round tho.

M36s didn't get to the field until the early fall of 44 (Sept/Oct). At that point, the TD Corps Dream Machine the M18 was coming on line and there was debate on towed versus SP units. Not sure it would be possible to get alot more M36s in time.

An option might have been to take a page from the Brits and re-arm M10s with 17lbs (Achilles). Not sure why, but there was a production bottleneck there too.

Given:

Our flawed armored doctrine, tanks don't fight tanks,

our poor technical and tactial intel regarding the PzV, thought it was going to be more like the Tiger ie grouped in seperate Bns and task organized out as needed and not half of the authorized strenght of the Panzer Divisions,

little else seems possible given that compressed time frame of when we thought we might have problems (Normandy) and whenw e knew we had problems (the Bulge):)
 

Blair152

Banned
So if the US had build Tank Destroyer's instead of Tank's in WWII How would that of changed the War .
M-18's of "A" Company, 612th Tank Destroyer battalion in1944.
So you're working on the same premise that Army doctrine at this time is
inflexible. Well, in the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, a Sherman tank, and a
tank destroyer, were both destroyed by Tiger tank. So the Army would have
to come up with alternative and fast.
 
No, doctrine can and does change rapidly.

Getting new/different weapon systems built and fielded out to units takes time. This was one of the reasons for the delays in fielding right before Normandy. Not enough time to field to units and get them trained up on it.

The "Tank Crisis" did not exist in our collective minds until after Normandy.

But, we managed to breakout of the bocage and in that realm (exploitation and pursuit) the M4 excelled.

Units were already task organizing TDs and tanks to off-set the weakness of one with the capabilities of the other.

The decision point for a "better" tank or tank destroyer fielded to the force in June 1944 was back in 1943. That time came and went.

The industrial base would need 6-8 months minimum to shift production, ship the new vehicles, deliver them to a unit and have the unit get trained up.
 
Complete noob question, but is there much difference in an M36 and a M-4 with a 90mm? The M36 actually had more armor on average than the M-4 (except on the top, but when artillery hits the top it pretty much screws anyone). For Russia and Germany using assault guns as tank substitutes did not end well because of the casemate design, but American tank hunters had turrets making them more useful then their Soviet and German counterparts.
RE Soviet and (especially) German use: Apparently, the Stug III (based on surplus PzIII chassis) was widely used and very useful, and the lack of a turret actually made it better, since this gave it a very low profile.

Though I'm no tank expert, I'd imagine that some sort of compromise can be reached between the two objectives of
a) having a heavily armoured area around the front of the gun, and
b) having an easily moveable turret?
 
Lets be clear the StuG had some useful features (low profile) and was a useful weapon but it wasn't better than a Mk. IV. But as you could get 2 StuG's for 1 Mk IV, which was why it was produced.
The advantage of a turret as compared to a casement can be seen by the fact that with the exception of the Swedes no one has built anything similar since 1945.
As people have said the US Tank Destroyers were flawed, just like the Sherman. IMHO the best solution would be to build neither but try and get a decent all round battle tank like the Mk IV or T 34. However that would require a change in doctrine in 1942/43 for it to have filtered through to front-line units by Normandy.
 

Larrikin

Banned
Lets be clear the StuG had some useful features (low profile) and was a useful weapon but it wasn't better than a Mk. IV. But as you could get 2 StuG's for 1 Mk IV, which was why it was produced.
The advantage of a turret as compared to a casement can be seen by the fact that with the exception of the Swedes no one has built anything similar since 1945.
As people have said the US Tank Destroyers were flawed, just like the Sherman. IMHO the best solution would be to build neither but try and get a decent all round battle tank like the Mk IV or T 34. However that would require a change in doctrine in 1942/43 for it to have filtered through to front-line units by Normandy.

The Sherman was a decent all round battle tank like the MkIV or T34. It gets a bum rap because it was on the offensive in Normandy against lots of very powerful guns in perfect defensive terrain. Any tank would have suffered in those conditions, even the much more heavily armoured IS2, Churchill and Tiger, let alone the Panther, which with it's relatively thin side armour would have died just as easily as the Sherman.

Still, the Sherman got the job done, and no other tank of WWII could have carried out the subsequent drive across France. They pretty much would have died in droves on the side of the road, which is what a lot of the surviving German tanks did any way.
 
I wrote the bulk of this the first day the original post went up, so excuse me if I repeat some points already made.

The tank destroyers were actually pretty effective, which is surprising given their specs. Biggest pluses: (1)their guns tended to be a generation ahead of what the the Shermans got--76mm guns with the best armor piercing ammo versus mostly 75 mm guns, and then 90 mm guns when the Shermans were getting 76 mm guns. (2) Mobility. They were fast. Major weakness: armor, especially lack of top armor for the turret. Unfortunately, the Germans didn't come neatly packaged in tanks over here and infantry/artillery over there, so tank destroyers tended to be used as tanks a lot.

The best policy would have been to progressively up-gun at least a portion of the Shermans. There were prototype Shermans with 90 mm guns, and the combination worked. There was also the option of using a longer barreled 75 mm gun comparable to the one the Brits used in their Sherman Fireflies. There was a project in the works to do that. Another option would have been to standardize the T25 (more lightly armored version of the Pershing). I'm pretty sure it could have been in limited production by the time of the Normandy invasion. I'd have to check on the timing but they built 40 T25 and 10 T26 (Pershing prototypes).

The point is that the US only went into France with inadequate tank firepower because elements of the army thought that was the right thing to do. They did have rational-sounding arguments, including the fact that 75mm gun Shermans took up a lot less room in shipping. The long main guns that extended past the front of the tank cut down the number of tanks you could ship in a given space, a valid concern when the allies were chronically short on shipping. Obviously they were proven wrong by events, and they should have known better, but hindsight is always better.

Added material:

As somebody pointed out above, the Shermans did prove extremely reliable, a key factor in sustaining an armored drive.
 
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