WI the US military would have also bought the Christy tank

How many lives could have been saved and battles affected if the US military had bought the Christy tank and the Tucker armored car? Would the armored car have performed well for the LRDG or would the weight have hindered it in the sand? the solid ground speed would have been an asset though and the firepower was a definite plus.
 
So you get christie suspension which ties US tank development to even lower weights hence even elss armored than M4? Is that what you are proposing?
 
lighter weight

So you get christie suspension which ties US tank development to even lower weights hence even elss armored than M4? Is that what you are proposing?
was the russian T-34 not a good tank? or the T-34/85? both direct descendants of the christy tank as well as the M-24 Pershing. I believe I have the us designation correct.
 
was the russian T-34 not a good tank? or the T-34/85? both direct descendants of the christy tank as well as the M-24 Pershing. I believe I have the us designation correct.
Sounds Like it ...

Toss in The Later German Tanks, Too ...

They Produced a Modified Version of Christy's Suspension, When they Copied from The T-34!

:eek:
 
was the russian T-34 not a good tank? or the T-34/85? both direct descendants of the christy tank as well as the M-24 Pershing. I believe I have the us designation correct.

T-34 suspension used heavily modified christie type, which allowed it to carry such weight. which raises the question at which point you aren't dealing with modifications of original design but new design based on old principles.
 

Markus

Banned
No body has any opinion on the Tucker armored car?

This thing? Ok, it is a better combat vehicle than the M3 scout car but such vehicles were not really meant to shoot it out with the enemy, just locate him and put the word out. I also got the gut feeling that the M3 is the better off-road vehicle.

I also don´t think the christie suspension would have mattered much, the early M4´s were a bit too heavy for their suspension but the late introduction of the 76mm gun was a far bigger drawback.
 
Sounds Like it ...

Toss in The Later German Tanks, Too ...

They Produced a Modified Version of Christy's Suspension, When they Copied from The T-34!

:eek:

Stop Typing Your Posts Like This!

Seriously! It Is An Assault On The Eyes!

As For The Pod It Has Little Effect!

:eek:

(other pointless smiley)
 
While I very much would have liked to see the US have tank equal to the T34 in US service by June of 1944 it would have taken something other than making Walter Christie not such a screwball.

The M4 wasn't a great tank but it was adequate. The real problem was the Army's armored doctrine. You see the Armored Command took it upon themselves to ignore all of the good ideas coming from the likes of Guderian, Patton and that British guy who's name escapes me right now and decided that you can't shoot a tank with a tank. No sir, that was too damn easy. To shoot a tank you need a different vehicle called a tank destroyer...you see it destroys tanks, says so right in the name. So while tanks, like the Sherman, went around with wimpy 75mm short barreled guns that were good for bunker busting and not much else, the tank destroyers like the Hellcat got good guns up to 90mm. Of course the tank destroyers also had kleenex thin armor and on some models a sun roof, so you were screwed no matter which type of vehicle you crewed.

Had the US Armor Command gotten its act together after North Africa and realized that tanks can support infantry and still fight other tanks, then producing an American equivalent of a T34 would have been great (other wise you just end up with an under-gunned or thin-armored vehicle that looked a bit like the kick-ass tanks the Russians had but the German panzers kicked around more often than Hogan fooled Sgt. Schulz). Plus, with no wasting resources on tank destroyers you can build that many more of your kick-ass American T34s.

As for the Tucker vehicle...it was fast and may have been decent for rear area security, but it had a high center of gravity, relatively thin armor and with the B-17 like ball turret was overly complex. It looks nice and all but it wasn't worth the effort.

Benjamin
 

Markus

Banned
Minor nit-pick: The Hellcat had a 76mm gun, the M36 tank-destroyer was the one with the 90mm gun.

Major nit-pick: The M4(75mm) was actually better than the early T-34, the later models with 76 and 85mm guns were roughly equal.
 

Deleted member 1487

Now the question is whether or not the Soviets would have been allowed to have the Christie suspension if the US army adopted it. That means no T34.

The other issue with the armor on the suspension/T34 issue is that the T34 had sloped armor and did not need to have as much to deal with German guns. The West was very behind in the slope design, so unless there is modifications the US tanks won't be able to resist as well.
 
@Markus - yeah, I knew the Hellcat was the earlier model, but I was just generalizing (and too lazy to look it up.) Regarding the guns of the M4, I probably got it wrong. It's been a long time since I did research for a WWII based TL so I am a bit rusty.

@wiking - well Christie, feeling spurned by the US Army sold the chassis to the Soviets without authorization so it is still possible for them to get a few examples to work from. As for sloped armor...that was inherent in Christie's M1931 design so by accepting the design they accept sloped armor as well.

Benjamin
 
Well, you could also end up with something similar to the British cruiser tanks correct? If I remember correctly they use something similar, or a copy of the Christie design.
 

Markus

Banned
@Markus - yeah, I knew the Hellcat was the earlier model, but I was just generalizing (and too lazy to look it up.) Regarding the guns of the M4, I probably got it wrong. It's been a long time since I did research for a WWII based TL so I am a bit rusty.

Benjamin

The difference between an M4 and a T-34 was not so much the guns but the turrets. The US 75mm and the russian 76mm were medium velocity guns but the M4 had a three man turret, the T-34 only a two man turret. As a result the commander was also the gunner and could do neither job well. Furthermore early T-34 were not reliable and lacked radios. The T-34 didn´t get a three man turret until 1944 when the version with an 85mm gun was introduced. The frontal armour was similar on both tanks; 50mm IIRC and sloped. Tought for a Pak38, no problem for a Pak40.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
No body has any opinion on the Tucker armored car?


The Tucker Armored Car was a deathtrap worse than anything foisted on the U.S. military during WW II. Nothing like a high speed, top heavy, insufficiently armored vehicle to get you a pile of white crosses. The U.S. Army tried a modern version of the Tucker when the came up with the up-armored Humvee. Didn't work any better in 2003 than it would have in 1943.

The Tucker Power Turret, on the other hand, was a very clever design that appeared on just about every U.S. bomber built of the war. Tucker, as was his history, managed to never make a dime off the design.

Brilliant guy, lousy businessman.

Regarding the basis of your OP - There is no reason to assume that using the Christie design would have made a bit of difference in U.S. tank doctrine. As has been said here and elsewhere time and again there was absolutely nothing wrong with the M-4 Sherman design. It was, in many ways, the best design of the war, remarkably reliable, easy to fix in the field, fast as it needed to be (does little good if a tank, or combat car, can move at 50 MPH if the infantry is moving up at 20 mph in the back of a truck and if the fuel trucks are only making 15 mph), and able to be modified into an amazing variety of vehicles.

The problem, if there was one, with American armor in WW II was in the basic U.S. doctrine. American doctrine was specific, tanks supported infantry, specialized tank destroyers killed tanks. Those TD, BTW, were pretty effective as tank killers, unfortunately the doctrine was flawed to the point that it seems almost nonsensical to us today.

If anything a Christie design would have made things worse, since the actual design was seriously limited in load capacity, something that would have driven the Army to even greater preference for light tanks.
 
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