M 5 Sherman tank. What would you have done?

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Subject: M 5 Sherman tank. What would you have done?
Herald1234 2/24/2007 3:24:09 AM

If you were receiving the first British battlefield reports about the performance of the M3 Lee/Grant, as the technical head of US tank production and you had the 1942 US automotive technology base, what would you have done with the Sherman design? Herald

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Herald1234 Amazing! 3/19/2007 3:25:26 PM

By that gun data a M-3 9.0cm.L50 had similar performance using APCR shot as the OQF 17 pounder Mark IV using APDS. at 1500 meters. I was aware that the two guns were similar in kinetic smash and that the M-3 was twice as quick firing, but I was surprised at how close the overall kinetic match was.

On a another note.

JFKY wanted to know how given the advantages of hindsight I could have used the realities of the US in 1942 to fight a smarter French campaign in 1944.

Let's assume that the US went with its tank destroyer doctrine as given.

Let's also assume that the US settled on the M-3 chassis, as modified into the M-4 as its primary exploitation tank.

What could we do?

a. Well the M-36 Jackson immediately springs to mind as a possible tank destroyer. With the Flak 8.8cm.L56 shooting holes in Char B1s and Somuas in 1940, it should have dawned on the geniuses in Army Ordnance that the M-1 anti-aircraft gun was a perfect anti-tank gun.

b. The Jackson should have been first in the queue.

c. The Sherman tank with a better drive train would have been choice two.

d. Looking hard at producing the Australian Sentinel in US factories with the Ford G-8 engine would have been choice three. This would have been matched with the Sherman 7.5cm.L38 gun armed tank, or maybe if the Sentinel could have been equipped with the M2A1 10.5cm.L22 howitzer the Sherman could have been phased out as the middle of the war US tank.

e. Licensing the OQF 17 pounder to go into the the Australian Sentinel would have been choice four. Then you would have the historical parallel mix of 7.7cm.L56 OQF 17 pounders Sentinel Fireflies and Sentinel howitzer tanks in the ratio of one to four. This would have rationalized US/UK ammunition production at least for the tank forces.

f. Then there is the question of moving a mechanized force to France.

>>

Seatrain

Wind & wave were not the only hazards faced by a strange looking craft which set out from last week.
At the last moment, the Seatrain New York was almost scuttled by a Shipping Board ruling.

Atlantic shipping lines, Seaboard Railways and unfriendly shippers protested bitterly to the Shipping Board and the Interstate Commerce Commission that the Seatrain, a floating railroad yard with a mile of track below-deck to hold 100 loaded freight cars, was damagingly unfair competition. Seatrain New York has a speed of 16 knots, can carry freight faster than any coastwise freighter, can lighter it from Hoboken to New Orleans in six days for half the rail fare. The Shipping Board handed down a last-minute decision while Seatrain : Seatrain Lines Inc. will be suffered a six-month trial period. The vessel cleared South with a cargo of cotton manufacturing machinery, paper, beans, steel, olive oil, whale oil, soap grease, soap stock, cement.

President of Seatrain Lines Inc. is Graham M. Brush, onetime shipping executive. Since 1929 he has operated Seatrain New Orleans between New Orleans and . Using a giant crane at each terminal, he has cut 40% off the usual stevedore charges, saved two loadings for shippers using rail-water transportation between the . In the past three years Seatrain Lines Inc. has carried twice as much tonnage between New Orleans and Havana as the three competing shipping lines which operate four times as many vessels.

Long before the USS Comet was built, SeaTrains Lines operated a series of train ferries between Havanna and the East Coast US ports. The type was a well known freighter in US service.

So I would have tried a little something different for transshipping the US tank force as well as storable ammunition and solid cargo[maybe liquid cargo too]. Railroad tank cars with high octane aviation gas could roll along English and French railroads just as easily as trucks.

More ocean going railroad car transport ferries would have been in the Liberty ship program

I would have also tried rebuilding the French railroad system to American gauge and standard. This would have done two things. Do you realize how more efficient it is logistically to assemble a one thousand tonne cargo shipment in a train and ship it east by rail than it is to truck it by convoy?? Especially if you can roll the goods off a train ferry at Omaha beach and Utah beach onto a railroad receiving dock[You build these onto the Mulberries and then build railroad receiving docks at the smashed French ports at Cherbour

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Herald1234 I hate this board's buggy HTML editor and its links mechanisms! 3/19/2007 3:51:03 PM

Six months is what I routinely argue as I regard the time wasted onn the T-2Xs involved months of dithering while the engineers played with the electric transmission which early on proved to be troublesome..

As for the buggy links;

Here is the one for the ships;

http://www.solentwaters.co.uk/Vessel%20Types/Vessel%20Types%202/page2.html

and here is the one for the inventers of the forklift truck;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Material_Handling_Company

The quickest dirtiest US solution would have been a Sherman tank destroyer along the lines suggested by Luciano Trentadue.

The M-36 Jackson would have been the next quickest solution.

The M-26 Pershing a year earlier would have been ideal as it would have continued the US correct decision to build a medium sized dual use gunned armored exploitation tank without producing a specialized antitank variant like what historically happened.

JFKY was correct about one thing, The US decision to simplify its production along a few chosen types of general purpose weapons was the correct decision in contrast to the Germans continuous one offs and scattered production of hundreds of different types of similar in performance weapons.

The problem with that US approach is that the urge to simplifyu offers a rational to resist the needed changes when operational experience suggests that a line of [Sherman] development has reached the end of the technological road and you should change over to the next line or try something else that is better.

Herald

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JFKY 3/19/2007 3:56:27 PM

Well all I can say Herald is IF the French National Rail System was not built to US standards the US WASN'T going to rebuild part of it to US gauge. You might have missed this part of the story of the Second World War, but there was this thing called the Free French Government headed by DeGaulle and I don't believe he or his government would have stood for the creation of a two-tier rail system in France.

Also you neglect to mention in your posting on the advantages of rail v. road traffic that it took the Germans quite a long time to advance their rail heads in Barbarossa, and in fact the US/British DID rehabilitate French/Belgian rail, but it took a very time to do so. Finally you neglect to mention the need for the massive importation of Rolling Stock into Western Europe to make your logistics plan work. The French had none after D-day, it was either destroyed or it was confiscated by the Germans. So, along with all the armour, fuel, beans, boots, bullets, bandaids and the like we'd have to have shipped an entire railroad too. And where would it have come from? After all much of US rail production was making TANKS, Herald. So we now have to produce more rail stock AND more tanks, the US was an industrial dynamo, yes, but it was not capable of infinite production or everything, simultaneously.

And I think this is why I doubt Herald and his/her critique of McNair and Company. It's nice to make this theories, but it's another thing to mate the production schedules for the various force structures. Sorry, but your logistics post makes say, you know McNair and his lot probably had a bit more on the ball than Herald, OR that they had a deeper knowledge base on the subject matter.

Also the sea trains to Havana didn't have to face the North Atlantic gales, so they really aren't an option for transport.

And sad to say, No the US wasn't going to adopt the Sentinel, Not Invented Here. Plus the Sentinel may or may not have been a prudential choice. Australia is not a natural hot bed of tank design.

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Herald1234 JFKY 3/19/2007 4:05:55 PM

1. You underestimate the ability of OZ's engineers. They did some damned good work on Sentinel.

2. The US did rebuild the French rail system to suit themselves, despite de Gaulle.

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/2923/s1939928457287ip1.jpg" width=740 border=0>

3. The USN seized and used every ocean going Seatrain Lines train ferry the compnay had to cross both the Atlantic and the Pacific, both to transport railroad equipment as well as tanks and other rolling cargo.

Herald

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Arbalest Gun Data Question 3/19/2007 4:33:46 PM

I’m curious as to where the Gun Data, as posted at tarrif.net was originally obtained.

There seem to be some discrepancies between the numbers provided by the website and numbers provided by others.

Some numbers agree with other sources, some do not. They might just be typos, but maybe not.

See “KT vs. T29” thread for an immediately available list of sources.

As per the header on the site: “All data is displayed in milimeters (mm) vs. RHA / FHA plate @ 30°)”

All data is copied from the website and presented in the form:

1. Projectile

2. Weight Velocity 100m 500m 1000m 1500m 2000m

The very first entry, for the 100mm D-10S L / 54:

BR-412 B ( Armor Piercing Ballistic Cap )

15.88 kg 880 m/s 148 / 143 mm 133 / 130 mm 116 / 115 mm 101 / 102 mm 89 / 91 mm

BR-412 D ( Armor Piercing Capped Ballistic Cap )

15.88 kg 880 m/s 186 / 153 mm 167 / 141 mm 146 / 128 mm 127 / 115 mm &nb

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Herald1234 Data discrepancies. 3/19/2007 5:22:31 PM

1. When I have time Arbalast i woul.d like to look into it.

2. As for the Panther's gun being listed as inferior, I have question's about that myselfm unless the data wasn't clarified for the much lighter APDS being compared to the normal composite rigid steel shot the Germans used.

A skim through of the thread you suggested shows me even more reasons why a Pershing or an Australian Sentinel with the US 9.0cm.L50 gun might have been a good middle of the war US development. The powerful argument for a tank that can support US infantry with HE shellfire as well as stay competively close to enemy armor in antitank performance was the correct US armor solution, always.

Herald

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Arbalest 3/19/2007 5:53:02 PM

Herald,

Since the link was provided by Jeff_F_F, perhaps he has additional information.

The site provided has the "feel" of a wargamer's site (lots of drawings); not necessarily a bad thing,

but the data may have been generated via extrapolation or some sort of model than includes

other factors. I found no information either way.

However, a number of entries do not agree with published figures that are supposedly reports from

firing range tests. There are entries for APCR for German 37mm guns, which seems odd, and an entry for

an AP round (not HEAT) for the 105mm le. FH 18 M L / 28.

I did not know that such a projectile ever occurred to the Germans, or that it was ever developed.

Clarification as to the source of this data would be most helpful.

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Arbalest 3/19/2007 7:15:59 PM

To continue, there is quite a lot to be said for the Sentinel, as previously discussed on another thread.
But while it seems to be a very good 1940-1943 design, it seems thinly armored going up against the

Panther and Tiger I.

The Sentinel turret design has plusses and minuses, with I think more minuses compared to the T-23 turret,
from very late 1943 on. It had good slope on the sides, but there was a problem about half-way down.

Additionally, the turret front was roughly vertical, or cylindrical due to the mantlet.

Note that until the appearance of the JS-3, the T-37/76A had the most heavily sloped armor design of any
fielded tank. The T-34/76D had slightly less turret-side slope, as did the T-34/85 and JS-2. The Panther

and KT stuck with 25 degree slope on the sides. The JS-3 has heavily sloped armor, but was very space

inefficient.

By 1944, 30 degrees of slope was not the magic shield that it was in 1941. Sloping armor is always useful,
but the question is “how useful is it?”

On TankNet (I have the correct site name & IP address somewhere) in the technical section, there are
calculators for projectile velocity drop, probability of ricochet, and penetration. They seem reasonably

accurate, at least for standard rifled projectiles with an impact velocity under 3500 ft/sec.

By this statement, I mean that I was able to plug in numbers for German 37mm, 50mm and 75mmL48

projectiles, plug in a range, and then calculate the probability of ricochet on a T-34/76A (50mm turret sides

@ (30 degree vertical impact + some horizontal deflection), and get historical results. This is better than not

getting historical results.

Plugging in 75L70, 88L71 and other high-powered projectiles reveals that much more slope, or much thicker
armor (actually, preferably both) became necessary by 1944.

The weight and impact velocity of many AP projectile at typical 1944 engagement ranges was such that a ricochet
was unlikely unless the angle of impact was 45 degrees or greater. I have no hard proof, but, for example, the

80mm plate forming the Panther’s hull usually caused ricochets.

This is not surprising, as it tells me that I was able to successfully model (interpolate) historical events. Extrapolation
is another thing. (I have no idea if these equations work for long-rod penetrators, although they do suggest that that

75degrees of slope is not quite enough).

The only thing that I will extrapolate is that the designers in 1943 realized that more slope was good (get it when you

can), but not a good primary design approach (except perhaps on the hull front). Thicker armor, and therefore

heavier vehicle weight, was the only solution

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Herald1234 Arbalast Reply 3/20/2007 12:30:37 AM

I did some research. Arbalest. I used this resource[see below] and applied some high school
physics to answer some questions about the various guns we’ve discussed this thread. 
One interesting conclusion I reached, was that the M-26 Pershing had inferior but 
competitive antitank capability to the Siberian Tiger, but that the M-26 Pershing was a 
better exploitation tank due to its simpler to manufacture design, and its more efficient 
dual use AP shot HE shell tank gun. This was so despite the much higher theoretical cross 
country speed of the Siberian Tiger of 27 kph as opposed to the Pershing's actual 15 kph 
speed.

It’s nice when the numbers crunched actually confirm by analysis what writers and so called 
experts proclaim without telling gn you the WHY of it.

The source data;

http://www.freeweb.hu/gva/weapons/introduction.html

Name	Calibre/ Length	Projectile				Penetration (mm)
		Type	Name	Weight (kg)	Muzzle Vel (m/s)	Angle (deg)	Range (m)
		Type	Name	Weight (kg)	Muzzle Vel (m/s)	Angle (deg)	100	500	1,000	1,500	2,000
7,5cm Kw.K.37 and 7,5cm Stu.K.37 [1]	75mm/L24	APC	K.Gr.rot.Pz.	6.80

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Jeff_F_F 3/20/2007 3:27:48 PM

Yeah, the data on penetration definitely looks buggy. I'd be suprised to see significantly higher penetration against a 30 degree angled Face Hardened Armor plate than against Rolled Homogenous Armor at any range. For my part I was looking for MVs to put my 3/18 reference to the cut down gun on the M-51 as being equivalent to a WWII medium velocity ATG, since most ATGs during the WWII era were in the 800m/s range. I looked at the MVs and they seemed okay.

On the other hand maybe the data is correct and we should forget the loser tank guns we use today and switch immediately to the 12.7mm Vickers "LFG-127000 Armor Annihilator." Maybe those were the .50 cal guns McNair had taking out tanks in his exercises.

12.7mm Vickers

AP W.Mk.I ( Armor Piercing )
Weight	Velocity	100 m	500 m	1000 m	1500 m	2000 m
0.038 kg	785 m/s	15 / 9 mm	38965 mm	38809 mm	38749 mm	36526 mm

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