Tag: Pershing

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The M26 Pershing Tank

Incidentally:

“In Finland the swastika was used as the official national marking of the Finnish Defense Forces between 1918 and 1945 and also of the Finnish Air Force, anti-aircraft troops as a part of the air force, and tank troops at that time.” Wikipedia.

I had never heard of that before. I wonder if they stop using it after the war.

I can’t tell you how many times, as a kid, I heard my friends and adults speak with awe about the Sherman tank. The Sherman tank won the war. The Sherman tank scared the bejeebers out of the Nazis. Oh my God, it’s a Sherman tank! Run!

If you were a soldier and your commanding officer told you to get into a Sherman tank and get out there and take on those Panthers and Tigers like a good boy — you’d have a right to take a court martial instead. Especially after you found out that your commanding officers, when offered a choice between the Sherman and the heavier M26 Pershing, chose the Sherman. We don’t need a bigger tank. Too expensive, and too heavy! No no, my boys will be just fine in one of those cute little Shermans.

In one battle, 17 of 18 Shermans were knocked out in the first twenty minutes.

The British called them “Ronsons”. Ronson was a lighter company which advertised “lights first time, every time”.

Would Patton have gotten into a Sherman knowing that a Panther was waiting around the corner?

I don’t know where the myths came from. Well, yes I do. There were a lot of generals and manufacturers and corporate executives and politicians invested in the Sherman. And there was no doubt about the fact that they were able to produce a lot of them: 50,000 by the end of the war. (The Soviets were producing about 1,500 T34’s a month at peak production).

The Sherman was lightly armored and fast. The speed didn’t matter: the German Tiger had an 80 or 90% kill rate against the Shermans. A Sherman could only take out a Tiger tank if six or seven of them attacked at the same time and one of them managed to get behind the Tiger. And even then, he better be quick: the other five would have been destroyed by then.

And let’s get to the truth: certain American generals bragging about the maneuverability and speed of the tank was like your best friend saying that the blind date he is trying to arrange is really quite smart and talented. In actual testing, both the allies and the Germans discovered that the Panther and Tiger tanks turned faster, climbed better, and were less likely to get bogged down in the mud.

The Russians weren’t as stupid. By 1943, they were at work on a larger tank to take on the Panthers and Tigers: the T-34, which performed admirably against the Germans, notably in the Battle of Kursk.

General George S. Patton championed the Sherman…. until the battle of Arracourt, a victory for the allies of no strategic importance. The fog and air supremacy favored the allies but it was also clear that the Germans were still capable of formidable opposition with their Panthers. Patton started asking for the Pershings.

The Pershing, astonishingly, employed the same engine as the much lighter Sherman. Who was in charge of this? Who made this decision? Let’s increase the weight by 50% but keep the same engine? The M26 Pershing, not surprisingly, like the German Tigers, tended to break down a lot.

Towards the end of this video, live footage of a battle between a Sherman and a Panzer, and then an M26 Pershing and the same Panzer, dramatize, in grim fashion, the reality.  Would you feel safe in a tank?

Does size matter:

 

Sherman  30 tons.
Panther (Panzerkampfwagen V)  46 tons
M26 Pershing  46 tons.
Tiger II  70 tons.
T34 (Soviets)  26 tons.
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Patton vs Bradley

Patton vs. Bradley

George Patton was Munchausen: bold, self-possessed, and a little demented. His strategy was to push forward boldly, quickly, without always paying adequate attention to supply lines and coordinated strategies. Sometimes his approach clearly cost lives unnecessarily, but he was also enormously successful on the battlefield.

Omar Bradley, on the other hand, gave a good deal of weight to the idea of minimizing casualties. He knew the war was won– it was won the minute American factories kicked into the production of war materials on a grand scale– and he didn’t always think it was necessary or desirable to race to the finish. Bradley cared about his men. He was also a fairly rational, logical strategist.  He didn’t like waste.

You might think Patton’s approach was better– didn’t he win the war? Patton, also like Munchausen, tried very hard to project an image of himself that was much larger than reality. He also appropriated supplies, especially fuel, that was intended to serve the needs of other divisions besides his. He also had the benefit of superb intelligence– the allies had cracked the Enigma machine and Patton knew what the Germans were planning at every stage of his advance.

Most of all, as noted, Patton had the huge benefit of massive supplies and support, through the industrial might and economic capacity of the entire United States, Canada, and Britain.

The Germans were said to have been frightened of Patton– but they probably should have been more frightened of Bradley, whose patient good sense kept Patton’s recklessness in check. Patton might have been lulled into an improvident move, a reckless gesture. Not Bradley.

In fact, Goering is said to have known the war was over when he became aware of the massive productive capacity of the United States.

More Bradley than Patton.

Patton, incidentally, liked the deficient Sherman tank.  It was only after repeated demonstrations of how inferior it was to the Panzers and Tigers that he began to request the Pershing instead.  Even though the Pershing had the same engine as the Sherman.  it was bigger and had better armor, and could take on a Tiger.

“When we land against the enemy, don’t forget to hit him and hit him hard. When we meet the enemy we will kill him. We will show him no mercy. He has killed thousands of your comrades and he must die. If your company officers in leading your men against the enemy find him shooting at you and when you get within two hundred yards of him he wishes to surrender – oh no! That bastard will die! You will kill him. Stick him between the third and fourth ribs. You will tell your men that. They must have the killer instinct. Tell them to stick him. Stick him in the liver. We will get the name of killers and killers are immortal. When word reaches him that he is being faced by a killer battalion he will fight less. We must build up that name as killers.” – George Patton

I do admire this about Patton: no bs about what he wants soldiers to do.  They are not there to rescue their brothers, feed the orphans, or rebuild a nation:  they are there to kill.