Post by miletus12 on Dec 25, 2021 20:06:45 GMT
As the video article illustrates, Barnes was a bit befuddled and muddled in his thought processes when it came to the practical realities to be faced. He proposed solutions and fielded ideas that grew out of his misperceptions of what the American army needed.
The answer to that question is that Gladeon Barnes invented a type of torsion bar suspension in 1934 that is used on US post-war tanks. He supervised the tanks being developed in WWII. His patent, his system, and it appears on US tanks and tank destroyers that came out of his department after the M2 Medium, M3 Medium and M4 Medium lines of development. One sees it pop up in the M18 tank destroyer and the M26 and M27 series tanks.
So why did the M26, Barnes pushed so hard, meet so much American army resistance. Refer to his disconnect between what the Americans needed to ship overseas to carry on their field operations? Barnes was not paying attention to "RADIO, reliability, maintenance, mobility, that the Americans wanted from the desired M4 replacement.
Give Barnes credit. He did manage to put something out there that could evolve into the M48 tank.