Tanks, tanks, tanks! Bovington Tank Museum, the Chieftain and others.

Steven Zaloga



Now I disagree with both the Chieftain, Nicholas Meyer, and Steven Zaloga about a few comments.

1. The Crusader, if it had not been worker sabotaged at the factories, would have been a decent tank.
2. The British cruisers in 1938-1940 were not really given their due. Their numbers were small, but these were the tanks that are the true antecedents of the British late war tanks.
3. The M3 medium tanks were horrible. About the only American tank, as terrible in US service, was the M7 tank.
4. The Sherman 75 gun was good enough.
5. The Tiger was NOT the best tank at any era. The armor, protection, mobility ratio is a false metric. Reliability, communications, situation awareness, user friendliness, target servicing speed and ease, and crew survivability are far more important "tank metrics". In those metrics, the German Tigers in the Mark I and II varieties were T-34 awful. In fact, the Panther, has not very good metrics in this respect either.
6. Did I mention bailout after the tank catches fire? That is a tank metric, Mister Zaloga does not consider this quality too well, though being an operator-user, Mister Meyer, the Chieftain, includes bailout as his criterion. Statistically, this becomes very important from a Human resources point of view as training 3,000 replacements (Americans) is a lot cheaper than 6,000 (British), 40,000 (Germans) or 300,000+ (Russians). Plus remember, those are HUMAN BEINGS, who are being expended, as "war material to be replaced".
7. Ronsons. There were no Ronsons of the type that Bertram Cooper associated with the Sherman, even being manufactured until 1947. Myths; sheesh.
8. Radios in Russian tanks were American made. I am astounded that Zaloga and Meyer never mentioned this little fact.
9. The French tankers wanted radios and the designers made space and power provisions for ER sets. The French government failed to supply these tools for the same reason as they screwed up aircraft production. Politics.
10. The Somua 35 as the ancestor of the Sherman? Take a look at the M2 Medium, Mister Zaloga. The only thing the French supplied was the idea of cast armor and it can be argued that the Americans were headed that way anyway, because all of their rolled and welded armor plate was earmarked for the navy as it was in the case of the British. The British used rolled plate in their tanks since they had more cold roll mill capacity than the Americans to make it at the time, though not the welders to join the plate into monocoque hulls.
11. The T-43 fusion tank was the Russian plan for 1944. Zaloga is correct that Kursk caused the Russians to understand that maybe combat need drives war material use. It was "Keep it Simple and Quick, Susan" *(KISSQ), and make incremental improvements on what works. Hence the Russians build T-34 / 85 for exactly the same reason as the Sherman 76 replaces / supplements the Sherman 75. Need a better can opener more than a whole brand-new tank, Comrade.
12. Russian attitudes about Lend Lease equipment. Neither Mister Meyer, nor Mister Zaloga gives Russian opinion due credit. Both claim Soviet bias in the Russian assessments. I have read the same material. My conclusion is that once one cuts through the Marxist sludge, the technical comments are kind of interesting as the Russians criticize things in the M3 Medium tank, such as the poor ergonomics (7 men got in each other's ways in trying to fight.) and the vulnerable fuel tanks, the poor ground pressure, the high metacentric height (ease of the tank tipping over on a slope.), the tank's shortcomings mechanically to function with excessive maintenance loading due to over-complexity, its tendency to freeze up as a paper weight in the Russian winter, poor build quality (Faulty rivets popped if one looked at them funny.
), and the inability to target service at speed. These are the things that any competent assessor would recognize as reasons that an end user would condemn the M3 Medium as inferior, even to the quite awful T-34.
13. Siderail. I think the Chieftain missed the heart on the Russian attitude about the P-39 and the Spitfire. First of all, the Russian comment was about the HURRICANE, not the Spitfire. They compared the P-39 to the Hurricane. They did not get that many Spitfires and what they got they actually compared to their Yaks. They actually thought the Spitfire was a decent high-altitude aircraft, that like most British and American gear they received did not exactly meet Russian weather conditions as to maintenance, simplicity and ease of use. The P-39, like the Sherman and Studebaker trucks were Lend Lease examples of western equipment that worked well to meet Russian weather conditions as to maintenance, simplicity and ease of use. The Russians, of the time, praised build quality, reliability, spare parts accessibility and supply, and manufacturer support, especially in the case of the P-39. This is not surprising. Bell Aircraft was not getting many American orders. Their hugest customer was Russia, so the Bell forward deployed manufacturing representatives bent over backwards to please the Russians. The P-39 was cold, wet, maintenance and pilot user friendly. It was also a bird that could stay with the BF 109s and FW 190s in dogfights in Russian conditions. It had a good radio, something which British birds did not have. More importantly, it could carry the superb Russian aircraft type autocannons instead of the crappy 37 mm Browning. The Hurricane could not, and neither could the Spitfire. Hence when the Russians needed an effective bomber killing fighter to supplement their Migs and Yaks, the P-39 was there with working weaponry.
13. Churchills and Valentines in Russian service are kind of a mixed bag. The Churchill is a horrible tank for the qualities reasons I mentioned above. The British praise it, because that tank was the best thing that they had in tank form from 1941 to mid 1944 that was not American made, though I think the Valentine was a much better British tank from any tank qualities point of view. Thick armor and the ability to climb hills slowly does not equal a great tank. What about the "Funnies"? Just as many variants of the Sherman were produced and the Sherman still could "tank" against tanks and anything else while it "funnied" in a specialized role. It was better in tight spaces, had better crew survivability, better situation awareness, better target servicing, better communications setup and its reliability was two orders of magnitude better. The Valentine had much the same superiority over the Churchill, but it lacked the can-opener and target servicing ability of the Sherman. This was the same thing the Russians experienced. They liked the Valentine for what it was as a light recon tank, even if it lacked a decent gun. The Russians thought the Churchill was comparable to the KV in an inferior sort of way.
14. T-50 was too late? KISSQ.
15. Stug III. Infantry tank? It was the German version of a Semovente and used exactly the same way.
16. Cold war tanks. Russians rely on gun-tube launched missiles (for tanks and infantry carriers) with HE shells for anything else out there, while the British / Americans who go for Sabot for tanks and vehicles and shot-gun rounds (anti-infantry measure) The Germans and French go for HEAT. It is claimed. Khrushchev was kind of stupid about ATGMs as the wave of the future though SAGGER made an impression in 1972. Zaloga ignores the Soviet work on armor packages to resist the western HEAT munitions which is the reality of the choices that NATO had made to stop Russian armor after 1960. Sabot work in Britian and the US once the Yom Kippur War reveals that HEAT mistake, is underplayed and as the Gulf Wars demonstrated and the Arab Israeli wars pre-demonstrated, Sabot was the correct choice against Russian armor or any armor up until recently. The Germans and the French got that wrong.
17. Zaloga discusses the US tank development. The 1950s stuff is still classified for a reason that has to do with "espionage".
18. Best tank of 1944 in WWII. Zaloga thinks Panther is good. See previous reasons for why I do not agree with Zaloga. The Panther power train still was horrible. T34 / 85 still has the qualities of the T-34 original, and it is still a horrible tank.
19. Tanks that served the war. Matilda and Panzer III.
20. Cromwell was a mediocre tank, inferior to the Sherman. Superior to the T34 / 85. Czech made T34 / 85s are supposed to be good, but those are post-war.
21. Joseph Stalin tanks, Zaloga overrates it. Ammunition and ergo are its defects.
22. Russian anti-material rifles. See my comments about armor protection schemes, tumble and standoff measures to divert, refract, shatter and splash incoming projectiles and effectors. German Schurzen or "skirts" were bullet tumblers which unintentionally doubled as anti-rocket-propelled HEAT munition protection.
23. Sherman Firfefly or the Sherman 76? Zaloga goes for the Firefly before HVAP. WHY? The Firefly was mostly antitank beyond 500 meters. It could not hit anything beyond that range with Sabot. Its shot and shell, both dart, slug and HE was also unstable at flyout because the barrel twist on the 17 pounder was wrong and not corrected until postwar. Plus: the three-man turret was too crowded to man, command, lay, service and use that gun very well. Slow target service cycles and rotten each man gets his elbows and knees in the way of another man as he tries to do his job around that humongous gun problems mean the tank is as bad as a Churchill with one round every 45 seconds or so. The Sherman 76 can put one (Composite rigid aluminum and steel) into a Panther's flank at 1000 meters and kill that tank at six shots per minute. Frontal armor (glacis and mantlet) the penetration range goes down to 400 meters against a Panther, but so what? And it lays three times as fast as a Firefly, from target ID to first shot out.
24. HVAP. Chieftain gets this wrong. So does Zaloga. The US was tungsten short. The release for tungsten for ammunition use was late. It would not be until Jarrett in late fighting in Cyrenaica in 1942 told the US army to upgrade their armor piercing shells to handle face hardened German armor that composite rigid was issued. The lighter shell with a denser core rod of hardened steel (the nail) surrounded by aluminum performed well against the tanks Jarrett sent back. The Ordnance Branch thought this solved the issue until Panther and revised Tiger I with deeper face-hardened naval type cemented plates showed up in Normandy. Then a quick fix was needed. HVAP appeared about 4-5 months later. By then the US tungsten shortage was still present, but the logic for a very limited production run of tungsten cored co0mposite rigid was somewhat justified. What about those 4-5 months when it was Sherman 75s and a few Sherman 76s in France fighting Panthers and Tigers with steel cored composite rigid shot? They still got it done killing 1 German AFV for every Sherman lost in tank unit versus tank unit encounters. And besides, that was what the Jackson was for. Bigger 90 mm gun with composite rigid steel shot equals a shot in the face dead Panther at 1,000 meters. Could a Firefly do that? If it was very very lucky.
25. Sherman Calliope? Why put a mattress rocket launcher on a Sherman tank? It was a "Funny". Maybe it was supposed to blow clear lanes in minefields by rocket bombardment when first misconceived? It wound up as just another rocket artillery bombardment system. Like many of Percy Hobart's other ideas, it was not adequately tested to concept (Duplex Drive Sherman was another example as well as the Bobbins, though the Crocodiles and the AVREs sort of worked.), and when it was finally used, it failed to function as originally intended.
26. Best tank of 1945? The Pershing? WHY? Pershing has a lousy engine. Maintenance was not that good by American standards. It will have to evolve into the Patton. T-23 / M27 was a much better choice. It was a lighter tank mated to a engine that could give it the tactical and strategic mobility required along with the 90 mm gun. It was not as well armored as a Pershing, but then it was never meant to be as it was designed to meet the lift limits and requirements for the Sherman. The added armor ruined it as the T-26 / M26.

Pure PR video, but one can still extract useful information.

1. The 2A82-1M 125 mm cannon uses a variant of the 15 cm/40 (5.9") SK L/40 breech block necked down to 12.5 cm. That was a Krupp sliding wedge type breech block designed in 1895.
2. Those 2 gun barrels in the proof firing stands show they wobbled during shots out. If the human eye can see that wobble in a low resolution PR video, then what does that say for dispersion?
3. After all those beauty shots of the Armata, I counted 15 shoot me here and kill me dead shot traps: 7 in the face of the unmanned turret and 8 in flank aspect.
4. Claims for long range acquisition and shots out target service, do not hold up under real world conditions. Example: the M1 Abrams was supposed to kill T-72s at 2,000 meters in Iraq at night with ease. If the weather and the Iraqis cooperated, that might have happened. As it was, at typical meeting engagements such as the famous 73 Easting in the First Iraq War, the opposing tank and IFV forces closed upon each other at offsets much less distant. The Americans blundered into well dug in and hidden Iraqis in many cases well inside rifle carbine range. The Iraqis should have been able to shoot at parity with the Americans that close together, but it turns out, the guy with his head on a swivel and who has put the training time in with the tank and the Mark One Fort Knox eyeball, and with standard optics, can see first, lay first and shoot first and kill while the other guy is trying to see our hero through a fogged-up sight because the weather has rendered the French made Russian supplied thermal sight useless in his Russian supplied tank.

For the record, I would not want to ride in a tank with 3 tonnes of high explosive sitting over and behind me and with only a 50 mm steel deck between that load and my head.

Start with the Challenger 1, where it all went wrong for British armor after the unusually good Chieftain.

Lazerpig finally made it into the thread. Funny thing is that I kind of agree with him about Montgomery and Rommel, but have to disagree with him about the Crusader tank. I have actually seen one. 57 mm version,. It has a horrible powertrain. Maintenance access was terrible. Ergonomics was typically British, and all in all, if the Germans pop you at 500-750 meters and you cannot pop them until you close to 300 meters, you are giving them a 250-300 meters run at you where they get the first shot at you.

And there is the Desert Army way of doing things that Montgomery had to fix before the British could beat Rommel who was really a one trick pony. We covered this in "Myths of WWII" in more detail.

As for Patton... He was far more than propaganda. Kasserine was a monumental flustercluck and though Harmon deserves some kudos for putting his division back together after Fredendall and Andersen frittered it out almost to destruction, it was still PATTON who did for II Corps what Montgomery did for 8th Army. Give credit where credit is extremely due.

M.

The ‘egg cartons’ of the Russian tanks: the poor protection of many T-72B3 and T-80 @elentireng ES3·13·2022 · 23:20

One has to understand what is going on with this "spacer armor". It is not as stupid as it appears.

Now what is STUPID, is that this cheap and highly effective defense against 1st and 2nd generation single charge or dual charge plasticine explosive compression formed and forged warheads, found in Russian rocket propelled grenades, would have any effect on tandem warhead high explosive antitank rounds. Not even Russian 4th generation reactive explosive armor protection schemes gives adequate protection against an NLAW or Javelin, or Kornet warhead. Might as well not be there at all.



The explosive filler is insensitive PBX or plasticine secondary charge filler that must be set off by a shock initiator. The slap plates of the steel sandwich will determine how sensitive the filler is to that shock. If the facing plate is too thick or the backer plate and insulator is too THIN, the explosive charge in the reactive explosive block will fail to stop an explosive forged plasticine penetrator. It may actually help the EFPE penetrator intrude into the tank.

In the business, that is called a stupid mistake. The Russians appear to have made it.

How did American tank crew-men experience WWII?



He liked the English. He was sort of neutral about the French. He hated Alsace. The Germans were "meh". He got over the "meh".

The Russians were ... "blah". There is an "arranged escape" to "not return Russian PoWs to Russia custody". It was "people are people" but politics gets in the way.

He gets it so wrong...

5. Centurion?



4. T-34



A BETTER tank with a better gun and a better runner. It also set the 3 man fighting compartment standard which the lousy T-34 did not.

3. RAM Kangaroo

While ingenious and Canadian, the RAM-K was a field expedient off the M-3 US tank series that evolved into the RAM. The French got there first.



The Lorraine 37L and 38L were effective but not built in the numbers desired. The British Bren carrier could be also argued I suppose, but it was NOT an armored IFV.

2. Carden Lloyd carrier. (Refer to the Bren gun carrier above.) Gifford Martel was pre-nixed by this guy.

Jean Renault. He came up with this.



It was the original tankette. It was used in contrast to this:



Hence I think Martel was the imitator, not the originator of the most successful tankette in history and the most successful tank of WWI.

1. Mother was the first British tank to see battlefield service and she had an appalling fail rate. See 2. for which tank should be number 1.