Allies 1947?

[Donald M. Scheef]

Yes, I would also apply the same desire for US artillery pieces, in which the 4.5-inch gun was interchangable with the 155 mm howitzer, the 155 mm gun with the 8-inch howitzer, 8-inch gun with 240 mm howitzer, etc.

Don S.

[Schwerepunkt]

I agree that GHQ could not possibly make any of the lists (Allies or German) in their entirety. Having received my first British tanks (Challenger and Comet) and having become aware that the UK 17pdr could penetrate German armor better than any US gun, their speed is improved over earlier tanks and produced in sufficient numbers could prove vital to the Allied cause.
The German variations of Maus, E-100 and Krocodile TD are very impressive and carry massive guns. However, the IS4 through 7 have great firepower and protection without all of the weight. They have speed and would be extremely difficult to handle.
If George S. Patton got his way and we turned the Germans around and went after Stalin the the Soviet Union, the Allies would be in a tough way for armor as the only US tank anywhere near equal to the Russian was the M26 (of which only 2 were on the continent of Europe).
Allied forces would need to depend on tactical air and artillery to hold the Russians to the east of the Rhine while reinforcements were rushed across the Atlantic. Japan might be allowed to surrender with conditions and all of the air power would be switched to Europe. Interesting scenario, especially if Wehrmacht '47 armor and aircraft were used on both sides.

[Harlan]

One small correction to your post, I believe there was twenty Pershing that arrived in ETO in February 1945 and they were split evenly between 3AD and 9AD. Additionally there were two Super Pershing that arrived shortly there after. I can give more precise numbers and details tonight.

But, with all that said; I have played many US/UK/Germany versus USSR in '45 to '47 and I have to agree with your assessment; the New Allies will need to rely on their airpower and artillery to counter the massive Russian formation. Until sufficient quantities of new family of armored vehicles arrived.

Harlan

[Schwerepunkt]

..for the correction. It was the Super Pershing that knocked out the King Tiger in their first meeting. I would point out, that the KT was rising on an obstacle so she was hit perhaps on her underbelly. Still, the SP was an excellent tank and had we taken on the USSR we would have needed every gun above 75 caliber we could get to the front.
I think our armored divisions would have held up fairly well but the infantry divisions anti-tank fire could not have held the Russians for long. However, the Mosquito, the P47, P38, Typhoons and other ground attack aircraft would have made it severly difiicult for the Russians to move in daylight, just as the Germans. Soviet artillery was extremely good but the US had 155, 175, 203 and 240 mm guns on SP mounts so our mobility might have made up for inferiority of numbers. Plus, our air power would not have just hit the tanks, rows of artillery made nice targets too, even rows hidden with camouflage. Who knows, Allied technology might have sped up technical ability to trace gunfire to its source.
That may be stretching things a bit, however, I would like to think that the Allies would have employed Von Manstein and Guderian as advisors. Model I don't think so because was he not SS? In fact, the two first mentioned Germans might have been given Corps commands of German forces at the very least. If the remaining German forces could not sustain two corps, then one reinforced corps with emphasis on schwere panzer abteilungen could have been formed. Interesting hypothetical situation I would say.

[Mk 1]

Having received my first British tanks (Challenger and Comet) and having become aware that the UK 17pdr could penetrate German armor better than any US gun, their speed is improved over earlier tanks and produced in sufficient numbers could prove vital to the Allied cause.

The British 17pdr was a good gun, without a doubt.

The time when it was really vital to the allied cause, though, was in 1944. By 1945 the US 90mm gun, firing HVAP or APBCB, was close enough in raw armored penetrating capabilities, and the superior accuracy of HVAP over early APDS gave it (and the US 76mm gun) far better hit-probabilities with "golden bullet" rounds, so that the 17pdr was no longer in a class of its own in the allied AT armory.

Challenger was a bit of a lash-up as far as tanks go. It was not regarded as a success IIRC, and was taken out of service by the fall of 1944, being replaced by Sherman Fireflies in the Cromwell units. I seem to recall that welds for the the turret plates had a tendancy to fall apart when travelling cross country. Could be wrong ... no claims to being very well versed in that particular odd-ball beast.

The Comet was a pretty good tank. While not as widely distributed as Shermans post-war, it soldiered on for nearly as long. I believe the last user of Comets finally gave them up in the early 1990s. Too bad the Brits could not fit a 17pdr in it.

The German variations of Maus, E-100 and Krocodile TD are very impressive and carry massive guns. However, the IS4 through 7 have great firepower and protection without all of the weight. They have speed and would be extremely difficult to handle.

The IS-4 was a more conventional back-up design for the same levels of protection as the IS-3. While I consider IS-4 to be a very interesting tank, once you have IS-3s I don't see it as adding much to your force structure. Just use the "Pike's" for your breakthrough formations.

IS-7, on the other had, was a monster in terms of gunpower and armor. Far closer to the German Maus or E-100 dream-machines.

Of course any of them: IS-7, Maus or E-100, would have been enormous wastes of resource and manpower. Useless in war, but interesting, none-the-less.

..for the correction. It was the Super Pershing that knocked out the King Tiger in their first meeting.

An attractive story, but a soldier's myth.

Every Tiger-2 built has a full history available through the German war diaries and unit returns. None were lost, nor even present, in that time in that area.

Super Pershing never met a KT.

Still, the SP was an excellent tank and had we taken on the USSR we would have needed every gun above 75 caliber we could get to the front.

We built several thousand Pershings as the war drew to a close and shortly thereafter, and several thousand M46 Pattons to follow them.

We built only 2 Super Pershings.

Ever wonder why?

It was not an excellent tank. It was a rolling disaster. As were most of the German super-heavies.

Tanks which are unable to travel more than 100 miles between major repairs are not nearly as useful in warfare as wargaming tables would have us believe.

Soviet artillery was extremely good but the US had 155, 175, 203 and 240 mm guns on SP mounts so our mobility might have made up for inferiority of numbers.

Soviet artillery was devestating in the concentrations it achieved, and the sophistication of their fire programs.

But with the Soviet's limitations in trained personnel, comms gear and tractors, it was an effective weapon primarily against prepared defenses.

The American (and the Brit) advantage was primarily in their fire control mechanisms and methods. Having a mobile gun is nice, but towing with a tractor or truck can serve almost as well as SP mounting. The question is how long it takes to get into action, on target, and how flexible the entire fire-call chain is in applying the available batteries to create effective concentrations.

By the end of the war the Soviets had mastered the art of effective concentrations like nobody's business, but these concentrations took several days to arrange. The Germans had mastered flexible responses, but could typically organize only one battery, or occasionally one battalion, per flire mission. The US and the Brits were regularly able to bring down the fire of all the available guns in a full division within three or four minutes of receiving a call.

Whether the guns were SP or not made only a little difference to that stunning capability. Basically, having SP guns might have meant the difference between having 12 batteries available at any one time for priority calls, versus 10 in a division with towed guns (more time spent in re-deployment means lesser availability). When your opponent has never before experienced a 10-battery reactive fire mission, he won't "miss" seeing a 12 battery mission.

That may be stretching things a bit, however, I would like to think that the Allies would have employed Von Manstein and Guderian as advisors.

Hard to guess what kind of hard decisions might have been made under the strains of necessity.

Certainly the US intelligence community in the post-war years made liberal use of German personnel. However, almost all use of former German military personnel was done by REMFs, not by combat unit commanders.

Most of the front line commanders, up to and including Ike, viewed German generals with contempt at best, and often with outright disgust. The German army of 1943-1945 had lost more terrain, more key political or economic objectives, and (to US information at that time) more combat formations faster than any other army in history. US Army commanders who met with their German counter-parts almost universally considered them as arrogant and useless.

Also don't forget that US Army units had overrun some hundreds of concentration camps in the last weeks of the war. Many frontline generals were still receiving reports of how many concentration camp survivors were dying in their care every day for months after the war ended -- large percentages of the "liberated" were so far gone they could not be saved, and despite any and all efforts they continued to die in droves for weeks and months (at Belsen in the British zone, for instance, an average of 300 former inmates died per day for the first week after liberation, and they were still dying at an average of 60 per day three weeks later). It is in many ways remarkable that any German POWs, or even civilians, survived the end of the war, given most front line soldiers' loathing and hatred of Germans by May of 1945.

I don't think even Patton contemplated using German Generals. As I understand it his notion was to shoot all the generals, and to re-arm German soldiers and march them to the East as cannon-fodder to do the first round of dying against the Soviets. Could be wrong on this last part, though. Patton was a hard one to understand at times.

[Harlan]

One of the major problems with the Challenger was that it was inherently inaccurate due to the very narrow internal gun mantlet and this lead to it being withdrawn prior to the end of the war (see New Vanguard 23 Challenger MBT page 9). Interesting enough, the Challenger 1 also suffered the same issue. The Challenger also suffered from a high center of gravity and resulted in numerous rollovers. Additionally, a weak idler assembly required the entire lot being pulled from service for period of time (see New Vanguard 14 Cromwell Cruiser Tanks page 36-38). Lastly, the Sherman Firefly was available in large numbers and was well liked by it crew and this did not help the Challenger cause. Interesting enough, the MOD looked a Challenger Stage II with heavier armor, but this did not make it past the design stage.

There is another factor that lead to the abandoning of the Super Pershing was the “We have nukes, so why do we need to build any more tanksâ€￾ syndrome that affected the military after WWII. Or simply put, tanks were not longer ** CENSORED ** after we developed the nuke.

Below is a quick snippet from Wikiepedia, so take it with a grain of salt, about the combat history of the M-26 in WWII. No engagements with King Tigers, but one engagement with four Tigers (I would assume Tiger 1) and another with one Tiger (again, assuming Tiger 1).

Combat Losses

A 33rd Armored Regiment Company F Pershing (serial number 38, nicknamed "Fireball" by its crew) was disabled in night combat with a Tiger tank near Elsdorf on February 26, 1945, on the second day of Pershing employment in combat. The first hit, at range about 100 yards, penetrated through the coaxial machine gun port into the turret, killing the gunner and loader. The second hit damaged the muzzle brake, and the third projectile deflected from the upper right-hand side of turret and tore away the cupola hatch cover, which was open. The tank was soon repaired and recommitted to combat on March 7, 1945.

On the same day that "Fireball" was disabled, another Pershing engaged four Tigers and two Pz. Kpfw. IVs, knocking out two Tigers and a Panzer IV. On March 6, 1945, another Pershing of the 3rd Armored Division (vehicle serial number 25), belonging to Company H, 33rd Armored Regiment, was destroyed at a range of under 300 yards by a Nashorn near Niehl, a small suburb town north of Cologne. The projectile penetrated the lower front armor plate and started a fire in the turret. The crew abandoned the vehicle before the ammunition exploded. The tank was rated as repairable, but due to the estimated time of repair and shortage of Pershing spare parts, it was decided to send the vehicle to the rear for cannibalization.

According to New Vanguard 35 M-26/M-45 Pershing, one Super Pershing saw combat before the end of the war. It apparently engaged and destroyed one heavy armored vehicle “probably a Panther or Tigerâ€￾.

I was surprised to learn that 310 M-26 Pershing were in the ETO when hostilities ended. Of the 310 M-26, 200 were issued to front line units. Pershing were also sent to Okinawa, but arrived after the island was secured.


Harlan

[Mk 1]

There is another factor that lead to the abandoning of the Super Pershing was the “We have nukes, so why do we need to build any more tanksâ€￾ syndrome that affected the military after WWII. Or simply put, tanks were not longer ** CENSORED ** after we developed the nuke.

It is largely true that the US defense policy came to place a greater reliance on nukes than on the army ground forces. But I would not ascribe the lack of further production (or development) of the Super Pershing to that policy.

In the first place, the US didn't have a substantial nuclear arsenal for several years after the end of the war. Up until about 1948 nuclear stockpile was relatively small, and there was only one delivery system (the B-29). It wasn't until the H-bomb was tested that military thinking really shifted towards "no one would dare fight a war when we have these things around" kinds of thinking.

After WW2 the primary direction of US tank development was in:
1 ) Perfecting the Pershing, and
2 ) Improving whatever else was still in inventory to make it reasonable enough, and then re-arming allies.

The Pershing went through some product improvements, and ultimately an entirely new power pack was developed. The result was different enough, automotively, that instead of being a further sub version of the M26 it was re-designated as the M46 (and christened the Patton). The later Pershings and first Pattons were identical in gun and armor, its just that a Patton had enough power to move around effectively on a tactical battlefield, and no longer had the tendancy to loose its fan belt (and so its engine) when the accelerator was abused.

At the same time, Ordnance developed a suped-up 90mm gun and binocular range finders, which then went into the M46's successor, the M47. This was further developed with superior ballistic shaping for enhanced protection levels to make the M48, and then again improved in shape, power pack, and re-armed with a British 105mm gun to make the M60.

All of that development took place within the period when the US relied upon nukes as its primary defense. So to my reading of history, it seems that there was indeed a significant amount of development. Its just that none of that development followed along the lines of overloading a chassis and power train until the tank was impractical (ie: the Super Pershing).