U.S. "57mm AT Guns": Ardennes 1944 by Antony Beevor

[Nickdfresh]

I have just finished Antony Beevor's Ardennes 1944; The Battle of the Bulge. I enjoyed Beevor's unique ability to weave a battle summary into an engrossing story. But as always, there are some stirrings of critics with his largely secondary sourced works and I think most might be aware of some of the few controversies of this particular work and of Beevor's style in general. For instance, there were some threads at various forums from May of 2015 regarding Beevor echoing the assertion that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery may have had a high functioning form of Aspergers due to his seeming inability to gauge reactions of his cohorts making him seem like (in the words of Ike) "a psychopath!".

However, as much as I enjoy reading Beevor and have purchased most of his works, I'm a bit more interested in (and annoyed by) some of his seeming flippancy when it comes to (the devil in the) technical details and weapons. On the whole he tends to get things right but seems to make errors of ASSumption. For instance, he says that the U.S. 76mm gun mounted on TD's and later versions of the M4A3E8 Sherman were derivatives of the "British 17-pdr." which is absolutely silly and a bit of a lazy assertion - as this could have been dispelled in a five minute Wikipedia check. Some other examples from another recent reading of mine was his Crete 1941 book, in which he makes reference to "Whippet Tanks" and "Spandau machine guns", both of which were WWI vintage weapons and out of service with their respective armies.

But my main question here is his repeated reference for various U.S. infantry units shooting "57mm antitank guns" while engaging the panzerwaffe. While I'm pretty sure the U.S. Army had fielded the 57mm as a version of the British 6-pdr., I'm almost sure they would have had most of them out of service by late 1944 in favor of 76mm AT guns. Am I correct? Or was the U.S. Army's poor bloody infantry cursed with obsolete AT guns against Panthers and Tigers?

[Gary Kennedy]

The 57-mm remained the standard antitank gun for US Inf units from its introduction in 1943 right through to VE-Day in Europe. Official allotment was 3 per Inf Bn and 9 for the Atk Coy in each Inf Regt, and three per Rifle Coy in the Armd Inf Bns. Both Inf and Armd Div HQs had three for defensive purposes. The towed 76-mm antitank guns were handled by TD units proper.

Others will enjoy themselves arguing the merits or otherwise of penetration of various types of atk amn against Panzers, but the 57-mm could certainly ruin a Panther's day, same as a Bazooka or a 6-pdr or a PIAT come to that.

Gary

[Kingfish]

It certainly had no problems taking out the Mark IVs and StuGs, as well as armored cars and halftrack variants, which was a sizeable portion of the German AFV fleet.

[Richard Anderson]

No more "out of service" in the US Infantry than it was in the British Infantry. The standard battalion AT gun for the British was also the 6-pdr, while the 6-pdr troops of the AT Regiment RA were usually attached to the infantry brigades.

[Nickdfresh]

Interesting. Thanks.

I know the 6-pdr. knocked out one of the first Tigers in North Africa, so it was a capable gun.