Attempts to Provide a Better Tank
By 1945 the tankers urgently needed a more powerful gun than the 76-mm. Firepower was their first consideration. The second was speed. Armor came off a poor third, for most believed there was more safety in speed and maneuverability than in armor. Maj. Gen. Ernest H. Harmon, commander of 2d Armored Division and one of the foremost armored commanders of the war, spoke for the majority of his fellow tankers when he described the characteristics the tank should have as "First: gun power; Second: battlefield maneuverability; Third: as much armor protection as can be had after meeting the first two requirements, still staying within a weight that can be gotten across obstacles with our bridge equipment."30 The main reason the tankers welcomed the 200 up-armored M4 (M4A3E2) "assault tanks" (promoted by Army Ground Forces but opposed by Ordnance) that got into action in the fall of 1944 was that the tankers needed more armor in order to get close enough to the German tanks for their 75-mm, and 76-mm. guns to be effective.31
An attempt by the Armored Force Board in the fall of 1943 to provide the M4 with a more powerful gun, the 90-mm., had failed. Ordnance had begun development work on the 90-mm. antiaircraft gun to adapt it for use on tanks and gun motor carriages early in the war, after reports from Cairo had indicated that the Germans in Libya were successfully using their 88-mm. gun against tanks, and the new antitank 90-mm. was standardized as the M3 in September 1943. Thereupon, the Armored Force Board, believing that the M4 tank was the one tank that could be delivered in time for the invasion of
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Europe, recommended that the 90-mm. gun be installed on a thousand M4A3 tanks. Maj. Gen. Gladeon M. Barnes, chief of the Ordnance Department's Research and Development Service, refused to go along with the recommendation; and General McNair turned it down on the advice of his 6-3, Brig. Gen. John M. Lentz.32
Barnes had nothing against the 90-mm. gun; on the contrary, he and Col. Joseph M. Colby, chief of the Development and Engineering Department at the Ordnance Tank-Automotive Center in Detroit, had done everything they could to get it to the battlefield on a gun motor carriage, over the determined opposition of Army Ground Forces, whose New Developments Division continued to insist that 75-mm. and 76-mm. guns were adequate. Thanks largely to Barnes's efforts, backed up by the Tank Destroyer Board, the M36 self-propelled 90-mm. got to Europe in time to play its part in the Roer plain battles. But Barnes did not want the 90-mm. on the M4 tank. He believed that the gun was too heavy for the tank; that it produced "too much of an unbalanced design."33
At the time, Barnes was in the thick of a fight, which he still hoped to win, to get a better tank than the M4 to the battlefield in 1944- The new T20 series tank, authorized by Services of Supply (later ASF) in May of 1942, was designed with more armor protection, lower silhouette, and more speed than the M4. By early spring of 1943, the Ordnance effort was concentrated on the T23. Wider, heavier, and lower than the M4, with wider tracks and therefore lower ground pressure, it had a rear drive and an electrical transmission, which made it much easier to operate. The T23 was highly maneuverable and could do 35 miles an hour, as compared with the 29 miles of the fastest M4; its frontal armor was 3 inches thick, about an inch thicker than that of most of the M4's.34 The design, according to an impartial observer, "would have kept the United States in the forefront of medium tank development."35 In April of 1943, ASF authorized Ordnance to procure 250 of these new tanks.36
Very early in the development work on the new medium tank, in the fall of 1942, Ordnance found that it was possible to mount the 90-mm. gun on the T23-Barnes was all for it, and was strongly supported by General Campbell, Chief of Ordnance; but Maj. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, then commanding general of the Armored Force, refused to go along, and in the end the T23 mounted the 76-mm. gun. In an effort to get more firepower, Ordnance produced a second design, the T25 mounting the 90-mm. gun; and a third, the T26, with the 90-mm. gun, an additional inch of armor, and tracks five inches wider. Ordnance recommended
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that 40 of the 250 new tanks authorized be of the T25 type, and that 10 be T26's, and ASF approved. All had the electrical transmission.37
Then began the battle to get the new tanks accepted by the using arms. Unfortunately, the electrical transmission laid the tanks open to some cogent objections. It added about 3,800 pounds to the weight, increasing the ground pressure and adding to the difficulty of getting the T25 and Ts6 over Bailey bridges (and on European railroads), even after the revision of AR 850-15 in August 1943, raising the Engineers' tank weight limitation for bridges to 35 tons. Also, prolonged tests of the T23 at Fort Knox, Kentucky, by the Armored Board indicated that the electric drive would require excessive maintenance. For these reasons, the T23 was ultimately considered unsatisfactory by Army Ground Forces for use in overseas theaters. Because of the weight consideration, the decision was made in August 1943 to convert the T25 and T26 to torquematic transmission; in this form they were redesignated the T25E1 and T26E1.38
Even with the weight objection removed, it seemed all but impossible to sell Army Ground Forces on the new tanks. Ground Forces was sold on the M4, so easy to ship and to handle; it was committed to the "exploitation" role of armor; it had not as yet had any experience with armored operations comparable to that of the Germans in Russia, which had led the Germans to develop the Panther and Tiger tanks. General McNair had no objection to "experimenting" with 90-mm. tanks, but felt that by supplying them AGF would be encouraging tank versus tank battles instead of giving antitank work to the field artillery and tank destroyers to which he thought it belonged. In October 1943 General Barnes's urgent recommendation for immediate production of 500 each of the new tanks, T25E1 and T26E1, and the T23 was turned down.39
The first breakthrough in the T25E1 and T26E1 program came a few weeks later when General Devers cabled from London a request for the highest priority for the T26. In January 1944, ASF authorized an additional 250. Though this was better than 10, it was only a fraction of what Ordnance wanted, and Barnes continued to press urgently for a thousand 90-mm. tanks. But General Moore of the New Requirements Division, AGF, continued to oppose the program; as late as mid-April 1944, AGF came up with the astonishing request that 6,000 T25E1 and T26E1 tanks be produced with the 75-mm. and 76-mm. gun. It took action by the European theater to get the 90-mm. tank program moving. Shortly before D-day, the theater asked that 75-mm. and 76-mm. tank production be stopped, and that in the future 25 percent of the tanks be armed with the 90-mm. gun and 75
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percent with the 105-mm. howitzer. Maximum production was requested with the following priorities: (1) the T26E1 (now redesignated a heavy tank); (2) the T25E1; and (3) the M4A3 with the 90-mm. gun or 105-mm. howitzer. By January 1945 the ratio of 90-mm. gun tanks to 105-mm. howitzer tanks had been reversed. The theater wanted four 90-mm. gun tanks to one 105-mm. howitzer tank, primarily because of the greater penetrative power of the 90-mm., but also because combat experience had revealed several deficiencies in the 105-mm. howitzer tank, most important the lack of a power traverse.40
After D-day, the disillusionment with the 76-mm. gun increased with further experience on the battlefield. Bradley noted that the 76-mm. often "scuffed rather than penetrated" the heavy armor of the German Panthers and Tigers. Aware that the British could pierce the thick-skinned Panther with their 17-pounder mounted on the Sherman, which they called the Firefly, he asked General Montgomery to equip one M4 in each U.S. tank platoon with a 17-pounder. This effort came to nothing for two reasons: first, Ordnance in England was overloaded with British orders; and second, the combat units were too short of tanks to spare any to send to England for the purpose. Bradley's solution for the time being was to use towed 90-mm. guns to form a secondary line of defense behind his Shermans.41
When Brig. Gen. Joseph A. Holly, chief of ETOUSA's Armored Fighting Vehicles and Weapons Section, returned to the United States in July 1944 to urge the shipment of more self-propelled 90-mm. guns, he looked into the possibility of getting a tank mounted with the 90-mm. gun. Obviously, the best bet for quick results was still to mount the gun on the M4, the tank already in large production. In Detroit Holly saw an M4 modified by Chrysler to carry the 90-mm. and thought it had "tempting possibilities." But the T26E1 production had been initiated already and had such high priority that no delivery of the modified M4 could be promised before January 1945. By that time the T26E1 would be coming off the production line in limited numbers: 10 were scheduled for October, 30 for November, 50 for December, 125 for January, and 200 for February. The decision, therefore, was to abandon modification of the M4 and devote all facilities available to furthering the production of the T26E1.42
After the production of the first ten T26E1's, tests showed that certain modifications were necessary, including the provision for more ammunition stowage. After these changes were made, the tank was redesignated heavy tank T26E3, and was standardized as the M26 (General
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Pershing).43 General Barnes insisted that of the first 40 off the production line, 20 be sent overseas simultaneously with the shipment of 20 to Fort Knox for tests. Army Ground Forces objected, urging that the tests be made before the tanks were shipped overseas; but Barnes (threatening to go to General Marshall if necessary) appealed to Maj. Gen. Russell L. Maxwell, assistant chief of staff G-4, and won his point. The 20 T26E3's were in Europe before the end of January 1945.44
The ZEBRA Mission of February 1945
As head of a technical mission (ZEBRA) to introduce the new tanks to the European theater, General Barnes, accompanied by Col. Joseph M. Colby of the Tank-Automotive Command, Col. George Dean of the Armored Branch, AGF New Developments Division, two Ordnance captains, a representative from General Motors, and a gunner from Aberdeen Proving Ground, arrived in Paris on 9 February 1945. First there were conferences with Eisenhower and other SHAEF and COMZ officers, including Sayler and Holly, at which it was decided to get the twenty tanks into action as soon as possible. Eisenhower assigned them to 12th Army Group, and Bradley sent them all to First Army, dividing them equally between the 3d and 9th Armored Divisions. By mid-February the tanks had been delivered to the 559th Ordnance Battalion at Aachen, training was under way, and Barnes had embarked on a series of visits to army group, army, corps, and division commanders.45
In addition to introducing the T26E3's, the purpose of the ZEBRA mission was to obtain as much information as possible on the performance of Ordnance materiel in Europe, especially such new materiel as the M24 light tank (armed with a new 75-mm. gun) that had begun to arrive in the theater in December 1944. Barnes was also very much interested in the performance of self-propelled field guns. As an improvement on the M12 with the M1918 155-mm. gun, which had given an excellent account of itself, he had sent to the theater one experimental model of a gun motor carriage, the T83, mounting the M1 (Long Tom) 155-mm. gun; and another experimental model, the T89, mounting an 8-inch howitzer. Both were sent to VII Corps for testing. Other items on which the planners in the United States wanted reports were bazookas and rockets fired from multiple rocket launchers. Before D-day, 4.5-inch artillery rockets (designed to be fired either from aircraft or from the ground) had been sent to the European theater. They were fin-stabilized, that is, stabilized in flight by fins that opened when the rocket left the tube. Two types of multiple launchers had been provided: the T27, an 8-tube launcher on a fixed framework mount, which could be fired either from the ground or the bed of a truck, and
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the T34, a 60-tube cluster to be mounted on the Sherman tank.46
In his conversations with the commanders in Europe, Barnes described new materiel that was not yet ready for shipment: a "supervelocity" 90-mm. gun, the T15, with which he said a large portion of the T26E3 tanks were to be equipped; and three heavy tanks, the T28, an "assault tank" weighing 90 tons with twelve inches of armor, mounting the new 105-mm. antiaircraft gun; and the T29 and T30, which were similar in chassis to the T26 series, but mounted, respectively, the 105-mm. gun and the 155-mm. Barnes also had photographs of the new 57-mm. and 75-mm. recoilless rifles and a wheeled mount for a multiple rocket launcher, the T66, which would fire a new 4.5-inch rocket that did not depend on fins, being "spin-stabilized"—rotated by a flow of gases through eight canted vents.47
The response to the ZEBRA mission showed plainly that theater needs could be summed up in two words: firepower and mobility. The commanders liked the T26E3 Pershing tank and would have liked it even better if it had carried the T15 90-mm. gun. They liked the light tank Ms4 very much. They had been converted to self-propelled field guns by the M12, and wanted large quantities of such guns of the Long Tom and 155-mm. howitzer type. They did not want the T23 tank with the electrical transmission. Most commanders were not very much interested in the very heavy T28, T29, and T30 tanks, for they did not see how these tanks could be got over roads and bridges. They were definitely interested in the recoilless rifles. On the performance of the bazooka, opinions varied. The general feeling was that it was good but ought to be better. One assistant division commander complained that "we're still using the model we started with" while the Germans have "taken our bazooka idea and improved upon it." The Germans had produced more deadly antitank weapons of this type in their Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust, both of which, however, were extremely dangerous to the user. The Panzerfaust, a recoilless weapon firing a hollow-charge grenade, would pierce seven or eight inches of armor plate. Some U.S. combat officers collected all they could get their hands on for their troops; one tank officer considered the Panzerfaust "the most concentrated mass of destruction in this war."48
The 4.5-inch ground rocket had been used very little. First Army, converting a 105-mm. howitzer battalion into a rocket battalion with the T27 launcher early in November 1944, had employed the rockets a few times in Hürtgen Forest in mid-November with "excellent results," accord-
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GENERAL BARNES, during ZEBRA mission.
ing to General Hodges; but the artillerymen were not enthusiastic, disliking the inaccuracy of the rocket and the smoke and flash that attracted counterbattery fire. Because of the smoke and flash, a "shoot and scoot" technique was evolved, using the launchers on trucks, weapons carriers, or, preferably, jeeps. The need for more inherent mobility in the mount and better accuracy in the rocket led commanders to believe that the new T66 launchers on a wheeled mount, firing the new spin-stabilized rocket, would be quite valuable. As to the T34 launcher on the Sherman tank, First Army did not want it because of the disadvantages of mounting the launcher on the tank. One Third Army tank battalion that did employ the T34 briefly was appreciative of the morale effect of this great concentration of firepower, but recommended that the launchers be mounted on light tanks rather than M4's. They had found the difficulty of jettisoning the launchers resulted in the loss of the Sherman tank as a fighting vehicle.49
At the time of the ZEBRA mission, interest naturally was centered on the Pershing tank. Although the theater refused to subscribe to a blanket statement that the Pershing with the M3 gun was superior to the Panther or Tiger, all commanders considered it a step in the right direction and wanted all the Pershing tanks they could get as soon as possible. In the meantime they would settle for the M4 with the 76-mm. gun and as much HVAP ammunition as was available. They emphatically wanted no more M4's with the 75-mm. gun.50 When Colonel Colby tried to sell the battalion commanders of the 3d Armored Division on the Shermans they already had (being unable to offer them anything better on a large scale immediately), he ran into a hornet's nest. After the heavy casualties of the winter, they were beginning to regard the 75-mm. Shermans as deathtraps.51
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CONVOY OF PERSHING TANKS MOVES THROUGH A GERMAN TOWN
Before Barnes returned to the United States, he asked General Campbell by teletype on 5 March 1945 to ship immediately all the Pershings available, as well as all available HVAP ammunition for the 76-mm. and 90-mm. guns; and to expedite the production of the T15 90-mm. gun and ammunition and the shipment of the twenty-five T83 self-propelled guns produced in February. Campbell promised to do "everything humanly possible" to get the Pershings to the theater on the highest priority, and was backed up by ASF's Theater Branch after a personal cablegram from General Eisenhower to General Somervell on 8 March. But the tanks would not effect the outcome of the war in Europe.52
On 23 March, 157 Pershings left the United States and another 53 were at port or en route. By the time they arrived, the armies were on their way into Germany. When General Borden, on a visit to the theater, caught up with Third Army in Frankfurt on 8 April, he discovered that Patton had not yet received any Pershings. Ninth Army had received nineteen by the end of March but as late as mid-April none had been issued to troops because Ninth's armored units had been moving so fast that they had not had time to spare
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tank crews to send back for training. In the last two weeks of April, the Pershings began to arrive in greater quantity. Third Army, for example, had ninety by the end of the month. On V-E Day there were 310 in the theater, of which about 200 had been issued to troops. But because of the difficulty of transporting them, and the time required to train crews in maintenance and operation, it is safe to say that the only Pershings that got into effective action were the 20 experimental models that First Army had received in February.53
As to the T15 90-mm. gun, only one got to the theater. When Borden visited SHAEF headquarters on 2 April, the first question General Eisenhower asked him was when the tanks with the "super guns" would arrive. The earliest date Borden could give him was June. Eisenhower said he hoped to have the Germans licked by then.54
Lacking the Pershings, the war was fought with the M4 Shermans, which continued to pour off the production lines. At the time of the Rhine crossings, 7,620 were in theater stocks. About 40 percent were of the 76-mm. gun type, but attempts to provide HVAP ammunition for the 76-mm. were hampered by the shortage of tungsten carbide. Because of production difficulties, receipts of HVAP before 1 March 1945 were less than two rounds per gun per month. By January 1945 there were enough M4's to enable the 12th Army Group to make a last-ditch effort to provide better firepower by installing the British 17-pounder. Here again the limiting factor was ammunition. British 17-pounder ammunition supply could support only 160 17-pounder American Shermans and by the time the first of them arrived in the combat area, the war was ending.55
Shortly before the drive into Germany, the American press broke the story that American tanks were inferior to those of the enemy. Hanson W. Baldwin in the New York Times and the editor of the Washington Post demanded to be told why; and the story traveled to Europe.56 Questioned by American correspondents at a press conference in mid-March, General Patton publicly defended American tanks. He also wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Thomas T. Handy, Deputy Chief of Staff, which the War Department released to the American papers, stating that while the Tiger would destroy the Sherman head on, the Sherman could usually manage to attack from the rear and avoid a slugging match; moreover, the Sherman was incomparably more reliable and long-lived, as well as easier to ship and handle, than the Tiger. Patton wrote the letter because he wanted
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HOW CARTOONIST BERRYMAN SAW THE TANK CONTROVERSY.
From the Washington, D.C., Evening Star, March 25, 1945.
to stop what he called "the foolish criticism" of American tanks which he believed was having a bad effect on the morale of the soldiers at the front.57 But privately he had stated to a visiting Ordnance officer, just, after the Battle of the Bulge, "Ordnance takes too God Damn long seeking perfection at the expense of the fighting men, and you can tell that to anyone at Ordnance." The officer believed that Patton was expressing the feelings of the
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using arms.58 It was natural enough for the tankers at the front to blame Ordnance for the heavy casualties they had suffered fighting in the Shermans.
Who was to blame? The Army Ground Forces New Developments Division criticized Ordnance for spending too much time on developing and promoting the T23 tank with the electrical transmission, which was not wanted, and the heavy tanks M6, T28, T29, and T30, which the AGF had turned down repeatedly because of road and bridge limitations.59 General Barnes and Colonel Colby maintained that the best American tank of the war, the Pershing, had been developed in the face of "bitter opposition" by the using arms. Colby believed that if AGF had given the go-ahead early enough, the Pershing could have been available in quantities for the beachhead landings on D-day; and the record supports his belief.60
The pros and cons of the tank controversy have usually been discussed in terms of the argument between Army Ground Forces and Ordnance tank designers in the United States. Ordnance officers in the European theater recognized a third point of view—that of many officers of the Armored Force, especially those in the theater. While it was true that the Armored Force officers could not wholly agree among themselves, there was a strong feeling among them that the Pershing could not (for whatever reason) be got to the theater in time to be of any real value, and therefore the first priority on tank development should be to eliminate the bugs from the M4 and then to modify it to take the 90-mm. gun.61 If only as insurance against the failure of the Pershings to get into action, this modification of a thousand M4's might well have been attempted when it was first proposed by the Armored Force Board in September 1943. In retrospect it seems to have been worth trying, and if successful it would in some measure have provided the tankers with the firepower they needed in Europe, from the breakout to the last defenses on the Rhine.