Posted on 03/10/2013 6:59:35 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
My neighbor served with General Patton, and has a couple of photos of the two of them.
Thanks to Henry Ford and his industrial genius in creating assembly line manufacturing we could crank out tanks, planes, mechanized vehicles beyond anything our enemies and allies could do.
Although I suspect he had mixed feelings about them defeating Nazi Germany.
“My father was attached to Patch’s Army”
My 93 yr old father also served in Patch’s Army, in a AA battery assigned to the Corp HQ. Actually dad also served under Patton until Alexander Patch took command of the 7th. Patch was a very good general. Little known because he didn’t cultivate the press, and the 7th Army’s campaign didn’t involve Normandy.
Dad has told me that the men he served with preferred Patch. Patton could be petty, for example ordering medical personnel to wear steel pots when they were far from the front. All that this accomplished was to make their job of attending to the wounded more difficult.
A family friend of ours had been a young German POW. At the end of the war Patton selected him out of a POW camp to clean his riding boots and perform similar chores. He was actually treated quite well by Patton, other than the time that Patton found some dirt remaining in the wedge of a boot heel and threw the boot at him. “Dirty!” Patton yelled.
Years later dad served with one of Patton’s sons, a Colonel, in Vietnam. He says the son was one of the finest officers he served with in his career in the Army.
“Sherman tanks to equip their elite Guards Tank Divivions”
Only until such time as their productive capacity improved to the point where the T-34’s became primary. I saw a number of T-34’s at the Ukrainian War Memorial in Kiev. They are the roughest looking thing going because they had to be built fast with no “finish” on them.
When the Russians finally turned the tide against the Germans, the T-34 was their lead. That is the tank that won at Kursk.
You’ve got your history backwards. The Lend-Lease Sherman tanks were a later replacement for the T-34 tanks. The Lend-lease Sherman tanks were delivered to the Soviet Union during the period of 1943-1945, and the Red Army used them as a high reliability replacement for the T-34. Among the early deliveries were some 38 of the M4-A2 Sherman tanks equipped with the Diesal engines used by the 229th Tank Regiment, 48th Army at the Battle of Kursk. As further deliveries of the Sherman tank arrived, they were used to equip the Red Army’s elite tank units for the remainder of the Second World War, and the more than 4,000 Sherman tanks comprised some 16% of Soviet tanks during the war or one in six Soviet tanks. The Soviet Sherman tanks were highly valued by the Red Army to the end of the war where they participated in large numbers on the Soviet-Japanese front in 1945.
The Sherman tanks were also highly effective against Soviet T-34/85 tanks in the Korean War, where the Sherman was in half of the tank to tank engagements, killed 3 to 1 in loss rate, and very few of which became unrecoverable or unserviceable. On average only one crewman was killed wheen a Sherman was knocked out, whereas on average only one crewman survived when a T-34 tank was knocked out. This survival rate, improved habitability, being equipped with a tactical radio, good performance, superior ease of maintenance and reliability combined to make the Sherman a first choice of tank in the Red Army.
When dad was near Munich he befriended a young Russian who was held as a POW by the Germans. Oh, how he hated them. He spoke fluent German and was used by my father and some others a an interpreter. They called him “little Joe” and even took up a GI uniform to fit him. He wore the uniform when they were on patrol.
My father considered adopting him and bringing him to Texas when he returned. He talked to the CO about it but did not, he was concerned that the war so hardened him that he might be a problem. His CO was receptive to the idea.
When I was a young man he told that I almost had another brother and then about “Little Joe”. He has often wondered what became of him.
—
Patton detractors had best avoid the subject in Dad’s presence.
Was the about Lt. Jack Bushyhead after the liberation of Dachau?
One account:
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/BuechnerAccount.html
My father’s company was encamped near Munich and he spent part of the winter after it was liberated guarding German POW labors who cut the forest there for firewood. Some of those POWs were SS. They were normally identified with a tatoo. One of them was an SS doctor, they used the term loosely.
Stalin blackmailed the Western Allies into forcibly repatriating Russians, Ukranians, and others in exchange Anglo-American and other Western Allied POWs detained by the Soviet forces as bargaining chips. Stalin ordered these repatriated POWs to be shot after they debarked from the transport ships at the Crimean docks. Allied officers raged in vain as this happened. When the U.S. refused to continue these reppatriations, thousands of American detainees were allegedly disappeared into the Soviet gulags.
“The Germans called the Sherman tank “the Ronson”, because one hit and it would blow up and catch fire.”
The anecdote misrepresents the larger truth. All medium tanks had a tendency to burn like a lighter when penetrated by the AP rounds of a heavy tank or another medium tank. The M4 Sherman was designed and built as a medium tank capable of defeating 1942 era medium tanks and anti-tank weapons. By the time the M$ was widely deployed in the ETO, Germany and the Soviet Union supplemented their tank forces with heavy tanks and larger caliber anti-tank weapons capable of defeating the M4 armor. Nevertheless, the M4 proved to be quite capable of matching the vast majority of threats it faced, particularly the most numerous German medium tanks, Panzerkampfwagon II/IV, and smaller caliber anti-tank weapons. Even the German heavy tanks proved vulnerable at the typical ranges actually fought in the tank against tank engagements. While there were some occasions where one Tiger tank knocked out nine M4 medium tanks in one engagement, there are also other engagements where the reverse situation occurred with the Shermans knocking out a succession of Tiger tanks. Due to the relative rarity of the German Tiger and Panther tanks versus the German medium tanks, the Shermans rarely engaged them in tank against tank battles. When they did find themselves in such engagements, the Shermans did reasonably well and the disparagement of their lesser guns, 75mm and 76mm high velocity, are not justified when seeing the actual numbers of engagements and tanks knocked out.
“The mechanics of the Sherman were very good. But the tank was underarmored and undergunned especially against heavier German equipment.”
The Shermans were never meant to enter such engagements, and when necessity required them to do so their results overall were fair to good. The heavier armament and armor versus the lesser numbers and lesser availability due to maintenance left the Sherman in control by virtue of numbers and by virtue of defeating the heavier armament in most engagemens..
Arguably the best tank of WW-2 was the Russian T-34, which was diesel, heavier gunned, very fast and was the first to make use of sloped armor, which greatly improved protection.
The T-34 tank had less armor than the Lend-Lease Soviet M-4/A2 Sherman tank, so the superior sloping of the glacis was necessary to give the T-34 slightly improved technical protection. Unfortunately, the T-34 theoretically better frontal protection did not translate into better protection in actual combat. When knocked out, the M-4 tank crew on average suffered one crewman killed, bu the T-34 crew experienced the opposite result with only one crewman surviving the knockout. This survivability improvement, reliability, simplified maintenance, tactical radio absent in the T-34, and many other attributes made the M4 a favorite among the soviet tank regiments.
Life is cheap to a Commie B_tard.
Until it is his.
Totalitarianism in all it’s forms is evil.
I think what most concerned the Germans about Monty was the fact that his Army Group was fighting on the Northern European Plain, while Patton and the other American Armies were on the Allied right fighting over the rougher terrain of the interior. While having Patton on the right flank spearheading the breakout from Normandy was effective, it led to Third Army being in a bad position for leading the way to Berlin. If I were a German general, I would be more concerned with the forces on the flat ground closest to my capitol than the ones in the south where the natural and man-made obstacles were greater. I have wondered what would have happened if Eisenhower had been able to somehow shift Patton to the north so that Third Army would have had better terrain for rapid movements with armored formations. “What if” scenarios like that will keep armchair generals occupied for centuries.
Pound for pound, I'd take the Panzer V Ausf G with that high-velocity 75. Of course, your ten T-34s to my one Panther would leave me a burning wreck but I'd take a few of yours with me :)
The Panther had a direct influence in the designs of both the Soviet IS-2 and the American M26 Pershing and was used, in quantity, by the Soviets themselves when captured.
Yep. As a guy with the 42nd Division [our General Linden accepted the surrender at Dachau] we were anticipating that the Nazi redoubt would be in Bavaria. It wasn't, so the scenarios continue.
My regiment was in reserve so I did not get to Dachau, we went to Munich. The war was not over yet.
“Patton and the other American Armies were on the Allied right”
Patton’s U.S. Third Army and the 12th Army Group were in the Allied center position. The Allied right flank position was occupied by Dever’s 6th Army Group with the U.S. Seventh Army and French Army B (later First French Army).
So long as there were any British field armies involved in the military campaign, there was zero chance the left flank position in the region of the lower Rhine would be occupied by any other than a British army or army group performing its traditional role. This perforce left the traditional invasion route into Germany through the center position to an American army group using its traditional line of communications through Cherbourg, Bordeaux, and/or Marseilles. In this case it became Cherbourg and Marseilles.
Knowing these geographical constraints, Patton had prepared himself decades before the Second World War to command an army in France. He studied the military histories pertaining to military campaigns and invasion routes through France. He and his wife used their early automobile to tour through the Norman and other French countryside, so Patton could study the terrain, roads, and bridges for their future military value in the event of an American military campaign through Frrance and into Germany. It is this kind of personal preparation which made it possible for him to command the Third Army while other officers were still preoccupied with the uncertainties they faced using just the map studies and aerial reconnaisance photos. It is the reason why he was able to wade out in the river to demonstrate the water was low enough to ford while the officers of the maneuvering unit were stalled at the river and wasting time trying to figure out whether or not there was a safe place to ford the river in the face of German positions on the overlooking ridge on the other side of the river.
Well, that was completely ludicrous. Third Army had its supplies curtailed ahead of Market Garden (which was one of Monty’s ridiculous fiascos, as was the Falaise Gap, which has often been blamed on Patton) and kept its motors running on “liberated” gasoline. October also had the First Army et al engaged in the battle of Aachen. Patton kept stocking up from the trickle of supplies, and was given the go early in November.
Here’s Balck, who had some moderate success at not being a miserable failure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Balck
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.