Posted on 09/06/2019 7:58:03 AM PDT by C19fan
A new tank destroyer concept, built for the Polish Army, could become the most effective tank killer in any army. The unnamed vehicle is armed with up to 24 Brimstone anti-tank missiles and can unleash a salvo of tank-hunting missiles, knocking out enemy tank units it can’t actually see.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
The US WW2 turreted tank destroyers would like to have a word with you. Also, modern TDs are almost all armored cars with a big gun or missile battery on top.
Me too, I never thought about it being as simple as little armor, lot more gun or firepower. I like the .50 cal axial machine gun, in case you dun screwed up and got too close.
Also though, don’t tanks have anti-missile missiles these days, I thought they did. Still I think the deal with these is a tank might be able to kill one or two missile, no way five.
“The Germans also had a simple solution... you had to point the entire track at the target.”
That’s fascinating. Because a dual tracked vehicle can turn in place, verra easily. It would require more coordination between the driver and the gunner but I can imagine it was cheap and devastating. Lotta bang for the buck, as they say.
There are tactical problems with that as well - you can’t sit hull down in ambush with a casemate or hull-mounted gun. US turreted TDs could and did. The German vehicles also had a few other problems...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbQPtgwe6k4
Tanks can have Active Protection Systems, yes - but NATO mostly decided this was a bad idea until very recently, when Turkish-operated ex-German Army Leopard 2A5s went into Syria and got shredded by Russian ATGMs far more easily than commonly anticipated.
This caused the US Army to stop dithering and waiting for the Raytheon QuickKill APS (which has mostly been vaporware) and place an emergency order with Raphael of Israel for the Trophy APS to protect US M1 tanks. Other nations are hastily ordering APS retrofits as well.
Meanwhile the Russians and Israelis are laughing their arses off.
Anyway, in the recent Second Chechen War, those Russian ATGMs that slaughtered the Turkish Leopards were going up against the Russian domestic APS, the full on Arena and Shtora systems and descendants. The Chechens found out that they had to fire *six or more* heavy ATGMs to saturate *one* tank with front line APS just to get one hit. This was a very unpleasant surprise for the Chechens.
Non NATO tanks also mount multiple ATGM jammers/deflectors - see this video about one of these systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtWNPqYeyU
Most of all, the design seems to be affordable and good enough to caution the Russians, who share a border with Poland and a bitter history.
Tank versus tank, like fighter versus fighter, was never the raison d’etre for either weapon; it developed naturally in the course of actual warfare.
Tanks were originally intended to attack stationary targets and personnel (as you wrote), and fighters were originally intended to attack bombers (which is why the USAAC/USAAF called them Pursuits, not Fighters). In fact, tanks were largely viewed as mobile artillery pieces.
Because American tanks followed outdated WWI/Interwar field artillery standards for Guns - short-barreled and low velocity guns to preserve barrel lining for very long life (much longer than the real-world life expectancy for the tank itself) - the 75 and 76.2 Tank guns were soon inadequate. As a result, the M10 and M36 Tank Destroyers became highly valued when tank warfare was necessary.
As I recall, even when they used the 76.2 - versus the 90 - they had a longer barrel for better ballistics. (That is old memory; I could be wrong.)
George Patton was a brilliant tactician, but he was mistaken in maintaining the adequacy of the M4 Sherman: It had a high profile (radial aircraft engine), narrow tread (obsolescent non-Christie), and a low-velocity gun (whether 75 or 76.2).
That is why the British did for the Sherman what they did for the Mustang: upgraded it. They gave the P-51 the Rolls Royce Merlin; they gave the M-4 the 17-Pounder (76.2).
It was called the Firefly, and it was offensively equal to the challenge of taking out Mark IV, Panther, and Tiger tanks in frontal assaults. The British used to hide a Firefly in a squadron of normal Shermans; the others baited the German tanks to engage, and the Firefly took them out.
let me sing you the song of my people... BRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
Ahem. M18 Hellcat?
Patton was correct in the M4 Sherman’s adequacy... for everything but tank v tank combat. The M4 was excellent for antiobstacle and antipersonnel usage. And to be fair, most of the time they weren’t fighting other tanks.
Only great if you have full control of the airspace, sadly, and they’re not impervious to antiair ground fire. We lost four to AAA/SAMs in Desert Storm/Shield alone.
no more vulnerable than a Striker or other TD... each has it’s strengths and weaknesses
1. I did not deliberately exclude the M18. I was writing on the fly. Read my post agin: I reference variables like barrel length.
2. I acknowledged that tank-versus-tank combat was not the original purpose.
3. Patton was not correct on the Sherman, and many tanks and crews paid for his excessive influence. Being a brilliant field commander did not make him necessarily the best judge on design and function. Simply asserting he was correct is no argument. There are multiple incidents of a single Panther or Tiger holding off an entire group of Shermans.
4. I suggest you read the following book, which strongly confirmed my longstanding opinions (having written a term paper on Patton in school):
“Death Traps: Survival of an American Armored Division in WWII” - by Belton Y. Cooper. He was an expert on the front lines, and saw the result of the high command yielding to Patton on the Sherman. (The Russians liked the Sherman because it was well made, with luxurious features, not because it was superior in combat to the T-34.)
5. My suspicion is that you have the same attitude toward Patton that many here have toward Trump: He is an infallible leader who never makes a mistake, and may never be criticized.
Cooper’s book has been debunked by Zaloga among others. Repeatedly.
Also, Patton was an ass. He was a reasonably successful ass, but still an ass. He made lots of mistakes, not least of which was slapping and abusing soldiers who were suffering from bad PTSD.
P.S.
The M-18 entered service in the Summer of 1944: in other words, when the ETO had less than a year left of war.
The bulk of the worst fighting - except for the Bulge - took place before that, with other tanks and tank destroyers. The US also had air superiority by then, with zero-length 5” HVAR fighters, making the need for other anti-armor less extreme.
I also did not mention the Pershing: same scenario.
I recall reading somewhere that during the Battle of Stalingrad the Soviets obliterated an advancing German tank company with a volley of Katusha rockets.
And yet some of the worst fighting was at the Bulge, where the M18 ripped the hell out of opposition armor for little loss to their own. Also worth remembering that the M18 (as the T70) fought at the Anzio breakout and came ashore in Normandy at D-Day, though not in the first waves.
Considering that the M18 was there from day one of the major part of American fighting on the ground in Europe and drove all the way to the Elbe... kind of hard to say it wasn’t there for the bulk of the fighting.
Dammit Captain, I said 321 Farsi Road, not 231!
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