Posted on 02/22/2021 11:02:45 PM PST by L.A.Justice
I don’t know what I was thinking... yes, I ‘meant’ to say T-34.
It is interesting about how the psychology of the troops affects their attitude toward their own weaponry as well as the mythologizing about their enemy’s stuff.
Wars are won on the strategic & operational levels. You can be near-perfect tactically — as many German units were — and still lose badly.
Patton may have told the US Armor Board “not to use gasoline engines” but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting an engine with enough power to weight ratio to push a 35-ton tank at reasonable speeds. In the late ‘30s thru the early ‘50s that spells and aircraft engine powered by high-octane av-gas.
Most Sherman tanks used Wright-Cyclone radial engine until fairly late in the war. It’s the main reason that the Sherman had such a high profiles — you need the room for a cylindrical engine you’d normally see hanging off a B-17’s wing.
Anybody who has driven a diesel-powered car or truck knows that they have great starting torque at low RPM, but you pretty much need a turbo-charger to get high-rpm performance.
Yeah, I forgot about those, but IIRC the M4A2 wasn’t used much by the Soviets. Mostly they were sent to the British, the Free French and other such forces in Europe, IIRC. And of course, used by the Marines in the Pacific as they could refuel from Navy craft.
Er, the Soviets had a different opinion about that. The T-34/85 was diesel powered, had a bigger gun and weighed in around the same as the Sherman.
The real reason was to reduce logistics complexity. The US was operating at the end of a ridiculously long supply chain. It was a lot easier and made a lot more sense to make everything run on one fuel, make that fuel in absurd quantity and ship it over. In a pinch, an aircraft could land at a tank laager, refuel from the tanks’ fuel supply, then fly home. Likewise, tanks supporting a forward airfield could be supplied from the aircraft’s fuel supplies.
Er, and the T-34/85 was *faster* than any Sherman.
Very true. And the same reason why M4’s operating with the Marines & Army in the Pacific had diesel engines. Diesel would have been available from ships sitting off-shore, and if not, a diesel engine could pretty much burn anything the Navy used in a pinch.
The Christie chassis was better suited to speed. But Soviet transmissions were probably the worst aspect of the T-34 design throughout the production run. So yeah, faster... but do you really want to run you power train that hard?
Neither the Shermans or the T-34s would normally run at their top speeds most of the time. The Shermans especially as they didn’t want to outrun their logistics tail. In their normal use cases, the T-34 was closer to its engine’s best use case than the Sherman was - rumbling along at a dozen or two mph, looking for threats.
Point is, America didn’t really *have* a lot of diesel surface vehicle tech at the time, whereas the Russians did. The Russians didn’t have a great aero engine industry to draw from. Our solution to the tank propulsion problem and logistics problem was to retune/detune aircraft engines and stick them in tanks. Their solution for their heavies and mediums was to make monstrous V12 diesel motors and the end results weren’t much different.
He must have been. God Bless all those guys who stormed that beach that day.
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