M36 Slugger (NA)
M36 “Slugger” Tank Destroyer
By the time the battalion supported the 100th Infantry Division in January 1945, it was equipped with the M36 “Slugger” tank destroyer. Sluggers carried the most powerful US antitank weapon to see combat in WWII, the M3 90mm gun. This weapon was more than a match for the especially long-barrelled 75mm guns of the 21st Panzer Division’s Panthers encountered near Rimling, and was only outgunned by the behemoth 128mm main guns of the 653rd Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion’s “Hunting Tigers” (Jagdtigers) that supported XIII SS Corps’ attack during Operation NORDWIND.
An unusual feature of this vehicle was that its turret was open-topped, to facilitate maximum observation for the commander and crew at the long ranges at which engagements with enemy tanks were envisioned by the designers. Unfortunately, it also meant that the turrent crews were vulnerable to shrapnel from above.
Despite these vulnerabilities, it was the crews of 776th TD Battalion Sluggers who scored the first kill of a Hunting Tiger ever recorded on the Western Front in the first week of January 1945, just outside Rimling!
M36 Slugger
Height: 10.4 feet
Width: 10 feet
Length: 19.6 feet
Weight: 30.5 tons
Combat radius (how far one can go on a tank of gasoline): 155 miles (road); 110 miles cross-country.
Armor
Front: 1.5 inches
Side: .75 inches
Turret Front: .75 inches
Turret Side: .75 inches
Mantlet (Armored shield on front of turret): 3 inches
Maximum Speed: 26 mph (road); 5 - 20 mph cross-country
Armament
Main Gun: 90mm M3 Muzzle velocity: 2,800 feet per second
Anti-aircraft Machine Gun: .50-caliber
(All data from Aberdeen Proving Ground Series)
Fond of halftracks, I called my ribbed-sole shoes halftracks, and scolded the minister at my baptism for getting water on my halftracks.
My first unpublished novel of 459 pages was Cadillac Loretta and the Day-Glo Halftrack, a story of two kids from the Heartland surviving nuclear war.
We have word of Kuwait busting $60 million worth of Iraqi biochem weapons and warheads en route to an unnamed European country.
No doubt the one filled with dirty, arrogant people who think they still matter.
Let us have the contraband heaped onto plates at a banquet so that Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and other notables may eat that which they denied existed.
Bon appetit!
