tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post4919328669107212066..comments2024-03-26T14:19:33.332-07:00Comments on Bench Grass: Towards GOODWOOD, Four: The Green Fields BeyondErik Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-8265975360696497122014-07-22T16:29:21.588-07:002014-07-22T16:29:21.588-07:00OK. The 6 pounder comes on the scene in early 1942...OK. The 6 pounder comes on the scene in early 1942 with a plain AP and a HE ammo nature. The AP round keeps getting upgraded. Sabot comes along in March 1944, well in time to be used in Normandy. That takes the maximum armour penetration from a baseline of 88mm up to 142mm. The US also buys the six-gun, but it doesn't do the ammo upgrades and as a result doesn't get value from the weapon except when units beg APDS rounds off the Brits, which they do whenever they can because they don't want to die.<br /><br />The six-gun is installed in a variety of British tanks. As you have discussed, Shermans start to flow into the RAC, to begin with in the Middle East. They bring with them the US 75mm. The combination of US pushing of Sherman, and after-action reports wanting a better direct fire support weapon, leads the UK to accept Sherman and also to introduce the ROQF 75. The important point here is that the ROQF 75 uses the same ammo natures as the US M2/4/6.<br /><br />Per Wikipedia, there is never a decent AP round for the M2/4/6 or therefore the ROQF, while there most certainly is for the six gun and the 17. In fact, the M61 AP shells were even delivered without the burster fill, so their ballistics may also have been screwy if the weight in the tail wasn't replaced with something.<br /><br />So. HEAT or whatever doesn't turn up in time to be relevant, but sabot certainly does. In fact, run the tape back to Villers Bocage.<br /><br />Wittmann kills a Sherman, another gets stuck across the road due to its shitty drivetrain so the rest of the squadron can't gang tackle him. He rips into the RHQ squadron, and then...well, Bill Cotton and a handful of Jackets scrabbling about like untermenschen get a mobility kill and he wanders off leaving his crew. The point here is that the Jackets' AT platoon are loaded for bear or rather tiger with 6 pdr APDS while the CLY tanks have nothing like it. Cotton pulls this off again and again through the day. It happens again in EPSOM - German armour smashes everything until it hits an infantry AT platoon and then it, er, doesn't.<br /><br />Question. Why wasn't there a sabot round for the 75? A 75 round weighs about as much as a 6, so the energetics ought to be OK. The Americans never got it for their own 6s - couldn't their industry manage it? In which case, why did ROF not make one as they obviously could? The British were clearly aware they were short on tank killing capability, hence the effort to upgun Shermans and M10s.<br /><br />Further question. The requirement for better suppressive fires out of a tank wasn't bullshit - engaging German anti-tank guns was something all armour that fought them needed to do. It turned up as a requirement from Tunisia and AFAIK Sicily - is there some really fascinating deep history of the landscape you're going to tell me about? Or is it more that 1st Army's artillery fire control and forward air control was a bit wank compared to 8th, which after all had learned the hard way?Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-85795400240444910712014-07-20T11:28:40.574-07:002014-07-20T11:28:40.574-07:00There really is no solution to the problem of havi...There really is no solution to the problem of having a good support weapon and a good antitank weapon on a tank so that it can perform both of its roles. It's telling that the universal solution of 1939 --an antitank gun in a turret and a 75MV in a sponson is now so incomprehensible that tank historians can barely take in the fact that the T-35, M-3 and Churchill all came along in response to the Char1.<br /><br />You set that aside, and you get to arguing that either a good high explosive round <i>can so to be</i> a good antitank weapon; either because the enemy won't be so gauche as to put more armour on their tanks, or because of HEAT/HESH/ATGM magic. <br /><br />Or you can think outside the box, accept that a tank is not a good artillery weapon, and give the tank a radio that <i>makes</i> it a good artillery weapon. <br /><br />The problem with this is much the same as the problems that prevent you from up-armouring in the first place. It implies an infrastructural investment in your army, in engineers and shops and great big trucks. Over the last seventy years, we have seen army after army sidle away from making that commitment in more congenial directions. The Stryker Brigade is the latest of what, four iterations of a version of an American army that could be deployed by air and still fight from a position of technical superiority?<br /><br />So we accept that there is an obvious explanation for the "go lighter" side of the Great Tank Debate, which is that light tanks cost less money. Not so much directly, as in terms of the support architecture. But what about when money isn't an object, as in World War II?<br /><br />The argument that I am limning here is one about social engineering. Sheppard puts it pretty clearly in 1938. You can <i>either</i> have a deskilled society of middle class managers and assembly line workers, <i>or</i> a trade union based society. The choice is made for you by the kind of total mobilisation army you embrace. <br /><br />GOODWOOD is the end of the line for the "middle class" society. We have faced the limits of our infantry replacement pool, and we understand that we are going to solve the limits of our current armoured force with EVEN MOAR armour. Simonds' plan for TOTALISE is fairly obviously an embrace of an REME-centric army, because Kangaroos. But I would also point to the way that the 5.5" is easing out the 25 pounder, improvements in radio, and the Comet that didn't hunt.<br /><br />As for the reason for not putting the 17 pounder on the Cromwell, it is simply because there's not enough deck on the Cromwell to punch a large-enough hole through. The mighty 70" turret ring of the Sherman will take it, but the Sherman has such a large turret ring because its deck is up on sponsons over the tracks. This was not a particularly acceptable solution to anyone else because of first flotation, second, height(!), and, third, the fact that this design feature began with the inability to find a proper engine for the Sherman, a problem that no-one else managed to have. <br /><br />So we relax the loading gauge (width at height), which is restricted by the limiting dimensions of infrastructure around railways, and accept that British tanks are not going to go by rail anymore, and we get to the 34 ton Comet, a little wider and a little longer than the Cromwell (as opposed to the Challenger, which is just, unsatisfactorily, longer) and you can put a heavier gun in --still not quite the 17 pounder, which goes into the even heavier Centurion. <br /><br />See? All of these problems could have been rendered moot if we had just gone with Brunel's 7 foot gauge to start with! (Or we would have just ended up with Tortoises shoooting at Mauses and complaining about exactly the same thing...)Erik Lundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-84491002920607769782014-07-20T09:38:19.468-07:002014-07-20T09:38:19.468-07:00A couple of things. Am I right in thinking you mea...A couple of things. Am I right in thinking you mean there are too many support weapon tanks in the fleet at the time of GOODWOOD and not enough tank killers? If so, perhaps the lurker here is the development of the sabot round. When we say gun we really mean projectile, after all. An MBT has to kill the best enemy tank, and then be at least acceptable in the support role.<br /><br />Regarding putting the 17pdr on the Cromwell, it wasn't much lighter than Sherman (28 vs 29 tons) or the M10 SPG, 29.5t, of which the UK upgunned 1,100 vehicles with the 17pdr as the Achilles (which Pip Roberts' memoirs says was sometimes used in 11th Armoured as a tank, although only much later).<br /><br />On rail gauges, you have this upside down - the UK loading gauge, not the rail gauge, is more restrictive than that on the continent. As a result, even the super-high density, super-low headway southern electrics have never operated a double deck train as are common elsewhere in Europe. <br /><br />The SR tried one just before nationalisation, but apparently the passengers didn't like having someone's feet in front of their face. Having been a commuter on the Southern Electrics, I don't believe this - I'd have put up with a lot for twice as many seats and comfort isn't exactly a priority. More likely, the cramped cars took too long to load and unload, and therefore the dwell times didn't permit a headway that permitted keeping the timetable.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.com