My background is posted in this thread.  You're welcome to find it and read it.

If you have any commentary on the sources, analysis, conclusions, feel free.   Standing by.

That's what I thought...

Left almost completely unspoken is that an experienced crew fights a vehicle in a way to maximize its advantages and minimize its weaknesses.

Kind of like the Flying Tigers learned not to get in a low speed turning fight with Japanese fighters, but do high speed boom and zoom attacks.

If you have a gun with more penetration, you defend from forward slope.  If you have less penetration, you defend reverse slope, with the crest situated where by the time the enemy can see you, he is already in range.  Or you have a pre-planned obscuration artillery mission, or smoke pots, or mine fields, to minimize the enemy's range advantage.

If you have a tank with a great gun and armor, but shitty reliability, you might prefer a static defense.  If, on the other hand, you have great reliability and maneuverability, in addition to decent optics, stabilization, and a power traverse, but you are fighting enemy vehicles with more frontal armor and a bigger gun, you might more quickly opt for a mobile defense, to get the target aspects you need to kill the vehicles.

You have to penetrate to kill, for the most part.  If you generate enough spall, you might take out the crew or fragile equipment.
You have to hit to penetrate or generate spall..
You have to shoot, preferably first, to hit.
You have to aim to shoot.
You have to see the enemy to aim.
YOU HAVE TO GET THERE to see the enemy.  Better if you bring a bunch of other tanks with you.
You have to NOT BREAK, (or be quickly repaired) and not run out of fuel, to get there.
You have to reload to shoot again.
You have to survive being shot to jump track and continue the fight.

The M4 was hands-down the best in the world at those things in WWII.  For most of that war, it brought a good enough gun, with a good enough shell, to accomplish the mission.

If you are attacking experienced enemy with decent equipment into the teeth of a fortified and prepared defense - you are going to take your lumps, regardless of frontal armor thickness or gun penetration capability.

I could not ask for a better example.

Thread needs more....

Yes, but that also had allot to do with numbers as well. Would you rather be in a Sherman say if the odds were reveresed? I’m betting no. If there were 10 plus Panthers for every Sherman, and I’m betting the numbers were three or four times that of Sherman’s against Panthers, your odds of surviving are not very good either.

They are the sole and only reason I started playing WoT. Every time one comes out I tend to go back and play a bit if I have been off for a while (considering the RNG and MM, that seems to be frequent these days). I know plenty of people that came to WoT through Inside the Hatch videos.

But there never could have been a flip in numbers. The Sherman was easy to make, transport, and maintain. The Panther was none of those things.

I'm school trained as an 1811, 1812, and 0352.  The similarities between armor and anti-armor MOSs, are substantial in that we live and die by our ability to kill enemy hard targets by exploiting weaknesses in their armor.  Of course, wheeled assets firing ATGMs are a whole different ball game than running about the battlefield in a tracked AFV with two feet of armor in front of you, but you quickly learn that engaging enemy armor with a missile that gives away your position every time you fire it has to be done with considerable tactical consideration lest you become hors de combat very quickly after the enemy MBT sees your launch signature.

I can't speak for the Army, but lots of armor officers in the USMC do or did end up commanding TOW units because of the understanding they had for armored warfare.  I've been on this site long enough to know CharlieR doesn't talk out of his ass.

Well, no.  Not really at all.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

In modern day combat, if you have ATGMs, you can stand off and perhaps get the enemy in a crossfire. As the range decreases that may be harder to do.  Your first volley may get some tanks in the flank, but that may not last long. If they pivot on you, you are SOL.

If you have decent equipment, but you cant penetrate the enemy frontal armor. you must maneuver to a flank.  If you are stationary, cant maneuver, and cant punch through enemy frontal armor, you are going to get slaughtered.

The attacker isnt going to take lumps.

The attacker will take no lumps. The AT rounds will bounce off the frontal armor and then the defender will die.

You can look at the 82nd Airborne at Biazza Ridge in Sicily in 1943
The 2nd Marine Division on D+1 at Tarawa
The 25th ID attacking the Gifu perimeter on Guadalcanal in 1942
Task Force Smith in 1950.
Desert Storm, such as Eagle Troop at the 73 Easting, or 1st AD all overthe place, in 1991.

You can pull out David Zucchino's Thunder Run, describing Baghdad in 2003. 2nd Battalion 37th Armor, Sadr City in April 2004. The Marines in Fallujah in 2004.

What you will find is that if you are a stationary defender, like the infantry usually is, and you cant penetrate the enemy armor, you will get hammered but good.  All of the lopsided fights I describe above are crunchies and grunts getting hosed by big heavy tanks with big heavy front armor, that couldnt be penetrated.

Go educate yourself.

Appreciate it, but that poster has contributed nothing to this thread other then sprinkling these:

Not worth the effort.

We are discussing tank on tank warfare here.  Nothing you posted has a thing to do with the relative merits of tanks.  Nothing you posted here regards initiative or consideration of terrain, engineer effort, obscuration and suppression.  A competent COMBINED ARMS force, in the defense, is going to get its licks in on a competent COMBINED ARMS attacker, despite the relative merits of the armored vehicles involved.

Or, to look at it another way, since you like historical examples,  why did the Battle of the Bulge end in a German defeat, despite the fact that Germans had numerous Tiger and Panther tanks, being opposed largely by the supposedly inferior Sherman tanks?  Why did they not sweep to Antwerp?

If your argument is that the US should have fielded a specialist assault tank with heavier armor sooner, then yes, there is some merit to the argument, be it that it takes for form of the Jumbo, T14, Tahootie, or whatever. My point of contention is whether the Sherman medium tank, the bog-standard, ubiquitous tank upon which the majority of the army's armored units were formed, should have been heavier. Perhaps we should clarify which of these two is your position before we proceed further? As an aside,  based on my combat experience, I really wish my -3 tank had spent a whole hell of a lot less time in maintenance, and a whole lot more time actually out and about with me.

As to the second part, what I have not seen addressed anywhere (maybe because no source material exists from which to postulate such a thing), is how many times an infantry battle had been positively affected by the availability of large numbers of mobile, responsive, tanks. I presume it is theoretically possible, if someone wishes to devote enough effort to the matter, to try to come up with some form of ratio in which the number of US tanker lives saved by extra armor can be balanced out a bit by the number of engagements in which a couple more or less tanks or mobility could be calculated. However, it seems to me to be impossible to calculate, but still critically important to the overall conduct of the war, to know how many infantry or engineer branch lives were saved because in their little dismounted firefight, of however many were occurring that day, there were sufficient numbers of working, mobile tanks to be able to swing the engagement decisively in their favour.

Opinions of the folks responsible for making the decisions and in charge of testing, in fairness. If Armored Force concluded as a result of testing of the E2 that it was suitable only for limited use in specific circumstances due to issues with reliability and flotation in the report I quoted (I'm not sure where you're saying I'm not citing source), then I would suggest that that opinion should have significant weight. And I'm wondering if you are actually thoroughly reading my responses. Example:

Yes, I know, page 14 and table  page 17. As I pointed out earlier, that is the average range, and averages are skewed by outliers such as the three 2,000m losses. Instead I put it that given the frequency of these engagements, as found in the BRL's "The Range and Angular Distribution of AP Hits on Tanks." (1951), is such that a very significant proportion of engagements occurred at substantially lower ranges than that. In case you didn't follow the link I posted a few pages back, here's a graph.



Note how only 25% of engagements were on the 'far' side of the 750m average for NW Europe.

The same report then goes into the details of frequencies location of the hit in a little more depth than ORO-T-117 does, giving not only the frequency that rounds would impact on the thick frontal armor anyway, but also whether or not the tank was even responding to the engagement at the time that it was knocked out. Part of that old "see first, shoot first, win" thing.

Yes, that 800 yards area for which only a quarter of casualties were taken. Fewer engagements, indeed, at 800 yards and over than at 350 yards and under.
Here's another graph, same source.


Nobody, to include the folks in the US, were advocating that there was no band in which additional armor would have found a practical benefit. The argument is over whether that additional benefit was worth it in the long run, especially when one figures that at under 350 yards, the round would probably have punched through a slightly reinforced Sherman regardless of where on the tank the round would have hit, wheras at 800 yards and over, the extra protection would have been of benefit only in the minority of cases where the frontal armor was impacted.

Now, in fairness to the argument, we are using post-facto knowledge. The folks in charge did not have the benefit of the studies printed in 1951 assessing in fine statistical detail what was likely and what was not. They don't seem to have made a bad guess, all things considered. After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that is that the Allies won, and the US had surprisingly low numbers of US tankers killed and wounded, especially when compared to either the other combat arms of Infantry or Engineers, or compared to other nations such as USSR, UK or (presumably, since no firm figures exist) Germany.

What is not cited, and I honestly cannot say that I have seen anywhere, is what restrictions were placed on the use of such vehicles, or their overall effect. We do know that if Armored Force placed specific limitations on the specially-modified-for-the-weight E2, there is the possiblity of a similar 'limited-use' instruction in 12th USAG given that the un-modified final drive ratios would have been less able to take the double-thickness of armor. After all, most tanks did not receive that upgrade (36 such modified tanks went to each of 4th, 6th and 11th armored). We also know that US tank crews deliberately ignored the advice of engineers: See discussion with Zaloga and Doyle, starting about 2:45 in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtl2DhoRPnc&feature=youtu.be&t=165
To quote Zaloga, "practically every one of these reports that I have read has a little postscript at the bottom that says 'but the troops find it very, very effective and its psychological value outweighs the technical issue'". Which brings us to the third issue: Whether or not the perceived value equaled actual value. I don't believe either of us have access to anything to prove or disprove that.

Yet the letter from MG White to Eisenhower dated 20 March 1945 also states "The major items of ordnance equipment are sound in design from a mechanical standpoint, particularly with the changes in suspension of the M24 light tank and M4A3E8 and M26 medium tanks. Any increase in armor plate thickness would decrease speed and maneuverability and it is felt that these highly desirable characteristics should not be sacrificed. The main armament of our tanks, including sights, is not comparable to that of the Germans..... The most important point, and upon which there is universal agreement, is our lack of a tank gun and anti-tank gun with which we can effectively engage enemy armor at the required range. The correction of this deficiency has made progress, but the problem has not as yet been satisfactorily solved."

(My emphasis)

Subordinate commanders in the report have similar opinions, see LTC Hawkins, CO 3/67 "The tank gun is the most vital factor in tank fighting."
Or, if you want, the Ninth Army survey 7 Dec 1944, " Among tank requirements, the gun comes first. Tankers desperately desire a gun capable of knocking out enemy tanks and bunkers. Armor protection is secondary but is considered of far more importance than was formerly the case", or 6th Armored's opinion of 13 Feb 1945 "Present tanks are entirely unsatisfactory, due to lack of a satisfactory gun and lack of flotation" (and of course, increased armor will make the flotation problem worse). Note how this is a complete reversal of their opinion of 14 October 1944 when it was reported that not only had they no 76mm tanks, they had no great desire for them.

The opinions of the commanders of the issues of weight and mobility, which are an inherent result of additional armor, are common and frequent. Recall that Eisenhower refused the M26 on the basis of its extra weight. (And that in the Remagen crossing operation, the M26 was out of the fight for three days because it couldn't stay with the Shermans). Again, 6th Armored (14 Dec 1944) "There is a definite lack of floatation and power compared with what we require to get effective results. Time and again a tank has been knocked out by direct fire because it could not negotiate a reasonable hill except at the very slowest speed. The great majority of tank losses can be attributed directly to being stuck in the mud or on a hill where they became easy targets for direct fire guns" If this is what 6th Armored is complaining about, making a sherman heavier is not going to solve their problem. And this is, again, at the micro-tactical level, and disregards a lot of operational-level factors.

We seem to be arguing in circles. The issue isn't 'how often did a Sherman meet a Panther", nor even is it "how often did a Sherman meet something which could kill it". The issue is "How do deal with situations where the enemy can kill you in situations where you are unable to effectively respond". Did it happen often? Not really, no. But that wasn't much of a consolation when you happened to be facing off against one in a disadvantageous position. On the other hand, even a 76mm Sherman can place effective enough fires on an anti-tank gun. Again, recall that all US Army production of medium tanks was converted to the 76mm in early 1944. Obviously the folks in charge believed that the  known reduction in HE capability was worth the extra anti-tank punch.

Forgive me, but I asked a different question, which you have not addressed in your response. I shall explain.

Logical fallacy here. The primary mission of the tank destroyer is indeed to destroy tanks. However, that does not mean that the primary asset allocated to destroy tanks is necessarily going to be the tank destroyer. USMCTanker may be a perfect sample case, since he seems to have been in both tanks and anti-tank units. I think he will be quite capable of coming up with scenarios where the anti-tank unit (whose primary mission, maybe even sole mission, is the obviously the destruction of tanks) will be the preferred unit to deal with expected enemy armor, and other scenarios where the tank is, even if the tank's primary function is not the destruction of enemy armor. I can certainly think of some such situations from the Army's side of the house.

A reading of FM 18-5 clearly indicates that the role of the tank destroyer is purely reactionary, to respond to massed enemy armored attacks. Nowhere in the doctrine does it state or imply that the TD unit is supposed to support an attack by driving up to the front line and engaging defending enemy armored vehicles, even when the supported unit is in the offense. Indeed, commanders were mis-reading the lines about 'offensive spirit and aggressive action' that in the 1944 rewrite of the FM, not only was that language toned down, but they even added in italics for emphasis that TDs were to stop going around chasing enemy tanks, but were to only ambush them. An exception was made in the 1944 revision to allow for going to the front line for bunker busting, but not one for tank-busting.

In other words, by the Tank Destroyer's own manual, whatever is dealing with defending enemy tanks at the front line, it's anything but the tank destroyer. This leaves the tank as the next logical option, a factor with which obviously both Armored Force and Ordnance Branch agreed given the history of their work to upgun the tank.

I believe you'll find that this is in reference to the armored divisions, and it does not reflect upon the role of the independent tank battalion. A quick count in Yeide's book indicates 75 such battalions existed, as opposed to only 68 battalions in the 17 created armor divisions. In other words, exploitation was the primary function of less than half of the Armored Force. And besides, when exploiting, you want less armor, not more, for mobility, and even at that, you might still run across a tank to kill.

Were I tasked to defend France for the Third Reich, and I had Eastern Front veterans, Stugs, Tigers, and Panthers at my disposal, I guarantee you my defense will situated such that an attacker primarily armed with Shermans in the amounts the Allies could get there will take their lumps.

On the other hand, should I be in an alternate universe where the Germans were using Shermans, and the Allies were invading with Stugs, Panthers, and Tigers, I guarantee my defense ...  will make the attacker take his lumps.

Defense might be situated a little different, but remember this - the attacker only gets to pick the date and time, tactically.

The DEFENDER gets to pick where, and terrain, engineer effort, counter-mobility operations, and a fire support plan can really help a defender.

I'm sure he is knowledgeable.  However,  his argument compared to Manic_Moran makes him sound like he would be at home behind the counter at a gun shop.  He lacks the scholarly bona fides possessed by Manic_Moran.

For what its worth, I have taught at the grad school level and have been published in Armor magazine.  You are incorrect. Got a few other scholarly items on the resume, which are none of your business.

That door swings both ways.

In a perfect world, the entire fleet going in to the ETO should have been uparmored prior to June 1944. The tanks in the Pacific theater were totally adequate.  In a practical sense,  the fact is that  the Army had no heavy tanks worthy of the definition.  I have posted this earlier, somewhere back in this thread, that at a  minimum the US should have had heavy breakthrough brigades, similar to the breakthrough brigades the Soviets were using, ultimately with JS-2s.  Optimally, since in the real world, with real engines, suspensions, and springs, more armor will impose a cost, I would have recommended either:

A heavy armor regiment per corps (probably 2000 additional tanks)
Heavies in the infantry division support battalions.  
Which isn’t that far off the British use of Matildas, Churchills, or Soviet use of SU152s, for example.
I disagree with the straw man argument you pose in that most of the time, tanks supporting infantry were divisional battalions, supporting infantry divisions.  It was extremely rare for US infantry divisions to attack panzer or panzergrenadier formations on the defense, to begin with, and to attack with German tanks sitting on the OBJ with infantry is more unlikely.  An Israeli style Golan heights defense with tanks bermed up wasn’t the German style, really wasn’t, and it would be more likely to see an armored counterattack after the infantry took their lumps.   The German defensive doctrine was still an elastic defense, tanks counterattacking, not in the FLOT or on the OBJ.  While admittedly he was describing actions in the east, I recommend Timothy Wray.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/wray.pdf
Then again, the TD/tank doctrinal debate was a gordian knot no matter how it is presented.

If you pull out Jarymoycyz, he mentioned quite explicitly that in battles such as Operation Spring, on 25 June 1944, the German counterattacks on Verriers ridge caused the Allies and specifically Canadians to emphasize synchronizing infantry advances with moving forward AT assets to wear down the inevitable counterattacks. So your piece on TDs vs tanks is based on a premise I disagree with, but anyone searching for the doctrinal quote to justify their position can find one, somewhere.

Back to the first question.  The Army needed a tank heavy enough to defeat the most common AT weapons at the most predictable ranges, especially in the infantry support role where the requirement to maneuver in proximity to infantry meant pH was increasing.  Good enough beats perfect.  A heavy tank that could withstand 75mm AT, really anything other than 88mm flak 41 and pak 43 and 75mmL70, could have accomplished all with 5 inches frontal armor.   That was not significantly more then what the base model had.  I don’t think the mobility costs would have been prohibitive but just for compromise, give them as support assets to the infantry division, which advanced dismounted.   As far as the impact of tanks on infantry fighting, I don’t know that it has been analyzed in the aggregate. Michael Doubler did a good job of describing tank support in the bocage, but again, 1st Army took 100,000 casualties in seven weeks and 85% of them were infantrymen.  The majority of tanks were in infantry divisions, and as I have mentioned, the majority of ammunition was HE, (70+%) and the majority of targets were not tanks (85%).  Since most tanks most of the time were supporting formations that moved at 3mph, suffering 85% of the casualties, optimizing those vehicles for that mission should not be contentious.  It was neither difficult, or for that matter particularly original.  The US was conspicuously absent in not producing heavy armor.  We could argue how many, for what mission, and what parameters, but anyone who wishes to answer the optimum number is “zero” is simply off base.

In fact, lets just chew on that:

During a seven week period, June-July 1944:
One tank division was committed...maybe two 3rdAD, and 2nd
The US Army had no heavy tanks.
Every German AT weapon in the bocage could penetrate the main US tank from every angle.
The front advanced maybe 50 miles...so maintenance issues were negligible to nonexistent.
100000 casualties. 85% of them being the infantry.

That's bad. Really bad.

The classic example, which I mentioned obliquely, is D+1 on Tarawa.  An armored force in an infantry support role that has frontal protection against stationary infantry threats and targets  is the optimal answer, if it can be fielded.  In the Pacific, that tank was already there.  Getting there in a sufficiently mobile package was feasible.

As far as the base sherman was concerned, up armoring the tank would have slowed its ability to maneuver, and while it would not have been impossible to armor up a tank to withstand, say 75mmL70 at 800 meters, the 75mm L40 still can’t do anything. The answer in that case is a better gun, or gun plus armor, but we are talking about 15% of the engagements, and the most efficient way to spend resources in that instance is by producing more HVAP.  The answer is "gun plus something" but implictly the gun and ammo.  But again, 85% of the problems arent that problem.

While your MG White quote is what it is, 3rd Army and 12th AG did not agree. Neither did his subordinate commanders.
“German Tanks have better sloped armor and a better silhouette then the American tanks.”
BG J.H. Collier
“Our tanks armor does not withstand German direct fire weapons of 75mm and higher”  
COL S.R. Hinds
“Armor: Insufficient to prevent penetration by high velocity ammunition”
COL Paul A. Disney
“[at Faid Pass in Tunisia] our tanks were penetrated by 88, 75, and 50mm caliber in this engagement in all parts of the hull and turret.
Tank crews in this battalion are adding sand bags to their tanks, about 170 bags for each tank, in an effort to make up for the tank’s lack of armor…”
LTC Wilson M. Hawkins

Lastly, there were a couple of different ways tank-infantry coorperation was practiced.

Ifthe tanks were worried about being quick to fire they led....infantry followed 50 meters back or so.

In terrain where you were worried about AT ambushes, infantry led.

You could advamce on separate axes, but  this was hard as the crystals in the radios didnt allow the two sides to talk.

The big problem is that in general, dismounted infantry could not protect tanks from AT fire if AT guns were outside small arms range, which was almost always the case.  And the tanks couldnt maneuver at infantry speeds.  This is why infantry support tanks, for the most part, required armor protection as the mission caused them to sacrifice mobility, and in general, they would not get the first shot off against hidden AT.

If you think QCMGR is participating in anything approximating open and respectful debate, feel free to read his posts.

@Manic_Moran

It occurs to me that the answer to your question regarding infantry support from armor is best performed by subtraction.
The classic example that people like to cite is where base shermans are advancing, attack a force of panthers and or tigers, and must maneuver. Frontal armor could increase survivability, but the gun cannot penetrate frontal armor, and heavier armor impedes the ability to maneuver to a flank.  Therefore, the answer would be a better gun, or HVAP, and accept we are an eggshell armed with a hammer. In some cases, which I believe Zaloga oversamples but is still valid, you have the "Bulge/Arracourt ambush with flanking fire" where the US is on teh defense. That detracts from the sample...but for consistency I'll leave those instances in.

As previously posted by me several days ago, we can look at Zaloga’s numbers and determine that the panther/tiger fleet (I would add jagdpanzer IVs to that number) was a known quantity, approx. 1/3 of the German force, and the example in the previous paragraph was a likelihood 5% of the time.  You could model it if you like to determine that these tanks were generally in formations intel could track, many were in the East, and for an infantry division support battalion the number may have been slightly less.

In any other then those 5% of situations, an infantry tank is preferable.  It could engage from long distance, defeat soft targets, call in artillery, and the weight does not impede mission essential maneuver.  With the exception maybe of an 88mm in the Siegfried line, the reduced mobility is not a significant factor.  Against the standard German defense, infantry in front with paks, and German tanks in the rear to counterattack as part of a doctrinal German elastic defense, such a vehicle is preferable.  Against most tanks, such as Mark IVs and Stugs, the gun was acceptable and the protection provides a decisive advantage.  Against something like unprotected flak guns in the ruhr, it is survivable at long range until artillery can be called in to address the tactical problem.

So my answer is probably: 93%.  But it would be easier to tally up what doesn't apply, and subtract.  In those situations, an E2, or Churchill VII or VIII would be preferable.

Ah, yes, the Maneuver Warfare dictum.

Its great when you can pull it off.  However, to set the conditions to do so, someone has to get a break-through (usually) and keep it going.  That means you have bust the defense, before the grand turning movements and envelopments are possible.

Sometimes, there are no gaps to exploit, until you turn a surface into a gap.  Sometimes you have to fight.

Maneuver warfare is awesome when you can get, but lives primarily at the strategic and operational level.  AT the tactical level, sometimes you have to assault a defended objective - yes?

If ifs and buts were bullets and guns Germany would have won.

The fact is there were massive holes in the German lines because they didn’t have enough tanks to fill them. Allowing the Allies to easily out maneuver German units.

Well, then - how did the Operation Watch On The Rhine take place?

I seem to recall Montgomery having a lot of trouble getting moving.  Things didn't bust loose until Third Army started "turning surfaces into gaps", and that was a while after D-Day.

17 pages that sound like a Ford vs Chevy debate between 18 year olds. We won. That's the ONLY thing that counts.

What a strange thing to post.

How did it take place?  The Germans pulled front line tank units from the eastern front as well as mostly dedicating months of new tank production in order to have a small advantage in numbers against the weakest part of the Allied lines in an attack that stalled in large part because the German tanks could only cross a limited number of bridges due to their size and weight.  Creating a huge traffic jam on the single road that went to their objectives.

You also left out how the battle ended.  It ended with the Allies out maneuvering the entire German force, cutting them off from their supplies and forcing them to abandon most of their tanks and retreat.  In the end the Germans lost far more tanks then the Allies despite a tremendous operational advantage at the beginning of the battle.  It really illustrates all of the failures of the German tank program with poor mobility, low numbers, poor reliability, poor fuel economy and logistics all combining into a massive defeat.

The Battle of the Bulge is probably the worst example of German tank warfare that you could have found.  You should have stuck with the problems breaking out of Normandy.  But of course the Allied loses then were mostly due to anti-tank guns not other tanks so that falls apart there too.

Your post makes a strong argument that the Sherman was indeed the proper tank for the European Theater.

I think this quote sums it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Peiper#Assigned_route

These roads weren't any different than the roads that the Germans used to attack France in 1940 and the Panzer III & IV were very successful in crossing those roads.  Just like the Shermans were when responding to the German attack at the Bulge.  But a Tiger tank is nearly 12ft wide and a Tiger II nearly 12 and a half feet.  It's literally wider than many of the roads in Europe at the time, even many of the roads now.

Attached File

Attached File

The fist picture is one of the roads into Bastonge, the second is one of the roads into St. Vith.  Both are representative of the roads tanks would be traveling down.  For reference the car in the first picture is less than half the with of a Tiger II.

Armor always loses.

Always.

There's no way to make armor better as cheap and easy as it is to make better guns and ammo.

For either one the damn engineers are going to just fill the whole creek with bundles of felled trees for today and work on the semi-permanent bridge a little ways up or downstream, or string a pontoon dingus.
Engineers are amazing.

This here is combat engineering. Tomorrow isn't included in the preliminary environmental impact study.

For what its worth, My father in law, a 92 year old veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and the push to the Elbe River, told me that he came up on Sherman tanks that were sitting outside a town and the tank commander said to his squad, there are Tigers up there, go up there and take them out. He said he and his squad told the tankers, you have the tanks, you go and knock them out....

He also said when in boot camp, they were told that all of the American equipment was better than the German stuff....his encounters with MG 42's changed his thinking....He said the Browning 30's sounded like bang bang bang and the 42 was bangbangbangbang....you get the image Im sure

He was a member of Roosevelt's SS...the 30th Infantry Division. He was captured by the Germans on April 14, 1945 after the failed crossing of the Elbe River in Elbenau, Germany. He said a German soldier told him Roosevelt had died.....

Slot A into Tab B-Jim hand me tha-*Thwupsplat-Fred, hand me that screwdriver.

The Breakthrough Myth is a good read. Don't agree with everything in it, but a really good read. Recommended.

Buck Naked is reformed now. He's saved.

I would wager learning how and why we had to fight to win the war count more than the winning itself. So we don't have to repeat it.

The tone of your response was ridiculous.

CharlieR was simply responding to someone questioning his credentials in a very measured, matter of fact manner.  At no point was he soliciting or hinting for your "moderation".

I never said you “failed” anything.  I stated you made a strange post, one that is about as strange and irrelevant as the question directed at me above.

Whatever.