From: Mil-Veh Co. (milveh@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Fri Apr 08 2005 - 10:56:19 PDT
I was watching the Military Channel about tanks of
WWII and it reminded me of story about General Motors
and the Sherman.
As the story goes GM, et al, were producing the
Sherman's when it came to their attention that the
Tiger tanks were far better gunned and armoured. Now
they had a big decision to make, keep making an
inferior tank of a flawed design with inadequate
firepower and hope that they could overwhelm the enemy
through force of numbers or stop production and retool
to meet the German challenge.
In the final analysis it was the time delay and cost
factor that won. Halting production and retooling
would have cost GM a lot of money based on the terms
of their government contract. For obvious reasons,
they were also under pressure to turn out many good
tanks now rather than better tanks later. The fateful
decision was made and it came at the expense of the
Sherman's crews that believe America was building the
best tank in the world.
The British units who were supplied with relatively
weak Sherman's were stunned. Never mind the 2 inch
armour, the Sherman's 75 mm cannon was a joke compared
the German 88 they claimed. Since the British were
not so keen as corporate America on sacrificing their
crews, the British looked for a remedy to the 88
threat.
They found it in an anti-tank cannon called a "17
pounder" which was in most respects comparable to the
German 88. With some ingenuity, they had to turn it
90 degrees to fit in the small Sherman turret and
called this upgraded Sherman tank the "Firefly." This
was what I was watching on TV. This was a remarkable
improvement, however the Americans balked at using a
"foreign" cannon for what must have been both ego and
financial reasons. Instead they insisted the 75mm gun
was just fine, when clearly it was not even capable of
penetrating a Tiger's armour!
For the Allies using the new improved "Firefly", it
was simply a case of too few, too late; although the
British had demonstrated their scientific, military
superiority once again.
I say again since the British has earlier warned the
American's that failing to use armour on carrier decks
and instead they were using wood, was sheer stupidity,
a formula for disaster. The American and ironically
the Japanese navy learned the hard way later in the
war as this warning proved prophetic.
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