Sherman tank was the most commonly used American Tank in world war ii. Up next, i rock and afghanistan think veteran nick lewis moran talks about the design and history of the m4 sherman tank. The tank was the best u. S. Tank during world war ii because of its versatility, low production cost, and reliability. Nicholas miranda is the director war intary director of america, the stakes game as 100 million players worldwide. York military Affairs Symposium hosted this 90 minute event. [applause] Nicholas Moran graduated from University College dublin and enlisted in the Irish Defense reserve forces in 1997. The United States army in 2000, and was commissioned as an army officer in 2002. He then spent one year in iraq as a tank platoon leader and a oneyear tour in afghanistan. Is also aoran graduate of the u. S. Army command and general college. He has been working at the San Francisco bays wargaming americas inhouse tanker and his historian since 2012 and has the nickname of the chieftain. His first book on the development of tanks is scheduled for release in the first half of 2018. He is known for written articles and reviews of tanks inside and out. A lot of you to called inside the chieftains hatch. Theres this videocast on cspans American History tv. Ladies and gentlemen, Nicholas Moran. [applause] good evening. On thats not a good title, but as the that i can come up with. Going to do the obligatory shot first. We are a commercial enterprise. If you are interested in tanks, world of tanks is great. Is not a realistic simulation. I would like to thank you for inviting me, because i have seen some of the other speakers, and there are some highend personnel. I dont have any letters after my name. I do not teach at a university, i work for a videogame. Thank them for taking the gamble and bringing this guy out who has no history whatsoever to give you guys a top. However, despite the disreputable background, as far as the academics are concerned, everything in here is either sourced from the archives or is as accurate as i can make it. Im hoping this will actually come across. If cspan cant hear me, im sure they will make a mention. Initially, i was asked to come here and do my midst of american armor top. Its on youtube. If you want to listen to it, go to youtube. In this, i took some of the common conceptions about the importing and the pershing and said these are the common conceptions, and they are wrong. Because i have given the talk, i said lets modify and instead of how good were the tanks, we will go with why is it the way it is . Thats the spirit behind us. I dont know your luggage i dont know your knowledge levels, speakers here are very high end. Every now and then, its good to go back to some of the lower levels and make sure the fundamentals are still good area make sure the fundamentals are still good. Audience participation question number one. The rifle is the m1 grand, what was better on service . What was better out in service . Pretty much nothing. You can make an argument for the storm to bear 44, but the m1 was probably the best piece of equipment of its type in the world and the u. S. Produced it. What was the better fighter than the mustang . Is better to strengthen the hearing . A better carrier than the ethics . A better artillery fusion in the ec . We had the best. Fighter. D stuff. Noncombat no other country had the handy talky. Spoke, some people say the higgins boat once the s1 the war. The victory ship. I think the record was six days in california. You can go on and on. Exceptions, the other countries have their own areas of expertise. We didnt touch the british with her photography and some of their radars. The germans had a few advantages. As a general rule, anything that the u. S. Went to war with was the best in the world that without the that was out there. What happened . How did we go from the vet at pretty much everything to this . We didng to argue that not get it wrong, and that there were very specific decisions made in the u. S. As to why the m4 ended up the way that it was. Over the course of the next hour hopefully you will get an understanding of the levels of thought that went into the design process. Audience participation question number two. [laughter] hands up for the chicken. Who holds the chicken . Who votes that a . In 2006, it was concluded that it was the egg. That fighting was later reversed by the university of sheffield and word in 2010. In a paper entitled structural control of nuclei eggshell protein. Current scientific thought and therefore indicate that the answer to your chicken or egg question is the chicken. I think you learn something this evening. Guesses . Sir. Back behind you. How would that apply to this topic . Most people are going by the looking back, hearing what people are saying, as opposed to looking at it as a moment. Excellent point. It is not the answer to this question, it is a good point. I mentioned earlier i was talking about british Army Operations in long island, which to an extent, i lived through. Interesting, the different perspectives, if any of you are involved in the matter or dealing with it after the fact. Cert . [indistinct] you are getting there. [inaudible] here is your chicken and here is your egg. On the left side is the symbol for army grand forces. These are the guys who equipped the force. On the right side is here is yoe is your the ordinance branch, the guys who developed the equipment. Is, should doctrine match the technology that is being created, or should technology be geared toward meeting whatever the doctrine requires . So, here is your next question. Drivesnks that doctrine the technological design . Ok. Who thinks Technology Drives what the doctrine does . Ok, a few more people. Who doesnt care . Ok. This is barnes. I refer to him as the mad of the u. S. Army. He believes he knows better than anybody else what the army needs. To quote him, for those of you in the back it is not well understood that tactics are written around the weapon. Field operations ordinarily do not generate ideas leading to new materiel. A new piece of equipment must first be produced, such as a machine gun, before the tactics can be designed for the exploitation abilities of the weapon. This is why it is necessary for the Ordnance Department to take a strong lead over that using services of the development of new equipment, and to get help where the weapon best fits into battlefield operations. If you talk to ordinance, Technology Drives doctrine. It is kind of hard to argue the know how, how can you to use a machine gun if you didnt know such a capability exists . This is what army grand forces thought. Here is thatne army grand forces would draw specifications and they would then be submitted to ordinance. Ordnance would Design Equipment to match what Army Ground Forces wanted the equipment to do. The quote is from the written history of the Army Ground Forces. Did not exist as an entity, but we will leave that aside. Curious, to be clear, we have the user saying they are in charge, and the developer saying they are in charge, and both have reasonable arguments. This is the process today. Parthad to learn this as of my majors course, and im glad im not involved in procurement. This is the army side of it. If you can understand this, you are a better man than i. The bottom line is that in todays military, it is driven by the operational needs, not the technology. Operational with needs, such as the 30 millimeter strike or striker. This came from the field. Said we needigade vehicles with a cannon capable of engaging bmbs. The engineers built them a cannon , a deviceone i saw you can fit onto a tank, when it is driving at least 15 miles per hour, it will detect a minefield before it hits the mine. We have not gotten to that today, but these requests were being fielded from the fields through ordnance, and they did develop materiel which met the requirements. Anyways, the bottom line is that ordnance thought they were in the lead and gs thought that they were. The world u. S. Joined war, the u. S. Was starting from scratch. To its simplest terms, the problem is to determine the kinds of equipment that will be needed most and could be requiredred in the hundreds, thousands, or millions, in time to be of use. Note the in time to be of use. You cant wait around for the Perfect Piece of equipment. In a lecture40, before the army industrial wessonnce, Major General estimated that the development of a major materiel required a minimum of three years from Work Environment to fielding. And the efficiency of war, they cut it down to 1. 52 years. Generally matches with the development of any piece of equipment developed by anybody else, british, german, russian. One and a half to two years. Yes, audience participation number 4. What are the two biggest problems facing the United States as they prepare to fight world war ii . One word each. Production. Logistics. You guys are very good, you are bouncing around the right idea. The two problems are called atlantic and pacific. There we go. Anything which is being built to fight is going to be fighting many thousands of miles away, and a couple oceans, from the nearest factory. It has to get there and be sustained. This means you need to have as few parts break is possible to reduce the need for spares to be shipped over. Youve also got consumables like petrol, oil, lubricants, across the ocean. Note also that unlike the germans, who could, if they had to do a complete refurbish, they to thehip the tank back factory, or so could the soviets. We could not. Anything we sent over was there to fight until it was either discarded or destroyed. The major repair in the u. S. Is not an option. You have to think about the entire chain, from the factory floor to the battlefield. Here is an example of one of the problems. Were 12,122 flat cars in the United States which could carry a pershing tank. In may of 1948, they wanted to get a battalion of pershings from fort knox to fort campbell. It took 40 days to collect all those flat cars. Say 1942, how to many flat cars were capable of carrying a 4550 ton tank . And Everything Else that had to be carried to get to the ship . And when it got to the shipyard, we had been building once every 10 days. What is the lifting capacity of a liberty ship crane. Make these 60 ton monsters, can you get it to the fight . Arguably, you possibly could, but can you get them in sufficient numbers to have an effect . Words,in the simplest what use is having the best equipment if you cant get it to the fight. For if it gets to the fight and it breaks down . No use. You wasted all that shipping and effort to get a tank overseas just to see it raked down. To see it break down. These are the basic problems. Lets get down to nuts and bolts. Quote on the Ground Forces. Criteria hed two genuine battle need. Reluctant to initiate development of any equipment not considered essential to combat to increase combat efficiency. Desired by men in the field, if it was not absolutely essential, it might prove to be a luxury or excess baggage. This was a clearcut policy of general mcnair, which he often emphasized. It was eventually adopted formally as were department policy. Whodetermines battle need . Determines what is an essential piece of equipment versus luxury equipment . The theater commanders. Another school of thought says the decision should be centralized in the u. S. Who thinks they went with theater commanders . They went with centralized decision in the u. S. . You are all wrong. Thatere youre going was done centrally, but once it was set up we have so many tanks, the actual nature of those tanks, improvements to them, was not centralized. I should explain. For the idea of the guys who wanted to centralized decisions was that theater commanders might be too strongly influenced by the limiting local conditions of their own tactical situation to exercise proper overall judgment, which seems distrusting and the reasoning of fourstar generals. They believed that theater commander recommendations were colored by the combat soldiers natural attachment to Reliable Equipment with which they were familiar. Basically, they were worried that the troops were very happy with what they had and would not request Additional Information or additional equipment. There was evidence to support this. With the sixth Armored Division that they 44, reports received no 76 millimeter tanks and had no particular desire for any. The 75 had gotten all the way across ramps, white rock the boats . And to anpartment, extent, mcnair, went with the former view. They did not produce and ship materiel overseas unless the endusers were asking for it. In d. C. Thisys was a great tank and it should be shipped overseas, they have the commanders in europe and north africa. If they say no, the equipment did not go overseas. The second criterion, reliable performance and combat. This standard is sometimes referred to as atul readiness. The equipment, having been proved capable of performing the function for which it was designed, was sufficiently rugged and reliable without imposing excessive problems of maintenance. Again, excessive problems. It might break down, that will happen. There is perhaps a subcategory which i would call immediate capability. Army Ground Forces were not willing to accept equipment if it was the case of that or nothing, but it still had to be reliable. 10. In point, m3 or m the situation of tanks, we have the m2 medium that the u. S. Started the war with. The u. S. Had, at the time, the cult of the machine gun. The infantry were owning the tanks. The cavalry had combat cards, basically tanks. The infantry were quite interested in the tanks ability to deal with enemy infantry. Why did i do that . Machine guns everywhere, deflectors on the back so you fire that, the machine gun would reflect office and shoot into the trench you were walking past. Gun,was an antitank trained for antitank capability. Somebody figured out that if we have a tank, they might bring one, and we have to kill their tank. The main weapon was the machine gun. To 15 tonsas limited by policy, because that was the average weight of an American Railroad bridge at the time. Ro bridge, sorry. So, in 1939, the u. S. Conducted a series of tests to determine if machine guns or would be more effective. Survey says 75 millimeter. Good to know. They added the 75 into the hall of an m2 medium. It should start looking a bit familiar. Then this happened. That is a photograph taken near the germans quickly overrun france. A couple lessons are taken by the u. S. First, a 37 milliliter is not going to cut it for antitank. You need something bigger. They already tested the 75 millimeter, fortunately. The second problem, and this is where the lecture will fork into two tracks. A created Tank Destroyers as a result. Why the sherman was designed the way it was, but also about the tds. The solution, build m threes. You take the m2 and you take the 75 and add a new turret and a few more gadgets and gizmos, and youve made an m3. It is always improving on something that they know already works. This is the sort of thinking which will dominate Army Development and procurement for the next war. They build arsenals. Probably the most important man in the war, he talks to chrysler, and they build the detroit tank plant. Initially, the army only wanted 350 m3 tanks. The problem was that the russians and british were in such demand for these tanks that they couldnt switch over to the m4. They built 6500 of them. Something similar happened with the six pounder. The british six pounder was developed before world war ii. After the fall of france, we realized we cant produce antitank guns, or we built the two pounder. The british one was what they had ready to go. The soviets say the t 34 was supposed to be replaced. Didnt happen, the germans invaded, will go with what we have. There were improvements on the m3 in the form of new stabilizers, the chrysler multibank engine tank. Call castcaste hull. Barnes was not in favor of keeping the 37 millimeter on the tour it. He was happy to go with the current list tank with a turretless tank. , this was going to break into directions. We have the question of how do we stop these . The idea of having antitank guns with the infantry was not working. I go past a couple hidden slides here you have to cut these off. Theres no way you could put enough antitank guns to stop the concentrated armor attack. The solution was to have mobile, couldantitank guns that meet the enemy attack at the point of penetration. The idea was these would be up all the tanks, and have the Tank Destroyer branch. Nearly defensive organization, if you look at the manuals and the doctrine. They were never to be used for the attack. Not everything was a Tank Destroyer. If you google it or look at my youtube channel, i explained the difference between an antitank gun and a Tank Destroyer. This is a problem the u. S. Had. This was the thinking of antitank technology at the beginning of the war. Intothrow rifles and a tank track to stop it . This is my favorite photograph ive ever found in the archives. It is a declassified photograph of an antitank rock. T failed to stop the tank you can see where the tank sheared theock rock. The u. S. Antitank systems were a little lacking. They eventually selected the 37 millimeter, kind of taken from the germans, not exactly. Construction in 1939, a little late to the party. Now you have the question, do you want these fast, mobile antitank Tank Destroyers . Do you want them to be really fast . The thinking was that these turret antitank guns would be hard to spot. They would be the master of the tank. The comparison of Coastal Artillery versus battleships, which the u. S. Navy didnt believe in either, apparently. Fact that these things are much