Regarding the “who thought of up gunning, and when it might have been available, the following is extracted from “Armored Forces” by Richard Ogorkiewicz. I hope it illustrates that things can be thought of, planned, started, and still not make it out in time for the “hind sight” decided ‘best time’.“In 1942, when the design work on the M4 medium was completed and its production was underway, the field was open for the design of a new medium tank. This was in fact started in May, resulting in the T20, a tank based on the mechanical components of the M4, but rearranged, with the drive placed for the first time since the T4 in the rear; giving a longer lower silhouette vehicle. What was more important it had a more powerful 76mm gun in place of the medium velocity 75 of the M4. Altogether it was a design which would have kept the US in the forefront of medium tank development and which could have been introduced by the beginning of 1944. Unfortunately this did not happen.
By 1943 the original concept of the Armored Force had lost ground, its decisive role was played down and the official doctrine settled on the exploitation role. For this the M4 appeared quite adequate. It did well in the British offensive at El Alemain in October 1942, where it was used for the first time and it was generally well up on the contemporary standard in medium tanks. Earlier there had been some criticism by the British of the M3 on account of the mounting of its 75mm gun, though the gun itself was appreciated, and this was repeated when the 1st US Armored Division landed in North Africa in 1942. But the M4 was thought to put all this and other matters right.
Moreover, quite early in the broad planning of tank production there developed something of an obsession with numbers, based partly on the usual overestimates of enemy numerical strength. The introduction of a new model was therefore, resisted as would have caused some drop in the quantities produced, even though in 1942 medium tanks alone account for 21,000 out of the peak annual total of 29,497 tanks. Altogether 57,027 medium tanks were produced, 49,234 of which were M4, out of a total of 88,000 tanks produced by the US during the Second World War.
In addition, the new medium tank development handicapped itself when the earlier T20 and T22 models were succeeded by the T23, which had an electrical, instead of mechanical, transmission. All these factors together with the absence of large scale armored operations such as those in Russia which spurred German and Soviet tank development, combined with the result that the production of the M4 was continued much longer than it should have been. As a further result American armored units which landed in Normandy in mid-1944 were still equipped with the 75mm gun M4, which by the standard of the Russian front and of the contemporary German Panther and Soviet T34/85 medium tanks was obsolete.
It was only in February of 1944, only four months before the Normandy landings, that the need for a more powerfully armed medium tank that the 75mm gun M4 was acknowledged, and to try and put matters right the turret and the 76mm gun of the T20 series were grafted onto the M4. A few of the resulting 76mm gun M4 were used in Normandy and its numbers grew thereafter, particularly in the final months of the war, in 1945. To some extent it redressed the balance as far as the quality of American medium tanks went, but basically it was not as good a tank as the T20.
The T20 series did emerge eventually, but in a different guise. Having dropped the unfortunate electrical transmission, and under the influence of the German Tiger I acquired a 90mm gun it became a heavy tank, the 41 ton M26 or Pershing. The user arm fixated in the exploitation role, had no part in it initially but the combined efforts of the Ordinance Department, and the General Staff brought it through and its production started at the beginning of 1944. Some were used in Europe, in the spring of 1945, too late to be able to exert any significant effect.”
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posted 06-24-2005 12:54 PM
