Tank Killers: A History of America's World War II Tank Destroyer Force Mass Market Paperback – August 3, 2018

It's hard to imagine that the Armored Force of the USA was virtually non-existent at the same moment that Hitler started his Blitzkrieg attacks in Europe.There may have been a few tanks still around from WWI, but most of them were in military museums and displays. For all practical purposes, our Armored Force had long since been dead and buried.In fact, I remember seeing newsreels at the movies showing tanks being dumped in the ocean, after the war.You could safely say that we were asleep at the switch.Other than obsolete WWI tanks, our total American tank inventory amounted to 240 machine-gun armed M1 and M2 light tanks, plus a single (1) medium tank prototype, armed with a 37mm gun.There were tentative budgetary plans to allocate $7 Mil for additional infantry tanks, but we had no tanks in large-scale production.What we did have was a force very similar to Poland's, in terms of size, and reliance on horse cavalry, with very little in the way of mechanized forces of any kind.Hitler routed Poland's army in about two weeks.To say that this was a wake-up call to the rest of the world, (and most especially to us) was a massive understatement.We weren't yet in the war, but it didn't take much imagination to realize that we had better start doing something soon.And so we started from scratch to invent and build a tank force, and we came up with the M4, which was competitive with, and even superior to, the early German tanks.It had a 75mm gun, compared to the 37mm and 50mm guns of the German panzers, at the start of the war.Thanks to Henry Ford, we had much experience with assembly-line auto production, and so we utilized this ability to produce tanks as well.And so, by the time D-Day arrived, we had had enough time to build almost 50,000 M4s, and sent ample numbers of them to England, to build up our invasion force.But Hitler was in love with tanks, and had a whole assortment of bigger, heavier tanks in the pipeline, which overwhelmed our lineup once they came on line.Also, we had to transport each and every tank - and not just tanks, but every piece of military equipment we used, across 3,000 miles of ocean, plus an additional trek from the ports to the battle site.Patton's technique was designed around rapid movement, and a battlefield strategy which did not necessarily involve brute force, or comparing one tank's relative features against another's.You might actually say that he copied, or patterned his methods after Hitler's blitzkrieg attacks, in that he utilized hit and run attacks, rather than attempting to stage toe-to-toe shootouts with Nazi tanks.It worked - as he demonstrated repeatedly - and so what if Germany had bigger and better tanks than we did? Actually, the big bad Panthers and Tigers had many problems, which effectively kept them from being operational much of the time.What good is a formidable weapon if it doesn't work?But when they did work, they were devastating. We knew that Hitler's whole menacing force revolved around the tanks, and if we could stop the tanks, we could win the war. Not necessarily just with our tanks - which we already had, in plentiful numbers - but with whatever method we could devise to stop them.Actually, for reasons that don't seem immediately clear, the whole US mindset was not to fight their tanks with our tanks, but to use a separate force of Tank Destroyers for that purpose.But I don't think anybody told Hitler.The M4 was a great tank, but was not built with enough armor, or enough firepower, to withstand the onslaught of the much heavier firepower of Hitler's Panther and Tiger tanks.Fortunately, early in the war, they didn't amount to a large percentage of the tanks we had to deal with. But as we began to run into more and more of them later on, they did start to present a problem.Thus was born the Tank Destroyers, or Tank Killers. Plus, artillery, bazookas, fighter-bombers, and any and everything we could devise to stop, and destroy, the German tanks.Whoever had the original idea to employ a self-standing gun, whether towed or self-propelled, specifically to blow up tanks, was a genius.Since the concept of the tank destroyers was so new, nobody seemed to know who they should be attached to. They were almost like the "red-headed step-child," in that nobody knew what to do with them.It seemed that everybody wanted them: The artillery wanted them to perform as additional firepower for them, the infantry wanted their support, and they supplemented the tanks - even bailing them out on many occasions with their superior gun strength.One thing that greatly contributed to the chaos, which could have easily been solved, was lack of communication. The radio frequencies were different for all three commands - infantry, armor, and artillery - and yet the tank killers were asked to integrate themselves with all three, without being able to communicate with them. It would seem that simply coming up with radios - for all three arms - which had variable frequencies, and could switch from one to the other, would have solved the problem.But once they were attached to an artillery command, for example, they were more or less "kidnapped," and taken over by the commander of whichever branch they were attached to, and spirited away from their own commanders.Even Patton didn't seem to be too sold on the TDs, but he should have been behind them 100%, because every panzer they knocked out was one less German tank he would have to worry about.When they were involved in firefights, they acquitted themselves beautifully by knocking out German tanks, which is what they were designed to do, right? He was probably a little bit jealous, since being built on an M4 chassis, they looked just like M4s, but had bigger, more powerful guns, and could knock out tanks that the M4 couldn't.The TD they came up with, which was mounted on the M4 chassis, was called the M10.The M10 had a 3", or high-velocity 76mm gun, and was very well-liked by the TD crews, since it was very potent and capable of knocking off almost anything it came up against, until the heavily-armored Tigers came along.The other, purpose-built tank destroyer we had was the M-18, which also had the .76mm gun, but was built on its own unique chassis, and didn't use the existing M4 chassis.Eventually, things improved considerably when they added the 90mm gun to the M10, making it an M36. This made it more than a match for the Tiger, but that came later in the war.But along with the higher gun power, also came the corresponding armor protection of the tank. The M4's armor was sufficient against the early German tanks, which had much less powerful guns, but did not protect the tank crew from the higher velocity guns, especially the 88, of the later Panthers and Tigers.Of course, the Tank Destroyers had no armor protection at all, for all practical purposes. They only had relatively thin-skinned shells, which protected them from some small-arms fire, but not against the tank's main gun.In fact, they didn't even have a roof overhead, to protect them from the weather, or from a grenade being thrown into the cockpit. Many of the TD crewmen resorted to constructing makeshift overhead canopies, or roofs, out of salvaged parts of other vehicles, for example.So none of the TDs was ever designed to stand toe-to-toe and slug it out with a tank. Any tank. They simply had no defense against tanks, inasmuch as they had no armor to deflect a big tank gun.But they weren't supposed to fight tanks - they were supposed to kill tanks. Hit and run, because they couldn't take a punch from a tank.They relied on a quick punch with a heavy gun, and then run away and hide, if possible.The tank vs tank mindset was not necessarily what proved to be successful, in the actual application of field forces.He didn't seem to worry too much about the M4 not matching up favorably to some of the German tanks - although most of the tanks we faced were pretty much on a par with what we had.The one that we had no answer for was the Tiger. It mounted the 88mm flak gun, which had no equal in destructive power, even at distances that our guns were completely ineffective at.But war is war, and whatever works, is what you count on to get the job done.One P-47 was worth many Tiger tanks, inasmuch as it could eliminate, from the air, virtually any tank, truck, train, gun emplacement, or troop formation it came up against.Probably the most fearsome opponent we faced was the devastating 88 ack-ack gun, which could be used as either an anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapon. This was what the Tigers had, which just simply devastated our M4s. They blew through our armor like it was cardboard.The only good news about the Tiger was that it was plagued by mechanical problems, which kept it off the battlefield much of the time. Plus, there were only about 100 of them operational, so it was rather unusual to encounter one. But when you did, they were a very big problem.Face to face, the M4 could not compete with the Tiger. It was simply no contest. Sometimes, though, if enough M4s were on the scene, and one could get behind the Tiger, they could blow him away, by hitting him in the more lightly armored areas, from behind.But even the 88 was just another target to the P-47: When it was used as an anti-aircraft gun, the pilot could see the flak coming, all the way up from the ground, and side-slip it. Then, all he had to do was train his .50 cal. tracers down to the source, and voila! No more flak gun.That's eight .50 cal. machine guns, all firing at the same time, each loaded with 500 rounds of high explosive, armor-piercing ammunition, which just absolutely shredded virtually any target into confetti. And that's in addition to the single 1,000 lb. or two 500 lb. bombs they carried. Those eight .50s may not have been able to penetrate the turret or the hull armor of the biggest German tanks, but they definitely did penetrate the deck plates, exploding the engine and scrambling the suspension, leaving it an immovable, burning hulk. Or, if he wanted to waste a bomb, he could instantly liquidate that tank.The opposition scattered like rats when they saw a P-47 in the air - like rabbits spotting a hawk circling above.Our 90mm gun came very late in the war, but this was something we should have had from the very beginning, both as an anti-tank gun, and as the main weapon on our tanks.When Germany's Panther and Tiger tanks came into play later in the war, they were too heavily armored, and their guns too powerful for our M10 tank destroyer, which used the 3" (76mm) gun.Much later in the war, we did convert the M10 to an M36, by adding the 90mm gun, but this was along towards the end of the war, when the outcome was virtually a sure thing.The Brits offered to mount their 17 pounder, which was just about equal to the German 88, in our tanks, which they had done for their own forces. (This meant putting their gun and mount into the M4s we had given them on lend-lease, which they named the "Firefly.")But it was too big for the M4 turret. They could only squeeze it in sideways, and by completely eliminating the recoil mechanism, which meant that the entire tank absorbed the shock when it was fired, which almost killed the occupants inside when they fired it.This was obviously not the solution, but they were interested enough that they sought out different modifications to the gun to make it work.The need for a gun which could match, or even exceed, the 88, was strong enough that the British undertook extensive modifications to the 17 pounder to make it fit into the Sherman, and they finally succeeded.It is completely understandable as to why Patton wasn't in favor of that, as far as converting American M4s. It would have meant totally changing the turret, as well as the gun, on all our tanks, and having to convert to completely different ammunition.This would have created an impossible situation, since the inside of the turret has to be designed, from the get-go, to secure and store the ammunition.Plus, they didn't even have enough guns to supply their own tanks, having enough to convert only about one out of four, so how could they have supplied our vast inventory of tanks?The Tigers and Panthers only comprised about 30% of the German tanks we faced, and the M4 had no problem dispatching the remaining 70%. Given the massive effort, plus the time that would have been required to change over, even if enough guns had been available, was deemed to be not worth it.Being in the middle of a war is hardly the time to undertake massive changes in your working inventory of battle tools.Secondly, you don't change horses in mid-stream, and Patton was doing very well, thank you very much, in knocking off Germany's tank forces just the way he was going.In the few instances of a Tiger/Sherman duel, the Tiger always won, and the myth persisted that we were completely outgunned, and that the M4 was a death trap. That was true in that particular instance, but much more often, the M4 was able to hold its own, and the skill of the crew was a bigger factor than the thickness of the armor.Actually, although much was made of the M4 being inferior to the later German tanks like the Panther and Tiger, more enemy tanks were knocked out by artillery, Tank Destroyers, fighter-bombers and Bazookas, than by M4 tank confrontations.Maybe the M4 fared second best to a Panther or Tiger tank, but so what? No matter how you killed it, a dead Panther or Tiger was pretty much harmless. And we did find ways to kill them, without sacrificing an M4 to the 88, which was a guaranteed death sentence.The way General Patton used his armor, he charged into the enemy lines and wreaked havoc in the rear areas, where they least expected him to show up, and was more into destroying troops and just general military targets behind the lines, then he was in shootouts with other German tanks.All things considered, the TDs acquitted themselves fantastically well, in that they killed many more Nazi tanks than they lost themselves.And by a wide ratio - depending on the details of where and when the unit served. But they didn't just hold their own - they prevailed, big-time! In some cases, it was a 10-to-1 ratio, but it generally averaged out to at least 5-to-1.They were fabulously successful, and all the more wonder why it has taken this long for the general public to become aware of how well they handled a job that nobody thought could be done - that of neutralizing Hitler's killer tanks!Our tanks, and George Patton himself, were viciously criticized, as if it was our fault that Hitler was so enthralled with tanks that he ordered bigger and bigger versions of them, which ultimately overpowered our M4.But what were we to do? There we were, with thousands of tanks, which we had just transported over 3000+ miles of water, and suddenly we needed more firepower to get the job done.But that was only technically, when compared with the relatively small number of Panthers and Tigers we faced. The vast majority of Nazi tanks could be handled easily by the 75mm gun of the M4.In fact, the HE (High Explosive) round of the 75mm gun was more effective than the HE round of the TDs, even though the AT (anti-tank, or armor-piercing) round of the 76mm on the TDs was much better against armor than the 75mm AP round of the M4s.So each one had some good features, which were perhaps offset by some less than terrific features of the other.The M4 was a great tank, and held its own with most of the Nazi tanks: Let the TDs take care of the rest.Well, Patton did just what he had to do: He made do with what he had, and did it quite handsomely, too, until we were able to catch up and supplement our tanks with a little more beef, in the form of the M10 and M18 and M36 Tank Destroyers, which proceeded to do a number on every German panzer they faced.Few people had any idea that the TDs were so devastating, or for that matter, any knowledge about them at all, inasmuch as until this book, very little has been known about them.But they certainly were devastating, and deadly, and only as we started to produce bigger and more powerfully armed tanks, did the realization that the TDs would ultimately become obsolete, or no longer necessary, become apparent.What is simply mind-boggling, when you think about it, is the artillery. A 155mm howitzer, self-propelled, on a chassis just like the M4, when a few of them were unleashed on any target - tanks, or whatever, and they could get the correct elevation and distance information, and start to unload with round after round, all the Nazis could do was sit there and take it. And die. There was no return fire, because they were far out of range, perhaps miles away. But they could wipe out a whole company of tanks with a few well-placed volleys of HE shells, and it's all over.Imagine: Just a few pieces of artillery, perhaps five or six, operating for a few minutes apiece, like running a machine on an assembly line, sitting far away in some wooded area, miles away from their target, and just simply wiping out many of Hitler's prize killer tanks, sight unseen, and all in a days work.They didn't need to meet up with the Germans face-to-face; all they needed was a map coordinate, of their approximate location, and they could saturate the area with high-explosive shells, and it's Goodbye, Fritz!We finally started to get some M26 Heavy Tanks with the 90mm gun, which was more than a match for the German 88, although they got there too late to have much impact. But the future had arrived, and the TDs were no longer required.After the war, the general consensus was that the TDs had served their purpose and filled the gap, but were not necessary in the future scheme of things. We had learned our lesson, and realized that we needed to build tanks that were fast, but heavily armored, and with vastly improved firepower, which the new wave of tanks provided.And so the Tank Destroyer units were demobilized, and the notion of TDs was retired forever.However, that's not to minimize, at all, the magnificent things they accomplished. It was just a case of plugging the gap with a hastily put-together program, in hit-and-miss fashion (as witness the eventual realization that the towed guns just didn't cut the mustard, and the self-propelled TDs were the answer) and finally coming up with the right combination, which completely surprised and baffled the Nazis, who were convinced of the superiority (and ultimate success) of their mighty Panzer force, which we proceeded to whittle down to virtually nothing, by the end of the war, on a one-by-one basis.

A year ago, I couldn't have told you the difference between a tank and a tank destroyer or how each differed from the other. This book starts you in the deserts of North Africa going up against Rommel's Afrika Corps, takes you up the boot of Italy and then marches you from Normandy to the heart of Germany with shot by shot accounts of brave men taking on German Panzers. It does get a bit tiring to read all the different unit names, acronyms and hard-to-pronounce names, but the author does keep the action coming fast enough to keep you engaged.

The concept of the tank destroyer -- a unit designed to hunt and kill tanks -- grew out of the great German victories early in WWII. Or more correctly, it grew out of American misunderstanding of what produced those victories. To the Army at the beginning of the war, "blitzkrieg" meant lots of tanks.Enter General McNair and the tank destroyer concept. Using both self-propelled and towed anti-tank guns, the tank destroyers would wait in reserve until the armored onslaught and then move out using a combination of mobility and ambush to kill the tanks.McNair's concept was fatally flawed, but few people could see it at the time.. So the United States built a strong tank destroyer force -- rather to the bemusement of Allies and Germans alike.The first result was a series of weapons, and especially vehicles, which had no exact counterpart in other Armies. They were hastily built and hastily deployed with American forces to meet the Germans.After they were deployed, the problems started showing up. Some of the vehicles, such as the one mounting a 37 mm anti-tank gun on an unarmored scout car, were quickly taken out of service. Others, such as the half track with a 75 mm cannon firing to the front, went on to serve because nothing better was available. Even in their most developed form, such as the M-10 with its 76 mm gun, they were defective weapons.The biggest problem with the tank destroyer was that it was essentially defense. That is, it was an offensive response to a German attack. Technical problems aside, the Americans were usually the ones attacking so the entire concept was severely strained and the weapons were never employed as designed.There were a lot of other problems as well. The planners hadn't allowed for the increasing gun power and armor of German forces. The 37 mm gun, the backbone of the light and towed tank destroyer forces, was obsolescent before it was ever issued and its replacement, the 57 mm gun, wasn't much better. Because of the emphasis on speed, even the best tank destroyers were thinly armored and no match for the later German tanks.Worst of all, McNair had the power to refuse to issue Americans heavy tanks to match the Germans. He was so enamored of his tank destroyers that he refused to recognize the need for heavier tanks with bigger guns. The result was that Allied armored forces (mostly equipped by the Americans), including the tank destroyers, were slaughtered by German Tigers and Panthers and American heavy tanks didn't get into action until 1945. It is no accident that General McNair was killed in action in France in mid-1944.So what did the tank destroyer battalions do in action. They did what troops always did when given misconceived weapons. They put them to use and made the best of them. This book is primarily the story of the tank destroyers in action and how the fought to overcome their handicaps.The later tank destroyers were not impossibly bad. While the towed units seldom saw action, the more powerful 76 mm gun on the self-propelled tank destroyers was quite effective against earlier German tanks, especially at closer ranges. In Italy and elsewhere they also proved effective as artillery support. Their light armor and the tendency of commanders to deploy them as tanks resulted in a lot of casualties, but in the whole they were quite effective.Ironically, by 1945 the Army was getting a version of the T-10 tank destroyer with a 90 mm gun. It was still under-armored, but the gun was a match for even the heaviest German tanks.

A rapid text about TD atuaction on the eastern front in the American troops, only a limited view on this Topic.

An interesting and unique review of action undertaken by an overlooked arm of the allied forces of WW2, very readable and well researched.

It is a common misconception that tanks were intended to battle tanks in WWII. This wasnt the case.In principle the tank was created to either race ahead to exploit holes in the enemy defence and capture distant objective, or to escort advancing infantry and destroy fortifications with their guns from the safety of their armoured shells.In 1940 America had almost no tanks of its own, and even though they were not involved in the war at this time, they were wary of the lightning progress that the Germans had made across Europe - spearheaded by their tank force.In any case, during their advance the Germans had swept aside both the French and the British - two nations with no shortage of tanks that had availed them naught - so America considered that another solution to the German tank force would be required, and that solution was considered to be the 'tank destroyers'.Faster, more lightly armoured than tanks, but mounting a comparatively larger main gun than most tanks of the time, Tank destroyers were intended to be a rapidly responding force of killers, roaming the battlefield or responding to calls to deal with armoured prey, although in reality they were very rarely used in accordance with tank-destroyer doctrine.This very detailed book explains the invention of the tank destroyer concept in the American military, goes into great detail about the vehicle involved - from the ineffective M6 and M3 tank destroyers (no more than an ineffective anti-tank gun bolted onto a jeep or half track) hastily thrown together and deployed at the beginning of Americas involvement in the war, to more purpose built machine like the M10, M18 and M36 that were deployed later, and also describes in great detail the type of enemies they faced.The book also describes in great detail the birthing pains that the tank-destroyer regiments experienced, which ranged from not understanding exactly how they were to be used and lead to them being employed as armoured cavalry, artillery, or as traditional tank forces; the the confusion regarding exactly who these forces belonged to and who was responsible for commanding them, the lack of communication that often lead to disaster, the vulnerability of a vehicle which generally sported little more than an inch of armour and was open topped, and many other issues.The book covers the entirety of Americans involvement in the desert war and the war in Europe from Operation torch to the fall of Berlin and is fantastically detailed and well researched, including many firsthand accounts and perspectives, and is one of the few books of its kind.The only complaint I have is that it does not explore the role of tank destroyers in the Pacific theatre at all, which even though armoured vehicles played a much lesser role in the jungle strewn and mountainous Pacific region, would still be worthy of researching

The role of the tank destroyer in U.S service is much neglected. This book goes part of the way to redressing the balance,giving a comprehensive overview of all the actions the tank destroyers undertook during the Second World War. Despite official apathy - including that of no less a figure than George Patton - the Tank Destroyer units were fed piecemeal into battle. In many cases being freely mixed with tank units. By nature of their bigger gun armament,they tackled enemy tanks whilst the U S tanks tackled enemy troops. A comprehensive index covers every Tank Destroyer Battalion formed with a thumbnail history. A minor point of annoyance is the use of the word "Doughs" to describe American Forces, The first time it,s mildly amusing but by the 100th it is really annoying.

Very detailed account of WW II TD history. Very comprehensive, perhaps better suited for readers with at least intermediate military knowledge.