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The M4A3E2 or (76) Sherman Jumbo was designated an assault
tank and not a tank destroyer as commonly reported in other sources. It provided applique armor to front and sides of the
hull, a standard 75mm main gun and HE (High Explosive) ammunition. Other features included a single-unit differential and
drive housing and removed headlights.
The turret system was also completely re-engineered to include a commander's
cupola and a loader hatch. Original armament was to be the 76mm main gun but the shell of the 75mm armament proved to be more
powerful. Some Sherman Jumbos did see the 76mm main gun mounted to their turrets however.
About 250 of these Sherman
versions were produced. Please see the M4 Sherman base entry for more details regarding the Sherman line of tanks and chassis
and their impact in the Second World War.
American Sherman-tank (M4-A3)
of WWII in Clervaux, participated at the battle of the Bulge in the north of Luxembourg
The first proposal for a tank was by the Austrian
Oberleutenant Günther Burstyn who, in 1911, proposed a design for "motor artillery" (Motorengeschütz)
with a turret, but his design never progressed beyond a German patent in 1912.
Tank or "landship" development,
originally conducted by the British Navy under the auspices of the Landships Committee was sponsored by the First Lord of
the Admiralty, Winston Churchill and proceeded through a number of prototypes culminating in the Mark I tank prototype 'Mother'.
The first tank to engage in battle was named "D1", a British Mark I, during the Battle of Flers-Courcellette on
15 September 1916. For further information on British World War I tank actions, see Tanks in World War I.
In contrast
to World War II, Germany fielded very few tanks during WWI, with only 15 of the A7V type being produced in Germany during
the war. The first tank versus tank action took place on 24 April 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark
IVs met three German A7Vs.
Mechanical problems, poor mobility and piecemeal
tactical deployment limited the military significance of the tank in World War I and the tank did not fulfil its promise of
rendering trench warfare obsolete. None the less, it was clear to military thinkers on both sides that tanks would play a
significant role in future conflicts.
In the inter-war period tanks underwent further mechanical development and, in
terms of tactics, J.F.C. Fuller's doctrine of spearhead attacks with massed tank formations was the basis for work by
Heinz Guderian in Germany, Percy Hobart in Britain, Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. in the U.S., Charles de Gaulle in France, and Mikhail
Tukhachevsky in the USSR. All came to similar conclusions, but in the Second World War only Germany would put the theory into
practice on a large scale, and it was their superior tactics and French blunders, not superior weapons, that made blitzkrieg
so successful in May 1940.
The
first tanks didn't have turrets in World War I until the development of the French light tank called the FT-17. This French
tank set the design of tanks to modern day even thou it only had a machine gun for is main weapon. Many World War I tanks
were huge compared to the early days of tank in World War II. At the Start of WW2 most tanks had a 37mm cannon.
Also
before World War II the development of mobile radio sets that could be used inside tanks meant that tanks to work together
as groups with out a person hanging outside of the tank with flags.During World War 2 tanks got larger up to the point of
the 50 ton Tiger tanks. With larger size meant larger weapons.
The Soviets with the IS-2 tank had the largest production
tank gun of WW 2 with a 122mm cannon. The IS-2 was the Soviet answer to the German Tiger and King Tiger tanks which had an
88MM cannon. The US built the M-26 Perishing with a 90mm Cannon. Armor during WW2 was mainly steel but Post WW2 the developed
of guided missiles and SABOT rounds meant the development of new types of armor. With new armor and larger main guns tanks
also got shorter. The closer to the ground a tank was the harder to hit. Vietnam was not a big tank war.
The US mainly
used tanks as mobile artillery since they would sink in many of the rice paddies of Vietnam. The North Vietnamese did use
T-34 and T-55. During the 1972 invasion the US used helicopters armed with guided missiles to destroy large numbers of North
Vietnam's Soviet built tanks. In the 1960 and 1970s tanks started to receive laser sights, night vision and other enhancements
to increase their ability to fight.
The Israelis developed explosive armor to defeat shaped charge rounds and missiles.
British and American researches came up with armor based on depleted uranium. One big modern change is the development of
smooth bore guns. Older tanks had rifled tubes which helped spin the shell as it fired. This helped stabile the shell in flight.
Smooth bore guns last longer than rifled tubes and for about the same weight can fire a large shell. The Original M-1 had
a 105mm main gun. The M1A3 uses a 120mm main gun as does the German Leopard 2.
Other new weapons are the use of missiles
instead of shells. Some tanks carry missiles that fire out of the main gun. Some are laser guided or infrared guided. Modern
tanks now use wireless networking to talk to helicopters, other tanks, artillery, command posts and even local close air support
aircraft. This networking will speed how fast a tank works on the modern battlefield. Working together with other battlefield
weapons will make the tank more deadly and useful for years to come.
The Tank was a culmination of technology developed
before World War 1. The first tank is believed to have been designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in the late 15th century. It was
never built. The Army of Great Britain in World War I needed a device that could break thru the line of trenches that the
Germans were building in World War I. Using Gasoline engines, naval steel plates and tracks the British built the first working
tanks. They were called tanks in the hope that Germans would think they were water tanks.
In the summer of 1915
the British tested their tanks in England. The tanks were rushed into production and were on the battlefields of France in
Sept 1916. The first tanks were slow but they were invulnerable to machine guns and rifles. Only artillery or mechanical breakdown
could stop most tanks.
During the Cold War, the two opposing forces in
Europe were the Warsaw Pact countries on the one side, and the NATO countries on the other side. The Warsaw Pact was seen
by the West as having an aggressive force outnumbering the NATO forces and tank development proceeded largely as it had during
WWII to maintain the balance of power. The essence of tank designs during the Cold War had been hammered out in the closing
months of World War II. Large turrets, capable suspension systems, greatly improved engines, sloped armour and large caliber
(100mm+) guns were all introduced to tanks during WWII. Tank design during the Cold War built on this foundation and included
improvements to fire control, gun stabilisation, communications and crew comfort. Armour technology progressed in an ongoing
race against improvements in anti-tank weapons, especially antitank guided missiles like the TOW.
Medium tanks
of WWII gradually evolved into the Main Battle Tank of the Cold War and took over all tank roles on the battlefield. This
transition happened gradually in the 1950s, as it was realized that medium tanks could carry guns (such as the US 90 mm, Soviet
100 mm, and the excellent British L7 105 mm) that could penetrate any practical thickness of armour plate at long range. The
WWII concept of heavy tanks, armed with the most powerful guns and heaviest armour became obsolete, since they were just as
vulnerable as other vehicles to the new medium tank guns. Likewise, WWII had shown that lightly-armed, lightly-armoured tanks
were of little value in most roles; speed was not a substitute for armour and firepower.threat.
A tank's protection is the combination of its
ability to avoid detection, to avoid being hit by enemy fire, its armour to resist the effects of enemy fire, and to sustain
damage and complete its mission, or at least protect its crew. In common with most unit types, tanks are subject to additional
hazards in wooded and urban combat environments which largely negate the advantages of the tank's long-range fire-power
and mobility, limit the crew's detection capabilities and can restrict turret traverse. Despite these disadvantages, tanks
retain high survivability against previous generation RPGs in all combat environments by virtue of their armour. By contrast,
tank survivability against newer generation tandem-warhead anti-tank missiles is a concern for military planners
A tank avoids detection using the doctrine of CCD:
camouflage (looks the same as the surroundings), concealment (cannot be seen) and deception (looks like something else).
Working against efforts to avoid detection is the fact that a tank is a large metallic object with a distinctive,
angular silhouette that emits copious heat and noise when mobile. Consequently, it's difficult to effectively camouflage
a hull-up tank in the absence of some form of cover or concealment (eg. woods). The tank becomes easier to detect when mobile
due to the large, distinctive auditory, vibration and thermal signatures of a power plant with an output comparable to that
of a diesel locomotive. Tank tracks and dust clouds also betray past or present tank movement. Powered down tanks are vulnerable
to infra-red detection due to differences between the thermal conductivity and therefore heat dissipation of the metallic
tank and its surroundings. At close range the tank can be detected even when powered down and fully concealed due to the column
of warmer air above the tank and the smell of diesel.
There are at least three possible explanations of
the origin of the name "tank". One is it first arose in British factories making the hulls of the first battle tanks:
workmen and possible spies were to be given the impression they were constructing mobile water containers or tanks for the
British Army, hence keeping the production of a fighting vehicle secret.
Another is the term was first used
in a secret report on the new motorized weapon presented to Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, by British
Army Lt.-Col. Ernest Swinton. From this report, three possible terms emerged: "cistern", "motor-war car",
and "tank". Apparently "tank" was chosen due to its linguistic simplicity. Perhaps the most compelling
story comes from Churchill's authoritative biography. To disguise the device, drawings were marked "water carriers
for Russia."
When it was pointed out this might be shortened to "WCs for Russia," the drawings
were changed to "water tanks for Russia." Eventually the weapon was just called a tank.
The cruiser tank (also called cavalry tank or fast
tank) was a British tank design concept of the inter-war period. This concept was the driving force behind several tank designs
which saw action during the Second World War.
Like the ships of the same name, cruiser tanks were fast and mobile,
and were designed to operate independently of the slow-moving infantry and their heavier Infantry tanks.
Once
gaps had been punched in the enemy front by the infantry tanks, the cruisers were intended to penetrate to the rear, attacking
lines of supply and communication in accordance with the theories of Hobart and Liddell-Hart. Speed was therefore a critical
factor, and to achieve this the early cruiser designs were lightly armoured and armed. This emphasis on speed unbalanced the
British designs; insufficient attention was paid to armour protection. At the time it was not well understood that lightly-armoured
vehicles would not survive on the modern battlefield. An even bigger problem for most cruiser tanks was the small calibre
of their main gun. Most cruisers were armed with the QF two-pounder (40 mm) gun. This gun had good armour penetration (the
best at the time), but was never issued high explosive ammunition. This made the cruisers vulnerable to towed Anti-tank guns.
However, as fighting enemy tanks was part of the projected role of the Cruiser tanks they were the first to be upgraded to
the heavier 6 pounder (57 mm) gun when it became available, and a great deal of effort was put into developing (admittedly
unsuccessful) Cruiser tanks armed with the 17 pounder QF (76 mm) gun. Ironically, given the emphasis on high mobility, most
cruisers were plagued by mechanical unreliability. This problem was usually caused by insufficient development as most of
the early Cruiser tank designs were ordered "off the drawing board" and was not fully solved until the debut of
the Cromwell in 1944, with its powerful, reliable Rolls-Royce Meteor engine.
The British and French tanks were are among some of the
least successful of the WW2 period. Some of them (such as the British Valentine, Matilda and Churchill) were eventually turned
into good fighting machines, but - working in a rush and without a proper development base from which to work up their designs
- many British tank designers produced tanks that were no match for their counterparts in the German Panzer units. The reasons
for this are described herein, but it is not all a sorry tale: despite their drawbacks, these tanks (both Infantry and Cruiser
types) were at times all there was to hand and with them their crews and commanders learned the important lessons that were
to produce the eventual Allied victory.
The tale of the Cruiser tanks produced by Great Britain has by now been
often told but it still bears re-examination, showing as it does, how a doctrine accepted without proper investigation can
affect the course of battles, even well past the point when the doctrine has been found wanting. British and Allied tank crews
had to drive their charges into battle knowing that their main guns were too weak, their armoured protection too thin and
their mechanical reliability all too suspect at a critical moment. But they went into battle all the same and often managed
to defeat a betterarmed and prepared enemy.
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World War II was the first conflict where armoured
vehicles were critical to success on the battlefield. During the German Invasion of Poland (1939) the Germans used a combination
of Panzer I (a training tank), Panzer II light tanks, and captured Czechoslovakian tanks (Panzer 35 and Panzer 38. Early war
German tanks sacrificed firepower and protection for mobility and reliability. In contrast, the French had good tanks like
the Somua S35 and Char B1 but employed a defensive doctrine and had poor tank command and control systems, lacking radios
in many of their tanks and headquarters. The French and British used a range of tank designs with different roles (see British
tank classification). One of the more successful British tanks of the war was the Matilda tank.
The German doctrine
of blitzkrieg or "Lightning War" made use of radios in all of the tanks to provide command and control, which made
them more effective tank for tank than their Allied opponents in the Battle of France, despite the Allied machines being more
than a match for the panzers one-on-one. German tanks bypassed enemy strong-points and could radio for close air support to
destroy them, or leave them to the infantry on foot. A related development, mechanized infantry, allowed some of the troops
to keep up with the tanks and create (for the period) highly mobile combined arms forces.
By 1941, the Germans
had the newer Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks with which to invade the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. In an echo of
the Battle of France the Soviets had several good tanks and one superb tank design, the T-34. German crews were initially
shocked by the excellent all-round performance of the T-34 and the protection and firepower of the KV-1. As before, the rigid
Soviet command structure and poor leadership allowed their machines to be surrounded and destroyed in detail, but the Germans
could not precipitate the same tactical and strategic panic as they had in France; instead they found an enemy that doggedly
kept fighting without food, water and communications. Despite early successes against the Soviets, the Germans began up-gunning
their Panzer IVs, and eventually built larger Panther and Tiger tanks to (ultimately unsuccessfully) deal with the Soviet
tank
The three traditional factors determining a tank's
effectiveness in battle are its firepower, protection, and mobility. In practical terms, the cost to manufacture and maintain
a given tank design is also important in that it determines how many tanks a nation can afford to field.
Firepower
is the ability of a tank to identify, engage, and destroy a target. Protection is the tank's ability to resist being detected,
engaged, and disabled or destroyed by enemy fire. Mobility includes tactical (short range) movement over the battlefield including
over rough terrain and obstacles, as well as strategic (long range) mobility, the ability of the tank to be transported by
road, rail, sea, and/or air, to the battlefield.
Tank design is a compromise; it is not possible to maximize
firepower, protection and mobility simultaneously. For example, increasing protection by adding armour will result in an increase
in weight and therefore decrease mobility; increasing firepower by installing a larger gun will force the designer to sacrifice
speed or armour to compensate for the added weight and cost.
Since WWII tank development has shifted focus from
experimenting with large scale mechanical changes to the tank design to focussing on technological advances in the tank's
subsystems to improve its performance.
With respect to tanks, firepower means the ability
to rapidly detect, identify, engage and destroy targets on the battlefield.
The main weapon of all modern tanks is a
single, large calibre (105 to 125mm) gun mounted in a fully traversing turret. The typical tank gun is a smoothbore weapon
capable of firing armour-piercing kinetic energy penetrators (KEP), also known as armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS),
and high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells and/or anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to destroy armoured targets, as well as
high explosive (HE) shells for engaging soft targets or fortifications. A modern type of tank ordnance arising from the close
range urban combat in Iraq is a 120mm caliber "shotgun" round for the M1 Abrams which will fire 1100 tungsten pellets.
A gyroscope is used to stabilise the main gun, reducing
the effect of manoeuvring on accuracy. Modern tank guns are also commonly fitted with insulating thermal jackets to reduce
gun-barrel warping caused by uneven thermal expansion, bore evacuators to minimise fumes entering the crew compartment and
(less often) muzzle brakes to minimise the effect of recoil on accuracy and rate of fire.
Modern target detection relies
on telescopic periscopes and sophisticated light intensification and thermal imaging equipment to improve fighting capability
at night, in poor weather and in smoke. The accuracy of modern tank guns is pushed to the mechanical limit by computerized
fire control systems. The fire control system uses a laser range-finder to detect the range to the target, a thermocouple,
anemometer and wind vane to correct for weather effects and a muzzle referencing system to correct for gun-barrel temperature,
warping and wear. Two sightings of a target with the range-finder enable calculation of the target movement vector. This information
is combined with the known movement of the tank and the principles of ballistics to calculate the elevation and aim point
that maximises the probability of destroying the target.
The tank had an interesting role in World
War One. The tank was first used at the little known Battle of Flers. It was then used with less success at the Battle of
the Somme. Though the tank was highly unreliable – as one would expect from a new machine – it did a great deal
to end the horrors of trench warfare and brought back some mobility to the Western Front.
A World War One tank
The idea of the tank came from a development of farming vehicles that could cross difficult land with ease by
using caterpillar tracks. However, the British army’s hierarchy was dominated by officers from the various cavalry regiments
that existed. At the start of World War One, the first engagement between the British and Germans had involved cavalry near
Mons. This seemed to emphasise the importance of such regiments. However, trench warfare had made the use of cavalry null
and void. Cavalry engagements fought in mud proved very costly and from a military point of view, hopeless. Despite this seemingly
obvious fact, senior military commanders were hostile to the use of armoured vehicles, as they would have challenged the use
of cavalry in the field.
The leading light in support of the tank was Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton. In 1914,
he had proposed the development of a new type of fighting vehicle. In fact, it is a common misconception that no fighting
vehicles existed in August 1914. The Germans, British, Austrians, Russians and French all had armoured fighting vehicles that
could fight on ‘normal’ terrain. But these vehicles could not cope with trenches that were soon to dominate the
Western Front. Caterpillar tracked vehicles were already in France as the British used them as heavy gun tractors.
Swinton had received some support from those in authority but many in the army’s General Staff were deeply suspicious.
Swinton needed an example of the machine that he believed would alter warfare on the Western Front. By June 9th 1915, agreement
was made regarding what the new weapon should be. It should:
Have a top speed of 4 mph on flat
land
The ability to turn sharply at top speed
The ability to climb
a 5-feet parapet
The ability to cross an eight feet gap
A working
radius of 20 miles
A crew of ten men with two machine guns on board and one light artillery
gun.
One supporter of the prospective new weapon was Winston Churchill. However, by the end of 1915, his name was
not held in high esteem because of the Gallipoli fiasco.
As the stalemate on the Western Front continued, so the
drive to find a weapon that could break this lack of mobility became more intense. Most of the original designs were based
on designs from the Holt tractor company. However, their vehicles were designed to operate on muddy land but not the churned
up landscape of the Western Front. The first 'tank' to have any form of caterpillar track was a vehicle designed by
Lieutenant W Wilson and William Tritton called "Little Willie". "Little Willie" was never designed to
fight but to serve as a template for development. "Little Willie" developed in to "Big Willie" which started
to bear a resemblance to the first Mark 1 seen in the photo. "Big Willie" was rhomboid in shape and had guns mounted
in blisters on the sides of the hull.
The military failure in Gallipoli had pushed the emphasis of the war back
to the Western Front - to the trenches and the lack of movement. Therefore, any new weapon that might seem capable of ending
this stalemate was likely to be better received than in the past.
The start of life for the tank did not bode well.
The first model came off the factory floor on September 8th 1915. On September 10th, its track came off. The same happened
on September 19th when government officials were watching. However, these officials were impressed as they knew that any new
weapon was bound to have teething problems and their recognised the potential that the new weapon had. Its main weakness
was the track system. Tritton and Wilson designed a new and more reliable version and on September 29th a meeting took
place in London that recommended the new weapon should have 10-mm frontal armour and 8-mm side armour. There would be a crew
of eight and the large guns would be 57-mm naval guns mounted on the sides. The vehicle would have a speed of 4 mph. "Big
Willie" ran with these specifications for the first time on January 16th 1916. Churchill had directly contacted Haig
to convince him about the usefulness of the new weapon. Haig sent a major, Hugh Elles, to find out more about the machine
and he reported favourably to Haig.
On January 29th 1916, "Big Willie" went through it first major demonstration
- under the tightest of secrecy. On February 2nd, Kitchener, Lloyd George and McKenna, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, attended
another demonstration. It was at this meeting that Kitchener described "Big Willie" as a "pretty mechanical
toy". However, those close to Kitchener said that he said this as a way to provoke the 'tank team' into defending
their creation, i.e. that he was deliberately provocative to see what response he got. Whatever the case, by February 12th,
100 "Big Willies" had been ordered by the Ministry of Munitions.
The development of the tank when compared
to other weapons was remarkably swift - a testament to the team surrounding the weapon and the drive of Wilson and Tritton.
After February 12th, Ernest Swinton went into overdrive to develop a fighting technique for these new weapons. Swinton was
very keen that both tanks and infantry worked in co-operation. However, in the early days, it remains clear that even Swinton
saw the tank as supporting the infantry in their efforts to break the German front lines as opposed to the tank being a weapon
that could do this by itself.
"It seems, as the tanks are an auxiliary to the infantry, that they must be counted
as infantry and in an operation be under the same command."
Swinton
In April, Haig informed Swinton
that he wanted tanks and crews ready for June 1st - the start date for the Battle of the Somme. This was an impossible request
as there were no tanks in production and if there were no tanks, how could crews train on them? Finding crews was also a potential
problem as very few people outside of the rich had had experience of mechanised vehicles by 1916. Those who did join the Armoured
Car Section of the Motor Machine Gun Service (an attempt to disguise the new weapon) came from the Motor Machine Gun Service
or from the motor trade - these people had mechanical skills but no military knowledge!
The abject failure of artillery
at Verdun and the Somme meant that General Headquarters ordered the new weapon into use by September 15th 1916. The first
tanks arrived in Europe on August 30th but the crews were faced with major problems. One tank commander wrote:
"I
and my crew did not have a tank of our own the whole time we were in England. Ours went wrong the day it arrived. We had no
reconnaissance or map reading....no practices or lectures on the compass....we had no signaling....and no practice in considering
orders. We had no knowledge of where to look for information that would be necessary for us as tank commanders, nor did we
know what information we should be likely to require."
On September 15th, 36 tanks made an en masse attack
at the Somme. Originally there had been fifty of these machines but these thirty ton machines could not cope with the harsh
lunar landscape of the churned up ground and fourteen had broken down or got bogged down. Regardless of this a new era in
warfare had started.
To effectively protect the tank and its crew, tank
armour must counter a wide variety of anti-tank threats. Protection against kinetic energy penetrators and high explosive
anti-tank (HEAT) shells fired by other tanks is of primary importance, but tank armour must also aim to protect against infantry
anti-tank missiles, anti-tank mines, bombs, direct artillery hits, and (less often) nuclear, bacterial and chemical threats,
any of which could disable or destroy a tank and/or its crew.
Steel armour plate was the earliest type of armour.
The Germans pioneered the use of face hardened steel during WWII and the Soviets also achieved improved protection with sloped
armour technology. WWII developments also spelled the eventual doom of homogeneous steel armour with the development of shaped
charge warheads, exemplified by the Panzerfaust and bazooka infantry weapons which were lethally effective, despite some early
success with spaced armour.
British tank researchers took the next step with the development of Chobham armour,
or more generally composite armour, incorporating ceramics and plastics in a resin matrix between steel plates, which provided
good protection against early HEAT weapons. Magnetic mines led to the development of anti-magnetic paste and paint, squash
head warheads led to Kevlar (or equivalent) anti-spall armour linings, and KEPs led to the inclusion of exotic materials like
depleted uranium in the composite matrix. Reactive armour consists of small explosive "bricks" that detonate when
damaged by HEAT fire, bending or disrupting the incoming molten metallic jet. Tandem warheads defeat reactive armour by causing
the armour to detonate prematurely. Grenade launchers which can rapidly deploy a smoke screen and the modern Shtora soft-kill
countermeasure system provide additional protection by disrupting enemy targeting and fire control systems.
The Tank, Cruiser, Mk IV (A13 Mk II) was a British
cruiser tank of World War II. It followed directly on from the Tank, Cruiser, Mk III (A13). The first Mk IV's were Mk
III's with extra armour fitted to the turret. Later Mk IVA's were built with the complete extra armour.
The great advantage military tanks brought is the ability
to cross very rough terrain areas at high speeds while also firing. The level of heavy armor that is part of the design ensures
a high degree of survivability for the soldiers that operate military tanks in the conditions of breakthroughs in the enemy
areas. It is highly uncommon that such special units be used individually; most of the time military tanks are part of armored
divisions or combined forces that work together in combat. One main reason for the inadequacy of individual use is the existence
of anti-tank artillery, and anti-tank bombs that were created as the main defenses against combat breach creation.
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