Whitworth

[Yankeedave]

 

[James N.]

???Don't you mean Wittmann??? One of my favorites - I'd love to visit Normandy and the scene of some of the exploits there like Villiers Bocage!

 

[Yankeedave]

i almost posted footage of touring European tank graveyards/battlefields. then i realized it was the wrong forum

 

[Yankeedave]

and funny a chocolate would be named whittman. if there was ever something that never melted in the heat...

 

[Yankeedave]

vittman

 

[Yankeedave]

talk about adherence to a strong central govt.

 

[kevikens]

If one looks at that video at exactly 59 seconds and later at exactly 2 minutes you will see something that surprised me. The Soviets had one of the best of WW II tanks in the T-34 and while we in the US sent them P-39 Aireocobras, and Studebaker trucks I never expected to see what looks like the M-3 Grant tank being used in a country that produced the T-34. The Grant, with its 75 mm sponson mounted gun and the 37 mm in the small turret at the top was our main battle tank in 1942 and 1943. I had no idea we were sending them that kind of armor or that the Soviets needed them. Am I wrong or are those two images the M-3 Grant?

 

[Yankeedave]

i see it. m-3 on lend-lease. not surprised to see it fall before the t-34 and such.

 

[kevikens]

I googled "Lend Lease M-3 Grant tank" and the third entry was "Soviet Opinion Of Lend Lease Tanks". The original Russian text document comes with a translation. They did, indeed, get the M-3 (in the US the Lee, in Lend Lease versions, the Grant). They though little of them and the document cites their shortcomings. They had mixed feelings about the M-4 which the document does not call a Sherman. It is interesting to read what the Soviets thought about armor as they put so much of their resources into armor.

 

[Yankeedave]

soviets begged the west to move against fortress Europe.

 

[James N.]

We seem to have been sending the Russians (and the English to a lesser extent) our "cast offs", things that had been tried and found wanting. One such was the Bell Airacobra fighter-bomber, though supposedly the Russians actually liked it; our tanks, not so much. The tanks first showed up in war on the Sahara in Libya as part of the armament of the British Desert Army fighting against Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika in the summer or fall of 1941. The British were glad enough to get them and despite their many shortcomings were thought satisfactory when compared to the slow and under-gunned British armor.

 

[Yankeedave]

yeah. i imagine the Brits-Russo would have liked the Garand too. Two things about our tank and russia. a) it couldn't stand up to what germany had, t-34 and up much better. 2) Sherman designed to flank, speed, mobility. In much of russia, when you come off the main road it is swamp or heavy woods. And most rivers run north south so the roads do to. Very few run along a good east west route. good for defender bad for axis. when you finaly get to open (steppe), it is so freaking open that any flanking, manuever and such can be see so far off and gets drilled fairly quickly - unless your tank can take it

 

[Yankeedave]

in a total opposite vein...and this in nooooo way endorses the contents. It's more of a 'who would have thought that could happen'. I feel we know very little of the real war. A veteran said that the real will never make the books. Appalled and amazed...