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Post by quincannon on Mar 8, 2023 4:39:40 GMT
The Armor School moved to Benning Mike, but the Patton Museum is still at Knox, and as far as I know there are no plans to move it. Much too expensive
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Post by miker on Mar 8, 2023 12:21:34 GMT
You are correct that the Patton Museum itself is still there, but the outdoor displays of Armor and other vehicles are no longer there. Armor/Cavalry has a 300 square foot display in the Infantry Museum and another building that is not open to the public. Money and the Infantry Mafia prevent a proper display of Armor stuff at Benning. Likewise, the large display of outdoor vehicles at the APG appears to no longer be displayed outdoors and I am pretty sure all that stuff was relocated to Fort Lee, I have seen the atomic cannon displayed there and there is a new pavilion that appears to shelter or house armored vehicles and artillery.
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Post by quincannon on Mar 8, 2023 16:55:09 GMT
I know the Ordnance Museum is scheduled to move to Lee. Did not know the tank park behind the Patton Museum is no longer there.
My contacts at the 4th ID Museum tell me that the Army is after them to remove all their monument tanks too, as they are very expensive to maintain outdoors where they do not show the effects of weather. The only excepts according to them will be the M-1, the M2 Brad, the Stryker, and I think an AH-1. Supposedly these artifacts are indicative of the division in its present state. No, I know the AH-1 is not presently indicative, but AH-64's to be used as monuments are a little hard to come by at present
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Post by Elwood on Mar 13, 2023 18:34:23 GMT
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mac
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,790
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Post by mac on Mar 30, 2023 10:41:54 GMT
Wow! What of his companions, I wonder?? Cheers
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Post by Elwood on Mar 31, 2023 0:01:49 GMT
Wow! What of his companions, I wonder?? Cheers
Good question Guess they never made it out either. I myself had never heard the name or the story. I owe it all to . . . Trumpets.
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Post by Elwood on May 8, 2023 21:57:56 GMT
Still reading . . . Trumpets. Bit of a break while traveling. Currently around Dec. 20, Patton about to head north. Book gives you good idea of the scale of the battle, Huge. MacDonald himself makes the comment that an awful lot of men were lost, some as prisoners, many killed, because command was slow, hesitant to give commanders in the field permission to withdraw when conditions dictated it. Not retreat, but tactical withdrawals to continue the fight. Didnt have to happen that way. I suppose communications or lack thereof only made matters worse.
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Post by Elwood on May 25, 2023 16:52:06 GMT
The end is in sight.
I knew Patton wasnt fond of Montgomery. Interesting to see that Omar Bradley had little use for him too.
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Post by quincannon on May 25, 2023 17:51:38 GMT
You're not fond of your dog (temporarily) if he takes a crap in your living room when your Rector (priest) and his wife are at your house for tea and crumpets. Saying George Patton was not fond of Montgomery is a little more severe than your temporary feelings concerning your pooch.
Bradley did not even like himself, EXCEPT, when he wrote about how he won the war single handedly.
Of the three of them, I much prefer Terry de la Mesa Allen, Ernie Harmon, Lucian Truscott, Maurice Rose, and Donald Duck. The five of them were all better, more balanced, general officers and not pink pants prima donnas. Then there is "Professor" Wood, of the "Name Enough" 4th Armored Division who was the best of them all at what he did, only to run afoul of another piece of crap prima donna.
Anyone who admires Bradley, MacArthur, Montgomery, has been reading all too many comic books. Anyone who admires Patton for his generalship is passable in my estimation, but anyone who admires the man's character, needs to go to confession and repent their many sins. He was a shit.
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Post by Elwood on May 26, 2023 17:40:15 GMT
Finished. I now know everything about the Battle of the Bulge.
Joking of course, but what a detailed book! MacDonald states that, in addition to being there, he researched it for 5 years. I believe it. I’ll post a few questions from time to time but a couple to start;
Was impressed, (a bit surprised maybe?) the amount of damage done to German armor by American troops. I suppose some of this or maybe large part due to terrain. Heavy forests, small villages not favorable to larger German tanks. (I’m reminded of Kelly’s assessment of the Tiger tanks in Kellys Heroes). Unless ground was completely frozen, Tigers often sank in the wet soil, plus heavy fuel consumption when Germans were low on gas. So, my question is, did German generals consider not even using tigers in this op due to the above? Or was it just what they had available at the time in the numbers they needed?
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Post by Elwood on May 26, 2023 17:44:30 GMT
Also, large number of US troops taken prisoner. I know some escaped at some point. But were the remainder repatriated before the Germans retreated further east? Book does not address this. Or were some held til end of the war?
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Post by quincannon on May 27, 2023 2:38:28 GMT
I think your read is pretty much correct as far as German armor goes. The terrain was miserable. The weather was terrible, and German armor, mainly the King Tigers were much to heavy, and mechanically unreliable to deal with it. The best the Germans had for that terrain was the Pzkw IV and the various models of Stug, both III and IV. Even they had trouble. You add to that the fact that the Germans by and large were playing with second and third stringers. The best thing the Germans had going to them was Omar Bradley.
Fuel consumption was also a huge factor.
Don't let anyone every tell you that anyone but combat engineers were responsible for stopping Jerry. No one ever gives them any consideration when you are talking big time 20th and 21st century warfare, but the combat engineer was the decisive factor in the Bulge as he is on nearly every battlefield since Napoleon was a corporal.
Back in the day I was on the Light Division task force. Mike will tell you Light Infantry fights light and freezes at night, and that true, but it is an article of Light Infantry faith that if you want to fight tanks, invite them into your woods. They won't come out. The way you fight tanks with Infantry is get them on your terrain, and the worse the better, separate them from their own supporting Infantry, then kill them. One of the books on the Bulge I recommended to you was "No Silent Night". There is a German tank attack conducted on Christmas Day 1944 described in that book, eight of them I think and the only one to be damaged and immobile at the end was a Pzkw IV named "Happy Salamander". The rest were in ashes, along with their crews.
Some may have been repatriated during the battle but the vast majority sat out the rest of the war in German POW camps. When I was a young fellow, one of the clerks at the neighborhood Safeway was with the 110th Infantry, 28th ID and had just returned to the line after being wounded on D Day with the 116th Infantry, 29th ID on Omaha Beach. He was captured on 16 December 44, and his whole wartime experience consisted of two days in combat.
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Post by yanmacca on May 30, 2023 10:33:14 GMT
Some guy on AHF came up with the time US forces faced German Tigers;
On December 21st, 1944 at 5 pm, 6 Tigers of 506th Heavy Panzer Battalion attacked the 7th Armoured Division near St. Vith in the Ardennes. The Tigers started with Star Shells and followed up with Armor piercing, destroying all of the defending American vehicles, including tanks.
Also, during the Battle of St. Vith, an M8 Greyhound of Troop B, 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron destroyed a Tiger I tank. EDIT: This was actually a Tiger II, according to the AAR.
Staff Sargent Lesniak encountered a Tiger in Norvell during the Battle of the Bulge. He quickly fired 3 75mm rounds that apparently did nothing, but the Tiger crew retreated, backing over a jeep and became disabled. The tankers destroyed the Tiger with thermite.
On December 19th 1944, Donald Nichols engaged a Tiger at 600 yards with his 105mm Sherman, resulting in a confirmed kill. He was later engaged by a second Tiger, and retreated. He knew it was a Tiger from the distinctive sound that the 88 mm shells made.
Also on the 19th, two Tigers were engaged by a Sherman, a 57 mm gun, and infantry with bazookas. The Tigers were thoroughly destroyed. A Tank Destroyer engaged a Tiger near Foy. The Tiger was not destroyed, but it was driven off.
On December 21st, 1944 an M16 engaged a Tiger with its .50s, and forced it to retreat.
On December 24th, Lt. Brunson and his crew engaged a Tiger II at 30 yards and destroyed it. I believe he was in Sherman, but possibly a lighter tank as well.
On Jan. 12th, three Shermans in support of an assault by the 101st Airborne engaged a Tiger. The Tiger destroyed one US tank.
A Tiger knocked out a Pershing in an ambush at Elsdorf, as he mentioned, and this Tiger was abandoned by its crew shortly after when it was stranded on some debris. Shortly after that engagement though, another Tiger was destroyed by another M26 90-mm HVAP T30E16 ammunition at 900 yds.
Another M26 destroyed a Tiger in Cologne, and there was a report of a Tiger being killed by the lone Super Pershing, but it's questionable.
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Post by yanmacca on May 30, 2023 10:34:25 GMT
Another snippet from AHF.
“The M60 machine gun began development in the late 1940s as a program for a new, lighter 7.62 mm machine gun. It was partly derived from German guns of World War II (most notably the FG 42 and the MG 42), but it contained American innovations as well. Early prototypes, notably the T52 and T161 bore a close resemblance to both the M1941 Johnson machine gun and the FG 42. The final evaluation version was designated the T161E3. It was intended to replace the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle and M1919A6 Browning machine gun in the squad automatic weapon role, and in the medium machine gun role. One of the weapons tested against it during its procurement process was the FN MAG.
The U.S. Army officially adopted the T161E3 as the M60 in 1957. The decision to adopt the M60 instead of foreign designs, like modified versions of the proven German MG 42 or the still-unproven FN MAG, was largely due to strict Congressional restrictions requiring preference be given to the designs of United States arms manufacturers (even if a superior design was available from foreign sources) primarily out of a desire to avoid paying licensing fees, but also out of a strong bias in favour of domestic products.”
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Post by quincannon on May 30, 2023 15:31:31 GMT
Ian: As you know I am always highly suspicious of American reports of tangling with Tigers. To most American soldiers all of the German tanks at that stage of the war were Tigers. That in itself is not all that unusual in that the tanks that many of our troops engaged were late model Panzer IV's with applique side and turret armor, that from a distance look a lot like Tiger I's. Always look at the tiger reports with a jaundiced eye. The Mark IV with a long barrel 75 was bad enough though. Good tank.
As far as the M60 goes that is quite correct. There were much better MG's out there when the 60's were adopted. In fact I like the 1919A6 better than the 60's and so did my weapons squad guys. Let me qualify that a bit though - liked it better on a tripod or bipod, but the 60 was easier to carry in an assault mode. Domestic products, and "better built here" were articles of faith in those days and still are to a great extent. Licensing fees though could be passed on to the end user through higher price tags, so I am not sure that was a great factor.
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