★★★★★ 5
Great (excellent) details for the date written
Format: Paperback
NOTE: I toned this version down in 2021 – I was in a bad place when I wrote the original and there were some hostile and entirely inaccurate personal remarks in it.
A few tables/charts with a wealth of information have tiny text but most of this was easy enough to read. The photos are poorly produced (at least in the paperback version I reviewed), which is sad given they would be so handy otherwise.
This is a classic post-war treatise on the weapons used for ground warfare during World War II by the U.S. Army and as such the Marines. It was first published around 1947 when the war was fresh and doubtlessly numerous technical details were still classified. It was written by a man intimately involved in many design projects. The coverage pretty much explains the breadth.
Examples of use are included for some weapons and detailed tables of data for many. He explains references to the "long primer" for the 76-mm gun and the 81-mm mortar T1 extension tube. I am happy to have bought it for that and numerous other details.
One thing I missed when I first wrote the original rambling, a bit over the top review back in September 2015 was that the 57mm M1 antitank gun is not mentioned even though it was a key component of Infantry weaponry in 1944-45, sometimes maligned but often quite effective when carefully used as noted in many, many detailed accounts. Perhaps it was skipped because it was a revision of the British 6 pounder and not designed by Barnes men? Yet, it is an example of the issues caused by the pre war budget minders forcing the Army into desperate choices as explained later – and the using arms who decided to adopt it almost at the last minute, late in 1943. Until a weapon is adopted by the Army ammunition cannot be developed – it costs too much money and time to do so.
Most of the book is positive and ignores failures, posed from the viewpoint of a proud designer not an actual user. Yet those failures illustrate the issues Ordnance had to deal with during the war. The U.S. invented the bazooka as the 2.36-inch model in 1942 yet the Germans fielded the more powerful 8.8-cm (88mm) model in 1944; and the U.S. did not get the 3.5-inch (90mm) into production-ready state until the war was ended. This was caused by offloading development onto people who went out for a “super rocket launcher” that had no place in the war. All too often, some excited designers did indeed get ahead of themselves when it came to what worked but was a bit too much (and ultimately impractical for the Army at the time). The inability to develop hollow-charge (HEAT) ammo for cannon and howitzers to reach its minimum potential (twice the caliber in penetration or better) was common for all countries including the U.S. The 105mm howitzer round was pretty good and while disparaged by all and sundry even the 75mm howitzer’s shell could (and did) take out medium armor.
Barnes refers to the M3 and M5 light tank as "excellent" when the tanker's epithet would have been "tin plated coffin with a pea-shooter". Here we have an issue with comparing numbers such as armor thickness and penetration power of guns to facts; it is common to think they were butchered such as in Africa when in fact they fought well enough, flaws and all. But they were not the weapons the tankers wanted (nor deserved), and thus tanker’s complaints were valid. And, yes, they were not seen as a prime resource for fighting German tanks and hence reverted to recon and infantry support roles. Where they continued to meet and destroy German armor (but also be destroyed). Any German field commander would have loved to have a battalion of M5s on hand chasing down and chewing up U.S. troops; the contribution of the men in the light tanks in Europe in 1944 and 1945 is all too often belittled by the “number nerds” who toss the light tanks off as useless. They were anything but useless.
Why were the M10, M18, and M36 designed as “Gun Motor Carriages” and not tanks? Because they were developed for the tank destroyer forces and the very bigoted officers who held the most sway on development wanted them to be nothing but “motorized antitank guns”. If they had been designed as tanks that would have invalidated Tank Destroyer Doctrine immediately. And yet, in the end, the men doing the fighting needed and wanted tanks, so they used them as tanks as much as they could, despite the open roof and lack of internal machine guns. It is claimed the gun motor carriages were cheaper than tanks (a specious argument given price varied by manufacturer and ultimately depended more on quantities produced not some arbitrary raw number) but to produce the gun motor carriages for a specialist role that was neither tank nor artillery (albeit they were used for both) was a costly thing to do.
The failure to develop a better light tank in time is not mentioned even though the T7 light tank with a 57-mm gun was ready in mid-1942 and could have been in the field around 1943 (the Armored Forces botched that one). The M24 was a nice tank but too late simply because development came too late because development had been stunted badly by congress and it’s miserly pre-1941 budget.
There are errors: The design of the M24 began in 1943, not 1945. The 76-mm gun could hardly penetrate the "...heaviest German tank armor." But it could penetrate a lot of armor and the myth that all German tanks were Tigers and Panthers is one of those fantasies of the war pursued by people who are glorifying the war not understanding it (most German armor was medium or lighter), let alone the myth that they were always met head-on is ridiculous. The 90-mm gun was not optimized for anti-tank use and hence had the same issues with dealing with the frontal armor of the Panther (though it could handle the Tiger) and yet was better at that than many other guns. The tendency to adapt anti-aircraft guns for anti-tank guns was common and is where Germany got its 88s and the 128mm. The U.S. found it did not need a lot of 90mms (the homeland was not threatened and what it produced was enough for its needs); there was never the demand for a higher altitude version and hence nothing like the 8.8cm FLAK 41 was developed which led to the 8.8cm Kwk43 and Pak43s; yet Ordnance built their own versions of hot 90mm for tank use.
I missed the boat in my original review failing to detail how the Army’s main issue was the budget provided by Congress and politicians from 1920 through 1940. They starved the Army; the U.S. was peaceful and they had no interest in making it a military country and as such kept the Army small (and starved the air forces and Navy as well but not as badly). This crippled development; while the Soviets started building a modern Army in 1930 complete with investment in tank forces and tank arsenals; the Germans in 1934 or so; and British in 1934 or so; the U.S. politicians did not begin serious spending on the Army until 1941. Before then, the budget was all about “beans, bullets, and bayonets” and of course bodes to wield them. The Army had to struggle with what it had and put to field what was practical not what was best. Thus, for example, the recoilless rifles (used by the Germans in 1940) did not arrive in U.S. use until 1945. And yet a U.S. officer bult the first recoilless rifle to be used way back around 1916.
Indeed, a brief little discussion on how the U.S. produced what it did based on budget would have opened many eyes. The Soviets produced so many thousand T34s for example, more than the U.S. – and in the U.S. the budget people were always saying, “You don’t need any more, stop building them!” As mentioned, the number of 90mm AA guns the U.S. produced was not based on manufacturing capacity but because they didn’t need more.
Thus - there is a lot of information and many details many people will never have heard before. There are also many missing details concerning the Ordnance Department struggles to get things done in a very brief time frame thanks to how Congress had refused to let them do anything earlier. Dig into that deeper and you might find it nauseating the way people played games that hindered the U.S. Army in its job of helping beat the Germans. And sometimes couldn't put 2 and 2 together to get the right answer. But, they were human after all, and people do make mistakes.
In my original review I argued that “If you want a politics free book you will not get it in this once, not unless you shut your eyes and remain ignorant . . .” but that is wrong. If this was a political book, Barnes might have ripped the budget mongers of the 1920s and 1930s a new sphincter for leaving the Army (and U.S. military as a whole) in such a bad situation as they did when war broke out. But, Barnes had more class than I do.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2015
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