Interesting WW2 photo

[Cpo1944]

I saw this online today and noticed the side arms were revolvers , probably S&W or Colt M-1917`s . I thought it was neat to actually see the old war horses still actually being used.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

My FIL liked to brag that he was ready to go to war,
Having been trained at ROTC camp down at Ft. Knox by George Patton.
He was down there with George and several thousand of his closest friends!

 

[the ringo kid]

Great photo. Ive seen pictures of German soldiers also armed with captured American revolvers. I THINK I have one original snapshot of a German sanitater (medic) who was carrying one.

 

[HeloMt]

The guy with the Thompson is going to have ringing ears!

 

[Cyrano]

Wow!! an old M3, with a sponson mounted 75. wouldn't surprise me that the tube was left over from WW I.

 

[jimmyj]

Wow!! an old M3, with a sponson mounted 75. wouldn't surprise me that the tube was left over from WW I.

What was the armament of the M3 Tanks ?

 

[Cyrano]

They had a 75 in the sponson on the side. It was a fairly short tube and corresponding low velocity. The little turret on top had a 37, probably the same tube as the towed 37mm AT guns. On top of this thee was a little commander's turret, with all around windows, and it had a Cal 50, I think. The whole thing was very tall and made a good target, but when the British got them in the desert, it was better than anything they had. The later M4, Sherman, was a much better tank.

 

[Coldshooter]

What was the armament of the M3 Tanks ?

A 75mm in the hull mount a 37mm in the turret a .30 coaxial mount. I'm not sure I have ever seen a .50 mounted for AA use. My father in law went to North Africa in one of these. The 37mm was considered to be the anti armor gun with the 75mm as a supporting gun. That sure changed quickly in combat. The US 37mm was not a bad gun armor just changed quickly. He was in a tank hit by an AT gun and had life long issues due to the lack of neurological care in that age.

 

[Coldshooter]

I do not know if armor was issued the newest weapons as side arms were secondary. In 1977 the Armor troops at Ft. Knox were still training with M3 Grease Guns because they would fit in the vehicles.

 

[Jon42]

We still had Grease Guns in 1987 when I got out of the Army. And some of the loosest 1911A1's I have seen, still fired every time but it was hard to hit the 50 meter targets with them.

 

[armenius]

Speaking of unusual firearms in combat, a friend had a 36 cal Colt cap and ball revolver he took off a North Korean. It was I great shape until they ground off the hammer nose to make it nonfunctional before bringing it back.I would have liked to know the history of that piece.

 

[Watchdog]

If anyone's interested in the photograph, itself, it was shot at Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1942. It's obviously a staged photograph, and looking at the shadows, it may even be artificially lit. The soldiers in the photo are entirely too clean, too well groomed, and obviously nowhere nowhere near any sort of battlefield.

The photographer was Alfred Palmer. Palmer was one of several professional photographers commissioned by the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) to document stateside activities and training of the military during WWII. He also documented civilian workers in armaments and aircraft factories.

These old photographs of WWII stateside groups, along with the FSA's photographs of Depression era migrants and locales by such noted photographers as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans are all housed in the Library of Congress, along with most of the original negatives. They are all film images, of course, black and white and early color and color transparency film. Thousands of them have been scanned and digitized and are available for viewing online and as prints you can purchase.

Palmer made most of his photos with a 4x5 Graflex or Speed Graphic (two outstanding film cameras). Palmer never quite achieved the fame and historical notoriety as Lange, Evans, or even Bourke-White, but his work was/is important in a historical context. His wartime photos are noted for their emphasis on the hard working Americans on the home front.

Prior to his work for the OWI, he worked for the Office of Emergency Management in 1939, photographing the building of America's new warships, what FDR called the Arsenal of Democracy.

In 1942, he photographed these high school girls at Roosevelt High in Los Angeles, as they learned how to sight a rifle.

He photographed these guys working on a B-25

Servicing an A-20 at Langley Field in Virginia. Note the fantastic detail and clarity of these old film images.

Alfred Palmer passed away in 1993 at the age of eighty-six. You can view his work at many sites on the Internet. His photographs, along with those of Lange and Evans are worth looking at. They're from a time when America, even in the worst of times, was the real America...the America so many of us wish it was today.

 

[Vulcan Bob]

Youse guys already got a tank and now ya want 1911's? Fugettabout it!

 

[BB57]

They had a 75 in the sponson on the side. It was a fairly short tube and corresponding low velocity. The little turret on top had a 37, probably the same tube as the towed 37mm AT guns. On top of this thee was a little commander's turret, with all around windows, and it had a Cal 50, I think. The whole thing was very tall and made a good target, but when the British got them in the desert, it was better than anything they had. The later M4, Sherman, was a much better tank.

It wasn't pretty and it never got the fame of the M4, but the M3 Medium tanks were quite effective in North Africa.

The US used the M3 Lee, which had a smaller cast turret, while the British primarily used the M3 Grant, which had a larger cast turret that allowed the radio to be turret mounted rather than mounted in the hull. That allowed the tank commander to operate the radio (which was much faster and more efficient) and reduced the crew requirement by 1.

The 75mm gun was sponson mounted in the M3 as US foundries were not yet able to cast a turret large enough to accommodate the 75mm gun. The plan was to use the 75mm gun in the M4 Sherman, but given the production issues the M3 was produced as an interim tank.

That interim status is also what resulted in the "M3 Lee" designation being used for the new medium tank, concurrent with the "M3 Stuart" light tank. Given that the Sherman was already on the boards and on order, "M4" was already taken.
For the time the M3 Medium tanks had decent armor (50mm front of the hull and all around the turret, and 38mm sides and rear of the hull) and very good armament for the day. Its main drawbacks were the riveted armor plate, the sponson mounted gun and the high profile.

The 75mm M2 and M3 guns had their origins in the French 75 used in WWI, but they were by no means outdated. The tank guns used the same 75x350R case as the field guns but the M61 APC and M61A1 APC rounds had very good performance for the era.

The M3's 51mm frontal armor was comparable to the Panzer III's 50mm frontal armor, but the 75mm M2 and M3 guns used in the M3 tanks were able to penetrate the Panzer III's armor well beyond the range of the 50mm Pak 38s and Pak 39s used in the Panzer III (1500 meters versus about 700 meters).

The M2 and M3 guns could also penetrate the 50mm of frontal armor on the Panzer IV variants up to the Panzer IV Ausf F1 out to about 1500 meters. That was a major advantage as the Panzer IVs prior to the F2 had 75mm guns, but they were short barrel guns with a velocity of only 430 m/s and they had to close within about 500m of an M3 Lee to penetrate the frontal armor. With the introduction of the Panzer IV Ausf F2 and its high velocity 75mm KwK 40 gun (a short recoil version of the 50mm Pak 38), the M3 was vulnerable out to about 2000m and the M3 was suddenly obsolete.

 

[Absalom]

The interesting thing about tank warfare in WW II was that there really was not a developed concept of tank vs. tank combat, the way it had emerged, for example, in respect to aerial combat out of WW I.

Discussions like BB57's about which tank could measure up to which opposing model are much more common in post-war debates than in the contemporary record. The tank was a means for the infantry to maintain mobility, to give an army the means to execute the aggressive warfare of motion developed by strategists like Manstein and made real by tacticians like Rommel, Guderian, and Patton, and to overcome fixed enemy positions and to avoid at all costs the bogging down in static warfare that became the curse of WW I.

While the Spitfire, the Hurricane, and the Mustang always saw the Me 109 and the FW 190 as their primary enemy, that focus and a doctrine of tank-on-tank combat never really came to fruition in the war. Allied tanks carried more HE than AP, since their main job was to help the infantry by blowing apart enemy machine gun positions and fortified strongpoints.

Not until the Germans put an 88, the by far most effective piece of artillery in use during the war by any side, on a tank and turned the Tiger into a tank killer pure and simple (albeit, fortunately for the Allies, one with lots of technical issues), did the tank become a true anti-tank weapon.

But by then, the war was basically over.

As for the photo, good that Watchdog explained the circumstances. I was ready to cast serious doubts on its authenticity .

 

[DWalt]

The original idea of the tank was for infantry support, not tank vs. tank battles. For awhile, there were tank destroyers (which looked much like tanks), whose mission was destruction of enemy tanks. I believe the 75mm was superseded later in WWII by the 76mm, which was somewhat more powerful and effective against enemy armor.

 

[Cpo1944]

My Dad was a machine gunner in the same outfit as Audi Murphy and he saw lots of action. He never had much good to say about American tankers- although he had great admiration for the Free French tankers. He said whenever they came upon a strong German position the tanks withdrew and the command came Infantry to the front!
One of his jokes was :
" Do you know why a Infantry Man is smarter than a Tanker? ans. Because there aint nothing between his chest and a German bullet but his GI shirt!"
My Dad was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery near Colmar France for defending a village with just his 1919 Browning and two other GI`s.
He knew what he was talking about. On a side note I showed him my then new 9MM Beretta and told him the Military was switching over to it and replacing the 1911`s . He snorted and called the 9mm "sissy guns" and swore they would regret the change and someday go back to .45 cal. I really miss that man!

 

[BB57]

The original idea of the tank was for infantry support, not tank vs. tank battles. For awhile, there were tank destroyers (which looked much like tanks), whose mission was destruction of enemy tanks. I believe the 75mm was superseded later in WWII by the 76mm, which was somewhat more powerful and effective against enemy armor.

There was not much uniformity in opinion how tanks should be used at the start of WWII.

The US had the M3 Stuart on the basis that tanks would act as scouting units, much like cavalry in the past (thus the name "Stuart". The lightly armed and armored M3 Stuart was however essentially useless as were many European tank modeled on the same principle. The above mentioned M3 medium tank was also intended for offensive operations.

Rommel made his reputation in France when he advanced far faster than anticipated by the German high command - at times having to stop as he outstripped his supply lines and supporting infantry.

Obviously the armored commands in the US paid attrition to that. For example FM-100-5 published in May 1941 stated:

"The armored division is organized primarily to perform missions that require great mobility and firepower. It is given decisive missions. It is capable of engaging in all forms of combat, but its primary role is in offensive operations against hostile rear areas."

They clearly did not envision the tank as an infantry support vehicle as was the case in WWI. However, they also did not see the role as being one of tank on tank battle as FM-17-33 published in September 1942 only devoted about 4 of its 140 or so pages to tank on tank combat.

In both the US and the German armies it was recognized that the majority of tank killing would be done by easily portable anti-tank guns and both armies fielded them in large numbers.

The Germans recognized the different roles for the tank and fielded two types of tanks to address both the infantry support role and the concept of exploiting a breech in the line by putting fast moving tanks in the enemy rear areas, something that could often turn a strategic withdrawal or re-adjustment of a defensive line into a rout.

The types of "tanks" were further refined by the Germans in the course of the war in two divergent directions. First with heavy assault guns, which were comparatively slow moving but heavily armored and armed with large bore low velocity cannon designed to throw a heavy HE shell. As the war progressed, they also developed tank destroyers that were generally low profile, heavily armored vehicles with hull mounted large caliber high velocity guns like the 75 KwK 40 or the 88mm anti-aircraft gun.

These tank destroyers were optimized for point defense from hull down positions with overlapping fields of fire for mutual defense, and in general were much more survivable than towed anti-tank guns.

By about 1943 there were also less expensive and quick to produce self propelled guns that were built around the 75mm Kwk 40 or the 88mm anti-aircraft gun. These were employed as tank destroyers but they were generally high profile vehicles and lacked sufficient armor and most designs had no overhead protection so their crews were very vulnerable to air burst artillery fire.

The Germans were also very good at re-purposing the chassis and hulls on their out dated tanks and rebuilding them for the tanks destroyer and self propelled anti tank gun roles.

WWII was really the first large scale application of armor and combined arms tactics and a lot of false starts were made. However by the end of the war, pretty much everyone learned that tanks needed to have adequate support from ground troops to reduce their vulnerability to enemy troops with short range anti-tank weapons.

The lesson was also learned that tanks were extremely vulnerable to enemy aircraft and armor was almost useless in a large scale operation if you did not possess at least local air superiority.

The Germans suffered that fate in 1944-45, however they learned that lesson dishing it out to the French in 1940. The French not only had more tanks than the Germans, they on average had better armed and armored tanks than the Germans. What the French lacked was the ability to move them up into combat as German airpower and their almost total air superiority massively disrupted French transportation and communications between the HQs in the rear and the troops in the front line.

----

In 1942 the 75 mm M3 was capable of penetrating the armor on the Panzer IIIs and IVs it faced out to at least 1000 meters, and no need for a larger gun was envisioned - in part due to the philosophy that the AT gun would be the main tank killer, and partly to the (partly) mistaken belief that the Panzer V and Panzer VI would not be produced in great numbers. It also was a failure to predict the up gunning on the later Panzer IV variants with the 754mm KwK 40 along with the increased numbers of tank =destroyers like the StuG III and Marder III which carrie the same very effective high velocity gun.

That was an unfortunate over sight as the US could have started putting the 76mm and 90mm antitank guns in the M4 in 1942. Even in 1943 it was felt that there was no need for a larger gun for the M4 in the invasion of Europe and it was felt that disrupting production in preparation for D-day was not worth the benefits. The same reasoning was used to delay production of the M26 Pershing with a very effective 90mm gun and much improved armor protection. The end result was a lot of dead US tank crews who were massively outgunned, and it wasn't until late 1944 that decently armed and up armored M4 variants started to arrive.

Even then the 76mm M2A1 gun with the M62 round was not sufficient. it gave the M4 parity with the latest Panzer IVs, but it would not penetrate the glacis plate on a Panther tank at anything beyond point blank range, so the 76mm M4s and to hit them in the side of the hull or in the turret. Against a Tiger I, the M1A2 gun was effective in penetrating the Tiger's frontal armor at about 400-500 yards - but the Tiger's 88mm gun could punch a hole in the frontal armor of an 76mm armed M4A2 Sherman at 2,000 yards.

The main flaw with the M1A2 76mm gun was that the 76mm Anti-tank gun with it's 57 caliber length barrel unbalanced the M4's turret, so they shorted the barrel to 52 calibers on the M1A2, reducing performance by a very critical 10%.

The British were a lot quicker in reading the tea leaves and adapted their 76.2mm 17 pounder to the M4 Sherman. It still could not penetrate the 55 degree sloped glacis plate on the Panther but it could penetrate the turret out to well over 2500 yards and it could penetrate the frontal armor on a Tiger I at 1,900 yards giving it near parity with the Tiger I. The major flaw with the 17 pounder as mounted in the M4 was that it wasn't particularly accurate and at 1500 meters it only had about a 25% probability of hitting the turret on a Panther tank.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Note the drum magazine on the Thompson. A nice staged photo of course. I have seen a photo of a 1LT Robert Upchurch guarding POWs in France with an S&W M1917. You use what you have on hand. The drum magazine for the Thompson was quickly discarded, the "stick" magazines easier to manufacture and maintain, more reliable. Yes, the tank was so new no one really understood its role, IIRC our doctrine was that thanks were for deep penetration, go after soft targets, it was the role of the tank destroyer to fight tanks, that really didn't work.
Speaking of WWII photos, I have heard all the stories of troops drilling with broomsticks because there weren't enough rifles. Has anyone ever seen such a photo. ?

 

[BigBill]

Somewhere online there's a video of a king tiger being stalked in Berlin by a 80mm gunned USA tank.