The Wrong track: Errors in American tank

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Interesting read, and though I haven’t gotten to the end yet, I do notice a number of problems with the text. For starters, the author keeps using the term “main battle tank” when that’s not what he’s talking about — for the simple reason that the concept of an MBT didn’t exist yet. Not a major thing in itself, except that if you’re making an argument about this sort of subject, using the wrong terminology says to me that you’re not as well-grounded in the matter as maybe you should be. Also, the author first casts doubt on claims made by another (Belton Cooper), but then quotes parts of his text without comment, without establishing whether those parts are reliable.

Another one is that Christie’s suspension design did not use torsion bars, nor was Christie a military officer. Bringing up the ability to drive Christie tanks with the track removed as an advantage is something that seemed useful at the time but which history has well proven to not be of much real use.

Saying the T-34 had better armour than the “very thin and only slightly sloped” armour of the M4 is also a bit misleading. The T-34’s hull front had only marginally thicker armour and it was sloped a bit more, but neither exceeded the M4’s by a great amount. The T-34’s main advantage in armour would be that its glacis wasn’t made from a large number of pieces welded together.

More later, when I’ve read further