I did make it past page 30, and though much of what is said about the history etc. seems factually correct, by chapter 3 the author still hasn’t said much that you couldn’t already learn from various other books on the subject, like Zaloga’s
Armored Thunderbolt (which he also quotes from at times). Again, though, he keeps getting details wrong that make me think he’s not an armoured vehicle aficionado
Like:—
Quote:
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The T20 series was at first intended to mount the 76mm cannon (also known as a 3 inch gun). (…) it was also the same cannon that was mounted on the M10 Wolverine and M18 Hellcat tank destroyers.
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Well … no. The 76-mm Gun M1 ≠ 3-inch Gun M7, and the quote makes it seem like the two were interchangeable or even identical. Never mind that one was fitted to the 3-inch GMC M10 and the other to the 76-mm GMC M18. I’ll leave it up to the reader to guess which gun went into which vehicle
(I’ll skip over his continual usage of “Wolverine”, “Hellcat” and “Jackson” because this would get much longer still if I don’t
)
Quote:
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It is striking that so much paperwork and official business had to be dealt with simply to procure two pilot models of a tank thought to be the near future of the U.S. Army during a war on a scale never before seen or experienced.
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I think he meant: “a tank thought
by some, mainly those developing it, to be the near future of the U.S. Army”, which is not the same. But then, his basic argument appears to be that the T20-series was delayed by those who didn’t see a need for it — which is hardly surprising.
Zaloga’s book has a good (better, IMHO) explanation of the reasons for this perceived lack of need than this thesis does so far (I’ve gotten to page 50 at the time of typing this sentence). As does this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQggt4Co54A
(Oh, feature request: YouTube embedding in the forum, so it automatically turns a URL like above, into a video you can play right here
)