In late March 1945, some tanks of the 9th armoured division move deep into Germany. They find some isolated stiff resistance, but the much feared German armor is now scarce. Anyway, some strange enemies are found. The times of the "Blitzkrieg" are so far in the past....

Introduction

The idea of this diorama is very simple. I wanted to depict a late world war two typical scene using two elements which can be found at this period, a "modern" T26E3 and a "rare" Pantherstellung. In some way, it represents the look of the very last stages of the conflict: The dynamic push of the Allies and the static, desperate and useless German defence.

The T26E3 "Pershing"

In the doctrine of the US Army at the beginning of the word war II the tank was envisaged as a support for the infantry and a tool for quick profit of the breakthroughs achieved. From this perspective, the US tanks should not be engaged in tank vs tank duels. The enemy tanks had to be tackled by a specialized branch, the Tank Destroyer arm.

The M4 medium tank was very suitable for this doctrine. It was quick, reliable and with a reasonable high explosive delivering capacity in its gun, and was at the level of what the Germans had in 1943. Nevertheless, the encounters with the German Tiger I heavy tank in Africa and Italy, showed the need to field a heavier and more powerful armed tank. In any case, the Tiger I was encountered in small numbers, and thus the feeling was that this need was not so immediate.

In fact, the development of a heavier tank was already on its way, and several projects (T23, T25 and T26) were under test. Anyway the pace was not very quick and by the time of the Normandy invasion, no heavy tank was ready for use.

The battles in France were a hard shock for US tankers. The US army knew about the existence of the Panther but they though that this German tank would be available only in small quantities, concentrated in special units in the same way as Tiger tanks. They were completely mistaken. The Panther was a medium tank conceived as a replacement for the old good Panzer IV and was present in fairly good numbers in the Panzerdivisions. The Panther was far superior to the existing versions of the M4 which simply, in most of the cases, could not deal with the German tank. The Germans had also improved other anti tank weapons and jagdpanzers. At the same time, the US Tanks Destroyer units were not able to accomplish in many occasions their theoretical task, so the Sherman tankers had to face the very dangerous job to fight against superior tanks.

Despite the fact that the US tank loses were much higher than expected, some officers were even reluctant to upgun the Sherman with the 76 mm gun, which had better armour piercing performance but worse high explosive capacity, as the British did in their Fireflies with the 17 pdr. gun. Anyway, the final trials on the T26 heavy tank were performed in the second half of 1944 and the production started in November 1944.

Nevertheless, the new T26E3 were not available for its use in the following tank crisis, the battle of the Bulge. The first 20 Pershings arrived to Antwerp in January 1945 in the frame of the Zebra Mission, which consisted in the trials of new weapons to deal with the German tanks. These tanks were split in two groups of ten and assigned to the 3rd and 9th armored divisions. My model represents one of the 9th AD tank.

The Pershing entered in combat for the fist time at the end of February of 1944. Probably, their most known action was the support to infantry troops in the capture of the Ludendorf bridge on the Rhine at Remagen on March 7th by T26E3 of the 9th AD. In the following months, more Pershings were sent to Europe and scattered among several armored divisions. By VE day, 316 T26E3 had been delivered to Europe. They do not saw very much action, except for the first 20 arrived, since at this stage of the war there were not very much German armour to deal with. Anyway, and despite their logical problems for a new machine still under testing, The Pershing showed to be able to compete in equal terms with Tigers and Panthers, destroying several of them.

Some Pershings (by then standardized as M26) were sent to Okinawa in July 1945 in prevision of the invasion of the mainland of Japan. They were not uses in combat since the war ended before.

The M26, and its modernisation, the M26A1, along their "sequel" the M46 was extensively used in the Korean war. Also, they were supplied after WWII to France, Belgium and Italy. The Pershing was the grandfather of all the "Patton tanks series", the tanks used by the Americans and some of their allies during more than fifty years.

The Pantherstellung

The use of Panther turrets in fixed fortifications started in late 1943. Some standard turrets were used, but in most of the cases they were specifically build for this purpose. These special turrets had the roof reinforced with 40 mm thick armor to stand direct artillery hits. The commander's cupola with periscopes were substituted with an simple hatch which had a rotate periscope. Two kinds of bunkers were intended to install these pantherturms, one made of steel and other made of concrete. In both cases these bunkers were sunk in the ground and were intended to house a permanent crew. There were two floors, being the upper the combat chamber with the ammunition and the lower the "living room!, with folding bunks, an electric generator and a heater stove.

A total of 268 of these turrets were reported to have been installed by March of 1945, most of them in the Atlantik Wall and West Wall. Around fifty were installed in Italy in the Hitler and Gothic lines. These Panther turrets were very difficult to neutralize. They were low and difficult to detect, and offered a small target. Usually placed in advantageous locations they were able to open fire from long distances and hard to hit and destroy.

References

• M26/M46 Pershing Tank, 1943-1953, by Steven Zaloga, Tony Bryan and Jim Laurier. New Vanguard no. 35. Osprey Publishing Ltd. Oxford, UK, 2000.
• Panther Variants, 1942-1945, by Hilary Doyle, Thomas L. Jentz and Mike Badrocke. New Vanguard no. 22. Osprey Publishing Ltd. Oxford, UK, 1997.
• Remagen Pershing, by Steven Zaloga, Military Modelling, 2000, Vol. 30, No. 7, pages 28-35.
• http://www.jagdtiger.de/GermanTanks/Regelbau687-01.htm (in www.jagdtiger.de).

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my friend Luis Fuster for kindly let me to use the photographs of the Pershings he has taken in his numerous visits to European tank museums. Also, the figure of the standing GI in the diorama was a gift from him. I would like to dedicate this article to all the people of PanzerNet.