“Official testing of Firefly indicated it was inferior to the 76mm M4…”

Hello everyone,

I generally don’t do Wargaming reposts, but recent Chieftain’s Hatch issue is quite interesting. For those who don’t know, Nicholas “Chieftain” Moran is the American server’s tank history expert and makes interesting historical posts on regular basis. This time, he focused on the American Firefly tests and…. the American military found the Firefly wanting.

Tests – part 1, part 2, part 3

23 thoughts on ““Official testing of Firefly indicated it was inferior to the 76mm M4…”

    • Also of note the much better Tungsten ammo for the 3 inch, 75mm and 76mm guns did not hit the battlefield until August 1944 at the earliest and was not available in numbers tell November 1944 and not in 10,000 shells per month until January 1945.

      Its funny that the Chieftain notes that the 76mm M4 was in production 6 months before D-Day. It takes 2-3 weeks to retrain crews, 2-3 weeks to ship the tank by sea (from the US not counting a few days for the rail roads and the usual customs BS even in wartime plus loading and unloading.) and a good 2-3 months to build enough tanks for a full unit plus reserve and training tanks. Not counting the fact that the HVAP was not even available to tanks in Europe until August(2k rounds were apparently air dropped into Europe)… Which leaves just two months to produce a large number of tanks for an invasion…

      Good Luck with that.

      Not counting the biggest factor of all… Military planners making decisions based upon the tanks they expected to face. Not what hindsight says was there.

      • Yep, I would say 17pdr was more than perfect stopgap solution given the time it was needed.

      • I dont disagree with your timeline given that it would have been the secondary tank used, but if it was the primary….

        When I had my T110E5 post on NA forums we got a document showing the actual production rates of a huge list of tanks in like 40 diff US factories and what it basically showed was while they could only create 12 T95`s with Glass armor per month because radical process, the US avg main plant could pop out 3 tanks per day of the semi special variety and almost 6 of the bog standard Sherman.

        Also there were multiple times Customs NEVER interfered with any war materials and since DDAY was more than Top Secret and due to the fact that the number one spied on Govt parts was customs and the congresses budgets, this would have been totally bypassed.

        In other words no way a rush order of M4-76`s would have taken as long at all if they were put in the front of production.

        ALso the US was arming the entire worlds 75mm ammo and a large amount of Rus 76mm. If they would have stopped even 1/8th they would have im sure blasted through those numbers in mere days.

        Simple fact is with the super fast TD`s and the massive numbers of M4`s, the 75mm were ok for the job. Not amazing but not even close to as useless as people make them seem.

        90% of most tanks jobs was killing emplacements and the 75mm was amazing at this.

        Anways Chief was just saying the reason they didnt use the 76mm was not because we didnt have it in time, because we could have, but because it was only viewed as marginally better overall and much worse than the 75mm for derping most its targets.

        I have no doubt at all if the US wanted 76mm`s 6 months was far and away enough time to get even 2000 of them perfectly ready.

        Also about training. The US army is bad at things, but what they were amazing at is training and making sure things like ease of use and ease of transition are tested. I saw an interview with a US tanker who was 57mm to 75mm to 76mm to 90mm in Korea and he said the 75mm and 76mm handling was so similar all you had to do was remember it was a much faster round and a couple of other basics if you lead a target. But dispersion was similar [even though peeps think the 75 was inaccurate they are wrong, it was slow, but very accurate] and equipment made the gunner at home. He said exp crews learned over a 3 day weekend how they worked.

        Anyways, I agree with him if they wanted it, it wouldnt have been any problem at all.

        • Well I did cheat and used my knowledge of the German “Start of Production to Front Lines Combat schedule” which actually averages 5-6 months with a few exceptions from time to time. That schedule basically means enough tanks for combat (1-3 units) and training, training of crew, spare parts, any special ammo, shipping and then fielded into combat.

          As far as training when units were switched from the M10s to M36s they went through a 2-3 week refresher course to familiarize themselves with the unit. The same thing happened with T26′s (Arrived in January but did not go in to combat until Feb 20th) when they made their way to Europe.

          For the M36 the first 40 arrived in France first week of September 1944 but saw no combat until after training (Crews switching from M10s) and were In active combat only in mid/early October 1944.

          I go agree with the Chieftain on if it had really been wanted it could have been done but it would have added to the already pressing logistics. Plus you already had the British doing conversions on their own… Plus by adding the 76mm in you have yet another shell to worry about when you already have massive stocks of 75mm built up… to be fair.

          Maybe this will help…
          http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/LL-Ship-3C.html

          7,313,781 75mm –Projectile, Fixed, APC, M61A1, or AP, M72
          488,600 76mm –Projectile, Fixed, APC, M61A1, or AP, M72

          • 1,154,759 3″ Gun –Projectile, Fixed, APC-T, M62A1, M79
            42,398 90mm Gun –Projectile, Fixed, APC, M82, AP, M77
            250 90mm Gun –Shot, T30-E-16

            In case anyone was wondering.

  1. Actually, having read all three posts, he repeatedly stated that it’s not that the 17-pounder was inferior to the 76mm, he just said that it’s as good as if not slightly better.

    It’s just that given the current situation, the slightly better part did not warrant a switch to the 17-pounder once all things such as manufacturing and rearming were considered.

    At least that’s what I got from the post. Enjoyable read.

    • No, he basically says its worse in most ways when using the normal Ammo and because it had a bigger round the 76mm was much better ROF and much better in accuracy even with NORMAL AMMO because they had to make sacrifices for the special rounds.

      Because those rounds that the entire gun was basically advertised as was the reason to use it over the 90mm for example fell way short on accuracy this made the 76mm much better at the lighter caliber job in most all ways and the 90mm much better than it at the “Heavier” round in most all ways.

      Overall even with its amazing Pen its accuracy made the 76mm the same as it could Pen a Panther`s turret at 1k yards or less and the Sabot couldnt hit relaibly at anymore than 1k yards….So it was a wash.

      So basically it had the negatives of things like slow reload similar to the 90mm, and more bulkiness. But didnt have the 90`s amazing accuracy or 1/2 of its HE power or sheer weight.

      What we forget is while the 76mm is a sleek penning round its still a sub caliber and if stopped doesnt cause massive DMG where as the huge 90mm surely does.

      So at 400 meters it was a great gun, but overall there were much better options like the 90mm and it only needed normal ammo.

      It was a great stop gap IMO. But give me the 90mm for 1 shot or the 76mm for multiple targets any day.

  2. I think its clear that the problem is that the 17 pounder was a quick and dirty install on a early turret.

    If they had spent the time and engineering resources to do a new proper turret with new proper mounting for the 17-pounder it would have been much better than it was.

    Also figuring out why the sub caliber ammo was inaccurate crap would be good. Didn’t matter at the short ranges the battles often happened at, but its still a bad plan to have something that has issues hitting a tank sized target at over 500m.

  3. I just swept through those articles, but all in all the conclusion would be, the benefits were that they got stronger gun into smaller space, so while it performed in matter of use and all about the same as 90mm gun, it could be mounted into places where 90mm could not. The drawback ware perhaps the handling, which reduced the RoF to about the same as 90mm gun on M26, but still placed in smaller and cheaper (at least in terms of avaibility on the field) platform. And while it had many drawbacks, having the gun capable of penetrating UFP on Tiger II, although in ideal conditions, was still pretty welcomed arnament among troops.

    As I said, I only swept through those articles, so feel free to correct me.

  4. The German commanders told their tank crews to target Fireflys before anything else; that should tell you all you need to know about which gun was more effective in battle.

    • I tell my guys in CW to target PZSFL first, does that make it great?

      Sorry but this means nothing. All it means is that the Firefly had the better chance to kill them than the 75mm which NO ONE is arguing is better or even close vs tanks.

      Now if they targeted Fireflys over 76mm`s then I would maybe give it weight but they would be stupid to do it unless at point blank range.

      The 76mm fired almost 2x as fast and at anything more than 600m had a better chance to kill them. So you have 2x firepower from 1 tank equaling 2 Fireflys and most engagements were not 400m or less. So if those commanders told there guys to target the slower firing less accurate tanks I would be surprised.

      Its not even fair to compare them. The 76mm was ironed out and not as rushed. One was basically a bandaid to kill heavy armor and one was the a solid log term solution.

      Most Fireflys used normal AP most the time, they only used Sabot in the Oh Shit moments.

  5. The 17pdr was inferior to the US 76mm gun, but only if the American gun was loading HVAP. As we know, that rarely happened. Because of that, the 17pdr gets its reputation. Is it deserved? Yes. Was it as good as it’s made out to be? No.

  6. US bias! :) If we could make a proper test (same type of ammunition (for example same way produced APDS) in different case) the 17pdr would be superior: more propellant >> more muzzle velocity >> higher penetration. On the other hand the Firefly had a bit cramped turret layout compared to the 76mm Shermans – thats a serious factor in combat situation, too.

    • Why do you need more propellant when the 76mm already did the job?

      In reality you only want as big as can kill target and as small as possible so you get things like lighter components and faster reloading due to weight.

      Sorry but the 76mm could kill a panther at 1k yards easily since it put what? 8/10 shots in a target tat big.

      So the only way to make it better was big increase in DMG and TBH the 90mm was much better at all round DMG, similiar Pen and MUCH more shock as well as massive HE round that would clear out almost any installation.

      Maybe if Tigers were actually in large numbers and actually relaible enough to not break down driving to the fight it would have been needed but TBH, our airforce could have lunched them, or the navy.

  7. History and Engineering aside, all this actually makes me wonder what will happen when WG will finally introduce Firefly. Because with my humble translation of the articles to WoT terms, we’ll get a Sherman with slightly better mantlet and a gun that has lousy RoF, crap accuracy, dreadful aim reticle bloom with both turret or hull rotation, aim time lasting ages and shit camo after shot, balanced by a reasonable penetration and mediocre damage. Due to the massive hype, it might be the biggest let down since Sturer Emil.
    I’m expecting butthurt of biblical proportions.

    • even If they gave it 0.42 accuracy, 2.5 aim time, 40 max speed, 15 hp/t, it would do just fine :) 173mm penetration is nice, but not that much, I would bet that all in all it will be a twin of Panther in its stats. But if they gave it tier 5 M4 + 17pdr, even with 0.42acc. 2.5at., it would be awesome

  8. What made the Firefly important was not that the 17lb gun was better than the 76mm gun but that the 17lb gun was better than the 75mm gun.

    A the time of D-Day most US and UK Shermans had the 75mm gun and the Fireflys were really useful. Once Shermans with 76mm guns were in good supply the Firefly became just another tank.