Tank Destroyer Doctrine

[killerpoodle]

This is just something I was wondering about. How did different armies field and use Tank destroyers?

According to Wiki The British used them as mobile AT guns to defend agianst sudden counter-attack before 17pdsr could be moved up.

[Busby]

The Americans came up with the idea that tanks shouldn't fight tanks and instead tank destroyers would be the lone anti-tank fire power other then infantry weapons and AT guns. So they were separated into there own formations. Which is fine. Except that it was quite plain as soon as America actually got into the war that tanks would have to fight other tanks more often then not. Its almost as if the US generals expected to have teleporter technology before any wars started so they could whisk there tanks out of the line of fire and then teleport the Hellcats and Wolverines behind the tanks, blow them to shit, and then teleport there tanks back to the infantry. When they actually could do battle, they tended to shoot-and-scoot. Rushing out from cover, fire a shot or two, then drive away. This actually proved reasonably effective, as the Hellcat in particular was extremely speedy, so it could shoot at a tank from one direction, then move off and come back from a different angle, much to the confusion of the German tankers who then believed the Americans had more tank hunters then they really did.

[Purple]

The most famous German tank destroyers on the other hand were heavy lumbering machines like these ones: Jagdpanther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdpanther) and Jagdtiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdtiger) were lumbering monstrocities of doom with nie impenetrable armor and the speed of a snail.
Their most famous (or infamous) model, the Ferdinand/Elephant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elefant) was literaly nie invincible with only a few ever produced it required heavy artillery to penetrate its armor. But it sank in just about any terain, roads included.


Hence Germans tended to use their tank destroyers as ambush weapons. With their heavy guns, the Jagdpanzer would lie in wait and pick off anything that comes into its crosshairs.

[Sturmhaubitze]

The US Tank Destroyer doctrine was a reactionary response to the mobile German tactics that were used in the early Axis victories. The basic plan was that each Tank Destroyer platoon would use its reconnaissance element (Originally a small team in a Jeep, later on replaced with M20 armoured scout cars) to scout out possible routes of enemy approach, as well as escape routes for the Tank Destroyers. When they found the enemy tanks, the TDs would move up to engage along the planned routes, then use the pre-planned escape routes to disengage. Tank Destroyers were organized into independent battalions, with each battalion attached to a division as needed.

This plan didn't work out as intended, and TD units found themselves mostly operating as assault guns, or along the same lines of TD units found in other nations. The scout element was retained, but the grandiose pre-planning was ditched in favour of just keeping them ahead to watch out for ambushes. They were also used as a security detail, since the TDs lacked proper hull-mount and coaxial machine-guns for infantry defense. The battalion was separated into its component three companies, with each company supporting one of the division's regiments/combat commands. That regiment would then split the company into its three platoons, and assign one or two platoons (4 tank destroyers each) to a particular company or battalion that would see the thickest fighting.

In Italy the tank destroyers found themselves even less useful, due to the very constrained terrain. M10 Wolverines were often pressed into artillery duties, firing HE shells from prepared positions, though their 3" shells were not much more effective than mortar bombs when used in this manner. Still, it was better than nothing.

British and Canadian tank destroyers, organized in a Division's Royal Artillery Anti-tank Regiment along with the towed 17 pounder guns, did not have such an elaborate doctrine. They were fielded as anti-tank guns with the benefit of light armour and greater mobility. They would fire from concealed positions, and quickly pull back out of view to avoid return fire, since they were thinly-armoured.

German tank destroyers (Panzerjäger) also used the same approach, with the exception of the heavy tank destroyers like the Ferdinand/Elefant, Jagdpanther, and Jagdtiger. However these heavy tank destroyers were very few in number, and the vast majority were thinly-armoured models like the Marder series and Hornisse/Nashorn, or the medium-armoured Jagdpanzer IV and Jagdpanzer 38(t) "Hetzer". A few platoons of tank destroyers and assault guns were usually the only armour a German infantry division could hope to possess, so they were used sparingly and cautiously.

Soviet tank destroyers were actually not differentiated from assault guns, and many of them could perform both roles equally well. Organized into self-propelled artillery regiments, and then split apart into companies to support Soviet divisions and brigades, they operated much like their German opponents. The difference is that the Soviets had a much higher ratio of medium-armoured and heavily-armoured assault guns, such as the SU-85, SU-122, SU-152, ISU-122, and ISU-152, which could be used aggressively to knock out anything that was holding up the advance. The lighter SU-76m, which was the most common assault gun, could also act as artillery since it was armed with the same ZIS-3 76mm gun that made up over half of the Soviet towed artillery. The Soviets also received Lend-lease tank destroyers from the US, mostly the SU-57 (M3 half-track with an M1 57mm gun) and a few M10 Wolverines.

[say1988]

Also remember that the US took a completely different direction compared to the Germans and Soviets, focusing on turreted tank destroyers, rather than the fixed guns. And that US tanks were not expected to engage armour, at all, compared to other countries where this was expected and was even a primary purpose of some tanks.

[EmilCrane]

As the war came to a close the germans began to use them as makeshift tanks. During OMG (Operation Market Garden) they used Jagdpanzer 4s like stugs to support an infantry advance, which they failed at probably due to a lack of HE shells or a turret. Also in the closing stages of the battle a couple of jagdpanthers snuck into 30th corps' rear area and just rolled up hells highway blasting everything in their path. The allies actually had no counter to them iirc.