Sherman Tank Myths - The 76-mm M-1 gun had an Inferior High Explosive ShellOne of the reason US Army commanders were reluctant to accept Sherman tanks armed with the 76-mm M-1 gun was the overall setup of the gun. To quote General Alvan Gillem, who took over as head of the Armored Forces in 1943, in a memo to the Armored Ground Forces on September 1, 1943 he wrote:The 76mm Gun M1 as a tank weapon has only one superior characteristic to the 75mm Tank Gun M3 ... armored penetrating power. The 76mm gun will penetrate on average one inch more armor than the 75mm tank gun M3 at the same range. The high explosive pitching power of the 76mm gun is inferior to that of the 75mm gun. The 76mm HE shell weighs 12.37lbs and has a charge of .86lbs explosive. The 75mm shell weighs 14.6lbs and has a charge of 1.47lbs of explosive. The exterior ballistics generally of the 76mm gun are less satisfactory for a general purpose medium tank weapon than the 75mm gun. The 76mm gun has an extremely heavy muzzle blast, such that the rate of fire when the ground is dry is controlled by the muzzle blast dust cloud. Under many conditions this dust cloud does not clear for some eight to thirty seconds. The presence of this heavy muzzle blast makes sensing the round extremely difficult for the tank commander and gunner.All of that is true but begs various questions. The first one is: did the Army ever do any side-by tests to get empirical evidence to the effect that the 76-mm HE shell was inferior? Did they ever establish exactly how less effective was the 76-mms high explosive shell than the 75-mms?This question arises because the 76-mm used the very same projectile as the 3-inch gun on the M-10 tank destroyer: the M-42 High Explosive shell. The whole purpose of the 76-mm was to create a weapon with the 3-inch guns ballistics but lighter and more suited for the M-4 Sherman tank turrets. The Ordnance Department filled this requirement by fitting the 3-inch barrel to the 75-mm breech, designing a new cartridge case, and fitting the same projectiles as the 3-inch gun to it.(Actually, they wanted to improve the ballistics with a longer barrel but the higher ups interfered.)This means that there were ample action reports from M-10 units to attest to the performance of the M-42 High Explosive shell (or lack thereof). In Italy in 1943 there were no complaints. And this comes from units firing tens of thousands of rounds in artillery support mode (due to a shortage of hostile armor to shoot at). The HE shell worked fine. In fact, one quote is: The 3-inch gun was better than the 105mm howitzer for shelling roads over which American troops planned to advance because the former left almost no crater but had a similar burst radius to the bigger round. Not only is there no indication that the 3-inch gun was a failure, it was used quite a lot for artillery support roles.Various tank destroyer units in Europe saw the same use and (again) did not complain. The towed Battalions in Europe saw a great deal of service as artillery and only recorded satisfying results.Another issue is that the muzzle blast of the 76-mm is touted to be excessive. Yet, again, towed and motorized 3-inch guns didnt seem to complain much about this.Yes, these factors annoyed the tankers. It would have been better to have started the production of 76-mm guns with a muzzle brake. Perhaps a heavier high explosive shell with more explosives would have been issued. But seeing how the tankers took to the guns readily when forced to by heavy German army, one wonders how much the flaws of the 76-mm (as expressed in Gillems memo) were more propaganda than fact. Certain commanders resisted any adoption of new weapons and often penned such wordy memos to discourage their use, trying to poison the well to keep others from using it.As a side line, the Ordnance Department did develop a reduced charge HE round using the M-42 projectile with the ballistics of the common round for the 75-mm (the Super-Charge round being the one most people will be familiar with as regards the 75-mm). And there was a smoke shell (the M-88), which may not have been issued as widely as the smoke shell for the 75-mm.In discussions of pros and cons, one cant help wonder how much reality is ignored for sensationalism.