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Show Patton Claims our Tanks are Best General Goes on Record in Defense of U. S. M-4; Resents Criticism. WASHINGTON. Lt. Gen. Patton, commander of the Third army, has gone on record as vigorously defending defend-ing the U. S. M-4 tanks. These have been criticized as being too light, says the United Press. Patton said the Third army tanks had rolled up a score of approximately approxi-mately 2 to 1 over German tanks. A substantial part of the enemy tanks were the heavy Tigers or Panthers. Pan-thers. Many of the German tanks were dug in defensively, while American tanks were attacking. Patton's views were given in a letter to Lt. Gen. Thomas T. Handy, deputy chief of staff. "It has come to my knowledge that certain misguided or perhaps deliberately delib-erately mendacious individuals, returning re-turning from the theater of war, have criticized the equipment of the American soldier," he wrote. "I have been in command of fighting units since the 7th of November, 1942, and may therefore claim some knowledge of the various types of equipment. Statement Incorrect. "With reference to the tank, either ei-ther M-5 (light) or M-4 (medium), it has been stated at home that these tanks are not comparable with the German Mark VI, the so-called Panther Pan-ther and Tiger types of tanks. This statement is wholly incorrect for several reasons. "Since August 1, 1944, when the Third army became operational, our total tank casualties have amounted to 1,136 tanks. During the period we have accounted for 2,287 German tanks, of which 808 were of the Tiger or Panther variety, and 851 on our side were M-4. "These figures of themselves refute re-fute any inferiority of our tanks, but let me add that the Third army has always attacked, and, therefore, better bet-ter than 70 per cent of our tank casualties have occurred from dug-in anti-tank guns, and not enemy tanks, whereas, the majority of the enemy tanks put out have been put out by our tanks. "It is patent that if a Tiger tank with an enormous thickness of armor ar-mor were put at one end of a village street and engaged in a fire fight with an M-4 tank at the other end, the M-4 tank would not last. How-, ever, the great mobility of the M-4 actually enables it to circumvent the slow and unwieldy Tigers and not to engage in a slugging match but to attack them from the rear. German Tanks Too Heavy. "With the advent of the heavy,; cumbersome Tiger tank, the Ger-'. man, in my opinion, lost much of' his ability in armored combat. These; tanks are so heavy and their road' life so short that the German uses them as guns and not as tanks that is, he uses them on the defense against our armor, whereas we invariably in-variably try and generally succeed in using our armor on the offense against his infantry, which is the proper use of armor. "Had the armored divisions which accompanied the Third army across France been equipped with Tiger tanks, the road losses would have been 100 per cent by the time we reached the Moselle river. As it was, the road losses on our long-lived tanks were negligible. "In mechanical endurance and ease of maintenance, our tanks are infinitely superior to any tank in the theater of war. The outstanding advantage ad-vantage which our tanks possess over the German tank is the mechanical me-chanical traverse and stabilizer, through the use of which we get most of our kills." |