Military Times has published two new articles about Wargamming’s North American tank researcher and “chief evangelist” Nicholas Moran, aka The Chieftain. One article focuses on Moran’s role as an employee of Wargamming. It also looks at “The Chieftain’s Hatch” section of the World of Tanks forum where Moran publishes articles based on his research. Here is one of the more interesting excerpts from the article:
He sees part of his mission at Wargaming as helping dispel myths and misconceptions — perpetuated mostly by movies — about armored warfare during World War II.
Consider the M4 Sherman tank, he says, long disparaged as the scrappy, if inadequate, answer to the Nazis’ armored divisions.
“The Sherman was probably one of the best tanks in the world, but people don’t realize it because they’ve been taught to believe that a Sherman blew up if a Tiger tank looked at it sideways.”
Sure, the Sherman, a medium tank, had its challenges facing off against Germany’s heavy Tigers, but that’s why the U.S. started working on bigger tanks.
“Three years ago, most people didn’t know the U.S. had a heavy tank program in World War II. I could say T29 or T32 heavy and most would have no idea what I was talking about.”
The other article focuses on Moran as a tanker and an active member of the National Guard. Moran tells and interesting story about how little emphasis is currently being placed on tanks and heavy armor even within armor units.
When Moran was going through the armor officer’s captain course a few years ago, the instructor asked the group of 60 students who would soon command heavy units across the Army how many actually had fired a tank “Table 8,” the basic live-fire gunnery qualification for M1 Abrams crews.
Moran was among only about a third of the class who raised their hands.
The instructor then asked how many had done a Table 8 for Bradley crews.
This time, Moran was among only about a quarter of the class who had qualified on the heavily armored infantry fighting vehicle.
“And how many of you have fired both?” the instructor asked.
“And this one single National Guardsman — that is, me — raises his hand,” Moran says.
The instructor was making a harsh, if necessary, point, right where the rubber — or track tread — meets the road.
“He was demonstrating how far away we had gotten from our core competencies. We’ve been so focused on the Iraq War and the insurgency in Afghanistan that the ability to tank had started to vanish from the U.S. Army. It’s been a sad state of affairs for the armor branch.”
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