Reply To: Battle of the Bulge – December 16, 1944

[bobcockayne 20723xp 2]

@oriskany totally agree on all your points plus:

The Comet was a fast tank more suited to open terrain I’m really not sure it would been any more effective than the Shermans given the close nature of the Ardennes Terrain. Not only that would anyone want to take a so far untried tank (specially give previous British experience with  Crusaders) into such an intense battle and it make sense that they reverted to the tried and tested Shermans.

From what I’ve read it was both recon and and normal units converting to Comet rather than Just Cromwell.

To answer your question on ratio James, it was to be a total conversion,though there was a suggestion that they retained the 95mm Cromwell as initially they were not sure of the effectiveness of the 77mm H.E. round based on its lousy 17pdr perfomance, but haven’t read that it proved to be a problem. There was so little German Armour left by the time of its introduction that like the Pershing it is difficult to access its effectiveness.