I've read how US tankers in World War II found that an effective way to knock out German tanks was to first fire either a smoke or white phosporus round at them. The idea was the fumes from that type of round would blind them and perhaps get sucked into the tank making them think they'd been knocked out. Once that round was on the way then the US tank would scoot around the side or rear to get in a killing shot.

My question, and this is just out of curiosity, is what kind of round would they normally have loaded? Say you're in "Indian Country" and you don't know what is going to be around the next bend. Do you load with AP and hope you can get a killing shot off first? Or with WP, HE, etc? Or would you leave the gun unloaded so you could grab the best round for the job right away?

I am not sure this can be answered in a general sense. The answer can only be answered on a case by case basis. If it were me, I'd looked at what my current potential threats would be for the mission I'd be doing, what other kinds of targets my other units in the area are engaging and plan accordingly.

I think given the sheer amount of tank companies within the numerous divisions, any sense of SOP to this sort of thing wouldn't have quite existed on a large scale. I'd imagine small units would have their own SOP towards what to do.

Jeff

I'd imagine the US tanks would work in pairs. One with an AP up the spout and the other with WP.