Talk:Howitzer Motor Carriage M8

Crew makeup vs the M3/M5 Stuart
When you say "(l)ike the Light Tank M5, the M8 had a crew of four; commander, gunner, driver, and assistant driver/loader", it appears to be saying that the M5 had a crew consisting of those members. As far as I know, the M3 and M5 both had crews of driver, bow gunner, loader and gunner/commander. That was how they fought; there was no room for a commander, gunner and loader in the turret, and if the bow gunner moved to the turret to load the gun in combat, there wouldn't be a whole lot of point in having the bow gun at all (and having the commander fight outside the turret at the AA mount would be plainly foolish for a front-line AFV, whereas it might perhaps be feasbile for a 2nd-line support SPG like the M8). The whole point is that the M8 had a larger turret, capable of holding three crew, which is why the driver and loader/assistant driver lost their roof hatches. I'm going to assume this is an honest mistake, and no-one was actually trying to suggest the M5 was manned the same way as the M8, but the language really does suggest that in at least two places. It ought to say "like the Light Tank M5, the M8 had a crew of four. However, unlike the M5, the M5 had both a gunner and a commander, the duties of loader being assumed by the assistant driver in action, whereas in the M5 the commander also served as gunner, and the assistant driver served as bow gunner" (or something less verbose; conscision is not my thing). This is all assuming that this was actually the way the men were trained to use the M8, not some localized thing units in the Pacific came up with, and which someone read about in some anecdote and proceeded to post on Wikipedia as standard tactics for the M8 in general. Because it seems a little suspect to me; perhaps the M8's AA gun can be manned and fired from inside the turret, unlike the M5's, in which case it would make better sense than having one man outside the tank totally. But it begs the question "why didn't they just make it a 3-man turret?"

Idumea47b (talk) 03:24, 26 October 2018 (UTC)