Quiddings all! The M18 is one of the most famous fighting vehicles of the war. However, outside of the fact that it was very fast and came out with a great kill to death ratio, which probably was a little consolation to the folks on the death side, there are still a number of lesser known but fascinating pieces of information about the vehicle. Thus, I'll go over five of them here. One. The M18 was supposed to use the Ford V8 engine. It is of course very well known that the M18 is a very, very fast vehicle, not least because of the power to weight ratio. However, one may ask if the Ford GAA was available at the time and planned for introduction into the M4, why didn't they put it into the M18 as well? Well, they certainly thought about it. However, the Ford was at the time a brand new engine and untested in the field. The continental was a known quantity. Given that tank destroyer Command and General Bruce had planted its flag on the T-49-67-70 program to create a lightweight, high-speed vehicle and fought other distractions like the 19-millimeter arm to T-53, they were unwilling to take any risk. If the Ford proved to be a dud, the M18 would be a failure. As a result, it was observed that it was possible to design the hull to take both the continental and the Ford. After all, that's exactly what happened with Germans. The first M18s will be produced with continental radial whilst armored force and its M4A3s would prove the reliability of the Ford engine. If the Ford worked, then later M18s would be built with the V8. However, the production of M18 was cut short before this change over happened. 2. It was possible to fit the M18 with a stabilized fire control system. It never was in the field as it was considered unnecessary. This fire control system would consist of Duke components, a stabilizer and a computing site. The stabilizer was developed for firing when a float. 250 swimming kits were required, but never used outside of testing. The kit permitted the M18 to fire when swimming, but water is not the most stable platform for an armored vehicle. Being indicated that a stabilizer was required for firing on water, but it was only to be fitted as part of the swimming kit. There was considered to be very little need for it when on land, as the vehicle was supposed to engage from stationary ambush positions, so no need for the expense. To help with the engagement of moving targets, the target range timer T1 was developed. This was not the first attempt to fit a fire control calculator to attack destroyer, computing sites T18 and T62 were trialled on M3s, but this was a much simpler system. The estimated range to target would be dialed into the system and the crosshair placed under target and then the timer activated. The timer would calculate the time a flight of the round and sound a beep over the intercom. The distance travelled by the target being the amount of lead required. This too did not see fielding. Unfortunately because the war was ending and partially because the combination of relatively short ranges and high velocity of a 76mm cannon made it an item of only limited benefit for the effort. 3. M18s were not well received. Indeed the view of the tank destroyer command in August 1944 was that troops receiving the vehicle were, quote, actively hostile to the thing. It was a hostility that army service forces, the guys who bought the equipment for the army, considered canceling the project as, quote, again, if the troops won't use them it is useless to produce them. The first T70s were given a trial by firing Italy, a platoon of the things showed up at Anzio. Fifth army's response was that the vehicle was not desired. The armor was too thin. It was not as one report stated the superb $40,000 foxhole which the M10 was. Further, with the large road wheels, the somewhat angular silhouette and with a muzzle brake, it looked far too much like a German vehicle for comfort. Of course generally speaking the troops didn't get much say in the matter and they used what they were given, but the A13th type destroyer battalion all but mutinied and flat refused to turn in their M10s for M18s. They were eventually given M36s instead. In the end, the M18's popularity tended to depend on the type of fighting that the user was involved with. If you were slugging it out with Fifth Army in Italy or First Army in northern France, you probably preferred the tougher armor of the M10. If you were involved in races across central and southern France with Third Army or Seven Army, you probably preferred the mobility of the M18. 4. M18 was subject to a factory recall. The perceived need of the vehicle to replace all the other interim TDs which were being used was considered so great that once T70 was close enough to being right, it was placed in the serial production to have the vehicles built whilst testing continued with the understanding that there might be issues needing redressing. Even as the vehicle was being built, some modifications were being made midstream, but by the time the vehicle was finally approved as the M18 and March of 1944, a slew of faults varying from minor issues like the .50 caliber ammunition tray being designed for 50 round boxes, but the storage being built for 100 round boxes, through more serious issues like differential gear ratios needing changing. Vehicles have become clear and needed to be fixed before the vehicles could be shipped overseas. Vehicles numbered 1 to 657 needed to be returned to the factory for modification. Vehicles 658 to 1095 only needed 36 modifications. These could be done at the depots before going overseas. 5. The 90mm could have been put onto the M18. Well, famously of course it was done, but purely for the sake of the experiment and only one no more pressing items needed to be tested. They basically plonged an M36 turret onto the M18 chassis, creating the descriptively named M18 with 90mm gun motor carriage M36 turret. Only minor modifications needed to be made to the M18's hull and the M36's turret to do it, and was briefly even trialled with wider tracks. The problem was it nobody seemed to think it was worth doing. As was stated in a reporting, to convert the present considerable stock of unassigned M18's to 90mm vehicles would require, after development, experiment and test has been completed, an unpredictable number of months. This would tie up this stock of an admittedly efficient weapon. The advisability of tying up completed, capable vehicles actually ready for combat, appears questionable. It is worth observing that the M18 of course ended up with one of the highest killer ratios of any vehicle of the war even without the 90mm gun, so there really wasn't any particular pressure at the time to upgun the M18 at the accompanying cost of an increase in weight of about a ton and a half as well as a reduction in ammunition capacity. So there you go, a nice short video that you can now use to dazzle your internet forum and enemies. I'm Nicholas Moore in the Chieftain, I'll talk you on the next one.