The Hellcat’s main gun was a high-velocity 76mm cannon. 50 caliber machine gun on an M18 during a training maneuver. The solution was the Gun Motor Carriage (GMC), although the first few models developed by the Army were anything but effective. Bruce, a respected planner from the War Department’s G-3 section, immediately set out to develop a vehicle fast enough to maneuver around the flanks of enemy columns to attack from the rear, and with enough killing power to distinguish it from the infantry support oriented tanks like the M4 Sherman. Bruce assumed command of the Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center at Fort Meade, Maryland.
The origin of the M18 dates to these first few weeks before the United States’ entry into World War II, when, on 27 November, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew D. During training in the United States, soldiers serving in tank destroyer units were authorized to wear the Tank Destroyer Forces shoulder sleeve insignia. Despite flaws in its doctrine and weapons developed to counter the panzer threat, the Army was well on its way toward developing its Tank Destroyer Force and several tank destroyer systems, including the M18 Hellcat, by the time the United States entered World War II. However, as German panzers tracked further into Eastern Europe, refinement of the tactics and development of the vehicles with which to blunt the new method of warfare still lagged. Within a year, the conclusion that mobile, massed anti-armor operations should be employed to counter armored attacks had been adopted after doctrinal endorsement from Army Chief of Staff General George C. McNair, set out to amend a strategy based around static and localized anti-armor defense beginning in the latter stages of 1940. Having witnessed the rapid advances of armored and mechanized forces in the German Blitzkrieg across Poland, the Low Countries, and France, War Department planners, including the future commander of Army Ground Forces (AGF), Lesley J. Army was coming to terms with the need to adapt its arsenal and operational doctrines to the evolving European battlefield. Even before Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on America on 11 December 1941, the U.S.
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