Posted: 12/30/2017 3:55:36 AM EDT
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So I'm watching Lindybeige and The Chieftain ramble on about tanks at Bovington... they spent most of their time climbing in and out of a Churchill(Lindybeige's favorite tank apparently)... then towards the end of the hour The Chieftain reveals that the M4(Sherman) is his favorite and they discuss the history of the vehicle...then he mentions that there are alotta myths about the survive-ability of the Sherman in combat, says they were very survivable and throws out that number.
1400 tankers of the US army killed in all of WW2... can that be possible?..seems like an incredibly low number... we were just late to the action in Europe I guess? pretty amazing fact if true. |
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just because a tank gets hit doesn't mean everyone in it dies
Shermans were very easy to get out of, other tanks, especially the t-34, not so much. Their ammunition , after wet-stowage was created, was incredibly resistant to exploding. The Sherman was the best tank of WW2 |
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Here is a video he did that goes into more detail on casualty rates of Sherman crews during WWII.
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/445740-myths-of-american-armor/ |
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Great uncle was a Sherman TC (or whatever they called them back then) and had four of them shot out of from under him in Europe. Only on one did he get injuries worthy of pulling him out of service for recovery at a hospital, and he went back out once he was healed up. He liked them for their maneuverability and ease of keeping them running in the field. Durability and survivability... not so much.
He was pretty lucky. Some other crews he fought alongside got toasted. |
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LOL! No. Quoted:
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The Sherman was the best tank of WW2 Late Model/Product Improved Shermans gave up very little the Panther, and were better than the T-34, especially for a survivablity standpoint. M4A3E8 especially was a superb tank, and Sherman variants beat the T-34 every-time they fought. All the anti-Sherman hysteria comes from one man: Belton Cooper. The whole Tiger/King Tiger IS-2 debate is a whole different class of tank. Still though I question the number of 1400, thats insanely low... |
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M_M has gone into great detail, using research from original archival sources, to come to his conclusions. Was the Sherman perfect? No, but it was also not the "death trap" that it has become in the popular imagination. The much-ballyhooed German tanks had plenty of their own stunningly stupid problems (special tracks required for being loaded on trains, anyone?). Everything also needs to be placed into proper context. There were many aircraft that went straight from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor without complete design and testing, and they were dropping out of the skies during training and on ferry flights throughout the war. STOOOOPID amounts of losses in men and materiel for causes that would NEVER be accepted by the public today, were they widely known. The B-24 and B-29 come to mind, but there were many other examples. |
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Wikipedia says the US lost 10,000 tanks/tank destroyers in the 1944-45 period alone. So....I doubt that number. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/Casualties-1.html#place |
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Here is a video he did that goes into more detail on casualty rates of Sherman crews during WWII. http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/445740-myths-of-american-armor/ |
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Eh Late Model/Product Improved Shermans gave up very little the Panther, and were better than the T-34, especially for a survivablity standpoint. M4A3E8 especially was a superb tank, and Sherman variants beat the T-34 every-time they fought. All the anti-Sherman hysteria comes from one man: Belton Cooper. The whole Tiger/King Tiger IS-2 debate is a whole different class of tank. Still though I question the number of 1400, thats insanely low... The T-34 was good in design but in use it was a death trap...beginning the trend of crappy Soviet tanks that runs to today’s pop-a-top models. Hell, Russian tankers who had shermans loved them and preferred them. British views are skewed by their hatred of lend lease. They never talk good about anything we have them...it’s all jingoistic rah rah British is best, despite their inability to have done anything without us. |
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Wikipedia says the US lost 10,000 tanks/tank destroyers in the 1944-45 period alone. So....I doubt that number. |
| Resist revisionist tendencies. I'm as patriotic as any, but calling the Sherman the "best tank of WWII" is not serving a positive purpose. It wasn't even designed to be used on the front lines - download FM 100-5 Operations and you read its primary role was to be in offensive operations against hostile rear areas, not tank-to-tank. OK, sure, our side won, but we got caught short with the M4 against German armor, and we just out-lasted and out-produced them. Ft. Knox would never fall back on that strategy now. We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. |
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Resist revisionist tendencies. I'm as patriotic as any, but calling the Sherman the "best tank of WWII" is not serving a positive purpose. It wasn't even designed to be used on the front lines - download FM 100-5 Operations and you read its primary role was to be in offensive operations against hostile rear areas, not tank-to-tank. OK, sure, our side won, but we got caught short with the M4 against German armor, and we just out-lasted and out-produced them. Ft. Knox would never fall back on that strategy now. We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. |
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I would like to add that we’ve been fed a heavy Pravda dose of BS about the mythical T-34 too due to 20+ years of history/discovery channel shows. Most of those are produced by brits/euros who have but down hard on that bait. The T-34 was good in design but in use it was a death trap...beginning the trend of crappy Soviet tanks that runs to today’s pop-a-top models. Hell, Russian tankers who had shermans loved them and preferred them. British views are skewed by their hatred of lend lease. They never talk good about anything we have them...it’s all jingoistic rah rah British is best, despite their inability to have done anything without us. Quoted:
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Eh Late Model/Product Improved Shermans gave up very little the Panther, and were better than the T-34, especially for a survivablity standpoint. M4A3E8 especially was a superb tank, and Sherman variants beat the T-34 every-time they fought. All the anti-Sherman hysteria comes from one man: Belton Cooper. The whole Tiger/King Tiger IS-2 debate is a whole different class of tank. Still though I question the number of 1400, thats insanely low... The T-34 was good in design but in use it was a death trap...beginning the trend of crappy Soviet tanks that runs to today’s pop-a-top models. Hell, Russian tankers who had shermans loved them and preferred them. British views are skewed by their hatred of lend lease. They never talk good about anything we have them...it’s all jingoistic rah rah British is best, despite their inability to have done anything without us. |
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a forgotten quality of armor is the ability to produce them, by the masses. if you don't have the absolute very best of something, then have a fucking lot of them. Quoted:
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...we just out-lasted and out-produced them... We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. Agree on the T14 - dang that thing has a low profile and silhouette. |
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My FIL was the only survivor of his Sherman tank crew,the rest were KIA. He then spent 27 months in a POW camp. Do you know what position he had in the tank? Commander, gunner, loader, driver? I would suspect the driver or the TC to have the best chance. Well that’s in my thinking knowing the later tanks, not the Sherman. When I was young and agile getting in and out was no big deal. I was in a mortar armored personnel carrier and our hatches were huge compared to the old stuff. Maybe we had special national guard sized hatches. I was up at Fort Drum and they had brought in about fifty M48 Patton tanks with pointy bows. I was able to inspect them and at over forty and a fatso’s waistline it was a tight fit using the loader’s hatch. Sadly those M48s were I believe the air force’s. Targets. |
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Resist revisionist tendencies. I'm as patriotic as any, but calling the Sherman the "best tank of WWII" is not serving a positive purpose. It wasn't even designed to be used on the front lines - download FM 100-5 Operations and you read its primary role was to be in offensive operations against hostile rear areas, not tank-to-tank. OK, sure, our side won, but we got caught short with the M4 against German armor, and we just out-lasted and out-produced them. Ft. Knox would never fall back on that strategy now. We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. |
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North Africa.... I THINK the Sherman's of that era were M3' s.....is that correct?  Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: M3 Grant. Part 1  Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: M3 Grant. Part 2 |
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Double tap:
Oh well:  Tank Chats #41 Sherman Firefly | The Tank Museum |
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My FIL was the only survivor of his Sherman tank crew,the rest were KIA. He then spent 27 months in a POW camp. Do you know what position he had in the tank? Commander, gunner, loader, driver? I would suspect the driver or the TC to have the best chance. Well that’s in my thinking knowing the later tanks, not the Sherman. When I was young and agile getting in and out was no big deal. I was in a mortar armored personnel carrier and our hatches were huge compared to the old stuff. Maybe we had special national guard sized hatches. I was up at Fort Drum and they had brought in about fifty M48 Patton tanks with pointy bows. I was able to inspect them and at over forty and a fatso’s waistline it was a tight fit using the loader’s hatch. Sadly those M48s were I believe the air force’s. Targets. |
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Googling sherman tank losses comes up with 4500 tank losses in Europe, and another link has approx 1 to 1.2 casualties per tank. Number seems low. As far as "the best tank" The US Army had a systematic problem in WWII. The goal was to produce 'good enough' equipment in sufficient numbers. The US Army did not have a robust technical intelligence branch. In some Armies this was a function of intel, in some it was ordnance. LTG Leslie McNair didnt want to slow down production unless he had feedback from frontline commanders that equipment was inadequate. However the commanders didn't have the time, or the reports, or trained analysts, to make those assessments. Also, there weren't a lot of liaisons looking at was going on in Russia to see what as happening there and what the Russians were seeing. The US fielded a lot...A LOT...of weapons that were perfectly fine in North Africa in 1942. They seemed to be okay in Italy in 1943...although there werent alot of German tanks, and data was limited. Then in 1944 in Normandy they failed. It was a systematic organizational failure. The pace of development in Russia led to advances in guns and armor that the US Army didn't pay attention to. The 2.36 in bazooka couldnt penetrate tanks, and was less capable then 88mm panzerschrecks and larger panzerfausts. The 57mm AT gun was okay, then not as good as the 75mm PAK40. The Sherman was good in 1942, on the edge of okay in 1943, and in 1944 its armor was inadequate and its gun was inadequate. The Brits realized this and adopted the firefly, in a crash program. The US didnt see the need. By 1945 there was a lot of new equipment, too little too late. It was available in large numbers and reliable. The kar98k bolt action rifle was more reliable and available in larger numbers then the garand...no one on planet earth says it was 'better.' The problem was bigger then the sherm, and we dont do it that way anymore. |
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yeah... they were talking about how the Sherman could be arguably the best tank of the war... they pointed out that this didn't mean a one on one squaring off with say a Tiger, but based on how the Americans used them and the things they did well, actual tank warfare... of course they mentioned it was reliable and repairable... mentioned that after the war the US Ballistic Research Labs did an assessment and concluded that in overall real world effectiveness the Sherman was better than the Panther.
They mentioned how the Germans put a huge amount of effort into recovering their knocked out tanks and repairing them... and how the allied tankers would climb out of their knocked out tank, go back to the depot and have a new one by the end of the day... they said at peak production they were making one every half hour 
One interesting thing The Chieftain mentioned that I had never heard before was that the Sherman was likely the only tank to be seen in every combat theater, possibly with the exception of the Stuart and Matilda 2, and this ability to perform in all environs points to good engineering, reliability, parts availability etc.... kinda cool. |
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I will never understand the German army fanboys, especially on a US board.
The myth of the uber German scientists is just that: a myth. Sure the nazis produced some impressive things but most of them were produced because they were desperate and were ridiculously not cost-effective. Did you really think that the side who built the Atomic bomb, who invented the jet engine (Britain and France did it before the Germans), who invented the bazooka etc... was not able to produce a good tank? The Sherman was 25% cheaper than the Panther, 300% cheaper than Tiger, needed way less manhour to be produced and was not made by slave labor. Contrary to another myth, the german quality control was worse than the US and Soviet one. You could swap a Sherman engine between different models, good luck trying that with a German tank. A Sherman could drive to the frontline, not a German tank. To keep 45 Tigers running, a German battalion needed 130 trucks in it's supply chain, 130! In 1943 Germany produced 330,000 tank tonnage (metric), the US: 960,000 In 1944 it was 550,000 for Germany and the same for the US. Why? Because the US had enough and shifted to an aircraft production priority. If you look at the cost, the manhour needed, the quality of the comm/optics/armor, the ease of maintenance, the reliability, the survivability, the quality of the ammo (Heat, tungsten, HE, cannister), the ease to make some upgrades: not a single tank model was better than the Sherman, none. A US army fielding Panthers/Tigers instead of Shermans would have not reached the German border before getting stuck by a lack of parts/supply. German tanks were good for a country fighting only in a defensive mode with supply lines getting shorter and shorter after each defeats not for a country on the offense. |
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Resist revisionist tendencies. I'm as patriotic as any, but calling the Sherman the "best tank of WWII" is not serving a positive purpose. It wasn't even designed to be used on the front lines - download FM 100-5 Operations and you read its primary role was to be in offensive operations against hostile rear areas, not tank-to-tank. OK, sure, our side won, but we got caught short with the M4 against German armor, and we just out-lasted and out-produced them. Ft. Knox would never fall back on that strategy now. We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. |
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Our tactics sucked due to the basic doctrine drawn up by Leslie McNair. He wanted the tank destroyer and championed that fiasco. Quoted:
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Resist revisionist tendencies. I'm as patriotic as any, but calling the Sherman the "best tank of WWII" is not serving a positive purpose. It wasn't even designed to be used on the front lines - download FM 100-5 Operations and you read its primary role was to be in offensive operations against hostile rear areas, not tank-to-tank. OK, sure, our side won, but we got caught short with the M4 against German armor, and we just out-lasted and out-produced them. Ft. Knox would never fall back on that strategy now. We better get our asses in gear because the Russian T14 should make you worry. Tank destroyer was a product of field artillery branch, starting with AT guns assigned to artillery regiments, than needing them in infantry units, since they'd be the ones needing to stop German armor attacks. Infantry wanted light guns that they could pull by the gun crew, which was the anemic 37mm that could barely take out a Panzer 1. They created tank destroyer battalions (which the Germans did too) of a mixed of relatively poor armored self propelled AT guns (noteably the M10) and various towed weapons. Later 90mm variants were kick ass, but still needed more armor. The only bad choices McNair made regarding TDs was promoting the 3" gun and not something better, emphasizing light armor and speed over more armor for survivability in a tank engagement, and pushing towed variety that weren't doing great things in battle. But like I wrote before, Germans used tank destroyers too: ever hear of Otto Carius? You probably love the guy and read all about the "panzer ace" but he was Panzerjäger, tank hunter. Only difference is his TD had no turret, heavier gun, more armor. But much slower, only good for ambushing enemy armor only in a small engagement area, couldn't support infantry for shit, which is a job TD, PJ often had to perform on both sides. |
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M3's were not Shermans, and were death traps.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7eJr0grTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu8NwLls7PY Quoted:
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North Africa.... I THINK the Sherman's of that era were M3' s.....is that correct? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7eJr0grTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu8NwLls7PY Speaking of which, the 75mm gun outgunned anything the Germans were bringing to the fight in that stage of North Africa. After being chased east by Rommel the British were desperately short of tanks, their own weren't very good (lots of mechanical issues), and while the M3 was not a well designed tank in terms of layout, was a bitch to crew it (7 men), its drivetrain was as reliable as the sun rising every morning, its 75mm gun was great for fire support role. The US only used the M3 Med early in North Africa because the British were desperate for Shermans (their name for the M4 Medium tank, we didn't call it that until after the war), Churchill begged FDR for more of them, one entire transport ship of them was sunk on way to North Africa to British, so they redirected US Army M4s to British and some battalions of our boys hsd to use older M3s. |
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I'll take the M-26 Pershing over the Sherman anyday. Lower, better armored and a better gun. Quoted:
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The Sherman was the best tank of WW2.....I tend to disagree with you. |
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I'll take the M-26 Pershing over the Sherman anyday. Lower, better armored and a better gun. Quoted:
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The Sherman was the best tank of WW2.....I tend to disagree with you. |
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But like I wrote before, Germans used tank destroyers too: ever hear of Otto Carius? You probably love the guy and read all about the "panzer ace" but he was Panzerjäger, tank hunter. Only difference is his TD had no turret, heavier gun, more armor. But much slower, only good for ambushing enemy armor only in a small engagement area, couldn't support infantry for shit, which is a job TD, PJ often had to perform on both sides. Carius ended the war in a Jagdtiger, but spent the vast majority of his time in tanks. |
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Quoted: M26 was too heavy to cross quite a few bridge types encountered in Europe, the type the M4 could drive over in ease. Mobility is great when you can cross a river and not wait for Army engineer units to either build a new one or heavily reinforce it. |
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mmit was much much better but got to Europe just about too late. Barely made the war. Quoted:
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The Sherman was the best tank of WW2.....I tend to disagree with you. Which the Germans wanted to do too but couldn't because their production sucked, they didn't even fully mobilize their industry until late 42. And with tanks they constantly changed designs, necessitating entire factory retooling, necessitating a constant need to iron out design flaws, and as soon as they do, the variant gets scrapped for new flawed version, cycle of failure, always chasing the best and newest game changer, and never even achieving mediocrity. All while ignoring lessons of France in 1940, when German tanks outclassed by British and especially French designs, kicked their asses not because bigger gun or more armor, bit because of doctrine, training, comms, and tactics, much better and responsive supporting arms. Which shows that the best the Germans ever were was about on par with US Army abilities from 43-45. |
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Clarification. Carius ended the war in a Jagdtiger, but spent the vast majority of his time in tanks. Quoted:
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But like I wrote before, Germans used tank destroyers too: ever hear of Otto Carius? You probably love the guy and read all about the "panzer ace" but he was Panzerjäger, tank hunter. Only difference is his TD had no turret, heavier gun, more armor. But much slower, only good for ambushing enemy armor only in a small engagement area, couldn't support infantry for shit, which is a job TD, PJ often had to perform on both sides. Carius ended the war in a Jagdtiger, but spent the vast majority of his time in tanks. |