The Sherman Tank what an amazing vehicle!!

[kfz]

Originally Posted by Owen D

Reading Mailed Fist by Ken Ford, page 70 & 71.
17th/21st Lancers are issued with Shermans in March 1943.
An extract from ffrench Blake's History Of The 17th/21st Lancers page 126 is quoted,

basically , "for the first time we have a HE option".

[4th wilts]

i still reckon great britain could and should have built a world beating tank.i mean if you look at the avro manchester,it was a letdown and then chadwick thinks ,i know,if i add 4 merlins,make a larger wing,and the lanc comes along,all this in 1942.it beggars belief.all those screaming,burning tankers certainly deserved better.yours very sincerely,lee.

[von Poop]

Originally Posted by 4th wilts

i still reckon great britain could and should have built a world beating tank.i mean if you look at the avro manchester,it was a letdown and then chadwick thinks ,i know,if i add 4 merlins,make a larger wing,and the lanc comes along,all this in 1942.it beggars belief.all those screaming,burning tankers certainly deserved better.yours very sincerely,lee.

How?
Where?
When?
With What?
We're back to that magic wand again.

The Churchill became an excellent device, Comet was a fine design, and it can also be said that the Centurion was essentially a product of WW2 which was pretty much top of the heap for decades. Sadly Hitler didn't really give anyone the time required to generate such Wunderwaffen at the drop of a hat. The story of British tank development is a hugely convoluted and complex thing which I've spent years trying to unravel somewhat & still don't fully follow the finer points. Demands for 'better' will always be there, but are never so easily satisfied in the real world, particularly a world torn in half by massive war.
I say give them, and the Americans, some credit for creating viable designs from so little in such a short time. Designs that while not perfect as has been said before on here; did the work that was put in front of them.

Cheers,
Adam.

[4th wilts]

all too late,tank manufactures had imo time enough to build or keep up with later german designs.should have had centurian in 1944,they knew we would be attacking and needed better tanks.probably leyland managers having a row with each other.should have read letters from the men who fought.yours very sincerely,lee.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

The development of the Centurion seems to have originated in 1943 following a government requirement to produce a Battle Tank with na ability to withstand a german 88mm

[von Poop]

Originally Posted by 4th wilts

all too late,tank manufactures had imo time enough to build or keep up with later german designs.should have had centurian in 1944,

I'd like to hear you properly justify that bit of personal opinion Lee, as it appears to have no real relation to the factual situation of allied vehicle design and development in the late 30's & 40's.
Don't forget that the Tiger, for example, had it's roots in 1936 and before. Germany was preparing to make aggressive war and had stolen nearly a decades march on the Allies, who were attempting to get on with the normal business of state rather than conquering the world.
It's so easy to lazily slag off what the allied vehicle designers and producers achieved in 2 or 3 years of hard work, often in the utmost adversity, without appreciating the huge technological hill they successfully climbed.

There's also the quite valid point that In Normandy the bulk off the tanks on both sides were broadly balanced against one another, with Mk.IVs being the mass of German strength weighed against Sherman and Cromwell etc. It's swings and roundabouts when the actual situation is investigated more closely, and nowhere near so out of kilter as popular perception may have it. You could have had hundreds of allied Cents and they'd still most likely have suffered the same huge attrition against well hidden HV AT guns in such grim terrain for vehicles.

[4th wilts]

but we even captured mk4s early on,tigers early on,panthers as well.you do not need an engineering degree to see that these tanks were superior to ours.i dont mean copying them either.i know they had major problems too,but i reckon if our tank builders tried harder,we would have had at least the comet a year earlier and if that saved one tank crew from death it would have been worth it.

[von Poop]

Right, so all the Industrialists, Generals, Scientists, Factory workers, Engineers and politicians simply weren't trying hard enough...
They may have made some dreadful mistakes, turned down wrong paths and fallen out with each other, but they were certainly trying damned hard to beat Germany, having launched off from very much the back foot.

But then it's so much easier to force things through in a single party fascist state geared towards conquest rather than in a democracy that's hoping for peace isn't it, so much more... efficient.
Even so, to perceive the German design and manufacture process as anything even vaguely resembling a smooth ride would also be greatly wide of the beam.

Making tanks is difficult, making decent reliable ones that adapt well to mass manufacture is extremely difficult, near on impossible given the technology of the time, but somehow the Sherman men managed it.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

The German designs whilst in some cases excellent were a nightmare from a production side, the T-34 or the M4 were models of production efficiency.

[MikB]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

Right, so all the Industrialists, Generals, Scientists, Factory workers, Engineers and politicians simply weren't trying hard enough...
They may have made some dreadful mistakes, turned down wrong paths and fallen out with each other, but they were certainly trying damned hard to beat Germany, having launched off from very much the back foot.

Well said. What is not always remembered is just how much British resource and expertise went into the aircraft industry, producing world-class examples in every imaginable role and exceeding all other countries in heavy aircraft production until near the end.

What we had in 1944 were Typhoons instead of Tigers, and they tore bigger holes in the German ranks than the Tigers ever did in ours. The Sherman was exactly adequate for the purpose it was employed in - there's no better evidence for that than the actual outcome - and striking that balance on a short lead time is a considerable technical achievement.

Regards,
MikB