The Sherman Tank what an amazing vehicle!!

[4th wilts]

allied pilots overstated the amount of tanks destroyed in normandy,i reckon.but the number of near missis,especially from 60lb rockets must have caused some other kind of at least concussion perhaps.i would not like to have been in a panzy with a rocket landing 10yds away.yours,4th wilts.

[4th wilts]

without reading 200 odd posts,does anyone know what crew survivability was like,in comparison with other tanks.yours,4th wilts.

[von Poop]

The short answer is 'about average for a WW2 'A' vehicle' Lee. The long answer (In Normandy) is bound up with (among other things) some very detailed after action reports carried out by the RAMC and others into what actually killed crews and destroyed tanks. It's dense stuff though,

[4th wilts]

roger,over and out.lee.

[General Mayhem]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

Can anyone provide any primary evidence of the famous "5 Shermans to one Panther/Tiger" claim?
After a comment elsewhere I'm intrigued, the rough statistics and tactical evidence don't immediately appear to bear this out on a first look.

As far as attribution goes I can't recall the book or the quote but the gist was this. During the african campaign the tommys learned that the best way to deal with a tiger in Sherman's (Besides running away) was a sucker play. They would have Sherman's out front to draw the panzers forward and then have Sherman's flanking them to hit the thinner side armor. The 5 to 1 ratio I don't believe was specified. ust that this was the tactic that worked. I'm a HUGE fan of the Sherman, but the evidence of battle does not support the claim that it was an amazing tank. There were complaints about it's vulnerabilty immediately. Yes it was easily manufactured in great numbers and was ubiguitous in many forms during the war. BUT
1) Ease and cheapness (relative) of production do not defend the continued manfacture of a tank that was easily and far to often destroyed by counter tank fire. AMerican defense contractors knew in plenty of time the tanks deficiencies (especially had they listened to the british) but ignored them.
2) upgrades came slowly and late at the expense of soldiers lives and experienced tank crews (a problem later in the war).
3) The much ballyhooed and vaunted American Arsenal of democracy's weapons contractors stuck by the Sherman while the Soviet Union with it's inefficient, blunddering and tottering economy managed to make the T-34 under far worse conditions.
This all goes back to the best tank of the war and I think perhaps if we set down the criteria it would be possible to make such an award.
1) Firepower
2) defensive armor
3)speed
4) reliability
5)adaptability
6) repairability
7) production cost
8) quantities produced
Clearly the Tiger comes out ahead in the first two categories and falls way off in the later. The Panzer in the first three at least. The sherman in the last 4. Weighted by importance, many historians are awarding the T-34 the title of best tank
sincerely GM

[kfz]

Originally Posted by General Mayhem

As far as attribution goes I can't recall the book or the quote but the gist was this. During the african campaign the tommys learned that the best way to deal with a tiger in Sherman's (Besides running away) was a sucker play. They would have Sherman's out front to draw the panzers forward and then have Sherman's flanking them to hit the thinner side armor. The 5 to 1 ratio I don't believe was specified. ust that this was the tactic that worked. I'm a HUGE fan of the Sherman, but the evidence of battle does not support the claim that it was an amazing tank. There were complaints about it's vulnerabilty immediately. Yes it was easily manufactured in great numbers and was ubiguitous in many forms during the war. BUT
1) Ease and cheapness (relative) of production do not defend the continued manfacture of a tank that was easily and far to often destroyed by counter tank fire. AMerican defense contractors knew in plenty of time the tanks deficiencies (especially had they listened to the british) but ignored them.
2) upgrades came slowly and late at the expense of soldiers lives and experienced tank crews (a problem later in the war).
3) The much ballyhooed and vaunted American Arsenal of democracy's weapons contractors stuck by the Sherman while the Soviet Union with it's inefficient, blunddering and tottering economy managed to make the T-34 under far worse conditions.
This all goes back to the best tank of the war and I think perhaps if we set down the criteria it would be possible to make such an award.
1) Firepower
2) defensive armor
3)speed
4) reliability
5)adaptability
6) repairability
7) production cost
8) quantities produced
Clearly the Tiger comes out ahead in the first two categories and falls way off in the later. The Panzer in the first three at least. The sherman in the last 4. Weighted by importance, many historians are awarding the T-34 the title of best tank
sincerely GM

GM,

your a bit late on the thread and yes you have the general theme that vehicles in WW2 (not today!) performance and contribution to the war effeort was based upon other things than a spec sheet. Like most things in life its never that simple.

Yes the T34 without doubt has a claim to the 'best' whatever that is and nothing to do with this thread, but apart from anything it only served in Russia and central Europe. It never made it to Kasserine or ploughed through the jungles of Guadalcanal or had to swim 3 miles and wade ashore into the bocage. The proof of thep udding as they say is in the eating, The Sherman did it everywhere.

As a wannaby Engineer you gotta admire a machine that did 500% what it said on the spec sheet, it cant be argued with, the spec said tank (and quick!) and M4 design team came up with the goods. Without credit!

Kev

[von Poop]

It is more than a year since I wondered, and wrote that, in the meantime I've consumed more on the Sherman than any other vehicle, from Hunnicutt, through primary sources, personal accounts, Fletcher & Forty, and am now firmly convinced 'the five to one thing' is, frankly, utter balls .

I could refute much of what you write GM, but that would kind of repeat the whole of this pleasingly monstrous thread. The only thing I would pick up on is citing armour as the second most important factor, as there's something that hasn't been mentioned here if I recall.
By c.1943 the armour thickness became almost irrelevant as a criteria, particularly so in the short-range fighting in Normandy as so many of the enemy weapons were cutting through even the thickest tank armour (as found on Churchills) with ease, the armour could have been beefed up to the maximum the chassis and drive-train could bear and still give no better protection against 'modern' HV guns, even at quite long ranges.
The British tank boards who eventually formulated the excellent Centurion settled on a criteria for 'The Universal Tank' (that Montgomery had wanted for so long) where Armour always fell below reliability in 'desirable' terms, I can't recall where I've kept the lists but trusting a useless memory I think reliability may have been factor number one for these very sensible men.

As for the Tiger, if one is to believe the very thorough after action report carried out between Valetri & Cori in 1944 entitled 'Who Killed Mr Tiger', it may well have been that the best way to deal with one was wait for it to suffer one of it's regular minor breakdowns and be abandoned as a result of the German lack of attention to infrastructural support.

Same old question applies as crops up several times in this thread, if not the Sherman, and failing possession of some logistical/manufacturing magic wand... What else? There are always very good real-world reasons why the M6 & Pershing type pipe dreams so often found on the web were never achieved.

The guns mounted however, and their tortuous doctrine/staff/personal opinion selection procedures may be a different matter, but I'm realising what a mind-bendingly complex subject those procedures were, a million shades of grey and each contemporary case presented, whether by Monty, a manufacturer, or anyone else, having some validity.

Ooooh, I seem to have set myself off again....

Ramble ramble,
Blah blah.

Cheers,
Adam.

(We may have to impose a blanket ban on all mentions of 'best' in tank-talk and restrict people to 'favourite' )

[Jaeger]

Here we go again. I see red when the 5-1, 6-1, 7-1 balls start appearing.

This is simply not they way it happened. Instead of going head to head with the Tigers, the tankers would deploy smoke and shout 'limejuice' over the wireless. This would lead to a visit from the 'Jabos', and without getting into the effctiveness of them, they would chase off any tanks in the area.

Another action would be to get the Royal Artillery to plaster the tanks. Thanks to the Allied training area (North Africa) the Royal Artillery was a highly flexible and powerful tool.

A third would be to let the AT units have a go at Jerry. 17pdr AT guns and Achilles did sterling work in Normandy. (just reading about the Black Bull and their actions)

The legacy of British Armoured Warfare has largely been based on a 'one off' affair in Villers Bocage. A neat row of AFV's with no supporting infantry, paraded infront of M. Wittmann's 88's. It is unfair and downright wrong to pin it all to this affair. The great swan following the Falaise Gap is hardly mentioned anywhere. In this action the reliable Shermans and Cromwells shot through at an amazing rate. The tanks were in their proper role. No Tiger could have duplicated it. They were too overengeneered, and slow.

Without starting the broad vs narrow front debate, I'd say that the machines availiable to the allies mated with the Air Force and RA could have bounced the Germans all the way to Berlin if the ground campaign had been directed...

[4th wilts]

another criteria should be crew survivability,and on that note,how did the br 7th a/d using mainly cromwells,compare with the other british gds armd div,11th armd div and the 79th armd divs,which used i believe used shermans.do we know how many casualties there were.i mean tanks lost to enemy action.4th wilts.

[Panzer_land]

I dont think the Sherman was the best tank. The Shermans were extremely vulnerable to the tigers and panthers. The best tanks of ww2 were the panther and the King Tiger, the best allied is the t-34 the second may be the UK Matilda and the third the Sherman