marathag
Banned
Not from lack or room, just wasn't thought it was needed. The M10 also didn't have power traverse.
M4A3E8
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Riain
Banned
With the incredible productive capacity of the US I think 'nice to have' shouldn't be so friggin difficult to achieve.
It amazes me that the country that churned out the P51, B29, F4U, Essex class carriers etc etc etc etc etc etc didn't make the tank equivalent and when anyone mentions that you hear a litany of 'reasons'.
McPherson
Banned
There are many who think the Sherman actually was the best Wally tank of the war. "I" am one of them.
marathag
Banned
Especially when the US decided that to many companies had been pulled in to make M3 and then M4 medium by 1942, and I'd have to check, but I believe 4-6 companies did not get further production contracts for armored vehicles, plus the Criminally underused Burlington Tank Arsenal that should have made thousands of M7 tanks, made under two dozen
marathag
Banned
It was a very good tank.
It had potential to be even better, by the end of 1942.
But wasn't.
Riain
Banned
Oh, I know they do and I have no doubt you are one of them. However I notice you use the qualifier 'Wally' and there's therein lies my issue.
I think it was Chieftain in his vid on Tank Destroyers that said lack of power traverse was about TD's were supposed to be as cheap as possible, so lack of power traverse was a cost consideration.
marathag
Banned
Also I came across another way for McNair to enforce the idea that these were tank destroyer, not tanks, along with the open top.
Not 1/3rd Tigers - only about 1350 Tiger I and 490 Tiger II built. Between Zaloga and Chieftain the number of U.S. encounters with the Tiger I in NW Europe can be counted on less than 1 hand. Understand that MkIV with Scheurtzen skirts were many times mistaken for Tigers. From reading Zaloga, who I've come to really respect as a source, I'm in the M4 was a lot better than many realize.
Riain
Banned
The US produced miracles during WW2, churning out in huge numbers some of the best equipment of its class in the world. But the minute someone says the Sherman might be better, or heaven forbid the US build a heavy tank line, the reaction is akin to "get your torches and pitchforks"!
I see the Sherman as akin to the P40, Zero, Bf109. A good mid-war tank capable of being upgraded but being behind the state of the art in 1944-45 and the production decisions of 1942 meant the US Army didn't have the full gamut of options available to it in that time-frame.
marathag
Banned
Early 1942, was the best tank in the world, a great mix of firepower, protection , reliability and mobility.
But even then, it had many flaws.
Too tall a hull, from the radial engine drive shaft.
ammo stored above the tracks, without armor bins
No loaders hatcno direct telescope for the gunner
And I could go on.
But the thing was, these were known, and companies worked on fixes, that were not all addressed, when they could have been
That would be fairly remarkable if true. The Germans only built 1,347 Tiger I and 489 Tiger II. At least half the Tiger II were deployed on the Eastern Front, it is reasonable to infer that the same ration was in place for the Tiger I, that would indicated a total deployment of only ~900 Tigers in the West, making the total Heer/Luftwaffe./SS Panzer tanks deployed in Western Europe, Italy, and North Africa a total of 2,700 tracks.
In addition to this, at no point in WW II did the number of Panthers deployed in the West exceed 489 (of which only 371 were operational). This would mean that, far from the already surprisingly small number based on Tiger production, the actual TOTAL number of German Tanks in the West never substantially exceeded 1,500-1,700 tracks, with likely never more than 70% available at any given time (Panther and Tiger operational readiness averaged 65% in the West, althose figures fell off the end of the table by the end of 1944. That would mean that the WAllies never faced more than 1,000 tracks at any point of the War with that total split between Italy and Northern Europe.
Riain
Banned
I agree with all that. I don't understand why people don't defend the F4F Wildcat or P40 as vigorously as they defend the Sherman. Or when it's OK for the USAAF to have the P38, P47 and P51, but not OK for the US Army to have a heavy tank as an alternative/backup/failsafe to the Sherman.
Riain
Banned
I'm not saying it was a big number, rather that the split between the 3 types wasn't drastically lopsided in favour of the easiest-to-beat PzIV, and meeting a Panther or Tiger was vanishingly rare. IIUC when talking about tanks a Wallied unit was as likely or perhaps even more likely to meet a Panther/Tiger unit than it was a PzIV unit, so basing plans around encountering PzIVs is poor planning.
They successfully mated an M26 turret to an M4.
And then it got rejected by the Army. Physically fitting a turret of one tank to another tank does not a successful design make.
Chieftain had another vid that takes on directly about Sherman verses other best weapons
Good one for TD's also which he wrote a book on
As part of the general discussion here I am curious how many folks here are familiar with this:
The United States versus German Equipment
This is generated from an exchange between 2nd AD and Eisenhower in March 1945 after they'd come off of follow-up combat in the same area of earlier Operation Queen where German guns had longer ranges over open terrain. Lot in there on Ground Pressure and flotation - - M5 lights had less than Panthers because of track width based on physical tests by troops in the field. Much harder to get in the simpler paperback - the deluxe version has a lot of error in it even though its prettier. Also about 76mm muzzle blast.
Also this, the French findings after they constituted a couple of Panther regiments after the war, before they could get their own tanks - highlights the mobility and reliability strengths of the Sherman. You might make the dash across France with Mark IVs, but certainly not Panthers.
I think one of the more interesting points Belton Coopers book makes unintendingly is how robust the maintenance structure is in support of a US Armored Divisions and the importance of battlefield possession after the battle - if you don't burn a Sherman out and ruin the armor its coming after you again - for the Germans then its like being in a zombie movie.
On the 75 HE thing, be interesting to know why the WAllies didn't look at Panther 75 ammo and copy how they solved the HE vs AP round problem. Also be interesting to see what would have happened if the 76 and 90 mm had enlarged propellant charges to boost up muzzle velocity from 2600 fps to the 3K+ of similar German weapons - probably similar performance.
Done right with some imagination and innovation I could see 90 mm armed vehicle(s) that could do all the jobs: SP artillery, tank killing, and infantry support, with the right ammo design AND help satisfy the "getting everything" over seas problem. 25lbr is after all about 88mm. Have to be an early decision to go from 105 to that though.
I think an interesting ATL would be about 4 buddies from West Point in the WW1 era that go on 2 to Artillery, Infantry, Cavalry, one of the artillery guys ends up in anti-aircraft artillery. Through push-pull of their discussions they come up with concepts and doctrine, they gain a lot of influence in the interwar US Army, and all that translates into a very differently equipped US Army in WW2, with a much wider use of the 90 mm gun. I pester Claymore every now and then with these ideas
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Bad timing.
The USAAF was in action continuously and having started with inferior (or at least not superior designs) gained a healthy respect for the need to gain and keep an advantage.
The USN navy had a tradition of going for the best ships possible since before WW1 and the end of treaty limits meant that ships laid down after 1939 were always going to be bigger than their pre war equivalents and on warships there is no substitute for tons.
The army need tanks fast and their equivalent to the P40 was actually the M3 Medium. the Sherman was a second generation design, in that sense more like the P47, and entered combat in late 1942 in British hands. Then the U.S. army didn't see much action against German tanks, Italy being mostly bad tank terrain, so the Army lacked the chance to really test their tanks in battle until after D Day, and even then Normandy is also bad tank terrain.
By the time they got involved in real tank action, the war was mostly won.
Had the Army been fighting tank action with the same level of intensity the Air Force was fighting fighter actions and the Navy was fighting carrier and cruiser battles and the Army would have demanded a next generation medium tank. that would have meant the T-20 series would have been a higher priority, with the T25 probably being the standard US tank (at least for the armoured division) in the last year of the war. And the T25 E1 was a great tank, potentially the best medium tank design of WW2.
As it was, in September 1943 the Ordenance Department wanted to order 500 T25E-1 and 500 T26E-1 for delivery in 1944, and the Army refused.
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You're overreacting. In general the Sherman is defended by a few people, who think its reputation is worse than it deserves (I am one of those). In general more people advocate a heavy tank for the US.
You know what's really weird? That most people rate T-34 higher than the Sherman, while the Sherman performed at least as good as the T-34, but arguably it performed better.
A few posts above @marathag comments that the profile of the Sherman is too high. The Panther has a higher profile.
The Sherman has a reputation of being the ronson burner, killing a lot of crews in fires, while in fact it the survivalrate of a crewmembers in a Sherman that was hit, was better than in most other tanks. The Chieftain mentioned these things, and a lot of other myths of the Sherman in the video I posted earliier. It's a video I highly recommend watching, because he actually dived into the archives and looked up reports from the time (and who works, as he says, "for an unrealistic videogame," of which apparantly a lot of people get their impression of the tanks of WW2).
Another good video of him is this one:
Where he defends that there were very good reasons why the Sherman was what it was, and why they decided to stick with it as long as they did.
(Ninja'd by @longtimelurkerinMD ).
What we also have to remember with regards to German tank numbers in the West is that after the collapse and defeat of the German armed forces in France and their headlong retreat back into the Netherlands and Germany they had in Sept 1944 about 100-200 AFVs (depending on what you classify an AFV as) edit ...'on the Western Front'
So the fact that the M4, Cromwell and Churchill 'fleets' were mostly armed with 75mm guns does not really matter - as they had many hundreds of 17 pounder armed and 3" armed AFVs as well as increasing numbers of 76mm armed Sherman's on hand which alone out numbered the German tanks by a significant margin.
So the fact that the M4, Cromwell and Churchill 'fleets' were mostly armed with 75mm guns does not really matter - as they had many hundreds of 17 pounder armed and 3" armed AFVs as well as increasing numbers of 76mm armed Sherman's on hand which alone out numbered the German tanks by a significant margin.