This post is inspired by the book Death Traps by Belton Y. Cooper. When American tank crews went to France just after D-Day, they were told by their
commanders that: "The Sherman tank is the best tank in the world and that
the German Tiger is a POS." In fact, the opposite turned out to be true. It was the early M4 Shermans, the M4A3s, and M4A5s, that turned out to be
a POS. If a Sherman tank was hiding behind a house, all a Tiger would have to do is fire its big 88mm gun, through the house, and hit the Sherman. The
Sherman would be dead on fire and its crew would be dead. The British called them "Ronson lighters" because they lit the first time. The Sherman's
deficiencies were legion: Thin armor and a weak 76mm gun, to name two.
The problems weren't corrected until the introduction of the M4E8, also known as the "Easy Eight," in which the deficiencies of the gun, and armor,
were finally corrected.