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I understand the importance of the T-34 well, the point I was getting at is that the fact that it had sloped armour is often touted as some sort of revolutionary, previously untried or even unique feature which as demonstrated by the example of FT-17 (Or as mentioned, the even earlier examples of US civil war ironclads) it really wasn't. There's no denying the effectiveness overall of the T-34 as a whole though.

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Another thing about the T 34 was it was a cheap, easily replaceable tank that was often fighting expensive, hard to replace tanks. As such the crews were encouraged to ram Tiger tanks if feasible. Trading a T34 for a tiger was a hands down win.

The T34 was an excellent design, even Nazi military experts called it that. It was not easy for Nazis to admit those they considered 'subhunan' made an excellent design.

The real issue with it was the construction quality. Two T34s from two different factories could be lightyears apart in construction quality. One might be fairly well made, the other could be a clanking rattletrap with quarter inch gaps in it's armor, missing or misaligned rivets, a terrible engine, etc.

It also suffered from a quality death spiral effect. They had short lifespans on the field, which meant it made sense to put less time into building them, which lowered quality, which lowered lifespan, which meant they had to be replaced faster which lowered production time and quality.

Heh heh, the T34 abd the Sherman were polar opposites. The T34 was an excellent design that suffered from haphazard construction quality. The Sherman was well produced abd suffered from a poor design.

What is this nonsense?

Sherman was an excellent design for it's time. Ease of manufacture. Ease of maintenance. Excellent communications. Excellent observation. Excellent space and hatches making it easy to get out if in a hurry. Good armor for it's size. It's gun was one of the best assault guns of the war and superior to the Mark IV at the time. The 75 remained capable of taking out it's primary opponents, but was upgraded to a better 76mm antitank rifle or 105mm assault gun. There were even jumbo variants with better armor than a Tiger 1. If you wanted to survive a penetration you wanted to be in a Sherman, not a German or Soviet tank.


The Sherman was literally in every theater of the war, from desert to winter steppe to steaming jungle. No German or Soviet tank did that.

 Frazzled wrote:

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Another thing about the T 34 was it was a cheap, easily replaceable tank that was often fighting expensive, hard to replace tanks. As such the crews were encouraged to ram Tiger tanks if feasible. Trading a T34 for a tiger was a hands down win.

The T34 was an excellent design, even Nazi military experts called it that. It was not easy for Nazis to admit those they considered 'subhunan' made an excellent design.

The real issue with it was the construction quality. Two T34s from two different factories could be lightyears apart in construction quality. One might be fairly well made, the other could be a clanking rattletrap with quarter inch gaps in it's armor, missing or misaligned rivets, a terrible engine, etc.

It also suffered from a quality death spiral effect. They had short lifespans on the field, which meant it made sense to put less time into building them, which lowered quality, which lowered lifespan, which meant they had to be replaced faster which lowered production time and quality.

Heh heh, the T34 abd the Sherman were polar opposites. The T34 was an excellent design that suffered from haphazard construction quality. The Sherman was well produced abd suffered from a poor design.

What is this nonsense?

Sherman was an excellent design for it's time. Ease of manufacture. Ease of maintenance. Excellent communications. Excellent observation. Excellent space and hatches making it easy to get out if in a hurry. Good armor for it's size. It's gun was one of the best assault guns of the war and superior to the Mark IV at the time. The 75 remained capable of taking out it's primary opponents, but was upgraded to a better 76mm antitank rifle or 105mm assault gun. There were even jumbo variants with better armor than a Tiger 1. If you wanted to survive a penetration you wanted to be in a Sherman, not a German or Soviet tank.


The Sherman was literally in every theater of the war, from desert to winter steppe to steaming jungle. No German or Soviet tank did that.

True, but most importantly, it was reliable! they where utter work horses that even if they broke, could be repaired by your average american farm boy., or car guy on there engines.
easily modified to do almost any roles, mounted with anything from heavy tank guns to rockets, amphibious or adhoc bulldozers to blast trhough thick hedges of normandy.

Israel had them working into the 60's and beyond with 105mm guns, able to take on soviet post war tanks, not best, but they could do it.

Shermans are still in some country's armouries. Of course so are T-34, and I suppose they saw combat more often. Here's an M36 however during the 90s Yugo wars.



(There's an image of an M36 I believe from the same conflict which had its engine replaced with a tractor's. Like literally a hole cut out of the back and they'd stuck half a tractor in there...).



The blog WWII After WWII has tonnes of articles on WWII era vehicles being used decades after (among all the other gear).

https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/

simonr1978 wrote:
I understand the importance of the T-34 well, the point I was getting at is that the fact that it had sloped armour is often touted as some sort of revolutionary, previously untried or even unique feature which as demonstrated by the example of FT-17 (Or as mentioned, the even earlier examples of US civil war ironclads) it really wasn't. There's no denying the effectiveness overall of the T-34 as a whole though.

It’s only touted like that on bs pop-history shows and people on the internet that don’t know what they’re talking about.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Shermans are still in some country's armouries. Of course so are T-34, and I suppose they saw combat more often. Here's an M36 however during the 90s Yugo wars.



(There's an image of an M36 I believe from the same conflict which had its engine replaced with a tractor's. Like literally a hole cut out of the back and they'd stuck half a tractor in there...).



The blog WWII After WWII has tonnes of articles on WWII era vehicles being used decades after (among all the other gear).

https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/

I see Ork Mekboys have been hard at work. What no red paint?

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Shermans are still in some country's armouries. Of course so are T-34, and I suppose they saw combat more often. Here's an M36 however during the 90s Yugo wars.



(There's an image of an M36 I believe from the same conflict which had its engine replaced with a tractor's. Like literally a hole cut out of the back and they'd stuck half a tractor in there...).



The blog WWII After WWII has tonnes of articles on WWII era vehicles being used decades after (among all the other gear).

https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/

That looks like some of my attempts to scratchbuild a tank out of cardboard.

I think most attempts by military and paramilitary forces to improve their vehicle's armour post-production tend to look like somebody starting to try and scratchbuild a tank.

Like that T26E4 Super Pershing that they...I think they welded parts from an industrial boiler to its turret?


Edit: Tanks Encyclopaedia says those things are remnants of a destroyed Panther they added to the front. Even more brutal, protecting yourself from your enemies - with your enemies' carcasses!

Well field improvisations, or work undertaken in ad-hoc shops aren't going to look pretty; they're just supposed to be practical. Meanwhile actual development programs are much better.



vs



(Yes, ERA on a BMP-1 is a super smart idea. ...Uh, we'll just ignore that one in Syria which blew itself up. That's a new form made specifically for light armoured vehicles actually).

 Witzkatz wrote:
I think most attempts by military and paramilitary forces to improve their vehicle's armour post-production tend to look like somebody starting to try and scratchbuild a tank.

Like that T26E4 Super Pershing that they...I think they welded parts from an industrial boiler to its turret?


Edit: Tanks Encyclopaedia says those things are remnants of a destroyed Panther they added to the front. Even more brutal, protecting yourself from your enemies - with your enemies' carcasses!

They say no one drinks from skulls of enemi s. They do use there armour plates.

Nothing says danger like wearing the skins of your victims. Now we see where GW got the idea for the necrons.

 Frazzled wrote:

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Another thing about the T 34 was it was a cheap, easily replaceable tank that was often fighting expensive, hard to replace tanks. As such the crews were encouraged to ram Tiger tanks if feasible. Trading a T34 for a tiger was a hands down win.

The T34 was an excellent design, even Nazi military experts called it that. It was not easy for Nazis to admit those they considered 'subhunan' made an excellent design.

The real issue with it was the construction quality. Two T34s from two different factories could be lightyears apart in construction quality. One might be fairly well made, the other could be a clanking rattletrap with quarter inch gaps in it's armor, missing or misaligned rivets, a terrible engine, etc.

It also suffered from a quality death spiral effect. They had short lifespans on the field, which meant it made sense to put less time into building them, which lowered quality, which lowered lifespan, which meant they had to be replaced faster which lowered production time and quality.

Heh heh, the T34 abd the Sherman were polar opposites. The T34 was an excellent design that suffered from haphazard construction quality. The Sherman was well produced abd suffered from a poor design.

What is this nonsense?

Sherman was an excellent design for it's time. Ease of manufacture. Ease of maintenance. Excellent communications. Excellent observation. Excellent space and hatches making it easy to get out if in a hurry. Good armor for it's size. It's gun was one of the best assault guns of the war and superior to the Mark IV at the time. The 75 remained capable of taking out it's primary opponents, but was upgraded to a better 76mm antitank rifle or 105mm assault gun. There were even jumbo variants with better armor than a Tiger 1. If you wanted to survive a penetration you wanted to be in a Sherman, not a German or Soviet tank.


The Sherman was literally in every theater of the war, from desert to winter steppe to steaming jungle. No German or Soviet tank did that.

The Sherman sucked.

It was a pastiche design that was a collection of mutually exclusive goals that lead to a tank that was meant to. Make everyone happy and in the end pleased no one. Light armor, light weapons, a gasoline engine that was so prone to catching fire on the first hit the crews named them 'the Robson lighter' created a tank that needed overwhelming numbers to defeat. Later war German tanks.

Techpriestsupport wrote:
The Sherman sucked.

No, it did not.

It was a pastiche design that was a collection of mutually exclusive goals that lead to a tank that was meant to. Make everyone happy and in the end pleased no one.

Literally none of that is true.

Light armor,

Wrong.

light weapons,

Wrong again.

a gasoline engine that was so prone to catching fire on the first hit the crews named them 'the Robson lighter'

Wrong yet again. German tanks also used gasoline engines and had a higher burnout rate than the Sherman. The Sherman, like all tanks of the era, burned out because of ammunition fires, something that German tanks were equally vulnerable to, but unlike the Nazis, we were able to help prevent it with the wet stowage system. Also, they were never called “Ronsons” during the war, that is all post-war Wheraboo nonsense.

created a tank that needed overwhelming numbers to defeat. Later war German tanks.

Also wrong.

The tiger tank had a gasoline engine because it was too big for the diesels of the day to successfully power. The panther had a diesel.

Techpriestsupport wrote:
The tiger tank had a gasoline engine because it was too big for the diesels of the day to successfully power.

All German tanks used gasoline. The Russians were the only nation that field diesel tanks more or less exclusively, starting with the T-34 (all earlier tanks were gasoline fueled).

The panther had a diesel.

Wrong.

IIRC the UK also fielded some of the diesel powered M4A2 Shermans, as did the US although I think they were only used in the Pacific theatre in the latter case.

simonr1978 wrote:
IIRC the UK also fielded some of the diesel powered M4A2 Shermans, as did the US although I think they were only used in the Pacific theatre in the latter case.

Indeed, the Western Allies field diesel engine AFVs (M3A3 Lee, M4A2 Sherman, M10, and Achilles), but not in the quantities as the Russians.

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Another thing about the T 34 was it was a cheap, easily replaceable tank that was often fighting expensive, hard to replace tanks. As such the crews were encouraged to ram Tiger tanks if feasible. Trading a T34 for a tiger was a hands down win.

Sort of. That certainly became true over the course of the war, as Germany upgraded its existing designs and developed new, heavier designs. But at the start of the war, and really through released a series of increasingly heavy designs. is idea that German tanks were all finely engineered, heavy but ultra-rare was not a constant of the war. It became true, as Germany focused tank design on upgrading designs and pushing towards heavier and heavier designs

The crews weren't encouraged to ram enemy tanks. That happened, but it wasn't doctrine. It was something down out of necessity in very specific instances. It's just one of those instances happened to be at Kursk, which was basically the only point in the war when Russia lacked a gun capable of taking out German armour at reasonable ranges (the Tiger was around before then, but was quite rare and could be dealt with by other means).

But of course, Kursk is one of the only bits of the war anyone pays attention to... it's really the same problem you see with the focus on Normandy meaning everyone has a totally false impression of the Sherman.

The real issue with it was the construction quality. Two T34s from two different factories could be lightyears apart in construction quality. One might be fairly well made, the other could be a clanking rattletrap with quarter inch gaps in it's armor, missing or misaligned rivets, a terrible engine, etc.

Yeah, Russian quality wasn't that tight before they had to pick up and move their factories miles inland, afterwards things got a bit shoddy. Also to be noted is Russian industrial focused was almost entirely on speed - they looked at innovations like underwater welding, just anything to get the number of tanks produced daily to increase. In contrast the Germans added ever increasing complexity to their tanks, but adapted almost no modern manufacturing, minimal use of assembly lines etc.

It also suffered from a quality death spiral effect. They had short lifespans on the field, which meant it made sense to put less time into building them, which lowered quality, which lowered lifespan, which meant they had to be replaced faster which lowered production time and quality.

Sort of. Its certainly true that T-34s didn't live that long, and the Soviets set their construction standards with those short lifespans in mind. But this didn't really lower the life expectancy of the tank, because when a tank rolls out of the factory and a month later gets hit by a tungsten round from an ambushing German field gun at 150m it really doesn't matter if your suspension was a bit crude.

This is a design principal followed by the Germans, as well. It sounds weird because they also over engineered stuff, but at the same time they were lowering the specifics of their designs. Longevity is different to complexity and reliability. The Stg44 for instance was a revolutionary design, sophisticated and very effective. It's also got manufacturing standards that no army in peace time would even look at, because the rifle would be suffering really high rates of failure after a year. But Germany in 1944 didn't care, and nor should they, because there was little chance of the country surviving for a year, let alone the soldier you gave the rifle to.

Heh heh, the T34 abd the Sherman were polar opposites. The T34 was an excellent design that suffered from haphazard construction quality. The Sherman was well produced abd suffered from a poor design.

The Sherman was an excellent design. It ranks right alongside the T34 as the two best tank designs of the war.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Techpriestsupport wrote:
The Sherman sucked.

It was a pastiche design that was a collection of mutually exclusive goals that lead to a tank that was meant to. Make everyone happy and in the end pleased no one. Light armor, light weapons, a gasoline engine that was so prone to catching fire on the first hit the crews named them 'the Robson lighter' created a tank that needed overwhelming numbers to defeat. Later war German tanks.

Every single sentence in your post is wrong.

The Sherman's armour wasn't light. With slope taken in to account the front plate was 93mm thick. The Tiger's hull was 100m thick. Being almost as well covered as a Tiger is not light armour.

The gun wasn't light. On deployment the Sherman's 75mm gun was the best gun on any medium tank. It remained an effective gun throughout the war. At one point, Normandy, the US was caught out by the number of Panthers deployed, in addition to armour upgrades to the PzrIV, which meant the 75mm was struggling to penetrate at longer ranges. As a result the US called in the upgunned 76mm Shermans they had designed and built, but which tank commanders at the front had deemed unnecessary before that point. The 76m version was capable of blowing through a Panther or Tiger at ranges past 1,000m. The German advantage in armour lasted 6 weeks.

The complaint about being a gasoline engine is just weird. You know what the Tiger ran on? Gasoline. Panther? Gasoline. Mk IV? Gasoline. Meanwhile there were Shermans built with diesel engines, as the US was quite adept at making use of any existing facilities to make sure they got as many tanks produced as possible. People attack the tank with a diesel version, while celebrating the German tanks that were all diesel. Very weird.

The Ronson lighter is also a myth. It was supposedly used because of the motto 'lights up first time, every time'. Except that motto wasn't even used by Ronson until years after the war. There was possibly an issue with Shermans lighting up, but if it did happen more than in other tanks it was due to the ammo, not the engine. And the problem ended with the introduction of wet ammo stowage and redistributed ammo, at which point the Sherman was one of the tanks least likely to explode. Sure, when knocked out the Sherman did light up, but that's true of every tank - because once penetrated and abandoned the enemy would typically keep shooting it until it did light up, because you don't want to leave the enemy with a tank they can recover and use again. But in terms of Shermans lighting up while the crew were in them, it was probably never true, and the opposite became true when ammo stowage was changed.

And lastly... the idea of massed numbers being used to defeat late war tanks is total bunk. It probably came from people reading about US doctrine preferred ratios for attackers, which said you wanted something like 6:1. But that was nothing to do with US vs German tank quality, its because the attacker always wants overwhelming superiority to offset the advantages of defense and ensure a successful outcome. 3:1 is widely used as the generic rule for what the attacker want, but its often forgotten that's the minimum needed, and if greater force is available you use it. Hence 6:1. But the same number was in use by the Germans - you know the German strategy of armoured breakthrough that served them so well in Poland, France and the initial stage of Russia - that was all about concentrating your armour in overwhelming force against a single point in the enemy line. It wasn't done because German armour needed a ratio of 6:1 to be competitive, its because that's how successful attacks work.

The second issue with that last claim is the crazy idea that you'd ever just zerg rush an enemy armour point with your own tanks. It just doesn't work like that.

So anyway, in summary, literally every claim you just made is totally wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

simonr1978 wrote:
IIRC the UK also fielded some of the diesel powered M4A2 Shermans, as did the US although I think they were only used in the Pacific theatre in the latter case.

I believe the diesel powered Shermans weren't done to try and build longer ranged Shermans, but because the US was finding ways to make use of existing facilities to increase tank production.

And just to note - there are good reasons to go with a petrol engine. Diesel engines at that time were nowhere near as responsive, you would hit the accelerator and there'd be a delay before you'd get a surge of power. Fine for tractors, not so great for a tank that will need to maneuver rapidly while under fire. And on top of changing to diesel would mean retooling factories to build different engines, and training crews to service diesel engines. You had to really commit to making operational range a key element of your major tank types to justify the shift to diesel. Only Russia made that assessment.

 sebster wrote:

simonr1978 wrote:
IIRC the UK also fielded some of the diesel powered M4A2 Shermans, as did the US although I think they were only used in the Pacific theatre in the latter case.

I believe the diesel powered Shermans weren't done to try and build longer ranged Shermans, but because the US was finding ways to make use of existing facilities to increase tank production.

And just to note - there are good reasons to go with a petrol engine. Diesel engines at that time were nowhere near as responsive, you would hit the accelerator and there'd be a delay before you'd get a surge of power. Fine for tractors, not so great for a tank that will need to maneuver rapidly while under fire. And on top of changing to diesel would mean retooling factories to build different engines, and training crews to service diesel engines. You had to really commit to making operational range a key element of your major tank types to justify the shift to diesel. Only Russia made that assessment.

I don't think I suggested it was anything to do with the range of the tanks concerned, if that was implied then I apologise, it was more a counter to Scootypuffjunior's original assertion that only the Russians fielded diesel engine tanks. Aside from that I wholeheartedly agree with everything both he and you have said in reply about the Sherman.

There was another good reason to go with a petrol engine back in the late 30s and early 40s which was logistics, at least according to Len Deighton in Blitzkreig he mentions that the majority of civilian filling stations wouldn't stock diesel but enterprising tank commanders could live off the land to a degree and refuel using local supplies. IIRC he suggests that the Austrian Anschluss was to a certain extent dependant on this happening in order for the armour to cross the border.

simonr1978 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

simonr1978 wrote:
IIRC the UK also fielded some of the diesel powered M4A2 Shermans, as did the US although I think they were only used in the Pacific theatre in the latter case.

I believe the diesel powered Shermans weren't done to try and build longer ranged Shermans, but because the US was finding ways to make use of existing facilities to increase tank production.

And just to note - there are good reasons to go with a petrol engine. Diesel engines at that time were nowhere near as responsive, you would hit the accelerator and there'd be a delay before you'd get a surge of power. Fine for tractors, not so great for a tank that will need to maneuver rapidly while under fire. And on top of changing to diesel would mean retooling factories to build different engines, and training crews to service diesel engines. You had to really commit to making operational range a key element of your major tank types to justify the shift to diesel. Only Russia made that assessment.

I don't think I suggested it was anything to do with the range of the tanks concerned, if that was implied then I apologise, it was more a counter to Scootypuffjunior's original assertion that only the Russians fielded diesel engine tanks. Aside from that I wholeheartedly agree with everything both he and you have said in reply about the Sherman.

There was another good reason to go with a petrol engine back in the late 30s and early 40s which was logistics, at least according to Len Deighton in Blitzkreig he mentions that the majority of civilian filling stations wouldn't stock diesel but enterprising tank commanders could live off the land to a degree and refuel using local supplies. IIRC he suggests that the Austrian Anschluss was to a certain extent dependant on this happening in order for the armour to cross the border.

Allies use Petrol from North Africa to Europe.

If the Germans use Petrol they could also use captured fuel, and resupply to some degree at allied forces fuel dumps. Capturing a Russian fuel dump useless, but get a US fuel store, oh, you can refuel your armour with what you find.

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Another thing about the T 34 was it was a cheap, easily replaceable tank that was often fighting expensive, hard to replace tanks. As such the crews were encouraged to ram Tiger tanks if feasible. Trading a T34 for a tiger was a hands down win.

It's worth noting that British cruiser tanks often had sloped armour. But it was sloped for the reason that they wanted to use thinner armour, for lightness. The uniqueness of the T34 was actually sloping heavy armour, as Sebster mentioned.

The one other aspect of the T34 wasn't the design of the tank; it was the design of a production line, far more advanced than the Germans had. Designed by an American from Detroit, Maurice Kahn, in a strange brief period in the depression when For and Packard weren't hiring, and American industry was helping Stalin build up production capacity. Kahn was a genius at designing efficient factories from scratch, an inspiration for Mies van de Rohe.... and is an unsung genius of the Soviet war effort.

Techpriestsupport wrote:The Sherman sucked.

The Sherman is easily one of the best tanks of the war.

It was a pastiche design that was a collection of mutually exclusive goals that lead to a tank that was meant to.

It really wasn't. The tanks design was actually pretty smooth (way smoother than the utter cluster feth that was the Ordnance Departments laughable attempts to build a heavy tank). When the Sherman first hit production lines in 1942 it was superior to the Panzer IV, and arguably superior to the T34, but the Sherman wouldn't see much combat until the US hit Africa in 1943 so by then the T34 had already cemented its legacy as a to be feared war machine, while the Sherman started meeting German armor in force after the Panzer IV got an upgrade, and the Tiger and Panther had come out with armor too heavy for a 75mm to reliable penetrate.

But really that never mattered. In 1943 much of the German armor fleet was still Panzer IIIs and unupgraded Panzer IVs. They didn't give the Sherman any trouble. Tigers and Panthers were few and far between. In a month Germany could produce between 100 and 120 Tigers. In a Month the US could chuck out 1000 Shermans. Tigers had great guns and armor but they weren't winning that fight, especially when the Red Army was blowing them up faster than they could be replaced and very few actually went west. The Sherman's greatest enemy wasn't anything in the German armor inventory, but the Panzerfaust an infantry born weapon produced in droves that worked quite well against pretty much everything that wasn't an IS series tank.

Make everyone happy and in the end pleased no one.

American commanders were more than pleased with the Sherman. So were American tankers for the most part. The Shermans rotten reputation wasn't born on the field but on the home front where rumor and supposition mixed with stories of the fearsome Tiger to produce a myth.

Light armor, light weapons,

Even in 1945 at the end of the war the Sherman had adequate armor and adequate weaponry for it's most common foe; infantry. To put this into perspective during the Battle of France Germany fielded over 2400 tanks. During the Battle of the Bulge they fielded a meager 557, nearly 1/5 of the force they had in 1939. Initially early in the Battle the US and Western allies had about the same number on the front, 500. Within a week, Germany had 450 tanks, and the Western allies had 1600. By 1945 that number became 280+ vs 2400.

German tanks were over engineered, maintenance heavy, expensive monetarily and materially, and took forever to build. The simple little Sherman was a superb tank in 1943, and by 1944 it didn't matter that it's design had fallen behind in the unending race of upgun/uparmor because in the words of a German "I ran out of shells but you didn't run out of tanks." War is not simply a matter of having the best technical specs.

a gasoline engine that was so prone to catching fire on the first hit the crews named them 'the Robson lighter'

Sebster covered this quite well.

To drive it home, who here knows how Michael Wittmann, famed Tiger commander magnificent who arguably made his entire tank design the legend that it is at Villers-Bocage, died? Tiger 007 ignited, burned, and the turret was blown clean off by exploding ammunition when the hull of the tank was penetrated by an anti-tank round.

created a tank that needed overwhelming numbers to defeat. Later war German tanks.

Which would have mattered if the Germans weren't running out of tanks and the only answer to a tank was another tank. The Sherman was more likely to cross paths with panzerfausts and anti-tank gun emplacements than tanks in the late war. Fury is actually a decent representation in a certain regard as only once do you even see a German tank in the film which is pretty much what the late war was like (of course the Tiger in that movie was commanded by an idiot, and so were the Shermans but w/e it doesn't have to be perfect). To bring up the Battle of the Bulge again, one of the keys in holding the cross road cities like St. Vith were *drum roll* Shermans! Us tanks and tank destroyers became pivotal in holding those cities because sure the Germans had Tiger IIs but they didn't have a lot of them and they wouldn't advance without infantry, a lesson Germany learned hard at Kursk when Soviet troops overran and destroyed the first Tigers to see battle because they advanced without infantry support.

The Sherman didn't have to beat German tanks in a fight if they blew up their supporting infantry and lighter vehicles, which Shermans were superbly good at. St. Vith was basically held by a single platoon of Hellcats and a company's worth of Shermans sitting inclined on a hill shooting their guns artillery style into every German advance on the position. It didn't matter than 75mm had a long shot at killing a Tiger II, or that the 76mm was ineffective. No Tiger II is going to advance alone into a closed quarters environment. Infantry would overrun and destroy it, and infantry and lighter vehicles struggled to advance against tanks they couldn't see.

The tiger tank had a gasoline engine because it was too big for the diesels of the day to successfully power. The panther had a diesel.

German tanks all had gasoline engines, and this is for two main reasons that lead into each other. One internal combustion engines were still a relatively new technology in 40s. They'd be around for awhile sure but mass produce and use was really an innovation of the 20s. An engine made in one month could be obsolete the next. This wasn't some hard and fast "an engine is an engine" time. Countries were manufacturing these things in different ways at different rates. Which brings us to two. Diesel engines were even more unreliable less powerful at the time than gasoline engines, and when choosing between them it was easy at the time to look and say a gasoline engine was better. Whether or not you made a tank with diesel really came down to how good your domestic diesel engines were. Soviet Russia had a vibrant tractor industry before the war and they were generally ahead of the rest of the world when it came to diesel engines because they were making tractors with diesel. It was easy for the USSR to make tanks running on diesel cause that was an industry they already had and could convert to wartime production (something planned into the Soviet war machine very early on). Likewise the US was a leading producer of automobiles which generally ran on gasoline engines so it was easy to convert that industry to wartime production. Like the US Germany had better gasoline engines than diesel so they made tanks with gasoline engines.

 LordofHats wrote:

American commanders were more than pleased with the Sherman. So were American tankers for the most part. The Shermans rotten reputation wasn't born on the field but on the home front where rumor and supposition mixed with stories of the fearsome Tiger to produce a myth.

I've got the impression elsewhere that Belton Y Cooper's book "Death traps" played a fairly significant part in the negative reputation the Sherman suffered, as anyone can guess from the title he wasn't exactly on the fence when it came to the Sherman but with that in mind I think he was pretty unfair to them.

simonr1978 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

American commanders were more than pleased with the Sherman. So were American tankers for the most part. The Shermans rotten reputation wasn't born on the field but on the home front where rumor and supposition mixed with stories of the fearsome Tiger to produce a myth.

I've got the impression elsewhere that Belton Y Cooper's book "Death traps" played a fairly significant part in the negative reputation the Sherman suffered, as anyone can guess from the title he wasn't exactly on the fence when it came to the Sherman but with that in mind I think he was pretty unfair to them.

History is not immune to the myth of "memory". Belton Y Cooper's example is actually incredibly common in late accounts of prior events. It's why today Historians encourage the distinction of contemporary records of an event, from record of an event by contemporaries. While not commonly studied in respect to WWII, it is a major topic of study in the Civil War that veterans often undergo a paradigm shift in how they remember their war time experiences during, after, and way after an event. This extends outside of war as well which is a common subject in the study of race relations in US history. US popular culture gradually accepted as a norm that the Sherman was a bad tank and that it got US soldiers killed for being so inferior. Actual war records completely contradict this narrative, but that doesn't matter because far more people bought into the myth than fought in the war, and even the people who fought in the war are not immune to group think. Even tankers who liked their Shermans during the fighting, undoubtedly had bad memories of being in a Sherman. It's a fething war of course they do! Combine this with popular notions and even a veteran who might presumably know better might start to think "yeah the Sherman was kind of gak."

Especially if you're someone talking about something second hand on the war front. Cooper was not a tanker. He didn't fight in a Sherman, but he did recover them from battle and take accounting of losses. He saw destroyed Shermans all the time, so of course he saw the merits of popular opinion after the war. His opinions on the Pershing are actually kind of tragically laughable, cause he obviously didn't know anything about the Pershing's many problems. His memory was also pretty bad, cause he seems to love blaming Patton for delaying the M26, even though Patton didn't do a thing to delay it and wasn't even the main opponent of the Pershing in the Army (that would be Leslie McNair). His book is filled with such inaccuracies, which is in part what makes it a valuable first hand account because people on the ground never have a complete picture of what is happening around them. It's also why it's a shoddy history, cause many of his errors could have been resolved with basic research.

Really the first warning sign for anyone should be that Stephen Ambrose wrote the foreword. Even in 1998, historians and academics had already black listed the guy for being a rampant liar and full blown plagiarist, and when your foreword is written by a rampant liar and a full blown plagiarist it's a bad sign for your book. And now that I've bashed Stephen Ambrose for the first time in 2018 I can check that off my list of things to do. See you guys again in 2019 to remind you that the author of Band of Brothers was a total ass

I'd hate to be TFG, but this is a thread on what is your favorite tank not why other people's favorite tanks are wrong.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
I'd hate to be TFG, but this is a thread on what is your favorite tank not why other people's favorite tanks are wrong.

No one is telling anyone their favorite tank is “wrong,” they’re correcting them when they say things that are wrong like, “Panther tanks used diesel,” or, “the Sherman had thin armor.”

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:
I'd hate to be TFG, but this is a thread on what is your favorite tank not why other people's favorite tanks are wrong.

No one is telling anyone their favorite tank is “wrong,” they’re correcting them when they say things that are wrong like, “Panther tanks used diesel,” or, “the Sherman had thin armor.”

Made a custom version:





On a serious note, this is a tangent that should really have its own thread.

In WWII 95% of all tank burnings were from munitions cooking off, not the fuel. American ammo was more stable than that used by other countries, which means that Shermans actually had a slightly lower chance of burning than British or German tanks. Shermans became even more resistant to fire when wet storage was implemented.

There is also what happened after a tank was burning. The Sherman was one of the best when it came to crew escape. Unlike Germans and Soviets (and to a lesser degree the British) Americans made their tanks easy to get into and out of. Things like having the hatches directly over the crew member, multiple hatches, quick unlock handles, and spring loaded hatches were all safety boosters. You could get all 5 crew out of a Sherman well before you could even open the only hatch on a T-34 (no exaggeration).

 cuda1179 wrote:
. You could get all 5 crew out of a Sherman well before you could even open the only hatch on a T-34 (no exaggeration).

Yeah, i remember from the fire safety course for Sherman's that to pass you had to be out of the tank within five seconds of someone yelling 'Fire'.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
. You could get all 5 crew out of a Sherman well before you could even open the only hatch on a T-34 (no exaggeration).

Yeah, i remember from the fire safety course for Sherman's that to pass you had to be out of the tank within five seconds of someone yelling 'Fire'.

Jeebus, that's even less time than we had to pass our test when "gas, gas, gas" was called with our chemical masks.