Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It seems to be an incredible irony that the Allies had so much industrial power and developed two tanks that were at least as good as the German Tiger or Panther. Especially the Centurion which the Israelis were still using in the 1970s to blow up Arab T-72s. Was it just not a priority or was there some misguided logic behind not getting the better tanks out of production? I mean if they had gotten these tanks out earlier then hundreds of tank crew members wouldn't have died.

I'm going to assume here ; politics.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
It seems to be an incredible irony that the Allies had so much industrial power and developed two tanks that were at least as good as the German Tiger or Panther. Especially the Centurion which the Israelis were still using in the 1970s to blow up Arab T-72s. Was it just not a priority or was there some misguided logic behind not getting the better tanks out of production? I mean if they had gotten these tanks out earlier then hundreds of tank crew members wouldn't have died.

Centurions I know very little about.

The Pershing is something of a messy picture as the sources are garbled on the subject. Plainly, America spent most of the war trying to build a bigger meaner tank but was very fickle in design. The Sherman early on performed so well there wasn't much will to build a heavier tank and even as the war dragged on the Sherman continued to perform to expectations for American commanders.

There is a perfect book for this exact question; Faint Praise; American Tanks and Tank Destroyers During WWII by Charles Bailey

The book is about the Ordnance Department and its development of tanks and American armor during the war (it was a giant cluster feth). He was the first scholar to point out how the Ordnance Department scapegoated their problems with design and production onto dead General Lesley McNair who even today is often blamed for preventing the Pershing from being produced. I.E. Internal politics and feth ups with the Ordnance Department combined with a lacking interest in the weapon, slowed the introduction of the M26 Pershing, which frankly was a lack luster tank anyway.

One word. Logistics. It was far easier to produce a whole bunch of the same crappy tanks than making few better tanks of different designs. (That theory didn't work out for the Germans.) If they had several plants all making the same part, there would be less problems and make for a quicker production. As a German tanker said "Our Tigers could destroy ten American tanks...but there always seemed to be eleven." That was the theory behind the American tank theory. Was it good? Debatable. (I'm not a fan myself.)
Also, this whole 'super industrialized gear up for war" thing was still new to us. At the beginning of WWII we didn't even have a real tank corp. So "mistakes were made."

 MWHistorian wrote:
One word. Logistics. It was far easier to produce a whole bunch of the same crappy tanks than making few better tanks of different designs. (That theory didn't work out for the Germans.) If they had several plants all making the same part, there would be less problems and make for a quicker production. As a German tanker said "Our Tigers could destroy ten American tanks...but there always seemed to be eleven." That was the theory behind the American tank theory. Was it good? Debatable. (I'm not a fan myself.)
Also, this whole 'super industrialized gear up for war" thing was still new to us. At the beginning of WWII we didn't even have a real tank corp. So "mistakes were made."

It just feels very different to the developments in aircraft for instance. Both fighters and bombers got progressively better as the war went on.

Logistics is part of war. Ignoring that in design, and thus calling a tank designed to cater to logistical needs crappy, is short sighted.

The Sherman was a fine tank. Compared to its contemporaries I'd rank it second best tank of the war after the T34. It's only design flaw was that its engine sometimes caught fire and escaping the vehicle when it did was nearly impossible. The Sherman outclassed the German PzIV until mid 1944 anyway, and hardly needed to be replaced. Even to the end of the war, the Sherman was in good parity with the PzIV which existed in far fewer numbers even as the most produced German tank. Allied generals determined that tank to tank combat was something that happened only on occasion, and completely redesigning their work horse for the event was a waste of time. I'd argue history vindicated them on this, as even if they got behind a redesign, the Ordnance Department would have probably botched it anyway. The Shermans reputation as a death trap is widely overstated.

There was legitimately, no need to replace the Sherman and the Pershing wasn't exactly a magic bullet since it tended to tear out its own drive train (even after the war when the design was upgraded it still had a tendency to do this). People often harp on how Panthers and Tigers were unreliable. The Pershing was worse. In absence of anything better, the Sherman was the best weapon available and performed its job admirably.

In ww2 the centurion was armed with a 17pounder gun, same as the Sherman firefly.
In the 1970s it had a 105 mm gyro stabilized gun, a big difference.

 LordofHats wrote:
Logistics is part of war. Ignoring that in design, and thus calling a tank designed to cater to logistical needs crappy, is short sighted.

That's basically what I said. Catering to Logistics is what made the Sherman successful and not catering to logistics is what made the Tiger kind of a failure. And "crappy" was a relative term in comparison to the Tigers in terms of performance on the battlefield. What I'm saying is that the Sherman was actually a better tank because they were reliable, could have spare parts easily available and did the job they were designed to do.

That said, they were called "Zippos" for a reason. "Because they always lit up on the first strike." Earned reputation or not? I don't honestly know.

I speak more to add my thoughts than to disagree This is one of my favorite subjects.

And "crappy" was a relative term in comparison to the Tigers in terms of performance on the battlefield.

One of the great flaws of the Sherman really has nothing at all to do with the Sherman but rather the perception that there were Tigers around every corner. The Tiger was an exceedingly rare tank. There never existed more than 100-175 (they only made around 1,400 total during the war) at any given time and almost always most of those Tigers were engaged in the Eastern Front against Russia.

The war wasn't lost because of the Tiger. The Panther (6000 total produced) became both more numerous and more deadly. And even then, there rarely existed more than a few hundred Panthers at any given time until the war entered its final 18 months. The German's main work horses were the PzIV (8000 total) and the STuG (15500 including all variants). The Sherman was a match for both these vehicles up to the wars end.

 LordofHats wrote:
I speak more to add my thoughts than to disagree This is one of my favorite subjects.

And "crappy" was a relative term in comparison to the Tigers in terms of performance on the battlefield.

One of the great flaws of the Sherman really has nothing at all to do with the Sherman but rather the perception that there were Tigers around every corner. The Tiger was an exceedingly rare tank. There never existed more than 100-175 (they only made around 1,400 total during the war) at any given time and almost always most of those Tigers were engaged in the Eastern Front against Russia.

The war wasn't lost because of the Tiger. The Panther (6000 total produced) became both more numerous and more deadly. And even then, there rarely existed more than a few hundred Panthers at any given time until the war entered its final 18 months. The German's main work horses were the PzIV (8000 total) and the STuG (15500 including all variants). The Sherman was a match for both these vehicles up to the wars end.

Fully agree. I think the Tiger is actually a failure due to its complexity of manufacture. Most of the German tanks were either equal to a Sherman or below it ability.

As a war machine the Tiger was a, strong tank. It was however the wrong tank for Germany, but so few of them were made that their impact on the war can be considered overblown. Their fame owes mostly to the fact they were very dangerous when encountered by the Western Allies (Russia was less impressed). They just existed in so few number that their battlefield impact was usually rendered moot.

For example; Michael Wittmann could destroy an entire armored column and blunt a vanguard unit's advance completely and still lose the engagement.

The Panther was most definitely a superior weapon to the Sherman. Sadly the Panther had a lot of design problems and by the time they finally worked it out, it was a little too late to change anything imo.

Yup, war is logistics, dictated by economy and society.

Did a humorous article on logistics a while ago.
http://minimumwagehistorian.com/2012/07/18/logistics-the-secret-to-winning-wars-its-cool-trust-me/" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> http://minimumwagehistorian.com/2012/07/18/logistics-the-secret-to-winning-wars-its-cool-trust-me/

 LordofHats wrote:
. It's only design flaw was that its engine sometimes caught fire and escaping the vehicle when it did was nearly impossible.

As a layman, this sounds problematic.

 Ouze wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
. It's only design flaw was that its engine sometimes caught fire and escaping the vehicle when it did was nearly impossible.

As a layman, this sounds problematic.

It was XD It especially hurt when a shell struck the engine as the tank literally lit up like a firework (which lead to ammo explosions, as if burning alive wasn't bad enough). Its hard to know exactly how common the problem ones, battlefield and all that, but seemingly occurred infrequently enough that no one heavily pursued a fix to the issue with any haste.

 LordofHats wrote:


The Panther was most definitely a superior weapon to the Sherman. Sadly the Panther had a lot of design problems and by the time they finally worked it out, it was a little too late to change anything imo.

Sadly? Whose side are you on here?

The side of awesome



How can I not admire what is arguably the first true Main Battle Tank to enter combat in warfare

The Centurion really didn't need to be introduced. Not in the slightest.

The Firefly, Achilles, and Challenger already sported anti-tank weaponry more than capable of knocking out Panthers and Tigers at range. The 17pdr was absolutely lethal throughout the entirety of the war, much like the German 88.

The Pershing, I suspect, was down to bureaucracy and logistics failures more than anything.

What I do know is that in part, after the War in Europe Ended the Pershing and Centurion got further development because the Western Allies didn't realize to Germany was defeated how strong Russian armor had become. The IS2 was a beast and Russia just came out with the IS3 and the T54 was right on the horizon.

 LordofHats wrote:
It was XD It especially hurt when a shell struck the engine as the tank literally lit up like a firework (which lead to ammo explosions, as if burning alive wasn't bad enough). Its hard to know exactly how common the problem ones, battlefield and all that, but seemingly occurred infrequently enough that no one heavily pursued a fix to the issue with any haste.

I played Mechwarrior, so I know those feels.

 LordofHats wrote:
What I do know is that in part, after the War in Europe Ended the Pershing and Centurion got further development because the Western Allies didn't realize to Germany was defeated how strong Russian armor had become. The IS2 was a beast and Russia just came out with the IS3 and the T54 was right on the horizon.

A lot of post-war upgrading and replacing came about because of Russian armour. The Russians were the Orks of that period; they glued blocks of metal to tracks and duct-taped turrets on the top, and created effective tanks. Also helps that Russian armour production was crazy efficient.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
It just feels very different to the developments in aircraft for instance. Both fighters and bombers got progressively better as the war went on.

Tanks got progressively better as the war went on as well, but the technological competition with tanks was far less severe because of the differences in air combat to tank combat. In the air having a slightly higher speed at a slightly higher altitude swung the kill/casualty loss ratio considerably in your favour, and when you then add in heavier armour and armament, and you end up the with horrific massacres the American planes were inflicting on Japanese by the late stages of the war.

But on the ground, having a slightly heavier tank with a bigger gun didn't make that much of a difference. First because the primary killer of tanks isn't other tanks - field guns, mines and infantry AT weapons are going to take out more of your tanks. And those threats aren't that effectively negated by having heavy armour and a bigger gun - whether you have 76mm of frontal armour like the Sherman or 150 mm like the Centurion, when a panzerfaust team hidden on your flank hits your track, the result is the same.

That isn't to say bigger tanks weren't a good thing. There's a reason all major powers steadily increased the size of their tanks over the war, they all (eventually) recognised the strategic value of a heavy tank. But that heavy tank was a specialist role, and other weapon developments were far more important.

As for why the US and UK took so long to develop their own heavy tanks? Well in the US case it's in part due to a commitment to tank destroyer doctrine (opting for fast, lightly armoured but very well armed tanks to take on German heavy tanks from ambush positions), but even that only explains part of the issue. For both the US and UK it really is explained by the length of time it takes to develop a heavy tank. Tanks in excess of 45 tons were pushing the limits of suspension, gear boxes and other key elements, and so a long period of development was needed to get a tank that wouldn't grind it's components in to the ground in the first battle.

The Tiger first began development in 1937, and the KV series of tanks deployed by the Soviets were discontinued in part because their armour was not as impregnable as it once was, but mostly because the rate of breakdown was extremely high.

The Panther is the one exception - the time period from development to deployment was absurdly short, allowing the Germans to gain one on one superiority against the Soviets. But for that very short development time, the Panther came with an extremely long list of problems, most significant of which was the extremely high amount of machine hours that went in to producing each one. The US and UK were right to continue development of their heavy tanks until they were ready. They were wrong to not recognise the need for such tanks earlier in the war (or even before the war), but they were right to wait until they had a tank worth producing to actually begin production.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
That said, they were called "Zippos" for a reason. "Because they always lit up on the first strike." Earned reputation or not? I don't honestly know.

Early Shermans did ignite, and this has been erroneously blamed on the petrol engine. The real cause was the placement and storage of the ammunition - after research following tanks lost in Normandy the ammo storage was lowered and given wet stowage, greatly reducing the likelihood of catching fire (the Panzer IV actually caught fire about as often, and much more after the modifications to the Sherman).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
As a war machine the Tiger was a, strong tank. It was however the wrong tank for Germany, but so few of them were made that their impact on the war can be considered overblown. Their fame owes mostly to the fact they were very dangerous when encountered by the Western Allies (Russia was less impressed). They just existed in so few number that their battlefield impact was usually rendered moot.

Many of the problems of the Tiger came not so much from the tank itself, but the lack of supporting elements. When deployed there was no tank recovery vehicle capable of hauling the Tiger (so they had to modify some of their very limited number of Tigers to perform the job) and the lack of rail carriages wide enough to carry a fully assembled Tiger.

The greater lack, though, was in the absence of other tanks and units to exploit the local superiority achieved by the Tiger. There was a real advantage to be gained in having a heavy tank that you plonk on to a key point on the battlefield and just declare 'no enemy tank is going through here', and just as much of an advantage of being able to advance into an enemy stronghold with 50 ton heavy tanks. There was a clear reason that all the major Western powers developed their own tanks at about 50 tons (the Jospeh Stalin II, the Centurion and the Pershing).

The problem the Nazis had was that they simply lacked the numbers, in other tanks, in guns and in manpower, to exploit the attack from their heavy tanks, or to hold the surrounding territory.

The Panther was most definitely a superior weapon to the Sherman. Sadly the Panther had a lot of design problems and by the time they finally worked it out, it was a little too late to change anything imo.

The Panther was, in a sense, an extraordinary piece of design. To produce a medium tank with the performance of the Panther in such a short period of development was an incredible achievement. It's impressive that it had so few mechanical issues to be honest.

That isn't saying it didn't have countless mechanical issues though, because it sure did. Honestly the Panther is probably the classic example of the Germans being screwed no matter what they did, by that stage of the war. Continue producing the Panzer IV and be dominated by the superior and more numerous T-34. Rush a T-34 killer into production and end up with a tank that requires an obscene number of factory hours, is unreliable, and makes your inferior numbers even worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
The Centurion really didn't need to be introduced. Not in the slightest.

The Firefly, Achilles, and Challenger already sported anti-tank weaponry more than capable of knocking out Panthers and Tigers at range. The 17pdr was absolutely lethal throughout the entirety of the war, much like the German 88.

The 17pdr was an excellent gun, but an upgunned medium tank is not the same thing as a heavy tank. As defense in depth evolved you saw a return to a lot of strong point defences, some thing close to old fashioned siege warfare, albeit with a lot more high explosives being fired by both sides. In those circumstances, where mobility was of little to no value, a heavy tank with a lot of armour was effective in a way that multiple medium tanks could not be. Consider the design of the Joseph Stalin II, which decided against a 100mm gun with greater armour penetration, and instead opted for a 122mm gun for the desctructive power of its HE round. They were then assigned to target enemy hardened positions - bunkers, buildings, any tough target that was made a lot less tough after it was hit with a 122mm HE round.

There are many reasons why.

With the Pershing, the reason more weren't built was largely because it was introduced rather late in the way so it wasn't like we needed it to match the Germans who were already well and truly on the ropes.

Also, the Sherman was a perfectly fine match.


Individually, the German tanks were superior in armor and firepower. Internally they were often a mess but that can be attributed to them being quite desperate to get tanks out into the field. Either because there was a genuine need or because Hitler had a hard on for more super weapons as fast as possible. Properly built they were superior generally speaking.

The Sherman was roughly equal to the Panzer IV, with the Panzer having a slight edge in silhouette and weapon.

The Sherman's main advantages were speed and how freaking many of them there were. Plus ease of maintenance. The German tanks were far outnumbered even if they were individually superior.

It didn't matter that a Tiger or Panther couldn't be harmed from the front at long range by a Sherman when you could fairly easily flank it and take it out at close range. So what if you lost 4-5 Shermans per Tiger/Panther? lucky you brought 12

That was one reason we weren't interested in matching heavy tank vs heavy tank. Heck at the start of the war tank on tank battles were scoffed at as tanks were seen as being something to support infantry and not an independent fighting force in their own right.

It actually took Panthers being way more common than anticipated for the US to mount the 76mm gun on Shermans. The Sherman design was so easily modified it also took away from the need to have a true heavy tank.


Tanks are also expensive. Putting your resources into large powerful things as your savior is not the best course of action. The Germans would have been far more successful if they had put all the resources they pumped into King Tigers and Tigers instead into Panthers and Panzer IVs. 12 Panzer IVs against 12 Shermans is an even fight. 12 Shermans vs 2 Tigers is going to be a massacre.

And even then Germany simply didn't have the material to support what were really revolutionary weapon designs and tactics. Too greedy.

Not sure if anyone else has touched on this but think about how far a tank made in America had to go once it was built to reach the front line in Europe.

I'll give you a hint, a long time, with most of that time being on a railway cart or a boat. That's almost a 3,000 mile journey, with a good chance of losing entire ships to U Boats or even inclement weather. Which would you rather do, crank out a ton of cheap medium tanks that, while not amazing, are getting the job done, or try and send over some far more expensive tanks that are larger, heavier, and could be possibly lost in the dozens from a lucky torpedo? Also keep in mind that the tank wasn't combat tested until near the end of the war. Generals had no idea if they could rely on the tank or not, and its introduction meant a whole new slew of replacement parts had to be sent over and have mechanics trained on how to work on it.

One major reason not a lot of Pershings got sent over was simply because they were much bigger than a Sherman, so you couldn't fit as many on a boat/train to get them where they were needed. You also have to take into account that not a lot of bridges and roads at the time were not designed with these heavier tanks in mind. The Germans and the Soviets frequently encountered problems with their heavy tanks where they couldn't cross bridges or would end up tearing roads to pieces with their massive tanks. The M26 Pershing wasn't as big as the heavyweights Germany produced, but they were up there.

That and good ol American bureaucracy. For example, I've heard Patton really didn't like the Pershing and wanted to stick with Shermans instead, as well as other officers delaying the research of the Pershing, why I'm not really sure. Guess they thought that the good ol' 75mm was plenty.

As for the brits, no idea. My guess would be their wartime economy was pushed to the breaking point as is, and like the Germans, rather than go through an expensive retooling of a factory to switch to a newer design, they decided to just keep pumping out whatever they had available because it was better than nothing and switching over would take too long.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are many reasons why.

With the Pershing, the reason more weren't built was largely because it was introduced rather late in the way so it wasn't like we needed it to match the Germans who were already well and truly on the ropes.

Thinking about it, there's actually two seperate questions - why were only a few Pershings built, and why were they deployed so late in the war.

The answer to the first question is simply a comment on the nature of a heavy tank - the reason very few Pershings were built is the same reason that very few Tigers, Centurions and JS II tanks were built - the heavy tank is a specialist weapons platform. There were relatively few compared to medium and light tanks for the same reason there were relatively few aircraft carriers and battleships compared to cruisers and destroyers.

The answer to the second question lies in how late in the war the Western allies committed to designing and building a proper heavy tank. Once that was decided two years wasn't that long a development time, it's just that deciding you're going to build a new tank from scratch in 1943 means it wasn't going to play much of a role in the war.

The Sherman was roughly equal to the Panzer IV, with the Panzer having a slight edge in silhouette and weapon.

It's also worth pointing out that both the Panzer IV and Sherman underwent significant upgrade paths over the course of the war. The myth of Shermans being simply churned out en masse is something of a myth - the engine, gun and armour underwent significant upgrades over the course of the war - there was a definite focus put on building a higher quality tank.

The Sherman's main advantages were speed and how freaking many of them there were. Plus ease of maintenance.

The Sherman wasn't a particularly fast tank - no faster than the Panzer IV and slower than the first Panthers (who unlike other tanks actually got heavier and slower over the course of its upgrade path, but still ended up as fast as the Sherman).

It didn't matter that a Tiger or Panther couldn't be harmed from the front at long range by a Sherman when you could fairly easily flank it and take it out at close range.

The bigger point was that if the Germans put a Panther or Tiger in a position with good lines of fire, you simply didn't commit Shermans at all. Instead you pound the ever loving hell out of the area with artillery and air power - there are images of Normandy that look like the moon. Then the tanks rush through, using their guns not on the German tanks, but to trash the German rear.

Or you attack elsewhere on the line and achieve breakthrough there, and force the Tigers and Panthers to either withdraw or risk being cut off.

Now, that strategy isn't ideal, of course, hence the (eventual) development of the Pershing and Centurion.

That was one reason we weren't interested in matching heavy tank vs heavy tank. Heck at the start of the war tank on tank battles were scoffed at as tanks were seen as being something to support infantry and not an independent fighting force in their own right.

Sort of - it was an area of considerable debate in each of the major powers before the war. That debate was lost in Russia because of Stalinist purges, in France because they were obsessed with siege warfare to justify the francs spent on the Maginot Line, and in Britain the debate was actually won, albeit in the wrong form with a doctrine of light cruiser tanks to operate in close formation and exploit breakthrough, while heavier Infantry tanks were used to support infantry (the result being tanks that were either too light or too slow, and ultimately not very good at anything). It was in Germany were massed tanks combined with overwhelming airpower were decided upon, but even that was very unpopular with most of the High Command, and it was only decided upon because Hitler saw it as the only way they could win, as an attritional war against France and England was only going to be worse than last time.

It's also worth noting that by the end of the war defensive strategies were largely developed to counter blitzkrieg/breakthrough/deep operations, and the late war attempts at decisive breakthrough generally needed the enemy to have made a serious error or suffer from a severe lack of fighting power (such as the Normandy breakthrough or Operation Bagration).

The Sherman design was so easily modified it also took away from the need to have a true heavy tank.

There is a considerable difference between an up-gunned medium tank and a heavy tank. The Russians might have stuck an 85mm gun on their T-34, and Shermans might have been upgraded with the US 76mm gun and British 17 pdr, but they all went and developed heavy tanks in addition to that. Because there are key situations where medium tanks, even lots of medium tanks, just aren't that effective, but a couple of heavy tanks will excel.

Tanks are also expensive. Putting your resources into large powerful things as your savior is not the best course of action. The Germans would have been far more successful if they had put all the resources they pumped into King Tigers and Tigers instead into Panthers and Panzer IVs. 12 Panzer IVs against 12 Shermans is an even fight. 12 Shermans vs 2 Tigers is going to be a massacre.

As I said above, the Germans were basically in a lose-lose situation. They were facing numerical inferiority in their tanks, and even had they focused on pure numbers they never would have matched the production numbers of the superior T-34 or the roughly equal Sherman. So instead they went for the superior tank, which only hurt their production numbers more but at least meant they had some kind of advantage. Whatever they chose, it was never going to be enough to match the production capabilities of the Soviet Union, let alone the US.

Really one of the things that made the Panther notable was that it was as fast as a Sherman or PzIV while weighing 15 tons more (50% increase in tonnage). That's no small amount.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Not sure if anyone else has touched on this but think about how far a tank made in America had to go once it was built to reach the front line in Europe.

I'll give you a hint, a long time, with most of that time being on a railway cart or a boat. That's almost a 3,000 mile journey, with a good chance of losing entire ships to U Boats or even inclement weather. Which would you rather do, crank out a ton of cheap medium tanks that, while not amazing, are getting the job done, or try and send over some far more expensive tanks that are larger, heavier, and could be possibly lost in the dozens from a lucky torpedo

I would think the logistic supply would work the other way. Think about it - a 45 ton heavy tank was, thinking very loosely and across the whole range of possible combat operations, about 3 or 4 times as effective as a 25 ton tank. But that 45 ton tank, pushing the limits of suspension, gear box and other technology of the time, means it was 6+ times as expensive to produce (again very loose numbers). Meaning across the whole it's the sub-optimal unit, and so you only build a few and use it in the specific operations where it's superior.

But when you add in logistics, well there the cost of shipping the thing is entirely proportionate to weight - a boat capable of shipping 500 tons can carry 11 45 ton tanks, or 20 25 ton tanks. If the cost of shipping plays a significant role, then you'd think the bias would move to quality over quanitity. If shipping ups the cost considerably, then heavy tanks might become the preferred unit.

As for the brits, no idea. My guess would be their wartime economy was pushed to the breaking point as is, and like the Germans, rather than go through an expensive retooling of a factory to switch to a newer design, they decided to just keep pumping out whatever they had available because it was better than nothing and switching over would take too long.

The British weren't reluctant to build new tanks. They went through quite a lot of tank designs over the course of the war. And the reason they went through so many tank designs, got typically mediocre performance out of those tanks, and were so late to deploy a heavy tank was all due to the very conservative nature of their tank design.

See, the British basically observed that their tanks were inadequate, and then set about building a tank to match the current German tanks, and when that came in a little too expensive they'd pull back on requirements until they got something they were willing to pay for. And then they'd put that in the field and discover that the tank they built to be good enough last year was now out of date.

 sebster wrote:
Tanks got progressively better as the war went on as well, but the technological competition with tanks was far less severe because of the differences in air combat to tank combat. In the air having a slightly higher speed at a slightly higher altitude swung the kill/casualty loss ratio considerably in your favour, and when you then add in heavier armour and armament, and you end up the with horrific massacres the American planes were inflicting on Japanese by the late stages of the war.

As far as the Germans went, in terms of fighters, they produced stuff that was at least as good as ours. It came down to quantity and the two-front war.

With the Japanese, it was more a matter of tactics than anything. Once we stopped trying to turn with them and developed engagement methods around diving through and running, we started faring a lot better. We were also far better at training up good enough aviators quickly, which is ultimately what I'd attribute the late war massacres to; the Japanese just didn't have a good replenishment system, and were throwing gakky, half-trained pilots into the fray, because that's pretty much all they had left.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
One word. Logistics. It was far easier to produce a whole bunch of the same crappy tanks than making few better tanks of different designs. (That theory didn't work out for the Germans.) If they had several plants all making the same part, there would be less problems and make for a quicker production. As a German tanker said "Our Tigers could destroy ten American tanks...but there always seemed to be eleven." That was the theory behind the American tank theory. Was it good? Debatable. (I'm not a fan myself.)
Also, this whole 'super industrialized gear up for war" thing was still new to us. At the beginning of WWII we didn't even have a real tank corp. So "mistakes were made."

It just feels very different to the developments in aircraft for instance. Both fighters and bombers got progressively better as the war went on.

aircraft didnt use up as much material as tanks and could be made out of diffrent materials than iron and they could fly to where they where needed, as for tanks usually had to be transported long distances over railroads and by ship.

due to the size of train tunnels aswell theres a limit to the size of a tank

The war was effectively over by time both tanks were introduced. The Comet had not long been in use when the Centurion was beginning to be available and already had a 77mm HV gun.

Best save the Centurion for Korea duty where it must have rules for machinegunning Chinese swarms off of the adjacent tank in all rulessets!

A better question for me was why wasn't a workable Black Prince tank introduced, Churchill + 17pdr = squeeeeeeeeee!

 Seaward wrote:
As far as the Germans went, in terms of fighters, they produced stuff that was at least as good as ours. It came down to quantity and the two-front war.

Well, yeah. That's why I didn't mention Germany.

With the Japanese, it was more a matter of tactics than anything. Once we stopped trying to turn with them and developed engagement methods around diving through and running, we started faring a lot better. We were also far better at training up good enough aviators quickly, which is ultimately what I'd attribute the late war massacres to; the Japanese just didn't have a good replenishment system, and were throwing gakky, half-trained pilots into the fray, because that's pretty much all they had left.

Changing tactics and the Japanese failure to preserve experience by rotating veteran pilots in to flight schools played a major role, but I don't think I've ever seen a text that didn't put superior US aircraft front and centre as the decisive factor in US dominance in air battles in the late war period. The Japanese were relying on aircraft that were good in 1941, and woefully outclassed in 1945.