Should the US have replaced the Sherman?

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**Avatar 720**

They did trial a Churchill with a 17pdr, the Black Prince variant, but it was horribly underpowered and pretty much obsolete by the time any prototypes had actually been produced, given that the Firefly and Challenger were mainstays, the Comet was already in use, and the Centurion was in early production.

**Crazy_Carnifex**

Avatar 720 wrote:
They did trial a Churchill with a 17pdr, the Black Prince variant, but it was horribly underpowered and pretty much obsolete by the time any prototypes had actually been produced, given that the Firefly and Challenger were mainstays, the Comet was already in use, and the Centurion was in early production.

Actually, Black Prince was a completely new design. They just gave the job to the same guys who did Churchill. Who proceeded to design it from the ground up to just be a Churchill VIII. Except it was even slower.

**Not Online!!!**

Question: When wass the M4 mass prduced? To my knowledge that was 1942 or did i get that wrong?

Second question: Which variant of the PZ iv consider you the workhorse, because the long 75 mm ones outnumber the short barreled pieces of crap by 7/1 according to lentz.

**Avatar 720**

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Avatar 720 wrote:
They did trial a Churchill with a 17pdr, the Black Prince variant, but it was horribly underpowered and pretty much obsolete by the time any prototypes had actually been produced, given that the Firefly and Challenger were mainstays, the Comet was already in use, and the Centurion was in early production.

Actually, Black Prince was a completely new design. They just gave the job to the same guys who did Churchill. Who proceeded to design it from the ground up to just be a Churchill VIII. Except it was even slower.

That's why I called it a variant, because for any degrees of separation there were on paper it was basically just a tweaked Churchill.

**Totalwar1402**

Why did the US replace the Sherman at all then if it had all these advantages? If there was no advantage in the M26 Pershing that is the bedrock of the Patton series of tanks then what was the rationale for changing the tanks over at all? Why not just have a fleet of super Sherman’s like the Israelis did? Improve the optics and ammunition with regular upgrades. If it’s already a sound platform then why scrap the entire fleet? Quite a few people have said there was a completely negligible advantage in upgrading the fleet at all even if it was feasible. Is this literally a case of the US looked at the big Russian tanks and said “we need bigger toys” and this was an egregious waste of resources?

As an aside I think a lot of Myth busting videos are overly focused on rationalising and making excuses for past mistakes. Being in a job you quickly learn that mistakes and problems abound in life. The way some people talk about it in this very deterministic manner nobody has ever screwed up or made a mistake. Yes, you do have Myth busting of “this was amazing” like I think the Chieftains hatch says a few things about the T34 on one of his videos and why it’s a tad bit overrated. But my impression is that a lot of myth busting is more about “X was not as bad”.

I get why they didn’t replace the Sherman in the war. It is a good tank and it is a tank that won the war. That’s a very difficult point to contend with. People mentioned tank on tank engagements being rare and killing infantry being more important. Well, oddly, this is one instance you can actually tell by playing video games. If you play Battlefield it’s way more important to kill the infantry and I’ll take a big monster HE mortar over an AP round any day. Plus I hope I was clear that I don’t consider “oh German tanks are amazing woot” because well, no. Again, Germany lost the war so that’s a big point to bring up in any discussion on the topic.

**Haighus**

Well, the US was entirely correct to start replacing the Sherman after WWII, I don't think anyone is disputing that. The Sherman was reaching its practical limits as a chassis in comparison to the tanks being produced by peers at that point, like the Centurion.

But during the war, it would have cost lives to go all in to replacing the vehicle.

**Not Online!!!**

Haighus wrote:
Well, the US was entirely correct to start replacing the Sherman after WWII, I don't think anyone is disputing that. The Sherman was reaching its practical limits as a chassis in comparison to the tanks being produced by peers at that point, like the Centurion.

But during the war, it would have cost lives to go all in to replacing the vehicle.

Aye, short production runs in order to improve or replace are just as bad as non innovation.

**LordofHats**

Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why did the US replace the Sherman at all then if it had all these advantages?

A service life of 16 years in the US military is pretty good for hardware like an armored vehicle in the 40s and 50s. Technology for tanks was rapidly advancing throughout the first half of the twentieth century, especially as we learned more about armor, ballistics, and engines. The Sherman had a good long run compared to many of its peers. Only the T34 family really compares.

If there was no advantage in the M26 Pershing that is the bedrock of the Patton series of tanks then what was the rationale for changing the tanks over at all?

Technological and doctrinal advancement in the post-war era.

Why not just have a fleet of super Sherman’s like the Israelis did?

Because we had money.

If it’s already a sound platform then why scrap the entire fleet?

It wasn't scraped. Like the M48, and later M60, a lot of Shermans moved into the Army reserve once new tanks got rolled in to replace it. Others were sold overseas to allies during the cold war, because a Sherman was better than the interwar-period British and French tanks commonly used by many developing nations up to that point.

Is this literally a case of the US looked at the big Russian tanks and said “we need bigger toys” and this was an egregious waste of resources?

We, did? Minus the egregious part. The Sherman continued to serve as a main tank in the US military for another ten years after World War II. It's immediate replacements simply weren't good enough until later variants of the M48 and then the M60 rolled out in the late 50s. Some of that is down to slowness in the Army, some is due to ongoing debate about what a good tank should look like, and others are just technoligcal challenges that took time to hurdle.

Honestly it feels like you're selectively ignoring parts of people's responses to keep beating a dead horse you've already gotten answers for.

**Frazzled**

M46 was good but M47 and M48 were already in development. There were also delays in Army gear universally until 1950 because there was a thought that all future land wars would be solved with nuclear bombs and artillery.

**Polonius**

Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why did the US replace the Sherman at all then if it had all these advantages? If there was no advantage in the M26 Pershing that is the bedrock of the Patton series of tanks then what was the rationale for changing the tanks over at all? Why not just have a fleet of super Sherman’s like the Israelis did? Improve the optics and ammunition with regular upgrades. If it’s already a sound platform then why scrap the entire fleet? Quite a few people have said there was a completely negligible advantage in upgrading the fleet at all even if it was feasible. Is this literally a case of the US looked at the big Russian tanks and said “we need bigger toys” and this was an egregious waste of resources?

The US didn't scrap the Shermans, and the M26 never fully replaced them. They were still the most common UN armor in the Korean war, and even after that they were mostly transferred to allies. It wasn't until the Patton series that the Sherman was fully phased out.

By the early 50s, the USSR was starting to mass produce the T-54, which easily eclipsed the WWII vintage tanks in terms of armor, firepower, and mobility. The Sherman was pretty clearly obsolete by the mid 50s as a front line medium tank. Even then, the Sherman could have played a role, it was just more efficient to use specially designed kit, such as armored cars, self propelled artillery, etc.

WWII saw enormous leaps in both firepower and protection, with early war tanks carrying limited armor and small caliber guns, and late war tanks, especially on the eastern front, had enormously thick armor and huge guns. Still, there's a constraint on both protection and firepower, as eventually weight becomes too much for the engines, transmissions, suspensions, and roads of the time. Still, these developments were gradual and evolutionary after the war, topping out with the limits of rolled steel armor driven by piston engines. The Main Battle Tank that we know now is a very different piece of kit, relying on composite armor, seeing helicoptors as a primary threat, and requiring high speed and long range compared to WWII tanks.

**Jadenim**

So I was doing a bit of a tank wiki-walk the other day and started wondering if we’re in a bit of a similar situation now; a lot of people like to claim that tanks are obsolete, but they’ve consistently found use in the low-medium intensity conflicts of the last 20-years, even in urban environments, so I don’t buy into that argument. However most armies are stuck with the open field MBTs designed to fight the Cold War, because it’s far too expensive to replace them and their associated training, logistics, etc. I wonder what a new ground-up armour design would look like optimised for current conflicts and incorporating the latest technology in terms of guidance, sensors, network connectivity, etc.

**Gitzbitah**

I think the JLTV is basically what you're looking for, Jadenim. It's meant to meet the challenges of current low intensity guerrilla warfare by being a super armored car with a turret. It's cheaper than a tank, so it can be more places, and tougher than a Humvee so you'll lose less to IEDs. All but useless against a tank, of course, but that's the tradeoff.

**LordofHats**

Jadenim wrote:
So I was doing a bit of a tank wiki-walk the other day and started wondering if we’re in a bit of a similar situation now; a lot of people like to claim that tanks are obsolete, but they’ve consistently found use in the low-medium intensity conflicts of the last 20-years, even in urban environments, so I don’t buy into that argument. However most armies are stuck with the open field MBTs designed to fight the Cold War, because it’s far too expensive to replace them and their associated training, logistics, etc. I wonder what a new ground-up armour design would look like optimised for current conflicts and incorporating the latest technology in terms of guidance, sensors, network connectivity, etc.

I think it's silly to claim that heavy close infantry support will ever be obsolete. I'm not sure the field requirements for such weapons platforms will be shifting much either. The Stryker is kind of a modernized urban AFV, but I think that we're in a similar place now as we were at the end of WWII with the exact picture of future armed conflicts being unclear or cloudy, especially since armies increasingly find themselves dealing with asymetrical conflicts while simultaneously needing to be prepared for more traditional wars.

**Vulcan**

Totalwar1402 wrote:
Just watched an interesting vid by the guy who does tank chats (Chieftains Hatch) discussing this. Basically amounts to: M4 is very reliable, does the job, better than the German tanks and the “heavy tank” was a white elephant anyway. He also brought up the issue that it’s difficult to physically move the larger tanks and so it’s impractical to do so.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TwIlrAosYiM

I am not sure on that though. It felt like he was going too much in the direction of defending the tank and the designers reputation. Just a few general points.

- He mentions that it was impractical to move heavy tanks. But the US took heavy tanks to Korea. So it can be done with the technology of the time. We’re not talking about the Maus, this became a regular thing to move big tanks around. He sort of framed that like it was an impossibility to move a 60 ton tank.

- Just a general glance at an M48 shows that they completely threw away the old Sherman design after the war. If it was this perfect tank then why did all subsequent tanks become bigger, heavier and have bigger guns? Even just the general shape of the tanks tells a story in of itself. The lecture was framed as “oh fans of the Pershing just like the big toys and aren’t thinking about the logistics”. But, clearly the post war designers did not share this opinion which is a very good suggestion that they were not happy with the Sherman. As well as that the logistics and maintenance issues were surmountable. They did make bigger tanks with bigger guns and they use that formula to the present day. All those Sherman’s went to the scrap heap very quickly.

- We know they could have built better tanks because they did build better tanks within a few years of the war. If they didn’t get them built then that is a failure on the part of the designers and the decision makers. This is framed as if the Sherman was all that could have been built and building a better tank was impossible. This is a case of eye of the beholder, but bungling through is not the same thing as steady as she goes.

- He brought up that the Sherman could beat the German tanks. I get that he is trying to counter the myth of “the Tiger” and all that. But, the US was a vastly richer and more industrial nation than Germany; which was being bombed and lacked resources. Given that during the Cold War the US leveraged that advantage against the Soviet Union I am not sure why “good enough” cuts it when we’re talking about the Sherman. If the Germans were building trash tanks then why is it reasonable that the US build more reliable trash tanks? Are we saying that if the US could have built M48’s that they would not have used them? Wouldn’t that have given the US an edge?

- Why would the US be developing the Pershing and bigger guns for the Sherman if they were happy with its performance? If it was part of the plan to have the reliable tank through the course of the war? Doesn’t that suggest they wanted a better tank but couldn’t do it until after the war ended? I think the lecture oscillates a lot on this point between the Sherman being good enough for WW2, whilst also implying that it’s impossible to make a MBT in the 1940s.

I think it’s more that the lecture came across as making excuses for the designers and decision makers. Especially since he spends quite some listing their failures and scrapped projects. This is not evidence of the sage masters of logistics knowing that big tanks with big guns was a silly idea that would never catch on.

Long and short:

1) The Sherman was already in mass production and good enough to do the job.

2) After the war ended, new and better tanks were developed and put into production, so those tanks were available for Korea.

It really is that simple.

**Frazzled**

Also, the Americans worked on a wide variety of projects - both medium and heavy. Several were specifically in developments to potentially replace the M4. Of those, the ones that would have been beneficial needed more work, and many of their benefits were added to the M4's editions over time (the turret mounting the 76mm for example, HVSS suspension as another).

Once you get to the "heavy" class, those were still in teething. Realistically they could have advanced six months with less resistance from mcNair, with M26 production beginning in May 1944. That would have buzzsawed right into the heavy production going for DDay, and resulting lower number of total tanks in production for several months. Did the Americans really want a hole in production RIGHT at the time of the intended heaviest fighting?

But lets assume thats the case. Following history, they wouldn't get production above 100 M26s per month for four months, plus shipping to the ETO, so figure 5 months, plus retraining. So units wouldn't be seeing material action until November 1944.

**LordofHats**

McNair might have resisted the deployment of the M20 series but he did nothing to delay it. I think a strong case has been made that the delays in the M/T20 tanks came mostly down to the Ordnance Department’s feth ups and McNair personal opposition to them never prevented their progress. The narrative that he did appears to be a post-war attempt to shift the blame to a dead man by the Ordnance Dept..

**123ply**

Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why did the US replace the Sherman at all then if it had all these advantages? If there was no advantage in the M26 Pershing that is the bedrock of the Patton series of tanks then what was the rationale for changing the tanks over at all? Why not just have a fleet of super Sherman’s like the Israelis did? Improve the optics and ammunition with regular upgrades. If it’s already a sound platform then why scrap the entire fleet? Quite a few people have said there was a completely negligible advantage in upgrading the fleet at all even if it was feasible. Is this literally a case of the US looked at the big Russian tanks and said “we need bigger toys” and this was an egregious waste of resources?

As an aside I think a lot of Myth busting videos are overly focused on rationalising and making excuses for past mistakes. Being in a job you quickly learn that mistakes and problems abound in life. The way some people talk about it in this very deterministic manner nobody has ever screwed up or made a mistake. Yes, you do have Myth busting of “this was amazing” like I think the Chieftains hatch says a few things about the T34 on one of his videos and why it’s a tad bit overrated. But my impression is that a lot of myth busting is more about “X was not as bad”.

I get why they didn’t replace the Sherman in the war. It is a good tank and it is a tank that won the war. That’s a very difficult point to contend with. People mentioned tank on tank engagements being rare and killing infantry being more important. Well, oddly, this is one instance you can actually tell by playing video games. If you play Battlefield it’s way more important to kill the infantry and I’ll take a big monster HE mortar over an AP round any day. Plus I hope I was clear that I don’t consider “oh German tanks are amazing woot” because well, no. Again, Germany lost the war so that’s a big point to bring up in any discussion on the topic.

You still havent learned anything I see.

**Kilkrazy**

One of the reasons the US stuck with the Sherman is that they worked out they could ship three Shermans for the same effort as a single Pershing, and the Sherman was already better than anything the Japanese had.

It was also as good as any German tank except the relatively small number of Panthers, Tigers and King Tigers.

The Pershing was't that good a tank anyway.

**Frazzled**

The Pershing was't that good a tank anyway.

Pershing was the US' version of a Panther, except it was much better. Further, the Super Pershing had a gun that was equal to the Tiger II's. Like the Panther it had initial teething problems with an underpowered engine. Had the war continued that would have been rectified in similar fashion.

What I always wondered about was why didn't the later M26s and M46s not go with the longer caliber gun on the Super Pershing. Any information on that?

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

I think they had the same issues as some of the German long gunned stuff in that the calibration on the gun sights tended to fail as the just couldn't be kept stable enough when the were driving even with a travel lock, especially if the had to go over rough ground

and of course in action the travel lock wouldn't be used anyway

**Frazzled**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I think they had the same issues as some of the German long gunned stuff in that the calibration on the gun sights tended to fail as the just couldn't be kept stable enough when the were driving even with a travel lock, especially if the had to go over rough ground

and of course in action the travel lock wouldn't be used anyway

Good points.

**LordofHats**

I think it's worth pointing out the Army replaced the Pershing faster than it replaced the Sherman

The Pershing is an amazing tank on paper.

In practice it suffered a number of very annoying practical use limitations, mostly centered on its transmission and drive train.

**Frazzled**

LordofHats wrote:
I think it's worth pointing out the Army replaced the Pershing faster than it replaced the Sherman

The Pershing is an amazing tank on paper.

In practice it suffered a number of very annoying practical use limitations, mostly centered on its transmission and drive train.

But it looks...COOL!

Yes, it had the same issues as the German cats, and to a much lesser extent the JS II series. Say what you want about the Soviets, but they were way ahead in diesel engine design. It also helps that they were the first to bring a big tank to the game in 1941, and had the teething problems for all that sorted out before the Tiger even went into production.

EDIT Its interesting that the dimensions are so similar:
Panther: L/W/H
8.86 m x 3.27 m x 2.99 m
(29ft 1in x 10ft 9in x 9ft 10in)

Pershing: L/W/H
28’4” x 11’6” x 9’1.5”
8.64 x 3.51 x 2.78 m

**LordofHats**

Yeah. The Soviet's just went straight diesel, while many western nations tried to make more conventional gasoline engines work, or even experimented with electric engines. I think it's easy to forget that in the 30s the internal combustion engine was still new technology. Much of the war machine of the participant nations in WWII was still horse drawn in the late 30s and early 40s. The US and the USSR were the only nations to come out of the war with the industrial capacity and technology to have true fully mechanized armies.

**Haighus**

LordofHats wrote:
Yeah. The Soviet's just went straight diesel, while many western nations tried to make more conventional gasoline engines work, or even experimented with electric engines. I think it's easy to forget that in the 30s the internal combustion engine was still new technology. Much of the war machine of the participant nations in WWII was still horse drawn in the late 30s and early 40s. The US and the USSR were the only nations to come out of the war with the industrial capacity and technology to have true fully mechanized armies.

I think you can add the British to that list, they had the most motorised/mechanised armed forces of any nation at the start of WWII, andcontinued increasing vehicle use.

Interestingly, the Italians were the second most motorised at the outbreak, but simply did not have the industrial and resource capacity to maintain that advantage.

**simonr1978**

LordofHats wrote:
Yeah. The Soviet's just went straight diesel, while many western nations tried to make more conventional gasoline engines work...

IIRC Len Deighton mentioned in Blitzkrieg that this was partly for logistical reasons on the part of the German military. Whilst internal combustion engines were relatively new technology in the 1930s, they were still around in civilian use and the use of petrol/gasoline rather than diesel engines allowed the military to refuel from civilian filling stations as they encountered them rather than relying on much rarer supplies of diesel fuel. It's been a while since I read it but I think he suggests that at least one of the pre-war German expansions (I think it may have been the Anschluss or it might have been the annexation of Czechoslovakia) would have probably been a different prospect if the military had been using diesel engine vehicles since the supply chain just was not up to the task without essentially looting or requisitioning civilian supplies.

**LordofHats**

I think the logistics of refueling were less significant than the domestic production ability of the countries involved.

Domestically tractors were a big industry in the USSR at the time, and the USSR used diesel engines in their tractors. So, obviously, when building tanks they built what they knew. Diesel engines.

Likewise, the US and Germany had big commercial car industries, used gasoline engines, so when they built their tanks they used gasoline. The Germans experimented with diesel engines and found they lacked the industrial expertise and capacity to do so. It would cost more to switch to diesel than to just keep building gasoline engines (or petrol, I know the difference between gas and diesel but I can't say I'm clear on the difference with petrol).

**simonr1978**

Gasoline is Petrol, it's just a different name for the same thing.

**Crazy_Carnifex**

Frazzled wrote:

The Pershing was't that good a tank anyway.

Pershing was the US' version of a Panther, except it was much better. Further, the Super Pershing had a gun that was equal to the Tiger II's. Like the Panther it had initial teething problems with an underpowered engine. Had the war continued that would have been rectified in similar fashion.

What I always wondered about was why didn't the later M26s and M46s not go with the longer caliber gun on the Super Pershing. Any information on that?

They did fix the Pershing's issues, eventually. That's what the M46 patton is

i think that they went with the smaller gun because it meant that they could stuff more ammunition in the tank. Something about needing to fit 70+ rounds, which they could barely do with the regular 90mm.

**LordofHats**

Ballistics also advanced in the post-war period. The M46 had better penetration with it's smaller gun than the Pershing owing to improvements in ammunition.