It must be said.
Posted Jan 27, 2023, 1:35 AM UTC
25334
Shermans usually managed to kill the supposed “superior axis tanks” on their own. 5-1 is the most annoying myth to come from the war, since a single Sherman could disable a tiger, it just happened that tanks travel in packs and not alone.
Plus, only like 4,000 out of the 50,000 Sherman’s built were lost. That’s an 8% casualty rate. I think only tanks like the Churchill come close to that for obvious reasons (in comparison, Soviet tank losses were ~75% and German were probably ~50%). It’s quite easy to have low casualties when your tanks are actually reliable and don’t die every 100 miles.
TLDR: just watch the Chieftain, American (and British) Supremacy
30
Hmm, I don't agree with your reasoning for survivability. Not saying they weren't better, or even worse, just that #built/#lost is not a good metric for survivability. If I build 100 tanks but 50 are lost versus 10 built and 8 lost. Was the less built tank really worse? Only 8 were lost compared to the 50 others. So building more tanks just numerically would lower the casualty percentage.
Then you gotta wonder, how many of the built tank actually saw combat. If only 6,000 of that 50,000 saw combat, that 4,000 doesn't seem as impressive.
1
For the Churchill, yes not many got built and not many got used, but for all other tanks the survival rate for the Sherman is just superior
The Sherman engine was well tested and reliable, having been placed one several tanks previously and refined since the T6 prototype. VVSS suspension while not the best saved room and complexity compared to both the Pz IV and T-34 suspension and the suspension housing was easy to remove, repair and replace in field garages. The Shermans modularity and reliability are never overstated. Also even for the shermans that did get taken out, due to large crew hatches and good supply lines, crews usually survived to man another tank
1
Sure, I'm not really debating the survivability of the Sherman per say. My instinct is to agree for lack of personal knowledge. I'm just not convinced by a lost vs built metric.
Like quick Google search of the Tiger I, ~1400 built ~500 survived. 64% loss rate. But 900 less than a quarter of 4000.
1
Yeah, I think those rates speak to how brutal the fighting was on the eastern front more than anything. I think the Sherman gets a unfair bad rep, but still. Those numbers are skewed.
1
I don’t understand why everyone hates on the Sherman, it wasn’t a bad tank in Africa, except the dust and even that wasn’t worse than any other vehicle.
By July 1944 they realized that it needed a bigger gun and they did that in the 76mm.
This doesn’t include the fact the Firefly was a good stop gap measure.
The engine was a little temperamental, but it was a solid performer. Of course it would have been better running diesel, but even the Germans didn’t run that.
Since the heavies weren’t faced by the US in Normandy, the tank seems to fit the perfect needs of the US army.
We also had air superiority for the most part and had a very well laid out system for CAS.
I think really the biggest issue is it is the Plain Jane of the dance. She doesn’t have the mythology like the Tiger, she isn’t sexy like the Panther, and she isn’t the supermodel that the King Tiger was. The Sherman was definitely the Plain Jane of the war, but if she is DTF and the other tanks weren’t putting out, go with the one that brought you.
23
On paper it seems like it is underpowered compared to other contemporary tanks but that is only if you don't take into account the actual role of armour and just compare the numbers on a piece of paper.
11
When I was talking about under powered, I was talking about the 75mm gun, which absolutely was in an armor battle. That said, it had good HE performance.
Overall, it was a solid tank for the crew and it was a war winning weapon for the US.
7
The role it really served was to support infantry mostly against infantry. Tank batttles happened for sure but the h2h comparison is not the true comparison of armour effectiveness. The real anti tank is superior combined forces and tactics rather than a bigger tank. Being simple to manufacture and maintain is a severely underrated feature.
6
I have 6 armoured divisions fully equipped, you have 1, my non armoured divisions also have AT support and there's TDs dispersed at various levels in different concentrations. Our air support has crippled your supplies and kept you spotted. I hope your infantry is in concrete bunkers that my tank shells can't shake.
2
The US quickly developed tank destroyer doctrine to deal with the underpowered 75 gun with the Wolverine and later Jackson. Open top vehicles capable of mounting larger guns using components from the Sherman while cheaper and lighter than the Sherman
1
Yes, but unfortunately the public seems to not know that or if they do, they think the US was stupid in armor doctrine for having open top vehicles.
1
I love these tank posts mostly because it brings the worst of people, people who never grew out of the "thing i like could beat the thing you like," except instead of argueing about if goku could beat superman, on the school playground they argue about whether or not tank A could beat tank B, on internet forums.
Now ignoring what i just said, we all know the l3/33 could beat them all.
8
Everybody fears the Mario bros with a 6.5 mm machine gun on tracks
2
This isnt a very controversial statement
2
Someone should try to put a long 105 mm gun on the Sherman
1
It has been said. More than enough now. Im german and i have not seen a Single meme saying german tanks are good. But every day about 10 guys talking about how the sherman was amazing and its not talked about enough. It has been talked about enough. Everys cousin and grandmas cat knows about it at this point.
1
I think its because for a long time everyone ragged on the Sherman. Alot of myths about it were said over and over. Even from "official" sources like say the history Channel on American TV. They would also talk about how superior the German tanks were. Like yeah, they were good, maybe over engineered... but good. However these historians they had would talk about the tiger like it was equivalent to an Abrams or leopard 2. Eventually someone called them out and now everyone dogpiles and the pendulum just swings in the opposite direction.
1
When it first came out, it was one of the best ones. The problem was the other tanks got better, and the U.S. stuck with it do to logistical issues. By the time the U.S. realized American tanks were lacking, the war was winding down.
M26 Pershing is superior to the tiger. Fight me.
1
There's a special reason the got nicknamed Tommy cookers
-5
"Hey guys this sherman is pretty cool with the large crew hatches, why dont we make them EVEN larger"
"Huh why didnt we think of that before? Do it!"
1
The Sherman was a logistical miracle, but overall a pretty mid tank.
America could produce nearly 50 of them per day, which is absolutely bonkers for a 30-ton gasoline (later diesel) tank... However... They were built like shit.
Insufficient armour, insufficient weapons, a habit of spontaneous combustion... Many Shermans rolled off the lines as total lemons with engines that wouldn't even start. It was bad enough that the British had the dark joke of calling Shermans "Ronsons", after a brand of lighters with the slogan "Lights up the first time, every time".
A quote by Lt. Colonel William B. Lovelady, commander of the 3rd Armored Division’s 2nd Battalion, retold by Lt. Colonel Haynes Dugan.
“One of his Shermans turned the corner of a house and got off three shots at the front of a Panther, all bounced off. The Sherman then backed behind the corner and was disabled by a shot penetrating two sides of the house plus the tank.”
Shermans were good because they were numerous and easy to build and transport, sort of like pre-1943 T-34's (which were basically garbage). But realistically, they were effectively made of scrap metal and held together with spit and glue and couldn't match up to any of the other MBTs of the war in basically any aspect until much later after many improvements were made.
-11
America didn't really design the Sherman to fight other tanks. The idea was to use anti tank assets organic to the unit getting attacked by tanks. For that purpose m10 companies were assigned to divisions and their 3 in gun was more than up to the task. It was the Brits who insisted on putting the 17 pdr in the Sherman, giving us the firefly and giving them the ability to counter the tiger at standoff distance. Anti tank infantry was also a specialized job where the soldiers were trained in many ways to defeat tanks, and each BN might have a platoon assigned. No, the Sherman's job was to maneuver on and destroy infantry and to create encirclements. For that it was adequate. Of course Sherman's found their way into German tank sights but not because they were out looking to fight German tanks.
7
Also the 17 pounder got chucked on the M10 anyway, and the M36 was later made replacing both and sharing ammunition with the new M26
2
Shermans had similar armour to the t-34 and even later on had that armour reduced slightly to accommodate more crew space, larger hatches and to simplify production
The 75 gun was fine in a multirole task and they later introduced a shell for it that could penetrate Tigers reliably, despite it not being the role of the sherman, America had a tank destroyer doctrine for a reason
The Spontaneous combustion was solved pretty early on. Crews would overstock ammo and the sponsons were rather exposed to have ammo placed in them (a problem in german tanks too). Wet Ammo Stowage got introduced to solve those problems but just putting the ammo on the hull floor stopped ammunition cookoffs from happening
The engine was fine. It was well tested, featuring on both the prototype, the m3 and in aircraft previously
The panther only featured good frontal armour. Whoever this Lt. Colonel William B. Lovelady is, they sure dont follow the correct armour doctrine or flank properly. In confrontations with big cats close air support, tank destroyers and 76 shermans were meant to be used.
1
Keep in mind, most of the improvements that made the Sherman an actually pretty decent tank came later in the war, around the 1943-44 mark. Tens of thousands of these things were built and shipped to European allies, which is why they got a reputation for being absolutely rubbish.
Refits like the Firefly I don't believe were directly caused by the Sherman's original guns being terrible for its role. It's well known that the 75mm ammo was made to poor quality standards leading to issues in nearly every single 75mm cannon it was fired from. For example, Adjutant Captain Pat Dyas' Cromwell, mounting the British equivalent of the 75mm and firing American ammo failed to penetrate with three direct hits to a Tiger's thinner rear armour and was subsequently destroyed by counterfire.
Another example, Major John Semken of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry put a reported 10(!!!) AP rounds into a Tiger which caught his tank by surprise. It was the first Tiger ever caught intact at Normandy because the shots simply forced the crew to bail, without the tank actually being destroyed and the shots not penetrating. This one might be a bit mythologised, but the 10 rounds stat was the one I found most referenced, bouncing between 6-10 in most accounts.
There's kind of a reason that the Brits up-gunned with the Firefly and the Americans with the Easy 8, and one hell of a reason why the Sherman got a reputation as 'weak'.
Add on top of that the tank destroyer doctrine was effectively scrapped by the time the T-34 and M4 rolled around and in fact proved that the tank destroyer doctrine was ineffective. The M4 absolutely was designed to fight enemy tanks and infantry and emplaced positions. The M3 was also designed to fight other tanks, however, in an offensive role as the tank destroyer doctrine was primarily a defensive posture to handle the niche and very specific situation of massed tank assaults against static defences.
All-around the Sherman was... Fine? A solid 5/10 tank using shoddy ammo and which didn't receive its improvements until the Pershing was already available (and yes, the Pershing, while infinitely superior, barely saw any combat), having tens of thousands of the inferior variants needing retrofits to be functionally useful. I mean, many of the additions to later models came about as recommendations from the Brits using them under Montgomery in El Alamein like welding plates to the floor to remedy ammo cook-off, and the M93 HVAP ammo (the one that could reliably penetrate Panthers) wasn't actually issued to Sherman crews as it was a 76mm round with the guns that could fire it only being added to Shermans in 1944, but rather was issued to tank destroyers, and saw extremely limited action before the end of the war.
It started out one of the weakest medium tanks of the war, hampered on every front by either production necessity or poor quality and only after significant improvements actually matched its contemporaries, most of which came very, very late in the war. That said though, still better than the Lee, which was just a rubbish tank all 'round.
0
43 and 44, you mean when the western allies actually started fighting major battles again? I believe shermans were in large numbers at Kursk but they're being used and treated very differently in Soviet hands
2
Grabs popcorn*
You leg, now we watch the wehraboos and tankies and overzealous free world fight.
There is one right below your comment.