I think at this point people expect the Sherman to be terrible which makes it by far easier to write mass media that works into that fact. Then it's not helped by shallow analysis that just lines up gun to gun and armor to armor and calls it quits.

It does get rather tiresome though. Certainly no worse a tank than the Panzer IV, or T-34 of similar vintage, and certainly a better tank in the wider strategic picture than anything out of the Fatherland.

I think we tend to measure tank success not by the metrics that matter, but instead by gun length and armor thickness. These are important but will not win a war alone.

I'd contend the Sherman gets a rough go simply because it was ridden hard and put into some of the toughest fighting of World War Two. It was virtually always on the offensive, traveling across Europe against a capable and well armed enemy. This will generate a lot of tank losses.

When backing up and looking at loss rates for German, or Soviet equipment all of which is generally considered "better" than the Sherman, the loss rates remain fairly comparable, if not worse for medium tanks. Indeed, Shermans in Red Army usage are lost at a rate similar to T-34s in the same battles, indicating at least some level of technical parity. When the Germans went on the offensive, the various big cats and lesser Panzers all were roughly handled by "inferior" Sherman tanks and similar platforms.

The only real "scandal" I'd content was the continued support of the Tank Destroyer as a separate branch and doctrine well after it was apparent the anti-armor mission was part of the tank mission*. The continued intrusion of non-armor personnel into the tank design process (see the shortening of the M1 76 MM) also left a mark.

In reality the Sherman was the right tool for the right job, just it could have been better with some more tweaks (updated armor, longer 76 MM gun, HVAP in quantity etc).



*This should not be confused with "tank destroyers are useless," there's certainly a place for dedicated anti-tank equipment where tanks are uneconomical or unfeasible. But the doctrine of the collective Tank Destroyer Battalion crushing panzers never came to fruition, and in practice the tanks and tank destroyers wound up doing the same missions with varying degrees of succsess

Dennis: What are you talking about? The M1's AP shell could penetrate 50% more armour than the M3 at 100M.

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I think we tend to measure tank success not by the metrics that matter, but instead by gun length and armor thickness. These are important but will not win a war alone.

I'd contend the Sherman gets a rough go simply because it was ridden hard and put into some of the toughest fighting of World War Two. It was virtually always on the offensive, traveling across Europe against a capable and well armed enemy. This will generate a lot of tank losses.

When backing up and looking at loss rates for German, or Soviet equipment all of which is generally considered "better" than the Sherman, the loss rates remain fairly comparable, if not worse for medium tanks. Indeed, Shermans in Red Army usage are lost at a rate similar to T-34s in the same battles, indicating at least some level of technical parity. When the Germans went on the offensive, the various big cats and lesser Panzers all were roughly handled by "inferior" Sherman tanks and similar platforms.

The only real "scandal" I'd content was the continued support of the Tank Destroyer as a separate branch and doctrine well after it was apparent the anti-armor mission was part of the tank mission*. The continued intrusion of non-armor personnel into the tank design process (see the shortening of the M1 76 MM) also left a mark.

In reality the Sherman was the right tool for the right job, just it could have been better with some more tweaks (updated armor, longer 76 MM gun, HVAP in quantity etc).



*This should not be confused with "tank destroyers are useless," there's certainly a place for dedicated anti-tank equipment where tanks are uneconomical or unfeasible. But the doctrine of the collective Tank Destroyer Battalion crushing panzers never came to fruition, and in practice the tanks and tank destroyers wound up doing the same missions with varying degrees of succsess

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In 1943 the Sherman was the best tank in the world. It's gun was as good as a T-34's, it's armor was almost as good, it had superior fire control to the T-34 and as good as a Panzer III, and it was easily the most reliable tank of WWII. In 1943, the Germans had Panzer IIIs with short 50mms and a few with long 50mms, Panzer IVs with short 75s and a few with L-43 75. The Sherman just gets a bad rap. Put any other tank in its place (allied or axis) and they would have been total failures.

Also: We could have had the M26 (90mm Main Gun) in service by early Autumn of 1944, had not the Army Ground Forces and Ordnance Department, supported by General Leslie McNair, put the M26 on the back burner. This establishment INSISTED on a separate, dedicated Tank Destroyer Force, and the misbegotten doctrine of designing a Tank (the M4) around the Infantry Support Mission, resulting in many needless casualties and deaths. THAT was the REAL SCANDAL...

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Also: We could have had the M26 (90mm Main Gun) in service by early Autumn of 1944, had not the Army Ground Forces and Ordnance Department, supported by General Leslie McNair, put the M26 on the back burner. This establishment INSISTED on a separate, dedicated Tank Destroyer Force, and the misbegotten doctrine of designing a Tank (the M4) around the Infantry Support Mission, resulting in many needless casualties and deaths. THAT was the REAL SCANDAL...

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It's perhaps possible that M26 development could have been a little further along by Autumn, 1944 but not much. The small number that were deployed to the Western front in early 1945 did okay, but were still not really ready for front line service. The fully developed/upgraded version of M26 turned was the M46 Patton that went into production in 1949.

And here I was thinking that most of Cooper's BS had been finally staked in the heart and buried under running water with garlic in its mouth. I'm rather inclined to go with "Armored Thunderbolt" as the definitive word on the subject but perhaps the publisher's blurb is more sensationalistic than the book itself.

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Also: We could have had the M26 (90mm Main Gun) in service by early Autumn of 1944, had not the Army Ground Forces and Ordnance Department, supported by General Leslie McNair, put the M26 on the back burner. This establishment INSISTED on a separate, dedicated Tank Destroyer Force, and the misbegotten doctrine of designing a Tank (the M4) around the Infantry Support Mission, resulting in many needless casualties and deaths. THAT was the REAL SCANDAL...

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It's perhaps possible that M26 development could have been a little further along by Autumn, 1944 but not much. The small number that were deployed to the Western front in early 1945 did okay, but were still not really ready for front line service. The fully developed/upgraded version of M26 turned was the M46 Patton that went into production in 1949.

Re: Tank destroyers

The thing with a cannon on it that's not quite a tank did not live long after the end of the war. However the dedicated anti-tank vehicle lived, and lives on in things like the M56, the Ontos, M150, M901, Stryker ATGM etc, etc.

Like I said, there's a need for vehicles that kill tanks that do not come with the cost/burden of a tank. The fact it doesn't look like an M10 is immaterial.

Re: "Begging"

It's worth noting that even when the 76 MM armed tanks they were left behind in the UK during D-Day because no one wanted them. Even then in the fairly limited US tank on tank fighting coming out of the Summer of 1944, while there was a press for a better gun, and then even a better gun on top of the 76 MM that existed it took the Bulge for the myth of the Sherman as utterly useless to start.

Looking back on it, with perfect hindsight we can see the M1 needed to be a full length gun. We can also see how useful the M26 would have been if it'd arrived in number in Summer-Fall 1944. But they didn't have that hindsight in June 1944. And until that moment the Sherman had proven to be one of the best tanks of the war.

The scandal thing irks me too. It's not like there was a sinister cabal of Army generals working in the basement of the proto-pentagon plotting how to lose the war by inferior tank designs. There were a lot of factors at the time that perfectly reasonable people fell victim to in regards to not building a better tank. We like to pretend it was just one general who screwed it all up, but literally hundreds if not thousands of senior and not so senior military folks and civilians all played their tiny part in ensuring that 75 MM armed Shermans would be as common as they were, while M26s would not be a factor.

As the case was the Sherman did about as good as any other tank would have, with the added advantages of being quite plentiful (I think there were two Shermans for every German full tracked AFV ever produced), and amazingly reliable*


*Which is odd in a way. We harp on McNair for keeping the TD doctrine alive well after it was due to be put down, but on the other hand his obsession with reliability is a big part in the success of US armor and motorized equipment.

I think at this point people expect the Sherman to be terrible which makes it by far easier to write mass media that works into that fact. Then it's not helped by shallow analysis that just lines up gun to gun and armor to armor and calls it quits.

It does get rather tiresome though. Certainly no worse a tank than the Panzer IV, or T-34 of similar vintage, and certainly a better tank in the wider strategic picture than anything out of the Fatherland.

I have to ask one question: If American Sherman crews had to laden their tanks with sand bag armor and logs, how much faith in the design to thwart German tanks and German antitank guns did they really have?

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii187/Stealth-Ranger/M4A3E8%20Sherman%20BM%20Group%20Build/14AD2025TB20B17203-14-45.jpg

I am not sure if I ever have seen any pictures of a German tank with so much added amour by their crew.

I am not here to pick a side on what country had the best tank during the war, I am just curious why American crews felt it so necessary to add so much extra amour.

And here I was thinking that most of Cooper's BS had been finally staked in the heart and buried under running water with garlic in its mouth. I'm rather inclined to go with "Armored Thunderbolt" as the definitive word on the subject but perhaps the publisher's blurb is more sensationalistic than the book itself.

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And here I was thinking that most of Cooper's BS had been finally staked in the heart and buried under running water with garlic in its mouth. I'm rather inclined to go with "Armored Thunderbolt" as the definitive word on the subject but perhaps the publisher's blurb is more sensationalistic than the book itself.

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And there ya have it.