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re: The Original Post
It was rather in poor taste. I'm not wishing ill on the author simply because I'm sure it's a book a lot of effort went into, but at the same time it's really sounding like Belton Cooper for 84 bucks. Or Belton Cooper+one of those images of war books.
The various faults and debates about the Sherman have all been done a few times over. If there was something new and shocking (the 75 MM gun lobby is actually run by pro-Nazi reptile men!) I imagine it might be worth the price of admission. But it's hard to think of what else there is that needs to be discovered, and it sounds like it might be less of a "this is a book I wrote after researching and coming to a conclusion" and more "The Sherman should have had a 105 MM AT cannon and here's research I made to support that"
Re: Sherman weapons
Any military decision is a series of compromises, made on a series of assumptions. Rarely if ever do they turn out half as good as we'd planned (even "success" is often only part of the original intent working as intended).
For the 75 MM on the Sherman to be a "scandal" I feel two conditions must be met:
1. Was there a perceived need to up-gun the Sherman prior to Normandy that was ignored?
2. Did the 75 MM gun lead to excess casualties?
The first is easiest to address. Frankly there was not. US tanks with 75 MMs had done just fine against the range of German armor prior to hitting Panthers in Normandy. Even when the Ordinance branch made bigger guns, and produced the M4A1 76, there were no takers from the Army Ground Forces.
This should be taken as a strong sign that there was no perceived need or organizational pull for a Sherman with anything but a 75 MM. Indeed, even after the choice was made to have 76 MM armed Shermans become the standard tank for the US Army, parts of the US Amy the British and USMC fought hard to keep 75 MM Sherman production going because it was quite effective for most tank missions.
So in that regard it's hard to imagine better armed Shermans prior to D-Day without some counter-historical behaviors. There just wasn't any support for it at the end user or higher echelon level.
As to the second question, this is a bit fuzzier. Would better armed Shermans have resulted in less losses?
I will contend they would not. For the following two reasons:
A. The 75 MM was only insufficient against heavy German armor. This was a battlefield rarity in the West. The primary killer of Shermans was AT guns (which a larger more AT oriented gun would have been worse at killing) and infantry AT weapons. The primary target of Shermans was infantry in buildings and fortifications. Clearly for most targets, and most battles, the 75 MM was enough of a gun to get by.
B. The decisive element of tank vs tank is who shoots first. While the 75 MM was not going to kill Tigers and Panthers from the front, it was employed very successfully at Arracourt, St Vith etc. The key factor in this exchange is that a stationary tank in the defensive will virtually always spot the tank on the offensive first.
So in that regard if Shermans had 90 MM cannons they'd still likely take heavy losses on the offensive because the German tankers would get to shoot first. This is virtually certainly true because when the Germans were on the offensive even with thicker armor and bigger guns, they too took heavy losses in exchange for fairly modest results.
So coming off of point 2: the 75 MM was excellent against the biggest threats to the Sherman, and against the primary targets it had on the battlefield. The gun was not as relevant to American losses as being on the offensive was.
I believe that I stated earlier that the Sherman had a much better AP (Anti-Personnel, i.e Cannister) Round and HE (High Explosive) Round, used by the 75mm, than the 76mm. I also stated that The 76mm Gun used a superior AT (Anti-Tank) Round, as opposed to the 75's. Once the HVAP (Hyper-Velocity, Armor Piercing) Round became available, albeit not until late 1944, US Tankers had a better CHANCE of scoring a kill against heavier German Armor.
However, (Here I go AGAIN!) once US Tankers learned to lob a "Willy-Pete" (White Phosphorous) Round into a German Tank's "shot-traps", they could incapacitate it by eventually forcing the Crew to either abandon their vehicle, or burn to death. In the mean time, having distracted the German Tank Crew, US Tanks could, to quote Patton: "Surround the Bastards, and then PILE ON!" in order to pump all kinds of ordnance into the now crippled German Tank.
Had we been smart enough to figure out these kinds of tactics, we might have been able to properly TRAIN our Tankers while they were still Stateside. THAT might have saved more lives. Again, this is just more "what if, what if, what if". The same goes for "a better-armored Sherman".
Take into consideration that at the time of it's inception, (early 1941) the Sherman was projected to have more than adequate Armor as compared to it's contemporaries. YET AGAIN, remember that the Sherman was designed to fight against the likes of German Pz.Is, IIs, and early models of the Pz.IIIs & Pz.IVs, all of which we know were somewhat inferior when pitted against Shermans by the time of the last El Alamein donnybrook. So, now we have complacency setting in within the various US Military Procurement & Ordnance Departments, Armor Boards, Committees, "Kaffe-Klatches", ad nauseam...
In the meantime, the Germans were not sitting on their hands, (like we were) as they needed to develop armor that could counter the Soviet T-34/76 threat- Enter Panthers and Tigers. US Intelligence was already aware of the development of these new German "Super-Tanks", but nothing was done about it. We all know the rest of the story. By 1942, Ordnance was working on quite a few different concepts and designs that could have, and maybe should have, replaced the M4 Medium-series.
"Nooo, the M4s are GOOD ENOUGH" the "Powers-That-Be" proclaimed, "Why stop production NOW?"
And thus, accelerated development of the T26/M26 was curtailed, but development of the Pershing was not halted altogether. Would the M26 have dramatically changed things in Europe had we had this Tank by late 1943? That's another argument again.
I just might BUY this book that we've been hemming and hawing over, just to see what this author has to say. I will again state my opinion of the Sherman- It had it's faults, but in all, the US M4 Medium-series Tanks DELIVERED...
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