TOP 5 American Tanks Of WW2 : How Effective Were They?
Vložit
- čas přidán 21. 07. 2024
- US Tanks of WW2
Before World War II, the US Army didn't think tanks should fight other tanks. Instead, that job was assigned to the tank-destroyer class of vehicles.
These vehicles were fast and had powerful guns but sacrificed a lot of armor to achieve such a speed. Meanwhile, the mission of the tank was to support infantry.
Based on this theory, the Army went with mass producing more than 60000 of Infantry support tanks.
The two contrasting tank philosophies, And the Great Depression of early 1930s that depleted the R&D money, idled The American tank force until the war jumpstarted it.
Here is the top 5 US tanks of the second world war.
Copyright fair use notice
All media used in this video is used for the purpose of education under the terms of fair use.
All footage and images used belong to their copyright holders.
#USTanks #ww2Tanks
The Pershing was clearly the most formidable US tank to see action in WW2. However, the Sherman clearly had by far the largest impact on the war, given its sheer numbers.
In the Korean war the North advanced South with Russian made T-34's destroying all before them including American Shermans then with the North's supply lines exceedingly over extended the Americans managed to deliver some Pershings which managed to out perform and outgunned the T-34's.
By the end of the war the new series of US & UK tanks were at the point of surpassing the best German an Soviet armour. The delay in development was due to the plan to deliver the high volumes of the existing design. I served my apprenticeship with a guy who drove centurions in Korea and he said they didn’t fear the Soviet supplied tanks.
@@ashleymarie7452 it would be difficult to design a tank the Germans couldn't destroy with the Tiger's 88mm or the Panther's 75mm even if the Allies had Tigers and Panthers they would have been harder to destroy but still vurnable. The Sherman whilst obviously not a brilliant tank was a medium weight, quickly manufactured and very reliable. The Firefly variant is what they should have made more of.
@@alexbowman7582 I don't disagree with that. Cheers.
@@alexbowman7582 Wrong. Obsolete M4A1 Sherman's from the Marine Corps and Army were shipped up to Korea from Japan. They took on the T-34/85s, the most advanced T-34 the Russians produced, and had a 1.1 to 1 kill/death ratio. In short, they beat the T-34 though it was just a marginal victory at best. Then came the M4A3E8's with the 76.2mm gun that easily handled the T-34s. Finally came the M-26 Pershing which had an incredible 9.9-to-1 kill/death ratio.
Unlike most armchair historians, anybody who's actually been a tanker knows that the weight of a tank is critical. Because the Germans were sure to blow every bridge in western Europe before they retreated, the 33 ton Sherman was vital because the Allies best and most numerous temporary bridge was rated at 40 tons. Consequently, the 46 ton Pershing would have been literally stuck on the beaches of Western Europe in the summer of 1944. It was only after the engineers had time to build stronger bridges, and open port facilities, that they were then able to get the heavy Pershings to the front. Actual tankers also know that it isn't just tank on tank; it's a combined arms battlefield, and the western allies were doing all right even before the Pershing showed up. In nearly all battlefield situations, Western superiority in combined arms operations easily over came a few extra inches of steel on the occasional Tiger or Panther that showed up.
Regarding your last sentence. Many times they did not though. Thats partly the reason the last year was a long tough slog. Armoured divisions that encountered significant German tanks etc, such as US 2nd Armored, highlighted the deficiency and problems.
Panthers were not occasional by the way. The Panther was slightly more prevalent than the Panzer IV after Normandy. Even in Normandy there were 8 battalions of Panthers. Circa 650 of them.
@@lyndoncmp5751 ANY advancing tank or army is going to suffer losses and delays when encountering prepared defences, especially in the bocage where very effective ambushes could be prepared. While the Western Allies suffered delays in breaking out from Normandy, much of this can be attributed to the British forces and Montgomery's poor plan, as well as his disastrous plan for Arnhem. The same, however, cannot be said for Patton's 3rd Army.
@@brucelamberton8819 Gavin didn't take Nijmegen bridge, sat like an idiot and fired at an empty forest.
@@lyndoncmp5751 US forces only encountered significant numbers of tanks once prior to the Battle of the Bulge, and that at Arracourt when the 4th Armored was attacked by the 5th Panzer. The result was a disaster for the Panthers, as obsolete M4's and M10's destroyed the 5th Panzer's 200+ Panthers utterly in open battle.
For that matter the 2nd Armored didn't have that much trouble against the 2nd and 17th Panzer, destroying more tanks than it lost. The USA rolled over the opposition so thoroughly, that the few times we didn't we treat them as abnormal rather than the expected trials of combat.
Yes, there were problems. American tankers were poorly trained to deal with opposing tanks because by doctrine, they weren't supposed to do so. American doctrine was not to attack positions defended by tanks, but to go around and allow the tanks to be attacked by specialized support units. This highlighted the problems of paper doctrine versus the reality of combat, as in real situations this wasn't always possible and it was often in practice a waste of support elements to keep them out of battle awaiting the call to kill tanks. McNair was too slow to approve 76mm upgraded guns on M4s as a result of petty defense of his own doctrinal ideas, and worse he was reluctant to even ship AT rounds to tanks because of the nonsensical idea that if US tankers had AT rounds they'd go looking for trouble. So yeah, things could have been done better.
That said, McNair was absolutely correct in emphasizing logistic concerns as the overriding operational problem.
Good point on the weight. The King Tiger was a disaster. Too damn heavy and they were underpowered.
For it's time, the M24 Chaffee was, even by todays standard, a very modern looking tank.
There were a number of Sherman variants. They seem to talk mostly about the earliest version. Later versions had more armor, a larger gun, and improved engines.
Yes.. cuz the later versions First came til produktion 1944
Also wider tracks to get stuck less.
@@Konghassan No? Except for the 76 which wasn't used until after dday but even then.
but they were slowed down to a crawl and the armor was still not enough to hold one on one against Tigers or Panthers. Shermans were obsolete by Normandy.
@@mrvk39 Shermans out performed German tanks in Normandy...
Tank v tank fighting was less than 10% of a tank’s use. Yet according to CZcams experts this is all a tank should be measured on.
Exactly, they always want to dismiss the numbers factor, as if reality doesn't matter only their daydreams of being a German tank ace do.
Here's a dose of reality for everyone, first off the inside of a Sherman was the safest place for an Allied soldier in the ETO during WW2, Sherman crews had the highest survivability rate of any Allied combat job on the battlefield in the war.
And this next bit of information came right from the horses mouth, in the 80's I was an air defense gunner (Vulcan) stationed in Germany at one point, the German people were very good about taking GI's into their homes during the holidays that couldn't make it back to the States, all you had to do was about a week before the holiday go by the orderly room and sign up on a list and you'd be assigned a German family that you could go and spend that holiday with, it was really nice of them to do it.
I spent Easter of 84 with a family that the father happened to be a tanker in WW2, he was just tickled pink that I was a crewman on an armored vehicle, you'd have thought that we were in some kind of exclusive club or something, the Schnapps flowed.
When we had our week of indoctrination classes when you'd get stationed in Germany you were told not to bring up the war when talking to the generation that lived through it, or pretty much anyone for that matter but especially them, it was just bad taste, him and I were getting along so well I didn't think it would be a bad thing asking him if what I'd heard growing up about the German tanks being superior to ours was true or not, he literally balked at the idea and said "I'll tell you what was superior, that was the number of Sherman's, when there was only one or two of you and ten to fifteen Sherman's come rolling over the hill it was only going to end one way and we knew it".
He also told me that his crew all had an agreement that if they made it back into Germany and were still alive that the first time their tank was disabled from breaking down or running out of ammo or fuel that they'd surrender themselves to the British or better yet the Americans the first chance they got, and it wasn't too long after they were pushed back across the border that something happened and as per their agreement they abandoned the tank and hid in the woods until someone came along they could surrender to, and he said he's always been grateful that it was an American unit that came along since someone in a British unit might just be a little blood thirsty from losing someone in the Blitz or something like that.
His expression when talking about the number of Sherman's they had to deal with is proof that while Sherman crews may have had "Tigerphobia" (which wasn't exclusively limited to just the Tiger tank, it's a blanket term) you can rest assured that the German crews had "Shermanphobia" just the same due to their overwhelming numbers.
@@dukecraig2402 Thanks for that story, Duke!
It should be also pointed out that the German's Mark IV, when fitted with "Schurtzen", superficially resembled a Tiger I from a distance, which proved unintentionally useful once "Tiger-phobia" hit their opponents. Many reported encounters with "Tigers" were actually with the Mark IVs, which were also the most common German tank as it was, and it was understandable that a "greenhorn" would make that faulty identification.
It was far higher than 10% for German tanks. German tanks faced allied armour practically everywhere. The reverse was not the case.
When we compare modern tanks, or tanks from any era, we always use the "holy tank triangle"; firepower, armor and mobility. For some strange reason the only tank in history excused from this is the Sherman. The reason for this is that while the US MBT of today, the Abrams, is highly competive one on one, the Sherman was not - unless it was a "special version"; Firefly (AP firepower), Jumbo (armor) or HVSS (mobility), all of these available only in limited quantities. What they all lacked, with the exception of the Firefly or had access to the very rare 76mm APCR, was firepower to take on well handled Tigers, Panthers or Jagdpanzers. Even the lowly Panzer IV outgunned the Sherman right till the end, thanks to its much better ammo quality. The standard rounds for the US 76mm M1 had a disturbing tendency to shatter - a fact that wasn't discovered untillate 1944. Meanwhile the Germans had improved their Panzergranate 39 already in 1942, after meeting the new, formidable Soviet tanks.
Imagine the scandal it would've been today if an US army was sent overseas with a MTB that could not pierce the front armor of one of its main opponents even at point blank range, while itself could be one-shotted through its thickest armor at 2000+ meters.
I'm not saying the Sherman was a bad tank, far from it - but for a country that made a long string of first class warships and warplanes, it was something of an emberassement. Even the Germans expected the US Army to land in Normandy with the best tank in the world. One Panther commander (Fritz Langanke) sounded almost dissapointed when he said "instead they came with the Sherman, which was no match for a Panther, let alone Tiger. As long as you kept the distance, there was no reason to fear the Sherman."
The Sherman was a good, sensible choice on the strategical level - but much more controversial on the tactical level.
There is a reason for all this: The US Army was playing "catch up". By the time of Pearl Harbor, Germany had already been at war for two years and had improved their tactics; above all they realised their tanks had to been able to fight enemy tanks. As a result they were improving their ammo and AT guns while designing the next generation of tanks; the Panther and Tiger. The US Army did see limited tank vs. tank combat in Europe from late 1942 onwards, but few conclusions could be made from this.
It wasn't until Normandy, when they suddenly faced hundreds of uparmored Panzer IVs, Stugs and Panthers they realised they had a tank crisis on their hand. In the end overwhelming numerical, material, firepower and airpower superiority carried the day, and the end of the war was less than a year away - too short time to really catch up to the Germans - although they came close with the M26 Pershing.
@@TTTT-oc4eb I’m not sure who the “we” you categorise yourself in is, but just about everything you say is standard wehraboo fare. The Germans were fully aware of allied armour that they would be fighting in France - including the Sherman - since North Africa and Italy. Quoting one man’s supposed thoughts is absurd.
The Sherman was the right machine for the job if for logistical reasons alone. All your fantasies of tank v tank combat is nonsensical. Every tank unit would avoid combat with enemy tanks whenever possible in order to fulfil their mission which was rarely “bash up enemy tanks”unless they were dug in to defensive positions. This was the job of anti-tank units and tank destroyers.
As for your claimed superior German armour on Tigers, Panthers and Mk4 tanks I suggest you look up data from both the US and British army following capture of German tanks in France. They actually concluded German armour was so brittle and prone to cracking from even glancing shots that it was little better than standard, unhardened rolled plate. The Germans were desperately trying to match Soviet tank superiority from1942 onwards which was why their machines whilst they were good in theory were hurriedly and poorly designed and manufactured.
The Wehrmacht was chronically short of fuel from 1942 onward. Most of the fuel they consumed in the early stages of the war had been supplied by the Soviet Union. After 1942, they were dependent on Ploesti, which had about 50% of it's capacity taken out by the air raid in August 1943. In 1944, the Red Army over ran both Ploesti and the Hungarian oil fields, leaving Germany with only synthetic crude oil derived from coal. These syn fuel plants were relentlessly bombed, leaving Germany, basically, "out of gas", by early 1945. This crippled both the armored forces and what was left of the Luftwaffe.
The Wehrmacht were chronically short of men from September of 1942 onwards. See rising use of Hilfswilliger, or Hiwis, which reached 600,000 or more in 1944. See need for levees of foreign laborers (drafted from occupied countries, or drawn from PoWs and slave labor) from April 1942 onwards.
And despite controlling or having access to almost all of the industrial and raw material resources of Continental Europe, Soviet Union except, up to early 1944, Germany yielded pretty underwhelming results around provisioning their armed forces. And the Wehrmacht was short of material from late 1941.
Excellent observation! Another anecdote of the principle, "Amateurs talk about tactics, the PROs discuss LOGISTICS".
Rory Gallagherfan,Another point,according to a soldier I served with in 1958/1959,whose father or grandfather was in the German Army as a fuel truck driver,was that the Germans had tank units that used mostly Diesel fuel and other units that were mostly gasoline powered.Very common problem was that the fuel tank truck drivers were dispatched to the wrong unit.According to him it could sometimes take a day or more to get the snafu fixed,while there was a tank unit out of fuel,easy target for aircraft,unable to move out and help in the combat.
@@korvtm Interesting. I thought most AFVs of the Germans ran on petrol? Like the Panzer III, Panzer IV, Panther, Tiger I and Tiger II?
@@michaeldunne338 I thought so too.But that was the story told to me by a young German man who had immigranted to the US then joined the U.S Army.Horst.T.Klim was his name
What's with the sherman bashing? It was one of the most successfull designs of world war 2, in service with some armies until the 80ies. Yes, it wasn't built to take a Tiger one-on-one in an open field, but that's like saying, the Fletcher class destroyers were crap, because they couldn't take on Yamato on their own. The Sherman did, what it was built for: Winning the war, and that is definitively something to be excited about.
If you ask some sailors and the tin can commanders I wouldn't be suprised if they think they could sink the Yamatom
@@peterson7082 Flashback to US Destroyers scaring the shit out of a Japanese commanders and running away with heavier ships
The M3 Grant saw a lot of service in the China-Burma-India Theatre. It remained in front line service there until the end of the war.
It was far better than anything the Japanese had in their inventory.
I heard a British Sandhurst lecturer say
“A lot was made about, you needed 3 or 4 Sherman’s to take out a single Tiger or Panther tank, but on the day you were far more likely to have 3 or 4 Sherman’s than a single Tiger or Panther tank”
So the best tank on western battlefields was the American Sherman , thank you USA, you are amazing!!!!
Edit, and the Sherman was able to take upgrades that probably no other tank achieved.
On a one to one basis the Panzer 4, Panther and Tiger were far superior to the American M4 ( to the British it was the Sherman). However as you point out the M4s we’re always there in superior numbers. Often forget was the M4 was an offensive tank as opposed to the Germans which were essentially defensive tanks. The Allies needed fast maneuverable tanks able to out maneuver set defensive positions. Also crossing destroyed bridges roadways and infrastructure etc with 60 tone monsters would have been totally impractical. Can you imagine a Tiger crossing a Bailey bridge? American mass production was a massive factor in the western Theater of operations. The allies always assumed if the met the Germans in anything of equal numbers they would lose.
@@bazd884thank you for that, you raise some excellent points my favourite of them is how impractical a 60 tones monster would have been for the fact that the M4 Sherman’s were offensive tanks, excellent!
Now regarding the equal numbers, we know to almost ensure victory when you attack an enemy you have to outnumber him 3-1, is this what leads to these story’s or the fact it was decided to move across Europe in a broad line rather than blitzkrieg tactics?
@@hitime2405. Well the Allies really needed huge numbers to basically swamp they’re way to victory German tactics Armor and men were far superior to the western Allies. The western allies seemed unwilling to sacrifice themselves in huge numbers to win victory. Indeed of all the allies only the soviets seemed willing to do this. Interestingly after the Normandy breakouts they moved through France quicker than the Blitzkrieg years. It wasn’t until they reached the borders of the reich itself that Germans were able to often significant resistance.
@@bazd884 excellent again, I didn’t know that about taking France quicker than the Germans did in 1940, and yes the Russians suffered horrendous losses, so proud of all the Allied forces in WWII.
@@hitime2405. The Allies at times moved 50 miles a day through France way and above the German invasion of 1940. It’s amazing to think after the Falaise Pocket the Germans by and large still managed to stay ahead of the advancing Allies. Of course as the Allies supply lines increased the Germans decreased accordingly.
M3 Lee was called by the Soviets “A coffin for seven brothers”. M3 hulls were later used on M7 Priest self-propelled gun.
Ooo that’s were the hull for that howsitzers come from
Yet 4 m3 challenged 2 tigers in Algeria lost 3 m3's but killed both tigers. Note usa built 6500 m3 tanks. Only 1390 tigers built during ww2
Yeah The m3 was actually not a bad tank, a little awkward but most tanks built in the 30’s were. The 75 was a good anti tank gun early war in North Africa. The main reason the m3 was built was because the USA didn’t have the industry to mass produce the big Sherman turret in the 30’s.
The US didn`t took the chance to build up a tank corps with ,, Christi" tanks. The russians took the chance to build the ,, Christis" tank, made it the BT7 and the granddaddy of the T 34.
It kicked ass in the pacific against the Japanese
The task of fighting other tanks was assigned to whoever contronted the enemy tanks. Hence, every U.S. tank carried AP ammunition. You promote a myth.
Re: "The task of fighting other tanks was assigned to whoever contronted the enemy tanks. Hence, every U.S. tank carried AP ammunition. You promote a myth."
U.S. Army Doctrine was that tanks led breakthroughs and supported the infantry, while tank destroyer command was given the mission of hunting down and destroying enemy armor. In reality, this concept proved to be totally unrealistic, in that the battlefield usually proved to be so chaotic and unpredictable that no combat leader, no matter how brilliant, could anticipate every contingency vis-a-vis these different forces and their use. There were a few occasions when things happened according to doctrine, but they were vastly outnumbered by those instances when things happened in a way that confounded U.S. practices and theory.
To add to the problem, there was considerable dissent within and among the top general officers in armor and TD command about what form those forces should take, i.e., towed anti-tank artillery versus self-propelled tank destroyers and other forms of mobile tank-killers. What would be the ideal mix of towed versus mobile AT - and within that, how should those towed guns be used? As a back-stop to mobile operations, or try to have them keep up with rapidly moving armored spearheads, or both? And so on.
Finally, it was decided often down at the operational level in-theater usually, to cut the Gordian knot and to parcel out TD command tank destroyers to augment tank forces. That way, the Shermans and light tanks would have at least some M10s and M36s (and later, M18s) with them in case they were needed. And even in the event they were not, the GIs soon learned that the TDs were excellent weapons in their own right for supporting infantry operations. In Italy and elsewhere, too, enterprising officers and NCOs developed methods of using tank destroyer main guns as indirect-fire weapons much like conventional artillery.
Of course, by war's end, it had pretty much been agreed that the U.S. didn't need tank killers, it just needed "killer" tanks, i.e., better tanks able to combine the two war-time missions into one. Many other nations reached somewhat similar conclusions, which led to the post-war concept of the main battle tank, and its development.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 Well summarized. My uncle was a "red leg." The prime mover for his 155mm was, by Syummer, 1044, armed with two MG 42 machine guns, whatever the theory.
The theory is clear enough:
"FM-17 THE ARMORED DIVISION
WAR DEPARTMENT ARMORED FORCE FIELD MANUAL
EMPLOYMENT OF ARMORED UNITS
. . .
BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR:
G, C. MARSHALL, Chief of Staff.
. . .
b. AGAINST ARMORED UNITS.
1) When enemy armored units are met during a march, attack will be made from march column. The tank units lead the attack. Missions and objectives for subordinate units will be immediately ordered by the division and column commanders. The tank destroyer units well forward in the column may be used to attack and delay the enemy.
(2) Once an enemy armored force is in position to intervene in the battle, its destruction is the main task of our own armored units. The enemy armored units must be attacked and destroyed by all available anti-tank weapons, and by the tank destroyer battalion, even if this entails the abandoning of a previously assigned mission. Although air reconnaissance may give warning of the proximity of enemy armored forces, there will often be little time for a deliberate plan or for detailed orders. Aggressive close reconnaissance must locate the enemy flanks as early as possible."
So much for "Tanks don't fight tanks."
One of the things that drives me nuts is how little the people who pontificate on the Sherman know about the Sherman. Like T-34 it had sloped armor, though just on the front which gave it an effective armor almost as thick as a Tiger, but not nearly as heavy. It's 75MM gun with new AP (HVAP) ammo introduced in 1944 had great penetration though it was, initially, short in the European field. Like the Tiger and other German tanks it was vulnerable on the sides and rear where the armor wasn't sloped and was thinner.
The Sherman, like the German tanks, used a gasoline engine. It actually burned less than German tanks because of it's fire suppression systems. MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH almost all tank fires are from the stowed ammunition. That was a problem early on but the US went to 'wet storage' where the ammo was surrounded a mix of polyethylene glycol and water.
The US tankers themselves PREFERRED the 75mm gun because it's HE was, by a long shot, the best tank-based HE in WWII. And of all the HE available to units, it had the second highest fragmentation rate. And that makes sense as just over 80% of all rounds fired by US Tanks were HE rounds at defensive emplacements.
By the end of the war the Sherman had evolved into the M4A3E8. That tank came with upgraded armor, the HVSS suspension and the 76.2mm gun which had outstanding penetration and could knock out a Tiger-tank straight-on. The 76.2mm gun also used HVAP ammunition.
In the end the US only lost about 2,200 Sherman's world-wide and they killed thousands more tanks than they lost. The tank was fast, accurate and was able to get the drop on it's contemporaries due to it's great visual range and speed. It also had a gyro stabilized gun (either built in or retrofitted) which allowed very accurate fire while moving, something other tanks often couldn't do.
Spot on. The Sherman was a solid tank. Yes, both the Panther (with its 75mm KwK 42 L/70 main gun) and the Tiger (88mm KwK 36 gun) could handle an individual Sherman with relative ease, but by far the most common German tank operating on the Western Front between 1944 and 1945 was the Pz.Kpfw. IV, which pound for pound the Sherman was an even match (in fact, the M4A3 easily outclassed the Pz.Kpfw. IV ). The Panther and Tiger tanks were overengineered, hugely expensive and mechanically unreliable...sometimes having the "best" tank isn't always an advantage.
Most of this is correct or at least generally accurate, but I really don't think that loss figure is even close to being accurate. Most reputable sources (I.E, Steve Zaloga) put the total number of American Shermans lost in the ETO (1944-1945) at around 4200 - 4500 with an additional ~2,700 lost in British service. Add in tanks lost in Italy/Sicily (around 1.1k American, unknown British), North Africa, and the Pacific as well as tanks in Soviet service, and the loss totals likely is at least around the ~9,000 mark. Now some of these figures may be counting tanks that were "lost" and returned to service (like how Soviet tank losses often include tanks that were brought back into service), but I'm sure that those aren't a very significant number of the cases and it really doesn't matter regardless.
Now none of this really says anything wrong about the Sherman, it really was a very good tank, and the losses it suffered are entirely expected considering the fact that it was used in every theater of the war in constant offensive combat in the most intense ground war in history, its just important to get the numbers right as to not create a false impression.
@@iiiiii_2212 I think for the frontline army officers, they would like to count the "temporary loss" tanks into the "loss" statistic, that would give them enough reasons to ask for reinforcement. LoL.
The 75mm M3 was never issued with any HVAP rounds. Nor did the M4A3 HVSS come with any improved armour.
The US lost far more than just 2200 Shermans, heck their own records show that they had lost around close to 4500 Shermans in the ETO, another 1100 in the MTO, and I believe something like 500 or so in the PTO.
Sherman didn't have any speed advantage of its opponents, nor did it have great visual range.
You accuse others that they 'read the usual history trash that everybody knows' but seeing how much you get wrong I don't see how you're any better.
The Tommy cooker
The Shermans reliability across the world in every environment and every theater is what made it special.
Tigers had a habit of not even being able to get itself to the front under it's own power.
Why waste fuel and wear if you can use rail or tractor-trailers as is done today?
@@stevepodleski That's how it is. Wise opinions have little likes. There you have mine.
If I'm not mistaken they got most of the issues on the tigers and ended up with around a 80% reliability issue was they couldn't make the parts to keep them up. They were also pricey and gas ran out. But everyone knows that
The Tiger was designed on purpose to use trains to move between locations where it was needed since it was first and foremost designed as a breakthrough tanks, so moving a long distance on its own power was not necessarily
Considering these things (The M4) had to be shipped half way around the world, cross over all kinds of bridges, and not break down every six miles, they did better than decently.
Were they the best? Probably not. But the best might be the easiest to put the most into production.
they did have the best crew survivability rate of any tank
My uncle drove a Sherman tank under Patton. He had 12 battle stars and two purple hearts. One of the good things about the Sherman was that the crew could get out quickly. Those tanks were often disabled and the crew would get out and run away from it before it got hit a second time. Then they would get back to the lines and get another tank. Those tank crews were tough.
@@herbb8547 my Dad drove a M5A1 for a Tank Destroyer unit in the 9th Army under the English in the North!
@@joeclare89 That is something to be proud of. My dad was a medic in the 88th division.
@@joeclare89 of US tanks. The Churchill had a better survivability rate.
"We all know the artillery won the war."
-George S. Patton, addressing a formation of troops after the war.
I always get annoyed at the comparisons between German and US tanks. The Panthers and Tigers in Europe were best suited to their defensive role and were happy for the Allied tanks to roll in onto them. However, these vehicles were never the ones that did the Blitzkrieg in 1940 and would never have completed the sweeping moves in Poland and France. They were incapable of it. Where as the Shermans rolled for hundreds of miles and kept on ticking. They did not break themselves and did get multiple upgrades in weaponry and drive systems and the first STAB systems. The original 75mm gun was a trade off being able to take on tanks and static defences with HE. It was the equal of Panzer III's and IV's with better cross country performance. The guns of the late Panzer III's and IV's were brutal but most tanks died if hit first. As for the Grant tank. Given the end of its role in the desert it switched to Asia where it gave the Japanese a severe kicking because they had nothing to compete. Had McArthur not been a dickhead, they would have been more instrumental in taking down the Japanese in New Guinea, but he rushed things and had unsupported infantry attack layered defences head on.
What you should be comparing them to is the T34.
T34 was, hands down, the best tank of WW2.
Sloped armour, wide tracks, cheap to produce, easy to maintain, reliable. Upgunned to the T34-85 towards the end of the war, and supported by all the other armour that used the same platform, the Soviets could deal with pretty much any German formation.
Obviously the T34 was the most effective tank of WW2. Simples!
@Dan A, you forget that the cost immediately goes up when you mention the T34 85, so technically it was really only cheep for the start of the war
What’s often overlooked and the footage shows is the logistical problem of delivering heavy tanks, such as the Tiger, to the combat area by sea. This must have dominated allied thinking and played a large part in tank design.
All WW2 tanks had plenty of mechanical issues, were high maintenance and broke down - a lot. The Sherman included. The difference between the Germans and the Allieds were really the huge number of replacement tanks available to the Western allies.
As for reliability, the Tiger was about on the same level as the Panzer IV, the Panther only slightly worse. All had an availability rate of about 70% in 1944. The Sherman, without replacement tanks, had an availability rate of about 80% (as shown in Korea).
Andrew Revell,
But only a few years later the Americans were delivering Pershings and Pattons by sea to Korea and the British were delivering Centurions by sea there too.
In WW2, both Tigers and Churchills were delivered by sea to North Africa.
Hmm... I have heard many speakers say that the Sherman was the best tank in the world at release. Its combo of effective sloped armor, plenty of gun to take on Panzer 4s (best the Germans had when Sherman released), its high speed and agility combined with its excellent reliability and ease of maintenance meant that Sherman Battalions were at or near full strength when needed. As it aged, it received numerous upgrades, although it probably lost the title of number 1 towards the end of the war. The 76mm using HVAP Was quite deadly to Panthers and Tiger 1s, although the number of fights between American tanks and Tiger 1's was very limited. Before the Bulge almost all Tiger 1 and Tiger 2 production went east. Some Panthers went west, but most, and I mean most of the 6000 or so made went east. The fact that the 75mm solid shot AT rounds could not penetrate a Panther's front armor was unexpected. Oops. The Firefly's 17 pounder, using an early version of APDS, and the 76mm using HVAP were fine against Panthers. It took a while for American planners to get the proper combo into the tanker's hands, and when they did the Sherman's numeric superiority overwhelmed the Germans in the big battles until the Bulge. On the Pershing - there was no politics on the Pershing. It was not ready for deployment during WW2. It had numerous issues regarding its powerplant and transmission that gave it the KV1 disease - too little engine for what was overall a pretty tough vehicle. Armored Force rejected the Pershing in late December of 1944 (while the Bulge was in full swing) as not battleworthy due to several pages of problems (mostly related to the powertrain). The fact that it was too heavy to ship from the USA in one piece (exceeded a liberty ship's crane capacity of 40 tons) and would not fit on a standard freight car were other things that Armored Force was concerned about. The engine problems really reared their ugly head in Korea, where they broke down with unnerving frequency. When the Pershings were running, they obliterated the T34-85s with a really unbalanced kill ratio. Instead of fixing the Pershing it was replaced by the M46 Patton by the end of the war, using a much stronger powertrain.
Most people that complain about politics delaying the M26 ignore the fact that the M26 was ultimately a stop gap tank similar to the M3 Lee, which was rushed into combat. If politics didn't delay the M26, it wouldn't have existed. It started life as the T20/T22 medium tank, which was the project to replace the M4 Sherman with a tank that had the same weight and firepower, but a lower profile. That project got delayed when it was decided that a the proposed medium tank's advantages weren't worth retooling to support a second medium tank, and the T20's turret could be mounted on existing M4's (which was an intended design feature). The main thing that delayed the M26 was a lack of perceived need for a heavy tank, because prior to the Battle of the Bugle, US commanders weren't demanding one. Had in fact there been a perceived need in the field for a heavy tank, the M26 would have still probably been delayed in favor of fielding the M6 which was a) designed as a heavy tank and b) was ready to produce. When the M26 was rushed out the door, it was 10 tons over the original design weight of its engine, transmission, and suspension because all of that had been designed for a tank the size of the M4.
It's very difficult to imagine a situation that would have seen the M26 recognized as the basis of future AFV's early enough to get it ready sooner than it was given the history. It would have required essentially in 1941, someone recognizing what the proper shape of a Main Battle Tank was going to be AND someone prioritizing getting an engine ready with the horsepower to effectively move a 50 ton tank that could fit into a hull of that shape. In other words, it would have to have envision what was going to be the M46 prior to going through the experiences of producing the M4, M6, and T20.
Ironically, the USA did have an effective 90mm gun tank - the M36. And it produced over a thousand of them, and it did excellent service in the Battle of the Bulge, but because we didn't call it a tank and because it wasn't as promoted in the public imagination as the M18 "Hellcat", it gets very little credit.
Very enjoyable video.
For those who have watched far to many of such videos as this or think they know something about these tanks because of these kinda videos I highly recommend checking out guys like The Chieftain and his in depth discussions and research into the context surrounding tanks from all sides of the war. So much is glossed over or just left out and I bet you will be surprised and learn some very interesting things as to the designs, reasoning, and actual performance of many tanks that have been badly misrepresented by so many "History" videos or by books like Death Traps over the years. Me being one of such people. I grew up on History Channel and other such shows and videos and finding guys like Chieftain and seeing the actually numbers, reasons, and actual paper trails showing how and why as well as how they performed overall in the war not just in single scenario opened my eyes.
When you watch old war film footage, frequently you see sandbags or a spare track stacked in front of the barrel. Might have stopped a 37mm, probably not a 75 mm, and certainly not an 88mm artillery round. Later in the war they did mount a much more effective cannon on the turret. And quantity has a quality all of its own. Also, when the Germans brought Tigers and especially King Tigers to France, frequently there were key bridges that their tanks were too heavy to bear their weight.
@ Jacques - The Sherman crews lamented most not the lack of armor protection, but the lack of a gun sufficient to pierce the armor of the best late-war German tanks and AFVs. That's what really dispirited them, seeing their shots bounce off the sloped armor of a Panther or the thick frontal armor of a Tiger or one of the excellent German TDs.
The sandbags, timbers, tread links were more for protection from shaped-charged weapons than for Tank cannon and anti-tank gun ordinance.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 Yes, to be effective they had to come at the side of the Panzer IV, and this was hard to do of course, that's where the numbers counted with swarm attacks. The Germans were able to examine the bazookas when they defeated us at Kasserine Pass, the recoilless rifle had the shaped charge penetrator, it was a brilliant design but insufficiently powerful enough to punch through the frontal armor of the Panzer IV German tank. The design inspired the Germans to develop the powerful Panzershreck, and later the more effective Panzerfaust, the Bazooka just simply was not as effective. But it was the FIRST of its type. America did not have an effective enough shaped charge penetrator until the development of the Super Bazooka, which came too late for WWII, but was very effectively used in the Korean War. But, like Stalin said, quantity has a quality all its own. The Germans did think that the Sherman was good enough, when captured, to repaint and put its own markings on them and put them into service. And later in WWII, we put a larger 16 inch gun on it which gave it a stronger punch, although it was still vulnerable armor-wise. Also late in the War we came up with the more powerful Pershing tank, but it was too late in the war and in insufficient numbers to play a significant role until Korea.
@@jacqueslefave4296 - Many of the major combatants in the war had shaped-charge weapons, including the U.S. but also Britain, Germany and others. Not everyone made the leap to using them in anti-tank rockets or warheads, but shaped charge explosives were used by German paratroops (Fallschirmjäger) to defeat the supposedly impregnable bunkers at Eben-Emael in the 1940 invasion of Belgium. The British had the PIAT anti-tank projector, which - despite its ungainly appearance - was actually a decent-enough weapon provided the soldier could get within range of the target.
The "Super Bazooka" was very nearly an exact copy of the Panzershrek, in terms of its bore size. It didn't appear in numbers until Korea 1950-1953. However, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps did debut another class of weapon which used shaped charges before the end of WW2, namely the recoilless rifle. It saw action late in the war in the ETO - airborne forces dropped across the Rhine had them, and also U.S. forces on Okinawa. SC warheads were anatural fit for recoilless rifles, since that type of weapon can't rely on high MV or KE to penetrate or destroy targets; it needs to rely on the explosive energy of the warhead. Too high of an rotation rate (spin) however, degrades the gas plasma jet utilized by such weapons, a problem which RR designs had to overcome.
Re: "And later in WWII, we put a larger 16 inch gun on it which gave it a stronger punch, although it was still vulnerable armor-wise."
This is typo ("16 inch gun") on your part, I assume. In U.S. service, the Sherman was upgraded from the short-barreled 75mm M3 gun to the 76mm high-velocity gun. The greatest difference between the two was not bore size or caliber, which was obviously very similar, but the length of the barrel on the newer weapon and the size of the propellant case, which was substantially larger on the 76mm than the old 75mm. Many tank platoons kept a few of the old 75mm-equipped tanks around because the 75mm threw an excellent HE shell, even if its AT performance was by then marginal.
I am of the opinion that the M26 Pershing was an excellent design, and had it been introduced sooner, especially in numbers, it might have aided in lessening U.S. tank crew casualties and vehicle losses, and perhaps even in shortening the war. Obviously, since that did not happen, there is no way to know for certain what its impact would have been. The Sherman was adequate, and won the war, just as the Russian T34 was adequate and did the same for the Red Army in the East.
I've seen those captured Shermans put back into service with German markings. By that time in the war, German losses were starting to become severe-enough that they were utilizing captured enemy equipment of all kinds, whether Soviet, British, American or whatever. German Waffen-SS troops were photographed in the Battle of the Ardennes Forest (Battle of the Bulge) using captured U.S. M-1 Carbines. Of course, infantrymen in all wars tend to collect souvenirs and captured loot from the enemy, whether weapons or other things. American troops went to great lengths to get Luger 1908 pistols or MP38/40 SMGs.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 Thank you, I had forgotten to mention the PIAT, an effective warhead, it was essentially a spigot mortar that was shoulder mounted. I understand that it took a lot of brute force to do the initial cocking of the weapon, after that the "recoil" (I use the term loosely) would automatically cock it. I admire the courage of the British soldiers for how close they had to get. I might as well mention the British "Sticky bomb", and the Germans had that hand applied three legged magnetic shaped charge penetrator that was an effective armor penetrator, but so was the Sticky bomb but I think that the Sticky bomb was superior because it could be applied to non-magnetic surfaces, blow through doors and even walls up to a certain thickness.
I think that the Germans had us beat on the grenade, their stick grenade could be thrown 3X as far as our "Pineapple" grenade and the similar British Mills bomb, and perhaps more importantly, it generally stayed put where it landed. Also, it was a good concussion grenade and could quickly be converted to a fragmentation grenade by slipping on a crenellated cast iron jacket.
I should add that to their credit, the Soviets bore the main burden of winning that war, we Americans won the Pacific war. Our lend-lease aid was a bargain for their sacrifice. The British carry the prize for standing in the gap alone for a critical year. And a shout-out for the Poles in the RAF. And the French underground for causing the Germans a major headache.
Repeating myths is not "history."
Nothing new, in fact this is just a rehash of old and out of date material.
Good clip :)
Correction: only 20 pershings were shipped over to europe and it was understandable considering the fact that it was about on par with the panther in reliability. This was appaling by american standards since the tanks they shipped over were expected to last more than 1500 miles without having to replace vital components like an engine.
Outdated and boring. most of the information in the video is just regurgitated crap and reaching mostly wrong conclusions. Do yourself a favor and skip it.
Yup even the opening line is wrong. Misconceptions about doctrine again.
When it first saw combat in 1942 in North Africa , it was superior to anything that the Germans were able to field against it . It had superior armour to the Panzer iii or IV at that time and had a better gun .
This would all change as newer German vehicles entered service , but when introduced , it was state of the art .
Germans knew they would be on the defensive for the rest of the war. Also the American Sherman’s were proving to be excellent at all roles and they were advancing day to day. Why change the formula?
@Prime Artemis the Tiger was pretty much an all round failure, so yes the M4 was a far better tank.
Scott Collingwood,
The Tiger was a very successful tank and had the highest kill ratio of any tank of WW2. It slowed and halted plenty of allied advances, even as late at April 1945 when a single Tiger of Panzerdivision Clausewitz held up the entire advance of British 3rd Royal Tank Regiment on Sassendorf on 9th April.
Anthony Mcdonald
The Sherman 75mm was not a better gun than the Panzer IVs 75mm L/43 which began equipping Panzer IVs from summer 1942. And the Tiger I greatly outclassed it in most aspects, as shown by the decimation they caused on Shermans in Tunisia such as Tebourba, Sidi-bou-Zid, Maknassy and Tunis.
For the loss of only around 10 Tigers in combat in Tunisia, the circa 30 Tigers deployed there took out around 200 allied tanks, a great many of them Shermans.
@@lyndoncmp5751 I fully agree with you on saying the Tiger was a successful tank, however this does not make the M4 Sherman a bad tank. It was a very capable tank with a very capable gun, and it was a dedicated tank destroyer. If given the chance, the US Army would send a tank destroy to knock out a Tiger instead of a Sherman.
I would make a point regarding the M3 medium tank. Production did not stop til well into 1944 and the type was used by Commonwealth troops in CBI theater into 1945 against the Japanese.
I think you will find that production of M3 Lee/Grant as tanks stopped in 1942. It was just a stop-gap weapon system until the Sherman was produced. And once the Shermans were available in numbers the M3 Grant was withdrawn from service against the Germans. But they weren't so obsolete going up against what the Japanese were fielding and saw extensive use in Burma. You are correct there.
Not to say that M3 Lee chassis were not still being built as the self-propelled guns built on this platform were still being manufactured in 1945. Just no one was building M3 medium tanks after 1942.
I think you may have your dates confused with the M3 Stuart tank (confusing American naming conventions, an M3 medium tank is a different piece of equipment than an M3 light tank) which was produced on into 1944 and also saw significant use against the Japanese.
@@iansneddon2956 Weren't the first "Kangaroo" armored personnel carriers based on Lees, or the M7 self propelled variant that originally were Lees? Ones that were pulled out of action, or sitting in motor pools, and heavily modified to carry troops?
@@iansneddon2956 The M7A "Priest" (named for the pulpit-like machine gun cupola) was based on the M3 chassis, which was excellent...from an AUTOMOTIVE viewpoint.
There were enough "leftover" M3 "Grants" or "Lee" tanks to equip Commonwealth forces in the CBI theater, and the Aussies in New Guinea, as this tank still outclassed what few tanks the Japanese had, like the Type 95 "Ha-Go".
The M3 hull was used for self-propelled gun motor carriages and armor retrieval vehicles. Those repaired at rear depots often left without their turret and sponsor gun for use as prime movers towing heavy artillery pieces.
The deciding factor on design of WW2 US tanks were weight. Every one had to be loaded on ships and transported across oceans. You can get almost double the number of Sherman's on a ship than Persians. The Germans had no such problems. All their armor had to do is fit on a railcar.
Germany had the home field advantage.
Even rail flat-cars were a problem for the Germans when it came to the Tiger series of heavy tanks. The standard road-wheels and suspension on the Tiger I were too wide, so prior to loading the tank, it had to have a special narrow track fitted after the outer road wheels were removed. At the destination for unloading, the process had to be done in reverse. I don't know about the King Tiger, but assume it was as bad or worse in that department due to its enormous weight and size.
As the war went on and Anglo-American interdiction of RR lines in occupied Europe and Germany became more and more of a problem, this too had to be factored into the time and effort needed to get these behemoths to the front.
Many of the leading Panzer Generals preferred the Mk. IV series of medium tanks, especially for fast-moving offensive operations, since they were of a much more manageable size and weight, and because they tended to be less prone to breakdowns mechanically, less apt to get bogged down in soft ground, and because they consumed less fuel. And since these tanks possessed a formidable long-barreled 75mm cannon, they hit hard, too.
ok no, the physical US army doctrine book at the time said that ALL tanks are to be used against other tanks, so the beginning of the video is just wrong. The Sherman had the same effective frontal armor as a Tiger, there were three times Tigers were seen in France, first time Shermans won, second time perishings lost, and the third time they were taken out by air craft when they were being loaded onto plains. if you look at tank battles at the time, the side that fired first almost always won, so the out gunned argument doesn't hold much water.
Not this old stuff again. You've been watching too much Chieftain.
1. Tiger Is armour was up to 130mm effective on the front due to the unique nickel steel chemical composition, the 265 Brinell Hardness and the angling (24 degrees on the nose plate).
2. There were circa 150 Tigers deployed to France, in 3 battalions SS101, SS102 and the army's 503). While the British and Canadians faced all of the Tiger
Is in Normandy, the US did encounter Tiger IIs of battalion 503 and SS101 as they neared Paris.
@@lyndoncmp5751 first off your math is way off, at 24 degrees 100mm of armor is about 109 mm effective.
Second tank on tank battles were very rare, there wer about 5 on the western front (battle of hannut, Arracourt, and battle of the bulge, arras, and Hürtgen Forest) what you are talking about is the tank in combat, what I was talking bout was tank vs tank combat.
The Sherman's 75mm gun might not be powerful enough to disable both the Tiger 1 and Panther in frontal confrontation, but on the sides and rear, a Sherman can take out both panzers, also the Sherman did well against the Pz III and IV, their armor weren't as thick as the armor of the Panther, Tiger 1 and King Tiger.
This is an EXCELLENT point. Actual encounters with the feared German "Big Cats" were relatively rare. If the Germans actually had as many Tiger tanks as is depicted in so many comic books, novels, and movies, they'd likely have driven the Allied landing at Normandy back into the English Channel, assuming they could find enough gasoline and get it to the front! The M4 Sherman compared favorably to the most common Panzerwaffe offering, the Mark IV, even the "Special" version, in terms of armor protection, firepower, and mobility. Most Shermans that were taken out fell victim, not to German "panzers", but to their tank destroyers and/or assault guns, like the Sturmgeschutz III, the "Hetzer", and the JagPanther, or to infantry, especially kids from the "HitlerJugend", carrying Panzerfausts, towed anti-tank guns, and MINES. Losing tanks is part of the game when conducting offensive operations against a well-prepared and determined opponent.
Most crews didn't want to upgrade to the 76mm because it was so much less effective against infantry and soft targets than the 75. Most crews wanted the 105mm howitzer version.
This is the most important thing people need to realise when they talk about the early Sherman's gun being inadequate against armour. They didn't want it to be adequate against armour. On the rare occasion they came across a German tank they would use tank destroyers, artillery or air support to deal with it.
Douglas Self,
The Panther was more prevalent than the Panzer IV after Normandy and more Panthers than Panzer IVs were encountered in Market Garden, Lorraine, Aachen, Hurtgen, Ardennes and Rhineland.
The Canadian 28th Armoured Regiment lost a whopping 44 Shermans in one day (August 9th 1944) to smaller numbers of Tigers of SS101 and Panthers of 12th SS at Estrees la Campagne during Operation Totalize.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Look up the battle of arracourt. Germans lost 2 entire panzer brigades or almost 300 factory-fresh tigers and panthers vs. a smaller force of mostly shermans. Wasn't one day but still, shows armor and guns aren't everything
A tank is useless if it breaks down on the way to the battlefield
the very first statement of this video shows that they didn't do much research. as far as the m26 is concerned the ground forces were basically ordered to use an untested machine that they were not trained on at all. the machines sent weren't even standardized... they were still T26 tanks not M26. also the super pershing was an up armored pershing due to the pershing losing it's only battle with the tiger 1.
On March 26th, 1945 the T26E3 was standardized as the M26.
@@peterson7082 regardless the reason was clear the tank was not tested as well as other tanks and it was stated that they would not take delivery of heavy tank t26 . It was a compromise that the t26 would be tested in combat in a very small number.
It was Korea where the m26's poor design would really rear its ugly head and be replaced with the older m4 until sufficient m46's were delivered to the military
Can you please make a video of Soviet tank destroyers of WW2?
Yes, Noted.
@@FactBytes Thank you.🙏❤️❤️❤️👍
HI, GOOD INFO AND SOME CLIPS I HADN'T SEEN BEFORE, BUT SOME WERE A LITTLE BLURRY, AND NEED "ENHANCING" . BUT THE WORST REASON WHY I CAN'T SUBSCRIBE TO YOU IS THAT NOT ONLY DO YOU HAVE TO SHOW YOU ICON IN THE LOWER CORNER FOR THE WHOLE VIDEO, BUT YOU JUST HAD TO PAINT IT BRIGHT RED SO I NOTICED AND REMEMBERED IT?? WELL GOOD JOB!! I DID NOTICE IT!! IT DISTRACTED ME, AND KEPT ME FROM ENJOYING THE SHOW!! GET RID OF THE DAMN THING!!!!!
With the sherman you would also be guaranteed they would show up on the battlefield. Not so Tiger and panther.
Also, most of the rounds fired by the sherman were against bunkers and personnel not other tanks. The 75 was very effective in that role.
Some of those tanks were using airplane radial engines. Not the usual in-line engines.
That's b/c the aircraft radial engines were AIR-COOLED, and at the time they were being readied for production, we were contemplating action in North Africa, which is mostly...DESERT. Likewise the Japanese tanks, being designed, such as they were, to fight in Manchuria, which is quite arid itself, had rather excellent and versatile air-cooled diesel engines, which also tolerated well the various and often poor quality of what diesel they could supply.
@@selfdo one advantage flying a radial engine is a that single pistonl can be damaged but it can continually to fly on , unlike the inline engine a single shot in the engine block manifolds would render it a complete stop.
@@robertotamesis1783 Yes, an AIR-cooled radial can sustain more damage before the engine seizes up and/or catches fire. I've heard of engines "blowing a jug" and they continued on, albeit at quite reduced power, at least enough to find a nearby airport and come in for a relatively safe landing.
@@selfdo Do remember that P-47B who suffered series of attacks from Bf-109 canon fire , then a Fw.190 came by to give him the coup de gras 3x he tried until he ran out bullets the German ace Hans Meyers saluted the American P-47 , I heard in history the early FW.190-A2 were not equipped with 20-mm canon not yet but something equivalent to a 50 caliber . Up to now I'm still shacking head , is the P-47 a flying tank.
The Army used the Wright R975 radial engine since there were warehouses full of those as used and surplus commercial aircraft engines. The commercial aircraft industry had switched over to using the new and more powerful Wright radial engine so stored the old ones along with their stock of replacement parts to sell or use later if needed. The Army tried some out in their 1930's combat car to reduce weight and their length to find those were liked by the drivers and tank mechanics. They declared the combat car obsolete in 1939 but continued to use the R975 since those were cheap, available and still in production by Wright for the export market.
This should not be debated ad infinitum. The miracle of the Sherman tank is that America was able to get it, along with crews, ammo, fuel, spare parts and maintenance crews, across the oceans in numbers large enough to win. If we’d been building a tank to fight in Mexico or Canada it would have been an entirely different tank. The Sherman was the right tank.
Sherman would only be the most reliable tank in WW2 smh
I disagree. I'd say, we won DESPITE Sherman. You are right that it was easy and cheap to produce and transport and it was reliable and very-well supplied. But, in all major characteristics it was hopelessly inferior to German armor of the late WWII period. We won that war because of our air dominance and scale of armor force, which hid the obsolesce of Shermans. US planners should've planned for Sherman replacements as early as 1941-2. It was entirely possible to mass produce the Pershing in sufficient numbers by 1944.
@@mrvk39 What are major characteristics? Because if you start treating WWII like World of Tanks is an accurate simulation of it, I'm going to tune you out. Lethal blast radius of explosive fragments of the HE round is a major characteristic of a tank, if you are fighting infantry and AT guns and other field pieces, but that probably doesn't show up in your list.
Would it have been nice to have M46's in 1944? Sure. But the M26 was not a strictly superior replacement for the M4. It used too much gas. It weighed to much to be transported easily. It had the M4's power train but weighed 10 tons more. So replacing all M4's with as many M26's as we could make probably would have degraded war effort, delayed victory, and even got more people killed. (For infantry, a supporting tank however theoretically unoptimal is still better than no supporting tank.)
During the entire war, there were only like 5 encounters between M4's in American service and Tigers. And while the Panther was a superior tank in tank vs. tank combat, as a practical matter it still got beat by the Sherman without the mythical 5:1 advantages claimed in some media.
Had the M4 not been the best tank of the war, we just would have fielded the M22 mid-war, which weighed less, had a better gun, had the same thickness of armor but better slope and a lower hull profile, better floatation and a better power to weight ratio. But it wasn't like the troops were clamoring for a better tank, and the whole myth that most tankers were quaking in the boots in fear of German armor is just a myth. The guys that found out the hard way that they couldn't take on heavy German armor when it was hulldown in a defensive position from the front were the rare exceptions. For the most part, US armor was rolling across France dominating the battlefield, and no one was paying enough attention to the few times it wasn't.
There probably wasn't a way to get to something as effective as an M46 before the end of the war, because the M4 ended the war so quickly.
@@celebrim1 I will be the last person to pretend its the World of Tanks. However, I say US got simply very, very lucky that it had superior air power and that vast majority of Tigers and Panthers burned down on the Eastern Front. Without these two factors, US would've had a far harder time winning the war with far more casualties because Shermans were no match for German armor.
Characteristics I talk about is everything from its inadequate armor, it's base ill-suited for upgrades like better armor and gun, it's high profile, etc etc. If you compare it to Soviet tanks of late war era and to German tanks, it is clearly inferior.
I reject your arguments about "5 encounters" and "had it not been the best tank, we would've" - it was a good enough tank AFTER accounting for US air dominance and the fact that Germans had most of their armor deployed and destroyed in the East.
@@mrvk39 I mean I feel it's a pretty unremarkable truism to say that if we didn't have air superiority and were facing superior forces that we would have had a harder time. I don't know that you are saying anything substantial in saying that that. The Army doctrine however assumed air superiority was a necessary component of successful combined arms, as demonstrated by the Germans themselves in their successful invasions. So there was never going to be a situation where we didn't prioritize air superiority over armored dominance. It wasn't luck that we dominated the skies over France and Germany. If anyone was "lucky" it was lucky for the USSR that we had most of the German air force tied up in the West, so that Germany didn't enjoy the complete air superiority over Russia it otherwise would have.
As for US armor versus Nazi armor, once again, neither side lost most of their tanks to other tanks, which shows just how irrelevant armored dominance was. Had the Germans actually massed heavy armor against US forces, it just would have meant that all those underutilized Tank Destroyer battalions with their M10s, M18s, and M36s would have got more of a workout as they had been intended for that very eventuality. The only time the US Tank Destroyer forces actually worked as intended was in the Battle of the Bulge when in fact the Germans did mass heavy armor. And they chewed up German heavy armor quite nicely. And more of that that would have just triggered more deployment of TD's and acceleration of the 76mm M1 deployment as well as possibly a perceived battlefield need for a heavy tank. We still would have flooded the theater with effective infantry support tanks.
As for your rejection of the few times the Tiger encountered US tanks, the Panther was encountered quite often. Yet, when the Germans massed 200 of them at Arracourt, and they still had 80 of them charging in an open field after the Air Force got through with them, the 4th Armored still chewed them up using only obsolete M10's and M4's with the short barreled 75's with the Sherman getting a positive kill ratio against the Panther. So, I reject that we won despite the M4 Sherman. I suggest the M4 Sherman was the most successful tank of the war. It wasn't intended to fight tanks. We had other weapons systems to do that. But when it had to, it still did pretty good - a few nasty individual encounters were all the German armor advantages lined up perfectly aside.
I mean, but off course a mid-war 34 ton tank is inferior to late war 50 and 60 ton tanks. So? The rare German heavy made little impact on the course of the war because we weren't generally just wasting men and material like the Soviets. Armored dominance wasn't even a thing particularly worth fighting over. In a sense, the Germans were wasting their time and money on big AFVs. The successful armies both focused on lots of medium tanks. We deployed ours better.
Fundamentally you are stuck on the idea that we deployed the wrong or inferior tank. We didn't. We deployed the best tank in the weight class, which was the heaviest tank that could be mobile at an operational/strategic level, fully aware that it wouldn't be a match for a heavy tank, but full aware it would be deployed in a combined arms situation that would render that irrelevant at a strategic scale. It had the best armor layout of any medium tank, with its front plate nearly as effective as a Tiger front plate. It didn't try to be invincible because armor tech of the day didn't allow a tank to be invincible, as the Germans continually learned to their loss. It has a few minor faults like poor floatation and inadequate AT ammo, but most of that was largely corrected by the end of the war. Even at a tactical scale, most of the time, it did the job when it needed to.
Another good feature here.....Keep it up guys!
Incredible video, FactBytes !!!!! The details all presented in the video is amazing!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️👏👏👏👌
Thanks Kevin
@@FactBytes 😁😁❤️❤️
The 75mm gun was nothing special ? It had a VERY EFFECTIVE high explosive round that was WELL LIKED by AMERICAN , BRITISH , AND SOVIET tank crews. Granted, it was ineffective against PANTHER and TIGER at all but the closest ranges. But it could MORE THAN hold its own against MK. IV panzer which was more prevalent than TIGER or PANTHER on the battlefield! It actually was the 76mm that fits the NOTHING SPECIAL category. Although it COULD (76mm) penetrate tiger at 1000m, tiger and panther could take out sherman at 2000m. And high explosive shell was LESS effective than 75mm. So.........................
Re: "It actually was the 76mm that fits the NOTHING SPECIAL category. Although it COULD (76mm) penetrate tiger at 1000m, tiger and panther could take out sherman at 2000m. And high explosive shell was LESS effective than 75mm. So........................."
The low-velocity 75mm M3 gun was not designed exclusively by tankers at all, but by a board of artillerymen not all of whom had tank experience. They were concerned about premature barrel burnout, not grasping that the nature of a high-velocity flat-trajectory gun like an AT or AA gun means higher-operating pressures (leading to higher muzzle velocities and better performance in those roles), hence shorter barrel life. So they equipped the tank with an all-purpose gun which was good for general missions not involving ant-armor operations, but mediocre as an anti-tank weapon.
The 76mm gun itself was not a bad design at all. Its inherent flaw was that its propellant capacity was insufficient to equal -let alone surpass - the performance of comparable Allied and German guns such as the British 17-pounder Ordnance QF gun, or the German Pak 75 or 88mm dual purpose guns. Later in the war, the deficit in muzzle velocity was made up to some degree, but the 76mm gun never lived up to the hype which preceded its adoption.
Other armies managed to design tank guns which fulfilled both roles well - anti-armor use and general use - so we can infer that good all-around performance was at least possible. The failure, therefore, was somewhere inside the U.S. ordnance development establishment. And to be clear, it isn't as if U.S. guns were in any sense "bad," they just lagged behind their contemporaries at times in certain areas. And some of our artillery weapons were superb, and were envied by enemy forces.
M4 "It is admitted that American tanks played a great part in the Battle of Egypt. America has been in this war for only a year. Why is it that in that short time she has been able to produce a first-class tank like the General Sherman whereas Great Britain, after three years of war and several years of preparation before the war, has not been able to do so." below 245
Hansard DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS 17 November 1942 (on line)
FactBytes, was the M26 Pershing a medium tank or a heavy tank?
The prototype began as a medium tank upgrade of the M4 Sherman, and ended as the U.S. Army's first operational "heavy" tank.
@@FactBytes Thank you for the info. Different sources tell me that after WW2, the Pershing was a heavy tank. But after the Korean War, it was classified as a medium tank.
@@kevinbabu8919 First prototype was a medium tank, then later it got reclassified as a heavy tank and then in 1946 it was again reclassified as a medium tank.
@@Dreachon Ok thanks bro. 😁😁
@@kevinbabu8919 Prior to October, 1944 it was a medium and until May, 1946 it was a heavy.
Considering the US won most battles it fought in during the war with comparatively light casualties compared to their opponents in said battles, I'd say they did great.
The September 1944 tank battle at Arrancourt being an outstanding examples...25 tanks of the 4th Armored's Combat Command "A" lost against almost TWO HUNDRED of the vaunted panzers, almost HALF being brand-new Panthers. Trouble for the Germans was, with the attack being literally thrown together in a desperate attempt to stop Patton's Third Army from resuming the offensive ("Georgie" had been halted on August 31, 1944, by a cutoff of gasoline, diverted to "Monty" to take Belgium, especially Antwerp, and ready for "Market-Garden"), the tank commanders and crew were ALSO "new", and had very little training, and their inexperience showed. The only positive thing the Germans got from that fiasco was they bought time to reinforce Metz, but it came at a price that would later haunt them in the Ardennes offensive, as those tanks and crews were sorely missed.
When the British and commonwealth forces received the Stuart in North Africa they really liked it. It was a match for the Panzer 2 and 3, and compared to the British rubbish was excellent. Panzer 4 could kill them at will though. Read Bob Crisp's book "Brazen Chariots" if you are interested.
They called it the Honey.
The so called British rubbish was easily a match for the Honey, in regards to performance and armament. Their profile was lower and they proved themselves in the desert rolling along the coast into Tunisia. Without getting into a novel here the advantage of the Honey was its support logistics. The American production system was better than the British one where any spare part for a Honey could be put into any Honey that needed it. The British parts required more skill and work to make the part fit which sounds nice but is in fact an inferior outcome. The other reason the Brit's liked the Honey was because it had an air cooled engine and the air was directed through the crew compartment prior to rolling over the engine. The tank was more comfortable than the British tank at the cost of a higher profile. But if your crew is more comfortable and alert that may have been a reasonable trade off.
@@wezab The M3 light and M5 were used by British forces to the end of the war in Europe. Which British tanks in service in 1941 were in service in NW Europe in 1945?
@@nickdanger3802 the churchill and comet,and the brencarrier were all used in Korea,as well as one of the best the centerian.
@@roybennett9284 The Bren carrier is not a tank. Were the Churchill and Comet is service in 1941?
@@nickdanger3802 yep got a bit carried away there, sorry.. churchill tanks coming into service in 1941.
The doctrine you describe is the work of General Lesley McNair, Commander US Ground Forces, WW2. A man so rooted in his beliefs he would never let facts get in the way. Though tank supporters such as Patton and Devers pleaded for tanks with thicker armour and better guns, McNair refused to listen. He killed off many tanks such as the T-14, T-20, Sherman Firefly, T-23 and T-25. He was about to axe the T-26, but was killed by friendly fire on a trip to Normandy 1944. His successor General Benjamin Lear, allowed the M-26 to go ahead, with a few seeing service before the end of the war. America's best tank - just!!!
The Shermans main gun could penetrate the armor of the Tigers and Panther, but they had to be within 200 meters to still have the penetration energy to kill them.
If one compares tanks in terms of a head-to-head slugfest, certain the M4 Sherman would in most cases lose out to better armed and armored German Panzers. However, that's not the basis to evaluate what tank was the "best", IMO. It's a matter of, it is the best machine that your industry can produce in the numbers required, your military's logistical network can support, your leadership can develop tactics that make the best use of its capabilities, and, most important, the tank crews can believe they can prevail and SURVIVE in? I'd say in all these categories, the M4 Sherman was either "top dawg" or at least wasn't notably deficient.
As for how the Sherman compared to the Soviet T-34, and I'll include the otherwise excellent and useful T-34/85, I still say the M4 Sherman, particularly the M4A3E8 "Easy Eight" version, was superior to the T-34 overall. The first comparison, which can't be exact, is on the Eastern Front during the war, as the Soviet casualty rates in T-34s were so bad that they lost more "tankists" in T-34s than did the US in the entire ETO (in all service branches!). Also, the Soviets themselves received, GLADLY, thousands of M4 Shermans themselves via Lend-Lease, which they dubbed "EmCha" (due to the 'M4' designation, pronounced as the Cyrillic letters in Russian), and issued primarily to their GUARDS armored divisions. Finally, Korea, particularly the August/September 1950 battles along the Naktong river, would provide a battlefield that pitted M4s vs T-34s...and the Shermans absolutely PASTED them! However, even in that comparison, we'd have to account for logistical support by the DPRK army (very poor, and UN air interdiction made it even worse), leadership (mediocre, they'd yet to face a properly equipped and trained opponent), training (the DPRK tankers had a week's worth of basic instruction and never engaged in any maneuvers), and doctrine as factors as to the lopsided loss rates of the T-34s.
In short (too late), the "best" tank is that which best fulfills your army's requirements. I'll say the M4 Sherman, in that respect, was THE "best" tank of WW2, period.
The Sherman if right ammo was developed for it . Tanks are nothing more than Gun Platform Good platform low breakdown Good Communication and right type of ammo great tank. The greatest killer of tanks was not another tank or airplane. Both sides had tank distroyer that killed more tanks.
Another video parroting a lot of old cliches about the Sherman that are just unfair and somewhat inaccurate.
The frontal armor of the Sherman was actually thicker than the frontal armor of a Russian T-34. Yet for some reason the T-34 is never branded as having inadequate armor protection while videos such as this one always make it sound as if you could shoot through the front of a Sherman with a flare pistol.
Also why is the Sherman always compared to either the German Panther or Tiger tank? The Sherman is a medium tank that weighed 33 tons. The Panther and the Tiger were heavy tanks that weighed 45 and 52 tons respectively. Gee you mean to say tanks that weighed 12 tons more in the case of the Panther and 19 tons more in the case of the Tiger could have thicker armor and a bigger gun than the much lighter tank of a different class? The hell you say. If I compared a British light cruiser to a German battleship and used that comparison as evidence that the light cruiser was shit because it came up lacking in armor and armament compared to a German Battleship I would instantly have my ass jumped sideways for comparing ships of two completely different classes. And my critics would be right. Yet for some reason these CZcams historian wannabes "ONLY" compare the Sherman to much heavier tanks.
Why not compare the Sherman to the Panzer Mk III or Mk IV tanks? The Sherman is superior to the MK III and a even match for the MK IV. Not only are those tanks of the same weight class as the Sherman but they are also by far the most mass produced tanks by the Germans in WW2. In other words these were the tanks a Sherman was most likely to encounter. Sorry but neither the Panther or Tiger was ever the main battle tank of the Germans. The Germans produced a total of about 1400 Tigers during the entire war. And that was over a period of 4 or 5 years so there was never a single day that anywhere near 1400 were operational and in the field fighting at one time. And only a handful of the ones they did have were sent to the western front. Most were sent to try and stop the Russians in the east. So here you have a Sherman's entire worth as a tank being based on it's comparison to a tank that was not only 20 tons heavier but that it barely had any contact with during the entire war. Gee, that's fair huh?
Furthermore these guys only compare the early Shermans to these relatively rare heavy German tanks. Never a mention of the various upgraded models of the Sherman. The US upgraded over 2000 Shermans to a more powerful 76 mm gun. Meaning there were 600 more up-gunned Shermans in WW2 than there were Tigers. And that's not counting the ones modified by the British to carry their 17 pounder gun. And here is another truth that rarely gets talked about. When the up gunned 76 mm Shermans became available many of the ground commanders didn't really want to swap the older 75 mm Shermans for the newer version. Well gee why would that be? Seems if you were getting your ass constantly kicked by all these superior German tanks you would want a tank upgraded to deal with them. But the truth is that German anti tank guns were a waaaaaaaay bigger threat to allied tankers than German Tanks on the western front. And the high explosive fragmentation round of the 75 mm Shermans was the best tank round of that type in the war. You didn't have to directly hit the anti tank gun with that round. You just had to hit somewhere near it and the shrapnel would do the rest. Well over 90% of the time a Sherman fired it's gun in WW2 it was not shooting at another tank.
I could go on and on. Educate yourself beyond the same old tired ass cliches about WW2 before you post such tripe reinforcing them.
Re: "The frontal armor of the Sherman was actually thicker than the frontal armor of a Russian T-34. Yet for some reason the T-34 is never branded as having inadequate armor protection while videos such as this one always make it sound as if you could shoot through the front of a Sherman with a flare pistol."
That's an over-exaggeration, but your point is made. The difficulty is that the Sherman's armor was inadequately sloped to deflect incoming shots whereas the T34 was at least somewhat better. Obviously, if we make reference to the many tanks of both kinds destroyed by high-velocity German AT guns, neither was proof against a sufficiently quick high-velocity shot. But if you examine the armor of both tanks and how it is sloped, the Sherman clearly has more vertical and near-vertical surfaces than the T34.
That protection was bought at a price: Sloped armor dramatically reduces interior space and degrades ergonomics, which in turn means lower fighting efficiency for the crews. But it does provide better ballistic protection against HV anti-tank weapons, a fact that Soviet tank designers grasped more-quickly than their counterparts in the U.S. and Britain.
The Sherman was both a more-capable tank and a less-capable one than its opponents, depending on how you slice-and-dice the data. But few would deny that it had a longer-than-expected service life, or that it earned its pay, so to speak, in action around the globe. The Israelis were using so-called "Super Shermans" into the 1960s and early 1970s, if memory serves, which is pretty darned impressive for a weapon called "flawed" by many authorities.
Educate yourself. The Panther was the most common tank on the Western Front from June 6th till the end. 1837 deployed vs. 1666 Panzer IV and 1640 Stug III. About 1850 Tigers were produced from mid 1942 till early 1945.
The Sherman weighed 30% more than the Panzer III and IV, so is that unfair to the German tanks? The Panzer III was no longer a frontline tank after 1943, and there were almost no Panzer III in Normandy.
The weirdest thing about the M6 was that a 37mm gun shared the main turret with a 76mm gun. What genius thought that would be a good idea?
After reading most of the comments and knowing what little i Know I dont believe for a minute that the majority of Shermans destroyed in combat were by the feared 88mm that the Germans used....I believe that the German used mostly hi-velocity 75 mm anti-tank guns people even veterans of WW2 have bought into the myth that every Tank was a Panther or a Tiger. And every tank was that was destroyed by German gunfire was an 88mm
The 88mm/8.8cm dual-purpose gun was famous for its lethality, and hence that is why many GIs and Tommies who should have known better called any German artillery piece or tank gun an "88." But the Pak 75 gun was arguably just as effective and more-numerous, and moreover, since it had a lower silhouette, it was tougher to spot in the field and tougher to take out. Seasoned tankers greatly feared AT guns if they suspected them of being about, due to the ability of enemy forces to camouflage them prior to bringing them into action. Tanks are just easier to spot in the field, not just visually, but in terms of the dust they kick up, the exhaust fumes and the noise they make.
Far as Allied troops misidentifying enemy tanks and AFVs, they may have done so when inexperienced or new to the theater of operations, but like anything else, once the men became experienced in combat and had been around, their overall effectiveness and ability to identify enemy equipment and forces improved greatly. Local and theater-level intel assets would have briefed the men, too, on what they were expected to face and come across on operations. And these, too, got better and more accurate as the war went on.
The Sherman had great cross country performance, could be produced in mass numbers and was good enough
Easy to fix, had a great HE round, loads of MGs. Fit on most roads. Roomy for the crew.
@@ThePooppantsman It's AP rounds also made mockeries of the most common German tanks.
Good enough to burn
@@luisarias6200 did well on Korea against the T34 and by the Israelis
@@luisarias6200 Oh, you mean like every other tank that is continuously hit till it burn to prevent it from being repaired?
Did you know that the Sherman after the introduction of wet stowage have an extremely low burn rate compared to others? and how it had an excellent crew survivability next to the Churchill due to not only said stowage, but also easily accessible hatch for most of the crew unlike its contemporary such as the Panthers and Cromwells, Stuarts have this too btw, and even the Chaffee have lots of hatches for its crew
I stand by my claims that the American M4A3E8 and the Russian T-34/85 were the best tanks of the war.
I hate it when documentaries and youtube channels compare the sherman to big cats, because you're comparing a general purpose medium tank to a heavy assault breakthrough tank. Like, no shit a Tiger is gonna win a head to head engagement if you put them on a field and have them shoot each other. As such, I will only compare the sherman to other general purpose medium tanks, ITS CONTEMPORARIES because that comparison would actually make sense.
So in this comparison, the main workhorse medium tanks of the big three nations were the sherman, the T-34 and the Panzer IV. We'll be comparing them according to the "holy trinity" of basic tank design: Armor, Mobility, and Firepower. Later on however I'll be adding on other factors such as SURVIVABILITY, MAINTAINABILITY, and CREW ERGONOMICS because everyone seems to forget those.
ARMOR:
The T-34 and the Sherman both beat the Panzer IV, with their armor rounding out to about 89mm-92mm from the front, while the Panzer IV only had 80mm dead on. On top of that, the sloping of their front plates made shell deflection much more likely whereas a shell striking a flat 80mm plate has nowhere to deflect that energy to.
MOBILITY:
All tanks of the era(Late 1930s to Early 1940s) had no stabilizer with exception of the Sherman, and so under combat conditions tanks won't go much faster than 15km/h to 25km/h at most. It was Identify target, reposition, estimate range, shell type, and fire command; rinse and repeat for every combat vehicle seeing as how they had no stabilizers and most tanks had limited visibility by today's standard. We only see tanks move at their top speed on marches or formation movement along roads; NOT WITHIN COMBAT CONDITIONS in WW2.
-FLOTATION:
The Panzer IV sunk on anything that wasn't flat ground thanks to both the track design as well as how narrow they were. Shemans initially had the same problem but this was worked out with later standard-issue variants having wide tracks and lastly the T-34 never had this issue as it had wide tracks to deal with the mud and snow from the beginning.
FIREPOWER:
T-34: 76.2mm L-11 -> 76.2mm F-34/ZiS-5 -> 85mm D-5T
Pz. IV: 7.5cm L/24 -> 7.5cm L/43 -> 7.5cm L/48
M4: 75mm M2 ->75mm M3 -> 76mm M1A1/A2
The Panzer IV's L/43 cannon had the best anti-tank capabilities when compared to its contemporaries, with around 99-105mm of penetration while the Sherman's 75mm M3 had around 94-101mm and the T-34's 76mm F-34/ZiS-5 had only 83-89mm of penetration.
This would change in the late war however, as the 85mm on T-34s had anywhere from 120-140mm of penetration(depending on which variant) while the 76mm on Shemans had 121-128mm while the L/48 on the Panzer IV only had a minor improvement over the L/43; going from 102-110mm only.
(Feel Free to fact check me on whether or not the sherman carried the 75mm M2)
-Gunnery:
American and German sights were generally better than what Russian tanks had for sights according to field reports both during and post-war tests.
AKA: RUSSIAN CREWS WERE BLIND ASF
Now for characteristics that affect combat capability but no one seems to mention.
CREW ERGONOMICS
The Panzer IV and the Sherman had the best crew ergonomics among the three, while the T-34 turrets were cramped. Early T-34 turrets(Model 1939-1940) were literally designed for 47mm guns but instead were stuffed with a 76mm gun. This led to the deletion of a dedicated gunner: Leaving the commander to do both gunnery as well as vehicle commanding and making the tank less effective in general.
AKA: RUSSIAN CREWS WERE OVERWORKED AND CRAMPED
VISIBILITY
A tank is literally a box with an engine, fuel, ammunition, a radio and a gun. How much a crew is able to see the outside world and their surroundings can change their combat effectiveness drastically. In this case, the Panzer IV wins out with having vision devices all around the tank as well as an all around cupola for the commander from the beginning of its service record. the Sherman comes in second because of the competent early war cupola and the excellent late war cupola and vision port design. Again, the T-34 comes in last as most T-34s didn't even have an all around vision cupola to begin with and only had them implemented from mid-late war. Hell, many Russian tank vision ports weren't even reflective glass but just polished steel.
AKA: RUSSIAN CREWS WERE BLIND ASF
SURVIVABILITY
The Shermans were the most survivable tank of the war for three main reasons:
1) Crew Ergonomics: it was easy to move around the tank, this includes bailing out(Unlike panther or T-34)
2) Well-Designed Hatches: Hatches were right above you(unlike the Tiger and Comet) and were springloaded making them easy to open for a quick escape
3) Wet Ammunition Storage: Ammunition that was hit either took more time before being set off and exploding or didn't explode at all after being hit because of the ammunition being stored in racks full of fire-retardant fluids.
The Panzer IV comes in at a close second because all of the crew members had a dedicated hatch with which to enter and exit the vehicle.
A moment of Silence for T-34 crews that couldn't get out of their tanks.
Side note: You don't hear crews complaining about burning tigers and panthers because they burned to death trying to get out of the damn things. Ironically you hear about burning shermans because the crews lived to tell people about it.
MAINTAINABILITY
The Sherman comes out on top again, thanks to American industrial capabilities you literally had disassembled tanks in the field depots ready for switching out parts and components. The T-34 comes in second because while they had a rocky start due to them taking time to industrialize and move all of their factories east, once they did industrialize they pumped out T-34s at breakneck speeds in factories.The Panzer IV didn't have as much access to spare parts and as a result you see them being blown up by their crews and/or abandoned by roadsides along with tigers and panthers(though not at the same rate and frequency of course).
In Conclusion:
The Sherman was a good tank when compared to its contemporaries: OTHER GENERAL PURPOSE/WORKHORSE MEDIUM TANKS. It had flaws such as bad flotation, unreliable powerpack(aircraft engine on a tank), and tall profile but in all other aspects it is either on par with if not outright better than than its counterparts during the war.
Side Note: I could have included "reliability" as well as maybe included Panther/Pershing/T-44(for fun because they were available in late 1944 but just weren't deemed worth sending into combat over the T-34) comparisons, but figured that's a different essay.
Also: I really really wanted to get into the "Protection Onion" for tank design but got too sleepy for such
Also Also: during a post-war test by the Americans and British on tank-on-tank engagements it was found that the single most important factor of victory was who got the first shot on target. This explains the high german kill counts because they were on the defensive. And in defensive battles, the defending force has the luxury of shooting first as an enemy formation approaches. On top of that, it usually takes a 3-1 numerical advantage or more for an invasion force to be successful against a defending force.
Daniel, excellent summary - good work.
The only thing I cannot agree with is the reliability statement. The M4 with the radial passed the engine test trials. It was annoying due to the fouling of the lower spark plugs, but that was about it. This comes from the men that I trust to have a reliable opinion, M4 variant tank crewmen that I have talked to. Men from both the US and Canadian Army that fought in WWII.
@@tankmaker9807 - The decision to use radial aircraft piston engines in a tank was either inspired and improvisational genius, or madness, depending on one's viewpoint. Judged from the results, as you state, it worked well-enough to get the job done.
It has always been my opinion that one of the unsung strengths of the U.S. Army in WWII was the ability of its men to solve unforeseen problems in the field, whether in combat, mechanical-technical, or the like. Another was the enormous reservoir of mechanical and technical know-how in the ranks amongst the enlisted men and junior officers, many of whom had come into the army from highly-technical civilian occupations demanding mechanical and other know-how, such as manufacturing, farming, etc.
In garrison, the army was hidebound by regulations and rules, some of which were - to use the salty language of that time "chickenshit" - but once the men were in the field, a more-flexible and practical attitude often took hold. And it was a real force-multiplier, too. The same "can-do" attitude was found at home in the factories and workshops across the country, which seemingly overnight turned itself into the "Arsenal of Democracy."
In looking something up for this post, I learned that the fastest tracked vehicle of the war, the M18 Hellcat, used the Wright R-975 Whirlwind, which was an aviation engine. If I had known that fact once, I needed reminding of it today. Evidently, it was a well-designed plant which did well for the men who used it.
@@tankmaker9807 I stand corrected then, and will edit as soon as possible
@@danielcervantes7826 I should have also mentioned that rebuilt radials were hated by crews because they were already worn out once, and tended to burn a lot of oil. Those engines did have a higher failure rate.
The Ford GAA V8 started life as a V12 for air craft use and was cut down by Henry and adapted to tank use. If only they had adapted the V12 version. Imagine a tank with that much power. The Meteor engine in the late war British tanks was a modified V12 Merlin. Interesting is the smaller GAA developed 500hp and the Meteor 600hp. Most crews I talked too liked the GAA and Meteor over other tank engines.
I suspect that statistics,projections, and theory go out of the window the minute the first shell hits home.
I was hopping to see the m36 Jackson, M16 Hellcat and M10 not Start and M3.
What you meant is were they the worst? Right?
?
I disagree with this vid on the M4 Sherman. See the Chieftain vid on the M4. The GIs loved the Sherman because the 75 mm could be used as a howitzer. The Easy 8 with the improved 76 mm could take on the Tigers and Panthers.
The 17 pounder British gun was probably a better antitank gun than the Panthers 75mm and more practical than the Tigers 88mm and with sabot rounds it was far better although there were accuracy problems.
Although the M3 75mm gun on the majority of Shermans had adequate anti-armor numbers against the majority of German AFVs it actually faced, it wasn't intended for that role. The M3 was intended to lob HE shells at "soft" targets, once the range, speed, and rough terrain performance of the M4 got it into the enemy's rear, the tank's "happy hunting ground", as Patton described it. US Army doctrine on armor was that 'tanks' were meant for that role, not necessarily to combat enemy armor, which job was left for tank destroyers.
The problem with that doctrine on armored warfare was that it ASSumed that their opponents would and COULD do the same thing! In most cases, German armor was held back, as they severely lacked fuel, their logistical train, being constantly harassed by the dreaded "Jabos" as well as US artillery, was quite poor (even PANZER divisions used a lot of HORSE-drawn wagons to bring up supplies and reinforcements), and they actually had few tanks proper, often having to rely on SP guns and Panzerjagers . The net result was that mostly US tanks are what took on German tanks, and often the tank destroyers never saw any enemy armor, and had to be employed in the infantry support role, for which they weren't well-suited.
@@selfdo That is false, the 75mm was chosen because it can both engage soft targets with HE AND destroy other tanks with AP, it just so happen that most of its target being soft ones, meaning that HE is used more often, doesn't mean the AP performed poorly, just not always needed
Also the job of fighting tanks in the US doctrine is not limited to the US Tank Destroyer branch, US TD are meant to respond against an armored breakthrough, but neither the Shermans nor US TDs limited to a single role, both can be used to either engage tanks or any soft targets depending on the needs in the field
Other than than you're correct
I like the Pershing, but Mr. Fletcher of Bovington fame said something in their tank chat that I believe sums it up best, which was that the M26 was the Tiger's equal. This is bad because tank design requirements were moving fast, and the tiger was becoming obsolete already.
Beyondfubar - Re: "This is bad because tank design requirements were moving fast, and the tiger was becoming obsolete already."
In actuality, the whole notion of classes of tanks was becoming obsolete - though not completely so, of course - but after the war it was realized by the British and Americans alike, and the Germans, too, by the 1950s when their new army was stood up - that the days of building heavier and heavier armored and armed tanks were coming to an end.
By the close of WWII, the Germans had already built and fielded super heavy tanks which ended up being dramatic under-performers in action. Development on the U.S. T28 Heavy Tank was started in 1944, but only a few prototypes of the 95 ton vehicle were ever produced. Renamed the Super Heavy Tank T28 in 1946, the project was terminated. Not surprising, since one of the prototypes kept bursting into flames, probably due to an impossibly over-taxed engine and drive-train. Britain developed the super-heavy Tortoise which clocked in at almost 80 tons, and some other projects, all later abandoned as impractical in the post-WWII world.
The Russians soldiered on for a while with very heavy tanks and AFVs, but they too eventually settled on something remarkably similar to the western main-battle tank concept. Namely, a versatile and capable tank with an optimum combination of firepower, mobility and protection, generally weighing between 40 and 65 tons, with some variants slightly lighter or heavier. The adding of additional heavy steel armor no longer made sense, since the advent of anti-tank guided munitions and missiles, as well as various forms of shaped-charge warheads, made such super-heavy tanks nothing more than big targets on modern battlefields.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 I agree, though the point I was trying to make was a bit simpler: The Pershing was the equal of a nearly obsolete tank.
Not sure if just a bad video title or you should've included tank destroyers.
Thanks for coming in late and winning the war for us.....
Were there treaties in place that required the USA to aid other nations?
Sorry, We had this problem called Isolationism. Thank Japan for waking us up to the threat. And thank you (I'm assuming you're British) for holding out as long as you did against tall odds. Finest hour indeed.
Japan put icing on cake but Churchill's and Rossovelt baked it. You can also thank Japan for signing a non-aggression pack with Russia so they didn't catch Russians in middle or Finland for making Russia look weak or Greece for Kicking Italy's ass causing a German delay. All things helped win war. According to France they won WW2 with very little help. Don't believe me check their war museum. It's laugh a minute.
Thanks for starting another suicidal European war that has little to nothing to do with us
@@user-yk7dc9hu2k Who charged Gemany with so many restrictions and monitory loss that led to rise of Adolp Hitler ? France maybe Who failed to stop Germany after invading it in 1939? France Maybe . Whose Primministers 💋 Hitlers Ass? France and Great Britain Maybe. America was still getting over WW1,the depression, and trouble's in Asia when idiots of Europe decide to start another one. Not forgetting after WW1 a large part of our population was of Germadic Ancestry. Example it's not Pennsylvania Dutch but Dautch. We did not declare War on Germany first but Japan so Hitler declared War on America first. So that made us late to party.
I believe the M4 tank was the best tank the US could've had, and arguably the best all around of the war. Most of the points about its armor and gun being weak are usually wrong and mostly based off the book "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper, who was never actually on a tank crew. The Sherman had reliable and solid armor for its size and time. About 80mm of effective thickness straight on, which is comparable to the highly acclaimed armor of the soviet KV series. The 75mm M3 was chosen specifically for its armor penetration characteristics. In 1940, it was vastly superior to anything else the US had and on par or flat out better than most of the foreign competition. The Sherman only began to falter when it ran into the latest and greatest tanks the enemy had to offer. But that's when we decided we wanted a 76mm M1 gun mounted in it, which had no problems defeating the great and mighty Tiger from the front at most realistic western europe combat ranges. The best quality about the sherman, was its reliability. Even the British in their indomitable pride admitted that the sherman was a superior design just counting in the reliability. It was able to function almost everywhere and would continue to function long after most other tanks would break down. No use having the biggest gun or biggest armor if the vehicle is inoperable.
This guy knows what he’s talking about, people.
The real disappointment with the M4 is that it was an adaptable tank, but the U.S, Army didn't take full advantage of it. The Jumbo Sherman had armor comparable to a Tiger, but the Army put a 75 mm gun on it, no better than the gun on the run-of-the-mill Sherman. The Jumbos were used against stationary targets, mostly pillboxes and I am not aware of them ever facing enemy armor. The 90mm gun was available then, and if the Brits found a way to mount a 17-pounder on their Firefly Shermans, the U.S, certainly could have mounted a 90mm on the Sherman. This was made evident after the war when the French and Israelis mounted 105 mm anti-tank guns on their Super Shermans during the 1950s. By then, however, the U,S, Army had its Pershing tanks with upgraded armor and the 90 mm gun.
@@chrisschultz8598 The 90mm Sherman was built by the end of 1944, called M36 B2
@@chrisschultz8598 sorry M36 B1
@@chrisschultz8598 It was attempted to put the 90mm M3 in the M4A3E2, but it was seen as unneeded. The M4A3E2 was equipped with the 76mm M1, which was capable against most armored targets. Just weren't that many jumbos around however, and heavy tanks didn't quite fit into the US version of combine arms doctrine. There's a reason why we only ever built a handful of heavy tanks ever.
The main purpose of a Sherman tank was close infantry support. All other roles were really almost irrelevant. The 75mm high explosive round of the Sherman was excellent at neutralizing enemy machine gun positions, snipers, infantry dugouts, trenches, pillboxes, mortars and other Wehrmacht targets. The Sherman tank with 75mm high explosive round was what American infantry commanders demanded of tanks after observing the Battle for France with German Mark III and Mark IV Panzers. The Sherman tank was actually a quite good tank for infantry support but more than held its own against German tanks with armor piercing shells. US Army doctrine had the tank destroyers such as the 90mm Jackson on a Sherman chassis and M-10 76mm tank destroyer. But we have to remember the purpose of the Sherman tank was its easy mass production ability. This mass production ability of adequate Sherman tanks are what won WW2 in the West because a large quantity of adequate tanks supported by the infantry, artillery and tactical air power has a quality all its own in combined arms operations.
The one main drawback of the Sherman tanks was the failure to put a diesel engine in service. Army logisticians for the European theater said it was too complicated to have both gasoline and diesel for logistics. I think this was a blunder because diesel tanks are much less prone to brewing up when hit. However, the main advantage of the Sherman 75mm tank was that often a whole battalion of a 150 Shermans could be assigned to every infantry division. This gave the US Army tremendous hitting power while at the same time saving lots of infantrymen's lives. After the bocage fighting in Normandy, US infantry soldiers and tanks virtually became welded together in combined arms teams. Neither tanks nor infantry could fight alone. American artillery support worked closely with the tank-infantry teams. The close tactical air support with forward air controllers with radios in Sherman tanks could talk directly to the pilots in P-47's. The German Tiger tanks were bombed, strafed, rocketed and napalmed by P-47 or RAF Typhoon fighter bombers. Even if tank destruction from the air wasn't always high, the point was the Allied fighter bombers made it impossible for German tanks to move during the daylight hours. German tank divisions had long mechanized supply columns that Allied fighter bombers massacred. A German tank without fuel, spare parts, mechanical support, ammunition and other technical support was nothing more than worthless scrap metal. Tiger tanks especially needed lots of logistical support to even operate a few miles. Whenever these German tanks moved they got pounced on by Allied fighter-bombers making armored maneuvers during the daylight totally impossible without annihilation. Case in point was the German armored Mortain counterattack with Panzer divisions massacred by Allied fighter bombers and pinpoint artillery.
The M3 Grant/Lee tank had a 75mm gun on the right side in a sponson in the hull with a 37mm gun in the turret. The 37mm gun had an excellent canister round that was extremely popular with American, British and even Soviet infantry commanders. The Soviets didn't care much for the Grant tank because their T-34 medium tanks and KV tanks were better designs. The US Grant tank saw enormous amounts of service even when classified as "obsolescent" by the US Army in 1943. The US Grant tanks was heavily used by the Soviet Army at Petsamo, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Kursk mostly in the infantry support role. But the Grant was a real good tank in India-China-Burma where the 75mm gun in the sponson was not much of a liability. So the so called "obsolete M3 Grant/Lee tank saw enormous service all around the world in North Africa, Sicily, the Soviet Union, Italy and in the China-Burma-India theater. The point here is an "obsolete tank" in one main theater might be perfectly fine in a secondary theater front where Japanese armor in the Pacific/Asia was much weaker than in Europe.
The last major point here lost on many posters here was the ease of maintenance and refurbishment of the Sherman tank. Army engineers and salvage teams could pick up wrecked Shermans, hose out the human remains of guts, brains and blood, repaint them and with lots of interchangeable spare parts could repair two or three disabled Sherman tanks getting them back into the fight fairly quickly. Sherman tanks had a whole industrialized maintenance/refurbishment system behind them. So when a Sherman got knocked out and the crew killed it hardly mattered. The wreck of one Sherman tank could supply lots of spare parts to keep many other disabled tanks in the fight.
Many times in combat the side with the fastest turn around times to fix blown up tanks into refurbished tanks was the side that won a campaign. Soviet T-34's mediums were even simpler to repair/refurbish after being blown up to make other rebuilt T-34's. The parts the Russians couldn't repair on the battlefield were loaded up on a train and sent back to the Ural Tankograd factories to be reused again. The American Army figured this out early on too but Sherman tanks were completely rebuilt in theater or in theater depots. This miracle of refurbishment meant many German Wehrmacht gunners had to knock out the same Soviet and American tanks over and over again. The Germans were never as skilled as the Americans or the Soviets at refurbishing their destroyed tanks into new usable tanks quickly. The Americans and Soviets with simple tank designswith reliable components with lots of interchangeable spare parts in abundance got most of their destroyed tanks refurbished and returned into combat in short order. The cannibalization of destroyed tanks whenever necessary got rebuilt tanks refurbished to keep on killing German Wehrmacht troops. These types of repair, recovery and refurbishment operation by military engineers and service troops are major factors in winning wars. The organizational repair, recovery and maintenance system behind an adequate tank, like a Sherman or T-34, is more important than who has the best tank. Even the best tanks get destroyed often in combat. The question is which side can recover their wrecked tanks and get most of those tanks refurbished in the least amount of time will ultimately win the battle and the war.
Not sure about your point regarding the engine?
The US Army ran all their motorized vehicles on 80 octane gasoline except for the M10 TD. It used twin Detroit Diesel bus engines since those provided gobs of torque at low RPMs to get the tank moving faster from a dead stop. The Army used Diesel engines to spin their various electric generators so having extra brought up for the M10'S wasn't a problem.
Generally you find that most people doing Tank documentaries will be highly critical of the M4 Sherman. These comments are due to a lack of knowledge. The Sherman was designed to support infantry. It's a fact that most Sherman crews never saw Tiger tanks in action. The Tiger was over priced, over engineered, prone to breakdowns, and required highly trained technicians to repair it. That and only 1200 Tigers were made. By the way the Leppard II tank suffers from the same problem.
The best thing about American tanks was the fact that they could be produced in incredible numbers BUT were NOT nearly as good as the German tanks from the Mk4 up to Tiger 2. Only the Russians with their T34 were a match for German tanks.
The T34 was good (in large numbers) Nevertheless, the German tanks were superior.
Let's not forget the IS series of Soviet Union armour.....
@@bazzakeegan2243 they were still vulnearble
Wrong. The US M4A1 and then the M4A3E8s took on Tigers in WWII and won those battles and, later, the T-34/85 in Korea and won those battles. You don't read good history books. You read the usual history trash that 'everybody knows.' Thing is the combat stats kept the US & British militaries clearly indicate they got the upper hand. And it's not figher aircraft where you don't see the kill. Those dead tanks remain on the battlefield until the engineers clear them so they're 100% verified.
@@Draconisrex1 Wrong the combat statistics speak clearly in favor of Germany, the Americans have lost 20,000 tanks and the United Kingdom has 20,000 tanks.
My Boss used to command a Sherman in WW2, when asked many years later about his experiences his face went white and his lips because compressed together as he recalled his experiences against the Germans, "we were slaughtered", he said !
I totally agree with you, I don't need to say more because my english is bad.
Pretty lively guy for someone who was slaughtered. Not making fun of him, but Why were there so many numbers of survivors from such a 'bad' tank? The fact is, while many of them may have been destroyed, the survival rate of their crews was generally higher than most other tanks in the war.
@@captin3149 Dude they build 50.000 of them and about 8500 where shot down at the Western front/Africa , don't know how much entered the war . 6000 Panther's and 1100 Tiger 1 where only build and most of them where on the Eastern front . Imagine if the Shermans where at the Eastern front and face 2/3 of the German Wehrmacht .
@@5co756 Shermans were on the Eastern Front and to a strangely large degree was favorably viewed.
I am not sure where you're getting that figure from
@@peterson7082 Did the Russians got Shermans ?
Best at what? If the categories are crew survivability, ease of maintenance, quality and standardization of spare parts then Sherman was the best.
The M-3 and M-5 were not used in the best tactical ways. In if used as scouts, tanks vs troops situation then they would have shined. The British used them in the Pacfic and did well .
The Brits liked the M3 Stuart, dubbing it the "Honey". It may have been outclassed as a battle tank in the ETO, but indeed it was well suited for scouting, and in the Pacific, where the Japanese had little armor, and what they did have was quite...mediocre, the Stuart did well. Also doing well in the Pacific was the otherwise obsolete M3 "Lee" or "Grant", which also completely outclassed Japanese armor, and it's sponson-mounted 75mm was useful for destroying enemy bunkers.
The light tanks did well in the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, in Army and Marine hands both. Not only using their main guns, either, but often with a flame-thrower added on. Very useful bunker busting tool.
so in conclusion: US tanks of ww2, are not the best, but did the job well.
Correct and right!
Nice video, cuts the BS out to a min. and gives you the facts as this writer saw it. Back in the day rule of thumb was ...the 88mm was the standard against which all others were measured, not as the best just as a benchmark, so it went something like this..German 88, American 90 and Russian 100 were all about...ABOUT... the same all things being equal.
Of course the 88 is used as AT gun, especially when their actual AT guns couldn't pen Allied tanks during the entire early war time
@@AHappyCub It was only the German 37mm AT gun that eventually had trouble with Allied and Soviet tanks, later 57 and 75mm guns, particulary the 75, were quite effective.
@@Riceball01 Germany don't use 57mm, you're thinking of the 50mm
Also my point still stand because I stated that it's only during the early war
Yup! The only issue is that Germany had plenty of 88s, while Soviets managed to equip only SU-100s with the gun in later parts of the war and US produced very few 90s also during the very part of the war.
They were not the absolute best. But they got the job done and that's what's important. They won the war.
No the Russians won the war
@@patrickporter6536 The Allies won the war.
Sherman- as tall as an appartment block!
Its were in closed relation with Russian's tanks :Sherman/firefly vs T34-76/ T34-85 ; Pershing vs IS1 & IS2; Stuart vs BT5&BT7
M24 Chafee was slightly better than T50 or T80 light tanks;
Pershing was closed in power with King Tiger. Panzers 4F2 to HJ were better than any other USA medium tank, except Sherman. Sherman was relative comparable with Panthers. Maybe Panthers F and Panther2 had some advantages over late Shermans, but arrived too late ( only 5 F and two P2 existed as objects)
M24 Chafee was relative comparable with Pz3M or Pz3N.
you are about over-estimating the stats
the Panzer IV is Inferior to the Sherman and T-34 in Armor, slightly better in Firepower
the Sherman Firefly is comparable to firepower with the Panther, no change in Armor
the Easy 8 and T-34/85 are equal, mostly compared to the Panther(which its equal is the Centurion Mk. 1).
speaking of Big Cats, Tiger I, Pershing, IS-2(1943) are equal in most regards
the Field modification, T26E1-1(Super Pershing) is closest Western counterpart to the Tiger II, and IS-2(1944)
if we count the prototypes of the US, then 4 more official ones(T29, T34 Heavy Tank, T30, T32)
An example that the Americans and British second-class were, in terms of material losses: The Americans have lost 20,000 tanks and Englishmen 20,000 tanks lost, Germany against America and Britain "only" 6000 Panzer lost. (The Russians Front not counting.) The combat effectiveness of the British and Americans was a joke, considering that main forces Germanys been fighting on the Eastern Front have.
German army(until 1945) was clearly better than the American one!
Yeah? Who won in the end?
Germany had excellent tanks. It also helped that they were primarily in a defensive role.
However Steve hit the nail on the head when it came to "combat effectiveness".
@@silgen Good question who really won ? Soviet Union? Great Britain? UNITED STATES? Canada? Australia / New Zealand etc. ?
1 to 1 and each of these countries would have lost.
@@OldEastGermany Nah, the US wouldn't have lost, it would have just turned Germany into a sheet of radioactive glass in the late 40's. Britain couldn't win on it's own, but Germany couldn't beat it either. And in fact in 1940 Britain had the most advanced nuclear bomb program, so the radioactive glass would have happened anyway in the early 50's. And who knows what the Russians could do, with their vast resources and willingness to sacrifice millions of lives to beat it's hated enemy?
@@silgen Totally wrong Germany had the best nuclear scientists (including Jews) World-wide first nuclear fission (1938) by the German Otto Hahn, Germany was clearly the leader.
I think one of the leopard tanks was the best but as history shows it not always the equipment but the person using it
?
Just a few things.
I think the M18 Hellcat would qualify better for the 4th spot instead of the M24 Chaffee simply because it was more widely used and effective and even tho it wasn't a dedicated "tank" it often served the role of one for infantry fire support rather than the open topped and speedy tank destroyer that it actually was.
The other thing is the Pershing was arguably at it's best during the Korean War and not during WW2 where as it has already been said, was too late to the theater in too few numbers and thus saw very limited action.
It was mechanically unreliable because of it's rushed production and in the only as far as I'm aware recorded instance of it going up against the Tiger, the tank which it was meant to counter was defeated - czcams.com/video/meduxDj61sQ/video.html
It apparently fared much better against the Panther however so at least that's that, but to be honest in my opinion if I was given a choice I would have rather went into battle with an M4A3E2 Sherman Jumbo with the 76mm gun and wet stowage, it proved to be more popular and was used more with the ground units so it was a combat tested tank that I would say performed much better in comparison.
Even though you're right that in the Korean War the M26A1 saw its best use in combat, it should be noted it was still retired before the M4 in service
@@peterson7082 Yeah it was just sadly dealt a bad hand by US leaders who were responsible for the tank development.
From what I've read there was some fishy political stuff going on as well back then that served to hamper it.
I always remembered US tanks being the worst lol
Japan and Italy, in near unison : "Am I a joke to you??!!"
The Italians and Japanese have that honor.
You remember from what? Frontline WW2 combat? Still better than the relatively non existent British tanks
us tanks a ugly in ww2
Nope.
The Sherman was truly poor in terms of 1:1 tank vs tank combat. But the doctrine was to AVOID tank to tank combat where possible. That’s a stupid risk to take with your very expensive kit. Air power, anti tank guns and artillery (and bazookas) are better suited to that mission.
Save your tanks for infantry support, but really for breakthrough and exploitation missions.
And if you HAVE to go tank to tank being superior numbers.
Edit: The E8 and basically any 76mm gunned Sherman, while not the exact match of the Panther was close enough and could be produced in huge numbers vs the any German tank. Thus, they could have been considered superior based on production and reliability.
BUT the US army actually preferred 75mm versions because of how they were really used
Not the case with that ratio or doctrine
@Weasel Worm - Re: "But the doctrine was to AVOID tank to tank combat where possible. That’s a stupid risk to take with your very expensive kit. Air power, anti tank guns and artillery (and bazookas) are better suited to that mission."
That's doctrine, also known as theory or standard operating procedure. But the trouble is that whoever wrote WWII tank and TD utilization doctrine, did not sufficiently-appreciate the degree to which battlefields and wars are absolutely chaotic much of the time. Which means that Murphy's Law always applies, and no plan survives contact with reality. Which in turn means that you cannot count on being able to preposition your tanks or TDs properly ahead of time and before the battle is joined.
In practice, this means that tanks are sometimes, even often, going to have to fight other tanks without the benefit of TDs being there or being there in sufficient numbers. And also that your TDs may be called upon to act as tanks, even they are not supposed to perform those roles.
"Save your tanks for infantry support, but really for breakthrough and exploitation missions."
Again, great if you can do that.... but can you do that?? A combat commander living in the heat of the moment often does not have the luxury of making such fine distinctions or making such nuanced choices.
These and other flaws in WWII era U.S. Army armored warfare doctrine led to it being scrapped and rewritten after the war, not only light of lessons learned in WWII, but in light of new equipment and technologies coming on line. U.S. Army doctrine, in the narrow sense of the word, "worked" insofar as we won the war. But it was widely-recognized by tankers themselves that it was flawed and that we only prevailed because of the flexibility and resourcefulness of our soldiers in the field. Doctrine, remember, isn't set in stone. It is for the guidance of the senior commander, and he may - at his discretion - deviate from it in the course of his mission, if circumstances dictate it. Which is precisely what many mid-level and senior leaders did in mixing and matching tanks & TDs in ad-hoc formations deemed to be the most-flexible and useful in the field.
Stuart Tank maybe by good in the jungle Not in Africa or Western Front Even Stg 3 or Hetzer get him easy from long lange Actually the Stug 3 and Hatzer knocked much more Ally's Tanks then Tiger and Panter Tank did Thank You for posting this video God bless You all
The trouble was that the Light Tank as a concept was obsolete by the start of the war. The idea behind Light Tanks was that they would literally act as Cavalry units, performing reconnaissance and raiding missions to disrupt the enemy rear. Of course, Cavalry itself was obsolete as a concept before even the start of WWI, and the trouble with trying to directly translates horse warfare into to vehicular combat is that vehicles need supply columns in a way that horses didn't.
As such, the Light Tank no matter how well designed was of only marginal utility during the war. Specialized US cavalry troops and regiments were the primary users of light tanks, but light tanks managed to combine high visibility, with high vulnerability, and insufficient firepower to really matter. Ideally, they were mobile machine gun nests, but they were ineffective if the enemy possessed anti-tank weaponry. The Stuart in particular was a terrible reconnaissance vehicle, because it had such limited road range that it couldn't stray very far from the front line anyway.
The M24 would have been an OK tank... in 1941. But by 1944 it too was already obsolete and likewise had poor overall performance. The USA would stay wedded to the light tank concept though for decades, on the excuse that they wanted air mobile armor. But in combat none of the designs ever worked.
rule #1---Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The thrust of all these videos is that tanks were used primarily to kill enemy tanks-- which is far from true. The main role was not anti-tank warfare, it was infantry support. A Sherman that was easy to build in quantity, that was also reliable and easy to maintain, is far deadlier to the enemy forces than a King Tiger that is having its transmission yanked out. What seems to be ignored is that, if you are a rifleman on foot, a Sherman looks just as terrifying as anything else. And it is, it will kill you as easily as a Tiger... given the rate the turret traversed, maybe even easier. Of course, we see the same thing with aircraft. German fighters had to primarily focus on shooting down Allied bombers whereas American fighters were more often challenged to shoot down German fighters. One should not expect the machines to be compared on a point for point basis because the value of different criteria varied based on mission.
They could have stayed with the 75mm and added a longer barrel and made it high velocity like the later model panzer 4
You know that is what they did right?
That is the 76mm, the longer guns of the Panzer IVs don't just make the same ammunition go further, the also needed entirely new ammunition, gun breeches and mechanics in the turret.
@@harmdallmeyer6449 mark Felton the tank that wouldn’t die.
@@gunnere-5936 what does that have to do with American guns? This tank was used at Kursk? Against T-34s,wich later implemented better guns.
It's also Charrypicking, one Tiger actually doing its job and taking fire. Ther are plenty of Shermans serving well beyond ww2, in Israeli and South American armies mostly, a thing that Tigers couldn't do
There's a very good memoir written about American tanks of the Second World War called Death Traps. It's a book by Belton Y. Cooper he was a soldier in the 3rd Armoured Division from D-Day to the end of the war in Europe. During his time he and his crew repaired 700 M4 Sherman's and his division lost 650 tanks completely destroyed. He talks about how American tankers were completely outmatched by German tanks. Since German Panthers were very common in France the Americans ended up having a major problem defeating it. Reports were very common about 75mm AP rounds bounced right off the Panthers front armor and the only way to destroy the Panthers were with risky methods trying to out flank the Germans tank and get a shot on the rear engine bay at close ranges. The Panthers high velocity 76mm gun could shoot straight through a Sherman from almost a mile away while the 75mm Sherman couldn't destroy the front armor of the Panther even from 200 yards.
General Eisenhower urgently reported back not to send anymore 75mm gunned M4 Shermans instead he recommend M4A3E8 Shermans and M26 Pershing heavy tanks as their replacement. Once the M26 Pershing entered service American crews reported they finally were able to defeat German armored vehicles.
Although death trap is a good perspective from a soldier in the field, it's just that.
Belton Cooper only saw the destroyed Shermans, never the hundreds of destroyed German tanks, the logistical effort to upkeep them or the Shermans that actually survived, he was a mechanic after all.
It's good to remember the perspective of men actually there, but he was neither a General nor a tank expert, that is also important to remeber
@ Garrison Nichols - I know a lot of people who are WWII history buffs will disagree with me, but I am very glad the late Belton Cooper wrote the book. Speaking from the perspective of a trained historian, such books - memoirs by men who did those kinds of jobs during the war - were and still are quite rare. So from that standpoint, the work has significant value. The book has come in for considerable criticism by armchair historians alleging this or that error or whatever, but the book is no more prone to them than any first-person memoir of its kind. I especially value his observations given the fact that he was a trained engineer prior to being in the army. In other words, someone with the training to know what he was looking at and the ability to evaluate it in technical terms. Few historians are scientists or engineers, or for that matter, skilled mechanics or technicians. Cooper was the real deal. And his exploits were often very entertaining, as well as educational. Like most GIs, Cooper and his men found time for some hi-jinks and fun amidst the carnage of war.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 I have to agree. The book is a great first person account of what life in ww2 was like. It's not a historical analysis of the effectiveness of the Sherman. It doesn't claim to be. People who think it is are wrong.
@@harmdallmeyer6449 - You give Belton Cooper - Lt. Cooper - too little credit. He was in fact an expert - as he was a mechanical engineer by training, in other words a professional engineer (After the war, he worked in that field for his whole civilian career life). He also went through armor school at Ft. Knox and additional advanced training on top of that. Cooper was assigned to one of the two heavy armored divisions in the ETO, those being the 2nd and 3rd AD. He was assigned to the Spearhead, 2nd Armored Division "Hell on Wheels" - which arguably saw more action than any other U.S. Army armored unit.
Cooper saw a great deal of disabled and destroyed enemy armor as well as damaged/destroyed U.S. and other allied equipment. How? Most of the time, the Allies were advancing, which meant that Cooper and his men did their work on battlefields vacated not long before, often less than a mile behind the front. And sometimes the "front" or line was so fluid as to be non-existent.
Given this fact, most of the time the Germans could not recover battle-damaged tanks and other vehicles; facing being overrun, damaged ones were abandoned and if serviceable, often disabled or destroyed by their own crews to prevent capture of intact equipment. However, this was not always possible, which is how the Anglo-Americans captured intact examples of enemy vehicles and equipment.
Most senior officers in the U.S. Army during WW2 - even acknowledged experts in mobile warfare and armor operations such as General Patton - had comparatively little knowledge of or experience and training in the technical aspects of tank design. Patton had come of age when cavalry were still in use by the army; in fact he designed the 1913 pattern cavalry saber! So, Patton and his colleagues relied on members of their staffs to handle these subjects for them, or in some cases, the men who crewed the tanks themselves, i.e. staff sergeant tank commanders, company-grade officers and enlisted men.
In other word, General Patton was an expert in how to use tanks in modern, fast-moving operations... but that isn't the same as being able to change a track or an engine in a Sherman tank, or understand the subtleties of using its man gun, ammo and sights to engage targets effectively. Nor would Patton have been in any way qualified to do the work someone like Belton Cooper and his colleagues did.
Even if we accept at face value the claim that the Sherman was the best and most effective compromise for the job needed, I still don't understand why the US didn't at least test heavier or more heavily armed versions of the Sherman in battle as early as possible. Why were there no tank destroyers with high velocity 76 mm guns in mid 1944? Why no long gunned Shermans till much later? The 76mm versions and the Jumbo came almost as afterthoughts. Reading commentary from the war itself, the Americans sounded almost blindsided by the Tiger and Panther, yet surely they were aware of the Tiger long before DDay. We know that their experiments with a heavy tank led to total failure in development. And the M26 was delayed. But it seems that the army, unlike the air force were more limited in tank versions than the latter. If the air force could field a vast variety of different fighters and bombers, why was the US landing on DDay with just one main tank -- the standard M4 with the low velocity 75mm gun? Even if the Sherman were a match for the PvIV, the latter PZ IVs at least had long barreled 75mm guns by early 1944.
Not really but they were the most numerous.
The Pershing was much better mechanically than is commonly believed.
There seems to be a myth of its unreliability based on some vehicles that were subpar, and not properly maintenanced, being rushed to Korea in 1950 during the "tank crisis" during that conflict. These tanks were not representative of the tanks real performance. Both the U.S. Army crews that tested them in late WW II, and Marine crews that used them in tank fighting in Korea, found the tank to be reliable when properly maintained.
It was underpowered compared to the late war Sherman, but not compared to other tanks in its size and weight class. It was certainly better than the Panther, which had a slightly better power to weight ratio, but a less than reliable final drive.
For perspective, the first versions of the Centurion which arrived just too late to be tested in combat had 100 more hp than the Pershing. They (like the Panther) also weighed around 10 tons more. So there was not a great deal of difference in power to weight ratio.
The T26E3/M26 could deal with any German tank on equal or better terms with the exception of the Tiger II, which suffered from mobility and reliability issues, was available only in small numbers, and was never as big of a threat to the Allied war effort as is commonly believed for those reasons.
Large numbers of Pershing's did not see combat in WW II, but those that did played an important role in the invasion of Germany in 1945 (particularly in strengthening the fighting power of the 3rd armored ""Spearhead"), and earned their place in history.
they weren't at all the best but were made in never ending numbers and access to unending fuel supplies
Actually in most aspects they were. They had far better crew survivability than german tanks. They were easier to repair and maintain. They were by far the most reliable tanks of the war and could handle most threats depending on the tank and model of said tank
They weren't the best but there were so many of them.
What da matter can't Mass produce?
Like the T-34, the Sherman's weren't "best", but they were decent, and produced and DEPLOYED in sufficient numbers, that, as attributed to Stalin, that "quantity" had it's own "quality".
Where the M36 Jackson?,the M10 Wolverine and the Hellcat?
Not tanks.
this overlooks the M3 used against the Japanese
So nothing in M4a3e8s or M4A2 Jumbos?
short version: not very good but mass-produced to the point it didn't matter
The Sherman performed it's role VERY well and deserves to be rated as the best all around tank of WW2. It's a shame though that the U.S. high command screwed around with the Pershing M26 delaying it's development / deployment until late in the war. While it did perform well in the few engagements it had at the very end of the war, it would have been nice for the avg U.S. tank column to have 2 or 3 of them mixed in with a bunch of Shermans - especially if they would have fitted it with the later more powerful engine from the start.
The T 34 was the best all around tank of WW2 . Better tank than the Sherman .
@@stironeceno Nope. The T34 had a myriad of issues the Sherman DID NOT have. The T34 was incredibly crampt inside making it hard to move around in and hard to bail out of due to its sloped armor and internally mounted suspension, both of which took up interior space. Also, it did not have a turret basket as the Sherman did, which meant T34 crews could be injured by the rotation of the turret. U.S. studies of T-34s noticed huge variations of armor strength, manufacture methods and composition. These variations could be fatal to crews, due to things like extremely brittle steel used for armor that might stop a round from penetrating, but would flake off chunks of metal inside the tank, becoming shrapnel. In T34's that were not cast, the welds and joints between the armour plates were many times of very poor quality. This allowed rain in, causing electrical failures, and left the tank vulnerable to weapons like petrol bombs. Welds would frequently crack after a round impact too. A US study during the Korean War found that a penetration by an anti tank round usually led to the destruction of the T34 and the loss of 75% of the crew. In the Sherman the figure was only 18%. The steel used in American tanks was far superior as were any weld joints. The other issue with the T34's internally mounted suspension was repairs; if a component was damaged and needed replacing, the tracks, the unit’s wheel, and the outer layer of armor had to be removed to access the suspension. It also lacked a shock absorber to control suspension travel which meant the springs were free to compress and expand unrestricted, making off road stability a nightmare. When coming to a full stop to fire the main gun, the entire tank would pitch back and forth violently before stabilising enough to site in the gun on target. Soviet designers were aware of this flaw, and wanted to switch to torsion bar suspension, but the factory retooling process would have delayed production so the setup stayed all the way up until the last T-34 was produced. The Sherman had NONE of these issues. The T34's drive gears were spur cut, and lacked synchronizers, so a huge amount of force was required from the driver to change gears; i.e. it was common for drivers to use a mallet to change gears. The gearbox only had 4 forward gears so it could not make full use of the 500 HP engine and worse, 4th gear could only be used on paved roads. Off road, only 1st and 2nd gears could be used, as changing from 2nd to 3rd required superhuman strength. Overall, gearboxes used poor quality materials, and combined with the beating they required to operate, would often fail. Eventually its transmission would be changed to a 5 speed one in late 1942, but new T-34s delivered were not guaranteed to have it. Once again, the Sherman had NONE of these issues. It was much roomier inside, was very reliable, easy to work on, easy to operate, had very good power and acceleration and was very maneuverable once it got moving. No question that the Sherman was the better tank.
@@GTX1123 The Germans during ww2 one tank they fear mostly over any other tanks was the T34 , not the 'Ronson' name given by the Ellies to the Shermans , The tank that defeated the Germans in the battle of ;Moscow , Stalingrad , Kursk , Bagration , was the T34 , Germany created the Panzer V to confront the T34 ,not the inferior Sherman . The gun that some time would explode while being used was the Sherman , not then T34 , GET A CLUE .
@@stironeceno GET A CLUE???? Try again, only this time instead of sniveling and whining because you got your butt handed to you, try addressing even ONE of the points I just made. BTW, who are the "Ellies"??? Was that a country called Ellie??? 😂HA HA HA. So let me get this straight - Tiger and Panther crews feared the T34? REALLY??? 😂Ummm, no they didn't. Time for a history lesson. GET A CLUE - HELLO, the Panther was developed to deal with the T34 genius. Crews of the older inferior Panzer Mark I, II & III crews GREATLY feared the T34 because those versions of the Panzer were inferior; i.e. they had thinner armor, nor had the firepower to do any damage to the T34's armor which the Tiger's fiercesome 88 and the Panther's gun - one of the best in the war - could EASILY do to the T34. Even the Panzer mark IV which had thicker armor and a much better gun could knock out a T34. What turned the tide against Germany in the East was when the Soviets finally figured out how to leverage the sheer numbers of T34's they had against the Germans. Up until the battle of Kursk, T-34’s suffered from overly aggressive Soviet doctrine, and inexperienced crews. They had huge losses of tanks and men; i.e. 23,500 tracked vehicles losses in 1943. The bottom line was that T34's 76.2mm gun was inferior to the firepower of the Tiger and Panther so better tactics had to be developed. SO IT WAS WITH THE SHERMAN TANK'S 75mm and 76mm guns. U.S. tank doctrine used the tank as infantry support. LIKE THE SOVIETS, green Sherman crews learned a HARD lesson in battle tactics when going up against Panthers and Tigers - yet their crew survival rates were MUCH better than the T34. The battle of Tursk was really the turning point for the Soviets. On top of underestimating the number of reserves the Soviets had, the Germans had to pull out part of their force due to the invasion of Italy during the battle. The cracking of the enigma code by the British was also a HUGE help for the Soviets because they now knew the exact movements of German tank columns. T34 tank crews began fighting MUCH SMARTER. JUST LIKE THEIR SHERMAN ALLIES, they began figuring out what angles and ranges the T34's 76.2mm gun could penetrate Tiger and Panther armor. JUST LIKE THEIR SHERMAN ALLIES they used sheer numbers of the T34 to overwhelm the Germans and put them into retreat. But in a straight up comparison, FOR ALL THE REASONS I've pointed out, the Sherman was the better tank. Don't bother replying with more crying and whining. If you're going to respond at all, trying refuting ALL of the FACTS I've listed this time. If you don't I'll take that as an abdication. Oh and try spell checking too. I'm waiting...
The US Army cancelled further production of the M6 heavy tank after deciding one wasn't wanted nor needed. In 1943 Congress felt differently because the Press had the public worked up about the giant German Tiger 1 blowing away the puny M4's. The Press blamed that on Congress being too cheap to fund the design then production of a heavy tank. The Democrats lost control of both Houses in the 1942 Elections due to the Press claiming they weren't being aggressive enough against the Axis forces. Now all of them were worried about the upcoming Fall Elections in '42 so Congress ordered the War Department to get a heavy tank in combat before November of 1944. Ordnance had the T25 ready for testing in May of '43 so supersized one into the T26 heavy tank by that December. It was approved for production by February of '44 with assembly finally starting in mid November after the elections due to delays obtaining the parts. Congress ordered the first 20 made to be shipped to Europe ASAP so those arrived in February of '45 without trained crews, mechanics or replacement parts. The Army refused to use those for one month until ordered to by Eisenhower who had Congress and General Marshall giving him Hell for the delay. Those were divided up between armor units who kept them in the rear due to their slow speed then called them up when needed. Army records show that the M26's only destroyed 12 German tanks before the war ended.
The amount of personal opinion stated as fact in this video is wild. "The Sherman's 75mm gun was also nothing special." NOTHING SPECIAL?!? It did a pretty good job of killing tanks up till mid 44. You call that "nothing special"?
My grampa was in world war 2 and fought in armored tanks
The M 26 should have gotten to the front much earlier....
If you isolate the question to what the original poster has questioned about, WW2 only (The Korean war is irrelevant) None of the US or British tanks were much good. Though the Hellcat, M10 Wolverine and M36 Jackson were good tank destroyers. The Pershing was too late to do much of anything.
The Germans and Russians had much better battle tanks.
Right off the bat this video gets American doctrine wrong. The point of the tank destroyer units was to deal with major concentrated armor offensives by the enemy. Tanks were assumed to be working with infantry on the offense and defense. That role includes fighting tanks. The way this video represents actual American Armor doctrine is a gross simplification that gives the wrong impressions of actual historical American Armor design and doctrine.
Agreed. If they were not intended to engage enemy tanks they wouldn't be equipped with armor piercing ammunition (the M3 carried both AP and HE rounds for each gun). When the Sherman tank entered production it was a match for any German tank of the time. Problem was that the up-gunned Panzer IVs (mounting higher velocity 75mm guns) were just entering service at the time. And a greater threat to Shermans was the Flak 88 guns able to decimate them at distance.
This is a fallacy that's been repeated again and again. The U.S. Army manual for armor tactics called for U.S. tanks to engage enemy armor at every opportunity. In fact, too much reliance on that philosophy led to the US catastrophe at Kasserine Pass, where massed US armor rushed to engage German Panzers only to fall into ambush after ambush.
German’s were very fearful of the Sherman tank with their 60mm cannon going against their Tiger tanks.
What? The sherman was never equipped with a 60mm cannon
@@scarredpotato6206 That one detail he's right on- but they never faced _Tigers._ In fact the 60mm. armed _M4's_ of the Chilean military were only recently retired from reserve and ceremonial duties and were active up until around 2003.
@@peterson7082 Oh my bad. I only remembered shermans with 75 mm cannons, 76mm cannons and 105mm howitzers
My dad was a tank mechanic during WW2 with the 903rd Heavy Automotive Maintenance (HAM) Ordinance Company. He had to go out through "no man's land" to pick up broke down or knocked out Sherman's and drop off repaired ones. He absolutely hated the Sherman's which were nicked named "Ronsons" by the troops because just like the cigarettes' lighter they would burn with one hit. He said it was common to come upon a scene where numerous Sherman's were knocked out but there was no German knocked out tanks anywhere... Read the book "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper who was an officer in a HAM unit if you want to know more about the wonderful Ronson tanks...
The book is a fine read, but to interpret it as a adequate let alone accurate source of history of U.S. armor is a mistake.
I respect their service. But while crew certainly felt that way one must keep in mind it is not unknown the scale of losses Allied armor and crew suffered. With that in mind the _M4_ was not comparatively prone to suffering ammuniton fires.
@@peterson7082 Agreed, the M4 wasn't particularly more prone to brewing up when hit in the ammo bins than any other tank fielded by any other armor. If you were to pen a Tiger in its ammo storage, it would brew just the same as a Sherman. Later Shermas were even safer when they introduced wet storage for their ammo.
"Ronson" nickname is a myth, and just because Cooper saw more destroyed tanks mean the Sherman is somehow a bad tank, his job is to repair tanks so of course in his perspective the Sherman is a death trap, but did he meet any of the crew that survive because they manage to get out in time? who would later be given a replacement tank to crew?, also the best way to ensure a tank cannot be repaired is to constantly fire at it even if the crew already escaped until said tank is burned from either ignited ammo or leaking fuel from the constant shelling
916: M26 Persh tank god sending Just needed 2 barrels to hve 2 shots ready to go already rifle loaded in case u miss your 1st shot. A dosser front or front & rear blade protects against mines & anti tank rockets from soldiers. In close 200 yards or less flame throws best of all & u would hve 2nd barrel already tank loaded shell. If 75 was ok, 90mm plenty of gun, but key was being able to fire tungsten dart cap unto front of shell if shooting at steal vs concrete. Bigger shells means less shots problem.