- Skeet
This same vet used to talk about the German 88's. A lot of what he spoke about seemed to indicate they could have been 88's. But a lot of what he said made me wonder how (why?) the German's could be using 88's like that, i.e. indirect fire into camps/parks on reverse slopes. I posted that question a while back, and the consenus was that lot's of WWII vets from the ETO referred to all German artillery as 88's.
I don't know of any 76mm gun Shermans being issued to British units (Like the GAA engined M4A3 the U.S. tended to keep the 76mm Shermans for themselves, but 76mm gunned M4A2s were sent to the Soviets)
- Al_BowieI love the wonderful thoughtless generalisations that such threads dredge up.
Particularly the one about a Panther being worth Four or Five Shermans. This gross generalisation is so wrong in the context of any rational discussion as to be laughable.
Consider this:
If those figures were true then the amount of Shermans deployed to the NWE theatre must have been greater than the actual number. Whilst a Panther in Defence (And I stress Defence - usually ambush) could take a number of Shermans to destoy it the truth also holds true for the Sherman as the battles at the closing of the Falaise pocket indicate and the early Cobra battles where the odds were reversed with up to 12 panthers being KO'd by A troop of Shermans in Defensive position.
Anyone who studies warfare will understand that the defender on prepared ground of his choosing holds all the trumps. The oncoming enemy may lose two or three tanks before even locating his assailant (as Michael Wittman found to his peril). This does not make it a better AFV by any stretch of the imagination. The other part to this is that the five vehicles lost whilst "stalking" the assailant may not all be attributed to the Assailant but its infantry screen or mutually supporting AT or AFV.
THe Panther was a mechanical basket case and was extremely unreliable. The Sherman on the other hand just kept going as wass evidenced in the Normandy breakouts by both US and Brit/Cwealth/Polish forces. The Brits were clocking up huge distances of road march which is extremely taxing on an armoured vehicle and still managed to keep it up. The much vaunted Panther and Tiger would have suffered up to 80% mechanical loss if they attempted the same thing.
The Sherman was an excellent product for the time and like the equally excellent T34 grew to meet the threat. The HVAP 76 mm Shermans with HVAP were a pretty good match for the Panther and even Tiger an could engage these at good battle ranges.
The ability to produce the Sherman easily and in Huge numbers was a very decisive factor and if you did an analysis based on cost effectiveness I know that the Panther would not win.
With the exception of the T34 no other ww2 vehicle has had such a career or was so adaptable as to still be going with such success at the end of the War. If the Germans had abandoned the Panther and tiger and concentrated on upgrading the Pz IV family then the numbers they would have had avail and the reliability these proven designs had would have offered more vehicles and some of the results of history may have varied.
The Sherman is a much maligned and denigrated vehicle but to misquote a cartoon of the time "It got their the fastest with the mostest" and did the job asked of it. If some decisions such as arming a percentage of Shermans with the 17pdr in both US and Brit service had been taken earlier along with the introduction of the 76 armed HVSS shermans then it would have had a lot more success but hindsight is onl avail after the fact.
- bsmartI don't have data at hand but I'm not sure there was much difference between the 85mm in the T34 and the 76mm in the Sherman. Both were moderate upgrades from the original gun but neither was the very high velocity gun that the 17pdr or 75L70 of the Panther were.
- Neil_BaumgardnerOddly enough you dont see very many pictures at all (at least that I have seen) of British Sherman 76s... Lots of 75s & Fireflies, but I cant remember any pictures of 76s in British colors...
Neil
- Neil_BaumgardnerJim, thanks. For whatever reason, I dont remember seeing any pics of British Sherman 76s before...
Neil
- JimWeb- Neil_BaumgardnerJim, thanks. For whatever reason, I dont remember seeing any pics of British Sherman 76s before...
Neil
I think there must have been quite a few in Italy - strangely enough not many fireflies... must have been because of the 76mm shermans.
- bsmartI'm not sure the French post war experience with the Panther proves or disproves the tanks reliability. It wasa peacetime army with peacetime priorities. I doubt they were run hard at all.
- Neil_Baumgardner...
While I think the Sherman was a great & venerable tank, I wouldnt argue it grew as much as the T-34, at least during WWII. The Soviets upgraded the T-34 with the 85mm gun during the war, while it took the French and Israelis to upgrade the Sherman with similar weapons post-war...
....
Part of the success & adaptability of the T-34 and Sherman is due to the fact that the US & USSR won WWII, leading to several generations of improvements afterwards. If the Germans had won (thank god not!), I have no doubt we would have seen 88mm armed Panthers and quite possibly even eventually 105mm armed Panthers in the postwar years. I'm not so sure (especially taking the French experience) that the Tiger or Tiger II would have had the same longevity...
- Al_Bowie
BTW the point I made about numbers does not indicate that the Panther killed 5 shermans for itself being killed. these would have been killed by a variety of threats such as infantry AT, AT and mutually supporting tanks. I notice you completely overlook the fact that the Panthers were fighting in sited defence giving them a three to one theoretical advantage to start with. If you analyse the Normandy / Falaise and cobra period battles where the Germans were forced to counterattack against vehicles in defensive position the ratios are about 3 to one in favourr of the Sherman highlighting the fact that it is the situation more than the vehicle that accts for the discrepency.
My comments regarding the longevity if you re read them are WW2 related and NOT post war although the Sherman did continue for a long period post war.
THe French used the Panthers ONLY until the US MAP could provide significant amounts of 76 Shermans and a ltd amount of Pershings.
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