pretty much anything that ran gas was considered a Ronson...
Posted on 04/17/2017 4:30:35 AM PDT by C19fan
As I recall, the Israelis successfully upgunned their Shermans to 90MM.
Seems like there was also an effort to upgun the American Shermans with the 90MM used in the Pershng, but it got nixed by Washington.
Shermans are kmocked too much. They were incredibly easy to fix on a battlefield (15 min to fix a broken tread, one hour to swap out a turret behind the lines. Later up gunned models could hold against anything but Tigers. Their somewhat smaller size made them better in cities.
And the fact we built the average Sherman in 4.5 hour from scratch?
The hellcats seemed to be really good.
Btw, any one hear play world of tanks on Xbox?
And he said Germany needed to make a direct copy. The Germans never fielded anything as reliable and effective as the T-34. It’s pretty clearly the best tank of the war.
And the kraut penchant for complexity cost them dearly. There were about 6000 Panthers made, fewer than 500 king Tigers. There were 80,000 of the better T-34s built.
Yep and most of the Germans gains in the war were with these “puny” tanks. Its was better tactics rather than equipment that benefited the Germans.
Agreed that the T-34 was the most prolific, but disagree as to it being the best tank of the war. The T-34 was incredibly simple and used the American chassis/suspension design which made it reliable. But even the T-34 had its problems. The driver could not see and had to open the frontal hatch to maneuver or rely upon the tank commander to steer. Their gun was fantastic but loading was complicated due to lack of internal space, making their rate of fire ridiculously slow. They were used at Kursk in 2 ways: to absorb German rounds and to ram German tanks.
Shermans are knocked WAY too much! The Russians who used them thought they were great, and said the T-34 was MORE likely to catch fire when hit, but you never hear that when people write about the “Ronsons” on the battlefield. The biggest shortcoming of the Sherman was that it was designed to fight against the Panzer III & IV models, and fell behind as development continued. The fact that a destroyer could not take on a battleship didn’t mean the destroyer was a bad design, but everyone seems to think that the Sherman was awful because it was outclassed by the Tiger, which was a heavy tank.
The Panther was not a great design either. The French used some in their army after WWII and found them way too unreliable. I read an account of their experiences online but can’t find it at the moment. A list of the tank’s shortcomings is found here:
http://ww2weaponsforum.com/showthread.php?14514-Post-War-French-Assessment-of-THe-Panther-Tank
Shermans are knocked WAY too much! The Russians who used them thought they were great, and said the T-34 was MORE likely to catch fire when hit, but you never hear that when people write about the “Ronsons” on the battlefield.
Heh. The original “Ronsons” were UK designed tanks that would, on occasion, flame up when simply turning on the ignition. The UK boffins have always been weird about electrical wiring.
Lucas Electric....the Prince of Darkness.
pretty much anything that ran gas was considered a Ronson...
Exactly. Several points:
*The Commies would build anything-—including a tank-—with a design flaw, FIXING the flaw as they would continue to turn out large numbers of flawed equipment. Say a T-34 could only turn left, they’d make 100 of these before fixing it. That would give them 100 tanks in the field-—flawed, but fighting.
*Agreed that Shermans, with the 75mm, were designed to fight against the Panzers, NOT the Panthers or Tigers.
*The Panther was a mess to fix. For example, whereas the Sherman could run over a mine, the crew could take off FOUR bolts and switch out a tread. But the Panther required the removal of up to FIVE wheels, or ten times the bolts, to change a tread. A Tiger 1 was so complex that if it broke down on the battlefield they needed a tank recovery vehicle to get it behind the lines for repair.
*Shermans were NOT intended for large scale Kursk-type tank battles. Their main purpose was as infantry support.
*Remember, American weapons had to go to two very different theaters. A Sherman was vastly superior to any Japanese tank—but again, was mainly intended as infantry support.
*We sent the Russkies 11,000 Shermans and Lees. The Brits provided Russia its heavies. One study found that in the defense of Moscow of 1941-42, 85% of the heavy tanks were supplied by the US/England. (yes, the US tanks were the crappy Grants, . . . but see point #1. Sometimes numbers are better than quality).
Panzershrek was the multi-use AT launcher.
But it was much better than the US Bazooka.
Used in Korea against WWII-era Russia-built tanks, the small-diameter US Bazooka proved near-useless against most areas of Russian armor. It did work against the lighter German armor (trucks of course, armored cars), buildings and light bunkers, but not against heavy tanks. But it was all the US forces had.
That, and lots of Sherman targets.
The Brit’s upgunned their Sherman successfully about mid-war. (For the Brit, Canadian, and Commonwealth forces) We could have, but Washington generals wanted the open-turret “tank destroyer” instead. But that open top left them defenseless in a town or against cannon bombardment, mortar round, elevated machine gun defenses, etc.
Tank destroyers rarely worked as theory held in the confusion of battle. GREAT in theory and mockup battles however.
The Americans had to wait to get upgraded to the 3.5” bazookas. The short-sightedness of the military was exposed when troops were equipped with old weapons because Korea wasn’t Europe.
Wow, a lot of really not-so-correct replies:
Post 1) One could say that about any advanced design. I remember how folks bitched about the M1 in the late 1980s, shut up when the Gulf war showed it was a hard tank to defeat. Same was true of the Tigers and 1943 Panthers.
Post 2) Your source on Jewish slave labor is factually lacking. You obviously know nothing about the Vienna works where they were built or the design fault that lead to them burning up when just friving, the fixed version and the incredibly high kill ratios put in by the 653rd and 654th heavy Tank destroyer battalions from Kursk to late 1944.
In general: The German designs were good for their time, much of the reliability problems they had with summer 1944 and later production is this:
1) In February of 1944 they lost their main supply of Manganese.
2) In August 1944 they lost their supply of Chromium and tungsten.
3) in September 1944 they lost their supply of nickel.
To keep production going there was a drastic reduction in the use of alloys in production, which adversely affected reliability. Try producing modern tanks without these elements with only heat treated carbon steel. Heat treatment becomes critical and it is impossible to match some of the characteristics you can with alloys. Transmissions last a lot less time and break a lot easier just to start. Had the allies stopped on the border in late 1944, the German military machine would have collapsed around late June of 1945 due to lack of alloys. Had the allies stopped after Russia overran the upper Silesian industrial zone in mid February of 1945, the German economy would have collapsed around May 15th at the latest.
A lot of the military history writers are completely ignorant when it comes to the material side of things.
Example, as regards the ME262: the Jumo Jet engines would not last 10 hours in 1943. It was not until the late summer of 1944 they got the life to around 25 hours at which time mass production began.
Now once you know this little fact the decision to use the ME262 as a fighter bomber makes a lot more sense. There was no possibility of mass production when the engines would not last more than 5~10 fights, you could not even train the fighter pilots when they need at least 20 hours to make the translation. But a few of these jets as fighter bombers flying through at high speed could cause all sort of expensive defensive measures that would divert more Allied resources by (by several magnitudes) then it cost the Germans, like the U-boat campaign and the V1 buzz bombs).
Not praising the Germans, just pointing out folks here really have a distorted view from popular history, which is pretty shallow and inane.
If you did more thorough research you would discover I am on the mark.
Although made in low numbers where deployed they were effective. Here is a link to just ONE service record concerning the Tiger II.
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen10.htm
The Sherman with the 17 pounder was called a Firefly and was better than our 76mm models.
Tank destroyers were preferred because they mounted the better guns earlier than the Shermans. They were also easier to escape from and had great visibility.
The 76mm gunned Shermans fought in Korea and bested the T34’s.
Jagdpanther armed with the 88mm. Just finished making a Tamyia model of it.
That and the fact that basically the crew was blind inside the tank. The Russians, who never lacked for reckless courage could sneak of on the thing and plant magnetic mines on it.
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