their Shermans and other tanks were simply outgunned. That's a compliment from the folks who pretty much invented tanks.
Posted on 11/21/2017 6:46:17 AM PST by C19fan
An actual frequent fault in Tiger tanks, by the way.
One of my favorite movies.
One of the best movies ever made.
At times I could be an IT version of Moriarty.
Lotus Notes, printers, McAfee VSE, HP products, and Z scaler do wonders for creating negative waves.
While the Pershing, Centurion, and the IS-III were the ultimate in heavy tank designs by the allies, they saw very little service by the wars end. The only successful counter to the Tiger was the Soviet IS-2 which entered production in Nov 1943.
The Panther V had a 75mm gun too but it was WAY better than our tank mounted 75mm gun.
bfl
their Shermans and other tanks were simply outgunned. That's a compliment from the folks who pretty much invented tanks.
The Grant tank pictured in Reply #24 was held together with rivets . . . which might sound reasonable unless you understand that the shock of a projectile striking the armor could easily pop a rivet or three.Not a big deal structurally, perhaps - but if you are in the tank and a piece of rivet is also inside, ricocheting around until it inevitably hits someone, that could ruin your whole day.
AFAIK nobody has used rivets in tank construction since then.
You are correct; as they say, amateurs talk tactics; the pros talk logistics and transportation.
My late father served in a maintenance company that was part of the 3rd Armored Division, the famed “Spearhead.” He served as NCOIC of a tank retriever platoon, equipped with 5-ton wreckers that pulled damaged Shermans (and other vehicles) off the battlefield.
When my dad and his men weren’t towing damaged tanks, they pitched in and helped the mechanics repair them. My father told me Shermans were easy to repair and with our advantages in production and logistics, there was never a shortage of spare parts and other components needed to get an M-4 back into action. By comparison, the Germans wrote off any tank that suffered more than moderate damage, while a Sherman with comparable damage was often back on the battlefield in a couple of days—sometimes just a few hours.
Our armored units had another advantage. Scores of men like my father had acquired mechanical skills growing up on a farm, or by working in machine shops or factories. The Army put those abilities to good use. The Germans were mechanically skilled, too, but they never organized their repair teams as efficiently—or supplied them as lavishly—as we did.
A final note: my father once told me that one of the first tasks in fixing a damaged Sherman was painting the inside of the crew compartment. At first, the significance of that task didn’t register. But later, as I learned more about the war and the M-4’s deficiencies, I realized the importance of that interior paint job. German anti-tank weapons, the high-velocity 75mm of the Panther and the dreaded 88mm could easily penetrate the Sherman’s armor and kill or maim the crews inside.
While maintenance teams did not have to remove casualties, evidence of the carnage was often visible when they began working on the tank. The paint was necessary to cover blood stains (and the smells) left from the tank’s last battle. For the record, the 3rd Armored had a cumulative loss rate of 600% among its 232 Shermans during the 11-month campaign from Normandy to Germany. A lot of the M-4s that were knocked out returned to service, thanks to an unparalleled logistics system and men like my father.
This sounds like a battle I read about where the Matildas were breaking through and an infantry officer, in desperation, told the AA commander to depress the muzzles and shoot at the tanks. The AA officer objected, saying their purpose was to shoot down aircraft. The infantry put a Luger to the guy's head and said that if he didn't do as he was told, his wife "would receive some interesting news". The AA officer did so - and the rest is history.
The Soviets were also very good at recovery and repair. Some T-34s were knocked out and returned to battle as much as 4 times. Though I doubt the Reds gave much consideration to the sensibilities of the crews about getting a tank that had had its prior crew killed.
I heard from an Iraq War vet that his most horrifying experience was riding in a damaged Bradley in which multiple soldiers had just been horribly mangled by an IED.
I never understood why we never adopted the Firefly. At least it was a fighting chance.
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