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I agree; if you can afford a Sherman, by all means go for it, and park it in the driveway. Guaranteed to reduce neighborhood crime rates.

My late father was a part of the 3rd Armored Division during World War II. He was the NCOIC of a platoon of tank retrievers—they had the job of pulling damaged Shermans and other vehicles off the battlefield, fixing them, and getting them back in action. They were easy to repair and the Army was full of men who had acquired mechanical skills in machine shops, factories and on family farms. There wasn’t much those men couldn’t fix, and M-4s that would ordinarily be written off were repaired and fought another day.

My dad had the utmost admiration for the Sherman crews. Everyone knew the long odds they faced in going up against a Panther or Tiger. In fact, the tank crews took so many casualties that during the Battle of the Bulge, infantry replacements were retrained as tank crews and sent into battle with barely one day of instruction.

For what it’s worth, Bill O’Reilly is an idiot. I guess he became an expert on tanks writing the god-awful “Killing Patton.” My wife gave me “Killing Reagan” as a birthday gift; I hated to tell her it was the biggest waste of ink and paper in publishing history. Not that O’Reilly cares; he’s got a nice little assembly line going and each book in the series adds more millions to his bottom line.

BTW, my favorite nickname for the Sherman is the one the Brits gave it, the Ronson. Named for the British cigarette lighter that lights “first time, every time.”

The “Robson”!
I had forgotten about that one.
Very apt name.

Oddly enough the shortcomings of the Sherman’s were also some of its, not strengths, but selling points.

Under armored meant it was light and nimble.
They could use practically any bridge they came upon and they could traverse practically any terrain.
The panthers were larger, heavier and couldn’t use half the bridges then in use in Europe.
The heavier Tigers were particularly cumbersome and useless.
The larger and heavier still Royal Tiger was practically useless in western Europe because of the light bridges at the many river crossings.

The Sherman was an engineering disappointment from the get go.
The short barreled,low velocity gun meant that it’s shells usually bounced off the thick hides of the German Panthers.
Even the up gunned models couldn’t take on a Panther one on one.

Even the narrow treads on the Sherman had to be upgraded to a wider tread to meet the reality of war in Europe.

A neighbor of mine was in an infantry unit in Europe.
He used to get mad whenever a war movie would show a Sherman destroying a Panther.
He would say that the only way that could happen was for the Sherman to sneak up behind the Panther and” shoot it in the ass.”

I’m sure your Dad came across some gruesome sights working on the Sherman’s.
The worst duty would have been the men who had to clear the disabled tanks of the human remains before they were towed to the shop.
Not a duty I would want.

A tip of the hat to your Dad and his buddies who kept the Sherman’s rolling.