American tanks in World War II were generally inferior to their German counterparts.
In a sense. But not exactly. In 42 when it was fielded, the Sherman was the better of everything the Germans had fielded. By the time the Nazis built some behemoth monsters, Shermans were rolling off the lines in incomprehensible numbers.
We didn’t duplicate the Germans superweapon fantasy and stop production in hopes of some grand scheme.
They Nazis were morons to build the Tiger around 1400 built, and King Tiger with around 500 built. Meanwhile their panther was a far better tank then either Tiger and they built 6000 of them. Better to have another 4000 panthers than the handful of monsters that were mechanical nightmares.
But either way, the P-47s ate them all alive.
But the Sherman was speedy, dependable, easy to repair in the field, and a mass production success. The Germans couldn’t keep up.
I feel this way about the present F-35 strike fighter. The program will cost $Trillions, and we will wind up with 400-500 working aircraft, max.
Another reason for Shermans being the primary tank was that you could ship 3 Shermans per flat car. You could only fit 1 or 2 Pershings on the flat car. This, in part, led to the Army sticking with the Sherman even when we finally had a better tank ready to go into production.
The Pather was a mechanical nightmare - hard to maintain and prone to breaking down, throwing treats, clogging roadwheels, etc.
IF the Germans had copied the T-34, as they originally intended, or at least kept the design simple, they could have caused all sort of mischief.