And between the panzers and the 88s they got destroyed at a pretty good clip, too.
Posted on 12/28/2015 10:27:21 AM PST by C19fan
The terms of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I prohibited Germany from joining Great Britain, France and other major powers in developing tanks — those heavily-armed, thickly-armored tracked vehicles that had debuted late in the conflict and had helped to break the stalemate of trench warfare.
But the tank ban didn’t actually stop Nazi Germany from inventing new tanks and refining tactics for their use. Instead, the treaty limitations pushed German armored vehicle development into the military-industrial shadows. In the decades before Panzers swept across Europe and the Soviet Union, the Panzerwaffe armored corps evolved in secrecy.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
Also worth noting is that at the time of the M4’s introduction to the Eighth Army in North Africa, it was a very competitive platform.
Some applique armor and a 17 Pounder (as in the Firefly) and you have a pretty decent tank. The Israelis ran their M-51s almost into the Eighties, IIRC.
Maybe with the exception of Patton.
I think if Hitler never back-stabs Stalin and attacks the USSR- Hitler wins. I don’t see anyway the Allies break into Europe without his forces spread into two fronts.
Just because.
Happy New Year!
I think if Hitler never back-stabs Stalin and attacks the USSR- Hitler wins.
Just a matter of when but was going to happen.
And between the panzers and the 88s they got destroyed at a pretty good clip, too.
“German is fun...but complicated. Except the word “dochâ€. I miss not having it in English.”
Sometimes a properly-dropped F-bomb suffices.
Here’s more: the M-26 Pershing, particularly the `Super’, really changed things around.
Wide treads for mobility, speed, sloped armor, a self-leveling barrel for shots on the move, high-velocity cannon and quadraphonic speakers.
https://youtu.be/6fTdSQUdKgQ (model reenactment)
With no threat from the west, and little or no involvement of the US, one could further speculate a more qualified German military leader could have defeated Stalin.
Shermans were not well armored---downside---and compared to a Tiger or Panther were under-gunned. But their equivalent, the Mark series, we were fine with that.
Did you know that if you take into account the slope angle the M4 Sherman Jumbo (E2) had almost as much frontal armor as the Tiger?
“the allies had did not have radios, the German tanks did.”
It is interesting reading allied news articles from the invasion of France. The soldiers on the ground swore up and down that the German tanks were bigger and had better guns than the French and English tanks. In reality the opposite was true. They also swore the Germans had a lot more of them which was again, not really true.
11 thousand? Hah! try nearly FIFTY thousand. And that was just M4s. We gobs of tank destroyers too.
Between P-47’s, Typhoons and our coordinated artillery those panzers died at an ever faster rate. Actually I think panzers broke down faster than they were able to kill M-4s. Most of the tanks Shermans ACTUALLY fought were (by numbers) Pz-IIIs, Pz-IVs and Stugs. Sherman’s had no trouble going toe to toe with those. And the M4E2 ate them for lunch.
Exactly. They did not have to go toe to toe with the best German tanks. They just flanked them and by the time the Panzers caught up half of them were down for maintenance anyway. The other half got blasted from the air while the Sherman’s drove over the horizon.
Yep, the Germans were merely better able to manage their tanks via radio so they could concentrate more of their tanks on fewer allied tanks at any given point
Doh, yes, I’m thinking we gave 11,000 to the RUSSIANS. Yes, the number was well over 50,000: 23,000 Lee light tanks; 68,000 Shermans/medium tanks; and 2,000 Pershing heavy tanks, or over 88,000.
“When a German dives into a sentence, you will not see him again until he comes up on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” - Mark Twain
“120mm guns were introduced that made the Sherman the equal of a Tiger 1.”
The Brits up-gunned their Shermans with 76.2mm guns to create the “Firefly” which with better ammo could take out a Tiger II at 1000+ yards.
There were SPGs and Tank Destroyer variants with 90mm, 105mm and 155mm guns, but no WWII production Sherman ever had a 120mm gun to my knowledge and brief internet search. What various armies around the world did with Shermans after the war I cannot be held responsible for.
If you can point me to some info I have missed I will stand corrected.
panther had a crappy final drive design. rushed into production before being fully and completely “design verified and validated”
response to appearance to T-34 seems to be the reason for rushing design to production.
MTBF was about 60 hours...roughly.
classic example of design and engineering failure.
other than that, it was a fine tank.
“And the M4E2 ate them for lunch.”
Could you point me to an image of an M4E2?
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