The Sherman wasn’t undergunned when it was designed and put into production. The german panzers invading france sported 37mm guns and 75s with very short barrels. The Panzer IV didn’t get a decent 75mm anti-tank gun until 1942 after the T-34s were hitting them hard in the east.
Those undergunned sherman stories are mostly late 44 and 45, when they were going up against German tank guns that didn’t exist in 1940-41. Even then it wasn’t that our guys were morons. Production was so overwhelming that they cranked them out even when it was outgunned and upgraded the 75 we had on it.
The Sherman kicked ass in one area, speed and mobility. The German tanks were wretched in that regard.
Then instead of trying to design a new super tank like the blockheads did, we simply cranked out 15,000 P-47 Thunderbolts and played a different game.
Also: reliability and rebuildability. They could do field depot work on a company or 2 of Shermans and get it back into action before they could get the transmission out of ONE Panther or Tiger.
The Panther was actually slightly more mobile than even the last Shermans, but the Germans couldn’t produce enough of them and their quality control sucked at that time. It was a threat, but it was really too little too late.
And as another poster pointed out, the Sherman was designed to be worked on by men straight off their newly mechanized farms in the Midwest. If you could fix a tractor, you could fix a Sherman in the field. Later Nazi German tanks like the Tiger and Panther were designed with tech first, servicing second - more than a bit of a change from the Panzer III and IV - and many of them had to be abandoned because even ‘simple’ repairs and maintenance took so long (days!) that the Allies would have overrun the position long before the task was completed. Even when Germany was on the advance, they had to combat-loss tanks with minor mechanical problems as they didn’t have enough recovery vehicles and crews would be left on their own in a not-entirely-secured rear area for days on end; nobody thought it was a good idea to let any resistance forces in that area have a free tank.
Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbQPtgwe6k4
>Those undergunned sherman stories are mostly late 44 and 45, when they were going up against German tank guns that didn’t exist in 1940-41. Even then it wasn’t that our guys were morons. Production was so overwhelming that they cranked them out even when it was outgunned and upgraded the 75 we had on it.
The Sherman kicked ass in one area, speed and mobility. The German tanks were wretched in that regard.
Then instead of trying to design a new super tank like the blockheads did, we simply cranked out 15,000 P-47 Thunderbolts and played a different game.
Poor tactics by US commanders were the primary problem with the Sherman. They used them like heavy tanks with frontal charges instead of like mediums that took out heavy tanks by blowing up their support vehicles and leaving them helpless as the mediums moved on.
Patton was the only US general to use the Sherman in it’s designed role and he was spectacularly successful at it. With US WW2 tank tactics(mostly infantry support) what we really needed was a good heavy tank or something like the STUGIII. Instead, we used Shermans in a role they were not designed for.
There was an active decision not to put a high velocity 76mm cannon on the Sherman in 1943. The 76mm gun wasn’t deemed ready and it’s high explosive shells were not as effective as those of the shorter-barreled 75mm on the Sherman. This policy was reconsidered in light of Tigers in Tunisia and Italy and in January 1944, Shermans with the 76mm gun were produced, but not in high numbers, as was the M18 Hellcat, a tank destroyer. The other issue, is taht the Army doctrine was to have out thin-0skinned and fast tank destroyers take on tanks.