The Sherman was poorly designed, built for manufacture and transport in large number, for which purpose it did serve. They were superior in quality (as in quality control) and weren’t broken down all over the length and breath of Europe like the malfunctioning hodge podge of manifestly inadequate German armor.
OH THE PANTHER! You mean tha T34 knock off? Yeah, a later development, which tended to catch fire at first.
German armor performed better because of the men inside of them, not the over engineered, overrated boxes around them. Their doctrine was superior. Their training and motivation was superior.
But the Hun got their asses kicked. My dad was one of the ones who helped kick it. What he told me the GIs feared was the 88mm gun. That and SS, which again is personnel not hardware. We grossly overestimate machines over men.
Five Shermans to knock out one Panther doesn’t sound like good odds. I knew men who served in the 4th. Armored Division and they had respect for the German tankers. And the effectiveness of their tanks. “Our shells would bounce off them’’ is a refrain I heard many times.
At the Aberdeen proving grounds they tested the armor on captured German tanks. THEY WERE IMPRESSED to say the least. So you are not correct. The armor was great, the gun sight optics were great, the main gun was great but overall they were not manufactured in great enough numbers and hard to maintain. Also German tanks were slightly under powered and not diesels.