Sherman Tank

The flak guns were actually first used against tanks in the Spanish civil war interestingly enough. They obviously didn't become mainstream until WW2 in their anti-tank role though.

 

The concept was realized upon the success of Rommels 7th Panzer, for which he was awarded Knights Cross. Patton read Rommels book remember?

 

You should change your avatar to a Russian KV-2 Heavy Tank. And it was Rommel, that incompetent general you keep saying, who "thought up" the use of 88 flak guns on the spot.

T-34 was shot to pieces once Tiger-1 and upgunned PzKw-IV w/75mm gun came out. Russian tank tactics were atrocious, resulting in 60-1 kill ratio for Tiger-1 and 10-1 kills for German tanks with 75mm and up, as long as they had well trained commanders and used in depth defense tactics. Of course, that was messed up by Hitler also, who was as stupid as Stalin was in his insistance of not retreating.

So any war can be won, by overwhelming numbers, and 24/7 bombing of the enemy industrial complex, not to mention supplying Russia with enough halftracks and trucks in 41-43 to transform their mostly foot infantry into a mechanized force capable of countering German Panzergrenadiers.

But I will say, that Stalingrad was won by sheer grit and determination on the Russian soldiers part, and one instance where no retreat order of Stalin was the right call to make.

 

As is noted above much of the information is coming from Karl-Heinz Frieser who focused on the war in France and I would tend to believe he was referring to the German troops along the Atlantic wall including Normandy.

As we know, when it comes to armored combat, the Battle of Kursk was the largest armored battle in history. The Germans lost 1/3 of all of their tanks (over 1000) during the Battle of Kursk and related battles. When we look at the Normandy invasion one of the "premier" German armored divisions was the 21st Panzer Division and it had only received a total of 17 Mark III's and 14 Mark IV's by the beginning of 1944 but also had moblle artillary (e.g. 88mm guns mounted on 1/2-tracks). Even by the time of the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans did strip their Eastern forces of tanks, they were only able to engage less than 400 tanks in the offensive which was no where near the over 3,000 tanks the Germans employed in the Battle of Kursk. Yes, there were a couple elite Panzer SS divisions but all were under strength and low on supplies including ammunition and fuel.

I find the claim that the panzer divisions near Normandy were up to strength to be highly exaggerated.

 

A lot of sources I've seen over the years say that the Wehrmacht forces in France in 1944 were well under stength, many had taken a hiding on the Eastern Front earlier.

 

I watched the H channels program and would disagree that the show favorably compared the Sherman. I dislike the H Channel because it is inaccurate and takes far too much artistic license so at least we have similar feelings about the H channel. Still the programs orator mentioned the Sherman’s ineffective gun alluding that the tommy cooker had to hit the kraut tanks in specific areas and were not competitive with german tanks them unless they attacked en masse, which I agree. I like the Sherman and would be confident of victory if I were a tank commander of a Sherman unit in WW2 IF I had the Sherman with the alloy ford V8, ANDand better ammo for the tiny cannon. Even without better ammo the ford powered Sherman would have been my pick. The radial engine often fouled plugs on the bottom cyls. Not good when running around a tiger! The Sherman used half the steel of a tiger or panther. But my biggest like of the Sherman was its reliability. Anyway I rate the Sherman era tanks as follows and rate them AS DEPLOYED and on a one on one basis. As Deployed; The Sherman’s overwhelmed the Panzers with numbers. So as deployed ; # 1 Sherman, number two t-34 number three panzer number four tiger. One on one…# 1 tiger number two Panzer number three T-34 number four poor Sherman!

the mighty 1000 lbs of torque ford 1100 cubic inch alum V8



reva

 

I've read the same thing and it did include the conscription of older men over 40 and boys as young as 16 but it was in the late phases of the war but not at the beginning.

 

I am, of course, referencing almost entirely the Panzer Divisions. By the way the portion that was over forty was the reserve component that did not see any real combat until after Operation Barborossa and then it was mostly garrison duty in france and Germany. And of course the upper echelons of the officer corps. Until you've been in a fullscale war for a couple of years you're not going to see very many people above the rank of lieutenant colonel who aren't over forty. But one should not forget that the Germans rewrote the book on infantry tactics in the attack during WWI. Nor should one ignore the fact that both the MG-34 and the MG-42 were grossly superior to both the BAR and the BREN as squad machine guns.

 

Rommel did NOT come up with the idea of using the 8.8 as an anti-tank weapon, though he was one of the first to use it in such a manner in large numbers. The German Condor Legion were the first to use the weapon in an anti-tank role during the Spanish civil war which led to some modifications by WW2 which made it more suited to the task.

The Russians were the ones that really utilized strategic depth in their defense, particularly at Kursk.

90% of German infantry moved on foot. You seem to fall victim to the flash of the panzer units which made up only a small portion of the German army. Also, do you have a source for the 60-1 kill ratio for the Tiger-1?

 

Rommel was only 1 division commander out of many during the battle of France. He did NOT come up with the idea of concentrating mechanized forces with combined arms support. Also, his book was about Infantry tactics and was published in 1937, it had little or nothing to do with his command of the 7th panzer. Rommel wasn't even know as an armored commander until after the invasion of france.

 

He was talking about the Battle of France, which refers to the German invasion of France from May 15-June 25 1940. I'm not saying that 40 and 50 year old men were riding in the panzers that sliced and diced British and French units. I'm saying that many of the reserves and 2nd and 3rd rate troops were reserve units made up of older men. People have a misconception that WWII was all tanks and half-tracks, when in fact the vast majority of troops during the war walked. German tactics relied on heavy concentrations of elite armored units breaking through enemy lines with foot mobile infantry and artillery following in behind to fill in the holes. The majority of the fighting on the Eastern front was Infantry versus Infantry combat, not all that dissimilar to WWI, with the Panzer units concentrated at the points of friction. The only exception to this was the U.S. Army late in the war with their massive numbers of trucks and vehicles. (This was also true to a lesser extent for the Brits and Soviets who were heavily supplied with U.S. vehicles).

The Battle of Kursk was fought in July and August of 1943, almost a year before the Allies opened up the Western front. I don't see how you can compare that to a battle fought 18 months later when the German military was in full retreat on two different fronts. Kursk was an absolutely titanic battle, there's no question about it. I'm disputing the idea that the Germans only sent undermanned and underequiped units to the western front, because that's simply not true. In 1944 and 1945 only about 60% of Axis forces were deployed on the Eastern front when compared to a high of 80% in 1942. Begining in 1943, the axis had to pull troops to fight the west in other areas. The axis army on the Eastern front consisted of millions of non-German allied troops while the Western front in France/Belgium etc. consisted almost entirely of higher quality German troops. More than 900,000 of these non-German axis troops from places like Italy, Hungary, Romania, Italy, and friendly Soviet areas were killed on the Eastern front. Most of these units were traditional infantry units and NOT comparable to the elite German Panzer units.

 

Wehrmacht forces everywhere in 1944 were understrength. They were better equipped in the West though because of shorter supply routes and refitting that occured when units were redeployed to the West. In 1944 the average German division on the Eastern front was at about 50% in terms of boots on the ground.

 

I rode in a restored U.S. M5A1 Stuart tank in a veteran's day parade here in St. Louis...which prior to restoration allegedly saw action in N. Africa.

You thought the Sherman was under-armored and under-gunned, the Stuart was even worse, basically a light tank, and the M5A1 was a step up from the original M3 Stuart.
I envisioned myself...facing Rommel's Panzer divisions in the Kasserine Pass riding in one of those. You get a healthy respect for American WW2 tank crews after that.

We can read books and watch movies on WW2...discuss strategy and tactics from the comfort of our armchairs, but crawling into the bowels of one of those tanks, is a visceral experience equivalent to shoe-horning into the belly turret gun of a B-17. Ultimately this is where battles are won or lost, on the courage of those who actually wage it...
those who crawl into the tanks and planes and lug the rifles around the battlefield...they win battles, not the Generals.

 

I said "on the spot" use, which is at the Battle of Arras, France, 1940. It was Rommel who reacted quickly and deployed 88 flak guns to stop Matilda tanks.

Source: http://www.alanhamby.com/aces.shtml Tiger ace with 168 kills. Not all with Tiger I but nevertheless, 168 dead tanks and he still survived. Best figures for unit ratios was 16:1 kill ratio, 13th Panzer Regiment, Grossdeutschland Division. I was sure I had read a 60:1 kill by someone, but I could not find it here. Still, 16:1 is pretty good, which proves the point that Russian T-34s got knocked out as easily as did Sherman tanks.

I am refering to Von Manstein use of mobile elastic defense, not to static layered defence with mines etc. used by Russians.

154 divisions deployed against USSR 1941 in Operation Barbarossa: 19 Panzer, 11 Motorized, 5 SS, 9 Security(presumed motorized), 4 Light ( mechanized ) , so 48 divisions out of 154, or nearly 30% of total being mobile, as opposed to USSR with 9 Mechanized corps (equivalent size of German division) with remaining 300 some divisions (brigade strength) without transport other than horses.

So in effect, German mobility was 5:1 vs Russian beginning in 41, and Blitzkrieg was to use the Panzer Korps as an independent mobile army that penetrates front line on narrow front, and advances rapidly to destroy HQ , communications, and capture supplies, and advance to major objectives behind enemy front line, with help by airpower, and theoretically with vertical envelope with fallschirmjager.

No doubt, Rommel was knowledgeable of tank tactics, and of tank warfare, and the proof is the North African campaign and the achievements of the Afrika Korps against superior numbers, and against better tanks during the Battle of Gazala.

Thought Patton read the book Rommel and His Art of War, but guess I was mistaken.

 

The book Patton supposedly read was "Infanterie greift an", written by Rommel.

Translated to english as "Infantry Attacks."

 

Well, apparently the French army must have read the Italian Army Field Manuel of how to lose embarrassingly even when outnumbering the enemy. LOL!

 

The Russians defeated the Tiger tanks with a shovel. They dug tank traps all over the battlefield, and the behemouth couldn't traverse the pit, and had to divert around them.
meanwhile dug in Soviet artillery would shell the tanks maneuvered in place by the tank pits.

The Tiger was a mobile 88mm gun...is really all it was. The Allies had gun motor carriages with artillery that dwarfed the Tiger...the U.S. had a 155mm mobile gun with armored rounds hard enough to pierce 6 feet of concrete. Aachen, Germany was reduced to dust by these mobile 155mm guns. The Germans surrendered Aachen shortly thereafter...the first city in Germany to fall to the Allies.

The Tiger has a mystique is all, just like the T-34...and a lot of the mystique is based on mythos and not fact.

German infantryman armed with 88mm rockets shot out of a tube..the "Panzerschreks"..killed as many allied tanks as armored fighting vehicles ever did...it's just the Panzerschrek lacks the glamour of a Tiger tank. The Panzerschrek rockets could penetrate 200mm of armor...no tank utilized in WW2 was invulnerable to it, and ironically it was copied from the U.S. Bazooka, only improved with the 88mm rocket.

 

In watching the Military Channel on tank battles one former Sherman tank commander from WW II summed up how the Shermans defeated a Tiger tank. They would send three Shermans to engage in a frontal attack and while the Tiger was occupied destroying these Shermans a fourth Sherman would sneak around to attack the Tiger from the rear which was the only real weak point for the Tiger. Three tanks and crews were basically sacrificed to take out the Tiger.

The obvious advantage for the Sherman was the shear number of them being produced but the disadvantage of thin armor and a realitively low velocity 75mm round that lacked penetrating power created a real disadvantage in head to head combat. The 75mm was improved by increasing the length of the barrel generating more muzzle velocity and then the later 76mm gun was used which was another improvement but the thin armor basically remained unchanged. In any case the Sherman was a good match against the Panzer tank but was not very good when addressing the Panther or Tiger I or II tanks which had much heaver frontal armor.

I like the Sherman but it was basically a medium tank that was most effective attacking infantry positions as opposed to taking on heavy tanks in battle.

 

Well yeah. The Sherman was spouting a pistol while tanks like the Panther were carrying a rifle.

 

Various sheman variants carried everything from 105mm howitzers, the Brtish 17lber At gun and some models developed as open top AT variants also carried the 90 mm AA gun which was similar in performance to the German 88. The nastiest AT weapon of WWII and the one that kille far and away the most allied tanks was not the Panzershreck which appeared only in limited numbers but the panzerfaust which was the precursor to the Russian RPG and had an even larger war head.

There was also a seriously uparmored sherman variant called the elephant not to be confused with the German Sp of a similar name.

 

Sorry the uparmored Sherman as caled the Jumbo not the elephant. A goodly number of Shermans had field mods of one sort or the other often more with the idea of defeating HEAT rounds from panzerfausts and panzershrecks.

 

Most field mods of course failed to do anything.

I think what tended to work best were the skirts, such as those the Germans used, which were originally intended to defeat anti tank rifles.

 

This is true, however it also misses a very important fact of tank warfare in WWII and the design of these vehicles.

The Sherman was never designed to attack other tanks! It's entire job was to assist the Infantry. Period. Destroying tanks was never the job of the M4 Sherman. The destruction of tanks was the design of other tanks, like the M10 Wolverine, the M36 Jackson (both based on M4 hulls), and the M24 Chaffee.

Those were tanks that were designed for the very purpose of destroying tanks. And while tank on tank battles did happen, that was not the design of the Sherman, or how it was supposed to be used.

 

Unfortunately the doctrine upon which the Sherman was designed to be implemented in proved to be rather stupid on the battlefields of Normandy. That said, people here are really overestimating how much tank vs tank battles really happened. Infantry/Arty probably knocked out more tanks than other tanks.