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ORIGINAL: IronDuke
AGF suffered and stuck with the attritional approach, not because they enjoyed losing more Tanks or having to sneak around looking for flank shots but because they possessed average equipment which did not match the best of German equipment, either Tanks or AT guns. To turn it into a virtue here in this thread is to hide the real failures that contributed to this situation.

And just whose fault was that again ID?

Not everything was because of failure, I contend that greater german combat experience in the east worked against the western Allies in one way, because the Germans went through the action/reaction phases of Tank design more quickly than the Allies did with their more limited campaigning. The russians front meant we had far fewer Germans to contend with, but better armed ones.

How come that the soviet "answers" looked remarkably similar to the allied ones then?

This whole "Sherman was fine" thing baffles me because it flies in the face of everything you read from those that were there. From Belton Cooper

Maintanence sergent with a bug up his backside. Limited perspective. get´s plenty of things outright wrong.

to Omar Bradley, they univerally condemn the situation they were in.

Heh, well given the press "scandal" at home, he pretty much had to, didn´t he.

Now, I don't accept uncritically the words of vets, the wider picure isn't easy to see in the confusion of combat, but its such a widely held perception that there must be something in it. The British were no better but did come up with the better stopgap in the Firefly.

Yet the solutions worked so remarkably well that all of the supposedly "war winning" operational armoured counterattacks the germans managed got beaten. The allies traded off though, but only the germans in Russia anno 1941 really managed not to.

In the hands of the Israelis facing enemies poor on the operational plane, the Sherman may have been fine. In NW Europe facing the Germans it wasn't, its as simple as that.

Regards,
IronDuke

I have one word for you ID: Scoreboard. Just what is the ratio of tanks lost for each side in those operations where german armour was present in strenght (Goodwood excepted,).

Battlestar Galactica starts shortly [;)], if this thread doesn't get locked up, I'll be back tomorrow. If it's locked, we can move to the COW if that is acceptable? Much the same discussion is going on there.

Regards and thanks,
Ironduke

ORIGINAL: IronDuke


One extra thing I might add. The added disadvantage of an attritional approach is having to refill your ranks with people with no combat experience every couple of weeks. The effects of that on morale and combat effectiveness are difficult to quantify, but I would bet they were all negative.

Perhaps except for the heaviest actions in the Ardennes, this simply didn´t happen. It is flat out wrong. Casulaties in armoured units was remarkably lower than in the infantry. On average 1 man was killed for each tank hit.

The Sherman did win the war, despite the fact it had issues, but that doesn't mean we set out to win the war in such a manner, or indeed should have done so. Why did America crank out the F6 when it could mass produce F4Fs? Given the state of Japanese training by...well just about any time....the F4F would have done the job fine. We did it because it was a better weapon, and we lost fewer as a result of upgrading. It was still mass produced.

Well, as you might have noticed at Vinnys, I have given my stab at how this situation came about.

One further upside of better equipment is increased survivability and less loss of combat experience as a result. A Panther moving around sporting dozens of scratchmarks was a Panther with combat experience.

Heh. It was a Panther on it´s way to the knackers.....

The Germans learnt the price of fielding bad crews in Lorraine. They couldn't avoid it given the sheer weight of casualties on two fronts over 6 years, but the Allies should have done better.

Regards,
IronDuke

True. I agree very much.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

As I've said before, they did this by trading. The Sherman won by attrition. You are making a virtue out of necessity. In the air, the Americans produced weapons like the P51, P47 and Corsair which were as good as anything their opponents possessed and better than most. They mass produced them.

The Sherman was the best design in 1942 that could fit within the confines of the massive US Log window and the port facilities that she would have to capitalize on. The design was constantly and consistently tinkered with to deal with its OPFOR while maintaining for better/and/or worse its original design themes. The US "solution" for a "heavy" until 1943 was the M6, and while there is a part of me that dearly wishes we could have seen her chew on the Afrika Korpse in all reality the correct decision was made as the M6 had NO application in our other Hempispheric war we were waging simultaneously.

The M-26 wound up being a feasible logistical solution to the M4's long in the tooth woes that was also a darn good potential Kitty Killer. Pity McNair and Friends succeeded in saying they didn't need or want it. This leads me to conclude that if you are sincere in saying the Sherman was a damn near suicide machine that:

a) the allies would have a lower % of surviving Tank crews than Fritz,

and

B) US Armor, TD, and Inf branches colluded at near treasonous activities and AGF was in fact a borderline Red Orchestra level capaign against US forces.....

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
At sea, they had the best carriers, and mass produced them. There was little wrong with their destroyers etc either. They had hundreds of them.

and they were being built by the methodology developed by an automaker...



Big Differences between Air, Sea, and Land Log are that a ship or plane is its own legs and can be "whatever size is needed", and the Sherman making a poor submarine. We *had* to be able to unload the damned things rapidly and by available amphib methods....

Life is like that the Army OFTEN has to "just make do" and the USMC if anything has it worse. Funny how the USN and USAF pretty much always get their hotrods though.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
Only in the field of tanks did the US live with mass producing something average was good, and this to me is a failure given how many they could have cranked out of any better design they came up with.

I agree to a point, you'll note that *I* am the one who pointed out that on D-Day the US could either have had the Upgunned M-4 OR the M-26. That they did not get it was due largely to McNair trying to make sure a bunch of brass got to have their own golf courses back on the block post war. Didn't work out but at least he tried.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
The USAF did not trade 1-1 in fighters, Navy aviation in the pacific traded at something ridiculously in their favour. They had weapons of the highest order and good training.

What can I say for a bunch of dumb hick farmers and cowboys we sure did do things "almost well" in a lot of things. Nothing like the Ubermen who "really won the war". I am not in the business of underselling or overselling the sacrifices and skill of the players involved.

The Germans and Japanese made pretty much as good a go as you can try on pure balls and tactical skill. It is amazing what running a readiness campaign for years prior to a conflict can do for a force when it initally faces the undertrained and blooded opfor. Of course as the opfor gets bloodied, wise, and angry it is pretty amazing what havinga good LOG net and nice doctrine can do on the rebound.

That is "ww2 in a nutshell" btw.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
AGF suffered and stuck with the attritional approach, not because they enjoyed losing more Tanks or having to sneak around looking for flank shots but because they possessed average equipment which did not match the best of German equipment, either Tanks or AT guns. To turn it into a virtue here in this thread is to hide the real failures that contributed to this situation. Not everything was because of failure, I contend that greater german combat experience in the east worked against the western Allies in one way, because the Germans went through the action/reaction phases of Tank design more quickly than the Allies did with their more limited campaigning. The russians front meant we had far fewer Germans to contend with, but better armed ones.

Yeah the Maus, the JagdTiger, and JagdPanther were all winning designs. I cannot tell you how horrified I was when I saw the Wehrmacht tossing the US and USSR's battle streamers there at the Berlin parade ground at the end of the war. Still gives me almost as many nightmares as that bawling Fwench guy under the Arc'd'Triomph or whatever.

Fact is if there is anyone who goes on about how assinine AGF's judgement on armor was it is me. As I recall YOU were the one stating they made the conscious decision to go with what they had as "it worked". Due to some creative anachrocistic cognitive dissonance you felt as though when Devers said "no heavies" he was discussing the M-26 and not the M-6.

My understanding of timelines says that that may well not be the case, add in several Armor commanders wanting an upgunned Sherm for TvT in '43 and we are at an impasse where branch loyalty trumped good sense.

Parochialism is never a pretty thing. About the only response I have to it is THANK GOD Fritz had it worse and in spades. Good enough often is, and frankly the Sherman WAS an acceptable design into the '50s, something the Kittens never pulled off.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
This whole "Sherman was fine" thing baffles me because it flies in the face of everything you read from those that were there. From Belton Cooper to Omar Bradley, they univerally condemn the situation they were in. Now, I don't accept uncritically the words of vets, the wider picure isn't easy to see in the confusion of combat, but its such a widely held perception that there must be something in it. The British were no better but did come up with the better stopgap in the Firefly.

No in a perverse way the postwar publishing machine added fuel to the fire by overhyping US' fears about the German WunderKit. Chuck Yeager summarized it best with his pithy one liner. We stowed their streamers not the other way around on land, air, and sea.

Kind of funny that we now have in this thread Omar Bradley decrying the US armor situation when evidentally Patton and Devers were(in theory) yelling the Sherman 75 was more than adequate? Fact is that GIs are almost ALWAYS envious of opfor tech for good or ill.

There ARE cases where an argument can be made that yes Virginia OPTech is better. I just do not see it in the case of the Sherm v Kittens in a strategic sense. I must be the only guy in North America, and indeed Western Civ who thinks that this bizzare surreal situation where we have Grognards of a certain bent declaiming that "the real elites all have something in common they surrendered in groups of 100,000 and more".

Sorry I don't buy it.

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
In the hands of the Israelis facing enemies poor on the operational plane, the Sherman may have been fine. In NW Europe facing the Germans it wasn't, its as simple as that.

Regards,
IronDuke

So the US was as Good as the IDF in 1951 vis a vis the NorKos but a blind barely mobile child in '44 in NW EUrope? The kicker is of course that the Germans in the IV and even yes the V and VI versus "superior until it was inferior but in the end timeless" T-34 ran into guys that grognardia tells us started off worse than the Norkos but somehow magically became world beaters....


this sure does get confusing....

Germany folded for the same reason Fwance folded a strategy that was flawed at its heart and the implosion of will it led to.

The Sherman was a design that was "good enough" to soldier on into the mid '50s in OUR kit, and until the late '60s in world kit and keep going.....

and I'll be damned if it fails at everything but winning in the end wars.

by the way ID just to be clear, despite the seeming acidity of my prose I respect your PoV enough and do not mean to sound venomous with "creative cognitive dissonance".  I am simply stating that if you take our latest jousting on this elsewhere to its logical conclusion you'll see the "circle" I am mentioning.
 
Hope you enjoy BSG.

Yeah, me too. Besides, I don´t doubt that the decision to stay with the Sherman (and not continually upgun it) was not necessarily the "best". The allies could definetely have done better in this regard, but for various reason (which we have been over) chose not to. At the end of the day, the Sherman proved to be adequate enough to drive the germans out of France in one summer. Kats or not.

Rune
AFAIK APCR was made of tungsten which was scarce after 42 so very few APCR shots were made. SO this approach is MOSTLY theoritical.

.50Kerry
The M47 was a better tank than the Panther no question. Better suspension, better engine AND entered service some 8 years after the Panther did.

As of T34/85 vs M4A3. Well the easy eight and after was on par with the t34. But in most 44 ther were not enogh of them. I recall a book where it as stated that in most part of 44 Shermans and Fireflies were 5:1. The other 76,2 armed M4s were even fewer in numbers.
So in 44 the t-34/85 WAS better than the M4a3.

Doggie
Thanks to the creative programmer of the forum engine I can only see that you have posted something. The venom what you spit is only visble for those who are interested in your Steak house style rampage. Hasta la vista!

Iron Duke you have never responded to the simple fact that in 42 nad 43 the Sherman as is was more than adequete for the job assigned, it handled everything thrown at it.

The powers that be didnt decide to keep it because it was better than what they could make, they decided to keep it because it could do the job they thought was ahead.

Once again, NONE of the powerful Armor Generals WANTED to replace it. Earliest they might have had doubts being 1944 July, exactly what was gonna happen in less than a year that could change what they had?

As to ships and Aircraft, Intially and continueing through the war the designs they had were inadequete for the job. New designs improved because it was NECCASSARY and shown to be so by combat. Such is NOT the case with the Sherman.

As I recall, for all the p-51's the aircorps was still using p-39's at the end of the war. Why? Because the p-39 was a very good aircraft for close support. The p-51 was good too but was designed for escorting the bombers and air to air.

The Navy in the Pacific also built and fielded aircraft in several versions and frames, for DIFFERENT missions. Why build 2 different carrier capable ( and in some cases 3) fighters? My understanding is that they each served different purposes.

Rune is an uneducated moron ! [:'(]  Good call Ursa u must be a genius [:D]
 
 

ORIGINAL: Ursa MAior

Rune
AFAIK APCR was made of tungsten which was scarce after 42 so very few APCR shots were made. SO this approach is MOSTLY theoritical.

Dunno. The germans manged to produce some 4750 (aprox) MK IIIs with 50mm guns and also produced 9600 towed Pak. They produced aprox 1.3 million APCR shells for these. Which means that on average (and taken across the entire production run) each of these guns had 90 APCR shells available. Probably the earlier guns had more (in 1941 and 42 where it mattered, since german AT Gun defence was pretty much pants otherwise) and the later guns (44-45) had less. Any way you slice it, it is hardly "theorhetical".

The other 76,2 armed M4s were even fewer in numbers.

Look at the numbers. In 1944-45 the US produced close to 7000 76mm armed Shermans. Not counting the Easy 8´s among them.

Could be I never was a tank expert.

If the cats were so unreliable, unsophisticated and inferior fighting machines why were they so feared?

They weren't, at least not by American AFV crews. In general, armor was feared by infantry. And an 88mm HE round was something for infantry to be concerned about.

Why are they depicted in significant majority of the american works dealing with this period as they are? Why are they shown in many warmovies (except for russians) as fearsome fighting machines?

They aren't depicted that way in the vast majority of American works dealing with the period, OTHER THAN in Hollywood movies. Hollywood being the famous military experts that they are, and loving a good story as they do, will exaggerate the immunity of German heavy tanks to make the historical American triumph seem that much more noble. Much the same way that Ceaser wrote kind things about the military prowess of Vercingetorix to make his own victory seem that much sweeter among the masses. When you see "Battle of the Bulge" (Telly Sevalis et al fighting US M48s dressed up in German livery) you are seeing a myth enacted.

@Ironduke

I thnk the whole "win by attrition thing" completely misses the point. I can illustrate by example. Let us suppose that every M4A376 armed sherman in the American OOB were replaced by a PzVIE (and we'll call it an American supertiger... it has the same fuel economy and reliability as the US M4, rather than the miserable logistical properties of real Tigers). The loss of US TANKS would have been about the same, because any garden variety PzIV could still hole the front of a PzVIE, not to mention any 88 armed German defense Bn using the dp 88 or any Tiger in the German OOB).

When Tigers went on the offensive in the west, they lost. Badly. Most of the "Tiger" mystique comes from the Ardennes offensive, and in that offensive most everything that the Germans faced were infantry lacking AFV support. People rightly recall the opening of the Ardennes offensive in 1944 as an American debacle because US troops were caught flat footed and thinly stretched. But the result would have been the same had the Germans fielded an OOB consisting entirely of PzIVs... indeed, Kampfgruppe Peiper would almost certainly have penetrated alot farther had every PzVI in their OOB been replaced by a PzIV.

The German heavies were great tanks on the defensive. The thing is, *any* tank would have been a great tank on the defensive, because NO TANK (apart from the Koenigstiger, which could not get out of its own way with a three-day head start) was much immune to enemy AT rounds. Being on the defense was itself worth an extra several AFVs.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
When Tigers went on the offensive in the west, they lost.

Like in Villers Bocage?

indeed, Kampfgruppe Peiper would almost certainly have penetrated alot farther had every PzVI in their OOB been replaced by a PzIV.

Indeed Kampfgruppe Peiper used mostly PzV Panthers and PzIVs having ONLY a battalion of SS Kintigers. Which in tunr were not used in the avangarde.

Yea,yes, Sherman can take Tiger head to head every time[:-][8|]
Sherman is better than everything,sherman is best tank ever created[:'(]

Tigers lost in ardennes because of allied air superiority not because shermans[8D]

Please answer this:In which tank would you feel more comfortable in one to one battle,Tiger or sherman?

Sherman is better than everything,sherman is best tank ever created

I don't think anyone made that claim. But FWIW the best AFV ever made was the EM-50. You should check out the memoirs of Sgt. Hulka.

Tigers lost in ardennes because of allied air superiority not because shermans

Tigers lost in the Ardennes because they were stopped by infantry supported by a rather modest number of US AFVs (mostly M10s).

Please answer this:In which tank would you feel more comfortable in one to one battle,Tiger or sherman?

No problem. The Easy 8. I'd put myself hull down somewhere and burn the Tiger as it advanced. If my shot missed I'd roll back, reposition, and shoot again with my gyrostabilized gun.

Which in tunr were not used in the avangarde

Yes, because most of the bridges couldn't take their weight. It's wonderful being in one of the 260 or so real Ogre Mark Vs of the WW landscape (the Koenigstiger) until you receive orders to move. Then you discover you can't drive your tank in half the places that your command wants you to go.

No one's saying these things were bad vehicles, but strategically they hurt the Wehrmacht more than they helped. They used up resources that could have been consumed making a more useful AFV, like Stugs, PzIVs, &c.

Cpt.Witmann stops whole brittish offensive with a single Tiger[;)].
Tiger is perfect war machine and so much better than any tank western allies has.
Only Soviets IS-2 and IS-3 is better.

P.S. IS-3 was best tank 10 years after WW2

If your talking about the battle I know about, Whitman had pure luck on his side. He caught the whole column foolishly taking tea or having a merry little picnic on the side of the road.

Cpt.Witmann stops whole brittish offensive with a single Tiger

<shrug>

It's not like he wouldn't have stopped that offensive if the British had been driving Tigers. That's the point. Any well positioned tank is, on the defense, going to be worth a large number of opposing AFVs. Likewise, any suddden surprise attack on an unprepared defender will result in positive results.

I know some will groan when I refer to empirical facts, but from the date the 3rd Army(US) deployed until 5 March '45, the 3rd Army destroyed 2,287 German tanks of all varieties, of which 808 were PzVIEs or PzVs (Tigers or Panthers). During the same interval, 3rd Army lost 1,136 AFVs, of which 854 were some variety of Sherman (M4). That is a rather impressive feat considering that the 3rd Army was in every engagement the aggressor.

ORIGINAL: Ursa MAior


Indeed Kampfgruppe Peiper used mostly PzV Panthers and PzIVs having ONLY a battalion of SS Kintigers. Which in tunr were not used in the avangarde.

KG Peiper used them as battering rams in the front of the column when they could. At Stoumont for instance, the Kingtigers were used to break into the town proper (where one of them was promptly lost to a 90mm AA gun...)