OT: Between the Sherman and the Mk 14 torpedo

[Terminus]

Also, the Shermans didn't burn because of their fuel, but because of flash ignition of their ammunition storage. That's why the "(W)" variant came along.

Think about it for a second. A German shell penetrating the frontal armour of hull or turret isn't very likely to fly through the ammo racks and ignite the fuel tank at the back of the hull.

Again, the History Channel is pure science fiction.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
The P-39 was originally conceived as an interceptor too, but the plane was too heavy with the super charger and it was removed which left it a plane without a clearly defined mission.

It did well in New Guinea as a ground attack plane, but only the Russians liked them. The Russians were also willing to take staggering losses.

Bill

The P39 had a very high roll rate as there were no guns (no weight) in the wings like all other 1E USAF fighters ... for low altitude dog-fighting, this is a key spec. The eastern front was characterized by low level dog fights, where the lack of a super charger wasn't felt as much and teh high roll rate was a huge advantage. top 2 aces of the war flew the P-39 ... both had +60 A2A kills ... I beleive one survived the war, both Russian.

I hadn't heard it was a weight problem vis-a-vis the super charger, but rather two things. 1 political, the other a supposed supply issue. Supposedly the super chargers were in tight demand for the Allison in the early war and it was decided not to field them with the P-39. I've also heard that the supply issue was politically motivated as the designer had a rather large ego and did not enchant some Army brass. Reportedly, the designer did an end run on the Army and went to Congress to get the P-39 development and production funded.

A weight issue is hard to conceive, but I'm not denying it might have been offered as an official reason. From the engineering perspective it would suggest that the HP gain on the super charger was less than the weight gain. Super charger systems would add ~200 lbs at that time ... but they add +30% HP ... on a 1200HP engine, that's 360HP ...

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: zuluhour

Gary, I'm with you. The M4 was obsolete as a MBT before it hit the shores of Africa. I never read much about it, but I wonder what the design was supposed to accomplish. The same goes with the British stuck on the cruiser tank mentality. It was evident to Germany that to accomplish more with less, superiority was to be achieved tactically with superior equipment to complement training. Without tactical superiority, strategic aims could not be met.

Actually, with the exception of a few Tigers, the Sherman was probably the best tank to see service in Africa, By the time of the Italian Campaign, it could have used a more effective gun, which it started receiving in NW Europe. Was it a head-to-head match for a Tiger or a Panther? No. But it could be built in Detroit, railed to New York, and shipped to Europe in massive numbers compared to the German "animals"..., and run rings around them when it got there. Considering it was built by people in the automotive industry to the specs provided by a US Army that had no experience in armored warfare, it was a quite successful tank.

[dr.hal]

Amazing footage.... thanks.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: zuluhour

Gary, I'm with you. The M4 was obsolete as a MBT before it hit the shores of Africa. I never read much about it, but I wonder what the design was supposed to accomplish. The same goes with the British stuck on the cruiser tank mentality. It was evident to Germany that to accomplish more with less, superiority was to be achieved tactically with superior equipment to complement training. Without tactical superiority, strategic aims could not be met.

Actually, with the exception of a few Tigers, the Sherman was probably the best tank to see service in Africa, By the time of the Italian Campaign, it could have used a more effective gun, which it started receiving in NW Europe. Was it a head-to-head match for a Tiger or a Panther? No. But it could be built in Detroit, railed to New York, and shipped to Europe in massive numbers compared to the German "animals"..., and run rings around them when it got there. Considering it was built by people in the automotive industry to the specs provided by a US Army that had no experience in armored warfare, it was a quite successful tank.

The long-barrelled Pz IV was equal to the Sherman in North Africa, at least in fighting capability. The Sherman was more mechanically reliable, and when the supply lines worked (which they didn't more often than not) it could be kept in the field and fighting longer than its German opponent.

[crsutton]

Well, I am not sure if I want to wade into this one but I think the Sherman is much maligned and deserves better. Although not the perfect tank, I am hard pressed to find a WWII era tank that was any better. Tank fanboys tend to be dazzled by guns and armor when examining a tank merits but there is a lot more to a tank than that. Both the Russian and German tanks developed during the war had many shortcomings that tend to get glossed over when comparing them to the Sherman.

The Sherman had its defects (many of which were corrected) but taken in measure to the defects of other tanks, I do not find them so bad. I think the late war M4A3E8 "Easy Eight" Sherman with the HVSS suspension was probably the best all around tank. This is said without considering the late war tanks such as the pershing, stalin III and centurion which really represent a new generation. But compared to the T34-85 and panther then yes, I would say it was better.

I know that panther lovers are going to wet themselves over this but when you consider that over %50 of all panther V losses were due to them being abandoned due to some sort of mechanical failure, I think an argument can be made.

some features that I like.

Fast turret with electric motor
decent gun with special ammo
higher rate of fire
Much more reliable
Much longer track life
gyros (well maybe not so great but the potential was there)
good radios
ease and simplicity of production

I guess it all comes down to what you like. But I think that if I had a war to fight, I would go with the Sherman over the other two.


The old guy on the video is Belton Cooper, who wrote the book "Death Traps" which recounts his experience as a junior ordnance officer during WW2.

Funny that this book was brought up. I was culling my library this past weekend and pulled this one and threw it in the recycling bin. I found it to be such a poorly written and documented book that I did not even consider donating it to the local library. I would have to question the validity of any documentary that would rely on the author as a source or this book as a source.

[tigercub]

and use them they did Stugs Destroying More AFV than any other TD or tank in history! nothing wrong with the Sherman....just the lack of being upgraded better before DDAY than it was.

Tigercub

[MDDgames]

Patton was right though. The US policy wasnt to fight tank to tank. The Air Corps had killed the vast majority of German tanks on the western front and that was the strategy from the word go, and what the planes didnt kill, the TD units job was to kill the rest. Patton wanted a tank that could kill infantry and advance quickly and that was the right thing to have in the right place and the right strategy.

The Brits had been fighting the Germans in the desert for years before we got into it, and we had studied both sides and came up with the best strat for fighting them. And frankly it worked. Germany had no chance to win the war, so ultimately the only question was, where would the line be drawn at the end of the war?

We as gamers have a tendency to look at individual aspects of the war (this plane vs this plane, this ship vs this ship) and sometimes over look the over all picture. The question isnt were our tanks better. The question was, did we have the right strategy to win? And that question is yes.

The M4 Sherman was designed not only for its battlefield abilities, but to get TO the battlefield quickly. That meant they had to be able to be transported on rail cars to get to the PORTS to be put on ships. The alternative would have been to ship the tank in pieces and assemble the tank in ports to begin with or make special railline to be able to transport them.

They had to be LIGHT enough for the cranes to be able to get them on an off or again, they could only be loaded/unloaded in certain places. Add into this the fact that the LST couldnt carry the M-26. Or at least couldnt carry very many of them (the M26 was 12 feet wide vs the M4 at 8 feet. LST was only 50 feet wide). This would mean that they wouldnt even get INTO the battle until a port was captured and repaired in order to get them to the places they had to fight. And once they got there, they would have to drive to the battlefield. They could NOT be shipped by rail from Cherbourg to Nancy for example.

Had they gone with the M26, it would have delayed the war 2 years at least in order to solve the transportation issues (LSTs ect). How close was Germany to the A bomb? Less than 2 years?

[latosusi]

Even then i would rather be in Panther than Sherman 1 to 1

[MDDgames]

ORIGINAL: latosusi

Even then i would rather be in Panther than Sherman 1 to 1

Yeah? I'd rather be in a Sherman than a Pz 1 1 to 1. Sherman wasnt designed to do the same thing that a Panther was designed to do.

[bigred]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

@WDolson: True, I suppose in the end it was all about economics when it came to winning. We won the war relatively quickly and maybe it would have taken longer had we stopped periodically to retool. I wonder what things would have been like had the Germans not continually retooled their industry? What if they had stayed with the PZIII the whole way through as their primary battle tank? In the end I suppose it didn't make a difference one way or the other. They would have lost either way.

The Germans had the Panzer IV from the start of the war. It was still a front line tank right up to the end of the war, though it was getting very obsolete vs Russian armor. What drove everything in tank development was the arms race on the Eastern front. German mid-war armor was adequate against the western powers right up to the end of the war. Even Lee/Grants were superior to Japanese armor right up to the end of the war.

If the Germans had standardized on the Panzer IV, the war in the Eastern Front may have been over earlier than history. On the other hand if they had more total tanks it might have gone on longer. It's a good "what if" question.

Bill

This is a good question. W/ Dali and the german players working the EU theatre I would suspect this is a good scenario for a east front mod.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: MDDgames

Patton was right though. The US policy wasnt to fight tank to tank. The Air Corps had killed the vast majority of German tanks on the western front and that was the strategy from the word go, and what the planes didnt kill, the TD units job was to kill the rest. Patton wanted a tank that could kill infantry and advance quickly and that was the right thing to have in the right place and the right strategy.

Like I said, US air power was responsible for a very small minority of armour kills. Most of them were some form of tank destroyer (SP or towed).

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: zuluhour

Gary, I'm with you. The M4 was obsolete as a MBT before it hit the shores of Africa. I never read much about it, but I wonder what the design was supposed to accomplish. The same goes with the British stuck on the cruiser tank mentality. It was evident to Germany that to accomplish more with less, superiority was to be achieved tactically with superior equipment to complement training. Without tactical superiority, strategic aims could not be met.

Actually, with the exception of a few Tigers, the Sherman was probably the best tank to see service in Africa, By the time of the Italian Campaign, it could have used a more effective gun, which it started receiving in NW Europe. Was it a head-to-head match for a Tiger or a Panther? No. But it could be built in Detroit, railed to New York, and shipped to Europe in massive numbers compared to the German "animals"..., and run rings around them when it got there. Considering it was built by people in the automotive industry to the specs provided by a US Army that had no experience in armored warfare, it was a quite successful tank.

The long-barrelled Pz IV was equal to the Sherman in North Africa, at least in fighting capability. The Sherman was more mechanically reliable, and when the supply lines worked (which they didn't more often than not) it could be kept in the field and fighting longer than its German opponent.

Certainly true. But MkIVf2 "specials" were few and far between in North Africa..., while M4's were everywhere in both the British and American Armies. Edge goes to the numbers in this case.

[Terminus]

Also, US Army performance in North Africa was badly skewed by poor leadership and inexperienced soldiers executing poor doctrine. It was very much a learning experience.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

It did well in New Guinea as a ground attack plane, but only the Russians liked them. The Russians were also willing to take staggering losses.

Bill

Saving grace for P-39 on Eastern Front was that most air combat happened at low level. Soviet pilots were not very well trained. Anecdotal evidence tells that pilots were often put into operations with total of 100 flight hours as training. Of course, if you survived for a while, you became experienced and chances of survival grew a lot.

Couple of German aces (Eric Hartmann and Helmut Lipfert) commented that fighting on Eastern Front gave pilots bad habits (like not using Me-109 strengths fully). This caused several German aces to be shot down on Western Front/Homeland defence, when they encountered very different style of air combat.

P-39 did suit well into Eastern Front air war, where ranges were small and altitudes low. Pokryshkin shot down 59 planes, most of them when flying P-39.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

This discussion reminds me of a film - The Pentagon Wars - while the movie has its faults it a black comedy about bringing the Bradley IFV into production, and its apparently not too far from the truth. Military wants, stakeholder investment and bureaucratic inertia combine to crate a bow wave of problems which become insurmountable - end result is a faulty product.

Message on Screen: "The WAM is overheating."

Tank Commander: "The WAM is overheating! What the bleep is a WAM!"

[:D]

[witpqs]

OTOH, look at the multitude of cases where the US got it right - there's plenty of evidence in WITP:AE that proves it.

I would suggest that WITP:AE displays many of those things, not that it is capable of proving them. [8D]

[JohnDillworth]

guess it's all fun and games until you give your best tank tactician (Peiper) hundreds of Panthers and tell him to find his own gas. He ended up destroying the Panthers himself and walking home. Tank for tank, man for man, gun for gun, General for General, the Germans were better but this was not a one for one fight. Lots of supply, lots of air power and lots of artillery are a great equalizer

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Also, US Army performance in North Africa was badly skewed by poor leadership and inexperienced soldiers executing poor doctrine. It was very much a learning experience.

You got that right...[8D]

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth
Tank for tank, man for man, gun for gun, General for General, the Germans were better

Meh.

1. Man for man? Not hardly. So many of their troops after mid-1943 were poorly trained Eastern European amalgums of conscripted soldiers that this degraded their capability.

2. Gun for gun? Not hardly. American artillery was par excellence, an unrivaled master of the battlefield post 1943. SP and truck-drawn organic transportation were a rarety to much of the Wehrmacht in this time frame. The German 88mm was a good versatile platform. The USAA 155mm "Long Tom" was unrivaled. The standard issue infantry rifle of the Wehrmacht degraded in quality over time too-the USAA M1 Garand was probably the best production rifle of the war.

"Gun for gun' the Germans were better? Nein.

3. General for General? The Germans had some superb leadership. They also had some pretty rubbish leadership too. When you consider that their uber-leader, some douchebag named "Hitler" was the last word on the military, that breaks any stalemate, IMO. Perhaps some individual Germans were better generals than their American counterparts. But I'll stick with the American leadership heirarchy, thank you very much. Thus, perhaps individual generals Germany gets the nod. But in terms of "Generalship" or "Leadership" or "Leadership Heirarchy", no such advantage.