Incorrect. IIRC, my argument earlier was that Americans hereabouts weren't listening to the troops because Americans hereabouts persisted with the Sherman was fine argument.
You seem to have lost track of some of your previous arguments in this thread ID...so I think you "IIRC" wrong...
Re the Sherman and the absence of American uber AFVs, I think it is more complicated than just blaming McNair and the Infantry Branch.
America could do best and most. With the Sherman, she merely did most. With the M-26, I am sure she didn't manage most in time to make a difference, and I'm not sure she did best either.
The Mafia in this case was just about everyone. McNair came up with TD doctrine, but he was Marshall's man so the Joint Chiefs would have backed him as well. Infantry branch didn't want uber tanks, and neither did the cavalry.
Not just the acquisition side but the operational side as well.
Firstly, overall American style simply never suited American armoured doctrine. Broad front offensives which lacked operational concentration were simply not conducive to the breakthrough. When breakthrough finally came in NW Europe, it was tellingly at that point the last German in front of 3rd Army had been shot and bombed into submission. Therefore, Allied armour in general tended to fight in situations its doctrine didn't ask it to. It is no surprise it was found wanting.
Secondly, it didn't have the sustained lesson learning its foes had in the east. When it did try and learn lessons, it generally did it poorly or slowly or both. Evaluation of the Tiger in Tunisia was lamentable and flawed, experience of the Panther limited. What experience it could learn from (primarily British experience in 41-42 in Africa) tended to reinforce doctrinal belief rather than knock it. The M4 and Grant squitted themselves well against the best German designs in theatre indicating there were no real issues facing german Tanks technically, and Rommel made extensive use of AT gun lines to defeat British armoured thrusts reinforcing the opinions gained from Spain that AT guns had the edge where they met armour.
So it seems you did start out criticizing not just those 'hereabouts' but those 'back then' too.
You seem to appreciate the pro-Sherman argument, since you make it.
the Sherman suited America because it was relatively quick and manoeuvrable which suited American doctrine. It was easy to make which suited American industry. It was relatively light and easy to transport which suited American logistics and strategic planners and it was relatively straightforward to maintain and fight which suited the American Citizen Army. At the sharp end, though, it had some issues.
And when facing an IS-2 so did the Panther, and it was not in as much "harmony with the system" by the above criteria either. Yet it appears beyond criticism simply because it could take a Sherman one on one. Same is true of a T-34, yet it too seems to escape criticsm.
The apparent inconsistency in your arguments is what got me involved in the thread. If you simply meant to argue "A typical Panther will beat a typical Sherman in a 1-1 encounter" I would have had no problem with that statement, becasue it is true. All the rambling inconsistent musing about WHY that situation existed and the perception that it was somehow criminal leading to the Sherman being "crap" that is the issue.
You got the "right answer" but justifying it, it appears in many ways your analysis of the situation that lead to that fact is flawed - or at least too steeped in cnspiracy theorizing and implied culpability.
Well, if I'm going to use A Tiger or Panther and you are going to use a Sherman, why can't we compare?
Well why can't we make the same sort of argument about the Panther vis-a-vis the IS-2? The same argument for the Sherman being "outclassed" by the Panther makes the Panther outclassed by the IS-2 (the M with 120@60 glacis plate and 122mm gun anyway).
Is your argument situational and the Panther "out of its depth" on the Ostfront?
IT appears by:
Only if you take as read that tank statistics are the only factor. I don't so the above doesn't follow. Superior tactics and C3 would have had an effect on the Russian front.
that it is not... That is a problem for your argument as it appears to allow for "other factors" where the Panther (or T-34) is outclassed, but hold eh equation constant on the Western...again consistency in analysis is all that is being asked for.
These figures are partially skewed by the late war though when German armour was in very short supply.
No, that is true only if you are ignoring the part of the casualty equation that relates to rate of engagement and focus ony on the part that relates to exchange rate per engagement. You can change the casualty rate by changing the exchange rate per engagement, or the engagement rate (in this case by atritting the Panthers faster than they could be replaced, and bringing in Shermans faster than they are being lost. Form a "big picture standpoint" if the trend is going down becasue of one relationship, might that not make up for issue trying to adjust the other?
I don't see how. Logic suggests to me that it is better to get off two shots that might kill something than three shots that won't. The demand for the Firefly and 17 pdr suggests that on the ground (whatever our models 70 years on might suggest)
the Firefly made a difference.
Because it my have lead to a tactic where rather than trying to outflank the Panther and byass it, to instead go toe to toe with it. You assume that "everything will remain the same" afer you make a major perterbation to the differential caluculus. You can't change one variable and effect their to be no operations effect. It may have been for the best, but it may not. We dont know.
Standard German doctrine and aggression demanded as much. Facing shermans made them cocky at times, but I don't think you can abandon your entire doctrinal base that quickly. Besides, without offensive action, you don't win.
You treat the Western Front in a vacuum again. The East saw that exact thing happen and the Germans adopted the "hedgehog" defense. Why would they not do that in the West? An argument can be made that with a lessor tactical advanage they may have chosen rather than to "shoot their wad" trying to keep the Allies in Normandy, and then disintigrate back to Germany, to use a more Eastern front OPLAN and fight a much more defefensily oriented campaign across the depth of France. Would tht have resultd in fewer casualties?
They only have so many of these, though. Your argument suggests they had choices. I think ultimately, they had very few. What made their Tanks effective was the tactical and limited operational mobility that allowed them to take a hand on the battlefield from a reserve. Guns and mines don't have this.
Of course they had choices, and they made different choices in the East when on the other side of the coin.
Ultimately, what have you got against victory with a better exchange rate like GWI or GWII? This is a very narrow argument. Which was the better Tank?
Nothing - but your assumption that if the Americans say deployed 76 armed tanks in stead of 75sand 17lbers insead of 76s and had Pershings supporting, that the Germans would have cnducted an IDENTICAL campaign agaisnt them is naive to say the least. And that the notion that the different sitution would have automatically resulted in fewer casualties is something the East at least raises issues with.
Did German tank casualties go down when the Panther was introduced? Or did other factors change in response?
To follow your GW anaology what if we had produced less Shermans and more P-47s? Or would it have been better to produce les P-47s and get the Pershing fielded sooner? this is one of the reasons GGWaW is so fun - you can explore asymmetric strategies
No. The Sherman wasn't a better fighter than the Panther,
It could not have beaten a Panther, just like Sugar Ray would have needed an analogous "lucky hit" to KO Ali. Yet people still make the "pound for pound" argument he was better. You can claim that is not a good argument, but that is simply your opinion.
it just means he wins by clever use of numbers.
Scoreboard. I'll take winning by any means over "losing with style"...in ar anyway!
If the sherman was only a "medium" why was it mixing it with the heavier German designs? Ultimately, it was mixing it because "medium" or not, it was first and foremost a Tank and the Germans didn't make allowance when fighting vehicles that were lighter than them. The Sherman, when deployed in armoured formations using fire and maneuver, and likely to face enemy armour, was a Main Battle Tank.
Why did the T-34 mix it up with the Panther and the Panther with the IS-2? The Sherman was not an MBT an he notion that just becasue it happend to meet what was probably the first of that class that it therefore was one is strained. Were the M-10 and Valentine MBTs becauue they mixed it up" with Panthers? How about a KV-1? The Sherman was an infantry support tank desinged to attack enemy infantry formations and drive through them. Wht made an MBT an MBT was NOT its characteristics, or what it "mixed it up with" but its doctrine for use.
It was outclassed in that role by around a third of the Germans it faced, and had its handfull with the other two thirds.
I'll agree withthe former...but that ignores its intended and the role it was most used in - infantry support and rapid advance. It can be argued that with a heavier tank the drive across France would have taken longer and the response to the Bulge may not have been as effective. (Fuel for the rather efficient Shermans was problematic as it was - extensive deployment of a "panther equivlent" would have required a LOT more fuel...again adaptive and emergent nature of war makes "single variable analysis" problematic.
The BAR was a squad light support weapon. As was the bipod MG42. Regardless of their design histories etc, in the squad support role, one had advantages. You can't explain away deficiencies by saying something was a medium. The Sherman was an MBT not a medium tank.
And one had other advantages... Two men with a bopod MG42 can engage one target but two men each with a BAR can engage two. So which is better? If you have one target to suppress the MG2, if you have 2 the BAR. 'Better' is situationally dependant. Like The MG 42, the BAR decendants live on today as the FN MAG. One was an automaic rifle, one was a machine gun. That they were two different ways to provide squad light support in two different ways doesn't mean that certain advanages of the MG automatically trump the the others advatages as an autmatic rifle in all circumstances. That one say has a higer ROF is not relevant when you can't keep its high rate of fire fed with ammo.
As an example. The later Churchill had much thicker frontal armour than the Tiger, very much thicker than the Panther and weighed around the same as the Panther if memory serves. Could it duel with the Tiger or the Panther? No, because it's 75mm weapon was designed to support infantry and its armour would't generally protect it against the 75 and 88. Therefore, despite being a British "heavy", the same size as the German "Medium", it was not much good as an MBT. Under your argument, we should be comparing these vehicles because both were "mediums" of similiar weight.
So medium infantry support tanks and heavy infantry support tanks are not MBTs. Good eye. You are correct. The late Churchill with upgraded 75mm and heavier armor was able to give a Panther a run for its money but was not used as an MBT and therfore was not one, despite "mixing it up" with one. If you dislike me classing a Panther as "heavy" (despite it being as heavy as other countries heavy tanks) then I will call it the first "MBT" and say that you STILL can't directly compare it to tank destroyers, heavy tanks, light tanks, infantry support tanks or tank busting aircraft and artillery just becasue ay of the atter can find itself "mixing it up" with a Panther.
Again - your argument that an individual Panther will far more often that not, take out a single Sherman or T-34, or Valentine, or Churchil III, or Stuart, or Cromwell, or alot of other tanks running around in 44 is fact. So will a Tiger. But it will find itself in trouble against an ISU or IS-2, Does that make the ISU and IS-2 better MBTs than a Panther?
And interestingly the descendent of the Sherman, upgraded and couped with "MBT" doctrine as the Isherman handed the IS-2 descendant the T-55 its ass in 67. Fancy that. All manner of circular and extrapolatory arguments can be made. What does it 'prove'?
In reality, what mattered was its role, not its size. It was an infantry support weapon and as such not designed to duel, and therefore it is excusable for it to not compare, although if the British had filled out the Guards Armoured with them and sent them into Goodwood, we would have had reason to compare them because the Churchill was being asked to perform as an MBT not infantry support.
So it is only those Shermans unucky enough to bump into a group of Panthers that are "outclassed" - as long as they "know their place" and do what they were designed to do, they are acceptable. Er "excusable". What matters is exactly the "role" and the "role" of allied medium tanks was NOT to be an "MBT". So one is left with the absurdity that had Shermans run away from Panthers and not engaged them, they would not have "mixed it up" with MBTs and therefor not been comparable. What about the case - as often happened when Panthers engaged an unspecting group of (insert tank to be morphed into an MBT here). The Cromwells 'assulted" by Wittman by this argument were heavy tanks and damn poor ones at that becasue a Tiger chewed them up and spit them out...
For a further example, the Sherman when used in recce regiments was better in one respect than the M5 because it was better able to drive off light German resistance that it came across. The M5 was less survivable and aggressive recce of this sort was beyond it. However, its "medium" status is irrelevant, what we are weighing are the attributes and how they fit the given recce role. The M5 had other qualities and weighing up the better recce tank would have to take those into combat.
One wonders what nomenclatural metamorphasis would have ocured if these Shermans operating in a recon role (better than light tanks!) had met a group of Panther trying to fend of an air attack while supporting an infantry assault. The fabric of the universe seems intact so luckily it must not have happened...[:'(]
When weighing up the better Main battle tank, speed, manoeuvrability, armour and armament are all relevant and in this regard the Sherman was adequate until late 43, increasingly obselete after that. However, whilst a variety of factors go into explaining why this was the case (eg One of its issues is that battlefield experience comfirming that was rather later in coming.) none of those mitigating factors alter the fact it was obselete. They merely help explain why.
I was starting to wonder just where your argument was leading, but we are back to your fixation on the "Panther as MBT" - Given that its users pretty much invented the role, and the SHerman wasn't one, I submit that the Panther was a "better MBT than the Sherman". But then on the eastern front, by the same argument, the Panther was 'obsolete' and the IS-2 was a better one.
My argument is that while the Panther was a "better MBT" - one v one - the production, logisitical support, operational employment, and doctrinal integration of a "Panther class" class MBT by the US Army may not BY DEFINITION have lead to a faster end to the war or fewer casualties overall then our use of the Sherman. The fact that the Panther was a better MBT than the Sherman doesn't mean it was more appropriate for US use, or the Germans would not have pursued a diferent strategy if they faced it. Whether sufficient numbers, with suffient fuel, integrated appropriately with other combat arms, with required maintainability and ammunition suply could have been mainained via a transoceanic supply line would have been at least problematic. It might have lead to greater succes ith fewer casualties, but may have lead to understrength units, with insufficient fuel and ammo, used in a manner that did not fully employ their capabilities to best effect.
"Better" has more than one context - yours is individual capability "1 on 1" and mine considers the system of production, support and employment. Yours is one set of assumptions and measures, mine is a diffferent one. I understand yours, I simply ask that you try to understand mine.
