I dunno too much about them. How good were they really on the western front and the eastern front. The germans gave it the name "tommy cookers" since it caught fire easely. Which was the main german tank to fight it in 1944 when the allied forces had landed in normandie and was the sherman as weak as I hear all the time?!!? On discovery channel the other day though, they said that the sherman tank was very good and that the germans respected it highly but then I have also heard that the shermans rounds used to bounce off the german tanks... well was it good or bad?!
thx
Good or bad is a useless generalization. So is everything you'll see on TV. Go read up on it and make your own decision.
In general, it was realtively fast and manueverable, but poorly armed and armored. Cheaper, too.
It was not a match for the armor it faced, but it didn't have to be due to numbers. A popular tactic was to rush heavy armor in a group. Losses might occur, but the Shermans could manuever to shoot the side or rear of the enemy tank(s).
It was really bad at first but got better as they upped the armament and made the fueltank/ammo storage better protected. The british Firefly version with a 17pnd gun could hold its own against PzIV's and working in groups they could tackle PzV's and even PzVI's.
The ratio for succesfull engaements were usually in the range of 4-5 Shermans to be able to defeat a PzV or PzVI.
That being said - there werent really many PzV and PzVI to go around - so they usually fought PzIV and StuG - which the Shermans could compete with.
I remember reading a account of a German 88 crew defending a narrow passage in Italy. After being attacked by wave after wave of Shermans the Germans were finally forced to withdraw because 'Wir habt keinen ammunition mehr!" So the Sherman wasnt rated highly amongst the germans in 43 early 44.
The Sherman did have two redeeming features though - it could be churned out in great numbers and it was failry easy to apply field modifications. The crews often resorted to attaching all sorts of extra armor - metal sheets, girders and mesh was popular in an attempt to defeat the efficient hollow-charge rounds of the german AT's.
Oh.. And another nickname for the Sherman(used by the british) was Ronson - it lights every time![]()
The Sherman was a "capable" medium tank manufactured in the thousands during the war.
Without going into particulars, the armor was thin & the shape of it was flat (except for the turret). It boasted a 75MM cannon, 2-.30MG. One in the hull, one in the turret next to the cannon & a .50 on top. Due to it's light weight, it was faster & more manueverable than the german tanks but do to it's low velocity gun & the much thicker armor of the germans the rounds usually did "bounce off". The couldn't compete with the germans head on so they would try & gang up on one or shoot at it from behind where the armor was much thinner.
They "Lit up" so easily because they ran on gasoline & not deisel fuel which has a much lower ignition temperature. Overall what saved them is sheer overwheming numbers.
As for the germans. In 1944, their big 3 main tanks were the Panzer V "Panther" armed with a high velocity 75mm cannon (made to compete with the Russian T-34 on the eastern front, the Panzer VI "Tiger" armed with the same 88mm gun the germans used in their anti-aircraft batteries, & introduced around the time of the battle of Bastogne, the King Tiger, also armed with an 88mm gun and heavily armored but very slow. There were many other pieces of armor on both sides but the Sherman & these 3 german "heavy" tanks did the brunt of the fighting.
I guess he said "Wir haben keine Munition mehr"
But it is really a good quote, as the Sherman always lacked the neccessary armor against German guns, and they also had a smaller caliber with less powerfull rounds.
There were several version a few month after they were put in service, most of them with barrel replacements (longer barrels to increase accuracity and muzzle-velocity), repositioned and additionally armed fuel-tanks and ammo-storage.
Far more "versions" were out there with field modifications. These included additional armory of the front, by placing sandbags and spare-track-parts there, side protections for driver and MG-Gunner, a repositioned HMG from the back of the turret to positions where it could be operated from the hatch, broader tracks, etc.
The most common and immediate modification was the removal of the white US-stars on the sides of the turret. They were visible for hughe distances and German AT-crews used to aim straight for it, as it also was one of the most critical areas of the tank, with ammo storage, crew and vital systems located there behind a relatively thin wall.
The biggest advantage over most German tanks was the somewhat smaller fuel consumption and the bigger speed and maneuverability.
The M3 Lee/Grant was the predecessor, developed from the M2 medium. The M3 was a stop gap developed from the M2 until the M4 could be developed. The M2 had some novel design features that harked back to the WW1 infantry tank notion (lots of machine guns, and even deflectors to bounce rounds into trenches).We could have been stuck using its predecessor, the M5A1 Stuart, or "Stuey."
The M5A1 was developed from the M3 light tank, in turn from the M2 light tank.
The running gear design and general design methodology was similar between the light and medium tank programs up until the M24 light and M26 heavy (which spawned the M47-48-60 series) came along.
The M5A1 was not the design predecessor to the M4 Sherman.
Actually most of the major revisions (A numbers) were produced concurrently and represented different hull construction techniques and/or engine types. This was a strategy to allow different manufacturing sectors to contribute, plus an insurance against problems with any particular engine type. So you had plain M4, M4A1 with a cast hull, etc, etc.There were several version a few month after they were put in service, most of them with barrel replacements
S! All,
Check http://www.onwar.com/tanks/index.htm for technical and production data of WWII armor. Many beautiful 4-view drawings and so on. My favorite source.
Utchoud