M 5 Sherman tank. What would you have done?

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Subject: M 5 Sherman tank. What would you have done?
Herald1234 2/24/2007 3:24:09 AM

If you were receiving the first British battlefield reports about the performance of the M3 Lee/Grant, as the technical head of US tank production and you had the 1942 US automotive technology base, what would you have done with the Sherman design? Herald

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Herald1234 A lesson from the Eastern Front. 3/13/2007 9:35:43 AM

From almost the beginning, both the Germans and the Russians learned that you didn't charge an antitank gun screen . You crawled up to it under an artillery barrage, tanks and infantry together. Conversely, antitank gunners learned that overhead cover was important when you dug in.

To their credit, the Germans, the Italians, and the Russians all came to the same conclusions about assault guns. They forewent the turret for simplicity's sake and built armored gun houses with top cover for the crews. the machines were not as tactically agile as tanks in that they had to be whole vehicle turned to shoot, but a mobile antitank gun, was better than NO antitank gun and they did consider right from the beginning the enemy's use of mortars and artillery against assault guns.

If the thing is going to be facing infantry, and tanks in a direct fire role; why wouldn't you anticipate the need for overhead artillery protection from the start? American tank destroyer designers seemed to have that as a problem.

Herald

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Jeff_F_F 3/13/2007 10:45:03 AM

The cross country performance of the tank was not that bad nor was its ground pressure. It was just slow.

You would have to adjust tactics for that. Since most tank kills in WW II were either antitank gun or infantry ambush kills, there is some truth to the argument that you could get away with using larger numbers of lighter tanks to overwhelm your enemy. The trouble here is that even in the category of AT guns and AT rockets the American soldier was woefully underequipped. It was as often a case of using improvised obstacles and explosives to stop a PZKW V as it was a P-47 dropping a bomb . That is expensive in infantry. It works but like the engineers who were fighting in front of the 10th Armored setting up obstacles at every botltleneck and chokepoint you could count their successes by the scattered groups of American dead at each roadblock where a Panther was knocked out.

OMG. You don't overwhelm your enemy with larger numbers of lighter tanks. If you are the Soviets you can try to, and you fail. You avoid your enemy's strength. You go around them. Control their lines of supply and communication. You destroy their formations by maneuver. Superior numbers isn't even needed. Look at the blitz against France. The Germans were OUTNUMBERED as well as having INFERIOR (in terms of Armor and Gun Power) tanks. What they had was superior leadership and superior tactics. Yes you can adapt to having slower tanks, by having a slower attack. Unfortunately a slower attack makes it more likely that your enemy will have time to adapt to your attack. Which means you have fewer opportunities to defeat your enemies by maneuver and have to rely more on fighting them tank vs. tank.

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Jeff_F_F 3/13/2007 11:00:06 AM

It would have been easier if the poor schmucks had a decent AT gun, preferably in a TANK, to give them some standoff. in that blizzard.

The German formula was one dug in Siberian Tiger plus a squad of platoon of infantry holds up a Sherman tank platoon and an infantry company forever as long as the position isn't flanked and the ammunition holds out.

With Pershings that wouldn't happen. The Pershings' 9.0cm.L50s could not only knock out the Tiger, it could direct fire shell the Germans as the infantry closed-even during a blizzard.

Herald

Not saying the situation couldn't have been a lot better. I'm just saying the Pershing isn't the answer. Too slow to blitz and even with the 90mm gun they couldn't defeat the King Tiger's frontal armor. You still have to flank the position.

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Jeff_F_F 3/13/2007 11:26:10 AM

The British were right in the end. In a tank or a tank destroyer you have to compromise on speed, range, protection, ammunition capacity, crew comfort, mobility, and gun power. if you are constrained by weight and you have to you compromise; you compromise first on speed, then crew comfort, then ammunition capacity. The last things you compromise are protection, mobility, and GUNPOWER.

Herald

The British ballance the Challenger on the side of heavy armor and lower speed because they do not use mobile warfare tactics to the extent used by the US Army. AirLand Battle is based on mobility above all else--even when defending a mobile defense is seen as superior to a static one. I'm not so certain I'd say the British turned out to be right in general. What you compromise on depends on mission. While I agree gun power is important, I disagree that it is necessarily more important than mobility.

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Herald1234 The German lesson 3/13/2007 11:26:21 AM

1. Combined arms. In 1940 the French didn't have it. In 1941 the Russians didn't have it. The only allies who even had a clue were the British and they proved as late as 1944, that they still didn't get it. Operation Goodwood ring a bell? How about Market/Garden?

2. Defense. Off the backhand[Mannstein and Tennis} In 1940 the Germans themselves, didn't have a clue. Often they let their panzers outrun their infantry and get shot up with catastrophic results. The Germans being quick learners modified their own armor doctrine in defense as well as offense to employ tanks with infantry support. In a US example, the Ardennes defense was definitely tank supported on the shoulders to channel the German armored columns into constricted killing zones where American airpower and TANKs would be able to meet the Germans on equal terms. Or was the actions of 10th Armored and 3rd Armored misdirected at the respective German kampfgruppen? ?????????

3. Dont confuse cross country speed with actual tactical speed. Once you are in fighting contact , the speed of everybody's advance is the same-the speed of a burdened scared man trying to cross ground. If by some miracle you break through the defense zones then you have exploitation speed and THAT is tied to your general cross terrain speed. Once again, if you outrun your infantry you are going to get shot up. A tank crawling across country at 15 kilometers per hour is not that slow. That was about the speed of a German blitzkrieg advance in 1944. It was also about the cruising speed of a Pershing offroad crossing ground, so what is the problem?

Herald

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YelliChink 3/13/2007 11:46:41 AM

There are a lot of scenarios during WW2 that there is no such an opportunity to even flanking the enemy. Rommel knew tried that during the First Battle of El Alamin and got terribly bogged down by well placed British defence. When it's Montgomery's term, Germans also knew that he will try to flank him, so he placed his armor division just there and hold them until it's too late. In the end, Montgomery's 8th Army broke through IN FRONTAL ATTACK. Same thing happened in Normandy, especially during the Battle of Caen, when Montgomery again faced German without any opportunity of flanking maneuver. Germans and Russians both assigned heavy tanks to independent regiments, and called them to front line when a frontal attack is planned. If Americans can put Pershings earlier, at least King Tiger's main gun is as effective (or, ineffective) as Pershing's 90mm against each other.

BTW, M36 has removable top cover to protect its crew from artillery fire. What they should've done is to add another 2 feet to the turrent to make the top cover permenant.

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Herald1234 The M-26 Pershing 3/13/2007 12:21:23 PM

http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3398

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9476/m2603aspecs05gunvsarmorsc1.jpg" width=717 border=0>

The point is that the Pershing was outranged in armor penetration by about 500 meters? Against a Siberian Tiger that is insignificant. most tank cannon shots in Europe at the toime were taken at 1000 meters range or less. The Pershing had a superior slew and elevation rate as well as a quicker loading main gun.

The protection compromise was a lot better than the Sherman or the Comet. You stood a bettern chance aginst that Tiger. And that was the worst you had to face in Europe. Compare the Pershing to the JS-2. Using the benchmark Panther as a comparison, it wasn't too bad now was it? All three tanks were similar in size, though not in mission as both the Panther and the Pershing tended to emphasize the general purpose combined arms and tank fighting qualities over the mainly infantry gun support quality of the JS-2 tanks.

Herald

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JFKY Some Larger Issues 3/13/2007 12:31:04 PM

The focus seems to be on TACTICAL issues in re: the M-4. First folks need to understand the imapct of logistics on the force structure. Europe was thousands of kilometres from Detroit and the Texas oil fields. Everything the US Army needed for war had to be transported from the US to Europe and those larger issues dominated tank design or tank approval issues. Someone mentioned Diesel fuel, but the US Army, decided for logistical reasons, to focus on ONE fuel, gasoline. The US Army was going to use Mo-Gas rather than Mo-Gas AND Diesel. First off, no Diesel Shermans.

Secondly someone mentioned that from NOV. 1944 until a point in '45 2,000 M-26's were produced. Again November 1944 is AFTER D-Day. If you want M-26's you have to POSTPONE D-Day or go with Shermans. There's no middle goround there it was either or...

Shermans were more easily transported than Pershings, in Liberty ships. Again, using the Sherman meant the US Army could have more tanks. Numbers count. Would you rather have X number of Shermans or X/2 number of M-26's? And that's assuming that production runs of the M-26 would have given x/2 number of M-26's to begin with.

So it's nice to talk about the tactical ability of the M-26 v. the M-4 v. the PzKw V or VI and how this or that model of tank would have solved the TACTICAL impasse, but the US Army 1940-45 was designed around some larger issues that outweighed any particualr battlefield concern. The Army must be EXPEDITONARY and SUSTAINABLE and NUMEROUS. Plus, it was hampered, by a pre-war underfunding of power plant R&D-limiting the engines available for tanks and AFV's and forcing fairly severe trade-offs between weight, mobility, maintainability, armour and the like.

The result was the M-4 Sherman and the use of any other platform came at a great cost to those larger issues. At such a cost that the US Army would rather have fielded the M-4 over the M-26. The M-4 is comparatively a weak tank, the M-4 with the 75mm is certainly the rough equivalent of the Pzkw IV with the L/43 barrel and the 76mm/17 lb model the rough equivlent of the Pzkw IV Lang. It is in comparison to the PANTHER that it's shortcomings are so glaring, and in terms of numbers, availability, reliability, and maintainability it far surpassed its German counter-parts.

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kensohaski 3/13/2007 12:33:52 PM

Tossed a diesel in it, sloped the armor, and borrowed a high velocity anti-tank gun from the Brits...

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Jeff_F_F 3/13/2007 1:17:04 PM

You'll get no argument from me that making the turret on the US TDs open was idiotic--except for the M18 Hellcat. The Hellcat was designed to be a very light, extremely mobile antitank weapon. In fact I belive it was the fastest armored vehicle of the war. Even more so than the German Lynx, which had only a 20mm gun. This makes sense. The M10's margin of superiority to the M4 was minor as an antitank weapon, and its deficiency against infantry was huge. I understand that an open turret allows more room to work, which makes sense, becuase the crew can probably fire the gun faster, and it is easy for the TC to look out and see the enemy and such. Still the trade off in protection against infantry just doesn't seem worth the benefit.

My puzzlement is only increased because until the start of WW2 there were virtually no similar tanks, and no other nation produced a similar tank in WW2, except for antiaircraft work. Granted a lot of German tank destroyers were open, but I'd think that US armor designers would understand that this was because they were cobbled together, rather than to exploit some supposed advantage of an open turret. Or maybe they didn't. I guess I can imagine a scenario where an enemy army is riding roughshod over every enemy they encounter, and the US Army says "I don't know what they are doing but we are going to copy it and learn to do it better." And then they do, even copying the stupid stuff.

Or maybe they say "The germans are kicking everyone's butts. They must be doing something right. Lets look at the German vehicles: They have tanks. OK, we have those. And they have assault guns, ok, they are like tanks only they don't have turrets. Why would you want to do that? We won't do those. And they have tank destroyers, those are like a gun stuck on top of a tank chassis in an open box so you have good visibility. Let's do that only, have the gun in a turret that turns like a tank's, so it is better." Any way you cut it its stupid.

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