Re: [OT/DSII] Re: Shermans and Panthers

On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:25:05 -0600, devans@uneb.edu wrote:

>On the American, and perhaps Brit side, I seem to recall a quote of a
>surviving panzer commander: I could always kill their tanks 10-to-1,
but
>they would always come up with an eleventh.

And, as I mention in another post, there were the Allied aircraft.
Typhoons,
Tempests, P47s, etc., etc. in numbers and often unharassed by the
Luftwaffe,
did a lot to hurt the Germans.

>Of course, these are probably oversimplifications, but the discussions
seem
>to fly in the face of what little I've read in recent posts, though the
>above was repeated often enough. Am I a victim of the wartime
equivalent of
>urban legends?

No, you're not a victim of urban legends. Your reading matches mine.

In general, the Soviet vehicles were very good and far superior to that
available to the Western allies. The T34/85 was a good, even superior,
match
for a Panther.	The T34/76 came out in 1941, almost 2 years before the
Panther, and was quite a shock to the Germans (and easily superior to
every
German tank at the time). The T34/76 suffered from an inferior gun and
thinner
armour than the Panther. However its armour was well sloped and it was
fairly
reliable, mechanically. It was better than the Panzer IV (the Germans'
most
plentiful tank) and far better than the Panzer III.

The T34, in all versions,  was lighter than the Panther -- by about half
in
the case of the T34/76 -- which helped with ground pressure. The T34/85
was,
according to my Jane's book, considered the best tank of the war by the
Germans. The T34/85 was STILL being used as a frontline tank in Africa
into
the 1980s. The Germans used as many captured T34s as they could get,
though
logistics was a big reason for this.

As you and others have mentioned, the problem with the Soviets was their
doctrine, training, and tank-to-tank communications. 

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,