Re: Merc Guild

Brian Bilderback wrote:

> Eli Arndt Wrote:
>
> >Keep in mind, those same Shermans fought in armies that beat back
Tigers
> >and Panthers.
>
> Wow,a debate about the relative quality of WW2 Armor.... thanks, Eli,
just
> what we needed to get this moving in another direction....
>
> What does everyone think of the "Shermans weren't as good as Tigers,
just
> more numerous" arguement, especially prior to the upgrade to the 76mm
gun?
> I refuse to believe I even come CLOSE to having a right to speak on
THAT
> issue....

>From what I have read, aside from its stellar mechanical reliability,
it was
the wrong tank for WWII.  As an infantry support tank, it ranks highly. 
It
has good mobility over broken ground, enough armor to repel light field
guns
and withstand artillery, and not only a gun with a great HE round, but
room
for lots of shells.  It would have been the best tank in WWI.

Unfortunately, the germans read Biddel-Hart's book and used tanks to
destroy
tanks, instead of using mobile anti-tank guns (german tank destroyers
had
heavier armor than the tanks that they were derived from).  The poor AP
performance of the sherman's gun, combined with its great height (needed
to
fit an air-cooled engine that was not used in all but the earliest
models),
meant that it could be easily seen before it was close enough to
penetrate the
armor of their opponents.  To add insult to injury, the 7.5cm/70 cannon
of the
panther could hole a sherman at quite a range.	The 8.8cm/71 could
penetrate
the sherman's armor from any aspect and at any range that the crew could
reasonably expect to hit.

The king tiger caused as much trouble as it did, because it combined the
8.8cm/71 with more front and side armor than the sherman's 75mm gun
could ever
reasonably hope to penetrate, at any range.  The tactic for shermans to
take
on a tiger were for one sherman to occupy the tiger's attention long
enough
for a another sherman to sneak up behind the tiger, and fire into the
much
thinner rear armor.  The tactic only worked because tigers were much
fewer
than shermans, and casualties among the distracting shermans were always
heavy.	The tactic that maximised sherman crew survival in a
hypothetical
one-on-one encounter is to flee before the tiger see's you.

The israeli's made good use of shermans by upgunning and re-engining
them with
spare units for their M60's, and by keeping their heads out of the
hatches to
make sure that they saw the other guys first (really helped, given the
soviet
doctrine of fighting buttoned up).