ORIGINAL: .50Kerry
I have to disagree, the American designs with their own and Jolly Ole' modifications turned out a product that could kill the Kittens and exploit more terrain.
In limited numbers. The 76s were not quick to fill out the Armoured Divisions and certainly through Normandy only one Sherman in four was a Firefly in the British units. You also can't have it both ways. Either masses of Shermans was good enough or "modifications" were the way to go (a point which makes the argument that the Sherman wasn't good enough).
There has to be a cutoff point on "gee-wiz" and if the Sherman can be produced and manned for 5 widgets and the Panther cost 40 but is only "5 times as good"(rather arguable) it is NOT a bargain. Sure maybe if you are the sort who is more worried about personal skin the Mittens look enticing but if you are more interested in a winning war effort you meld the cost and time needed to produce your designs to your likely economic situation and material one.
but then why build heavier designs in the first place? I still think you're making a virtue out of reality/necessity. The Sherman was found wanting but was available in large numbers so they carried on. This is essentially the "quantity has a quality all its very own" argument or (as uncle Joe put it) the battle was won in the factories before the first shots were fired. I don't argue with that, but that entire premise is underpinned with the fact the Sherman was not good enough by 1944 and had America been fighting someone her own size, she was in some trouble.
The Panther was a good heavy, I'd still prefer the M-26. The M-26 took German armor and the German armor did NOT take any M-26s. The M-26 took the best of the M4 to a tank approaching the mittens in size, speed, and lethality but smoking the Mittens in ease of manufacture and deployment.
Yes, but given the best German weapons were clearly capable on paper of taking the M26, there would have been reasons for this. Not least only 20 being deployed, and not seeing any action at all before February 1945 when (to say the least) it was all over bar the shouting.
I believe in going to war to win not die gloriously "taking as many of them with me in my hot rod".
But could we agree it is somewhat inglorious to die in inferior equipment, with the only solace being that one of your colleagues most likely got the man who killed you eventually.
Put another way, would the current American Army swap 1000 M1s for 5000 M60s?
If the best way to ace fritz or Ivan was a live reenactment of the Desert Rats then Desert Rats it should be. Fact is in reality it is a multi-interger balancing game.
The Germans simply could not be everywhere the T-34 and Shermans were. Wouldn't have mattered had they had 5 Leopard 2s that Allied Armor simply could not have easily killed if they were facing 100,000 other thanks. The United States had several opportunities to have the "greatest and most gee-wiz" tank on the block and oddly we decided instead to go with the reliable, economical, and in 1942 Tough M4.
Yes, but I think you're mistaking cause and effect. They didn't turn down the heavier weapons because they were content to have 5 times as many of the 4th toughtest Kid on the block. You went with what doctrine told you made sense. That things changed suggests that doctrine was found wanting as was the Sherman.
If you are asking Enlisted Sven I can *maybe* see the "but it looked cool and had all these neat features and cup holders too" arguments making more of an impact but as you climb the food chain they make less and less difference.
But it wasn't about Kitties having cute cup holders, it was about watching AP shot bounce of Kitty hulls and being taken out from 2000 yards. Enlisted Sven didn't want bigger machines as a fashion accessory, but to give himself a chance of making it out alive.
We damn near produced more 105 Howitzer Carriage M-4s than the Germans made Panthers. You'll have to remind me who "got combined arms" again sometime.
Not sure what your point is.
The thing is Kitty fan tends to try to argue a very narrow and very weighted glidepath on "best tank". I'll go with the Iowa over the Yamoto and the M4/M-26 over the pituitary tanks for 1,000 Alex. Answer is: what sleds carried their flags to victory?
The sleds that came in the greatest numbers. However, the finest we could produce during the cold war spent decades trying to think of something different than sled theory in central europe in case the balloon went up because the other side had the sled surplus. One thing in our favour was that our M60s, M1s and Chieftains/Challengers and Leopards were adjudged better weapons. Kind of ironic how things turned out, is it not?
I respect the bravery of the crews who drive the Sherman and the 34s to victory just as I respect the ruthlessness of Allied command that was willing to send them in those "death traps".
But again you make it sound so planned. Nobody woke up one day and said lets build an inferior tank but in huge numbers. We might lose them hand over fist, but we'll get to Berlin in the end. the Allied command was ruthless because they had to be, not because they wanted to be.
In all likelihood the pervasiveness and penetrating power of the "VW tanks"(ie non Ferrari super tanks) helped shorten the end game of the conflict. That 2 or 7 KMH "advantage was at the expense of turret speed and also managed to drive up weight to the point the vehicle had severe tranny issues its whole life.
It is more important to me that my equipment is ready even if I have been a tad abusive in our co-dependent relationship than my having the "longest drill" so to speak.
Different strokes for different folks.
But you make it sound like a choice once again. War does not have to be fought by hordes of rubbish on one hand and thin lines of quality on the other. It wasn't at sea or in the air. Was Bradley or Eisenhower happy that the Sherman was having a hard time?
My main source of picque is at this myth that somehow these Kitty tanks were invulnerable and the Allies(US especially) ran in abject horror at their mere sight, but that Ivan lost 113 tanks per Kitty killed every time and EVERY Tiger or Panther lost was "abandoned unharmed without petrol left in the tank".
Yes, but you can understand my pique at the myth that the sherman may have been rubbish but we planned it that way. I doubt it was much of a relief to Sherman crews that their rides always started. More would be alive today if they had had breakdown rates like the Kitties did.
No that is not your thrust so far as I have deduced, BUT in the end the Panther Tiger and Maus ARE war failing designs because the Tuetonic powers that be refused to mate their designs to their needs.
I'm not sure. This relies somewhat on whether the Germans could have produced five times more PZ IVs if they had ditched the Panther. For my part, the Germans built their army to face east after 1941 and since they were never going to win the numbers game against the commies, they had no choice when facing the heaviest Soviet assault guns and the IS range but to go for killing power and quality. America got away with the Sherman because it could produce tens of thousands and outproduce the Reich (with or without the russian and British figures thrown in). The Germans could never have outproduced anyone on any single front, never mind a combination of them all, so producing more (but inferior) PZ IVs was not quite as attractive an option as it was for Uncle Sam. They would always have ended up with lots of poorer designs that were still too few in number.
Germany was idiotic for deciding "hey I can take all three of the world's other superpowers at once" but she likely would have done far better either keeping the war super short or possibly delaying.
She always had tried to keep wars short, it's what Germany did. Her problem was that operational ability was allied to dreadful strategic ability and arrogance and the whole thing fell apart as it had sometimes in the past.
The Allied Method put the Axis one to slumber.
Indeed, hence my inability to grasp why you defend substandard equipment (circa 1944) in such terms. We won the numbers game on the ground. I'm just saying it didn't have to be that way because it wasn't in other fields and one has to ask how the Germans lasted so long when the numbers game was so heavily against them, if not for that quality.
What strikes me about the other side of the fence is that it starts out detailing why Uber Generals could have been around circa 1943 but then finishes up with the Quantity is quality and who actually won the war approach. It seems to me to be that the only reason to speculate how Uber Generals could have arrived early is to patriotically wave the flag for American engineering in the face of the Cats, but the argument shifts somewhat when the quality of the Cats is under discussion. [;)]
For my part, I think the Germans made mistakes but were never likely to outproduce anyone whatever model they chose to standardise on. In those circumstances, building more survivable vehicles had the effect of keeping morale higher, perhaps keeping a higher percentage of crewman alive through combat and allowing a few to stem a tide in places.
No, they couldn't be everywhere, but Allied Armies in the west rarely asked them to be in the sorts of numbers that counted.
Regards,
IronDuke
