Like Erich said, good thread.

Gotta head out to work but I'll leave you with this,Heart;

What would you rather be in crossing the battlefield at Kursk? A Sherman

make mine a Stug

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Compared with the flimsy armour with a pop-gun that was the numerous T-70s...heck YES!

Compared with the "grave for seven brothers" M3 Grants...heck YES!

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

OK, I give. A Sherman with the 17pdr.

...be a firefly

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Yes, this is an interesting thread and shows again how hard the 'best...' question is.

It's all very well having 'wonder weapons' but you need a lot of them and everything was diminishing for Germany, increasing for the Allies, post D-Day.

To me, the Tiger Is/IIs are like the Me262 - wonderful things, and maybe a better fighting design ( who knows ? ) but, if the air is full of P-51s and the ground is crawling with Shermans.....

( Just as an anecdote to the main topic, my Uncle was in Shermans at the very end of the war and told me that the 'Ronson' reputation made him very uneasy - his crew were in constant fear of being 'brewed up' ).

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

The thing about German tank crews was that they were truly confident about their tank- Tiger and Panther.

They trusted they could take alot of hits and survive and if you have that advantage-I think that´s quite a big thing in a battle.

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Morale can really make all the difference - b/t German and American tank crews - if you don't have confidence in your equipment, your efficiency suffers. It seems the only way you could feel "safe" in a Sherman is to HAVE tons of Shermans crawling all over the place - more targets, the less odds that you're going to get hit....

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"I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience." - Admiral Wilhelm Canaris

In one of my books there is a picture of a Panther Ausf A disguised with tinplate and paint to resemble a M-10 motor carriage. It was supposed to have been used by a unit under Col. Skorzeny in the Ardennes for scouting behind allied lines. The tank looks very similar except for the wheel layout.

Perhaps they should have disguised the Sherman to look like a big German tank.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

I know the photo, Ta - the tank is lying next to the railway station at Malmedy.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Kai is quite right here. The differences between allied and german tanks has become known in history circles as 'The Tank Gap' While in actual fact there is not mcuh difference in between the main combat tanks,the Sherman, especially the marks used in NW Europe, the Cromwell and the MkIV, the major problems was pscychological. To every allied tank crewman each tank round the corner was a Tiger and that created a real fear in them. They also had the reassurance, confirmed on them by there generals, thats the tanks could be replaced but they could not. This meant that allied crewman were much more ready to abandon a damaged, not destroyed though, tank than the germans, for whom saving a precious tank was important. General Dempsey even went so far as basing Operation Goodwood on the premise of tank replacements were greater than infantry replacements. (D'Este 'Decision in Normandy' (Penguin:2001) p. 355)

It is the similar effect that allied air power had on the Wehrmacht. By 1944 all planes in the sky were considered allied even though they might not be.

[ 13. March 2005, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: Mahross ]

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Thoughts on Military History
Cornish Scale Modellers
Ross' Military Modelling and Art

Having struggled through almost all of Chapter 4 of Buckley's 'British Armour In The Normandy Campaign' I'm approaching Chap. 5 ( 'The Tank Gap' ) with keen interest to see what light is shed on this subject....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

These writings of the Tigers to be superweapons is a bit rich for me. The use of ratios used by allied tanks to overcome a tiger is even more suspicious. The main enemy for allied tanks in the Desert and Normandy was a dug in Anti tank gun.

The simple fact is that in the race between Warhead and Armour, is that the warhead will always win.

In addition we have the asymetrical fighting aspect. 'Limejuice' called on the radio and smoke deployed on the target are would destroy or chase away the threat. There is from what I gather a lot of controversy about the effect of close air support now, but still everyone agree that the germans lost their possibilitys to attack efficiently when they lost air superiority.

Another issue is that once the allies breached the front in Normandy, and their Armour could operate as intended (mobile warfare) they performed well. A role that the Tiger NEVER could do given maintenance, mechanical reliability and fuel consumption.

For me it is a great puzzle that the allies denied their tankers to use the countermeasures from the desert against the 88mm. Bricks and sandbags to act as 'skirts'

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

If there was no operation Lüttich and the German tanks were in reasonable numbers there to fight back..who knows how fast the allied would have gone forward...

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I'm puzzled here Kai.

Operation Lüttich lasted from 7th August till the 13th. So any effects for scrapping that operation would be effective from 7th August and forward right?

The germans never managed to replace their tank losses in Normandy. Something that I guess that Martin can comfirm as he advance in the book he is reading.

I recon that most of the german tank losses had already occured by Operation Lüttich. That and the loss of other units too.

Op. Epsom 25-30 June.
Op. Goodwood 18-20 July.
Op.Spring 25-27 July.
Op. Cobra 25-31 July.
Op. Bluecoat 30-7 July August.
Op. Totalise 7-13th August.

So abandoning Operation Lüttich would do what?
Caen is captured, and Patton is driving like hell through the countryside. Pandoras box is already open.

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

If they hadn't had Luttich, anything and anyone that was not lost would still have hade to make it out at Falise.

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"What might work in New York City is certainly not going to work in Montana. So, for the federal government to be having any kind of, you know, blanket rules that they're going to try to impose, I think doesn't make sense." Hillary Clinton

(Photo removed for humanitarian reasons.)

curious from our English forum members Jaeger has posted some important land actions of Normandie, and we refer to all the German armor losses as something they could never regain.

question: anyone ever put into effect a true loss(s) of British armor during the time frame ?

I know full well about the claims - over of both sides

Regarding Operation Lüttich. Talmander and Zetterling claim that only 46 German tanks was knocked out during the action. So... 46 extra wrecks in tha Falaise pocket if you ask me.

Erich what do you mean? The losses discounting the ones that were recovered? Or what it meant for the British to loose all those tanks?

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

Trouble is, the two sides have tended in the past to differ in the way they have listed tank losses.
The German practice was normally to list only tanks which were total write offs as losses, while on the Allied side it was normal to list tanks which were out of action at the end of the day, even if the damage was minor and could be repaired within 24 hours.

But using the same benchmark, total write offs, we get some interesting figures ( source the poster MKenny ).

In the Battle of Normandy for the month of June, 374 Allied tanks were total write offs, against German losses of 244.

For the month of July, the figure is 522 losses for the Allies against 288 for the Germans.

A total of 896 for the Allies, against a figure of 532 for the Germans. However the Germans also lost a further 120 Stug assault guns in these two months.

I know these figures don't show us how many tanks were Ko'd and then repaired, but it is extremely difficult to find German records detailing this, so it is impossible to compare them in this way

anyway I hope it is of help

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!

Personally I think the Lüttich was the reason Falaise pocket took place. If Hitler had not ordered the offensive the panzer divisions could have been used to other operations. So I am not talking about Lüttich itself but where it led to.

So far the Falaise pocket has been considered almost the end of German Army in the West (??):

"Although anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 Germans had managed to escape across their remaining crossing at St. Lambert before the Falaise salient closed completely on August 21, 10,000 had been killed and 50,000 taken prisoner. In addition, nearly all of their tanks and artillery pieces had been left behind."

TheHistoryNet | World War II | World War II: Closing the Falaise Pocket

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Kai

I don't think that is the case. Patton was chewing miles south of the germans. He was virtually unopposed and could do as he pleased.

My point is that the germans had shot their bolt, and by the time Lüttich got underway there was no escape for them. (Germans)

The roads were clogged with traffic, and the 3rd US army set up it's guns for the Turkey shoot.

I have read a few accounts by people inside the pocket and outside the pocket. The Germans don't list the Jabos as the worst enemy, but artillery spotter planes. This fits in nicely with Talmander and Zetterling's writings of the over-estimated close support from USAF and RAF. But then again I have read the direct opposite from others...

What there is little doubt over is that the Falaise pocket meant the death of an army.

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

Alte Hase

I must have irked you in some way, and for that I am sorry. If I have conveyed an arrogant message that the British were superiour and that the German armour was pants. Then can assure you that it was not my intent.

Friends?

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

Ooooooooh, so cute!

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