Myth buster threads: comments

Regarding height: <http://www.panzerworld.net/vehicleheight.html>

 

Unfortunatly there is not ally tanks in height comparation.

 

post subject

Just delved into memory mode, I think the name of the stabiliser on the Sherman 75mm was 'Westinghouse', but could well be wrong.

 

Here is something about 76mm gun and maybe why people complained about it.

The main problem with the US 76mm gun was that both the M79 AP and M62 APCBC ammunition had insufficiently hard noses so that they were liable to shatter when hitting the thick frontal armor of the Panther and Tiger.

The US Army had predicted based on US testing (on softer BHN plates) that the M79 ought to be able to frontally penetrate the Tiger out to over 1000 yards yet in real life it could not beyond about 300 yards.

 

where they testing them on stuffed tigers? Apparently it could also knee cap an elephant at 500 yards but was only any good agianst tortoises at 100 yards

FNG

 

Thanks Christian! I think this clearly shows that there really wasn't much difference in the heights of the tanks.

 

One more insightful contribution to this forum by banned member and authoritative source Danyel Phelps - written by him as a result of private correspondence with me. As before, this is no step towards letting him back on the forum, and all discussion regarding this post must be directed at me since Phelps will not himself be allowed to react to others or discuss his post even in this thread.

Danyel Phelps wrote:
Ammunition Discharge Issue

In the past I have bravely crusaded against this idea and have endured the heat of a thousand flames to get one idea across: The M4, for all of its bad publicity, was not particularly more prone to ammunition discharge than any other tank. Having looked at the ammunition layouts of several 1930-1940 era tanks, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there was indeed an issue here. You can say "Any tank would combust with ammunition hit" and you would be absolutely correct. However, there is one problem:

German tanks tended to have higher quality armor plate, and therefore were better protected than Allied vehicles with comparable plate thickness. The result of this is that tanks are less likely to be penetrated, and therefore are less likely to combust due to ammunition discharge.
That, my friends, is unfortunately the fact of the matter. It isn't so much an issue that the M4 was more vulnerable to combustion if the ammunition was struck; it's an issue of the ammunition being more likely to be struck because the armor quality and thickness was inadequate. The layout of the front glacis offered German gunners with two shot traps which happened to lead straight into catastrophe.

That said it is important to remember that other tanks could, and did, combust. Feel free to read the following articles which I am sure some of the old-timers of these forums have seen a thousand times.

http://www.iremember.ru/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=19
An interview with Hero of the Soviet Union: Dmitri Loza

For a long time after the war I sought an answer to one question. If a T-34 started burning, we tried to get as far away from it as possible, even though this was forbidden. The on-board ammunition exploded. For a brief period of time, perhaps six weeks, I fought on a T-34 around Smolensk. The commander of one of our companies was hit in his tank. The crew jumped out of the tank but were unable to run away from it because the Germans were pinning them down with machine gun fire. They lay there in the wheat field as the tank burned and blew up. By evening, when the battle had waned, we went to them. I found the company commander lying on the ground with a large piece of armor sticking out of his head. When a Sherman burned, the main gun ammunition did not explode. Why was this?

Such a case occurred once in Ukraine. Our tank was hit. We jumped out of it but the Germans were dropping mortar rounds around us. We lay under the tank as it burned. We laid there a long time with nowhere to go. The Germans were covering the empty field around the tank with machine gun and mortar fires. We lay there. The uniform on my back was beginning heating up from the burning tank. We thought we were finished! We would hear a big bang and it would all be over! A brother's grave! We heard many loud thumps coming from the turret. This was the armor-piercing rounds being blown out of their cases. Next the fire would reach the high explosive rounds and all hell would break loose! But nothing happened. Why not? Because our high explosive rounds detonated and the American rounds did not? In the end it was because the American ammunition had more refined explosives. Ours was some kind of component that increased the force of the explosion one and one-half times, at the same time increasing the risk of detonation of the ammunition.

It is not clear here what models of the M4A2 and T-34 he is comparing, but as he makes no mention of Wet Storage we can assume it is a 75mm armed M4A2. He states earlier in the interview that his unit had tanks armed with both weapon systems. This piece of the interview shows us that American ammunition was much less volatile than Soviet ammunition in the same role. The result: The M4 did not have as great of a problem with combustion as the T-34, all things considered.

http://www.combatmission.com/articles/usmedtanks/m4.asp
Lieutenant Colonel Louis Hightower, describing action in his M4A1 around Sidi Bou Zid, in January 1943.

Another Mk IV came up to him, and we got that one with one shot, still moving ourselves. He flamed up like a flower. The another Mk IV approached the Tiger and the burning tank, which was stupid because all my gunner had to do was move his sight over a hair, and that tank also flamed up with the first shot. Then our gun overheated and jammed, and we were in serious trouble as the remaining Mk IVs really opened up on us. We could actually see the shells coming along close to the ground, like a ricocheting stone on the water. One shell fragment came straight down our gun tube, rattled around the but caused no serious damage. Another shell went through the bogie wheels, under the tank. Then with a sound like a giant bell, a shell hit our turret, but didn't penetrate. Another hit made our ears ring, but we kept on working on that jammed breechblock. As soon as our gun was unjammed, we began firing again, but now a German 75mm shell smashed the bottom of our left gas tank, and blazing gasoline spurted out over the back of the tank, the tracks and the ground around us. Heavy black smoke began to roil up from our hull. I shouted to my boys, "Now is the time to git" and we boiled out like peas from a hot pod."

This is interesting: Here we see a claim that not one, but two German mark IV tanks combust one right after the other. It would appear that German tanks are not so omnipotent as to be immune to combustion which seems to be often stated.

Then, of course, we come to late production vehicles. The ammunition storage in late production vehicles was relocated from the sponsons to the floor of the turret and floor of the hull. This change alone was a better layout than most Panzers as can be seen in the diagrams displaying Panzer ammunition storage which can be found in Panzers at War by Michael and Gladys Green. In addition to this drastic improvement the new wet storage racks were applied to drown the ammunition in the event of penetration.

The solution was made up of three liquids:

• Water
• Ethylene Glycol
• Ammudamp

The Ethylene Glycol was there to prevent the solution from freezing, and Ammudamp was a well-known rust inhibitor.

At this point, which was January 1944 onwards; you cannot say that the M4 series was particularly prone to combustion. The only tanks which maintained dry ammunition storage by 1944 were old early/medium production run vehicles and the awesome M4A3E2, which was a tough nut to crack in its own right.

To review:

M4: Early production – 1942

• Mediocre armor quality
• Plate thickness provides unfavorable resistance against 75mm fire
• Flawed hull shape: two shot traps in front hull

M4: Medium production – 1942-1943

• Mediocre armor quality
• Plate thickness provides unfavorable resistance against 75mm fire
• Ad-hoc fix to flawed front hull: Factories weld steel plates over vulnerable shot traps – questionable difference in protection
• Ad-hoc measure to protect ammunition: Factories weld steel plates over ammunition storage – provided target for German gunners

M4: Late production – 1944~

• Vastly improved armor quality
• Increased plate thickness gives improved resistance against 75mm fire
• Permanent fix to flawed front hull: Reshaped to eliminate shot traps
• Relocation of ammunition storage – steel plates over ammunition storage no longer needed and therefore removed
• Introduction of wet storage racks protect and preserve ammunition upon penetration

M4A3E8 Development: WWII - KOREA

I also feel I need to comment on the statements that the Korean War M4A3E8 somehow differed from the WWII M4A3E8. The fact of the matter is that it didn't. American weapons and equipment development dropped out and stagnated just after WWII. Therefore, the U.S. Armed Forces were largely using equipment that survived WWII. One of the few exceptions to this rule was the M4A3E4, which was an ad-hoc measure to get the 76.2mm M1 series on the field to fight the T-34/85 during the wait for more up-to-date tanks to arrive.

The most significant change to the U.S. Tank roster in the timeframe of the Korean War was the updating of the drive train that powered the M26 "Pershing," which was dubbed the M46 "Patton." Most other changes to equipment, such as the M24 "Chaffe" replacing the M5 "Stuart," were already underway before the end of WWII.

There was no update to any part of the M4A3E8 save for some samples being fitted with a 105mm howitzer for support. It was decided by the end of WWII that the next generation of tank development was to belong to M26 design. The M4 had served its purpose and would be phased out. No further development of the M4 would take place for front-line combat in the U.S. Army.

Of course, the M4 found a new life in the service of other countries such as Israel in the post-war world.

Tank size comparison

Though Christian Ankerstjerne has produced an excellent series of graphs and diagrams displaying the heights of select tanks, I felt I should finish off my post by contributing an ad-hoc graph I constructed some time ago to show the differences in profile between three well-known and often compared Medium Tanks. This picture shows no data and is a purely graphical presentation. Take it for what you will.



Sherman Gyro Stabilization

Fear not, Merlin: Your memory does not fail you. A quick look at page 7 of this .pdf file gives an interesting insight at the Gyro installed into the Sherman. It is a computerized copy of issue 98 of Science, which I assume is a Newspaper of Magazine back in the 40s. The date printed for the issue is Friday, September 17, 1943.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/issue_pdf ... 8/2542.pdf

For those of you who cannot open .pdf files, or otherwise don't care for the hassle, I have hosted a low-res picture of the article for your viewing ease. You can see the main body of the text and the illustration, but you cannot read the report in the upper-right corner of the add.

 

Thanks Roel, especialy for the pictorial comparsions of the Panther, Sherman and T-34, which I think again point out the height issue is not that "big" a thing. And the M4/76mm is the highest of the Sherman clan.

 

Actualy it is tall as panther,what is basicly heawy tank,not medium (german made classifications by gun caliber not tank weight) so it is not minor thing as u try to present it here.

But truly discowery would be statistics how much tanks blown up from direct hit,not just tale from one tank crewman.

 

The first major modifications to the Sherman were brought about by the need to improve its crew safety features. Having earned the sobriquet "Ronson" (light first time) from Allied crews and "Tommy Cooker|" from the Germans because of its tendency to catch fire very quickly when hit, a study of damaged tanks and test shooting of examples to determine why this occurred was undertaken. One of the major conclusions was that the unprotected ammunition stowage was mainly to blame. The temporary fix was to add 1" thick appliqué armour patches over the ammo stowage, fuel tanks, and in front of the driver & co-driver.

The next step was to redesign the hull to allow Glycol/water liquid protected bins for ammo stowage, or "wet stowage", to be fitted and also larger hull hatches for quicker crew evacuation - hedging your bets! This gave us the 47degree glacis plate that got rid of the box extensions for the front hatches, which were weak points anyway. The cast hull Sherman, the M4A1 got this treatment as well with the hull casting modified to allow bigger hatches canted out at an angle. Then came the T23 turret to enable the 76mm M1 gun to be fitted and this, theoretically, gave Sherman crews the ability to mix it with the best Germany had to offer!

US Army research proved that the major reason for this was the use of unprotected ammo stowage in sponsons above the tracks.


At first a partial remedy to ammunition fire was found by welding one-inch thick applique armour plates to the vertical sponson sides over the ammunition stowage bins. Later models moved ammunition stowage to the hull floor, with additional water jackets surrounding the main gun ammunition stowage. This decreased the likelihood of "brewing up".

At 1645, armor-piercing rounds struck the engine compartment of Alger's tank, starting a fire. The early Sherman was nicknamed "the Ronson" due to the propensity of its lightly armored gasoline engine to burst into flames. Now, Alger's command tank was ablaze. Immediately afterward, two armor-piercing rounds ripped through the south side of the turret, killing radio operator Leger. Alger and the rest of the crew jumped from the flaming tank and tried to work northward to join the remnants of Company D.

The hostile armored force now bored in on the American flanks. Multicolored tracer shells streaked through the sky as the Germans rampaged at will among the burning M-4s.

The British found out in the desert. The Russians learned it in 1941. Most Americans didn't discover the truth until D-Day, but their tank crews never forgot. German equipment was superior: better design, manufactured to higher standards, and operated by consummate professionals, who would fight with diabolic efficiency right up to the spring of 1945 when all hope was lost. British soldiers nicknamed their Sherman tanks 'Ronsons' after the cigarette lighter advertized to 'light every time'. Russians christened the lend-lease M3 'the coffin for seven comrades'.

The army soon learned that their light Sherman tanks were no match for Nazi Panthers and Tigers. Hundreds of their "Ronson-lighters" — crews and all — went up in smoke. Indeed, 60 percent of all lost Shermans were torched by single shots from enemy Panzers. In contrast, only one in three of the Americans' salvos even penetrated German armor.

 

Actually the point I'm trying to make is that all the tanks are about the same heighth. Look at the graphics Christiane and Roel have posted. There is virtually no discernable difference between the vehicles. It doesn't really matter that the M4/76 is as high as a Panther (or Mk IV) or is centimeters higher than a T-34, it makes little difference on the battlefield at 500m. It is a minor thing. And yes, I agree the Panther was a heavy tank, but it this has little to do with the question.

Roel: Maybe it's a difference in language or perception, but when I see, "T-34 is broadly superior to M4" I think, "T-34 is much better than M4". It wasn't, in Nov 1942 they were roughly equal. The difference in armor thickness and slope was already overcome by German AT weapons in late 1942, when the Sherman entered combat. The additional protection offered was not enough to earn the T-34 a label of being much better than an M4. The T-34 did have better stats than the M4 in some areas, but it was also behind in some things like ergonomics, communications and optics (I won't bring up reliability). As we all know, a design is the sum of many compromises, the M4 missed on some, but then so did the T-34 (and Panther for that matter).

 

Please stop with that Dmitri Loza story ,that doesnt,t prove more about Sherman or T-34 than this story.

While the bow machine gunner's relentless MG34 fire prevented any of the British crewmen from emerging from their hiding places, Wittmann turned his attention to the array of vehicles conveniently lined up along the side of the road. Two Cromwells and a Firefly were knocked out, before the fearsome 88mm KwK was turned on the first of the lighter tracked vehicles belonging to the 1st Rifle Brigade. On noting the ease by which these vehicles were destroyed, the remaining number were taken out with heavy fire from the pair of MG34s operated by Woll and bow gunner SS-Sturmmann Jonas. In all, a staggering fifteen vehicles and two 6-pounder anti tank guns were reduced to burning wrecks. This was quickly followed by the destruction of three Stuart light tanks.

On entering the town itself, Wittmann encountered the four Shermans belonging to Regimental HQ. Three of these tanks were quickly taken out, including the two decoy M4A4 Sherman command vehicles - Wittmann of course was not to know that these vehicles were not armed. Woll then slammed another 88mm shell into the scout car belonging to the RHQ Intelligence Officer, with the panicking infantry being showered by deadly shrapnel. Wittmann himself then grabbed the MG34 mounted on his cupola, and joined Woll in razing the remaining M3 half-track, that belonging to the medical officer. The disabled vehicle was blown into the middle of the road, preventing any throughway.

As Wittmann's Tiger now moved cautiously towards the centre of town, it passed the side street where the Cromwell of Captain Dyas had been lurking; shortly after seeing the German vehicle rumble past up Clémenceau Street (today Rue Pasteur), Dyas rolled out after it, a scene witnessed by John L. Cloudsley-Thompson, whose own command vehicle had been one of the the three Cromwells 'brewed up' by Wittmann's Tiger. As Cloudsley-Thompson nervously watched Dyas slowly follow Wittmann up the road, Wittmann's next encounter was with a Sherman Firefly belonging to 'B' Sqn., commanded by Sergeant Stan Lockwood. Having sustained a light hit from the 17-pdr cannon of Lockwood's Firefly, Wittmann half-turned into a section of wall, causing the rubble to fall down upon the British vehicle.

Amid this confusion Captain Dyas, who had up to this point kept his Cromwell at safe distance in following Wittmann's Tiger, seized the opportunity to have a crack at his much larger adversary. The brave Dyas did manage to get two 75mm shots off against the massive German vehicle, but instead of claiming his prize he saw both shells bounce harmlessly off the Tiger's thick armour. Dyas was not to get a second chance; with Wittmann now aware of the danger the Tiger's massive gun quickly turned itself on the now helpless and exposed British vehicle, and an accurate shot from Woll succeeded in blowing Dyas clean out of his cupola, leaving him dazed but unhurt. His gunner and driver were not so fortunate, however.

 

post subject

And you know how Wittmann went out do you? By a Sherman Firefly gunner who had only fired a few practice shots before, if I remember correctly he took out two more Tigers and a Panther on the same day.
Have a look at the last but one post in 'Tank Warfare of WW2' titled
'Tank Aces'.
Wittmann had a good run and a BIG share of luck, but it ran out.
Once again, the Sherman in spite of all it's faults was the AFV that won the Tank-War, simply because there were so many of them and we could afford to lose them because they kept coming, which the enemy could not
compete with. OK quote me the fable that it took five shermans to knockout one Tiger, no problem, we had five more shermans, they had not got another tiger.

 

Combat effectiveness of early war T-34s can best be evaluated in terms of 'hard' factors—armour, firepower, and mobility—and 'soft' factors: ergonomic features such as ease of use, vision devices, crew task layout and so forth. The T-34 was outstanding in hard factors and poor in soft ones.

The 'big three' of tank design have always been armour, firepower, and mobility. The T-34 had an outstanding balance of all three throughout its World War II life cycle.



“The finest tank in the world” —Field Marshal Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist. (Liddell Hart 1951)


"The technological pace-setter of World War II tank design" —Steven Zaloga.

"We had nothing comparable" —Friedrich von Mellenthin.


"Very worrying", Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, Commander of Second Panzer Army.

"This tank (T-34) adversely affected the morale of the German infantry", General G. Blumentritt.

"It was the most excellent example of the offensive weapon of Second World War." - General Mellentin.

 

Re: post subject

I know how he went out(but if I am not wrong before he went he did kill more Shermans) ,that was the point of my post ,this is story just like Dmitri Loza is.

 

Just look "Losses Kills" statistic from two Tiger units that fought on western front.


schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 (501) Losses 107 Kills 500
schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 102 (502) Losses 76 Kills 600

You just have to respect this .

 

Of course, the kill claims are vastly inflated, and doesn't match Allied armour losses at all. The German high command always divided claims by two to make the numbers more realistic before using them in their strategic analysis.

 

Re: post subject

The men who destroyed Wittman tank had luck,if someone destroyes 137 tanks that is not becouse he had good runs or big share of luck.

Once again Sherman had his role in winning the war and yes they didn,t have another Tiger or any other tank becouse they lost majority of them in the East.

 

ilirja:

The point of the myth-buster is not that the Sherman is the best tank of WWII, but that it wasn't the terrible tank it has been made out to be and that mist of the stories (ronson, five to kill one) aren't true and that other tanks suffered from similar faults. US and British crews expected more and were thus quick to criticize any and all shortcomings of the Sherman.

The Sherman never enjoyed a time n which it totally outclassed all the German armor as the T-34 did, 1941 and the first half of 1942 are source of the German quotes you used. By mid 1943 (Kursk) the T-34/76 had been matched by other weapons, including the German Mk IV and the US Sherman. The T-34 was a technological pace setter, but that doesn't equate to best or to mean that it was always in the lead. It did have a great combination of fire power mobility and armor, especially in 1941-42, but it had poor soft factors that had a great impact on it's effectiveness. The hard factors are most important when comparing tanks one on one. The soft factors (including reliability, maintianability and producibility) are exactly the ones that make tanks so dangerous in mass. The Germans were able to consistently out perform their early war opponents with "inferior" equipment thanks to these soft factors.
You and sinissa seem to take the myth-buster as an affront to the T-34 in particular and the Soviets in general. The point is not that the T-34 was bad or that the Sherman was better than the T-34, the point is that the Sherman was an okay, adequate tank, and was roughly equivalent to the German Mk IV and the Soviet T-34 (the M4/75 to the T-34/76 and the M4/76 to the T-34/85).

 

One more bit of tribute to the T-34 versus the Sherman:

One of the main reasons the Sherman never enjoyed a period of superiority like the T-34, was the T-34 itself. As is well known, the early German encounters with the T-34 (and KV-1) led them to up gun and up armor their own tanks and led to the obsolecence of the Mk III (except as the StuG) and the introduciton of the Panther (and TIger). The inproved German tanks arrived at around the same time as the Sherman. As the improved (and later new) German tanks were intended to defeat the T-34, they were able to handle a roughly equivalent tank, the M4.
So part of the Sherman's poor reputation is because of the T-34.