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[SirQuiamus]

Sherman was the best tank of the war. Good gun, decent armor, best crew survivability, best mobility and most crucial by far, fastest target acquisition.

Ach! Vat Nonsenz!

Is this good engineering, pray?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Sherman had a ridiculously high profile because the oblique driveshaft hogs up inordinate amounts of space under the gunner's seat, because they just had to have the drive sprocket at front and squeeze the radiator between the engine and the crew compartment. Such a bodge job, man – no Teutonik Eleganz vatsoever!

I'm partly kidding, of course, because the best weapons are clearly the ones that win wars. Despite being wonky and weird, the Sherman was relatively simple, modifiable, and easily mass-produced; it was to AFVs what the Ford T was to automobiles – the quintessential McTank in the days before other McProducts.

[mainiac]

McDonalds is all about cutting corners and giving you as little as you need.  The Sherman didn't really cut corners, they just set a reasonable goal that they could consistently surpass in their designs  The Germans on the other hand set unreasonable goals and failed them.  The Soviets for their part set the lowest possible goals and then found the most cost effective way to meet them.  So the T-34 would be the model T or tanks.

I like the comparison of the transmissions.  Between the T-34, Panther and M4, the Sherman had the strongest transmission.  They used the highest grade steel and had a herringbone gear fit.  The Panther, which weighed 50% more had weaker steel and straight cut gears.  They also designed the tank with a neutral steering transmission (something no other tank had!) but forbade crews from using it because it would break their tank.  Oops.  The T-34 had the worst transmission of the lot because they figured that a lot of their tanks wouldn't need to go more then 300 miles from railway to destruction.  So they designed the transmission with cheap materials, made it easy to replace and packed a lot of spare parts.

Both the American and Soviets strategies make sense if you consider the situations.  The Soviets need disposable tanks so fancy transmissions are a waste of dearly needed resources.  The Americans have access to high quality materials and dont want to be doing repairs thousands of miles from home.  The Germans... weighed their tanks down with 15 tons of Adolf Hitler's ego and that's why the Panther is the worst tank of the war.

[SirQuiamus]

Adolf "One-Ball" Hitler and his Nazi chums really loved their big guns, and we're not even talking about the real Wunderwaffen yet! Königstiger, Sturmtiger, Maus, Karl-Gerät, Schwerer-Gustav... they went absolutely bonkers with their phallic toys when their troops were being overrun at the front and their war industry was getting bombed back into the stone age. And obviously, the Panther had a crappy transmission as a stop-gap compromise because by 1943 their industry simply didn't have the resources to produce more durable alternatives in such quantities (even with widespread exploitation of slave labour). And they still had to slather Zimmerit on their tanks out of fear that Allied engineers just might invent magnetic anti-tank mines.

Shermans, on the other hand, were equipped with all kinds of gearboxes and engines – radial engines as well as V8s and Diesel engines – and that weird driveshaft design, along with the decision to have the gearbox separately at the front, must have made it easier to use whatever pre-designed parts were currently available. I maintain that German tanks were often better-designed than Allied ones, but when we're talking about the world outside the engineer's desk, sometimes less is more.

[mainiac]

The allies had designs that were good on paper too.  They just stopped them at the prototype stage.

[Ghazkull]

So what is this now, the "German tanks are crap"- circle jerk club?

Apart from you frothing at the mouth about the Panther i haven't seen real info yet why it should be crap.

And the glorification of the Sherman is somehow amusing. Yes it was simple, yes it could be produced in huge numbers and then the US lost 20.000 of them on the Western Front compared to Germanies total of four thousand tank losses. Then we can add British and French tank losses and we are at over 46.000 losses in tanks.

Even granting that German infantry was fighting excessively well and german anti-tank guns were taking them out by the dozen, it still leaves quite some doubt towards the "Crapiness" of German Tanks you try and establish here.

I refuze to let ze german engineering to be drawn into ze dirt like zat. (- i really can't do these Nazi-Accents)

[Lord Shonus]

And the glorification of the Sherman is somehow amusing. Yes it was simple, yes it could be produced in huge numbers and then the US lost 20.000 of them on the Western Front compared to Germanies total of four thousand tank losses. Then we can add British and French tank losses and we are at over 46.000 losses in tanks.

Considering that the US Army and Marine Corps only ever possessed 20,000 Sherman tanks in both theaters this is literally impossible. The US lost roughly 20,000 armored vehicles of all types (Including but not limited to Hellcat and Wolverine Tank Destroyers, M3 Stuart light tanks, M3 Lee Medium tanks, as well as the Sherman) in the entire war. Meanwhile, the Germans lost 2,200+ tanks on the Western front in the period between 6/6/44 and 5/8/45 alone.

[Loud Whispers]

muh gorillion folded tanks cut through maginot lines

[mainiac]

Apart from you frothing at the mouth about the Panther i haven't seen real info yet why it should be crap.

-A transmission that broke down half the tanks before they saw battle.  France equiped a formation after the war purely by going around and collecting Panther tanks in france that had broken down without seeing battle and hadn't been destroyed by retreating Germans.
-An engine that would catch on fire if driven uphill during a long trip
-50mm side armor on a tank that weighed 45 tons.
-A gun that made it dangerous for friendly forces nearby due to blowback
-An overweight gun that required the engine to run at all times because if the engine stopped the electric motor couldn't move the turret which is an example of the extremely convoluted shit you get when your tank is crap and you have to kludge everything together
-No secondary gunners scope, making it virtually impossible for the tank to fire quickly
-Poor commander visibility
-Horribly overweight leading to it getting stuck in the mud constantly
-Much more expensive then the Sherman, the tank that consistently trounced it

The thing about the Panther you have to understand is that the tank that actually existed was a poor cousin resemblance to the statistics that were popularized.  They set unrealistic goals and so they had to cut a million corners to meet the specifications while cheating in other places.  The result was a horrible, overpriced piece of crap.

And let me guess, next you will look at wikipedia and say that the Panther was cheaper then the Panzer IV.  That's because the Panther prices are based around the assumption that you are using slave labor to a much greater extent then the Panzer IV and the Panther paid less for it's materials then the Panzer IV because crony capitalism intensified the further along in the 3rd Reich you go.  In terms of actual economic cost, the Panther was absurdly expensive although that was also due to horrible production techniques.  The numbers rose so much because the Nazis were devoting more and more resources away from things like feeding people and towards war materials.  But then some of those production techniques were the fault of a bad design, like a heavy tank requiring material strength you cant deliver so you need to resort to expensive stress hardening to meet the specifications (at the expense of brittle metal).

And the glorification of the Sherman is somehow amusing. Yes it was simple, yes it could be produced in huge numbers and then the US lost 20.000 of them on the Western Front compared to Germanies total of four thousand tank losses. Then we can add British and French tank losses and we are at over 46.000 losses in tanks.

1) Your numbers are hilariously inaccurate
2) The Sherman lost more tanks because THERE WERE MORE SHERMANS.  Tanks lost to other tanks were a small minority.  More Shermans were lost to landmines then German tanks in western Europe.  Artillery by far killed more tanks then everything else.  So you put more tanks on the battlefield and there are more tanks for artillery to destroy.  Even a Joseph Stalin tank or a Tiger II has little chance of surviving a 155mm artillery shell.  A decent barrage by a 75mm company broke up tank attacks on many, many occasions.

[Ghazkull]

Considering that the US Army and Marine Corps only ever possessed 20,000 Sherman tanks in both theaters this is literally impossible. The US lost roughly 20,000 armored vehicles of all types (Including but not limited to Hellcat and Wolverine Tank Destroyers, M3 Stuart light tanks, M3 Lee Medium tanks, as well as the Sherman) in the entire war. Meanwhile, the Germans lost 2,200+ tanks on the Western front in the period between 6/6/44 and 5/8/45 alone.

You see the Problem there? The Americans only fought properly against the Germans starting at the same date as you stated above, so they still lost 20.000 tanks and armored vehicles to the Germans 2,200+

Also i am sorry with the above numbers i just meant all kinds of tanks...i should have clarified that in some form...wait. i just actually read what i wrote there. Where did that happen O_o must have started correcting an argument i was about to write but forgot to write in the correction. Apologies for that.

Still the Sherman, was by no means a great tank either. The placing of the ammunition spelled regularly certain death for the crew.

The Sherman lost more tanks because THERE WERE MORE SHERMANS.  Tanks lost to other tanks were a small minority.  More Shermans were lost to landmines then German tanks in western Europe.  Artillery by far killed more tanks then everything else.  So you put more tanks on the battlefield and there are more tanks for artillery to destroy.  Even a Joseph Stalin tank or a Tiger II has little chance of surviving a 155mm artillery shell.  A decent barrage by a 75mm company broke up tank attacks on many, many occasions.

i'd actually like to see the numbers on that one. Don't get me wrong i don't want to sound in any way offstandish i just want to see the numbers proving that.

And let me guess, next you will look at wikipedia and say that the Panther was cheaper then the Panzer IV.

I never was going to imply that. Obviously the Panther would have been more expensive.

In any case the argument of the engine fire holds true for earlier Panther Models, but with Ausführung G and later A-Models most of the problems in that regard had been fixed.
True the transmission was overengineered sensible crap but that was solved by transporting Panthers as close to the front as possible.

The rather thin side armor was mostly uninteresting in equal engagements since Panthers were used in Kampfgruppen with Panzer IVs as support at the flanks.

As for the turret that information is actually not true. the turret could still revolve albeit slower without the engine. Besides which Tank in a battle has its engines off unless it waits in ambush, in which case it is completely irrelevant to move the turret.

[Arx]

I'm seeing a whole lot of assertions (from all sides) and not a whole lot of sources.

I have no investment in this, just pointing out that there've been ~5 sources posted in this thread, and none of them are on this page.

[mainiac]

i'd actually like to see the numbers on that one. Don't get me wrong i don't want to sound in any way offstandish i just want to see the numbers proving that.

Well Zolaga in Armored thunderbolt found that about a quarter of American tank losses due to gunfire were caused by 88mm.  Losses due to gunfire were themselves only half of losses.  Most gunfire losses were due to 75mm gusn, which were used on the Panzer 4 but probably more significantly were the caliber of the 7.5 cm Pak 40 stationary AT gun.  There was a British study done immediately after the war that found that about 16% of tank losses in ETO were caused by other tanks.

If you want to see the numbers, go get the book.  Or google around a bit, shouldn't be too hard to find.

I'm seeing a whole lot of assertions (from all sides) and not a whole lot of sources.

I'm stating pretty basic facts about the Panther.  If you want to quibble with basic information then go get your own sources, I'm not going to waste hours of my time looking up stuff I've read at various points over the past years for your convenience.

[Il Palazzo]

As the years go by, I'm less and less inclined to pay any attention to numbers posted without references.
I liked the posts by Lord Shonus providing some - but when prodded to do so! - as I can then discuss something substantial.

The discussion so far is a bit meh in that respect. No sources, lots of opinions. Numbers pulled out of who knows where.

Please try to focus the discussion around published, verifiable sources.


Another thing - I thought the whole argument was about how, supposedly, the German tanks were crap all around the board. That they were prone to malfunction and hard to provide for logistically was never in doubt. Even such respected sources as the Discovery/History Channel will tell you so.
The argument was that they were also ill-armoured and ineffective.

This argument I can discuss based on the source posted by LS, where I look at the numbers for AP hits vs hits that penetrated the armour - where Shermans fare horrendously poor, with nearly every hit penetrating the armour, whereas the German tanks require closer to two shots.
Then there's the tables for hits to knock out the tank, where the two sides are more on the equal footing (i.e., not every shot that penetrated a Sherman ended up disabling it), but still with German tanks coming out on top.

These are the numbers that I find more telling about the battlefield quality of the armour, rather than the numbers lost, since the latter is dependent on too many factors other than just the quality of the machine.

[mainiac]

This argument I can discuss based on the source posted by LS, where I look at the numbers for AP hits vs hits that penetrated the armour - where Shermans fare horrendously poor, with nearly every hit penetrating the armour, whereas the German tanks require closer to two shots.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

Please try to focus the discussion around published, verifiable sources.

Please, go out and actually do some reading about the subject before you claim the moral high ground on me.  Look for some sources on actual combat performance, not this crap about firing range tests.

[Il Palazzo]

Come on, mainiac. I don't know what you've read or what your expertise is, so it should come as no surprise that I'm not going to take your word for granted.
As much as I value your input, if you can't be bothered to provide and discuss concrete sources, save your opinions for yourself.

[mainiac]

And you've given me no reason to take your word for granted.  Yet you are adopting an extremely strong prior that German tanks were good until proven otherwise.  Why should I respect that prior without evidence.

My prior is that tanks were equal until proven difficulty.  Basic facts about the tanks then influence that: German tanks were rushed into service, they had bad armor profiles, they had bad reliability, coordination issues, etc.

Why should my prior be given less respect then your prior?  My prior is the simple one and I have given you my reasons for changes to my prior.  I am not the one asking you to take things on faith.  You are asking me to take things on faith and then acting like I'm being presumptuous for telling you I wont.