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Are Shermans THAT bad?


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in reference to the Tiger thread, here's some use of the statistics given in your link:

US losses Jun-Sep: 1500

UK losses Jun-Sep: 1500

Panther losses Jun-Sep: 649

3000:650 = 4.6

for every lost Panther the allies lost 4.6 tanks.

furthermore, of 1845 lost German tanks 393 were lost to AP shot. that 21% of 650 Panthers is 137.

allies lost 22 tanks (3000:137) for every Panther destroyed by allied tank or AT-gun.

isn't silly use of statistics fun?

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Interesting, the distinction between 'took' and 'lost' in this conversation about Shermans and Panthers. I've read it both ways in various accounts. The fact of a 4.6 to 1 loss ration has nothing to do with tactically needing 5 Shermans playing cat-and-mouse to reliably kill a Big Cat. Both may be correct for all I know, but the similar 5:1 ratio is just coincidental.

About my own pessimistic U.S. armor opinions. No statistics at hand, but I got the jist of it from Cooper's "Death Traps" book. I was under the impression the ETO tank war had been so traumatic for the U.S. military that between '45 and '50 the "age of the tank" was pronounced over and piddling attention payed to the force - until the shock of North Korea invaded the south in June

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Sillier and sillier.

Notice in the loss figures by nation and date at the link Andreas provided, that half of all Allied losses in the June to September period occur in August. Gee what happened in August? Were German Tigers at their peak? Epic tank battles that were fiascos? Um, no. Every tank in the allied fleet drove clear across France, that is what happened in August. US losses in June and July, the supposed "death trap" nonsense, come to 522.

Meanwhile look at the timing of the German losses and remember we are talking about TWO - the date a vehicle is written off by its parent unit, not the date it is put out of action. Virtually all the losses are in September. Losses for June and July are recorded as about 500. But if you look in e.g. the gerob site for actual operational strength, you will find it had fallen to about 600 in theater at the time of the breakout, at the end of July. Which was down 1600 from the total sent to the theater.

Were the other tanks all just peachy, but lost at the west wall after the race across France? No, not remotely. They never left Normandy. They were hit in June or July, they went into the workshops in June or July, they were definitely lost in August went the front moved, but nobody was around to do the accounting and write them off, and nobody had the slighest idea what might or might not emerge from the shatter chaos streaming east from Falaise. By September they could close the books and acknowledge them as lost. But the actual KOs occurred when they left operationally status.

But if a take is put in the shop by AP hits in one month, lost objectively forever for failure to be able to move in another month, and written off as "abandoned" in a third, the cause of loss will not be recorded as "AP shot" but as "abandoned by crew". Which means exactly nothing.

The US lost under 600 mediums from D-Day to breakout, TWO or delta operational. The higher losses in August reflect a bit for Mortain but not much - it was mostly stopped by infantry arty air TDs and its own strategic pointlessness - but less than the rate of loss seen in June or July, for actual combat.

The balance of the outsized August losses, twice the rate from the heavy combat periods, came from the movement of the front. Some of that was undoubtedly tanks hit in July but still thought repairable before the front moved - the flip side of the German case. But most simply failed to drive 400-500 miles across France - out of thousands that had to do so, 10-15% didn't stand it.

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MikeyD - Cooper is a maintenance sergeant with a bug up his backside. A typical crank out to smear the brass and make a name for himself doing so. He is not remotely a credible source and nothing like an expert on US armor operations in the period.

His only reasonable point, on which all the rest is hung as a spin doctor's smear job, is the slowness of the brass to understand the need to upgun Shermans - before the fight had even begun, really.

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Hah! Sorry for laughing, I'd never read of Mr. Cooper being savaged so soundly before! I admit when i read his book I thought it was more a 30 page pamphlet stretched into a however many hundred page book. His referring to the "Christie" suspension Pershing got on my nerves a bit too.

Belton Cooper's book should be filed under "first person accounts" - definitely limited to his own field of vision and with definite opinions of what he saw. Rather reminds me of how Patton wanted to shoot cartoonist Bill Malden for his grunt's-eye-view of the war. Both Cooper's and Malden's ground-level perspectives made the whole affair somewhat less bright-and-shining than the top brass would've wished.

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Andreas,

The charge number thing was aerospace humor. If somebody wanted something done, we had to have a program number against which to charge the work. Seldom were we allowed to charge work to corporate overhead accounts. There were several major investigations regarding improper billing to wrong accounts, and consequently, management was death on charge numbers.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Originally posted by coe:

...so how was it the Germans lost 2000 AFVs in Normandy when the allies were saying it took 5 shermans to take out a panther? Were the AFVs mostly abandoned?

(lack of repair parts, fuel, over run?...

I just started reading Jent'z Panzertruppen-V2, (but haven't got to Normandy yet...) but it's amazing how many panzers are lost when the front moves against them (in Russia). They don't have enough tow-vehicles to get them to safety, and then... when they do get them to (supposed) safety (a town far to the rear), the Soviets make some operational breakthrough and bypass said town...!

For what it's worth...

Ken

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ken - and why on earth do they need tow vehicles?

Do you think operational tanks need tow vehicles to conduct a fighting withdrawal?

They are out of operational for a reason, and no it isn't needing an oil change.

Look at the tanks operational when fully stocked PDs first enter serious combat. You will find on the moves to the theater, only trivial numbers "fall out" from mere movement - and are back in action rapidly. But actual commission to combat results in half of the force out of running status in a day or two. In the best cases it may take a week, while reflecting large scale "churn" back out of repair status.

What is happening is everything is taking hits. Only subformations deliberately left out of battle move upward in operational strength. Soon half the force is in the workshops, and the other half is being used with cautious, cycled through the front or reserve to husband strength, etc. A stable balance of rates then keeps some level of armor force in action. The subcommands fighting are still being smacked around on very short time scales, but they are being replaced by others LOB in reserve, and those reserves are being replaced by repaired vehicles.

All categories then evaporate slowly. From being half strength the runners drop to 33, 25, 15. Vehicles are being cannabilized for spares to keep others running, replacing systems destroyed in action and the like. Eventually they report only one figure for operationals of all types and don't bother breaking out repair categories anymore, and that operational total runs about 2 companies TOE strength - for a panzer division.

What happens when the front moves is all the vehicles in the shops are lost. Some modest portion of the runners also "fall out" for maintenance reasons, and others are KOed for the same reasons the front was forced to move in the wrong direction. The short term replacement pool gone and additional souces of loss now operating, the remaining vehicles have little life left in them. If damaged during a retreat, to an extent that would lead to a week in repair and then renewed service were the front static, instead they are lost.

But nearly all of those are caused by enemy action. Even a portion of the pure maintenance failures are driven by the fact that the tank has been broken several times and is "tempermental" about its jury-rigged wounds, as a result. It drove over a mine and threw a track, it was replaced. But the suspension was also damaged and nothing could be done about that part. Etc.

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The balance of the outsized August losses, twice the rate from the heavy combat periods, came from the movement of the front. Some of that was undoubtedly tanks hit in July but still thought repairable before the front moved - the flip side of the German case. But most simply failed to drive 400-500 miles across France - out of thousands that had to do so, 10-15% didn't stand it.

I have a question.

From what it was said if i am not mistaken , these losses for the Allies are Total write offs.

I can understand mechanical breakdowns during the Allied advance , but i do not see how this advance results to total write offs for the allies.

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pak - the US was not Germany. For Germany tanks were always scarce, since they were outproduced in them by their combined enemies by 4 to 1. The US was never low on tanks. The rate determiner for them was always trained tank crews, and behind that logistic thruput to get tanks and their supporting material to the front. The US made 45,000 Shermans. But front line armor strength in the actual fighting units ran 2000 in Normandy to 6000 at the end of the war. They merrily wrote off things the Germans would have scrounged.

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Originally posted by JasonC:

pak - the US was not Germany. For Germany tanks were always scarce, since they were outproduced in them by their combined enemies by 4 to 1. The US was never low on tanks. The rate determiner for them was always trained tank crews, and behind that logistic thruput to get tanks and their supporting material to the front. The US made 45,000 Shermans. But front line armor strength in the actual fighting units ran 2000 in Normandy to 6000 at the end of the war. They merrily wrote off things the Germans would have scrounged.

A relative question is the meaning of the phrase for example "third army total write offs".

If the vehicle is beyond any type of repair ,it is a TWO.

Is there another way a vehicle can be TWO?

For example, does an army rear echelon area provide every available repair activity?

I guess for example overhaul is beyond army's capacity.

Anyway, what happens when a vehicle's repair requirements exceed the capacity of a formation's rear echelon area?

Say for example that a tank needs to be moved to repair facilities outside of an army's area of responsibility in which case it may be under the authority of an Army group formation for example.

If there is such a case, does the army declare the vehicle as TWO ?

In such a case the meaning of TWO is that the formation is not more responsible for the repair of this vehicle , which is different than the usual meaning of TWO.

P.s

The question remains the same for "divisional TWOs" which i read about in one of the links provided earlier.

[ October 07, 2006, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

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Originally posted by JasonC:

ken - and why on earth do they need tow vehicles?

Do you think operational tanks need tow vehicles to conduct a fighting withdrawal?

They are out of operational for a reason, and no it isn't needing an oil change...Etc.

Hi Jason,

You are exactly right. I was merely sharing my learning experience regarding the fact that many losses are not from immediate battlefield loss (a tank being killed and burned out...)

I am reading where panzers were ordered to advance/operate in unsuitable terrain, and became bogged. A second tank attempts to tow the first and ruins the transmission. Now... two tanks are immobilized (without even seeing the enemy), and the Russians have broken through and surrounded the area... The Germans then are forced to destroy both of their panzer to prevent them falling into enemy hands...

As an average (at best) CM player, I can sometimes relate to the frustration of Allied players with Shermans (and T-34) when facing Tigers, Panthers, etc., but their numbers certainly did the trick.

Salute,

Ken

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I dont like the M4 Sherman series myself, But only for asthetic reasons.

Other than being butt ugly, it was a fairly good tank.

Its greatest shortcomings were the same as any other tank of the period.

Someone seems to be assuming that the high loss rates it suffered were due to being a crappy tank, Guess again,,,,,,,,,

The sherman was the most common allied tank in the west, so of course its going to suffer the most losses.

But proportionaly it should suffer no more losses than the Cromwell or the M3 series.

The often desperate shortage of good crews meant that inadequatly trained crews were often sent out to fight, and this might account for high overall allied losses.

Combine this wih the fact that most allied tanks WERE M4 shermans,,,, and you have a high loss rate for shermans.

The fact is that the sherman is STILL a valid tank today, and is still deployed by many 3rd world countrys.

Are Shermans particularly bad tanks? No.

on average they are better than most allied tanks of the period,

Are shermans designed for stand up slugging matches with high velocity tank killers? No.

They are infantry support tanks that CAN be effectivly used in the AT role, WITH PROPER TACTICS.

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What is the best infantry support tank of the war? I would suggest the Sherman-

good HE round (75mm)

sizeable ammo load

3 machine guns

fast 3 man turret, responsive to threats

not too expensive per tank

Off the top of my head, I can't think of another tank that has all these qualities.

And can any other vehicle compete with the Sherman 105 in its own particular role?

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The thread is really interesting at least to me.

I have an additional question.I noticed that TWOs for British are also very high during August.

I understand the remark about the American procedures based on their overwhelming production.

Did British have also similar attitude in respect of writting off their tanks?

Did they count on replacing them with American tanks?

Are there any numbers regarding the American tanks given to British?

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In defense of MikeyD's statements, and various twists on the statistics presented here - A large number of Axis AFV's were destroyed due to Allied air superiority. I recall reading (was it from the Actung Panzer site before it got pulled?) that up to 80% of all Panther tanks were, in fact, destroyed from the air. I know most/all of you gents are aware of this, but this discussion seems to be framed in an AFV vs. AFV manner. Despite the above-listed Axis fiascos, I suspect kill ratio of German vs. Allied tanks to be statistically more significant once we pull the air support kills out of the equation.

A member here with access to the data should list the post-D-Day Axis tank losses in sub-categories. I'm sure the Allied tank losses during this time frame due to Luftwaffe action was minimal...

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I rather suspect by war's end the vast bulk of German tanks were either abandoned in maintenance depots as the front overran them or were left with empty gas tanks by the side of the road. A Sherman Company turning a corner, coming upon abandoned Panthers and putting a couple rounds into them to make sure nobody was home shouldn't really count in the great Sherman/Panther exchange ratio debate.

The 'glass-half-full' statisics above seem at variance with the bitter feelings many tankers have expressed about the inferiority of thier equipment against the Germans (a PzIV J commander might disagree with that assessment, though).

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