Sherman VS. tiger!!

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by roqf77:

[snips]

i will search for the web page but i found one that had a ministry of defence file from sep 44 that said a ratio of 36% of medium/cruiser tanks were fireflys by august44.

I suspect you mean War Office, not Ministry of Defence.

Originally posted by roqf77:

Plus firefly's were never refered to as such they were only denoted by a c at the end of there name

Haywood (op. cit.) disagrees, on good authority.

He does say "One point that needs to be made early is that the name Firefly is not included in any War Office or Ministry of Supply technical or policy files. Nor was it used by ministers, generals or senior officials in any filed correspondence that the author has seen whilst researching at the public Records Office (PRO)."

However, he states that "The name was used at Brigade and Regimental level in Twenty-First Army Group unit war diaries from March, April and May 1944", and goes on give examples from 4th and 8th Armoured Brigades.

The other name often used was Sherman 17-pdr.

Originally posted by roqf77:

and this was only with two marks of the firefly all other conversions were not marked as engineers were ordered to convert as many as they could.

Mr. Picky says there were VCs, ICs and IC hybrids.

All the best,

John.

[wamphyri]

OO some very nice discussions here.. I'd just like to throw out another "bone" of sorts. I've made up a little CMBB(don't have cmak.. and don't have cmbo installed) scenario that was what happened in the show I watched. To say the least I couldn't do what was suggested .. because honestly the tiger loses every time .. there's always 2+ sherms left. One thing they didn't tell about or try in the show was smoke.

The 3 sherms that are supposed to get taken out pop smoke and I usually only lose 1 of them. The one that's supposed to ambush from behind tends to get targeted or the tiger moves. Played it 3+ times as a hotseat and every time the tiger gets taken out with more than 1 sherm alive .. that's with sticking to what the discovery channel said was their supposed tactic.(if you don't hotseat the ai tiger will turn around so 3 sherms have a shot at it's back turret .. or if your axis the ai sherms will run towards the flag.. had to hotseat it to try and get the results I wanted)

I don't know if this provides anything at all by making this scenario .. but it was fun. It also proved (not that it needed to be) that war isn't something you can't always stereotype things about what is or isn't best. It's all about how it's used when it's available. give me those 4 shermans and I'd learn that dern tiger a thing or 2..!!!!

wamphyri

[stikkypixie]

The thing is tigers never come alone.

[Timber]

Hmm.. in CMAK i destroyed 10 Shermans with one Tiger set at a fixed position !

I set the Tiger crew at "Crack", and the allied crew's were set to be a random selection.

I did as in Discovery channel's program hide the Tiger behind some three's, guarding a particular spot. Soon the Tiger had massacre'd 7 of the Shermans without trouble !. The other Shermans were in the meantime trying to flank the Tiger, but only managed to fire two surprise AP rounds at it "And they both bounced off". So now the Tiger swings its whole chassis towards the flanking Shermans, so that it faces them head on. And then in one turn it took them out one by one.

End result: One Tiger, Ten knocked out Shermans !

So I'd have to agree that it highly depends on the scenario !!.

Regards.

[roqf77]

good points john i just ment offficaly it was a nickname someone was quoting official documents and found very few fireflys refered to i was just saying they wouldnt. and the vc and the 2c were the most popular conversions. but you are right.

[roqf77]

In effect on target they are identical to the US 75mm

no need to get so upset i was just saying one of my grandads friend was in a cromwell and was in a sherman 75mm previously and noticed the cromwells gun was better by the fact he got some kills v tigers and panthers. plus if you look at the photo the barrel on the cromwell is clearly longer. i dont know what rsf means but that was what i was told. so in effect on target i dont think it was, if it was why change it from the 6 pounder when by this time they had a he shell for it. by the way the 75mm on the cromwell has a mussle break the 75mm on the sherman does not, it is a compatable gun but is not the same.

[flamingknives]

I wouldn't get so bothered if I could easily understand what you write. Punctuation and capital letters are very useful things.

If you look up the performance data of the US M3 gun and the British Mk.V, try http://salts.britwar.co.uk, you'll see that they are similar to the point of being identical in terms of performance.

The US M2 gun, used on early M3 medium tanks, has a lesser performance. The Sherman never mounted the M2, so Shermans and British 75mm guns would have comparable firepower.

The British 75mm gun does indeed have a muzzle brake, as it has a smaller and lighter gun mount than the US M3 gun and needs to attenuate the recoil

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by roqf77:

good points john i just ment offficaly it was a nickname someone was quoting official documents and found very few fireflys refered to i was just saying they wouldnt. and the vc and the 2c were the most popular conversions. but you are right.

I'm not right, I'm merely quoting Haywood.

Haywood, incidentally, seems to be of the opinion that there never were any IICs, and those identified as such are really IC hybrids. Likewise, the IVC reported by some authors is a mistaken identification of a IC.

Given the amount of stowage, camouflage and random gubbins typically to be seen draped over British Shermans in action, I wouldn't be surprised if a few mistakes were made identifying the mark.

All the best,

John.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

[snips]

If you look up the performance data of the US M3 gun and the British Mk.V, try http://salts.britwar.co.uk, you'll see that they are similar to the point of being identical in terms of performance.

Were one to consult that document (which I really will get round to issuing the reformatted version of one day soon) the attentive reader would find that there are in fact two sources that credit the 75mm Mk 5 with an unusually good performance (most sources simply say it's the same as the M3).

WO 219/2806 (Appendix G to SHAEF/16652/GCT/Arty) gives both the Mk 5 and the M3 slightly better performance than the US 76mm, which suggests that the figures are hogwash, although if they were officially believed it would explain why the US Army didn't rush 76mm Shermans to the front sooner than they did.

The other source, though, is Bovington Tank Museum's "Fire and Movement" booklet, which lists penetration figures for the Mk 5 and M3 separately. For APC, the performance of both guns is within 3mm, which is as good as being identical. However the figures given for the Mk 5 firing APCBC are much better, and of the same order as those given in WO 219/2806.

Given the generally shocking level of scholarship in quoting penetration figures, I would normally write these off as a pair of mistakes -- quoting penetration at normal but saying it is for 30 degrees is a common error. However, the Bovington booklet gives the muzzle velocity of the Mk 5 firing APCBC as 2,650 ft/sec instead of the normal 2,030, which would certainly account for a considerable improvement.

I have never found independent confirmation of this muzzle velocity figure anywhere else, but I still wonder why Bovington should have made quite such a large error on such a well-known gun. Was there perhaps a souped-up round designed? I know that "Looney" Hinde demanded an APDS round for the 75mm in his after-action report for Villers-Bocage, and it can't have been a hard job to just tip a bit more propellant and a pinch of bicarb into the cartridge.

All the best,

John.

[flamingknives]

Beale, in his book, "Death by Design", quotes 2300 ft/sec for the 75mm 'medium velocity' gun. He also mentions an experimental 75mm high velocity gun, which was superseded by the 17pdr and 77mm guns. I've also seen referral to an 8pdr in the same sentance as the 75mm Mk 5, while Beale (again) quotes 15lb shell weight for the 75mm.

I would quote the CM figures, but that means re-starting my system (dual OS Mac), and I can't be bothered at the moment.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

Beale, in his book, "Death by Design", quotes 2300 ft/sec for the 75mm 'medium velocity' gun.

He does in table 4.1 on page 100. But on page 108 he says (of the 77mm and 75mm) "The corresponding muzzle velocities were 2,000 and 2,750 fps". I can't recall seeing the M3 firing the M61 rouind credited with 2,300 ft/sec anywhere else, and assume it's a typo for 2,030 (quited in e.g. Hunnicutt).

Originally posted by flamingknives:

He also mentions an experimental 75mm high velocity gun, which was superseded by the 17pdr and 77mm guns. I've also seen referral to an 8pdr in the same sentance as the 75mm Mk 5, while Beale (again) quotes 15lb shell weight for the 75mm.

He says the calibre of the 8-pdr was 75mm. The "long" 8-pdr was apparently too dam' long, and the "short" 8-pdr no real improvement on the 6-pdr in armour-piercing performance. So, another triumph for the British defence procurement process.

All the best,

John.

[roqf77]

sorry to have caused such an argument but i ahve to say im in over my head i was just repeating what i was told by a tank crew. is all interesting though. it interesting to note by dec 44 i think anyway over half of the 75mm guns on the shermans were replaced by 76mm what was the he shell on this like?

[roqf77]

what about the 8 pounders he?

[flamingknives]

8pr HE was presumably not much better than the 6pr.

Do you mean the US 3" gun or the British 17pr.? Both had a calibre of 76.2mm.

[roqf77]

us 76.2mm still a good at gun if not brilliant.

[roqf77]

apparntly after normandy most commanders started to request more us 76.2 mm so they made more. british 17 pdr numbers were more like 5,000 total about 2,100 5's were made and there was a similar numbers of 2,s made plus some from other marks but that was by jan 45- dec 44 not sure how many were done between june 44 and later.

[flamingknives]

Hmm. Worth noting that the US 76mm gun was seldom used by the commonwealth forces, due to the logistics problems this created. British units in NWE didn't use it - I think it was just the Poles who made use of it.

AIUI, the 76mm had a less powerful HE round, as the walls of the shell had to be thicker to withstand the higher firing stresses. The 17pr. had a larger shell and correspondingly more powerful HE round, IIRC.