Mike Dorosh's Sherman question

[Michael Dorosh]

Gyrostabilizers weren't often used in action, though...and the incidence of tank vs. tank encounters in Korea was low. Among the Commonwealth nations, I don't think there was a single tank-to-tank action, Sherman or otherwise.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Just a quick question, are you a moron?

Well, I certainly wasn't aware that building cars confers expertise in casting or rolling big lumps of armour plate. I don't know if you think that qualifies me as a "moron", because I have some difficulty following your reasoning. Perhaps if you could manage to come up with something better than flat assertions of patent tommyrot, I might have less of a problem.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

All joking aside,

Where I come from, "joking" is normally discernible by being funny.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

it was the methodology of the assembly line which was borrowed from the Auto Industry which helped the west to mass produce vehicles of all kinds, including Sherman tanks. This isn't a new revelation, it's been known for 60+ years.

You have it backwards. Mass production was used in the armaments industry before the auto industry even existed.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Any time you compromise, you run the risk of creating something that is sub-par.

Any time you do engineering, you compromise. Can you find a better compromise in the 30-ton class than the Sherman? I doubt it.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

If I had to choose a single *great* tank of the 20th century it would have to be the Centurian. If you have to ask why, read a book. :mad:

Thank you, but I have read sufficient books about Centurion even to be aware of how it's spelt.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Bolting on a bunch of stuff to make the Sherman more useful is more of a kudo for the engineers, not the original design.

"A kudo"? And you ask me if I'm a moron?

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

The DD tank's 'most successful amphibian' status is a bit suspect.

OK, so name a more successful one. If you can't, what conclusion do you think you can draw?

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

if you can name 5 combat tested swimming tanks I will buy you a beer.

T-37, T-38, T-40, PT-76, Type 2 Ka-Mi, LVT(A)1, 2 and 4.

You owe me a beer.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

If Sea Lion had gone ahead it is possible the Tauchpanzer III would have been the 'most successful amphibious tank' ever built.

And if counter-factuals are true, I'm the Pope.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

I do concede the point that the chassis was also used for a huge variety of tasks.

A greater variety than the T-34. So that would make it "more flexible", using the language we anglophones are habituated to.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

IMO, not to the same level of performance as the SU85/SU100 TD's& SU122 AG. Again I think this speaks to the manufacturing power of the west, not the soundness of the design.

I can't see that an SU-122 is any better than an M4(105) for the CS job, nor an SU-85 than an M4(76) or an SU-100 than an M-36B for tank killing. If you have any evidence of the superior performance of the Soviet vehicles, go right ahead and post it.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

M46 Scored 20% better. So are you saying it isnt' a better design?

It's obviously a better tank-killer. Wouldn't you expect it to be, at 50% more combat weight (and a corresponding increase in shipping space)? It also had less mobiquity than the Sherman, which matters in difficult country like Korea.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Armour Up? SU-100 tank hunter - 110mm Frontal Armour for example.

I'd like to know your source for this. My copy of Zaloga & Grandsen says 45mm for the 1944 model SU-100.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

How many engineers & military leaders looked at the Sherman tank and said "Golly! That is a great design! We should make our own version!"

The Argentinian Narhuel and the Australian Sentinel both pretty clearly take their inspiration from the Sherman, so I think it's doing better in this respect than Panther or Tiger. Or T-34, for that matter.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

The thought of Heinz Guderian demanding that Germany look into building a tank based on the Sherman design is a total farce.

But Guderian fought to keep up production of Panzer IVs, pretty well comparable to the Sherman, rather than abandon it and go for a bunch of SPs and super-tanks instead.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Beta tape was better than VHS, but VHS won out. The Sherman is the VHS tape of the American WWII war machine.

I'm not convinced that the evolutionary pressures of the home entertainment market are very similar to those of the battlefield.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

It was at best on par with the Pz IV as far as greatness goes.

Since the Pz IV was the only design from any nation to serve as a front-line gun tank from the first day of the war to the last, I'd say that was quite a recommendation.

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

That's just one man's opion though, I'm sure it won't keep you from sleeping at night.

Yup, that's all it is, just opinion. You'd be much more likely to convince me if you could rise to the level of a coherent argument, based on facts.

All the best,

John.

[Other Means]

Betamax had better colour, sound, resolution etc than the VHS.

The betamax had all the quotable stats that geeks loved.

The VHS could record for 3 hours, which meant you could record a whole film - which is what was really important.

And so the VHS won.

So maybe the 2 things aren't so different.

[Corvidae]

J Ruddy, Put down the crack pipe please,

The industrial assembly line was first applied to the textile industry of england, addapted to the arms industry of england, and then the furniture industry of america.

The american auto industry addopted the already existing idea of the assembly line.

The LOCOMOTIVE industry, NOT the auto industry, was the main producer of tanks in america.

And its canADIans not canukians you f**king dolt.

The M4 sherman is STILL a respected design, and remains the foundation of most modern tank manufacture.

It was never a super tank, but it was and is today, a very good tank.

Like all good tanks, the M4 is a compromise, Unlike most tanks, the M4 chassis is extremely flexible and addaptable.

the M4 was designed to be easily upgradable.

The M4 was one of the 3 tanks that determined allmost all subsequent tank design, The others were the T34 and the PzIV,

while you are paying salty's bar tab (its comparable with the defense budget for 6 third world countrys by now I expect) You might want to try cracking open a BOOK, and doing some f**king research

[Guest Mike]

Why don't Canadians come from Canadia?

[z-warfare]

All the godless socialized-healthcare-worshipping denizens of the Soviet Socialist Dominion of Canuckistan (SSDC) are Canuckians.

[JonS]

I thought they were canuckistanians?

[Cuirassier]

Canada RULES!!!

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

Why don't Canadians come from Canadia?

Because they come from Arcadia.

All the best

Andreas

[J Ruddy]

lol - you guys need to calm down a little.

I guess you don't recognize a troll when you see one...

Well, this isn't fun anymore so I'll leave on this note.

Shermans suck. Anyone who disagrees is a total baboon.

:mad:

have a nice day, Bills fans.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

lol - you guys need to calm down a little.

I guess you don't recognize a troll when you see one...

Never mind that. Where's my beer? And not that Molson slops, either.

All the best,

John.

[Corvidae]

Ah, so J Ruddy is a troll.

I was wondering how anyone could post such profound ignorance without mentioning jesus or including selected bible quotes.

That explains it.

I am a Chimpanzee Ruddy, And the only thing that sucks here is you, In torn fishnets and a mini skirt, for 5 dollars a pop.

[MikeyD]

Back to the subject at hand.

Let me relate another snippet from my "Tank Killers" subway reading this morning;

"By 29 September... ...the Allies by now held a 20:1 advantage in tanks along the Western Front." To quote an old Sovet dictum 'Quantity has a quality all its own'.

About the T34 discussion above, its interesting that before introduction of the 85mm gun turret the T34 bow often got decent factory applique armor upgrades. The Russians knew just how much extra armor was needed to counter the PzIV 75mm gun. They even produced a rare T34-43 'Jumbo' package with an applique bow that could stop an 88 shell! All that went out the window when the heavy new 85mm gun turret arrived. The new T34-85 could no longer cope with the added weight of the extra armor.

[Guest Mike]

MikeyD can yuo provide more info on this "factory applique armour" for T34's?

i'm aware of the T43 which had up to 75mm hull armour - but even that didn't resist the 88mm and the tank was far too heavy and lacked mobility - it's turret was the basis for the 85mm turret tho.

Photo from Wiki article on T43 - T34 on left, T43 on right.

[MikeyD]

On the uparmored T34 - I got that info from an old issue of 'AFV News'. I'll have to rummage through my not-very-organized references to retrieve it. I recall the T34-43 uparmored to withstand an 88 got a single-piece bow applique with cutouts for the mg ball mount, tow hooks, and driver's hatch. I've seen a couple photos but they're hard to spot if you're not looking for them. I'll get back to you on thicknesses and stuff. Opinion was these were factory mods, not field retrofits.

[J Ruddy]

T-34's suck, the best tank was... er never mind, did that, got the t-shirt.

Seriously (and I mean it this time) does anyone know, is it really 100% true that Commonwealth Allies put the D-Day stars on their vehicles crooked so they wouldn't be confused with Yanks. I know I've heard this a hundred times from all kinds of sources, including first hand accounts, but I don't know if it is a myth or something that a few people did or not at all.

I have a book with a ton of Normandy armour pic's (forget the title right at the moment) and I have looked for an not found any crooked stars. I guess it's a little off topic but I'm painting up a June '44 M4 and have to decide whether to put the star on straight or not before quickly/sloppily painting over it so that German AT teams aren't tempted to use it as a target.

Jim

[Guest Mike]

Sounds like a modern myth to me - aircraft had a hard time determining anything about a tank at all given speed, height, etc - whether a star is on straight or crooked would not be noticeable.

Besides all the horror stories of getting bombed by americans come AFTER D-day don't they? and involve medium-high level bombers who won't see the tank in the first place!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

MikeyD,

i think you are thinkin about the T-43 project. it had 70mm glacis, 90-110mm turret. it was not 88mm proof though, which was partly why Soviets went for T-34/85 instead.

there were lots of T-34s with added armor, especially T-34 mod 41/42. for example "T-34 in action" by Zaloga has couple of pictures of T-34s with added armor. EDIT: yeah, the additional armor was added in factories.

[MikeyD]

That "Tank Killers' book I'm (slowly SLOWLY) reading on the subway has a surprising number of friendly fire incidents described in the book, usually at the most inconvenient moments. It looks like the CM aircraft model isn't all that far off! Pilots claimed they kept mistaking plain stars for German cross markings. That's why the big stars-in-circles suddenly appeared after N.A. Actually, photos show a lot of early Italy U.S. stars-and-circles purposefully rotated (see my HT mods). Lots of crooked stars in Italy on pretty much everything!

It looks to me in ETO the Brits weren't all that much concerned whether the star/circles on the rear deck and turret roof appeared properly alligned or not. They didn't view the star as representing thier national identity. A crooked star would do just as well as a straight one. I hadn't read anyhing of Brits rotating their recognition stars for spite (I ain't no bleedin' Yank!) but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

[birdstrike]

Pilots claimed they kept mistaking plain stars for German cross markings.

Was this also the reason they used yellow stars in NA?

And if they wanted a clear distinction, I wonder why they abandoned the prewar red/white/blue patterned star.

Maybe fear of being taken for the British?

[MikeyD]

About the side-topic of T34 add-on armor, I've started a new thread on the subject on the CMBB board (no T34s in CMAK) with numbers and illustrations and all sorts of cool stuff to argue over!

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

Seriously (and I mean it this time) does anyone know, is it really 100% true that Commonwealth Allies put the D-Day stars on their vehicles crooked so they wouldn't be confused with Yanks.

Yes, the Canadians did really do this for spite.

[Corvidae]

American units tended (as they still do) to shoot anything not smothered in stars.

So painting stars on their vehicles was a sound allied survival tactic.

I mean its pretty hard for the average american to tell the difference between a boxy tiger and a lozenge shaped sherman without stars, most americans still cant tell a triangle from a circle.

[JasonC]

I see this line from Rich Anderson online at his US army in WW II website. It appears to have gained wide currency.

"the lightly armored tank destroyers *proved regularly* that they were *unable to engage and destroy enemy armor when it attacked* in mass, even when the tank destroyers were deployed in concealed defensive positions."

Now here is my problem. Nobody has remotely established this proposition, and in fact it is false.

There is exactly one passage of arms of which it is accurate - Kasserine, where the TDs in question were short 75s in halftracks and the entire army completely green. There isn't a single armor attack by the Germans after that, of which it is even remotely a fair statement.

The only other German massed armor attack against US forces in WW II that was remotely successful was the Bulge, for about 2 weeks. In which there was no failure of (SP) TDs, which did their job well throughout and outscored their heavier German opponents. (*Towed* TDs, especially the inadequate 57mm, certainly got a poor rep there - not the subject).

Studying every other German armor attack in the west I have been able to find decent reporting on, I cannot find a single additional time that fits the statement. Leading me to believe this is a slur that got traction in the blame-game aftermath of Kasserine, and was simply never investigated by those repeating it. It was basically pure second hand smear in other words.

If anyone knows otherwise and can cite actual occasions, I am all ears.

[Corvidae]

Jason,

I must agree with you on tht point,

A generic smear probably derived from early problems with inexperienced troops.