155mm arty was used in direct fire mode to blow Panthers up?

[Destraex1]

Just reading a book called "death traps" about American Armour maintenance crew trying to keep the poor shermans in combat.

One section has an answer to the germans being the 155mm motorised arty batterys being used like anti-tank cannons.

Another answer being the giant shells hitting the thin top armour of the panther decks.

Apparently a 155mm blew a panther turret clean out of the tank.

Does CMBN have the 155mm in this context?

[ChrisND]

Artillery is pretty effective against tanks, if it can get a direct hit. You can always make a rough test scenario in the editor to see what happens.

[Rokossovski]

Unfortunately CMBN doesn't model U.S. artillery in the game in the direct fire mode, unless you count the Priest. (Which perhaps you should, although admittedly not firing 155mm rounds).

I seem to recall that CMBB modelled german 105mm towed artillery pieces, since in '41 and '42 that was occasionally the only answer to T-34s wandering around in the rear. I'd like to see towed artillery in the game to model situations where battery positions come under direct attack. In a pinch, I suppose one could use the German 150mm infantry guns as a stand-in.

Perhaps a future module will give us a couple of true towed artillery pieces to play around with. One can hope.

[Fetchez la Vache]

But are HE blast effects modeled in-game?

[Magpie_Oz]

Would be fairly difficult to hit a Panther with a Long Tom, given they were really designed to fire indirect however they did have a muzzle velocity greater than the 88 and they did fire an AP shell so if you did hit the energy would be enormous, HE or AP anything would be devastated.

[JasonC]

First, the source is rather notorious and not exactly reliable.

Second, there is little evidence that SP 155s were used for AT work -and there weren't many to begin with. SP 105s - Priests - were much more common, and 105mm HEAT was effective against a Panther turret front, but not exactly an engagement you'd want to court. 105mm Shermans, on the other hand, were called the most effective general weapon available by armor battalion officers in the Normandy period, because they felt they could do anything. 105mm HEAT isn't great at range, due to low muzzle velocity, but at hedgerow initial LOS ranges would be fine for AT work.

Third, large caliber artillery firing HE was definitely effective against tanks, but direct hits were quite rare. The usual effect was instead to strip them of any accompanying infantry and thus deprieve them of combined arms and scouting, to button them and thus reduce their intel and visibility, and to "encourage" the crews to try elsewhere. A fair number of track damage "M-kills" could also be expected from heavy 155 barrages. But it took a lot of rounds to have this effect. In cases like the Elsenborn ridge position in the Bulge, thousands of rounds of heavy caliber artillery helped stop tank attacks, but probably only physically disabled on the order of a dozen or at most two dozen fully armored AFVs.

SP 155s *were* used for bunker killing at the westwall, in a direct fire manner. But typically against positions that could not fire back with dangerous AP.

FWIW...

[Destraex1]

the death traps author is not a reliable source?

[silverstars]

the death traps author is not a reliable source?

To be fair, any book on WWII read by more then four people is an unreliable source.

[Magpie_Oz]

Ironically it was the ease of maintenance that was one of the few good things said about the Sherman. Not sure if death trap is a fair description.

[Sergei]

It was already discussed here, no need to repeat it all.

[Salkin]

Wouldn't a near miss from a 155 REALLY rattle and maybe injure the crew (loss of hearing maybe...) of a german tank?

//Salkin

[JonS]

the death traps author is not a reliable source?

That depends. Some bits of it are reliable. But all too often Cooper strayed out side his lane - outside his personal experiences and area of personal expertise, and started free-forming on anything from grand strategy to TOE to actions he'd only heard about 2nd or 3rd hand.

Even the title is a furphy. US tankers were vastly more likely to survive the campaign in NWE that footsoldiers. Heck, they were probably more likely to survive it than German tankers, despite the later hiding out in Tigers and Panthers and StuGs and whatnot. Was the Sherman a deathtrap compared to a Abrams? Well, sure. But were they deathtraps compared to other frontline occupations in the US Army in WWII? Absolutely not.

[Magpie_Oz]

Certainly a close explosion form a 155 round would almost certainly panic the crew, don't think it would deafen them tho' 50mm to 100mm of armour is a pretty good sound barrier.

A big problem would be the cratering of the ground.

As for an M12 shooting a Panther, can't imagine it myself for lots of reasons. Would the crew drive with the gun loaded? Could they fire the cannon from its travel rest , if they are driving along they are unliky to have someone in a position to pull the lanyard where the Panthers gunner sits at the trigger, even given all that is the 155 sighted for direct fire and how experienced would the crew be at tank v sp gun action?

If the 155 was an emplaced arty piece again I cannot imagine the Panther "stumbling" upon it, rather it would just shell or fire MG's it from range as the crew has no cover.

[gunnergoz]

Any tank is a death trap in the right/wrong circumstances, though some designs narrow the circumstances a bit. The Sherman got a bad rep in part because there were just so many of them in harms way and they were usually on the offensive, so they took a lot of fire and consequently a lot of losses. But the M4 had a lot of good points too, mostly to do with reliability and mobility, so if it was properly handled and the crew was a bit lucky too, they could and did hold their own. Where it shined was in the way US forces tended to use them as part of a combined arms team and as the Americans got better at it, the tank losses went down somewhat.

As for the 155 SP you speak of, it was called the M12. About 74 are said to have been sent to the ETO along with their ammo carrier variant. That's about 5 SP battalions worth including spares. They were intended for indirect conventional artillery support of mobile forces but on occasion they were used as bunker busters...carefully, since the crew was very exposed in that there was almost no frontal armor above the hull.

[Destraex1]

Are we saying that the Sherman was a better tank than the german tanks they were facing and therefore the American tankers had no need for the 155 stunt?

[gunnergoz]

Are we saying that the Sherman was a better tank than the german tanks they were facing and therefore the American tankers had no need for the 155 stunt?

No, we are saying that Shermans were our main tanks and they were present in numbers enough and were used with skill enough that they defeated the German tanks over time, in concert with combined arms and air power. The 155 stunt, if it happened, was as much a fluke as the M8 that took out a Tiger in the Ardennes with its 37mm peashooter. Individually, the Panther and Tiger were superior to the Sherman and it took numbers and better tactics to defeat them but no one was silly enough to deliberately go to face them with an unarmored SP artillery piece that wasn't designed for it.

[Sergei]

In Soviet Russia, tanks trapped death!

[MengJiao]

Unfortunately CMBN doesn't model U.S. artillery in the game in the direct fire mode, unless you count the Priest. (Which perhaps you should, although admittedly not firing 155mm rounds).

I seem to recall that CMBB modelled german 105mm towed artillery pieces, since in '41 and '42 that was occasionally the only answer to T-34s wandering around in the rear. I'd like to see towed artillery in the game to model situations where battery positions come under direct attack. In a pinch, I suppose one could use the German 150mm infantry guns as a stand-in.

Perhaps a future module will give us a couple of true towed artillery pieces to play around with. One can hope.

The British 88mm gun-howitzer (the 25 pdr) had an AT round that was effective in 1941 at least.

[gunnergoz]

The 25 pdr was in part intended for direct fire IIRC, with its turntable mount enabling quick changes of direction. It wasn't an AT gun but with its solid shot AT round it could defend itself if it had to. For that matter, US 105mm howitzers had a HEAT round for self defense in a pinch.

[Destraex1]

I was more referring to the fact that the Americans had to adapt to the fact that the Sherman was likely to get shot out from under you in a gun fight. Some people seem to be denying this by saying that the Sherman tank was not likely to have that happen and there fore death trap was not an apt name for that particular book.

Seems to me to be simple fact that against the germans the early shermans were death traps. Tommy Cookers, ronson lighters.

As for the 155mm stunt, I understand that that is a not equipped for aT combat. But covering hedgrow gaps against tanks it could have handled if zeroed and it got the first shot off. It would have been a one shot solution to stopping an attack. A last ditch effort like suggested in the book death traps.

[gunnergoz]

No one is denying the vulnerability of the Sherman, that I can see. All that is being said that it was a tool put to the task and it served its role. They made 50,000 of them and a lot of those got used up, no question. But to simply call it a death trap is too simplistic because it implies the tank had no utility other than to kill its crews. It was in no way inferior to the Pz IV and that was its opponent as often as not, yet no one calls the Pz IV a "death trap." When surprised by a Panther, Tiger or other large bore AT weapon, the Sherman had better duck and cover or outmaneuver the enemy and hit them where the Sherman's gun could do some good. It was not the best tank on the battlefield but it had its strengths and the men who had to crew them, made the most of those strengths and a lot of them paid the ultimate sacrifice for its shortcomings. Sure, a boatload of M26's in June '44 would have been nice but the Army made the decision to save the shipping space for larger quantities of Shermans. Right or wrong, tankers had to live and die based upon such decisions and enough of them did survive to defeat the German tanks in the end, inferior Sherman or not.

Re: the 155 as a hedgerow sniper, consider that the weapon was usually found in the rear, where most heavy artillery was sited. It had no business being up on the front line in the bocage and was never to be found there from any incidents I've heard of. There were plenty of M4's and TD's up front to do what you describe. It served a far more useful service laying down suppressive, offensive and final protective fires for the doggies on the front line, not to mention doing counter-battery work as required. That's where the gun shone and that's where they kept it until, under specific conditions, it became useful as a direct fire bunker buster...but never against the front aspect of a bunker that still had it's "teeth" because that would have been truly suicidal since the M12 had almost no defensive armor.

[Blackcat]

On the Ronson tag for the Sherman, I seem to recall someone posting on here the official after battle damage survey figures. I think I am correct when I remember that the percenatage of Shermans found to have burned was not much different to MLIVs and other tanks.

[Destraex1]

death trap is a nick name not a literal appraisal.

Its an apt one if the figures are true... what was it 800% of original force losses in normandy, not including repaired ones.

[Blackcat]

"800% of original force losses in normandy"

Seems awfully high. DO you have a source for that?

[gunnergoz]

Interestingly, the Israelis, admittedly no one's fools in the military smarts department, bought up every one of those "death traps" they could get their hands on and over the years used them brilliantly against their opponents. Even an obsolete Sherman, armed with a more capable gun (ironically, a French copy of the Panther's long 75mm), was more than a match for 1950's era Soviet built tanks in the hands of the Arab armies. So was it vulnerable? Yes. Not the best out there? Yes. A good war fighting tool in the right hands? Most definitely.

If one wants to talk about "death traps" lets focus on the M5 light. Now there was a tank past its prime. I still can't figure out for the life of me why it was still in service in 1944, with its puny 37mm and meager armor. The Army upper echelons had all these doctrines and theories about how to use lights and mediums and TD's but in the end, the GI's had to use what they had on hand to win a victory and sometimes their worst enemy was their own Army brass. I'd take my chances in a Sherman, but an M5 light...no thanks.