Extreme Tankery!

[Darkrenown]

http://tanksandafv.blogspot.com/201...l#!/2015/01/interview-with-steven-zaloga.html

A fine interview for mythbusting.

The whole Ronson thing is nonsense

One of the more popular books regarding the Sherman tank is "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper. This memoir by a World War II 3rd Armor Division Ordnance officer seems to have generated a fair amount of controversy amongst tank enthusiasts. What are your thoughts on it?

I don't want to call it a terrible book but it's a terrible source if it's the only thing people read.

A lot of what's out there on Tiger tanks is very one sided. There are some very good Russian websites that are pointing out all the errors in those Tiger histories, you know German accounts will say "Oh Tiger regiment such and such went this Russian tank unit and destroyed 57 vehicles." And then the Russians go and look at the unit histories from the Russian side and find that the incident either didn't occur at all or the German tank claims were grossly exaggerated.

We are starting to see some stuff come out like Bob Forcyzk's recent book on tank warfare on the Eastern Front which just came out through Pen and Sword. His first one covers 1941-42. That's starting to redress the balance. Bob's a retired US army armor officer and he's got a PhD in history so he is providing a more balanced picture on the fighting on the Eastern Front and Bob reads Russian and he reads German so we are starting to get a more balanced look.

I see he also likes Forcyzk.

 

[Darkrenown]

The Irzyk article posted by Chromos is also a good read - it basically says what I always say: The Sherman was an excellent tank despite what a superficial comparison of guns/armour might suggest to an uninformed observer and the Panther was an over-specialized TD that broke down too much. In the interest of not going on for 10 pages I'm just going to say I'm not going to comment on this further here, people can read the article or not.

 

[Darkrenown]

Would be quite interesting to hear what those "largely tactical reasons" were, and exactly how disproportionate these losses were in tank vs tank combat, as well as what tanks were involved on the German side of this fighting.

I don't know the numbers, but I suspect it was a mixture of the Brits having worse tank/infantry cooperation plus they were fighting on a narrow front for longer, and I think faced heavier German units - certainly they met a couple of Tiger units, although tank losses seemed to have been pretty even in those engagements.