T-34 reputation vs Sherman reputation

[Imgran]

I'm talking about the S-35 mostly which equipped the DLMs of 7th Army that actually faced a couple of German Panzer Divisions in Belgium. This was again the reserve that was supposed to shore up any holes in the line like Sedan but went to vainly try and link up with the Dutch instead.

The H35 was supposed to be an infantry tank to begin with, given to the cavalry only because the infantry didn't want it, while the R35s were also in the support role in independent tank battalions (none of which went to 7th Army). It was the AMR 35 which was the other tank that went to the DLMs in large numbers, which didn't really have range issues but were really just tankettes ala the Panzer I. The French had some stinker designs certainly, but the thought processes behind them weren't bad and in large part it's French industry that is to blame for the crappy tanks themselves.

To elaborate regarding design philosophy, the French believed (and were later vindicated) that the next war would favor a defender that had good, centralized artillery control, epitomized by the term "managed battle". Hence, their national army and economy was directed towards a defensive battle against the numerically superior German Army; which contrary to popular belief in fact made provisions for a complete defensive line extending well north of the Maginot that would take advantage of several defensive river lines within Belgium. See the Dyle Plan - named after the river the defensive position rested on - for more details.

The problem again is that any good defense is reliant on a mobile reserve that can shore up any holes or weakpoints in the line. Otherwise, the enemy will just pour through any hole in the line they manage to create. The French accounted for this by creating 7th Army, which was an all-motorized army that had a pair of cavalry/DLM Divisions. It was stationed centrally at Reims precisely so it can reinforce any spot where the Germans are breaking through - and notably Sedan was just a few dozen kilometers away from Reims.

Unfortunately, the French High Command made a terrible mistake and sent 7th Army to Holland instead, extending the Dyle line while trying to link up with the Dutch. That left the frontline French forces bereft of almost all reserves, which was why they ended up sending Char B tanks unsupported into battle in the first place - for want of reinforcements they were just throwing everything they had at the enemy.

It was this complete lack of reserves that was at issue, not the penny-packeting of the tanks nor the lack of range of the infantry tanks. French infantry tanks (especially the Char Bs) were not meant to do massed counter-attacks in the first place; instead they were supposed to support set-piece attacks against fortified positions. This is why the Cuirassier Divisions had no real infantry attached to them at all and ended up doing badly despite the gross disparity in armor and firepower between the Char Bs and the German Panzers.

Thanks for that. That's actually very informative. However, I will point out that the Somua S-35 was hideously outnumbered during the invasion of France as well. Compared to the roughly 450 Somuas, if the production numbers I've read were to be believed Germany had a little under 1200 PzII's, somewhere just short of 200 PzIII's and somewhere between 400 and 500 PzIV's to throw at France, less whatever they were using to occupy Poland, Czechoslovakia and Norway at that point.

That means that the performance of France's second line tanks is very much key since their formations would be the ones Germany's army would preferentially target, and they were crap. Most of them were 1917 Renaults and slightly upgraded versions, or the H35 and R35 that were slightly upengined versions of more or less the same thing.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

...
Sure, there were complaints about its combat performance in June 1944 particularly among the US Army, but what's significant is that the US Army hadn't even encountered a single Tiger or Panther in Normandy at this point. Most of the complaints instead stemmed from the fact that most Sherman tankers landed in June were highly inexperienced and a bit panicky; constantly reporting Tigers and Panthers when the Germans only had a handful of Stugs and captured French Somouas. By the end of the month most of these panicky officers had learned their lessons or were replaced, and the first encounter between the Panther and Sherman was an unmitigated disaster for the Panthers who suffered 25% losses. Wrecks recovered from the defeat allowed the US Army to test the Panther around July 9 near Isigny, which confirmed that more than 75% of the Panther's surface area could be penetrated by the Sherman's gun.

Indeed, I recently got my hands on a report which detailed every single US Army Sherman vs Panther engagements in ETO, and the results are pretty shocking. In total, 30 engagements were fought, involving approximately 200 Shermans in total against 150 Panthers; averaging 6 Shermans and 5 Panthers per engagement. In total, a mere 20 Shermans were destroyed in these 30 engagements, compared to the loss of 72 (!) Panthers. So the old wive's tale that it took five Shermans to kill a Panther is now definitively and thoroughly debunked and in fact reality was a total 180: It in fact took three to four Panthers to kill a single Sherman. The only vehicle the Panther could manage 5:1 kill rates on were M8 greyhounds or M5 Stuarts.

That however is not comparing *a* Panther against *a* M4 Sherman on a 1:1 basis - which would be the issue to compare when the question is what the better tank was.

It´s comparing Shermans which usually had a 1,5:1 or better numerical advantage to german tanks which lacked most of the stuff needed. Fuel was already becoming scarce and armor-piercing ammunition that used Wolfram almost nonexistant.

In short, the Sherman wasn't merely decent. It was unquestionably good. It was in fact so good that, contrary to many accounts, the Soviets actually absolutely adored their Shermans and assigned them exclusively to Guards Tank Divisions. Their evaluation (c/o Walter's Dunn's "The Soviet Economy and the Red Army") declared that the Sherman was fully capable of engaging the Panther on even terms; something that was derided when Dunn published his translations of Soviet records in the 90s, but now seems to be nothing short of the truth given we now have a compilation of the actual results of every single Sherman vs Panther battle fought by the US Army in ETO.

In short the M4 Sherman could not compare to a Panther. US economy, numbers, readily available fuel and armorpiercing ammunition, complete air superiority and artillery support availiable that had not just a few rounds made it able to compete.

Still, it also bears remembering that the T-34 was not considered an ideal design even by the Soviets (who preferred the Sherman over their T-34s!)

Really? Where did you read that? I always thought that actual US tanks were negligible within soviert forces and that most of the lendlease was economical like trucks and more trucks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Significance

Or to cite from "When Titans clash": "Other lend-lease equipment, particularly combat vehicles and aircraft, proved less successfull, increasing Soviet suspicions that they were being given junk....
The Sherman, however disappointed the Soviets because its narrow tracks made it much less mobile on mud than its German and Soviet counterparts, and it consumed greater quantities of fuel. In fact, the US Army Ordnance planners had standardized this width to ensure that Shermans would fit onto ocean transports and across existing U.S. brigding equipment, two considerations that meant nothing to the Soviets..."

, who saw it as a stopgap tank for a better design. They got stuck with it however because Barbarossa kept them from producing the newer, better designs they wanted...

The T34 or KV tanks were at the time an unexpected nasty surprise for the german army. Any tank that suddenly appears and whose frontarmour can´t be penetrated by the standard PAK to the point that it´s nicknamed "Panzeranklopfgerät/Device to knock on tanks" is
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/3,7-cm-PaK_36

 

[gagenater]

SNIP

Really? Where did you read that? I always thought that actual US tanks were negligible within soviert forces and that most of the lendlease was economical like trucks and more trucks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Significance



The T34 or KV tanks were at the time an unexpected nasty surprise for the german army. Any tank that suddenly appears and whose frontarmour can´t be penetrated by the standard PAK to the point that it´s nicknamed "Panzeranklopfgerät/Device to knock on tanks" is
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/3,7-cm-PaK_36

http://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/


Very long interview with lots of interesting information about Russian use of Shermans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease_Sherman_tanks#USSR

USSR[edit]
The Soviet Union's nickname for the M4 medium tank was Emcha because the open-topped figure 4 resembled the Cyrillic letter che or cha (Ч).[citation needed] The M4A2s used by the Red Army were considered to be much less prone to blow up due to ammunition detonation than T-34 (T-34-76), but tended to overturn in road collisions because of much higher center of gravity.[11]

A total of 4,102 M4A2 medium tanks were sent to the U.S.S.R. under Lend-Lease. Of these, 2,007 were equipped with the 75 mm gun, and 2,095 carried the 76 mm gun. The total number of Sherman tanks sent to the U.S.S.R. under Lend-Lease represented 18.6% of all Lend-Lease Shermans.[12]

The first 76-mm-armed Shermans started to arrive in Soviet Union in late summer of 1944.[13] In 1945, some units were standardized to depend mostly on them, and not on the ubiquitous T-34: 1st Guards Mechanized Corps, 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps, and 9th Guards Mechanized Corps.[13]

It's quite telling that ALL the organizations that the Russians chose to standardize the Sherman on were Guards divisions - considered higher quality organizations than ordinary ones. The Sherman III variation was developed specifically to send to the USSR. It was fitted with diesel engines to match it to the other common tank types in use by the Russians, instead of petrol engines which is what the US and other allies used.

 

[Imgran]

That however is not comparing *a* Panther against *a* M4 Sherman on a 1:1 basis - which would be the issue to compare when the question is what the better tank was.

It´s comparing Shermans which usually had a 1,5:1 or better numerical advantage to german tanks which lacked most of the stuff needed. Fuel was already becoming scarce and armor-piercing ammunition that used Wolfram almost nonexistant.

Excuses excuses.

You're trying to say that the Panther couldn't fight the Sherman because it didn't have enough Tungsten ammunition (in other words, APCR) -- since when did the Panther need bloody APCR to put a hole in a Sherman?????

As for fuel, the Panthers got the priority on that over anything but aircraft. They were intended to be the primary tank of the German army at the time. The real issue with the Panthers is that the design was absolutely horrible in every way but gun and frontal armor. Its transmission had a tendency to either fall apart or spontaneously combust. Germany lost a lot of its Panthers to tranny fires. Its side armor was garbage, so was its rear armor. its optics were very bad limiting the effectiveness of its long range gun in the hands of anything but a highly experienced crew. It was built to make power turns to allow its limited traverse a bit more play but whenever an inexperienced driver actually tried to do this -- TRANNY FIRE!

All a Sherman needed to do to deal with Panthers is keep moving until they could exploit the bad side armor, or failing that, just keep moving until the Panther had to move to deal with them, and just wait for the Panther to break down, which it would do like clockwork. They were horrible tanks. Maybe if Germany had had the time to perfect them it might be different, but they were just too bad, and the rush job in development showed hardcore.

 

[Dina1954]

I am quite certain those are claims and not actual kills, because the 500 figure exceeds the number of Allied tanks that were actually lost to all kinds of enemy armor. It's typical German propaganda to be honest - the sole Tiger battalion in Tunisia claimed 150 kills despite missing every single major battle.

Allied tank losses in tank vs tank combat was very low in Normandy - practically non-existent in fact for the US Army who only encountered one Panzer Division and no Tigers at all. Only around 1,500 Allied tanks were lost in total, of which only 10% were lost to tank vs tank action.

Moreover, the three Tiger battalions were not very active. 101st SS for instance was virtually destroyed after Villers-Bocage and had only nine working Tigers for June and most of July.

The only really verifiable instances of Tigers doing well happened around early 1943 in the Eastern Front. Most of the rest turned out of be highly exaggerated accounts at best or complete fairy tales at worst.

I just wrote down the figures from Schneiders Tigers in Normandy now I am wondering , is his figures about the Allies losses to the middle of August 1944 of some 2395 tanks wrong too? He says

most were caused by hand-held antitank weapons as well as Pak and Flak this is truly but the figures? Another Question I have read Jentzs books about the Panther but I can not find how

many Panthers wich was delivered to the westfront.One guy in this forum has said 3000 but can this be correct ? I had guissed 25% of the produktion.It would be very nice if you can bring me

this information.

 

[D Inqu]

most were caused by hand-held antitank weapons as well as Pak and Flak this is truly but the figures?

Handheld AT accounted for only a tiny minority of armor losses, with the exception of the battle for Berlin.

Pak - yes, very powerful.

 

[Zinegata]

I just wrote down the figures from Schneiders Tigers in Normandy now I am wondering , is his figures about the Allies losses to the middle of August 1944 of some 2395 tanks wrong too? He says

most were caused by hand-held antitank weapons as well as Pak and Flak this is truly but the figures? Another Question I have read Jentzs books about the Panther but I can not find how

many Panthers wich was delivered to the westfront.One guy in this forum has said 3000 but can this be correct ? I had guissed 25% of the produktion.It would be very nice if you can bring me

this information.

Schneider specifically notes that he took his kill figures from the war diaries, which were not official but only guessimates and claims by the battalion commander. The 150 kill figure of the Tunisian Tiger battalion in fact came from Schneider's book, and was found to be very much an exaggeration, one which the English language translators didn't seem to be able to really parse given Schneider did a lot of work showing how the kill claims were very different from reality in his other works.

 

[Zinegata]

That however is not comparing *a* Panther against *a* M4 Sherman on a 1:1 basis - which would be the issue to compare when the question is what the better tank was.

It´s comparing Shermans which usually had a 1,5:1 or better numerical advantage to german tanks which lacked most of the stuff needed. Fuel was already becoming scarce and armor-piercing ammunition that used Wolfram almost nonexistant.

There literally isn't a single case where one Sherman fought only one Panther to begin with; especially given it was contrary to German doctrine to deploy tanks at less than platoon strength. This is why one-on-one comparisons are utterly useless. War is not a joust.

And again, the reality is that based on the 30 known engagements, the average was 6 Shermans versus 5 Panthers. It's not a 1.5-1 numbers advantage. 1.3-1 is the actual figure.

In short the M4 Sherman could not compare to a Panther. US economy, numbers, readily available fuel and armorpiercing ammunition, complete air superiority and artillery support availiable that had not just a few rounds made it able to compete.

Yes, because the Sherman was unquestionably good, while the Panther was a terrible tank which owes its reputation primarily to badly researched games like Panzer General.

The Sherman, however disappointed the Soviets because its narrow tracks made it much less mobile on mud than its German and Soviet counterparts, and it consumed greater quantities of fuel. In fact, the US Army Ordnance planners had standardized this width to ensure that Shermans would fit onto ocean transports and across existing U.S. brigding equipment, two considerations that meant nothing to the Soviets..."

Thanks for demonstrating my point by quoting pop-history from Wikipedia while ignoring Walter Dunn's "Soviet Economy and the Red Army", which did actual ground-breaking archival research based on Russian accounts that showed every single Sherman that the Soviets got went to a Guards tank unit and they did it because they adored the Sherman.

 

[Zinegata]

Thanks for that. That's actually very informative. However, I will point out that the Somua S-35 was hideously outnumbered during the invasion of France as well. Compared to the roughly 450 Somuas, if the production numbers I've read were to be believed Germany had a little under 1200 PzII's, somewhere just short of 200 PzIII's and somewhere between 400 and 500 PzIV's to throw at France, less whatever they were using to occupy Poland, Czechoslovakia and Norway at that point.

That means that the performance of France's second line tanks is very much key since their formations would be the ones Germany's army would preferentially target, and they were crap. Most of them were 1917 Renaults and slightly upgraded versions, or the H35 and R35 that were slightly upengined versions of more or less the same thing.

The performance of the second line tanks was actually somewhat less important than the organization. It's not about the number of tanks, but the number of overall weapons in each Division and how the Divisions were meant to fight.

The DLMs, when faced with German Panzer Divisions, actually stopped them cold despite the Germans having many more tanks in these engagements. Key to this is the French realization that massed tank attacks were not very workable to begin with, all you need are a few well-placed and well-concealed anti-tank guns to savage a massed tank rush. This insight was confirmed by the US Army during the Fort Leavenworth exercises, and further validated by the US Army's Ballistic Research Lab wartime research that showed that anti-tank guns achieved as much as 5:1 kill rates in their favor if tanks attacked unsupported by infantry.

Hence, to create (and destroy) these anti-tank gun positions, you need infantry and your "armor" Divisions should in fact have more infantry than tanks. Infantry gives tanks more staying power and can eliminate at relatively little cost the anti-tank guns that could destroy them.

This is why the DLM had a very balanced force that was approximately one tank regiment paired with two motorized infantry regiments. The Germans at this point were still doing the reverse of the ratio; and the lessons of the French campaign in fact convinced them to adopt an organization more similar to the DLMs (by Barbarossa they had 1 tank regiment for every two infantry motorized/mech regiments in Panzer Divisions). The US Army and the Red Army both also later adopted an equivalent 1:2 tank-infantry ratio. Only the Brits persisted in a strict split between tanks and infantry, and that was a large reason why Goodwood turned into something of a fiasco after the initial break-in.

 

[keynes2.0]

Yes, because the Sherman was unquestionably good, while the Panther was a terrible tank which owes its reputation primarily to badly researched games like Panzer General.

Why the hate for PG? 0 experience Panthers going up against 400 experience M4A2s have a pretty good chance of losing the initiative roll and getting wrecked.

 

[f1nalstand17]

Indeed, I recently got my hands on a report which detailed every single US Army Sherman vs Panther engagements in ETO, and the results are pretty shocking

Would you mind sharing the title of the report?

 

[Zinegata]

Why the hate for PG? 0 experience Panthers going up against 400 experience M4A2s have a pretty good chance of losing the initiative roll and getting wrecked.

There's a very large correlation on the Internet between folks who insist the Panther is good and folks who insist Germany can invade Britain/win in Russia/conquer America eventually. Both of these memes were present in Panzer General and to a lesser extent other SSI games.

Albeit to be fair that's to a large extent an outgrowth of the "German fanboy" problem in a lot of wargames (Squad Leader being the earliest source I've found that promotes the 5 Shermans to kill a Panther myth), with very many wargames trying to prove the Axis victory counter-factual. It's ironic how Japanese wargame designers are much more grounded and come up with choice quotes like "whatever the final score of the game, Japan, the country, loses the war".

 

[Zinegata]

Would you mind sharing the title of the report?

It's a report by the US Army Ballistic Research Labs. Zaloga had compiled their findings into a couple of handy charts.

http://i.imgur.com/bxwWdOS.png

 

[f1nalstand17]

It's a report by the US Army Ballistic Research Labs. Zaloga had compiled their findings into a couple of handy charts.

http://i.imgur.com/bxwWdOS.png

Thank you.

 

[f1nalstand17]

It's a report by the US Army Ballistic Research Labs. Zaloga had compiled their findings into a couple of handy charts.

http://i.imgur.com/bxwWdOS.png

Do you know what "battle" was the one on the second row which has 19 engagements?

 

[Zinegata]

Do you know what "battle" was the one on the second row which has 19 engagements?

They're not part of a single battle. This is a compilation of all known engagements, with the second row being all engagements wherein the Shermans were on the defensive and fired first.

 

[gagenater]

Grousers.

The bit about 'Sherman tracks are too narrow for ice and mud was true - it was one of the first things the Russians noticed once they got into the right (wrong) ground conditions. And if you will read up on the links I posted the Americans fixed this rather quickly as a solution had already been developed - grouser plates which could be quickly and easily fabricated at basic shops in Russia (or shipped from the U.S.) and which could be bolted onto the treads in the field. They were made in a couple of different sizes a short/small one for ordinary mud and ice and extra long ones for super squishy situations. The extra long ones reduced the ground pressure below that of a human foot - so they could drive into places people would get stuck in. The short ones were usually all that was needed. Incidentally the T-34 also used grousers but of a different design. It had an all metal track, whereas the Sherman had rubber gripper pads on the outside of each link. This meant that Sherman's were actually pretty stable on ice - at first. On ice the T-34 slid like crazy. (even worse than the narrow threaded Sherman) They would equip it with toothed/clawed crampoon like grouser attachments for it. The Russians learned to their sorrow that if/when the rubber gripper pads for the Sherman wore out it slid on ice even worse than the T-34 unless they left the mud grousers on in the ice and then they would dig/bite if the rubber pads were worn out. The Russians didn't have the capacity to fabricate their own rubber pads for the Sherman's very easily since they lacked natural rubber, and were often short on synthetic rubber, and forces were often to far afield to get specialized suplies like this on a timely basis.

 

[keynes2.0]

So that would be 21 M4s destroyed by Panthers in the ETO? That seems a little low. But if it's correct...

IIRC there was an average of 1 fatality per lost M4. There is about a 1 in 10 million chance of dying to lightning strike per year. Suppose a WWII veteran lived 40 years on average after enlistment (pretty conservative guess). That would mean that a US serviceman in WWII faced odds of dying in an M4 shot by a panther equal to their odds of surviving being wounded in action then going on to die by lightning strike. Or alternatively the number of M4 crew killed by Panthers equaled the number of frontline Soviet combatwomen who died to lightning.

 

[f1nalstand17]

They're not part of a single battle. This is a compilation of all known engagements, with the second row being all engagements wherein the Shermans were on the defensive and fired first.

Yes I know, note the battle was in quotations and engagements was plural.

 

[f1nalstand17]

So that would be 21 M4s destroyed by Panthers in the ETO? That seems a little low. But if it's correct...

According to Zaloga's list of sources, the report only covers the 3rd and 4th Armored Divisions.