Posted on 01/25/2013 1:11:30 PM PST by Vanders9
Tankies - Tank Heroes of World War II
Highly reccomended if you have a spare hour. There's a follow up about the battle for Malta which isn't too shabby either.
One needed to be a hero to go up against a Tiger, in a Sherman.
One needed to be a hero to go up against a Tiger, in a Sherman.
Next year is WW1 centennial.
I’ll never understand why the American government built thousands of tanks, but not nearly big enough to take on Tigers or T-34’s.
How can we watch it? Do you have a link? Thank You, FReegards,
Also, it was felt that numbers were important. It was more important to have lots of tanks than it was to have a few excellent tanks. The Sherman was in production and the War Department preferred to keep making them rather than retool for a new tank like the M-26 Pershing, a few of which appeared late in the war.
Finally the Sherman was a good tank. It was reliable, maneuverable, and relatively fast. It could cross bridges that wouldn't support a Tiger. The Israelis were still using them as late as the 1960s. The Sherman's problem was an inadequate gun. The Brits fixed this with the Sherman Firefly; the British 76.2mm was quite “adequate” for big game. The problem with the Firefly was not enough of them - and the Germans learned to shoot them first.
One reason was transporting them to the beaches and because of small bridges. But the Pershing did come along at the last 6 months or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6LqB-RYUvY
Sorry I should have made it easier and/or clearer. Just click on the “BBC” link under the thread title, or just here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tK8QC3wrz8
yes on all counts, doctrine, transportation, retooling. there were idf shemans in ‘73 war too. the syrians had some SU-100s on the northern end of their attack.
as an aside, the german halftracks did NOT have powered front wheels like ours did. and the german “jeep”, the kubelwagen, was not 4 wheel drive. the schwimwagen was 4 wheel drive which is why commanders hundreds of miles from serious water used them.
there is a video of pershings engaging tigers in front of the cathedral in Koln.
The British must have had a heavy tank. An old Combat Engineer told me that when they put a British tank Battalion across the Rhine, they would sink just about to the water on the pontoons.
They handled them OK but any heavier and they would not.
This was not an unusual doctrine for the interwar and early war years, and because of the time taken to develop armoured fighting vehicles a lot of tanks built to this were in common use even quite late on in the war. Of course, this idea of Shermans supporting infantry and M10's or whatever taking on enemy tanks is completely an armchair general's solution. In real life Shermans came up against their German opposite numbers all the time, and the medium velocity 75mm general purpose gun couldnt handle the new German tanks of the mid war years. The Firefly was a good solution (the tankers in the documentary thought a lot of them)but as Little Ray says, the Germans quickly learnt to pick them off first if they could. They were easily identifiable by the much longer gun barrel. I have heard that one way British tankers got round that was to fit dummy barrel attachments to their standard shermans, so that the germans couldnt tell which ones were the Fireflys.
the churchill was a “heavy” infantry tank but not big gunned.
we were outgunned and outnumbered in germany in the 70s; M60/A1s with 105mm and some A2s with 152mm gun/missile (my tank) vs 115mm on the T-62. they were smaller and faster but also had limitations and we learned to take advantage of them.
It retained that position only until the Germans began introducing panthers and Tigers from early 1943 onwards. The americans seem to have come to the conclusion that standardising on the Sherman would be enough to overcome these new german tanks, which after all were only available in limited numbers.
I had heard the the Sherman simply wasn’t a “heavy tank”. We didn’t develop such a weapon until the Pershing came along. But for what it was, it did well, especially in Africa when it and the M-3 did fairly well against the early, lighter German equipment.
My grandfather was a sherman tank gunner in the 12th armored, they were involved in some of the bloodiest fighting in France. I wish I more documentaries were made that included them.
I remember his stories about how frightening the battles at night were. they dug a trench, backed their sherman into it so it propped the front up and fired shells like artillery down into the river on advancing Germans.
Yes that would be the Churchill (not named after Winston, incidentally). They were very heavily armoured tanks (thicker than a Tiger) but undergunned. Originally only armed with 2pdr (40mm) guns, most in use had 6pdr (57mm) guns, which were - OK. A few in Italy were fitted with 75mm guns from Shermans.
Well, the British tankers in this documentary certainly preferred Shermans to any of the British built tanks they got lumbered with.
You understand then just how bad the situation was!
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