Armored Fighting Vehicles version M4 - are we going with that? Sure, man.

[Daryk]

Code tags would probably straighten out that lovely table into the glory it was intended to be...

[chanman]

You know, if Sherman crews had a higher chance of surviving the destruction of their tank, then it makes sense that there would be more soldiers talking crap about the tank they were shot out of - statistically, it seems unlikely that certain crew positions on certain tanks - like T-34 drivers would have had much of a chance to complain about their vehicle on the basis of being you know, dead.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

In many respects, the Sherman was probably the best tank in the war.  The Panther and the T-34 both had heavily inflated reps that ignore most of their flaws: the Panther was overweight and strained its engine, suspension, and drive system.  It also had poor off-road capability, and flaws in German metallurgy caused by a mixture of lack of quality control and sabotage (slave labor is never a smart choice for building weapons) meant that its armor was often brittle and prone to shattering upon being hit.  It also needed extensive maintenance to keep in working order, while a Sherman could stay operational the entire war with nothing but regular lubrication and oil changes.

The T-34 was riddled with flaws: the original version had such bad visibility that it was prone to accidentally running into enemy tanks just because it couldn't see them.  The controls were so stiff that drivers resorted to turning the tank by striking the control bars with hammers.  The sloped armor made the interior extremely cramped.  And many of the original product run had hulls that were so badly fitted together that daylight was visible through the gaps.

Also, the line about five Shermans being needed to take on a single Tiger?  Actually originated from an offhand comment a German general made at a party.  And it wasn't a comment about the superiority of the Tiger to the Sherman, it was a comment on just how freaking many Shermans there were: the US built about 50,000 of them while Germany built about 20,000 total tanks, TDs, and SPGs combined.

[Dave Talley]

and as the Chieftain said, you send one sherman or two you send five because thats how many were in a platoon

the brits and russians both used and loved the shermans

[Kidd]

We've been down this road before.

When judging a thing, consider carefully if one is judging it on its own merit, or judging it on the merit of its users, system and environment.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

There's also the issue of the theoretical performance that can be attained if everything is working perfectly versus the actual performance attained under typical conditions.

[Kidd]

There's also the issue of the theoretical performance that can be attained if everything is working perfectly versus the actual performance attained under typical conditions.

Mmhmm. That too.

Now behold the AMX-30 ACRA, or the French peek into the gun/missile launcher concept

[ANS Kamas P81]

One hell of a gun mantlet there.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

It looks a lot like the M103, the US's last heavy tank.

[chanman]

and as the Chieftain said, you send one sherman or two you send five because thats how many were in a platoon

the brits and russians both used and loved the shermans

I just watched the Chieftain's videos through the restored Panther, and I have to say I'm impressed at how bad the crew situational awareness must have been. Only the TC seems to have had anything resembling a decent field of vision. I suspect that more than a few Panthers knocked out on the Western Front never saw their attackers coming.

As for tanks, here's an odd one:



Couple thousand built, but only used by India

[DoctorMonkey]

Remember that India vies with China for population size and has about a billion people


They also like to have / use their own technology and industrial base, possibly also partly due to the unreliability of Western Allies (US, UK etc) for RULE 4 VIOLATION DETECTED - REDACT REDACT REDACT

[ANS Kamas P81]

National pride is a thing, of course; being able to say "we made it ourselves" is kind of nice.  And your point about allies, well...let's just say that in the past, some of the best trading partners have gone to war with each other, so having your arms factories in someone else's country is potentially a bad idea even if they're your best friend.  Plus there's always all kinds of spinoff and support industry with second- and third-order economic benefits for doing it yourself rather than simply buying export material; that's always got to be considered.

That said, you can buy a lot of stuff for cheap on the export market.

There's also the 'localization' effect - a factory in country that may have specific requirements for terrain considerations is going to understand those considerations much more than a foreign one would.  Take Japan for example; entirely apolitically, their strategic situation for tanks is homeland defense on mountainous and forested terrain with a lot of bridges over rivers.  Expecting a company in, say, the southwest USA's flat deserts to inherently understand that kind of terrain and what to consider in designing and building a tank is foolish.  Granted, you can learn a lot, but the folks who live there know it best and would be your best choice for builders, if they're technologically capable of it.

[Sabelkatten]

I think India has the simple problem that the nation they've been fighting the most is Pakistan - a nation that is ALSO often "western allied". So they sometimes end up with their friends being friends with their enemy, which isn't the best thing for buying weapons...

[grimlock1]

You know, if Sherman crews had a higher chance of surviving the destruction of their tank, then it makes sense that there would be more soldiers talking crap about the tank they were shot out of - statistically, it seems unlikely that certain crew positions on certain tanks - like T-34 drivers would have had much of a chance to complain about their vehicle on the basis of being you know, dead.

That's an interesting observation.  Survivorship bias can have subtle but powerful effects. Consider when the US Army Air Corp asked the Statistical Research Group to determine the most critical places to add armor to B-17s, based on the location of damage found on planes that returned from missions.   The answer was to armor the places with the least damage.

[DoctorMonkey]

That's an interesting observation.  Survivorship bias can have subtle but powerful effects. Consider when the US Army Air Corp asked the Statistical Research Group to determine the most critical places to add armor to B-17s, based on the location of damage found on planes that returned from missions.   The answer was to armor the places with the least damage.

It was the least damaged or never damaged areas on returning aircraft


I had understood the British pioneered this technique in WW2, before the US entered


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research

[kato]

Now behold the AMX-30 ACRA, or the French peek into the gun/missile launcher concept

Unlike the 152mm gun-launchers trialled by Germany and the US, the French gun wasn't supposed to fire any standard gun-fired shells at all btw. The soft-target ammunition - i.e. other than the ATGM - was instead a rocket fired at Mach 2 (with a pretty small HE warhead, comparable effect to a 81mm mortar).

There was also a casemate tank with the gun based on the AMX-10P chassis with three prototypes built.

ACRA was abandoned for cost reasons in '74 and replaced by HOT.

[Matti]

There's also the 'localization' effect - a factory in country that may have specific requirements for terrain considerations is going to understand those considerations much more than a foreign one would.  Take Japan for example; entirely apolitically, their strategic situation for tanks is homeland defense on mountainous and forested terrain with a lot of bridges over rivers.  Expecting a company in, say, the southwest USA's flat deserts to inherently understand that kind of terrain and what to consider in designing and building a tank is foolish.  Granted, you can learn a lot, but the folks who live there know it best and would be your best choice for builders, if they're technologically capable of it.

USA got Sherman to work in all the environments tank was used.

[MarauderD]

Question for you history buffs:

My grandfather passed away 19 years ago, and served in the 6th Armored Division of the US army.  He was a Captain and the XO of a Battalion of mobile field artillery, which if I remember correctly, was the 231st Armored Field Artillery Battalion.

He described his vehicles to me as a Sherman that had the turret removed and a howitzer put on top.  I've never seen one, and was curious of anyone here knew what it was and could find a picture.

Best,

Mad

[Dave Talley]

Question for you history buffs:

My grandfather passed away 19 years ago, and served in the 6th Armored Division of the US army.  He was a Captain and the XO of a Battalion of mobile field artillery, which if I remember correctly, was the 231st Armored Field Artillery Battalion.

He described his vehicles to me as a Sherman that had the turret removed and a howitzer put on top.  I've never seen one, and was curious of anyone here knew what it was and could find a picture.

Best,

Mad

thdre is a sherman with a 105 as its gun, but those were in armored units, he was probably referring to the M7 Priest

[MarauderD]

It was definitely a Sherman of some sort, he would have said if it was a Priest.  I think he said it had a modified or open turret?  I wish I had written this all down.

Another edit after looking up the Priest:  you are probably right!  I wish I had the picture of the vehicle, because apparently it was named Baby CJ after my mom, who was born in 44. 

Thanks for the help!

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The 105 variant Shermans still had turrets.  The Priest was a Lee (originally) or Sherman (after the M4 became the US's primary tank) body with the turret removed and a howitzer added in an open-top design.

Here's an image of the M7 Priest SPG

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

And just for fun, here's my favorite Sherman variant: the M4A3E2 Jumbo.  This one's packing the 75mm, though they usually were built with the 76.2mm installed crews liked the 75mm's utility enough that many Jumbos were converted back.  The 76.2mm was a better anti-tank gun, the 75 was a better anti-everything else.

[Dave Talley]

fun part is that from a distance its very hard to tell the difference

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

And they often painted the barrels to make it even harder to tell them apart.  That way German crews would have a tougher time figuring out which Sherman to prioritize.

[marauder648]

IIRC the Sherman Jumbo wasn't actually called that, it seems to be a name that popped up after the war possibly on a model kit and it seems to have stuck.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The US didn't start assigning names to its tanks until after WW2 anyway.  "Sherman," "Lee," "Wolverine," and other names were designations the British gave the tanks.  "Jumbo" and "Easy Eight" were nicknames that were given to Sherman variants by the troops.

[DoctorMonkey]

thdre is a sherman with a 105 as its gun, but those were in armored units, he was probably referring to the M7 Priest

There were British variants with howitzers in the Sherman but I think those were the same as the US ones (105mm howitzer) and also artillery forward observer tanks that had a dummy gun and used the space for more radios - it could have been that he had one of those and considered the artillery battalion his "firepower"?


More of a conversion was fitting a 155mm howitzer as well as 105mm (and the British fitting 25 pounders)


Looking at wikipedia reminds me how many variants they made of the thing!

[ANS Kamas P81]

The Priest was more of a dedicated artillery piece compared to the shortbarreled M4(105) and its M4A3 variant.

http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/manufacturer/m4_105mm/m4_105mm.html

This one still had the turret, and a dinky little sawed-off four-inch gun seemed to do pretty darn good as a mix of light field artillery and assault gun.  From what I'm reading, they showed up in mid-'44 and were organized into a six-ship Assault Gun platoon for each tank battalion.  They were much better at demolitions than the 75 or 76mm tanks.  Good visibility, good protection, good firepower, fine mobility, but no power traverse for the turret.

Brits drove a bunch too, and apparently Free French units got their hands on a few that fell off the ship somewhere.  The 105 Shermans also showed up in the Philippines and Okinawa theaters; I imagine the island fighting was probably a better fit for them with the short barrels, good armor, and high boom quotient - no need for an M4A3(76) to take out a Chi-Ha for example.

However, it should be pointed out that those were all for TANK battalions.  Your granddad, God rest his soul, was in an arty BN and very definitely would have operated Priests, from what I'm reading.

https://history.army.mil/documents/ETO-OB/6AD-ETO.htm

Here's the history of the 6th Armored Division, of which the 231st Armd FA BN was one of three organic arty battalions.  They stayed with the division the whole time, joining a LOT of other artillery units attached from other divisions, arrived in France June 12, 1944 and made it all the way to the outskirts of Leipzig before the war ended, not very far from Berlin.  At the bottom of that link there's a long list of where the division (and thus, your granddad's BN) were, so you should be able to look up histories and track down a lot more info if you're interested.

And as for the Sherman 105s, well, they got a little bit Battletech in the PTO. 



That's not a dummy gun marked (1) there, that's a freakin flamethrower.  AND a 105mm howitzer.  I kinda want to make a Battletech version of this now, AC10 and Plasma Rifle on a tank...

[CDAT]

Question for you history buffs:

My grandfather passed away 19 years ago, and served in the 6th Armored Division of the US army.  He was a Captain and the XO of a Battalion of mobile field artillery, which if I remember correctly, was the 231st Armored Field Artillery Battalion.

He described his vehicles to me as a Sherman that had the turret removed and a howitzer put on top.  I've never seen one, and was curious of anyone here knew what it was and could find a picture.

Best,

Mad

Like others have said, I think it was likely the Priest, but if it was a tank (with turret), the only other thought that I have would be the M8 HMC. It is not a Sherman based howitzer, but based on the M3 Light tank with an open topped 75mm howitzer.

[Wereling]

Could also be a M40 Gun Motor Carriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M40_Gun_Motor_Carriage