Panzer IV vs M4

Yes we can put it to rest. I still advise you to go to a museum and actually look at these tanks or if possible attend an event and see a demonstration instead of looking for something in a book or online. You will see big differences in optics if you do so. I am actually on base now and going to see if I can get permission to show you the sights of a Sherman. As of right now I have no idea of where to find a TFZ around here but I will get pictures for you if I can.

 

There are anecdotal evidence according to US armor veterans (Gen. White, Col. Cole, among others) that German optics were better. With regard to merits of M4 and Panzer IV, most agreed that their difference was marginal and they worried about Panthers or Tigers far more.

 

It's refreshing to read something by one who deals in facts rather than vapid crap like, "LOLZORS the German tanks automatically pwnz all of them!".

 

Here is a good question for people. Can anybody provide accurate info on the production of tanks like Panzer IV, M4, T-34, Tiger, Panther, etc. by individual plants they were produced. Its easy to provide total production numbers, or time to complete and so forth but i am looking at the actual numbers produced by individual factories. can anybody provide this? reason is that i am wondering if the M4 and T-34 are in fact so much better because of their ease of manufacture. It seems funny to me that the 2 most produced tanks were from the 2 countries with the most capacity. In other words am researching as to how easy it was for the tanks to actually be manufactured. The Tiger was produced in 2 factories over 2 years that made 1300 over that period. thats about the only tank i can find. the hypothesis is that if i can find these actual numbers then i think that a country like UK or germany could not have produced that many more T-34's or M4's than it could panzer IV's while the US or USSR could have produced panzer IV's in numbers similar to T-34 and M4. Not saying it is true but looking for info to find out.

 

I prefer the Mark IVG-J over all the variants of the Sherman series except the M4A3E8.

 

Kevin, the Pz IV J was probably the worst model of the Pz IV series. That tank had no powered turret traverse and had some components redesigned "to aid mass production". I would not rate the J over any variant of the Sherman tank. For that matter, I would be hesitant to take any variant of the Pz IV against any Sherman tank with a 76-mm gun.

 

I take it not counting the Firefly either.

 

I have seen numbers for at least some of the US plants but I'm not sure they will answer the question you want answered. For instance many of the US plants were new and built from the ground up to build tanks. Furthermore there was a lot of space to build them so they could be built larger than I suspect was easily acomplished in Germany or the UK. Then US industrial policy very much concerned itself with how to work changes and improvements to the vehicles into the production lines without disrupting production. Was this practiced at the same level by the Germans for instance?

 

Going on the height issues:
Sherman = 2.62m
Pz Mk IV = 2.68m
There is not much between them.
Turret traverse:
Sherman = 16 sec
Pz Mk IV = 12 sec
Again nothing much between them.
The question over crews, when Germany started losing more and more veteran crew men, the crew standards must have started to drop, training a new crew in 1940/41 must have been longer then in 1944/45. The Allies to must have gone through the same process of losing tank veterans, but I think they did not have the same problems Germany had late in the war, when they were equipping their units with old men and boys.

 

I am not sure about the traverse rates. I don't have my reference with me at the moment, but if memory serves, average traverse speed on a powered Pz IV turret was 22 seconds.
German tank crews suffered horrific casualty rates. The average German panzer regiment suffered more casualties in Normandy alone than US tank battalions in the entire European campaign.

 

It sounds like what you really are asking is what were the man/hours required to build a specific tank. Those are not the easiest figures to come by, but i have read that the man/hours required for a t-34 were significantly less than for a German tank. I also seem to recall reading somewhere that the Tiger required roughly twice the man/hours as a Panther did. The British Matilda 2 was a fairly expensive vehicle in terms of man/hours as well, a factor that led the British to replace it with the easier to build valentine. Of course these figures would be affected by not just the industrial capacity of a nation, but by their expertise at running large scale assembly lines. In that regard, the US had a big advantage over British and German industry.