Myth buster threads: comments

a bit of massaging of the numbers , from 43 onwards
give decreasing kill ratios ,
a pointless exercise wiz to exclude the heavy batallions of tigers units
give a overall kill ratio of 2/1
.it would have been the tactical reality of units up to division strenght
until the cavalry arrive , if it arrive .

of course the russians always choose weak sectors and attacked with a local
superiority of better than 5/1 for a divisionnal front
.
:roll:
.
.

 

Yes, and that explains a maintained high kill ratio for German tank units. With their superior AT guns against Russia's inferior armour, they would almost certainly get a few kills in before they were themselves destroyed in such a target-rich environment. It is important to note that if the attacker moves with a 5 to 1 advantage, then a kill ratio of 2 to 1 in favour of the defender leaves the attacker with three tanks for the enemy's none.

Edit: this is all of course a gross oversimplification, made merely to point out that this great kill ratio doesn't say much about the effectiveness of the German army as a whole.

 

http://www.alanhamby.com/aces.html

If you go the the link above you can see some of the numbers of kills German tiger cammander/gunners claim to ahve.


Edit: Note that its commanders and gunners not one or the other therefore I assume many of the kills for different man are of teh same vehicle.

 

But when u look in prices 1 tiger cost like 2 panther.1 tiger II cost like 2 tiger I r 4 panthers.Anybody know costing ratio on tiger and T34?

 

Germany was limited in the following aspects:

- Crew
- Fuel
- Spare parts

Therefore, having "fewer and more expensive" tanks made sense. Furthermore, two Panthers could not be produced for one Tiger, the difference in materials used was roughly 8 tons, if I am not very much mistaken.

 

I'm not sure about the prices, but you can't just say "you could get four Panthers for one Tiger II" even if the cost of a Tiger II was indeed enough to pay for four Panthers. It's not a matter of money alone, it depends on the factors Panzerman mentioned. Getting all the separate parts and putting them together is quite difficult when every factory and railroad is being bombed regularly, so it could be wise to focus on getting a few really powerful vehicles rather than trying to build as many as possible.

 

And, of course, certain resources (copper, for instance) are used in almost equal amounts for any tank of that period.

You'd probably get 1.2 Panthers and some spare steel for every Tiger II

 

From the mythbuster section...

Exactly what is the rationale in this statement?
Even if we accept all the assertions given in the myth buster it still does not make sense...
- The 85mm gun was comprable to the US 76mm (not inferior)
- The armor was more brittle
- It was Noisy and cramped, and the rivets weren't properly smoothed

None of these actually seem to show the T-34 to be inferior in ANY respect

First of all, noise and rivets are just fluff... The concept of a tank being used in a "stealth operation" is ridiculous, there's a good reason tanks arent built with the requirement of a smooth eco-friendly engine... You see it is generally accepted that noise will be actually quite abundant in wartime ... Shaving the rivets dosent detract from the armor, just from the production cost... I havent heard of any incidents whereby a penetration of rivet led to a worse outcome for the tank had the rivet not been there...

As for armor... Brittle armor has its advantages, particularily when dealing with smaller AT calibres... The T-34/85 would have been more resistant against 37mm shells, though I'll grant perhaps less so against larger tank rounds than a late-war sherman... larger rounds would shatter high BHN armor, whereas they would only rip a hole in lower BHn armor... Not a big difference for the crew... and IIRC T-34/85 had slightly thicker turret and side armor than most Shermans...

Considering all Sherman variants of WW2, the T-34/85 had superior armament to all of them... Even the Firefly. IIRC The Russian 85mm had similar (marginally better) penetration to the 17 pounder, and being of a larger calibre, did more damage when it did so... Given the almost identical similarities between the 85mm and the 17 pounder (slightly in the 85mm's favour) I fail to see how one could claim that any Sherman possessed superior firepower to the T-34/85... It is only with the firefly that the Sherman actually began to catch up with the T-34/85, but despite being an improvement the gun was still only comprable, it did not actually noticably surpass the 85mm...

Just as the Sherman never really surpassed the T-34/85...

At least not in WW2, I'll admit that post war shermans (M-50 Supers, Korean Easy Eights) were superior to all T-34 models... However this is because The U.S army chose to develop and upgrade the Sherman to make it competitive well into the 60's... Whereas the Russians dropped the T-34 in 1945 and favoured new tank designs such as the T-44, T-54/55... A 1944 model T-34/85 is at a disadvantage to an M4A3E8 upgraded with 1950's technology, as was discovered in the Korean War (though the Sherman crews were nevertheless advised to leave tank combat to the Pattons)

 

Hi Smeg - I guess you are talking about the T-34 mythbuster?

I'm gonna attempt to answer a few of those...

Rivets yes, noise no. A quieter and more spacious tank equals a more effective and efficient crew, whose 'peak performance' takes longer to degrade.

By late-war, how common were 37mm AT guns? Armour should surely be geared towards your biggest threat, which by late war was 75mm* (well, actually it was the Panzerfaust, but hey )

This is a new one on me - I thought that the Korean war shermans were stock WW2 Shermans, which is why the Centurian and Patton stood out so well.


*As far as I am aware, the majority of German tank & anti-tank guns by 1944/45 were 50mm, 75mm or 88mm

 

I don,t want to get involved in such useless debates but now can you put on same level T-34 and Sherman,the T-34 and Panther were best WW2 tanks ,that is a fact that some people liked or not have to admit.Your Sherman in not even near them.

 

No debate is useless at all, if you consider it such then why even comment on it? Tanks are far from my speciality but reading the debates on here shows that late war Shermans were at least on a par with contemporary T-34s.

You think the opposite? Fine. Demonstrate it with evidence.

Don't just rubbish other people's opinions by condemning the debate itself, such comments tend to carry little weight around here unless you're willing or able to back them up.

 

Don,t get me wrong but if you like to learn more about WW2 tanks you should try to read some books about them.

What evidence should i bring to you,am i supose to find T-34 and Sherman and try to prove who is the better one.

Well now,how can such debate prove who is better.By writing who has biger armor or gun,or how many tanks were destroyed or who destroyed more.

 

Evidence is simply finding supporting information, of which so far you have provided none beyond your own opinion.

Do not patronise me, I said tanks weren't my speciality not that I know absolutely nothing about them, I am aware of what books are and I know how to read, although I don't have the time to read as much as I'd like to. I really don't get what point you are trying to make.

By discussing the capabilities of such tanks both their paper capabilities and performance in the field (Which can be reasonably deduced from sources such as reference books and memoirs) we can reach conclusions on their capabilities, the conclusions objectively reached here are that the Sherman tends to compare quite favourably with its contemporaries if you scratch beneath the surface of the History Channel and the supposed "Ronson" nickname.

This has been discussed quite exhaustively on here before, with supporting evidence and sources.

So far we know what you think, but you have offered no insight as to why you think that.

 

The Sherman was more reliable, much more crew-friendly, had thicker armour, a better gun and better crew protection. If these points are not elaborated on in the T34 mythbuster they are certainly mentioned in the Sherman mythbuster. Ilija, please take your time to read that topic because your statement about the Sherman is so completely untrue that it's almost funny. The T34 was not superior to the Sherman at all. These tanks can certainly be compared and in an objective analysis of both designs the late-war Sherman will invariably come out on top.

The finer part of the production also involved such things as applying camouflage patterns and making the insides of a tank more crew-friendly, though I'll admit these are details compared to the overall crew-unfriendlyness of the T34 in terms of crew space, seats, turret space, handling, and ammunition storage. In all these fields the Sherman was superior to it and the Russians (notably Dimitri Loza) openly admit this.

The difference between brittle armour and armour with lower BHN value is that high-BHN steel will splinter and flake even when it's not penetrated. It's a notable advantage for a tank crew that a round actually has to penetrate a tank's armour to kill them. It's also worth mentioning here that the late Sherman had thicker armour all over than the T-34 in its latest form.

Concerning firepower, the 85mm was not superior to the 76mm M1 at all. I'm really surprised to hear this from you, smeghead, and I'm interested in seeing your source for the claim. While it had a more effective HE shell it was not supplied with rounds nearly as efficient as American HVAP and therefore couldn't match the penetrative capacity of the American gun at its best. With regular AP rounds, both guns were roughly equal. Certainly the 85mm came nowhere near the penetrative power of the 17pdr gun. At 1000 meters the 17pdr with APDS could penetrate no less than 80mm more armour (60% more) than the 85mm with subcalibre ammo.

 

The thing that you wrote on your 3 myth buster post are the funny ones,were did you find some of the information that you presented there,if american army didn,t need more than one Sherman to destroy Tigers or Panthers that why would they bother to develope tactic in which some will keep the Tiger or Panther busy while the others try to find better firing position.

Oh please were did you come up with this one,when M4A3E8 and T-34-85 meet on the battlefiel during the Korean war they were on same level of performance only the quality of american tank crewman was advantage on Sherman side.

 

Contradiction?

Why if "Your Sherman in not even near them" can you then say "...they (Sherman/T-34) were on same level of performance..."?

Again, can I ask your sources here?

If you refute this, then please provide an actual counter-argument and sources.

 

About the myth that 5 Shermans were need to destroy Tiger or Panther, maybe this myth thing comes from situation like the one in which Barkmann was, when he manage to destroy 9 :lol: Shermans and that in a damaged Panther,this famous event toook place on 27 July,and if I am not wrong the same men some days before manage to destroy 6 Shermans and becouse those Sherman boys let this one run away he managed to destroy 15 more allied tanks in the same tank.Yep you have to respect that one, 30 tanks at a cost of one single Panther.

 

And a single KV managed to hold off a much larger German Force during Barbarossa (a battalion IIRC), so what? Individual instances don't indicate the capabilities of a type as a whole. How much of that was down to the capabilities of the crew or commander? Who can tell?

What about as a whole? Does this match up for tank-on-tank combat on the western front as a whole? Do you have this information? If not then why do you hold this to be true?

What about the eastern front? What were the comparative kill/loss figures for T-34s? Without those (as meaningless as I believe them to be without the context of those losses) why do you believe the Sherman figure (If true) to be important?

 

When I wrote this i meant about the revolution this two tanks brought to tank design and how did they perform on the battlefield ,that for me is why this two are the best tanks of WW2.

 

Interesting, but again why? The Sherman triumphed over the Panther in terms of production figures alone. What exactly did the Panther bring to Tank design? I'm aware that the T-34 was the most mass-produced tank of all time, but what in particular was the revolution that the T-34 brought to tank design? Don't say sloped armour.