Best tanks

Certainy true, but in a straight match-up any mobility characterisitcs don't matter anymore if the differences are as slight as between these two tanks, so in such a comparison the Panther will win. The only edge the Sherman ever had over the Panther was the fact that its design was more simple, making it easier to maintain. It is a great advantage, but in combat I'd still pick the PzV any day of the week and twice on sunday. In almost every respect the two tanks, or at least the M4(76) and the Panther G, are comparable but the Panther has just a minor edge.

And thanks for accepting my argument, by the way.

 

how can you compare a Sherman to a Panther, or a Tiger...

 

Sherman and Panther are the same kind of tank: medium tanks, main battle tanks. They are comparable.

 

except one thing...in terms of the best tank..the sherman isn't even in the panthers league...

 

The fact is, the Sherman and the Panther were very comperable. Despite popular belief, the 76mm cannon had a much easier time dispatching Panthers than Tigers. There have been reports of Shermans holding their own against Panthers, and even a few where Shermans, using AP rounds, dispatch Panthers from distances of 1,500 yards. The M4A1 76 had a grand total of 101mm of frontal armor, and the Panther had a total of around 100. They are both entirely able to penetrate eichother at 1,500 yards away. The Sherman, also contrary to popular belief, is two inches shorter than the Panther G. The Panther G proke down constantly as well. Compaird to the Panther, the King Tiger looked like the Sherman (As far as mechanmical reliability goes.) The 7.5cm KwK L/70 was supperior to the 76mm M1A1C, I will admit that.

Just a little post I made on another forum.

 

Yes, I agree that the later verions of the Sherman were excellent, but the aura surrounding the Panther blinds some people to the Shermans strenghts.

 

Well, at least the aura surrounding the Panther is based on the truth. The aura surrounding the Tiger I is based on popular legend, and not on the fact that the tank was any good after 1943. The Panther on the other hand is a very very good tank, and according to me it is the best tank of WW2. However, if you think that the Sherman is a bad tank then rad the previous 14 pages of this discussion and you will find that the late versions of the Sherman weren't that bad at all.

 

well...i don't know as much about it as you guys, but i've seen many documenteries saying the only reason the Sherman had any effect on the battlefield is because there were so many of them in numbers, which im sure is true to some extent. I've also seen German soldiers talking of how easy it was to destroy them with hand held anti-tank weapons, and one documentery of a single tiger destroying about 28 British Shermans and APC's, and halting an advance singlehandedly.

 

Yes, these stories are all true. Because they are about the early Sherman, which had fewer armour, a terribly inferior gun and an ammo storage system which tended to fry the crew after taking a hit. The later M4s corrected most of these mistakes.

 

were the later M4's actually used in WW2? because the stories i heard were from early 1945 and the Ardennes Offensive, by which time lets face it..the war was practically over

 

There are plenty of stories that go the other way as well. Like when the 106th Panzer Brigade "Feldherrnhalle" ( from the 13th SS Corps ), equipped with Panthers and Jagdpanzer IVs, was completely destroyed by U.S. forces, including the 712th Tank Battalion. Or when the 112th Panzer Brigade was destroyed by the French 2nd Armoured Division at Dompaire. The French were mostly equipped with 75mm Shermans, and had only a few 76mm Shermans and M10 TDs. The Germans were equipped with Panthers and outnumbered the French as well.

 

This shot trap was eliminated by the introduction of the chin gun mantlet in September 1944. The 'later version' of the Panther ausf G was the best all round tank of WW2.You can clearly see the chin mantlet in this pic.

http://www.battletanks.com/images/PzKw_ ... er_G-3.jpg

 

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. Good point!

The later M4 carrying the 76mm gun was first issued to the 2nd and 3rd US armoured divisions on July 22nd 1944, three days before Operation Cobra and the final breakout from Normandy began. This first lot was made up of 102 tanks but more of them soon followed. According to Danyel Phelps, by the Ardennes Offensive almost half the armoured units in US army were equipped with it but I cannot confirm this.

 

MY GOD! DOES THIS EVER STOP?! lol actually it's amazing to see a post go on for this long! i'm sorry, i just had to comment

 

Sherman 76(w)s and, to a lesser extent, E8s and E2s were uses in WW2. Most sources that talk about the Sherman 76(w) will say that, by the end of the war, more than half of the Shermans in the ETO were infact 76(w)s. The plan origionaly called for only 1/3 of Shermans to be armed with the 76mm and wet storage, but they became an instant hit when they got to europe and the demand for them was too high to ignore.

 

so up until july 1944 the sherman in use was the sherman that blew up if you threw a stone at it hard enough? or did they have some better designs before the version that appeared in july 1944

 

Nope, nothing better than the M4, M4A1 and M4A3 basic designs. The Firefly was better when it comes to armament but this tank was produced in limited numbers, for British troops only and it didn't have any improved armour.

 

dood..that must of sucked...lol

 

You do realise that almost every tank, even those mighty and flawless German ones, had the problem with ammunition going off when penetrated? The Sherman, however, is the only tank that ever gets nailed for it, even though it eventualy fixed this error when others did not.

 

Yes, well, the Sherman is also the only one to ever get famous because of this. Doesn't that strike you as odd? I mean, you can't blame post-war historians and public opinion for the battlefield nicknames we all know.