Myth buster threads: comments

If the Tiger I would have had sloped armour, it would be significantly larger and/or heavier...

 

All good points.

However, the Sherman was a more comfortable tank to fight in, and tended to be more reliable. It was also far quieter.

All 'soft' facts, but still advantages.

Personally, I think that both designs were (in their later stages) approximately equal, both having advantages and disadvantages compared to the other. The only occiasion where significant numbers of both types fought each other (Korean War) seems to agree with that.

The early models - T-34 was better overall.

 

Indeed ricky,as i said it was not crapy tank,just it could be much betther.

 

I'll very happily agree with that statement, though the same could be said of any tank

 

Il point again,when u make weapon u cant had all,it is all in compromises.One of things why sherman was more silent then a T-34 is coz he had gasoline engine with less power then T-34 diesel engine,and if u match speed,power to weight ratio,mobility and range ower silence,it is clear what option is betther

 

Actually, the main reason why the Sherman was quieter than the T-34 was the tracks. The Sherman tracks had rubber pads, while the T-34 was unusually noisy even for an all-metal-tracked tank.

 

Just been having a look at the stats on onwar.com (a good source from what I can tell)

Comparing the original M4 to the 1940 model T-34/76 you get the following:

T-34 M4
Engine 500hp 400hp
Weight 26000kg 30300kg
ratio 19.2 hp/tonne 13.2 hp/tonne
ground
pressure 9 psi 13.7 psi
road speed 55 km/h 34 km/h
off-road
speed 30 km/h ??

Comparing the M4A3E8/M4A3(76)W HVSS to the 1944 model T-34/85 you get the following:

T-34 M4
Engine 520hp 500hp
Weight 32000kg 33650kg
ratio 16.3 hp/tonne 14.9 hp/tonne
ground
pressure 11.1 psi 11 psi
road speed 55 km/h 42 km/h
off-road
speed 40 km/h ??


Frontal Hull armour on all marks of the T-34 remained at 45mm, while the Sherman went from 51mm to 108mm.

The Sherman has a higher fuel consumption rate than the T-34.

Any surprises there?

Interesting that in terms of performance the T-34 series degraded, while the M4 series improved.

In terms of fighting ability the T-34 began as the better tank and they ended up a rough equal.

 

Sherman was improowed bit still,not good as T-34 as u post it there.Now look slopes on sherman and T-34 hull.T-34 is 30 degrees and sherman from 35-90 degrees (corect me if i wrong but 90 degrees is probably no sloped) and if u need to improowe armor on 105mm where will u put it on sherman (probably on non sloped armor surfaces),and when u look turet,T-34 got 7mm thicker armor,and round slopes,what sherman dont hawe.I dont denie that sherman was improowed greatly from oreginal model,but still,he did not catch T-34 in performances,he just come closer.

 

The T-34 was a great tank when it first appeared in 1939...
The Germans had a real problem cracking its armor in 1941, it was famed as being almost impenetrable to all but the 88's...

By the time the Sherman arrived in Normandy in 1944, the Germans had essentially up-gunned their AT entire arsenal simply to get the better of the T-34... Tanks were no longer equipped with inadequate 57mm weapons, the Panzer V was comissioned to be a T-34-beater etc. etc. The fact is that the Germans were forced to make drastic changes to their military in response to the T-34, where as by the time the Sherman was encountered they were well prepared to combat such a tank...

The Sherman was simply a few years behind the T-34, thus it didn't have such a 'revolutionary' effect...

The T-34 was ahead of its time, and it was retired early in 1945 in favour of newer designs... The Sherman was used well into the 60's and constantly upgraded with newer technologies... There are reasons why comparing later Sherman variants to old T-34's is misleading

 

Gotcha!

50mm weapons, surely.

But nobody has done so. Nobody has brought a later Sherman varient than the M4A3E8/M4A3(76)W HVSS into the comparison, and that was most definately a WW2 varient. The USA as far as I know did not continue developing their M4 series tanks after WW2*. They were only used in Korea because they had so darn many and they needed tanks fast.

Israel (and a few others) did, but as I said, nobody has brought these upgraded versions into the discussion.


*Prove me wrong. I'm serious, it is not a challenge, I'd like to know.

 

50 mm, not 57 mm, whoops... my brain is runny

I accept thine challenge... Sort of...
I wasn't referring to any post-war Shermans, but of what i've read many comparisons have been made with the Sherman Firefly which IS *in my opinion* superior to the T-34/85... However that is because it has been specially upgraded to sport a 17 pounder (hope I got that one right, not so good with the remembering calibers today)... Of course it is going to be better than the production version...
The point is that the T-34 could and was upgraded as well, and if the Firefly is to be mentioned, so should they... A notable variant is the T-34M, aka the T-44, which was considerably superior to the T-34/85 in terms of protection and (in the 100mm variant's case) firepower... However, like the JS-3 the T-44 came late in the war and it is likewise questionable whether or not it saw combat... Still several thousand were built in its short production period (quickly superceded by the T-54) so it was hardly an experimental Obiect...

Whether it was superior to the Firefly is, like this topic, down to the time-olf question "good at what?"

for those who don't know it
the T-44 @ wwiivechiles.com
http://www.wwiivehicles.com/ussr/tanks_medium/t44.html

 

We know it, it's a damn good tank for 1945, but not as good as the T-54/55 that replaced it.

I would say that the T-44 counts more as a post-war design, for the same reasons at the Centurian and JS-3, which would therefore disqualify it from the discussion IMO - unless you want to compare it to the Israeli Super-Shermans?

Edit - it also represents quite a significant re-build of the T-34, so much so that it warrented a whole new designation number, and so one could claim that it is not really a T-34 variant, but that it was merely 'based on' the T-34. Like the M4 Sherman was 'based on' the M3 Lee/Grant for example.

The only other significant T-34 variant that I can think of is the version with the long 57mm gun. I'm sure there were other variants thought up, but AFAIK none were made in any serious numbers, and none were ever deployed in combat. Was there ever a flamethrower version?

(obviously, not counting the various TD versions like SU-85 and SU-100, otherwise we'll need to bring the M10 and M36 into it!)


Oh, just had a thought - how about the adaptability of the design?

The M4 chassis was used for everything from Mine clearing to AAA to close support (105mm gun, or even Calliope rockets) to Bridgelaying to AVRE to Duplex Drive to ...

The T-34 was not, although this may well have been because the USSR just did not bother with such fripperies. Could the T-34 hull support its use as a 'funny' - after all the hull is smaller and less spacious than the M4's.

 

It was T-34 with flame thrower wersion but not in large number i think,and T-34 hull is longer then sherman hull,and it was used as platform for some AA systems but by germans,not Soviet.[/img]

So it was capable for such modernisation but look like USSR more prefer to develop new platforms then to modernise old ones.

 

Ah yes...



[/img]

 

And the Maus

 

By the way, just so you are aware, the T-34 Mythbuster has been altered in the light of coments on here (admittedly not much, but it has). The delay was caused partly by the author's absence...

 

You said that the armor plate used on the hull front was 45 mm thick throughout the war. There's a T-34/85 in the Finnish Armor Museum which was captured by the Finnish Army during WW II. What is interesting in this tank is that that has a glacis plate of exactly 50 millimeters in thickness. I don't know if it's a design modification or a result of loose tolerances, but it proves that not every T-34 glacis plate was 45 mm.

 

That's interesting. Does anyone know of other examples of this variable plate thickness or is the one in Finland the only example?

 

My texts say the T-34 had 47mm of frontal hull armor. Sloped at 60 degrees however, that is a ballistic protection value of 164 mm thick of armor that is not sloped.

Inotherwords, 47 mm sloped at 60 degrees is the same as 164 mm that is not sloped.

- Greg

:smok:

 

The differences are most likely due to differences in pate thickness during manufacture. The same was observed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds after the war, where a majority of the Panthers and Jagdpanthers tested had a glacis pate thickness of 85 mm rather than the nominal 80 mm.