British and American WW2 tanks were inferior to German ones

Great Debates
21

The Sherman was essentially “good enough”, and could be produced in staggering numbers. For example, Germany produced 49,000 and change armored fighting vehicles of ALL types during the war. The US produced 49,000 and change Shermans alone.

But ultimately the issue was a doctrinal one. US doctrine at the time had separate roles for light tanks, medium tanks, and tank destroyers. According to this doctrine, tanks weren’t really intended to seek out and engage other tanks as a primary mission. That was the job of the tank destroyers, and they were lightly armored, very fast and very powerfully armed relative to the Shermans. The Shermans were intended to support infantry, exploit breakthroughs, and in a pinch engage enemy tanks. So they were optimized more for that role.

Of course now with 77 years of hindsight, this looks insane and stupid. But at the time, there were a LOT of theories and doctrines that had to be proven wrong. Look at the heavy bomber offensives by all parties in the war- grievous losses up front, and then various changes and adjustments (night bombing, fighter escorts, box formations, etc…)

The British also had a doctrine that was very broadly similar, with the heavily armored and slow “infantry” tanks, and the faster, lightly armored “cruiser” tanks.

Meanwhile the Germans figured it out faster than the Allies and set up all their tanks to do most of the tank roles simultaneously. Of course, some of the later-war tanks/tank destroyers were almost purely defensive, but that’s not exactly germane here.

The US and Britain DID figure it out, but they figured it out in the Summer/Fall of 1944, and by the time they tried to rectify it with the Pershing and Centurion tanks, the war was all but over. The M4A3E8 Sherman (what Fury was), was basically an incremental improvement over the previous M4A3- better suspension and more powerful gun, but still not anything that made the Sherman anything other than barely adequate for fighting German tanks directly.

And with the exception of Gen McNair, I’m not sure that the generals were against it; I think there was just less experience. Look at it this way- the US didn’t even enter the war until 1942, and fought in N. Africa, Sicily and Italy. None of that, with the possible exception of N. Africa, gave the US good experience in mobile warfare. So we started the experience and data accumulation process basically after D-Day. Meanwhile, the Germans had been working on it since 1939- they’d seen what worked in Poland, France, and Russia, and were modifying existing designs and coming up with new ones to match.

22

Damn straight.

[aside] I love how that film keeps getting more respect as time goes on. [/aside]

23

A couple of points here:

Note that the Germans had some of the same issues as the British and Americans with specialized tank design. The original German doctrine had the Panzer III as the fast “breakthrough” tank and the Panzer IV as the slow heavy infantry support tank. The Panzer IV eventually became the main tank model when the Panzer III was unable to mount the later 75mm gun. This distinction became more pronounced later in the war, with large numbers of Stug III/IV replacing the Panzer IV as the German equivalent of the British Churchill in the infantry support “tank” role.

A common statement heard about WW2 tank comparisons is that it took 5 Shermans to destroy 1 Panther. This is a misunderstanding of the contemporary reports, where a typical action did have 5 Shermans taking out a Panther or Tiger, because the US unit was usually at its full strength of 5 tanks, whereas the German unit was reduced to one or two working vehicles. It wasn’t that 5 tanks were necessary, but that 5 tanks were available and were used in the action. (Particularly useful in maneuvering to attack the much thinner side and rear armour on the Panther.)

24

Sure, but they always envisioned the PzIII as fighting other tanks, and just upgrading the PzIV with the 75mm gun wasn’t a major stretch.

The US tank destroyer doctrine was a bigger lift; it wasn’t a question of the designated tank-fighting tank not being able to mount a big enough gun, it was more that the vehicles mounting the big guns weren’t necessarily the ones fighting the enemy tanks in every situation. In fact, the tank destroyer doctrine had a huge blind spot- it wasn’t geared toward offensive action, but rather toward outpacing enemy armored formations and ambushing them. Which was useful in the Battle of the Bulge, but not very useful during the advance through France, the Low Countries and Germany.

So in effect, they didn’t have an AFV that was intended to actually fight defensively employed enemy tanks. We had breakthrough tanks, we had infantry support tanks, we had defensive tank destroyers, we had recon tanks, etc… but nothing that could effectively engage enemy tanks that were on the defensive, or even just in a meeting engagement.

25

the problem with such a debate is it leaves out theater events. The Germans lost as many Tiger tanks to mechanical issues as they did to Russian attacks. If for any reason the tank was incapacitated and the crew had to abandon it then they would have to destroy it. these were excellent tanks but that doesn’t mean anything if you can’t keep it going.

Hitler’s intervention usually amounted to a demand for bigger and better. But that almost always translated into a day late and a dollar short production. When the Allies needed a better tank they just stuck a bigger gun on a Sherman and bypassed the cost and delay of starting from scratch. Done.

The whole war was like that. Germany started out with a massively superior war machine in almost every conceivable way. And it was all pissed away on mega weapons that were expensive and late to the war.
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Germany spent more money on the V2 than the US did on the Manhattan Project and Hitler doubled down on stupid when they perfected it. Instead of using mobile rockets and easily concealed launching pads he spent money and time building an “invincible” launch site that was quickly destroyed. Had he gone straight to the mobile system that they eventually used he could have delayed D day.

26

The corresponding heavy to the Tiger/King Tiger might be the KV series/ IS / IS2 tank

Not that I disagree with your points.