The Sherman was developed to fight Panzer Mk IIIs and IVs, but by the time it entered service it had, in the words of one commentator, “grown long in the tooth.”
Yes, it was reliable and produced in great quantities, but inferior to late model Panzers in both armor and firepower. The Pershing was developed as a result, but a bit too late to make much of a difference in WWII.
Only if the Panther was running.
Against and Panther and a Tiger yeah the Sherman had to have been the up-gunned 76mm version to stand a chance of penetrating frontally, but on the Western front the vast majority of German armor was either the Panzer IV or the StuG series of tanks, which even the 75mm Sherman could reliably handle. The number of times Sherman’s fought Tigers on the Western front was vanishingly small, so claiming that the “Sherman’s were inferior to German armor” is a statement that is 100% true if you strip any and all actual wartime context from it.
They were inferior to late model Panzers in both armor and firepower.
The discussion of the Sherman tank may merit a separate thread. However…
I read that the American doctrine was the Sherman should NOT be used to face off against enemy tanks. There were tracked vehicles called “tank destroyers” for that purpose. They were essentially a large-caliber gun on top of a tracked vehicle - without a real turret. Of course, in battle, you have to “fight with what you have RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW”.
Sorry I’m confused if by late model Panzers you’re referring to late model Panzer IV’s or late model Panzer V-VII’s.
Wonderful discussion about Shermans vs Panzers, but maybe best for another thread?
V–VIIs.
I haven’t read the entire thread, but I’m going to toss in a favorite of mine: Battle: Los Angeles. You’re not going to come away from this movie with a better understanding of war, strategy, etc. And, you have to ignore the lame attempt at explaining the enemy’s motive, but it’s a fun movie of just blowing up stuff.
At the beginning of the war when, in the 8th Air Force, you had to fly 25 missions to get your ticket home, crews’ chances of making that far without getting captured, WIA or KIA were 1 in 3. Later on things got safer, you had to fly 35 then finally, 50 missions.
I agree. For example, my favorite movie is Apocalypse, Now!, but it isn’t my favorite war movie. (Das Boot is.)
Yeah, Shermans weren’t really bad per-se. They were just victims of the dumb (IMO) tank destroyer doctrine that the US adhered to for most of the war, which basically said that tank destroyers were supposed to engage and destroy enemy tanks, and that American tanks were meant more for attacking everything else and exploiting breakthroughs in enemy lines.
The Shermans weren’t bad when they were introduced, but they weren’t replaced by a better tank like the PzIV and T-34/76 were. We just upgraded the gun and kept on chugging, while the Germans created whole new tanks based on their Eastern Front experience. And we kept on with the tank destroyers the entire war, with the M-26 Pershing only making it into combat because of George Marshall’s overruling of Gen. McNair’s opposition to it and championing of the tank destroyer doctrine.
Probably but I found it to be informative background for discussing war movies.
The thing I liked the most about ‘Das Boot’ ( the extended director’s cut ) was that the focus never strayed from the perspective of men grinding it out in a dangerous, confined environment. There were no posturing speeches from Churchill or Hitler, no close-ups of Admiral Donitz wrangling over strategy: just 50 guys enduring routine, boredom, having to breathe in each other’s body odor and farts, and trying not to beat the hell out of each other due to the clash of habits and personalities. All interrupted by bouts of thrills of victory, or more often, the shared experiences of sheer terror.
I was talking to someone not too long ago when the subject of this film came up. He said he saw it when it first came out, so I thought, “great, we can compare notes”. All he ever said was raving about the explosions ( of the depth charges ) about how loud they were. When I said that my take was that it was interesting seeing the war from their side, and all the other dynamics involved, I just got a blank, indifferent gaze. What a boob.
If we want to talk The Worst War Movie’s, I rented The Filthy Thirteen (2019) off Redbox because it advertises itself as based on the true story of the 101st Airborne Divisions infamous demolitions team which wound up being the inspiration for “The Dirty Dozen”. Looking at the poster it looks like it might be a good mid-budget movie, but nope. Not 5 minutes in you get clearly recorded on somebody’s phone video, the Normandy that the 101st Airborne drop into looks suspiciously like the Pacific Northwest with giant trees everywhere, and to top it all off, apparently the 101st Airborne had some budget problems because literally everybody is either using a bolt action rifle (definitely not a Springfield 1903 either) or literally Cowboy style lever action rifles. What they couldn’t find ANYBODY they knew who owned either a real or reproduction M1 Carbine or M1911? Hell, air soft guns would have looked better than that!
Also, The Human Condition trilogy (sorry for any reposts), Fires on the Plain, The Burmese Harp, Au Revoir les Infants, Three Godless Years, Oro, Plata, Mata.
My favorite’s the first.
I was reading an interesting article on James Stewart’s wartime service on the Quara website the other day. He apparently suffered terribly from what we call today PTSD. (The men in his unit called it “going flak happy.”) Still, he stuck it out and served with great distinction.
I saw this at Language Camp* in 1972! I’m sure the battle scenes were quite good, but the only thing I remember other than the ending is the two young lovers agreeing to meet “at the factory” the next day (which was probably 22 June 1941).
A much better classic Soviet war flick (IMHO) is Ballad of a Soldier, which starts with an infantryman knocking out a Panzer at point-blank range. To reward his heroism, he’s given a furlough to visit his mother in a village far from the front. The rest of the movie follows his journey home.
The scenes on a train are funny to watch dubbed into English—the other soldiers on board sound sooooo GI! (“Hey, Joe! Give us a cigarette, eh?”)
*Not Band Camp!
Only one mention of The Enemy Below? But that’s the best of TOS Star Trek episodes.
