It must have been traumatically blood-curdlingly stressful with all the vanquished victims horrifically screaming for ice cream.
I was under the impression that they were “dangerous” in the sense that against German Tiger tanks, they were under armored and the main gun was ineffective until they upgraded it. My “source” is the making of Fury, so take that as you will.
Churchill’s “Never in the field of human conflict” speech was mostly about bomber command though many people think it was only about the fighter pilots:
*"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain."*
Were bombers effective in the beginning? I’ve heard, but can’t cite, claims that the main contribution of bombers was to force a battle of attrition with the Luftwaffe, and that strategic bombing only became effective once the Allies had near-total freedom of the skies. Were the losses from say, 1940 to 1943 a net gain for the Allies?
Sure, Tigers would tend to destroy Shermans in idealized 1 on 1 tank duels. And that’s how we tend to think of history, because we imagine it like some boxers in a ring or something. Tank duels are a romantic, exciting notion.
But it’s not the most common danger tanks faced, especially on the western front. Most Sherman crews never saw a Tiger, but they saw plenty of bunkers, plenty of antitank guns, plenty of infantry running around with panzerschreks and panzerfausts. It had plenty of missions where they had to break through a static position and then pursue dozens of miles into the enemy rear, racing to cut off retreating forces.
And because of its excellent anti-infantry main gun, loads of onboard machine guns, good crew visibility, good crew ergonomics, good mobility, good reliability, managable logistical load, and ability to be repaired and modified in the field, it was actually very good at the tasks it actually saw most of the time. Oh, and its low cost and suitability to mass production guaranteed that they would be everywhere they were needed.
Panthers and Tigers were broken down most of the time. Theater-wide availability of those tanks on any given day would be somewhere around 30% of the force. And they’d break down in battle a whole lot. Going from memory, at their peak, there were fewer than 300 operational Panthers and Tigers available on the Western Front, and significant less most of the time. Encounter them was a rarity and sort of the stuff of legends - so it got written about and it distorts how we think about them.
But the reality is that it was relatively uncommon to encounter German tanks/assault guns on the western front, and most of those were stug 3s and panzer 4s, which the Sherman was generally better than.
The Sherman’s main job was assault on fortified positions, breakthrough, and pursuit. It was the most adaptable platform of any major tank of the war, seeing all sorts of upgrades and modifications. It was reliable, repairable, and logistically easy. It was actually an extremely successful tank. It’s unfortunate that the superficial history records it as being some sort of huge disadvantage or disaster.
You’re asking two separate questions. Was early war bombing effective, in that the destructive effect on the target worth the cost of the campaign in a vacuum? No. The US Strategic Bombing Survey pretty much concluded that the generalized daylight industry bombing campaign was only a tiny fraction as effective as we thought, and the British night bombing was only really effective as a terror weapon rather than significantly hampering the German war effort.
Only certain specific campaigns like the transport bombing campaign in 1944 in France and the Oil campaign of the same year were effective in achieving their goals.
On the other hand, during 1941-1943, which were the decisive years of WW2, the western allies weren’t contributing very much to the war effort, and so any forces they could tie down and keep from being deployed to the Eastern front could’ve ultimately been decisive. So materials that went into the U-boat war, the war in North Africa, and resources deployed to counter the bombing campaign all kept German resources from making that one push over the top that could’ve beaten the Soviets.
In that sense, the air campaign kept a whole lot of planes and anti-aircraft guns (which were also excellent anti-tank guns) defending German territory rather than going to the Eastern front. In that way, it was not only worth it, but potentially crucial in the war effort. But the actual effects of the bombing were pretty mediocre - if they had dropped pamphlets showing Hitler in women’s clothes instead of dropping bombs, and the Germans dedicated the same defense forces against them, they’d have probably still served their role.
Complete and utter tripe. For starters the Soviet Union no longer used Tank and Mechanized Divisions from 1942 on when the Guards designation came into use; tanks were either used in separate brigades or in 3-4 brigade Tank Corps. The Tank and Mechanized Divisions that existed in 1941 were not reformed when destroyed in battle, and the 1942 pattern Tank and Mechanized Corps were much smaller than and did not derive from the pre-war Mechanized Corps that the pre-war Tank and Mechanized Divisions formed. There were no Guards Tank Divisions in WWII, there were 12 Guards Tank Corps and 9 Guards Mechanized Corps. Much more importantly, distribution of Lend-Lease Shermans had jack shit to do with being given a Guards designation. Three Mechanized Corps used Lend-Lease Shermans, the 10 other Mechanized Corps and all of the Tank Corps, Guards or not, almost universally used T-34, T-70, and KV-1s.
I’m one of the first to point out how bad the mechanical reliability of the Panther was in all production models and that it didn’t just suffer teething problems with early production models that were later fixed - the teething problems were just obscenely bad, like the engine setting itself on fire - but operational rates were never as low as 30%. Just prior to the Ardennes Offensive
Even after the pounding of losing the battle, operational rates due to battle damage only dropped to 34%:
I think one of the worst possible roles has to be being drafted into the Volkssturm, aka the German home guard, at the very end of WWII. For a starter you’re going to be someone who the army hasn’t drafted yet due to age, so you’re gonna be getting on in years or not even an adult yet. Your training is minimal. Your uniform is an armband. Your weapon a rifle from the 19th century that you haven’t enough ammunition for.
And you’re being thrown into combat against the Red Army, one of the worst foes imaginable. They outnumber and outgun any other force in history, casualties will never deter them, they have one of the best tanks in the war (and lots of them) and will show you no mercy should you fall into their hands; if you’re lucky you’ll be shipped off for a decade or more to some Siberian gulag which you may not survive.
“Ya don’t get combat pay 'cause ya don’t fight.”
Funny, I was just thinking about Bill Mauldin this morning before I opened this thread.
Randall Jarrell.
Thank you.
Interestingly enough, the AAF’s own statistics show the ball turret as one of the safest gunnery positions to be in- apparently they were vulnerable to flak/fighters from below, but gained the protection of the rest of the aircraft for anything above the vertical plane.
That’s not to say that it was a good place to be; you couldn’t wear a parachute in the turret for one thing.
I bet they told that first part to the gunners, but not the parachute thing.
I recall seeing a pamphlet for air crew about the Me 262. They were flying to fast to hit you. 
Great video here about German vs the Allies tank production.
Jump to 26 minutes in.Key fact? 10,000 man hours to build a Sherman. 300,000 to build a Tiger.
The risk of burning to death if a fuel tanks was hit is probably exaggerated (but still real).
At first I thought that surely the Tiger had a better kill ratio than that, before I saw the extra zero.
Which is why I gave the qualifier 1944-1945. That’s the first time it was seriously outmatched vs the Tiger, Panther and Jagdpanther. and suffered huge casualties.
Being Bucky Barnes
Daniel V. Gallery, who commanded the crew which captured it, wrote a book about the capture. Along with several other books, both fact and fiction. :rolleyes: