Why Did German Tanks Perform So Badly in The Battle of the Bulge?
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- Опубліковано 10 лис 2022
- German tanks were completely ill-suited to The Battle of the Bulge Campaign. In this video we discover why.
Bibliography
Beevor, Antony. Ardennes, 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble. London, UK: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2016.
Caddick-Adams, Peter. Snow & Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Chamberlain, Peter. Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two. London, UK: Arms and Armour Press, 1978.
Chamberlain, Peter. British and American Tanks of World War II: The Complete Illustrated History of British, American, and Commonwealth Tanks, 1939-1945. London, UK: Cassell & Co., 2000.
Cole, Hugh M. The Ardennes: The Official History of the Battle of the Bulge. St. Petersburg, FL: Red and Black Publishers, 2011.
Holland, James. Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019.
Schneider, Wolfgang. Tigers in Combat. 1. Vol. 1. Winnipeg, Man.: J.J. Fedorowicz, 1994.
Because they lied about their emissions?
a german classic
Are you saying that the Panzers were VW's or Mercedes built? 🤔😋
Wouldn't they be doing better then... 😐
If only they had a mentally disabled girl chastising them
😂
My dad was a driver of a Sherman tank, 66 Armored Reg. 2AD. He said the roads were so bad, his Sherman slid off the road due to ice and became stuck in the verge. The crew had to bail out of the Sherman however, under enemy fire; that was when my dad was wounded. He didn't talk much about the war but over the past 40 years I wrote everything he said down. Dad passed in 2019, he was 98 years old.
Yep, contrary to the myth, the Ardennes was poor tank country for both sides.
Shermans also had problems in snow, ice, slush and mud. Their narrow tracks did not help them.
Your Dad's service is appreciated and thankfully he had a long life. We could do with more anecdotes from him, if you're willing to share, please.
Another story dad told me when he was in North Africa. There were little blue pebbles in the sand. The tank crew would put one pebble in their mouth, moving it around to keep your mouth from drying out. It was so hot that they fried eggs on the tank hull.
I asked dad once what was he doing prior to landing at Normandy. He thought about it for a long time, then he said. We played a lot of pinochle!
Our fathers fought together in 2nd Armoured. Mine was a TC.
My grandpa was a Hellcat gunner in the Battle of the Bulge ( 10AD ) and i remember asking him about it once as a kid. His response was brief, as it always was when i asked him about the war. "It was cold". Much later in life i learned his vehicle had an open turret ❤
The the engine inlet received air from inside the turret.
Hellcats in Europe? Just asking.
@anthonyeaton5153 yes, the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer
@@anthonyeaton5153where else would they be?
@@anthonyeaton5153if you are thinking of the plane that was used it Europe too. They were just not as common. The British used them too
My grandfather was in the 41st Armored Regiment and was part of Patton's relief of Bastogne. We spoke of the war often. I asked him about the Tiger and he said it had two specific weaknesses, neither of which is ever mentioned.
The 88 was an incredibly effective weapon, but it had an extremely long barrel. The problem faced by the Germans in the Ardennes is that in heavy woods, the turret often can't rotate because the barrel would hit trees and stop.
The second problem is similar to the first, but mostly was an issue for the Germans in open terrain. The Tiger's turret, being so heavily armored, rotated very slowly. In close quarters, a Sherman could move forward faster than the Tiger's turret could rotate. If the Sherman could get ahead of the Tiger's line of fire, it could outrun the turret rotation and they couldn't get a good shot.
Throw in poor fuel efficiency, poor reliability, poor logistics, and heavy weight and you have a tank that isn't nearly as effective as it could be.
Yeah, it's been often written that the Tiger's turret couldn't turn much to the point that some descriptions suggest the turret didn't turn at all, that the entire tank had to turn to aim. Is why the Panther was the primary MBT although the Tiger was feared whenever it appeared.
The Tiger taking 300,000 man-hours to complete is an insane statistic.
For some perspective, if you, by yourself, spent 16 hours a day working on one, every day of the week, every week out of the year, it’d take you over 50 years to make one. In other words, basically the average person’s waking hours for their entire adult life.
By comparison, a T-34-85 took around 20,000 man-hours, meaning that you could literally produce fifteen T-34-85s for a single Tiger.
@@michaelwong8083 34-85s are actually quite good tanks and we quite the danger to Tiger 1s. It is just insane how much better on the strategic level the T34s were.
@@michaelwong8083 "By comparison, a T-34-85 took around 20,000 man-hours, meaning that you could literally produce fifteen T-34-85s for a single Tiger."
Go watch Lazerpig's rant, and it is a rant, on the T-34 and its quality "issues". (have some popcorn ready)
@@rring44 The T-34 was a good design on paper but Soviet build quality left a LOT to be desired.
@@scottgiles7546 Lazerpig is great
For those of us who live in areas covered with concrete and asphalt, it is easy to forget how quickly unpaved roads, and open country, gets quickly plowed-up by heavy vehicles.
Light vehicles do it, too. The record for dust throwing with my ole 2005 Honda foreman was 50 feet in the air, and I was one of the biggest reasons the dirt road leading to North River was always just barely above the tundra 😂
Especially thousands of vehicles going through this sludge lol
After watching how fast tanks can destroy paved roads, I can’t even imagine a dirt road
try taking a wrong turn in rural PA while driving a semi.
...no it isn't.
.what is easy is for idiots to forget good logic and common-sese
The Germans simply overengineered everything. An WW2 Ordnance Corps officer in the US Army noticed that a German 105MM gun's breech block had almost three times the number of parts that the US version did, which provided no advantage. And I would bet the Russian version probably had even fewer parts than the US version
Yeah, I read a book once where a US engineer said that if you could build it with 3 parts the germans would use 5.
Read a book years ago that pointed out the Germans could have manufactured four Panzer 4s for every one King Tiger they produced. Luckily, they didn't because a Panzer 4 could still give a Sherman a fair fight
@@kevinkelly5780even if they made more panzer ivs. They wouldn't have the men to field them.
They had the men. It's a myth that the germans had to go for quality vs quantity. @@manz7860
@@manz7860 or fuel to drive them. Or the logistics to supply them. Or the spare parts to repair them
The lack of alloys was no joke there was a incident where a IS-2 group was shelling a position with HE when a panther caught them by surprise. Instead of wasting time unloading the shell they just fired at the panther. The shock from the 122mm HE cracked the sloped front plate causing the crew to panic and bail.
Late war there was instances of 75mm HE from shermans cracking the front plates of panthers.
It was not super common, but it really speaks volumes of the awful quality of german tanks and their steel by this point in the war.
german tanks in ideal condition were a formidable force to be reckoned with.
in the later stages of the war, steel quality, general supply situation and crew experience turned the once mighty enemies into a controllable issue that could be handled adequately
@@Gary_The_Metroin all soviet tanks it was ultra common though. In an account from a soviet infantrymen in the battle of Kursk he describes a panzer II with its tiny 20mm gun making a t’34s frontal armor plate slide off the rig. Meaning the weld holding the plate to each side literally snapped like plastic after a 20 mm round hit it.
@@bigsmokes2708 If it was "ultra" common, Germany wouldn't have needed to make overengineered crap to defeat them.
In 1940, the German advance had gone west-southwest and utilized the elaborated road network.
During the Ardennes offensive they were restricted to only 5-6 roads, and couple with that, you have roads that are very narrow and step, which increases fuel consumption considerably.
The few roads capable of handling the heavy German tanks, made it easy for the Americans to slow down Peipers Kampfgruppe by blowing up the bridges just as the Germans were approaching. Peiper himself is said to have said: "Those damned engineers".
Peiper's route was chosen by Hitler himself, an example of his ludicrous micromanagement of operations
But Americans act like its an insane accomplishment that they held off the german attack while having full artillery and air superiority and only having to defend 6 roads
@@jobvanhetkaar8848
In the first week of the offensive, Allied aircraft were all grounded by fog and bad weather. Some sorties were flown, but nowhere near enough to have an impact on the German advance.
But after 7 days, the weather cleared and the 'Jabos' went hunting again.
At the start, the Germans had more men, and more tanks than the Americans divisions stationed in the Ardennes.
The Germans: 250 000 German soldiers and about 1500 armored fighting vehicles.
The Americans: 80 000 men and about 80 armored vehicles.
Simpler put, 25 German divisions vs 4 American divisions, when the German barrage opened up in 16th December.
@@wolfu597 the Germans were very undersupplied from the start and they never had any significant air support. The Americans were being reinforced every day while the Germans didn’t even get enough fuel to make it to their set goals. It was a doomed offensive. It’s a miracle that they got as far as they did.
@@jobvanhetkaar8848 I agree, the Germans did well getting as far they did.
Many German generals suggested that the offensive should be limited to the river Meuse, because they knew all to well that capturing Antwerpe at this stage of the war was a pipe dream.
There were major fuel dumps in the Ardennes, but in order to maintain the element of surprise, the Germans hadn't conducted a proper reconnaissance of the area, and that led to some bad decisions on the German side.
One such instance, was with Kampfgruppe Peiper. After crossing the bridge at Stavelot, Peiper turned left in the direction of Trois Points and its bridge. Had Peiper turned right, he would have stumbled upon a massive Allied fuel dump that contained the 800 000 gallons of fuel that had been spirited away shortly before his arrival at Stavelot.
You can probably imagine how Peiper reacted when he heard that he missed out on 800 000 gallons of enemy fuel.
I think the point made about Tigers and Panthers being designed to fight the Soviets was spot-on. Those vehicles were designed to fight a very different war to what was then asked of them in the Ardennes in 44.
My thought too. In the steppes at long range they were the ultimate of their time. In terrain like Ardennes they were just a resource drain. If in combat it was like shooting quail (infantry, concealed AT guns at close range)with a 300Win Mag.
make's you wonder what happend to all of there Fast Attack tank's
lack of fuel, are you people that stupid?
@@creatorsfreedom6734 never had any…they were just catching people off guard
The Tiger wasn’t designed specifically to fight the Soviets. Quite the opposite, it was meant to be a breakthrough tank against the maginot line.
My father-in-law was a gunner in a Sherman Firefly. The 17pdr was certainly capable of penetrating any German AFV, but was needed in greater numbers than were available. He mentioned especially that they enjoyed greater manoeuvrability compared to German heavy tanks, mind you , he was fighting in France and the Low Countries.
Firefly was not a good design. The gun was too big and made the turret too cramped, the APDS round was too inaccurate, and the normal AP round didn't have enough performance advantage over the 76mm to warrant all the compromises.
it worked though, didnt it?@@gamesguy
@@lukeisadog not particularly
@@gamesguyWell it did. It was certainly a stop gap measure for better tanks, but it was a very powerful gun, and gave Sherman units a gun very capable against German armour. It wasn’t perfect but to say it didn’t work is very strange.
@@imperialinquisition6006 There is zero evidence the firefly made any difference whatsoever. American armored formations without it performed just fine against German armor.
My uncle, who ran a morter section in Third Army, noted that the German mortars employed a sophisticated optical sighting system, which allowed them to set up, and drop their first rounds on target in about 5 minutes. My uncle's mortars, with simpler sights, could be set up in seconds, fire a ranging shot, an adjusting shot, and fire for effect within 90 seconds to 2 minutes -- a 3 minute advantage.
Cool. I bet your uncle was proud he rolled with Patton's 3rd Army.
@@covercalls88 He didn't brag on it, but you could tell he was proud of serving in that outfit.
@@salamanca1954 He doesn't need to brag. Those who know anything about ETO knows who Patton was and the army he commanded.
Theres a comment by one german soldier about the roads being muddy bogs when it was over cast so they couldn't move. Then as the clouds cleared the roads froze enough to move and the airforce made sure they had to hide rather than move
The Typhoons and American ground attack aircraft were around all the time so the moment the fog started to lift, they were in
Another problem for the Germans when traversing mud and then having a very cold night was the mud buildup between those interleaved road wheels on the Panther, Tigers and many halftracks. Many nights that mud would freeze solid thereby immobilizing the vehicle and getting the mud off the inner wheels was a gargantuan task as was repairing any damage to those inner road wheels.
@@sirridesalot6652 It ain’t German engineering unless they make it needlessly complex.
To add to the performance of the Shermans -- the Sherman also featured a "unity" (1x magnification) sight which in urban combat makes target acquisition much quicker due to the large field of view it had. Crews also had numerous periscopes -- the driver, assistant driver, commander, and loader all had periscopes which could rotate and tilt allowing them to scan when not performing other jobs while most german tanks only provided this level of vision to the commander.
One really neat feature of the Sherman was that the commander had a scope that roughly emulated the gunners scope and also could take control of turret rotation. If the commander saw a target first, he could get the turret rotated and close enough for the gunner to get onto target quicker.
@@LordNinja109 And don't forget the early stablizers for their guns and the 76mm guns meant for the big cats.
people also kind of don't know that the 75MM gun of a standard Sherman can still penetrate even the front glacis of a Tiger at short range.... and in heavily wooden terrain, it's really easy to get to close range. The main gun of a Sherman is a hell of a lot better than most videogames would have you believe
Yeah, a very well positioned, dug in Tiger did a great job in one instance (as one should expect, tigers are pretty well designed weapon systems).... but in the average tank engagement it's a lot less one sided than some corners of the internet pretend
@@petriew2018 You are perhaps referring to the Tiger I. No Tiger II was ever penetrated from the front ever in the war by anything.
Petrie W
Sherman 75mm were proven to FAIL to penetrate the front of the Tiger I even under 100 yards.
I hate when people say allied tanks(Sherman mainly) were terribly made. The logistics behind them were absolutely insane.
Performed well in 4 different theaters. West Europe, east Europe, africa and the pacific
The people who call shermans bad are slightly nazistically inclined 12 year olds
Don't confuse the numbers of Sherman's compared to Tiger's or Panthers. The Sherman one on one didn't have a chance even when they finally started putting a gun on a Sherman that could penetrate a Tiger's Armour. The Tiger was a much better tank for a crew to survive in. I can't remember the Battle but a Tiger survived 90 hits from the Sherman's. The Germans didn't have but around 3,000 Tiger's compared to 50,000 Sherman's. When Patton crossed the desert the Tiger's were shooting the Sherman's down long before a Sherman could get close enough to fire. It was a much better tank. More Tiger's ran out of fuel and the crews left them than Sherman's destroying a Tiger. The Tiger's had the first Power Steering and it used a steering wheel instead of levers to steer a tank. The Gasoline in the Sherman's was more volatile than the Diesel Engines in Tiger's. At least gas didn't freeze in Sherman's. If there were 5 Tiger's taking on 5 Sherman's which didn't happen the Tiger's would have easily won that battle. The thing about a Tiger the Turret moved to slow. Look at the Jagapanthers. It didn't have a Turret but it was absolutely lethal to Sherman's. It just had to be positioned to it's advantage. If the Germans had 50,000 Tiger's things wouldn't have worked out well for our guys. My dad was on a Destroyer in the Atlantic for two years and on a PT Boat in the Pacific around two years and he was in the Occupation of Japan. He also had a Master's in American and World History. He told me what the Sherman Crews said about the Tiger's. They were just happy they didn't get hit by a Tiger. The King Tiger was a monster but two big for the roads of France. They would have been perfect on the Eastern Front against a T34 which was a pretty good tank. The Tiger was the answer for a T34 which was a better tank than the Panzers.
No German tank-none of them-could have done what the Sherman did in multi-theaters of war. The Sherman tank was greatly underrated, based strictly on it's inability to slug it out with German heavy tanks. That constituted probably 1% of the Sherman's mission scope, the other 99% of the time it performed admirably. The best German tank was the Mark IV, after that they were gas-guzzling behemoths with limited capability other than being artillery with limited mobility. The Tiger tank was a waste of German resources and the Panther tank was rendered a maintenance nightmare by adding too much armor on it after the fact. The final drive gave out frequently and it was difficult to service in the field due to it's torsion bar suspension.
@@kurtsherrick2066 The only thing the Tiger excelled in was tank on tank battles with smaller Allied tanks, and that happened very rarely. For the infantry support role the Tiger was almost useless-not to mention it guzzled gas in great volumes and the Third Reich was always short on fuel. The best German tank was the Panzer IV-had they concentrated on producing those instead of spending precious resources developing/producing the Tiger or Panther they would have been much better off. The Panther was a worthy effort to produce a better medium tank, but adding extra armor on it contributed to making it unreliable. The final drive gears in particular failed often-usually at the worst possible time. Many of the Panthers at the Battle of Kursk ended up broken down on the battlefield before they ever encountered Russian troops.
@@kurtsherrick2066 The Americans rarely fought actual Tigers. According to "the Chieftain", only 3 times was there a tank on tank duel against Tigers. The first, the Tiger lost to a flank shot by a Sherman. The second the Shermans won by virtue of the Tiger still being on a train. The third, the Pershing lost. When in combat, everyone sees the worst. All the tanks were Tigers, all the shells were 88's.
Huh, never thought too much about the spring loading of escape hatches being important. It's a great point about something almost ridiculously low-tech but making the job of exiting the tank, especially under life and death situations. This simple addition can help preserve experienced crews, requiring fewer new/replacement crews and therefore greater combat efficiency.
“Oh bugger. The tank is on fire.” .
In a hot firefight, having a heavy ass hatch fall on your noggin or elbow or hand.
Thart's not exactly how it worked out though, as unlike the German tanks Shermans tended to explode when penetrated.
@@WolfwaysIt kind of is. Sherman’s did not tend to explode when hit as far as I am aware(are you sure it’s not the old German propaganda about it always catching on fire etc…) . Good ergonomics and features like spring loaded hatches gave the Sherman, the second highest crew survival rate of the war.
@@WolfwaysBasically Nazi propaganda is what you are saying. “Oh yeah our tanks never exploded, but the Sherman’s always did”. Not according to any statistics I’ve ever read but who knows maybe you’re right. Not that it made a difference in the end did it.
That same fuel shortage also hindered training of German vehicle crews, both in the air and on the ground.
Exactly
One of the things I never understood was the Germans not including a periscope for the gunner. Both the T-34 and M4 had these.
The idea is that you drive your tank up the backside of a slope such that the commander, looking out through the cupola under his hatch, can see the target (or where an approaching target is planned to be).
In an Allied tank, the gunner has an optic (the main sight in the case of the M4) which is stuck through the roof of the turret such that he can see the same thing. In this position the enemy can only spot a couple inches worth of your tank while the gunner can directly see what he's going to be shooting at, and when the driver is ordered to advance to get the gun over the crest for firing, the gunner is already aiming.
In a German tank, the only optic the gunner has is directly next to the gun barrel. While it likely gives a beautiful picture through perfect and accurate German lens glass, it can't see through dirt. The commander gives a direction and description of the target and its surroundings to the gunner. The turret slews to the direction of the target, the driver advances, and only once the turret is exposed to enemy detection and fire does the gunner get his first view of the target area, hopefully with the target inside his field of view, and begins his aiming process.
Well tbh hull defelade that gives a perfect sightline like that is rare, and many of the ones that exist are flimsy. They probably saw it as an unnecessary add on.
The Commander and gunner had an azimuth indicator which made it quick and accurate to get on target. German sights also had a much better wide angle than allied optics. But yes, lack of gunner"s periscope was critizised by the the Germans themselves, too.
@@TTTT-oc4eb That's why I mentioned the Germans at least got the barrel pointing in the right direction before advancing.
They got superior optics, simple as that.
@@BerndBarsch Already covered.
My Dad was gunner on a tank during the Battle of the Bulge -they fought throughout -they finally had received AP ammo-Before when he hit a German tank the round would just leave white spot -there was intense shelling -he survived his tank being hit twice-only he and the driver survived one hit-I have a picture of him at the Rhine wiping his butt with a Nazi flag-he was my Hero❤
"wiping his but with a Nazi flag" AWESOME!!! I LOVE it!
The German's referred to the British Sherman's as Tommy Cookers, or even Ronson's (lighters), sometimes by the Brits themselves. The armor was less than the panzers. When the Sherman "Firefly" was equipped with the longer 17 pound gun it gave the British a chance against the Panzers. Because the Germans would attack these tanks first the gun was often camouflaged to make it appear shorter.
@@alfredeneuman6966 3/4 of that comment is a load of horse shit but yeah.
@@alfredeneuman6966 The American Sherman and Russian T34 tanks were the best all around tanks of WW2. Panzers were just as much "Jerry Cookers" as any Allied tank; i.e. the mark IV Panzer side armor was actually thinner than the Sherman and was of inferior quality. The difference was in tactics. German tankers had a lot more experience than Allied tank crews but once Allied crews learned the ropes they were more than a match for the Germans.
@@alfredeneuman6966 this is a well known myth, they didnt call them ronsons
I was under the impression that the King Tigers weren’t in the lead of the columns but in the back. Also, the 82nd Airborne Division would use captured PanzerFausts against their previous owners. They captured a truck load including practice weapons in Sicily and kept adding to their stocks of them. The final blow was finding an intact M12 HMC in a supply depot and moving it to high ground facing Peiper. The 155mn shells were the final blow to cause Peiper to retreat at night on foot back to the German lines.
Without authorization, American artillery units used newly developed proximately fused shells against the enemy. These were going to be used for field trials. They exploded at a certain height above the ground. The shrapnel would send infantry to take shelter, stripped those riding the vehicles off of them as well as damaging the mobility of armored vehicles via track breakage and penetrating the engine compartments from above.
The Ardennes famously were thought to be impenetrable to massed armor prior to WWII. This was based on sound understanding of the terrain by both the Belgians and the French. An army could traverse the area in 60 hours unimpeded (which is about how long it took the Germans) a well known fact in 1938. The failure in 1940 was that the 'precautions' necessary to impede armored forces like blocking troops, roadblocks and fortifications, mines etc were not there then. But they were in 1944.
What if, lol, the Germans had produced more of the Pzkwf IV's than the Tigers, they might have had a few hundred more tanks. Better suited to the terrain. They'd still lose in the end, but they may have gotten farther.
@@scottkrater2131 they’d also have been knocked out much more easily in the engagements they did have.
@@astratan2238 maybe, maybe not, there'd have been more, and their long 75mm guns were easily capable. They may have been able to overcome American tank units more easily. In the end they still would have lost.
@@scottkrater2131 I think that whilst the long 75s would have been perfectly capable, the big overmatch the Panzers had in most engagements was their own armour. Pz IVs were the least resistant of the options, and would have been more vulnerable to the proliferation of 75s and 57s in American hands. I think they might have got further as you say without just falling apart due to fuel and maintenance, but they would have been losing far more tanks when they actually engaged.
@@astratan2238 if Peiper, had been able to cross the bridge with his tanks, instead be forced to find another route because his tanks were too heavy to cross the bridge? Which also gave Americans more time to prepare a defense.
The firefly works, if you can fire first and accurately
But this shows the value of having mobile antitank abilities that can fit various circumstances
This was very educational, thanks
The "accurately" part was the problem.The turret was uncomfortable and the dispersion was terrible.The americans preferred going with the 76 M1 because of how bad the 17pdr was at anything but penetration.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 The 17 pdr was a much bigger gun than the 76. It could fit in the sherman turret but got in the way of normal operation and was very hard to reload so the first shot better be good! Putting it in the M10's open turret worked better as long as you remembered the armor was only good against splinters.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 The inaccuracy of the Firefly is only related to the APDS round, the normal shot, which could easily handle the Tiger I and the Panther was not that much different from the 76mm M4.
Nicolas Moran (The Chieftain) has a good youtube video out there on this subject. I totally agree with you on the poor ergonomics though.
@@ronhall9394 while the 17 pdr was a powerful gun in the same ballpark as the Panther's 75mm and Tiger's 88mm, it could not "easily" punch through their frontal armor. The Panther's glacis was a tough nut to crack, and a well angled Tiger was almost as well protected as a Tiger 2. There's a reason why Firefly crews were adviced to not engage in direct firefights.
lack of fuel, are you people that stupid?
The Firefly was not the Sherman 76. The firefly used the "3 inch" gun from the old 17-pounder towed gun, and while effective in armor penetration it was only a stop-gap, cumbersome and slow to reload. By the time of the bulge most of the anti-tank shermans were of the 76 type which was a much more functional purpose made design that left more room for the crew and was much faster to operate.
(All three guns were actually the same bore, they were designated 75, 3", and 76 to avoid supply mistakes as the chambers and pressures were different.)
There were also a few shermans with 105 guns but numbers were limited.
Neat thanks I didn’t know that about 3 inch vs 76 mm.
Just a note, the 105mm howitzer Shermans were used mainly as indirect artillery but could also be used as infantry support firing HE shells it was not designed as an improved anti tank gun.
The Chieftan's report on the Firefly is quite enlightening. He covers the pros and cons. One thing I did learn from that particular video was how incredibly accurate the American 76mm tank cannon was. OTOH, the 17 pdr shooting the sabot ammo couldn't hit a bull in the ass with an ironing board beyond 500m.
My uncle, Thomas Braidwood, was a gunner on a Tank Destroyer with the 803rd TD. They arrived at Bastogne at day light, the tip of the 3rd Armoured spear,. Thry immediately engaged J Piepers King Tigers just east of Bastogne, he knocked 3 of 4 out immediately, causing aa retreat and time for the 3rd Armto arrive in force to Bastogne. He and his driver told me the story a few years before he died in year 2,000.
Yeah... Peipers Kig Tigers were not near Bastogne to begin with, and to continue, my uncle once killed the Bigfoot while droping the Hiroshima bomb with his bare hands.
@@julenmarcossantamaria2762My grandpa was in the Coast Guard on a sub hunter in the Pacific. He once jumped overboard and swam down to an enemy submarine, broke into it, killed the enemy crew single handedly, and captured the sub.
@@thomascraig6814 Ha! Still More believebable than this guys story lol
In 1940, the heaviest German tank weighed 24 tons, one-third of a King Tiger.
And in May 1940, they had daylight from 5am until 10pm, in December it is dark until 8am and dark again by 5pm.
Great point!
'Military video visualized' trashes an argument that Panther was a medium tank. Germans just replaced medium tanks with heavy ones.
There is no set standard for "heavy" or "medium" and at 44 tons, a Panther was far heavier than any allied medium tank.
what a great point.
@@Ralphieboy There is.
Soviet WWII classification. light
Something i would like to point out that gave the shermans an overlooked but absolutely enormous advantage was their stabilizers. The 75 was a relatively light and small gun that was very easy to stabilize and shoot on the move. German tanks would have to come to a stop (imagine the rocking of your optics when a 50 ton metal behemoth goes from 20mph to a complete stop) this resulted in shermans being able to fire before the german driver was able to start slowing down.
They didn't have to come to a stop. Wittmanns Tiger at Villers Bocage famously fired on the move. His gunner took out two dozen targets while firing on the move.
@@lyndoncmp5751 there is not a single historical source that says he was on the move when they made those shots. Another lying fanboy.
Nate
Clearly you've never read a single work on the battle.
@@lyndoncmp5751 wow ive never heard of that one! Great source. Feel free to prove me wrong at anytime. The 88 was a heavy gun that was not stable at all on the move. Even the sherman had a hard time farther than about 500m and that was at a snails pace. In fact some questionable sources say it wasnt made to fire on the move. Just get your shot off faster than an 88 could
Nate,
Wittmann was well known to order his Tiger gunners to fire on the move in more than one occasion. It could be done. Just read Michael Wittmann and the Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte by Patrick Agte. Its all in there.
Conversely, Otto Carius said he never bothered because there was no point. He never said it couldn't be done. He said it just wasn't necessary in his opinion.
Yes the 88mm was a heavy gun but it was well balanced in the Tiger and the Tiger was a very stable gun platform.
Excellent post. Thanks for the background. My uncle Don fought in the Bulge. He was one of two out of his company to survive. His training as a sniper was the key to stay alive.
A lot of the these new tanks had been put together rather hurriedly with very little done with ironing out their teething issues, added to this the lack of raw resources, fuel, and a short supply of spare parts made it rather hard to regularly service their tanks to keep them in running order. This is something that was extremely important on the eve of a major offensive.
German (over) engineering with needle roller bearings in their engines didn't help either
From German records, 50% of the tiger crews abandoned their tanks because of mechanical failure. THE DAY HE DIED, WITTMANN had 17 Tigers in his command , only 3 were combat ready..
And when you're building them with starving, dying slave laborers, your workforce isn't exactly motivated to do a good job.
Knocked out tiger tanks were difficult to recover thanks to their weight; apparently tankers were forbidden to use a working one to tow another because that would wreck the engine in the working one. That situation could only be worse for the tiger II.
Difficult yes, but they did it. Only when the allies advanced did they have to leave them there or had to blow them up. When the Germans controlled the ground, they recovered and repaired them.
Two 18 tons Famo halftracks were required to retrieve a Tiger I. When a Tiger I was used to try and retrieve a Tiger I it often damaged the transmission.
Tigers couldn't even make it to the front on their own without frying their transition. They had to be sent by train lmao
@@nekrataali
How come the Tigers of Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 did a 300km plus road march to the Normandy front in June 1944 and how come the Tigers of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 504 did a 400km road march to Maknassy and back in Tunisia in March 1943.
Neither went by train.
@@lyndoncmp5751yeah but that only applies to pre-Stalingrad lmao they couldn’t do that once the Americans showed up or ever when the Soviets advanced
Good video, the German's created their own logistics headaches caused by lack of standardization. I was shocked with how many different and varied types of equipment Germany's Quartermasters had to deal with. It is a wonder they did as well as they did.
They got high on their own supply of propaganda. Every side in the war used propaganda, but the German higher ups actually started believing their own bullshit. General relativity was dismissed as "Jew physics," so the Nazis didn't accept an entire branch of science that would have helped their own rocket program.
You see this across their entire production line where ideology interferes with actual facts. To provide another example, the Germans rejected sloped armor at the beginning of the war because they thought "German steel is superior to Asiatic Judaeo-Bolshevik hordes and their cheap, iron imitations." Meanwhile, the Soviets were like "Hey, we can reduce a tank's weight and material costs without sacrificing toughness by angling the armor," which was then copied by the rest of the Allies who were like "Wow that's a good idea! We should do that too!"
So here the Germans are trying to build wonder weapons that destroy 50 Allied tanks for every German infantryman, while the Allies were like "lol Tiger gets pierced through the front and out the back at one and a half clicks!" You see similar problems with how the Germans counted kills among fighter pilots or included civilian massacres as enemy soldier deaths.
In the early years Germany didn't have that much variation. The real trouble came the longer the war got. While they developed powerful tanks they also kept tinkering with the designs building in improvements that unfortunately cut production time. The Tiger alone had three variants, early, mixed and late. And the Panzer IV the workhorse tank of the Panzerkorps had variants from A to G (with the F version even having 2 subversions) And then add all that foreign gear Germany used to pad their roster including German modifications of said gear. Only late in the war did they even think about using standard parts (the E Series) but at that point it was of course way too late
@@Athrun82 Interesting points, thanks for sharing! Still amazes me how successful they were with what they had.
@@mrgunn2726 To be fair the first wars Germany fought were short and decisive. Which in essence was Germany's whole doctrine since the Prussian times. Germany never had many resources so they developd doctrines that would account for that. In essence Germany had to fight a so called Entschleidungsschlacht as soon as possible to knock out their opponent early. The Blitzkireg is imho the pinnacle of that: a quick and decisive strike trough the frontlines to create the biggest possible shock to paralyze the opponent
Nazi Germany was almost autistic, basically their own worst enemy but that was how Hitler liked it. Similar to the chaos under trump
When I was stationed in Germany, I was a tour guide with the USO. One of our most popular battlefield tours was Bastogne. One trip, a German acquaintance brought his uncle who was a Panther commander during the offensive. His view was the approach march was almost as stressful as combat, "Narrow icy roads, and YES (his emphasis) tanks will skid." Also he mentioned the lack of fuel limited tactical flexibility ...
Yes- my Dad always felt fuel was a huge obstacle for the Germans...
Bastogne is in Belgium
@@imtheonevanhalen1557 ... Yep Bastogne is 240km away, from Kaiserslautern where I was. About 2-3 hour drive.
Peiper missed a fuel depot off a side road of his line of march. This depot was defended by a company of Belgian Foresters (light infantry) that placed a barrier of flaming fuel drums that Peiper’s forces didn’t investigate.
Very interesting and informative. Thank you!
So often, people look at the "hard" aspects of a tank, that being mobility, armour and firepower, and decide its value based off that.
But its the soft factors that have more of an impact. Ease of use, cost to build and maintain, crew comfort, fuel efficiency etc.
It is fully possible to have both.
in many ways the Tiger I fills these requirements. What few people know is that it was incredibly comfy to drive,with an actual steering wheel instead of levers and great ergonomics,even the frickin seatswere wrapped in leather. Cost and maintainability arent great but it ticks most of the other boxes just right. Always preferred the Tiger I over the panther because of its much better quality and better armor. If I had to choose any tank to fight in on a WWII battlefield, I´d pick the Tiger I
@@TTTT-oc4ebM1 Abrams and all of it's variants essentially.
I think the Ukrainians prefer to be using the latest tanks despite their cost and maintenance, lousy fuel efficiency and road limitations than the Soviet era "Jack in the Box" tanks that are simpler to operate and maintain. High tech means survival on the battlefield.
This video talked about the Firefly variant, but Shermans with the American 76mm high velocity cannon (not Brit 17-pdr) were also readily available during this point in the war. It could also take out Tigers and Panthers at competitive ranges.
Additionally, Shermans had the ability to shoot on the move due to its stabilized gun. German tanks, on the other hand, had to stop to shoot.
True !
Sherman tanks also had to stop and shot. The first that do it was the Abrams during the first golf war. The Sherman could fire first after stopping. Not fire on the move.
@@samuelgordino The Shermans actually had a good enough Gyro to shoot on the move but the issue was that very few crews were trained to use it so it was mostly left unused throughout the war.
@@samuelgordino Golf War? They were fighting about golf, or was it on a golf course?
@@frankmiller95 😂😂😂
Thank you for the concise summary.
Interesting presentation, very informative. Thank you.
Imagine being the guy who has to carefully explain to Hitler that this thing was easy to do when there were no people with guns in the way, but since there are now people with guns in the way it will be much less easy to do because driving through a forest is much harder when there's bullets flying at you
Hitler had many issues but fortunately he was not prone to shooting the messenger the worst that might happen if you kept disagreeing with him too much would be you might get reassigned to some lame command no chance to win glory in combat.
There are, not there's.
@@Mortablunt Precisely, Unlike Stalin Hitler never had anyone assassinated or sent to a gulag or death camp for disagreeing with him, certainly not a solider. (I'm clearly excluding the night of the long knives). Assignment to a lame command happened (eg Milch for being sarcastic on the Me 262 issue) or being frozen out of the inner circle. It was Goering that could be a nasty prick hounding a man to suicide as happened to Jenonshenk who Goering scape goated for Stalingrad. An assassination attempt was a different matter.
I speak German and have heard his ordinary speaking voice (to the Finnish Mannerheim as he discuses the suprising number of Tanks they discovered and their surprise at the T-34). He's normally shown ranting out of context at the peak of a speech in films I assume were used by and preserved by Allied propaganda but his ordinary speaking voice is often calm, even humble in moments as he admits small (and forgivable mistakes) and is affable even fatherly in moments. It's ingenious. He could be almost as folksy as Roosevelt could be on a fire side chat. Obviously as his Parkinsons took hold and health deteriorated and the stress corroded his body this must have left him. It's easy to see how he managed it.
They all knew there was at best 1 on 20 chance of success. The alternative was a 1 in 1 chance of simply watching the Wehrmacht get ground down in a series of defensive delaying actions
To be fair to the French, they simply didn't have the manpower to adequately defend the Ardennes sector, and the Belgian reluctance to spook the Germans once the war broke out in September of '39 caused them to not allow the French in, nor did they cooperate all that much with the French Army prior to May 10, 1940. Obviously, to no avail, as the Germans attacked them anyway. It was also the entire reason for the Maginot Line; the shortfall of French young men of military age was simply that they'd already "perished" in the testicles of their would-be fathers in Verdun et al. in the "Great War", or, as the French term it, "La Guerre 1914-1918". The Dyle plan was the answer, and it ASSumed that, with new-found motorized mobility, the German Army would do a variation of their "Schliffen Plan" that they'd tried and ALMOST succeeded with in 1914. Hence why the cream of the French Army stomped into northern Belgium, to engage the Germans who were already hammering through Holland, and also through the northeastern part of Belgium, on a line from their Fort Eben-Emael, taking by surprise in only 30 hours, to Liege, Brussels, and Antwerp.
And "engage" the French actually did, blunting the Panzers in two large tank battles in the first week, at Gembloux and then Hannout. It looked at first as if the Allies would halt the German thrust well before they got to Paris. It was when they found that the Germans indeed had more tanks (they'd thought there were still about 1,500 of them in Poland, guarding the Vistula from a surprise attack by the Soviets) and they COULD get them through the Ardennes! By May 15, 1940, Rommel's 7th Panzer ("Ghost" division) was beyond the Meuse, in strength, and plunging deep into France. The French C-in-C, General Maurice Gamelin, didn't know if the panzers were going to veer west-southwest, to drive directly on Paris, or drive down into the Loire valley, taking the reverse of the route that Patton's Third Army would take in '44, and take Paris from the rear. Instead, the panzers went west-NORTHwest, and drove for the Channel Coast, reaching it in five days!
really appreciate the effort of thorough unbiased historical documention/production.
Aye. How much I've missed it in this politicized world!
My uncle, Thomas Braidwood, killed 3 Tiger Kings the morning the 803rd Tank Destroyers arrived at Bastogne. Heard the story from him and the driver, John Maurine.
Another, “My dad was there:” Infantry, 106th Golden Lions; I paid a visit to the memorial in St. Vith. The Henry Fonda movie “Battle,” loosened my father’s tongue. I was in gestation during the Battle of the Bulge and was born a War Baby. (Capt. Grimes passed in 2008, age 95, interred Green Hills San Pedro adjacent to Fort MacArthur)
Did you know two regiments, the 422nd and 423rd, surrendered to the Germans on 19 January, 1944? The troops wanted to continue fighting.
@@exceptionallyaverage3075They had run out of food and ammunition and were surrounded. Troops were allowed to filter out from their positions back to American lines but the bulk couldn’t. It was a sad situation for this unit that was new to the front. The third regiment of this unit was near St. Vith and fought on proudly.
@michaeltelson9798 Yes, I know. The rank and file of those two regiments didn't want to surrender.
I think you missed the lack of an engineering capability to build bridges and support the advance. If the germans could cross any stream after a few hours delay it would have made a world of difference. The Americans could and did constantly bridge streams and rivers in surprisingly quick fashion using engineer battalions designed for that purpose.
The tank weight factors in there, though. Much easier to make something that let you bring a 35 ton tank across than a 70 ton one.
But yeah, the US did have a lot more toys. Hence why one German soldier said he knew the war was lost when he saw the US was all trucks, no horses.
@@Axterix13 logistics was always a very underrated factor in american war fighting. sherman himself was a master supply officer - when a confederate officer blew up a tunnel to stop his advance, he said sherman probably had a spare in his baggage train.
This was by design. That is, the Americans were fully aware that any tank they brought to Europe would need to cross the continent's plentiful streams and rivers. So, they designed a tank that would do the job on the battle field, but would still be able to cross most of Europe's existing bridges. If those bridges had been taken out, the tanks had to be able to cross the portable bridges that the army could easily transport with them. This is a major reason why the Sherman wasn't bigger and heavier. If it had been, it would have been much harder to get the tank to the battle.
My MIT-educated uncle (RIP) was a US Army combat engineer in WW2-Europe. I dont know if he was in the Bulge but he died around 2000 playing tennis.
@@DKWalser Can I offer a slightly different perspective? I recall reading something that said the Sherman's dimensions were dictated not by knowledge of E.T. conditions but rather U.S. transportation infrastructure constraints. I don't recall if the article contended it was railroad or shipboard environments that resulted in Sherman's "petite" size.
I love the format of these videos!! Great idea to open the second channel, and executed well too
I'm sure it's been accounted for in individual games where a club wrote their own rules, but the very idea of a bridge not being able to support a tank is such a small, obvious and incredibly important detail. It would make for an incredible game where the attacker doesn't know which bridges can be used to get his tanks across, while the defender is given the choice of where to set up ambushes and create diversions.
I have to make that a scenario to play out.
It's happening every day in real life in Ukraine.
Excellent, to the point info.
You are much appreciated. Ever since a friend forwarded me you Midway video I have loved your content. You do what I wish I could do.
Excellent summary. It's fascinating how much popular culture has influenced perceptions about German armour. Great job!
And more recently, that space has been polluted by gamers.
Uh no half of this is straight nonsense biased 😂
@@Sccrd4Lfe
*_"Uh no half of this is straight nonsense biased"_*
Bias, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Do you have any evidence of this bias?
Great work THank you
Nice video. Good info, good script, good film, and good narration. Nice of you to mention the enhanced survivability of the Sherman. I'm pretty sure that I have read that it was the most survivable of all full size tanks in the war. Five hatches, including one on the bottom. The electrically operated turret was also a big advantage. From ambush, you could rotate the turret while the engine was off. German turrets ran off engine power, and to rotate the turret as fast as possible you had to really wind the engine up. That's not an ambush anymore. "Hey! We're over here!"
M4 track width"
The image of the Sherman Firefly at 10:24clearly show the extension "duckbills" attached to the outside of the track links. There were also "grousers" which added a full-width "blade" to the track links for improved traction in mud, ice and snow.
Yep. I noticed too that Firefly sporting the track extensions. Those were cheaply manufactured by the tens of thousands in Europe itself, in liberated countries like France and Belgium and widely distributed by December 44.
Yes and they were not that great. Most Shermans in the Ardennes had regular narrow tracks. The Shermans had as many problems in the terrain as the German tanks did. In fact Sherman tankers complained about the superior flotation of Panthers and Tigers.
Great video. A couple additional points. The Germans lacked a purpose built, mass produced tank recovery vehicle for their heavy armor. The Germans did not field the number of engineer units, or bridging systems to compensate for the mobility challenges they faced. Historical quibble: Peiper put his Tiger II unit last in his order of march for precisely the reason you outlined. The opening of this video would cause a viewer to think he led with them.
Yeah I've heard it took 5 large half tracks to try and recover a Tiger that was stuck.. not ideal and very dangerous
They produced more than 300 Bergepanthers with reinforced final drives.
@@TTTT-oc4eb that might address the Panther, which by all accounts was a medium tank, whose maintenance issues are a worthwhile topic of their own. My comment was more directed at the heavy tanks….Tiger 1 and heavier which were the subject of the video.
@@Eloso3135 Bergepanther is German for salvage Panther, who could then salvage any type of tank
*_"The Germans lacked a purpose built, mass produced tank recovery vehicle for their heavy armor."_*
The Bergpanzer was a converted PzKpfw IV which was designed as a rescue vehicle. It was actually quite successful. The problem was that the German super heavies required more of them. Ar Kursk, it took no fewer than five Bergpanzers to recover a Ferdinand.
One issue worth considering is the supply & fitting of bearings on these complex vehicles. Not just the weight, but the size, number & quality of bearings for all heavy vehicles must have been a Gigantic cost factor. I believe there was a factory at Swinfort (probably wrong spelling, sorry) that made them. The metallurgy & fabrication of bearing components is complex. I know it was a major problem. So was the supply of effective lubricants to keep them functioning.
Lubricants was a big problem for Germany. The coal-gasification process they used could produce fuel, but not lubricating oils/grease. That had to come from natural petroleum and Germany had limited resources of that. Even the synthetic fuel they produced could only make 87 Octane fuel efficiently, when they tried to make 94 Octane for improved performance of their aviation engines the quantity of fuel they could produce went way down. The only source of natural petroleum they had was the Ploesti Oil Fields in Rumania, hence the Allies interest in those bombing raids. Germany tried desperately to seize the Caucusus Oil Fields in Russia, but got distracted in Stalingrad and we all know how that turned out. Had they focused on the Russian Oil Fields, the war in the east may have gone differently. Germany still would have lost because this was a war of production and they were outmatched by the Allies, but the losses they suffered in 1943 in particular might have been significantly curtailed.
A well known limitation, once Timken had been persuaded not to export to Germany. Hence - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinfurt%E2%80%93Regensburg_mission
Good information about the Battle of the Bulge.
Nick Moran "The Chieftain" makes the point that the Sherman's design weight was limited by the capacity of typical port cranes.
CommonZense if you are shipping thousands overseas!
@@zen4men Cheaper by they dozen!
@@douglasstrother6584 Mass production lowers costs
Any large, decent army can do reasonably well when they can drive or use rails to move their equipment, arms, vehicles, parts, med supplies, fuel, ammo, food, clothing, staffing to the fight. What was truly amazing is that the US projected their power across two different oceans, those are some long supply lines.
Logistics become everything, weight, size, and durability were the watchwords.
Good recap. Excellent points about horrible roads in Ardennes. The more recent books about the Bulge also make the following points: 1) Germans were scrapping up whatever they could to reconstitute their Panzer divisions......so 70% of armor was Panzer IVs and Panthers supplemented by Stugs, JgPzIV-70, plus even Jagpanthers.....2) the armor divisions were woefully underequipped in terms of the number of halftracks to carry the Panzer Grenadiers.......3) German tanks were more vulnerable to attacks by US bazookas because US artillery drove of the accompanying infantry who had to traverse on foot 3) each Belgian village was a strongpoint especially early on when armor could not leave the road without fear of getting bogged down... read up about Krinkelt, Rocherath, Dom Butgenbach, and other northern shoulder of Bulge battles plus Hosingen, Vielsalm, etc...
No tank types performed great in the Ardennes on either side. It was poor tank country all around. Hills, woods, narrow twisting roads, small bridges. Even a 25 ton Jagdpanzer IV collapsed a bridge and they were nearly ten tons lighter than a Sherman.
The allies didn't move any faster during their counter attack in January. They struggled in the terrain and weather too. The overwhelming majority of Shermans in the Ardennes had narrow tracks which were not good in snow, slush and mud.
Over 500 Shermans were lost in combat in the Ardennes, which was more than all the German armour types lost in combat combined.
I read an article online a few years ago.
This article stated that when Germany entered hostilities in 1939, about only two of their five mechanized divisions had half tracks for the infantry. The other three divisions either had infantry ride in trucks or the infantry had to ground-pound. I believe I'm recalling this correctly.
Not exactly the number of MTOE mechanized divisions that I think a casual observer would assume a country that implemented modern armored dynamic mobile warfare.
@@lyndoncmp5751
Actually-
-for slush and soft ground, you are correct, a narrow width of track is unfavorable.
However, unless we're talking about snow that won't hold a tank for the first 18 in, a narrower width of track will help place more weight on fewer square inches and thus should offer better direction of travel traction. It's the same semi-truck tires and automobiles; assuming some sort of a road under the snow, you're better with a relatively narrower tread generally.
Where tracks can get dicey is movement tangent to the direction of travel. Bulldozers have pieces that can be fitted to tracks to prevent lateral movement say downhill sides.
On ice, a narrow track or a wide track is not very useful unless there's something on the track that can dig into the ice such as studs in rubber tires.
@@lyndoncmp5751 very true!
@@michaeldunagan8268 true at start of work and even worse during the battle of the bulge. Everybody has this image of Panzergrenadiers in halftracks but that rarely happened in Bulge. For example, in Zaloga's "Smashing Hitler's Panzers" he points that only 1 of the 3 grenadier regiments of the Hitler Jugend Panzer Division had halftracks. When you read the accounts of German attacks at Dom Butgenbach, Rocherath-Krinkelt, Lausdell Crossroads, etc.....the Germans attack with tanks but the infantry are on the ground and consequently get hammered by US artillery
Very interesting and informative presentation. And thank you for doing your own narration rather than AI.
About sums it up. Great post 👍
This was great, thanks a lot for the explainer! Keep up the great content! God bless :)
Wow! This is simply a spectacular piece you have brought to us. I thought I knew something about German and Allied armor but certainly not compared to you. This was a joy to watch and learn from. How in the world did you come onto to some much unfamiliar footage and pictures? You get top marks for one of the very best WWII summaries I have heard in a long time.
True , then army engineers blowing bridges able to support weight of tanks, Germans wasn’t carrying substitute bridging with them, time was not on their side.
I wouldn't consider many of these images/clips unfamiliar. A lot of them come from German newsreels/reports and propaganda made about the offensive. The rest, British/American newsreels about it. WWII was incredibly well documented, especially at this point.
Its a very flawed narrative.
No tank types performed great in the Ardennes on either side. It was poor tank country all around. Hills, woods, narrow twisting roads, small bridges. Even a 25 ton Jagdpanzer IV collapsed a bridge and they were nearly ten tons lighter than a Sherman.
The allies didn't move any faster during their counter attack in January. They struggled in the terrain and weather too. The overwhelming majority of Shermans in the Ardennes had the 75mm gun and had narrow tracks which were not good in snow, slush and mud.
Over 500 Shermans were lost in combat in the Ardennes, which was more than all the German armour types lost in combat combined.
One thing to keep in mind about the sherman is that germany didnt actually think they were easy to knock out despite the damage and losses they sustained. Chieftain has a good video on that
No tank is "easy" to knock out.
When the Germans got back into the Tank production business, they focused on a tank with light weight, and produced the Leopard 1. The designed it based on the lessons that the Sherman taught them.
Happy to see the M36 TD with its 90mm gun showing up a couple times, in particular there at 9:45 while talking about the not spring loaded German tank hatches.
Anyone who has owned a German car can relate to this video: awesome performance, crazy maintenance and complexity.
my previous car was an audi a4. the subwoofer was garbage so i wanted to replace it, but it was built into this cage in the rear deck that i had no idea how to disassemble. in a japanese car a rear speaker would just be bolted into the rear deck, but noooo the germans have to overengineer the fuck out of it, and it sounded like garbage anyway!
@@oldfrend Wife had a VW Pasat. To change the timing belt, you have to remove the entire front of the car. In my f150 you only have to remove the fan shroud if you don't want to bust your knuckles.
@@3rdworlds also! there's no drain plug in the oil pan! to change the oil you need this vacuum extractor thing that you snake down the dip stick tube! the fuck?!
@@oldfrend I’m fairly certain every procedure in a German car’s service manual starts with “See procedure IN1: removing glovebox.” They’re built like Matryoshka dolls
Unless of course you owned a bug. Lol
First, Happy Veterans Day to our Veterans we appreciate your service. Sad most of our WW II Veterans have passed. They fought the good fight with honor and led the free world to victory, many with their lives. Great video on German tanks. I'm sure there will be much discussion and debate which tank was overall the best German tank of the battle. I'm going with the Panzer IV.
...the democracy delivers!
Well, many people appreciate their service
@@4fingers183 Thank god the Germans will be African soon.
@v12 Thanks for the feedback. Sometimes best isn't overall best. Like what was discussed in the video about fuel economy. If the tank uses too much fuel, that's a demerit. There is a lot to factor in and to consider as best overall.
And to think that this very day their sacrifices may be all undone in vain. The Nazis have arisen anew in Europe and we must stop them. Nazis and their collaborators wear their faces on postage stamps, a government puts Nazi statues in the town squares and calls them national heroes while sending soldiers armed with old Nazi emblems to murder its own for the crime of their heritage. The Nazis must be stopped in this year as in those years. Demand an end to support for Ukraine. Not one bullet for the lovers of Bandura not one boot for the nationalist battalions not one cent who are they who repeat the words flown next to Heil Hitler on the old banners. Demand an end to support for Ukraine, stand with Russia once again against Nazis as did our grandfathers.
My old man was a tanker during WW2... North Africa and Italy. Did'nt ever talk much about the war, but as a kid I made a comment about tanks being safe because of the armour. His reply shocked me. "No" he said, "Not that safe!" " Fire was the problem.... then you got cooked inside like in an oven!"
"Horses for courses". The Pz II and the 35/38t were ideal for Ardennes 1940. Tiger IIs and Panthers were a disaster there in '44.
Well described and reasoned analysis.
Forgive me if I'm talking out of my butt, I thought I read somewhere one of the reason's Germany built a smaller number of Tiger tanks instead of twice as many Panzer-IVs for example was because they simply wouldn't have had the manpower to man that many tanks and they absolutely could not afford to lose tank crews, so survivability on top of being able to go 1 vs 4 for example was paramount.
Naw it's more like they got high on their own supply of propaganda, especially later on in the war. It's not that a Tiger could take on five Shermans...it's that there were five Shermans for every Tiger and each one was capable of soloing the Tiger. Because the US was producing so many Shermans (by the end of the war Detroit was making more tanks in a month than Germany had operational), Shermans were designed to keep the crew alive so they could be rotated back in when their tank was knocked out.
For the most part, the Nazis thought their wonder weapons would win them the war. They began juking the stats in their reports and documents to inflate their success because they didn't believe untermenschen were actually capable of destroying glorious German steel.
Yeh i think this point often gets overlooked. Even if they had the manpower, Germany was not going to outpoduce the americans, soviets and british combined, especially with the US mainland completely untouched.
They went for quality because they where never going to win on quantity.
the most unreliable part of German heavy tanks (Panther, Tiger II) is the over engineered final drive. However it is not a design choice, it is due to the lack of raw material that they have to make it 'over-engineered'
The Panther final drive was NOT over-engineered. It was under-engineered. It was designed for a much lighter tank, and then Hitler insisted on up-armouring the Panther so much that he added more than ten tons to its weight.
@@michaelwong8083 It wasn’t Hitler’s idea to armor it up but the OKH. The German tank companies design tanks that fulfill the OKH requirements.
Tiger final drives were different and much more durable than the Panther's. Furthermore, many of the final drive failures were also due to combat damage, they were very vulnerable to artillery.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Artillery less so, more that the Germans simply could not replace any worn out final drives. All the potential spare parts were soaked up to build more tanks, and Germany was at a such a bad state that they needed those tanks more than they needed their current pool of tanks to be sustainably effective.
Combat damage came to be as a result of combat maneuvers being much harder on the drives than cross country or road travel.
@@terran6686 once a Tiger or Panther unit was discovered, the allied would direct as much firepower as possible against them, mostly artillery and tac air. This would often result in most or even all tanks damaged, but few outright destroyed. 503 schwere abt. reported that 2/3 of final drive failures were due to combat damage.
My great uncle was a motorcycle messenger in the 1106th Combat Engineer Group (I have a copy of their campaign map). He was under direct enemy fire during the Bulge and played ‘opossum after being forced to hit the deck to escape capture.
I saw a special on tanks.
It points out how tank design is a balancing act.
Firepower - Armor - Speed - Complexity - and other things, even comfort for crew. (If the crew is sweltering in the heat or freezing in the cold how effective will any tank be?)
- As you can see, Heavier armor, like the Tiger 2, means more protection but it also means heavier, slower, and a gas guzzler.
Shermans often get looked down on for several reasons but once they got out into open fields they proved themselves with their speed and reliability.
Also the lack of fuel. They still have a preserved Tiger 2 in Belgian La Gleize, where it ran out of fuel and was sold to a local lady, from an Inn!! Also a small Museum, which I sadly missed during my years as a long distance walker in Belgium.
For those that are interested in this subject, an excellent follow up on this video is "Myths of American Armor" by The Chieftain: ua-cam.com/video/bNjp_4jY8pY/v-deo.html
That has its own myths and revisionism in it so don't take it as gospel.
Because they ran out of fuel and had no air support when the weather cleared.
Seeing that welder flinch when slag landed on his arm is such a mood
I was really happy to see how much the Allied bombing campaign hurt tank production and quality. Also, this new channel is OUTSTANDING. I've read so much about WW II and seen many history videos. This presents a different analytical approach that is very, very intelligent, insightful, and fresh.
also give the allied navy credit for this. it was the blockade that denied German a lot of resources they needed, fuel being the most important. Can't have a lot of low quality tanks if there is no fuel to drive them
Not to mention how many flak pieces were used in the west to stop the RAF and USAAF bombers that could have been used in the anti-tank role in the east, the the Soviets may not have been able to win without it.
It really boils down to economics. Which economy can outlast the other. The Anaconda Plan executed by the Union Army in the Civil War took a while longer to end that conflict but in the end it succeeded.
@@billywird You've no doubt heard the terms "necessary and sufficient" and "necessary but not sufficient". Saying "it really boils down to" is tantamount to saying that economies are "necessary and sufficient" to win a war. I present this counterargument: The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong had a much less substantial economy than the US but they won the Vietnam War, principally because (in my view) they could "outlast" the political will of the US. I would argue that Mao beat Chiang on the same basis. We'll see how Ukraine does vs. Russia (although Ukraine has had a lot of economic help of course). Japan was banking on the US lacking political will in 1945 but the atomic bomb and the Russian entry into the war (same day as the second atom bomb fell) were huge factors in the Emperor authorizing surrender. I think economies surely make a difference but they are "not sufficient" in all cases.
@@emmgeevideo Our American Revolution was accomplished on the same can do with nothing desire to win our independence from England just as the North Vietnamese prevailed against the US in Vietnam. From an economic standpoint the US could have stayed in Viet Nam for as long as it wanted. But the Vietnamese prevailed politically just as we prevailed politically over England. But both the Vietnamese and the Colonists needed financial help from other nations. The reasons for war are generally economic and it really boils down to one economy prevailing over another for the duration. In both World War I and World War II it was a large economic struggle when you get right down to it. And of course in war as in peace there is always someone making money off of war. Even in Viet Nam the United States was footing the bills for the prosecuting of that war. Of course there was people making money off of the war here in this country and it was also supporting the South Vietnamese economy. It was a boom for them those that were making money off of that war did not want it to end. With the changing political winds here in the US it finally came down to Congress not allocating the funds and of course with the withdrawal of US forces South Viet Nam fell.
Really interesting to hear the numbers on the man hours to build and fuel consumption of these vehicles. The enemy may have great tactics and fighting spirit, but most times it seems like a numbers game.
Logistics is what wins wars. It doesn't matter how good your troops are, how advanced your equipment is or how righteous your cause is, if you can't get it to the front, keep it operating and replace your losses. Once the Americans joined the war properly, and were able to orient their mammoth industrial capacity to supporting the war, it was OVER.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II
As one of my history lecturers summed it up; the war was won with British brains, Russian blood and American bullets and beans.
"not even the tiger 2's frontal armour can stop an anti tank round fired from the firefly" meanwhile shows a picture of a tiger 2 getting penned on the side
tiger 2's thinnest effective armour on the front is 185mm, firefly has 171mm penetration at 10m, it can definitely pen a tiger 2 from the front
By the battle of the bulge, they would probably already be using a better shot with 190mm penetration. But due to sloped armour it probably would not penetrate anyways.
Still would make a seriou damage to the structural integrity of the armour, considering the German late war quality. I believe APDS could kill it thought
I climbed around inside of a Sherman that was displayed at a salvage yard when I was a kid. Even as a kid, the inside space seemed incredibly small.
Thanks for pointing out the importance of the spring loaded hatches on the Sherman tank. A simple yet important fact easily overlooked by history.
The same thing with the Japonese Zero. It was faster and more maneuverable than Americas fighters but it had no armament protection for the pilot and its fuel tanks did not have bladders to avoid gas vapors. One round through the tank and it would catch fire.
A very interesting video, but it does feel like a couple of things are missing here:
1. For all of the faults of the Tiger 2, one of the problems was that it was used outside of its designed purpose. The Tiger was a breakthrough tank - it was built to punch a hole in the enemy lines while soaking up some damage, and then the lighter, medium tanks would exploit while the Tigers were taken back behind the lines for maintenance. Being used in combat for weeks on end was not a thing they were designed for, and the longer they were in combat, the harder it was to keep them running. They took a long time to make, yes, but at the same time they were never the main focus of German tank production in the late war - the main focus was the Panther, of which thousands were made.
2. The problem with the Panzer IIIs and IVs was that by 1943 they were becoming obsolete and reaching the limit of what could be done in terms of upgrades. The Panthers were designed to be their replacement and the next generation of German medium tank. They had a lot of problems of their own, many of which amounted to being rushed through development, but moving on to new models was necessary. So, yes, the Stug III and Panzer IVs were cheaper, but with the arguable exception of the Stug (which had taken on the role of a tank destroyer), continuing to produce them would have left the Germans relying on outdated equipment. And, if you do take the Stug as an exception, you still run into the issue of it having a very different role in combat than the breakthrough tanks - they are not comparable in a "Germany would have been better off building X" way.
The Tiger and Tiger II were not well-suited for combat in Northwest Europe, with its forests and extensive urbanization. On the Western front in 1944-45, what relatively few were engaged there were usually kept in a defensive role, guarding reconnoitered lines of advance against Allied armor, able to pick them off while still outside effective range of the enemy tank guns, then using their relatively limited mobility to move to another firing position, often pre-dug by pioneers attached to their panzer battalion, once retaliatory air or artillery strikes began to fall. On the offensive, Tigers were still vulnerable to flanking shots.
The general open terrain of the Eastern Front better suited the Tiger's thick frontal armor and heavy firepower, where it was better able to pick off Soviet armor while shrugging off retaliatory fire. By the time it was in significant numbers on the Eastern Front, the Heer was almost always on the defensive, or the run, and such warfare also well-suited its usefulness on defense.
Theres something to say about quality over quantity. But only to an extent. The shermans are considered by some to be the worst tank in late ww2. But theyre dead wrong. They had the highest survivability of any tank made in real numbers. And were more than capable of taking out most tanks. Killing tigers was the job of american 76 tank destroyers. The sherman was an infantry support tank. My point being the germans focused too much on very heavy expensive to run and repair tanks. Also resulting in them constantly breaking down due to a lack of replacement parts. The sherman was the perfect tank for ww2. Easy to ship, drive, produce, repair, and replace. Had very few casualties. And was meant to do a few things very well. The russians also knew this with the t34. Though it had many shortcomings compared to the sherman due to it being an older tank made with any materials available
@@natelav534 Generally agree, but the Germans didn't "focus" on the "heavy, expensive" tanks. The Tigers were indeed very costly, but their role and production numbers were by intent limited; they were not to be the main battle tanks of the Panzerwaffe. The Panther was only about 35% more expensive that the Panzer IV that it didn't entirely replace. The latter, although very much outdated by 1945, was still effective due to decent automotive performance and having an adequate 75 mm L/48 main weapon.
The Panther was hampered not so much by its design, although "feature creep" caused it to be quite a bit heavier than originally planned, but by manufacturing troubles which also plagued other German AFVs. The biggest issue was that the planned final drive with helical gearing never came off, the Panther had to make do with the same unit as the Panzer IV, hence why it was trouble-prone. That and use of foreign and/or slave labor at Neibelungenwerke caused huge QC issues.
Even had the Germans stuck with the Panzer IV as the principal battle tank of the Panzerwaffe, as Guderian wanted, they still wouldn't have produced them in anywhere near the numbers to match Soviet, UK, and USA production. And what of crewing them and supplying them with fuel and ordnance? The Panzerwaffe could barely run what they did have! As of quoted: amateur talk strategy and tactics, the "pros" talk of LOGISTICS. Gemany LOST the part of the war dealing with logistics very badly.
The surviving 30 Tiger IIs of Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 501 left the Ardennes area and in mid January 1945 were entrained near Cologne and transferred to Hungary, where in February they lead the SS attack and were instrumental in the Germans retaking the Gran bridgehead off the Soviets.
In the open tank country there they could use their advantages to great effect.
Nate Lave
Give the survival rates of all tanks built in numbers in WW2 and cite your sources so we can compare.
Great video, but just some clarification needed. The 17 pounder on the Sherman Firefly could penetrate the Tiger II armour but only within 500m with a well placed shot. Beyond that it was very unreliable at penetrating.
I can't see the 17 pounder penetrating the Tiger II even under 500 yards. They struggled with the Panther at that range with APDS often breaking or bouncing off. The Tiger Armour was very slopped more than doubling its effective thickness.
"It aint got no gas in it"
WAIT! The Sherman wasn't a death trap?
And the 17 pounder was long considered the second best anti tank gun of WWII.
Thankfully, this isn't Hollywood! For all the good points of "Fury" and many other productions, it's so incredibly refreshing to hear good, first-hand information about Shermans, instead of making it out to be some glorified glass coffin by story-tellers.
But but, belton Cooper said they were...
Sherman crews only had a 3% fatality rate on average.
@@huntclanhunt9697 not to mention people seem to ignore that cooper's book is a memoir...
The reason that ex-Panther crews did not complain about their tanks slowly catching fire, is that those Panthers went boom and did not leave much crew to complain.
Another detail: the Panther is as costly as the Panzer IV. All the added options and features and improvements did not help make the PzIV cheaper.
Just for comparison:
A Merkava tank (Mk1 to Mk4) takes ~30 minutes to change the entire transmission and engine block, with only 21 bolts needed to be opened.
One cannot change a car engine this fast.
Depends on the car. I remember back in the day when VW meets would have a race where you drove your car to a line, pulled the engine out, put it back in and then drove away again. Those times were well under 30 minutes. But then a VW engine was held in by to nuts and two bolts and about five wires. And, one big guy could pick up the entire engine.
Merkavas are famously workable
I know an ex NZRAF engineer who reckons that back in the day a good crew could change the engine in a Skyhawk in 45 minutes ...
@@Mishn0 Yep. Worked pit crew for Formula IV road races back in the late 1970s early 1980s in Waterford MI. We would swap out whole engines relatively quickly.
My mechanic removed the engine and tranny on my MG Midget in 15 minutes. The first time that I tried it took 3 days w/a Chilton manual.
11:13 Might I ask the exact source of this description? I'd love to use it myself but I'd like to also be able to cite it precisely.
From my own studies: the Tigers encountered bridges which they couldn't cross due to weight limitations, they were fuel hogs and fuel was getting low in Germany, ammunition was getting low in Germany, fresh troops were less trained and less experienced, and the entire offensive required bad weather to ground Allied aircraft. Add to that the unexpected resilience and resistance of the American soldier. The Germans should have studied the American Civil War to better understand the type of soldiers they were facing.
Wow. Amazing. Simple Working tank better than superior over engineered tank. Love the series
Damaged Tigers took a long time to haul back to a repair facility, get repaired and return to battle. Hitler wanted a 1000-ton tank. His generals had a difficult time changing his mind. Can you imagine the military resources that would have been wasted?! And, of course, the Allies could simply have out-maneuvered it.
The question is. Would Germany have been better of only making Stugs and Panzer IVs? Some say yes some say they would not have logistics to support so many more tanks anyway
Yeah many people think the Germans were stupid for making high cost, complicated tanks, but in reality it was their only option because they never would have won anyway if they tried competing head to head in a mass production style war against the soviets or Americans, since Germany was a smaller country than both of them from the start, that's why they thought they could win with the "quality over quantity" mindset.
Thinking only of the fuel consumption, would you rather have five Pz IV and StuGs or two King Tigers?
the panzer 4s weren't reliable at all. It says something when your most reliable tank is the tiger. The thing is the panther was a less complicated design that wasn't that much more expensive than the panzer 4
Its a difficult question because at face value one would say 'yes', until you factored in that the Allies were making newer and better tanks as well. The Soviets especially, once the IS-2s hit the field in 1944 the StuG's and Panzer IV's were completely inadequate against them, they needed Heavy Tanks and Tank Destroyers equipped with the 8.8.cm Pak 43 to fight them. The T-34-85 and the 76mm equipped Sherman's also closed the gap in the firepower department against the German mediums, turning what would have previously been a 70-30 or 60-40 engagement in favour of the Germans against T-34-76's or 75mm equipped Sherman's to a 50-50 or a 55-45 engagement against the Germans.
@@madgavin7568 This is very true, and with that I would conclude that they definitely should have taken the middle road in focusing on Panther and Tiger development (since they were good against IS2s ect.) instead of the ridiculous projects like the Jagdtiger and Maus.
One of reason why the US did not make a big tank was getting shipped to Europe. The only way to do it back then was cargo ships. Ships were used to transport troops, ammo, fuel, trucks, cannons,planes,food, and other supplies. 2 40 ton tank was easier to transport then 1 70 ton tank. Over 40 thousand Sherman tanks were built in different models. The Pershing tank came late in the war.
The track was pin and hole design, when the track froze to the ground the final drive failed or the transmission. Pin and hole drives are simple to make but wear out quickly in sand, gravel , or rocks, readjustment is a constant or the pins slip and ride on the track not in it. The system was changed in the last year of the war.
10.31> Not sure I agree with your assessment of the Sherman Firefly 76mm (Brit 17-pounder) main armament being better than the German '88'.... at distances under 1,000 metres yes, they could penetrate the frontal armour of the Panther but doubtful on the Tiger II (although in theory the APDS round could). Physics says that retained energy at longer ranges in excess of 1,500 would favor the '88 due to its larger calibre and heavier shell weight (not sure that these ranges would have been seen during the Ardennes offensive though). I would much prefer to 'reach out and touch someone' at the longer ranges, knowing I was invulnerable to return fire! Using the phrase 'giving the allies a gun that could outgun the enemy' is a false statement, as the '88' was a far superior weapon at all ranges!
It doesn't matter - the vast majority of functional German armour in the '44 Ardennes campaign was not armed with an 88 cannon & as you say yourself ranges within the Ardennes were restricted. Going around a bend in a Firefly or a Sherman & spotting a German armour target? What matters is who gets in the first shot & the US tank crews were of higher 'calibre' at this stage than the Germans.
@@nightjarflying I can see your point. I think the worst enemy for the Germans was the Germans themselves!
@@andrewtreloar7389 That's right. Germany didn't switch to a full war economy until mid-1943 overseen by Albert Speer. By that time their expansionist, genocidal war was already lost. Hubris.
nighjarflying,
Then how come the Americans lost 3 tanks to every 1 German lost in combat in the Ardennes.
The Germans lost 500-600 armour types. The Americans 800-900.
However, around 50% of German armour losses were due to lack of fuel, ammo, minor mechanical issues, getting stuck in a ditch etc and no means to recover them.
At the highest the Germans lost no more than 300 in actual combat.
The vast majority of American armour losses were not due to lack of fuel, ammo, mechanical issues etc.
So, around 3 times as many American tanks etc were taken out in combat than German.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Slightly fudged figures there Lyndon? A touch of apples & oranges? You seem to be arguing that going by the numbers of pure armoured combat losses the Ardennes German armoured forces were superior in quality to the Allied armoured forces.
This is an absurd argument since this isn't a tank versus tank Kursk type situation - the Germans sent in tens of 1,000s of infantry pre-dawn on the 16th hours before the German armour rolled & they destroyed a healthy unknown number of US AFVs without use of mobile tank or anti-tank cannon - your figures don't allow for that.
The Germans started out with the benefits of a rolling artillery barrage leading a surprise infantry attack plus over four times as many anti-tank & artillery pieces.
Good luck with picking out armour versus armour losses from that mess.
Stugs weren't a great choice for the Battle of the Bulge, either. They are good on defense, where their low profile makes it easier for them to stay hidden, and they can position themselves to be facing likely avenues of attack. However, on offense, the same lack of turret that gives them that low profile, coupled with the opposing side getting to pick where it strikes from, hinders their ability to react quickly, since the entire tank has to turn to point the gun in the general direction of the enemy.
Stugs also had mediocre weapons and subpar armor against anything with a 76mm
Stugs not a Tank, they are artillery by design and crew.
StuGs were meant to be heavily armored self propelled artillery, they lacked a hull gunner which meant the commander had to defend the tank from infantry. Nevertheless they were used as replacement tanks due to shortages of turrets tanks, better than nothing. The final versionsof the StuG III had a commanders viewing cupola probably reflecting this. The lack of a cupola was extremely dangerous for the commanders of StuG III and JagdPanzer IV when used out of role as they were subject to sniper fire and artillery.
Wow. Thanks for the summary. I didn’t realize they were so problematic. But the Firefly had a better gun than even the legendary 88? You just blew my mind.
Sherman optics were better than this video suggests. The M4 gunner had a better field of view, as well as excellent telescopic sights. The M4 gun also had a stabilizer which allowed the gunner to sight and fire the gun then roll back into cover, reload and roll up and shoot again without resighting the gun.
Thanks. I do believe the Sherman was far from perfect in late '44, but like that we're moving away from the crappy death trap myth.
No we arent. Its not a myth that it was a pos,death trap. Its a fact.
An adequate tank that works is a lot better than an an "awesome" tank that doesn't.
It was not adequate until the easy 8 model for 1. 2 . shermans had plenty of their own issue's and would also breakdown regularly early on.3. Its a myth the tiger was not reliable.
@@peterm7593 but it wasn't reliable. The tiger needed preventive maintenance after every battle and when shot, the electronics were prone to breaking even if the tank wasn't penetrated
@@peterm7593 And a lot of tankers didn't like the 76 mm gun because its HE shell wasn't nearly as good as the 75's. German tanks were kind of irrelevant compared to the infantry with handheld anti-tank weapons or anti-tank guns.
During the long retreat in Russia, the Germans had become all too accustomed to using roadways as means of transpiration, or escaping encirclement. One incident occurred in eastern Poland where a new abteilung commander was told NOT to use the roadway as means of movement across the face of an established Soviet force. Ignoring the order his Tigers IIs were shot to pieces.
By the time of the Ardennes they were accustomed to roadway travel, only this time as main driving thrusts in the offensive. The pavement grants speed but your panzer grenadiers cannot deploy if they are not in total step unison with the armor if they are all linear on roadways trying to fight their way up to the spearhead.
This reminds me of New Zealand. I'm an American, truck driver since 2005, and now living and trucking in NZ. I drive dump/tipper trucks now, and the off-road thing is a major issue. You can have big beautiful Kenworths with a long hood and lots of chrome...or you can have a cheap cab-over Japanese Hino truck that is lighter and more maneuverable. King Tigers were amaze-balls, but not suited to the area they were sent...like Long-Haul Trucks are not suited to off-road duty.
Right from the start the narrative is incorrect, the King Tigers were at the rear of the column, NOT the front. The lead panzer element compromise 4 Pz IV not Tigers.
"German over-engineering," lol. This is legendarily true; a double-edged sword for the Germans for centuries.
Part of the problem of comparing Shermans to German Pathers/Tigers is that Shermans were created to be incredibly simple to make, ship, and repair, considering factories were across the Atlantic ocean. Therefore, to "make" a Sherman tank must also take shipping into account, where that was not the case for Germany.
Thank you for also pointing out how comparable the Shermans were to the Panthers and Tigers. The mythical status of German tanks doesn't translate to making American tanks so meagre. Shermans were excellent, especially considering how far away from home they had to be.
True, and the Russians had to pump out lots of t34s really quickly, and the New Zealanders had to settle for the Bob Semple...
circumstances don't directly correlate to making quality products, and the Panthers/Tigers made in response to the T34 weren't the right approach going forward.
Also Shermans weren’t designed for tank-on-tank dueling. That was the job of TD’s like the M-10 and M-18.
@@bryonslatten3147 That's not true.
Tank destroyer doctrine was a defensive one, wherein tank destroyer units were to be used to quickly counteract enemy armor attacks. That's why they generally traded off armor for more speed, and why the US experimented with things like half-tracks with a 75mm gun. It was important for them to get where they needed to be, and they were expected to be in friendly controlled areas. Hence things like the open tops, which were that because a) less weight and b) increased visibility. Of course, on the offense, that's just asking for an infantryman to throw a grenade or something in there. Also not too handy when faced by artillery strikes. But basically, it is more accurate to say that tank destroyers were not designed for general use or to support offensive operation, rather than that the other tanks were not expected to deal with opposing tanks.
Or the short version: Shermans were designed to deal with enemy tanks.
@@Axterix13 my grandfather was a Sherman 3-tank element commander in Italy. When I asked him how they dealt with German tanks he replied “that’s what the tank destroyers were for”. As for defensive anti-tank that was the job of AT guns. The M-10 and M-18 were light and fast because they were expected to flank German armor and hit it from the sides and rear but the Allied armies were in the offensive for most of the time after the D-Day landings. As for dealing with the majority of German heavy armor battalions the strategy was to isolate, bypass, and starve the battalions into surrender rather than by direct assault. This is how most Tigers and Tiger II’s ended the war, as abandoned useless hulks. That’s another quote from my grandfather.
A true fact is that you said government require that every single piece of equipment it purchased to issue to the military for the war effort had to come with that phone manual explaining how to transport it by vehicle by ship and buy air across the ocean and to the front.
Half a mile per gallon.
You killed my brain right there well done 💯
Modern SUV.
The overlapping road wheels on the German tanks looked like they would bind up in heavy mud and snow.
In some other video they interviewed one of the Tech Sargent's repairing the Sherman tanks. He said that some of those tanks were hit bad enough to kill the crew, but were repaired and put back in service up to five times. Bad for the crews, but pretty remarkable for the tanks considering the damage it takes to stop one of them.
That is what my dad did. Tech Sgt, Service Company, 707th Tank Battalion
Good thing the Sherman was one of the most survivable tanks of the war. At least you could getout in a jiffy if things got too hot
@@901Sherman Yes but crew protection is more important than lightly armored tank.
@@robertonavarro7713 He just said the Sherman was one of the most survivable tanks of the war. That IS crew protection.
@@901Sherman are you talking about the same Shermans that the Germans nicknamed 'Tommy Cookers' and 'Ronsons' - lights first time, every time - due to their habit of bursting into flames when hit?