Sherman Death Trap: Veterans vs Historians
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Belton Cooper's book Death Traps is quite infamous for it's myriad of errors and other problems. Of course, it is very important to consider the context here, so both the division Cooper served in and also the fact that there was at least one ghostwriter involved.
And oh boy there are a lot of errors and some are quite weird as well. I look mainly at technical aspects here and some might consider those errors minor, but they are so consistently wrong and with a pattern that I am not sure if there was not actual sabotage or trolling involved.
Cover design by vonKickass.
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» SOURCES «
Cooper, Benton Y.: Death Traps: The survival of an American Armored Division in World War II. Ballatine Books: New York, USA, 2003.
Thomson, Harry C.; Mayo, Lida: The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply. United States Army in World War II. The Technical Services. Center of Military History, United States Army: Washington D.C., USA, 1991.
Hunnicutt, Richard Pearce: Sherman: A History of the American Medium Tank. ECHO POINT Books & MEDIA: Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, 2015.
Zaloga, Steven: Armored Champion: the top Tanks of World War II. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, PA, USA, 2015.
Zaloga, Steven: Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, PA, USA, 2008.
Zaloga, Steven J.: Panzer IV vs Sherman: France 1944. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, UK, 2015.
Spielberger, Walter J./Doyle, Hilary L./Jentz, Tom: Panzer IV und seine Abarten. Motorbuch Verlag: Stuttgart, Germany, 2019.
Newsome, Bruce: The Tiger Tank and Allied intelligence. Volume III: Tiger 131: from Africa to Europe. Tank Archives Press: Coronado, CA, USA, 2020.
Newsome, Bruce: The Tiger Tank and Allied intelligence. Volume IV: Capabilities and Performance. Tank Archives Press: Coronado, CA, USA, 2020.
Military Intelligence Division: Tactical and Technical Trends. War Department: Washington, D.C., USA, 1942-1945.
Tank and AFV News: Interview with Steven Zaloga, 27th January 2015: tankandafvnews...
From the Editor: Debunking Deathtraps Part 1, 29th January 29 2015:
tankandafvnews...
Statistics on M4 Sherman Page on Wikipedia
xtools.wmflabs...
28 July 2002 Version of M4 Sherman on Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.o...
en.wikipedia.o...
#DeathTraps,#Sherman,#BeltonCooper
As an Infantryman, I loved the fire support tanks provided. But, as an Infantryman, I hated being around them because they were RPG magnets, and the guys firing the RPGs weren't exactly snipers...
Yeah, the Germans specifically in World War 2 noted that one should stay away from tanks in general and Tigers in particular, since a lot of stuff is coming their way.
Even in WWI tanks attracted all of the attention.
It's amazing how people are drawn to them.
@@michimatsch5862 I didn't mind people being drawn to them, so much as the rockets thoee people carried. Those things are really irritating!
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized absolutely! Im sure there were plenty of conversations about it at the time.
"Look, buddy, it's a nice Tiger. It really is! And we're all super-happy that you're here with us! Lord knows those Soviets have really been giving us hell... And please don't think this is anything against you personally... but, my platoon and I are going to bivouac over there. Like, WAY over there... I'm talking more-than-the-firing-spread-of-a-Katyusha-battery far over there. Again. It's really nothing personal. We just want to, you know... live."
I didn't mind the tanks being around, as long as they stayed out of our way. Tankers have a bad habit of killing Infantrymen by driving over them, not just because they are bomb and missile magnets.
I am a 3rd Armored Division veteran (cold war and DS/DS). I met Belton Cooper at a 3AD Association Reunion back in the late 90s. He struck me as an earnest man who could easily be misunderstood. To this day, I believe his book did a very poor job of representing his views of both the Sherman and the losses. Of course, in conversation, when it was pointed out that 3AD saw more heavy combat than other Armored Division and also had a reputation for pushing the Germans much harder than other allied armored forces resulting in higher casualties, which he did not really have a good grasp on. I don't think he intended to be misleading, but I have long believed that he was used by a writer to forward an agenda.
Conspiracies might sell more books than "another ww II book"
this is a good example of why they call it the 'appeal to authority fallacy'
Belton Cooper was a smart man who could easily be considered an authority on the topic of tank repair. However he simply did not have the raw data necessary for his conclusions to be taken as inarguable fact.
I wonder if mid war there were mixed up intelligence reports or errors made simply measuring things like armor thickness. Leading to all this Fudd Lore tier misinformation.
@@michaelbaker8284 to my understanding, Belton Cooper's book was written well after the war when we had plenty if correct information. A casual watch of 60s and 70s war movies would be clear evidence of the misinformed "common knowledge" about the difference between German and American tanks.
Cooper was a jerk that complained about the poor armor on US tanks thru out the war. Ordnance decided to shut him up by allowing him to up-armor the single Super Pershing that was shipped over in late March of 1945. They made him stop after adding 5 tons with the tank getting knocked out a few weeks later by a Panzer 4 that put a round thru the side of the hull. The war ended a few weeks later where Cooper went home and Super Pershing into a salvage yard to be cut up for scrap.
When I started as a tanker in the mid 70s, the story of the Sherman being a death trap was common. As I went through Armor training and maintenance training, the real lesson was proper ammo stowage. Units that overstowed ammo or did not keep their tanks clean (from oil and grease) tended to burn but tanks who carried ammo in the proper storage bins and kept it clean has fewer issues. Later in my career I had the opportunity to interview and view the papers of Major (ret) James Burt MOH recipient in 2d Armored Division. 64th Armor's Burt spoke glowingly of his Shermans emphasizing their mobility, reliability and versatility while describing German tanks as mobile pillboxes. About the same time, I came across a great book written by a Russian Hero of the Soviet Union "Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks: The World War II Memoirs of Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitriy Loza. Loza loved his shermans prefering them (both 75mm and 76mm) over T-34s, again for their mobility, reliability and versatility. In this case, I will go with the opinions of two highly decorated tankers over that of a maintenance officer.
Cboetigphond the agreement against M4 Sherman tank started with the Battle of the Bulge movie where M4 Sherman was show to be inferior Tank compare to the German Tanks Panzer IV, Panther and Tigers even President Ike Dwight Eisenhower called the film inaccurate at it premier, the movie. The movie Patton, the General playing Bradley criticized the 50 cal machine Gun because it went though German Half tracks bounce around not stop the vehicle, yet in real life action it well penetrated the German Half Tracks and Armored Cars damage or destroyed flesh, metals parts, shrapnel, fuels and start fire, even shot down German and Italian Planes form the ground, many Stuka Dive bombers, Single and Twin Engine fighters and Bombers fined out this lesson the hard way in North African Campagne afterward the Germany and Italian planes were force to go at a higher altitude, there was a case of a German FW 190 fighter got that lesson at the Battle of Anzio by M10 Tank destoryer 50 cal Ma Dece Machine Gun, anyway Hollywood like to praised the German war machines than they should overrated there performance.
@@bjornsmith9431 Hollywood likes to sell the plucky underdog story so it needed an overwhelming and monstrous enemy.
@@p.strobus7569 true👍.
@@bjornsmith9431 its "Ma Deuce" not "Ma Dece"
@@bjornsmith9431 Loved my .50 at various times I had an M85 and a M2HB while later I had M2 light barrel aircraft guns. The movie is not very good.
The "death traps" thing does seem to be a theme. Saw a video where the Sherman casualties were the main focus. This might be an extrapolation of the now rather hackneyed "Ronsons" version of the Sherman story. The thing nobody seems to notice (or mention) is that good or bad, previously shot-up tankers kept getting back into those things. That does deserve a lot of respect.
Also, Shermans were FAR better than the tanks that had preceded them. The crews genuinely liked them, and they were a match for P4s.
They were reliable, had a 75mm gun capable of firing both AP and HE rounds, and were relatively easy to maintain with replaceable parts. Compared with the M3 Lee/Grant (firing angle limitations), the M3 Stuart/Honey (light tank) or the Crusader (badly built) the Sherman wins hands down.
Arguably the Cromwell, Comet and Pershing were better, but they were later designs and were more complex to build and maintain.
@@mikereger1186 All such designs were nearly immedaitly replaced too, Cromwell and Comet with Centurion and the Pershing was replaced with the M46 which went on to serve along with the Late Shermans till the late fifties, only the introduction of the M48 finally saw the M4s going too.
@@spamuraigranatabru1149 the last time a Sherman was in combat was in Lebanon in 1982. The Isralis used them until the mid 1970s.
@@erwin669 Ayep, with the very last frontline service ones being withdrawn in the late twenty tens
My Great Uncle, My Grandfathers brother was a tanker in WW2 and beyond. Career Sergeant. He served in the Lee, Sherman and post war Pershing. From his tales it was rather clear he loved the Sherman the best. He felt it was like a sports car. According to him you could get it up to a decent speed, and even get the sucker to jump over ditches and such. A mental image that 9 year old Dukes of Hazzard me found awesome. And modern adult me shudders at the thought of ol' Uncle John launching a Sherman off sand dunes in North Africa. Looking back I assume he loved the Sherman best because he started out as a driver. And that's the tank he took into combat. I don't think anybody had much fun in the Lee's, save perhaps the Brits who viewed them as "better than walking". And by the time the Pershing came around he was a Sergeant so was always in the Commanders seat. Which wasn't as much fun. Plus while the Pershing had as much speed as the Sherman. You just couldn't get it to jump. It wanted to remain firmly on the ground. Further proof that it's the men who fight in the damn things that actually know if its a good tank or a bad one. Their standards may seem a bit strange to normal people. And if it brought them and their buddies back alive, it's a good one. Heck if they had 1 or 2 tanks shot out from under them, and they were still around to tell you the story 30 years later, it was a GREAT Tank.
I have a copy of an old US Army Journal of Recognition dated September 1943 which was disseminated among all Army troops, not merely among high-ranking officers or technical personnel. It includes details and specifications of both the short-barreled and long-barreled versions of the Panzer IV and notes that "Allied experts consider the Mark IV a good tank but inferior to the U.S. General Sherman." Furthermore, the Tiger Mk I is described and illustrated in detail in the November 1943 issue of the same publication. Consequently, it is obvious that the Allies were very familiar with the characteristics of both versions of the Mk IV tank by that time.
If I remember correctly, the the only instance of the Sherman Tank being armed with the M2 75mm gun (which was significantly shorter than the M3) were the initial pilot models, one of which is at Bovington. The M2 was also used on the M3 Lee/Grant tanks with some later variants of the vehicles being upgraded to the longer M3 gun. All in all a great video as always, I actually had little idea that Death Traps was ghost written, and considering its age it sounds like it was written almost entirely based off memory and not from any real credible source.
There may have been a handful of the older "M3 style" suspension and M2 gun in North Africa, according to some photos I've dug up. In all likelihood none of them made it to Sicily.
The M4A1 in Bovington, named "Michael", indeed came with the M2 gun, but they later switched it to the M3, as it is today.
You can usually tell a M2 gun because it had that big round counterweight on the end of the barrel to keep the gun balanced for the stabilization system. The stabilization system was calibrated for the M3 which was 40 calibers long versus the m2 which I think was 32 calibers long.
Irregardless I read deathtraps and Coopers came ashore after D-Day from a LST onto the beach. He should have never even encountered a M4 with a M2 gun in the ETO since by 1944 any tanks issued with M2's would have been upgraded.
Very possible if Mr. Cooper saw any M3's or M4's equipped with M2's it was probably in training in the USA. If memory serves me correctly most of the pics of M2 guns were shown on training vehicles in the USA which would make sense to me. A training vehicle doesn't need the latest and greatest gun and a training tank with a m2 gun and counterweight can still be used to train the crew on the use of stabilization system and the M2 still fires all the same ammo as the M3 so works fine for gunnery training.
@@bencejuhasz6459 Also little fact= its the oldest sherman out there.
Bernard, I continue to respect and appreciate not only your thoroughness in script writing & production, but also by your commitment to Primary Sources and accuracy of information as is possible. Your reputation proceeds you, sir. Peace, Love, and History ✌️
I remember the Chieftain did at least a video or two around this. If I remember correctly a couple highlights were:
Sherman's were doing better than average on survivability compared to other tanks of the war even in their worst variant, they improved over time to be among the best to survive a hit, having a numeric advantage over Germans had some implications on who is likely to be shooting first (thus who is likely to hit and win), while people died in them the rate was an order of magnitude lower than front line riflemen, while Tiger tanks could be a bigger issue for Shermans there was only like three engagements the US army came in contact with Tigers (and one was with the army air core not tanks, another they were parked on rail cars not ready to fight).
Somewhat related, the myth of it took multiple Sherman's to take out one enemy tank comes from doctrinal process than the design/weaponry, the US Army did not send one tank of any style after one enemy tank to have a fair fight like many internet arguments about tank specs seem to imagine happened, at minimum they sent a tank platoon after an enemy tank to have an advantage. If they came up against a platoon of enemy tanks, then they would send in a tank company. Regardless of the size they came up against, if there was other tanks/troupes doing nothing at the time, commanders may order them to go along too so as to have an even bigger advantage.
On that second part. While there is almost certainly an element of that, you always send a stronger force if you can, the more specific thing was that the basic operating element of US tank units was the platoon. So, unless you were in some exceptional operating circumstances you would send a platoon. So if someone says "there is a tiger (or an MG nest, or anything else warranting armoured support) over here, send tanks" they sent a platoon.
One of the common claims was "it took five Shermans to kill a tiger". And one platoon of Shermans was five tanks.
And no commander in his right mind wants to give a fair chance to the enemy. You aim to overwhelm the enemy to minimise losses on your side.
@@allangibson2408 If you're in a fair fight in a war, someone made a BIG mistake. sm
Yep, Chieftains _'Myths of American Armour'_ and _'Why the Sherman was what it was'_ talks are well worth viewing for anyone who hasn't seen them.
Yeah but Chieftain made an other error, he used data of the frist US army, which rarely engaged german heavy tanks or even german tanks in numbers, unlike the the third army and the British and Canadians troops.
I saw a video on UA-cam I believe it was interviewing the author of the book. I felt he had a very biased perspective on the M4 Sherman. Based on my dad's experience in the tank which was extensive, the tank was nowhere near as bad as this officer portrayed it. It wasn't perfect and it could be knocked out if you didn't have your eyes open and looking around all the time. But the same can be said of many tanks not just a Sherman. It would also include the panther, tiger and King tiger. My dad talked about shot traps and using the superior mobility of the Sherman to get around to the flanks and the rear of the German tanks so you can fire armor piercing rounds into their more vulnerable parts. He also talked about aiming for tracks. You don't have to blow a tank up in order to mission kill it and for it to be abandoned.
Exactly. The tank has not been made that cannot be knocked out by something (Matilda II was probably closer to that than even the Tigers when first deployed). The Sherman had few of the really bad points that bad tanks have. Also circumstances matter. The Panthers suffered more when they were on the offense, as Shermans were most of the time.
The tankers were instructed to shoot low at the big German tanks as soon as they spotted one since their 75mm and 105mm rounds did considerable damage to their road wheels, axles and tracks.
@@billwilson3609 you could also bounce an armor piercing round out of a 76 maybe a 75 off the ground and into the belly armor of a German tank it depended somewhat on the terrain.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer The M4's came with 5 user manuals that all crewmen had to become familiar with since it covered each crewman's responsibilities and how to perform those. The gunner's section showed how to bounce HE rounds with delayed fuses off hilltops so they'd explode above soldiers concealed on the other side. It also showed how to bank delayed HE rounds off masonry buildings to hit targets hidden by buildings. The manual showed a M4 at a street intersection concealed by buildings shooting a round at a 45 degree angle at a stone building with the round bouncing off to explode behind a barricade where soldiers had positioned an AT gun.
Finding out that we have more to learn is never a bad thing.
I've been editing Wikipedia on and off for the last eight years, including creating lengthy articles from scratch. A few things about Wikipedia: many editors pride themselves on being good editors, but on NOT being experts on anything. All material is supposed to be sourced, though that wasn't a rule in the encyclopedia's early years. Also, there is a rule against drawing a conclusion opposite to that presented in a source using only that source's statements or statistics. So, anyone with no personal knowledge of a topic can paraphrase material from any source (with some exceptions for pre-determined unreliable or offensive sources), cite it, and it will stand as a valid edit for years.
Wikipedia has become a tool of the "woke"
Yeah ... that attitude of "no personal experiences" - is a problem. I can understand the reason for it, given the nature of Wikipedia but it IS a problem.
I use Wikipedia a lot and .. theoretically ... can edit it - though I never have - but as a Historian - there are real problems with the way it's organized.
Having a source for something doesn't mean it's of any value. As a Historian - one of the things you have to do - is pass judgment on sources.
Look at the Bull Shit in this article on Rex Barber
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_T._Barber
They have a "historian" local to Barber's home town who wrote something up claiming that Barber was the sole person responsible for shooting down Yammamoto. This is pure - undiluted - Bull Shit.
How do I know?
Because I *_AM_* a Historian (just not a published author).
What Barber's home down did - was organize an expedition to the crash site of Yamamoto's plane.
Here - according to the two pilots versions of what happened - Barber attacked the plane from the rear and Lanphier attacked from high on the right. Barber could see Lanphier but because he was behind him, Lanphier didn't know that Barber was even there.
I heard Lanphier speak once - and he said that what he did - was fire to clear his guns - and the plane flew right into it.
What does that mean?
If the plane "flew right into it" - the damage would all be at the front of the plane - which - as anyone who knows anything about WWII aerial gunnery - is more likely to do critical damage to the aircraft than hitting it from the back.
The wreck is on the internet. You can look at it and you can see the bullet holes in the stern of the plane. What about seeing any damage that Lanphier did to the front of the plane? Well ... the front of the plane was destroyed in the crash - so there IS no front to the wreck.
So ... what does that mean?
It means that while Barber can certainly claim that he hit the plane - he can't prove that HE shot it down and that Lanphier DIDN'T.
The problem here - is not between _which_ pilot shot down the plane - but Barber's contention that it was HE ALONE who shot it down.
As anyone who knows anything about Fighter Pilots can tell you - they are, in general, not short on ego. So I'm not in the least bit surprised that Barber want's sole claim for the kill. That's just fighter pilots being fighter pilots.
The Army - *_CORRECTLY_* as they have done time and time again throughout that war - awarded half a kill to each man. THAT was the right thing to do.
But - you have whatever twit wrote that article - that is clearly taking sides with the Barber faction and uses as their "source" something written by a "historian" and an expedition sponsored by - _Barber's Home Town_ . Can you imagine an expedition to the wreck made by Barber's Home Town - that would come back and say he didn't shoot down the plane? Can you imagine them even saying - they don't know? Of course not. Of course they're going to come back and say that Their Boy deserves all the credit.
Oh ... and the Governor of Barbers State - pronounced him as the _sole_ person to have shot Yamamoto down. As if that means shit.
As a Historian - you NEVER take any one source as gospel - especially - if they're obviously biased.
I use Wikipedia on a nearly daily basis because - for UA-cam Comments - it's sufficient and they do an OK job (especially when it comes to how to spell someone's name ...). But - anyone doing serious research - should be looking through their sources. As a Historian - one of the things I value most about Wikipedia - is the way it's sources are listed - and I will look them up if I think I need to. As I did here.
.
@@BobSmith-dk8nw I recommend to friends that are in school that they use WP to find sources, then look at those sources and make sure they say what's in WP. A partial solution to the issue you talk about would be leaving it as is, but just before or after inserting a "responsible alternate opinion" from a different source. There is also a policy that "primary sources" of any type should be used on only a limited basis, if at all. Of course, WP is drowning in conflicting written policies.
@@robdgaming Yes. I would agree with that for the most part.
My biggest problem would be and one of the reasons I never actually made any contribution, was that I'm not sure how my assertion would be regarded that I had heard Lanphier state that he had fired his guns to clear them - and that the bomber had flown into it.
Would I cite Lanphier as the source, listing him as being a contributor to a "P-38 Convention" I attended? Here I would have a problem with citing the date as it was over 50 years ago and I don't remember exactly when that was.
I got to talk to Lanphier afterwards and he was a really nice guy.
Tony LaVier
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_LeVier
was also there which made it an extremely interesting, if small, event.
Then I have a problem with the removal of a primary source here
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=USS_Card&diff=176551308&oldid=174579321
wherein there is a statement indicating just whether or not the USS Card "sank" or whether it merely touched bottom.
Given that the Communists who attacked it want to assert that it was "sunk" and the current article sides with their assertion, it is important that evidence be presented that the ship did not in fact come to "rest" on the bottom - but merely touched it - meaning that it did not "sink".
As with the Lanphier/Barber contention as who who shot down Yamamoto - this is a History Issue.
As a Historian - a statement like this from a first person source would be priceless - but - Wikipedia removes it specifially because it is a first person statement. Given that the person furnished their contact info - (which I'm not sure should be included) this is just the kind of information you would want. But - it was removed.
I happened to come across it - and was sorry to see it removed. However, one of the good things about Wikipedia is it's "History" function, which caused the statement to be preserved rather than just deleted. Thus I am still able to see it and now show it to you.
Sadly - there are other RL reasons for my lack of participation which are unlikely to change.
.
My grandfather had two brothers fight in WW2.
One in Europe
One in Pacific
Neither would talk about the experience except on extremely rare occasions.
As infantry the only comments I remember them saying were to stay the hell away from tanks, "they might shoot at you, they WILL shoot at the tank"
@Military History not Visualized
I believe @Military Aviation History brought to our attention the case of "Survivorship Bias".
This is a case of the opposite.
This is "Attrition Bias".
One thing I would point out. As far as I understand it, 3rd armored division primarily operated basic M4 (75mm) tanks at the time of the D-Day landings. By late summer of 1944 they started to receive M4A1 tanks equipped with 76mm guns. Since they did not operate many (any?) 75mm M4A1 tanks, and the M4 never was issued with the 76mm gun, it is understandable that someone in the 3rd Armored Division would think the primary difference of the two models of Sherman tank was the gun. From what I can tell from looking at photobooks of 3rd Armored tanks, the basic M4 (75mm)and M4A1 (76mm) were the two most common types of vehicle in service with that unit, and M4A3 tanks only start to show up in 1945.
Always nice to see someone using those Zaloga interviews I did a few years back. Thanks!
According to Nicolas Moran, statistically the Sherman was the safest tank of WWII. But that doesn't matter. How we perceive things is so much more important than actual facts. Soldiers and news reporters believed the Sherman to be a death trap, so the reputation stuck. This is why myths, rumors and propaganda are so powerful. You don't need facts to have your thoughts and emotions manipulated.
Another phenomenally formed, researched, and written episode. I hope we get more veterans vs. historians
The story comes from the book “Death Traps” by Belton Y Cooper. I thought it familiar to a battle referenced within and then I saw an interview with David Ayers who confirmed it came from that book. However, Audie Murphy’s Moh stand on top of a burning M10 firing his 50cal and calling in arty on top was certainly a story of selflessness and courage without a doubt. I dont know how that man could walk w balls the size he had.
“Death Traps” really did ruin the image of the Sherman. When I picked up the book twenty years ago I was left wondering how the Allies in the West managed to beat the Germans using Sherman’s.
There are so many myths out there that got debunked only thanks to internet. And most of them seem to be aligned with Nazi propaganda. I hate the myth that the Wersal peace treaty caused a second war. In fact not enforcing this act and letting Germans whipe their ass with every single page of that document is what caused war. And a proper occupation of Germany after WWI would prevent WWII.
The Eastern front beat the Germans.
@@shatbad2960 a quite possibly false, misleading oversimplification of the largest conflict in human history
@@leesunghwa809 Not really, had the Eastern front not come to be, Germany would have held Europe. Huge amounts of man power and resources where used in that part of the conflict.
@@shatbad2960 we can never fully know the outcome of the war had the Soviets and Germans stayed in peace, but one thing for certain is that the National Socialist government was corrupt to its core and was not a stable government. This in the end would have lead to their collapse.
This was actually a very very interesting and thorough video. Well done.
Thank you very much!
In WW2 some of the Russian units that used the Sherman loved them. Also in the Korean War they did well against T34 that the North Koreans used
I was told by my grandfather that was in A Sherman tank in WWII. That he had a great respect for the German tanks. Especially the Panthers. They were simply in a different league than his. He never saw a Tiger. And he thought that was a good thing. I wish this guy could have sat down with him and been told what it felt like to find out there was German Panthers in the area. The look on my grandfathers face when he told me that was all you needed to see. It was a 2 minute conversation and only happened once. I wish I could have recorded it.
a 75 Sherman crew found why's to counter tigers and panthers by firing smoke shells at them forcing there crew to abounded there tank remember you don't have to pen the tank to defeat it
@@xahmadx6442 the fact you have to find special ways to deal with enemy tanks and not jut simply shoot at them should raise some bells and alarms. The Germans also found ways to deal with T34s and KV1s in 1941 but no one in the German army, not even the most ardent nazis would say these were optimal solutions.
You can develop tactics to fight enemy combatants armed with assault rifles while your men carry pistols, doesnt mean its an optimal solution. The optimal solution is to have at least parity if not superiority in the same class of weapon systems. One of the core capabilities is the ability to reach and threaten the enemy at great distance, surpassing the range of the enemy weapon system.
German tanks had that advantage after 42 its clear, and already the mere knowledge of it puts the other side in a defensive posture.
@@DD-qw4fz In the battle of aracore the Americans devastated a large German Force equiped with dozen of panther the Germans had the advantage of high numbers the panthers got defatted by 75 Shermans the panther was in the offense this battle is a good example of how tactics can defeat technological superiority and the real threat came from anti tank guns not tanks Anti tank guns are hard to spot and they hit hard that's why the Americans stick with there 75 Sherman it delivered a HE capable of knocking most of the anti tank crew
And one of the reasons why the Sherman is better than a panther or any German tank
It's very easy to modify for example
Sherman jumbo
with 177 effective armor thickness
Sherman Firefly
The 17 pounder has a pen of 200 better than the 75 of the panther
The Sherman 76
Good gun and ergonomics with fast reload
@@xahmadx6442 again. To bad my grandfather was not alive to talk to you. Pretty sure you would stop quoting Wikipedia and would have listened instead. It's easy to say how things go In a WWII tank from the comfort of your armchair. He was there. And from what I remember he did NOT share you opinion.
@@xahmadx6442 Arracourt shows how miserable the panzer brigades were, most of the crews had 10 days of training, there was no recon done and it was foggy and the U had air domination. It really didnt matter with which tank the Germans advanced it would end up the same.
Sherman proponent love to point at Arracourt as the ultimate argument but completely ignore other cases that dont go in Shermans favor.
For example 2 panthers with veteran crews at the small town of Herrlisheim eliminated an entire weakened regiment of Shermans, the shock was so great over half of the unit gave up with intact Tank. ua-cam.com/video/86K0ncTkAkA/v-deo.html
"And one of the reasons why the Sherman is better than a panther or any German tank
It's very easy to modify for example"
Sounds like a buzzword to me, most German tanks had numerous variants and some of the variants of the Sherman were made because the basic tank variant was missing either armor (Jumbo) or a good gun (firefly) .
13:55 this criticism by ‘the author’ is strange to me, as I could make the same criticism that nobody was celebrating the chefs in the divisions for keeping them fed and ‘functional’, like, no shit
What I usually tell people who quote "Death Traps" is that it is written from the perspective of someone who specifically handled knocked out tanks.
It would be like having a book about the morality of man written by a homicide detective that sees death and murder all day. You'd think that humanity was mostly consisting of murderers.
I get your point but is humanity not consist of mostly murder? Most of the technological advancement happen because it allow us to murder other human better.
@@jintsuubest9331 How many people do you know who have murdered someone?
@@Oddball_E8 I think he is saying that homicide detectives are going to meet more murderers than me and you, and they may concluded that there are a lot more of them than there actually are.
@@dougerrohmer And that's my entire point.
All that Belton Cooper saw were destroyed and damaged Shermans all the time.
Of course he's gonna consider them death traps.
That is one of the worst analogies I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
Day in, day out...hosing out the burnt remains of men sent into battle with an increasingly inferior “zippo” AFV. Only the Japanese experienced worse casualties due to crap-tastic armor on the front lines.
Shermans were death-traps. I’m beside myself hearing “revisionist histrionics” like this.
Ughhh...!
A late friend of mine was a tanker in the US 2nd Armored Div, and he and I talked a fair bit of the war and the equipment in it. He had nothing but good things to say about the Sherman. Another friend was in the Korean war and thought well of the Sherman.
Don't get too wrapped up in comparing our vs their tanks. Tank crew quality and battlefield support of ammo, fuel, intell.and replacement tanks is everything.
As well as being heavily engaged, another reason for 3AD's heavy Sherman losses was that the division had more of them than most divisions. 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions retained a regimental organization throughout the war, which gave them four medium tank battalions vs. three for most armored divisions, with 59 medium tanks per battalion, including six 105-mm armed Shermans listed in a TOE I have. My source is Stanton's "World War II Order of Battle" (enthusiasts beware, the book only includes US Army Ground Forces units).
Belton Cooper was a maintenance officers who jobs was to fixed and maintain Tanks and Tank destroyers, not frontline combat a rear with the gear guy or chap.
There's another memoir where the author has gotten a lot of flak. Writing under the Pen Name Guy Sager, a German Army Veteran of WWII wrote about his experiences. As he wrote the book a number of years after the war his memory wasn't the best. One German General really gave him hell about it but eventually, when the author apologized for whatever he screwed up the General came to respect him as a fellow Eastern Front Veteran.
This is both the good and the bad of memoirs. These guys are telling us how they *_felt_* about things and a lot of the real value of these books is in all the tiny details of what it was like to do what they did. It gives you, the reader, an ability to somewhat understand what these people experienced.
One thing about Cooper and the reason I'm inclined to cut him a lot of slack ... is that ... given the nature of his job, to evaluate these tanks as to what was to be done with them, he probably saw a lot of tanks before the bodies and body parts of any dead crewmen were removed.
Thus, Cooper may have not only seen more wrecked Sherman's than anyone else - he may well have seen more dead tankers than anyone else ... except graves registration ...
From the feeling I get about the guy - it seemed he was deeply effected by what he had seen happen to these men.
Here, I would note his remarks on trying to repaint the insides of the tanks but never being able to get rid of the smell of the dead and dismembered bodies that had been inside them. He hated to turn these refurbished tanks over to new crews and not get rid of that smell.
*_THAT_* is the kind of thing you are not going to get from a technical history that gets all the facts and figures right. The pervasive smell of the dead bodies that, try as they might - the just couldn't get rid of. That is the type of thing the Ordnance People had to deal with.
Another thing from this memoir is the anguish of being told to train infantry replacements as tank crews and then send them into the line with only the most superficial training. They had a full company of 17 Shermans ready to be handed out - but no tankers. So - their command grabbed whatever replacements they had - whether they were clerk typists like the Bog on Fury or just infantry replacements and put them in these Shermans. Cooper, iirc, tried to tell the powers that be what was going to happen but they were adamant that they wanted that Company of Shermans in the line. They lasted a few hours and all 17 Shermans were knocked out.
Then - they had to fight against having their maintenance crews assigned as Tank Crewmen. Here Cooper was like "You Get these guys killed and who's going to fix the tanks? These guys have *_YEARS_* of experience. How are you going to replace them if they die?"
The thing with all of this - is the pressure the Commanders were under to keep feeding men into the meat grinder.
Again - this is the type of thing you get from a memoir where what's important is what these men went through ... and if they screw some things up ... well ... when I was in the Marines I was one of the few people that knew or cared about a lot of stuff like that. The other guys minds were on getting drunk, getting laid and getting out. They knew what they needed to know to do their jobs - but beyond that - they didn't really care. And so - a lot of their knowledge was superficial and their attitudes based on that. I think Nick made a remark once about how - just because someone was in the military didn't mean they actually knew anything about things that weren't part of their immediate job.
The thing about those guys I served with when I was making my contribution to the Vietnam War by being a sentry in California for 15 months - was I was serving with A LOT of guys right back from Vietnam. Most of those guys didn't play _Panzer Blitz_ the way I did (though some did) or know all the stuff I knew about the 8th Air Force in WWII - but - when they were in Vietnam - a lot of them had really seen some shit. In the stories that they told (when and if they told them), did it really matter if they got some of the technical details wrong?
.
Guy Sajer, he stated that the book was memoir and not a history.
@@brucenorman8904 That as what he meant - but I'm not sure if that is exactly what he said.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Soldier
.
When you look at the evolution of just the ammunition storage in the M4, I think there is validity to many of Cooper's assertions. A gas engine, coupled with poorly stored, unprotected ammunition was, in fact, terrible. What the US Army did over the course of the war to rectify this is also generally unrecognized. (For example, Wet storage at the bottom of the hull vs. Sponson mounted ammunition.) What Belton Cooper was referring to as far as "Maintenance" was nothing to do with simple vehicular maintenance, but in fact--tank recovery and refurbishment on an industrial level. That industrial scale effort that kept his 3AD supplied with operational battle-ready tanks through the entire campaign. 3AD lost far more tanks than they had on their MTOE--but never went to battle short on tanks! There is great truth in much of what Belton Cooper talks about, but much inaccuracy in his details. Great respect for both the historical and first person opinions. Both must be taken in context.
And the ammo storage thing is probably isn't true. I heard the theory it was actually because of British tankers storing their ammo everywhere it could start a fire when hit.
even before wet storage, Shermans had excellent survivability. Escape from a Sherman was faster than most tanks. Sherman wasn't the only gasoline powered tank.
@@bobstitzenberger1834 Gasoline and accompanying explosive fumes may not have been a great choice but yes, at least the fuel was isolated from the crew compartment by a metal bulkhead, in contrast to the thin metal tins of fuel which rode in the fighting compartment next to the crew in T-34.
However the flaws of the early Sherman in ammo storage are shared with every other tank of the time, they are not a unique flaw of the Sherman and neither is the petrol engine. They are not valid criticisms of the early Sherman in isolation. The later wet stowage Sherman's stand out as WW2 tanks that didn't have atrocious ammo storage.
Practically every WW2 tank used gasoline, except the Russians. I think a good argument can be made that the Sherman was the best WW2 tank.
People really need to understand the tradeoff of logistics here. Tanks from America need to fit on rail cars and then on ships. Parts need to be standardized and replaced in the field. Also it cant be too expensive. It also needs to cross or go thru European bridges and towns.
The Sherman's were good, not great but good. Not the best tank in the world. But for a tank 10k miles from its factory, it was reliable and the allies had a quantity of men, materials and supplies.
That being said, military tech was a series of trial and error based on battlefield experience. The Russuans had that and learned to slope the armor of t34s. Making the armor better without sacrificing weight. Russian tankers were also shorter, thereby their tanks had a lower profile.
Churchill "The Sherman tank has maintained its reputation gained in Africa at every stage in the battles in Italy and Normandy." 1470
WAR SITUATION
HC Deb 02 August 1944 vol 402 cc1459-568
The M2 75mm was shorter and mounted on early M3 Grants and Lees and very early Shermans, later replaced with a M3. Many of the M2s had that counterweight.
More interesting is the subject he actually knew something about - namely the mechanics. He said that out of of 50 Shermans, 15-20 could be expected to fall out due to major or minor mechanical issues during a 50 km road march. Shows that no WW2 tank could be said to be really reliable, only "relatively" reliable by WW2 standards.
That seems outright false. The Brits tested the M4 and found that it's by far the most reliable medium tank they could get their hands on by several magnitudes. A 40% failure rate on a relatively short march seems unlikely given even the British tanks were not that bad.
@@ArchOfficial But what did the Brits have to compare with? Of all British medium/heavy tanks,only late war Churchills as well as Cromwell could be considered reliable, everything else were abysmal.
During a 10 day period in the outbreak phase from Normandy, 290, 20% of Commonwealth Shermans, broke down to the extent they were considered losses. The single Cromwell unit actually did slightly better.
This is 1944 - even your vanilla family car could break down at any time, and cars have always been much more reliable than tanks. Road marches are tough even on modern tanks.
@@TTTT-oc4eb That's my point, most tanks are unreliable junk compared to the M4, even in an era where most vehicles break down regularly.
@@ArchOfficial My point is that the M4 probably was relatively reliable by WW2 standards - but that doesn't really say much. It is quite possible that it was the best - but it is impossible to know if it was because of the tank itself or due to US logistics. US and German tanks were operating under very different conditions.
In Korea the M4A3E8 (HVSS) - the last and best of the Shermans - had an availability rate of 80%, compared to 65% for the M26 Pershing. From May 1944 to the end of the year the Panther and Tiger had an average availability rate of 70%, resp.73% . But this only tells a part of the story, because more Tigers (and probably Panthers as well) were out due to combat damage than breakdowns - so the big cats and the Sherman is probably pretty close, especially compared to the Sherman versions of 1944. Even many of the notorious final drive failures on the big cats were due to combat damage, as they were very vulnerable to artillery.
"More interesting is the subject he actually knew something about - namely the mechanics. He said that out of of 50 Shermans, 15-20 could be expected to fall out due to major or minor mechanical issues during a 50 km road march. Shows that no WW2 tank could be said to be really reliable, only "relatively" reliable by WW2 standards." do you have a link on this, is this Beltons book ?
Ive red on a forum long time ago a short snippet on the Commonwealth tank issues during the Normandy breakout, a crapload of Shermans broke down on road marches, with a clear note in the report, these were mechanical losses, not combat ones of any sorts...
Links would be appreciated, as you can see ppl are just repeating the same old mantras and claims, without actual evidence...
This is from a German Paratrooper in Normandy D day to Falaise: - if the M4 was hit with a Panzerfaust it went up every time and the crews never got out "poor bastards". These would have been first production run i.e. no water stowage of ammunition and floor 1 cm deep in petrol that would go to flashpoint when the panzerfaust jet came through at 1000C. He said they were sitting ducks (coz in Bocage separated from infantry support?). All it took was someone to pop up from a ditch with a Panzerfaust and it was over.
My memory from reading Cooper is that he only ever seemed to be describing tanks that I seemingly had been penetrated with solid shot and no explosion. Germans used two types of Panzergranit, the more common one with an explosive charge in the base, and the less common pure solid shot. It seems that the ones hit with solid shot could be repaired and put back into service.
Loved your analogy so much I had to partake in the comments.
I've read Cooper's book and it's shocking to find out how inaccurate it is. If 3rd Armoured had the heaviest tank losses in the ETO,and Belton had to recover many knocked out Sherman's, it's understandable that he had a very negative view of American tanks.
Cooper inspected tanks that were brought to the main repair depot in the rear. Those were either shot up, needed an overhaul or burned up. Cooper assessed their damage or wear to determine if those were worth repairing or being parts donors. He also was required to make verbal reports to the division brass about the number of tanks brought in, the number repaired and the number scrapped then answer any questions they may have.
Cooper started complaining about the thin armor on US tanks in 1941 after being sent to Fort Knox to learn tank tactics. Nobody liked him due to that so his superiors decided he'd cause less trouble by assigning Cooper to that job.
The Sherman gets a bad rep but honestly, it was probably the best all around designed tank of the war. Fought in almost every theater, in vastly different environments, was versatile, reliable, upgradeable, easy to work on, easy to build, easy to transport, and offered many escape hatches for the crew. Sure the Germans had bigger tanks with bigger guns and thicker armor, but the Sherman wins where it counts.
Was also the most technologically advanced tank for its day, what with the wet storage ammunition and the somewhat effective vertical stabilizer.
the "Sherman was a bad tank" crowd forget that no tank is immune from anti-tank weapons. The whole point of anti-tank weapons is to knock out tanks. If they can not do so, they are not anti-tank weapons. Even today, no tank can survive the main gun of another tank. They are all lethal. They also don't really understand the role of the tank in combined arms warfare. Tanks have multiple roles and taking on enemy tanks is only one of them. In fact, if your heavy force is being used to counter the enemy's heavy force, your tactics suck. Mechanized (armored) warfare is about mobility and firepower on the move, not about shootouts with OPFOR tank regiments. This is where the M4 shined. Killing tanks is where the tank destroyer shined.
I read several Free French veterans memories, and they were generally happy with the tank.
Protection was not the best, but adequate, the gun good enough in most cases, and the tank was "quick".
They recon that German tanks had better guns and armour, but the Sherman was a match, compensating its limitations with some strong points.
It depends on what perspective you choose, at what point in time, location or what engagement.
Id prefer, on a personal note, not to be in any tank once anything larger than a nerf dart is shot at it, the consequences of that statement leading to the notion id be in combat and at risk of death which any soldier would acknowledge, is not preferable to being home with the missus.
Shermans were not easy to built or easier to maintain. Having a radial engine in a tank is not a smart move. Having cylinder heads facing down into the tank hull, forces you to strip out the whole engine for a simple task like a spark plug change. The m4a4 had a 30 cylinder Multibank engine which 5 carburetors, with the same maintenance issues like the radial engine. The m4a2 had two diesel engines coupled together. This is a level of over engineering the germans never reached. Until spring 1944 all shermans were produces wirhout a commanders coupola, which made the commander lack situational awareness. The turret had only one hatch for all three members for the crew inside the turret until spring 1944. The gunner and the loader had difficulties getting out off the tank. The gunner had a very bad gunsight which only offeres 6 to 9 degree fov, which forced him to have an extra periscopic sight for situational awareness.
The vvss suspension had a suspension travel of only 11 cm. The M4 could be stopped by a 30cm vertical obstical.
Most sherman still had this configuration when the allies landed in normandy. All the major improvements arrived at the Frontline in November/ December 1944 when the war was basically over.
For a very large part of the war, the m4 sherman can be discribed as medicor at best. The first M4A3 HVSS 76mm (easy 8) reaches the frontline when the battle of the bulge was almost over.
If Cooper's reporting is somewhat faulty, the responsibility for that lies completely with the Wehrmacht for not keeping him on the mailing list for technical data on the tank.
To be fair, they had the wrong email address.
Churchill tanks had heavier armoured protection than most other allied tank in the mid war. They were also roomier inside. The crews preferred the Churchill over Shermans, as you had a better chance of survival.
I would add that this isn't just memoirs created decades after the fact, even things like After Action Reports and other documents created at the time often have errors like overstating the enemy by identifying Panzer IVs as Tigers etc.
A soldier can provide great information on a soldier's perspective of the war. But a soldier's perspective is necessarily limited and (with a few exceptions) they are not any more qualified to comment on the big picture any more than any non-soldier.
It's interesting how the M-4's reputation has been rehabilitated by solid research. My own father was a pilot. The best airplane of World War II? the one that brought him home.
Wet ammo stowage was a great idea in WWII. We see in Ukraine lots of more modern Russian tanks which DO NOT have wet ammo stowage. Upon penetration, they pop their turrets and the main gun propellant burns ferociously.
Ah, yes, the book that shall not be named
During the pre internet years, the Sherman was always compared unfairly against the German big cats by Panzerphile war gamers who usually happen to be... Americans. Belton Cooper's book only serve to convince them even more with confirmation bias. In reality the Sherman was a good tank, not perfect, but good enough. US Army Shermans were KO'd mostly by well positioned AT guns, well hidden TDs, AT mines, and infantry AT weapons.
According to a American study direct enemy fire accounted for 54% of tank losses, 20% were mines, infantry AT weapon only accounted for some 7.5%
The British experience in NW Europe(aka ETO) is analogous and comparable to the US’s. It can be assumed that these figures for NW Europe/ETO would be similar. The American Study’s samples show the British had more causalities, percentage wise, due to gunfire than American forces. In 1944 for example, the study showed that 50.9% of Amerian tanks sampled were lost due to gunfire compared to 59.2% of the British.
Gunfire in all its forms causes the majority of Allied tank casualties. A British Report, broke down a sample of British tank casualties down further. Splitting up the gunfire into AT Guns, Tanks, SPGs, along with Mines and Bazookas(Hollow Charges).
Anti-tank guns 22.1%, tanks 14.5%, spg 24.4%
Is it fair to say the US doctrine wasn't geared for tank-on-tank, but to use the tank to support infantry, and use artillery, anti-tank (and even air support) to deal with panzers?
Could the discrepancies in reported barrel lengths be due to inconsistency in including the breech as part of the barrel length?
All you have to do is look at the number of killed US tankers as a percentage of the total and compare to the pour bloody infantry. Then go, hmmmm which one would I be better off as, a tanker, or an infantryman?
I agree that generally a veteran's account can be less accurate than that of a well read historian, I say that as a 25 year British army veteran who served both in the infantry and the REME. I may have been able to field repair AFVs, gained some knowledge of their use in warfare and the appearance and characteristics of enemy vehicles but that doesn't make me an expert. The passing years have also taught me not to trust what I once perceived as fact, also, soldiers have a tendency to denigrate the usefulness of their equipment, in my opinion. Or perhaps that's a British trait.
One might call back to the discussion of the A10 acting as a ground attack aircraft. Distancing the actual statistics (even after dealing with the mess that gathering such numbers and evaluating them is) from the experience on the ground can be a mess.
If something's a pain in the rear, I can't imagine someone who's life depends on it having a very positive view on it's failures, even if it is statistically better than an alternative. Maybe it shows more about how equipment can affect morale in excess of it's technical value.
My Grandfather was a career soldier, and ended up in Gds Amd with 9 Coldstream in '44. He maintained the Churchill was the very best tank on the field on account of having bailed out of three and survived to tell tall tales to his grandson... I think his logic was that a tank was a fire magnet, so best be in one that could take a hit. Mind you, he also had a strange affection for his Webley and Sten, which by all account were bloody horrid things.
@@duncanhamilton5841 sounds like a glass half full kind of guy. Probably less optimistic people tend to hate their equipment, while more optimistic ones swear by it
I was friends with a US infantry Marine who saw combat in Afghanistan.
Most of his descriptions of his equipment went like this: “It sounds cool, but it actually kind of sucked.”
I know a few rank and file one-enlistment Marines with similar opinions.
Conversely, when talking with a few other infantry Marines with longer service records and 3+ combat tours, they had drastically better opinions of their equipment.
For example, both praised the M240B for its ability to put out high volumes of fire. Both generally liked their rifle optics. One said that his M110 was the best rifle he’s ever used.
The one who fought in the early GWOT in Iraq said tanks were amazing force multipliers. The one who fought more tours in Afghanistan said they were useless.
The true uniting factor is that both of them are deaf as doornails and have bad joints and backs.
*approving Chieftain noises*
Who knew that shade could be a projectile.
Cooper stated that German tanks did not have a powered turret traverse. In the case of the Tiger series and Panther series this is absolutely false. Really late model Panzer IVs did not have a powered turret but this was at the stage of the war when German was just about defeated. German turret traverse was slow by allied standards but it was not due to using a hand crank!
The German tanks used a hydraulic traverse with the hydraulic pump driven off the engine of the tank. So the max traverse speed was determined by the engines max rpm. So the speed varies depending on the rpm but us tanks had a electric over hydraulic. A electric motor drove the pump and aloud the us tanks to traverse the same rate no matter what. This also allowed powered traverse with the engine not running. That's something the German tanks couldn't do.
@@cyclonebuzz8172 Some early German AFVs used a dedicated gasoline engine to power the hydraulics.
Friends father commanded am M18 with a 76mm gun. He stated that the M18s did well against the German tanks. He stated most of the tanks he encountered did not have turrets. Dad played with an M36 with a 90mm gun that crumbled a derelict Tiger tanks glacis plate.
It's a great video, thanks. Very interesting statistical data. He did not know in detail the American armored units in the European theater.
15 Divisions, 4,200 Shermans With 4 lost, the 3rd Armored alone accounted for 23% of all these casualties (about 826 Shermans). Very very good. Greetings.
MHV, I'll just note that the 900+m/s value for the Pz IV might refer to the PzGR 40 - which was a lighter, faster round with no explosive and much less post-penetration damage - and far less likely to set off fires. So it'd be using a comparison to a different and much less frequent round. In alternative, it might be referring to the 75mm of a PANTHER - kWk 42, at 935m/s accoring to wiki. Which are wrong comparisons in either case.
Also note the M4 also had a light, fast, non explosive round with higher pen and less post-pen damage, the HVAP T-45 shot, about 860m/s.
All in all, as you note the book is wrong and does not compare apples to apples.
I appreciate the video and the corrections to figures provided and to updated statistics. I appreciate accuracy, in all things. So, thanks for that. And thanks for providing corrections to your video, as well, in the captions (while only few, again, I appreciate accuracy). If Lt. Cooper could have corrected statistical errors in his printed book, be them his or his "ghost writer's," (ie. typist's) I have no doubt he would have.
That said... Lt. Cooper's statistical errors don't change the big picture:
If a German tank could punch through the frontal armor of a Sherman... and lets face it, most could...
If a Sherman's A/P rounds (75 or 76) bounced off the frontal armor off of most German tanks... and most did...
If Shermans became mired in mud that German tanks (with wider tracks) could traverse... which was often the case...
If, prior to hostilities, I witnessed an arrogant General overrule a superior U.S. tank vs. the Sherman... which he did...
If my duties included traveling through enemy territory to deliver loss reports/secure replacement tanks... and it was...
If one of my jobs was overseeing the washing out of the remains of knocked out Sherman tank crews, patching up the holes, painting over the gore inside and redistributing the armor to replacement crews... and it was...
Well...
No disrespect to the author of this video but... no amount of statistical bean crunching and decades-after-the-fact error correcting (where tank dimensions, capacities and dates are concerned) is going to change the historical fact that the Sherman was under-armored and under-gunned for the German tanks they KNEW they would end up facing 1:1 AND the German high-velocity anti-tank batteries they KNEW they would encounter.
And before the flamers come forth shouting that "they were not expected to fight 1:1..."
Fair enough, but this does not change the fact that 'no plan survives first contact.' A more contemporary version would be "evabody-gotta-plan till they git hit..." ~ Mike Tyson. This was as true back then as it is today. Any military commander will acknowledge this.
Finally, Lt. Cooper was not part of one tank crew. He recovered, repaired, maintained and supplied armor to NUMEROUS tank crews. He talked to surviving tank crews in theater... about engagements, armor, maintenance needs... He had a MUCH bigger picture of what was going on (at that time) than that of any one tank crew's account.
With that, it's my belief that "Death Traps" is a completely appropriate title.
This video, while informative and very instructive for those crunching exact historical dates, armor measurements and capacities... please do keep in mind, it was made by (again, no disrespect intended) a man who was born decades after the war, with more than two decades of subsequent research available to him (1998-2022). If you want to rattle off precise measurements of X,Y or Z gun tube from the conflict... again, good video.
If you want a vivid first hand account from a highly-educated armored maintenance officer who was there in
Northern Europe (D-Day to VE-Day), on the move with one of the most heavily-engaged U.S. armored divisions in the war...
read the book.
>If one of my jobs was overseeing the washing out of the remains of knocked out Sherman tank crews, patching up the holes, painting over the gore inside and redistributing the armor to replacement crews... and it was..
I've seen this mentioned multiple times but that wasn't a repair shop's job. That was the job of quartermasters. By the time a tank got to a repair depot, human remains would have already been removed. In fact, it was a pretty big deal at the time that the US was choosing to have its dead buried in local war cemeteries instead of paying for them to be shipped back stateside, so there was a lot of oversight on how the dead were handled. With the frequency Cooper claims to have found limbs, why weren't other repair shops reporting the same? And why was he hosing the remains down in the first place? Mortuary Affairs probably wanted as much of the body as they could get ahold of for the burial. So much of Cooper's story doesn't add up.
@@Humorless_Wokescold
If one were to venture as far as the dust jacket of his book, Cooper's divisional assignment and primary missions are clearly and concisely listed.
Lt. Cooper was an Ordnance Lieutenant in the Third Armored Division. He traveled WITH the armored division as it attacked south and eventually east across Europe. He was not part of any "repair shop." He was also responsible for traveling back through bypassed enemy territory (regularly) to Battalion HQ, where vehicle loss reports were delivered and replacement vehicles were obtained.
As Cooper details in his book, one of his primary missions in the ETO was to locate disabled vehicles (tanks, tank destroyers, half-tracks, trucks, jeeps, etc. ), assess their condition and when repairable, recover and return them to the Vehicle Collection Point (VCP). At times, this was done under fire.
It doesn't take much discernment to realize that this/his mission made Cooper one of the first responsible for approaching and assessing the damage to a shot-up Sherman tank. (ie. He had to stick his head in the turret and hull openings, look past the gore and assess internal damage and determine if it was a candidate for recovery/repair). If not repairable, or if required repairs surpassed the capability of the mobile VCP, disabled vehicles were to be left in place for later retrieval by Battalion personal
@@frodrickfronkensteen9241 No, I haven't read Death Traps and I have no plans to. Every review I've read makes it sound over emotional to the point of parody. The quotes I've seen from the book make Cooper sound like a bad soldier. Maybe those quotes aren't representative of the whole book but frankly, I don't care. Cooper gets enough wrong that I seriously question how much is actual memory vs how much is stories he's repeated until they became memory. Even the favorable reviews of Death Traps contain quotes that sound too hyperbolic to be credible.
For example. One reviewer shared quote after quote where Cooper says something to the effect of 'this was a pivotal, game changing moment in war.' WWII, as told by Cooper, only had pivotal moments. Being briefly left in charge for 12 hours? Pivotal! A poorly coordinated German attack? A massive counter offensive that threatened to break Allied lines!
I'm going to be blunt. I don't trust what Cooper has to say about WWII and I think the dismissal his fanbase shows towards historians and engineers makes it pretty clear this isn't about historical accuracy. Bean counting is important when you're trying to build an accurate picture of what happened. Bean counting is how you reconcile Cooper's claim that he was regularly washing away the remains of tankers with the actual American crew fatalities. When John Hopkins University examined tank fatalities in WWII they looked at 274 medium tanks. Out of 1370 crewman (accounting for infantry made part of the tank crew) you had 171 deaths and 466 wounded. That study was done in 1951 when the records were much more readily available and could be cross referenced with newspaper stories everyone was already familiar with.
So how do you (and I do mean you) reconcile Cooper's claim that he was frequently washing out human remains with the numbers all the bean counters report? And keep in mind that the bean counters are also including in those 171 deaths soldiers who were gunned down after egressing from the disabled tank. It doesn't add up. The likeliest explanation is that Cooper is exaggerating the things he saw.
@@Humorless_Wokescold Did I say Cooper "was frequently washing out human remains?" I went back to my posts above, thinking I mispoke. Ya, I did NOT say that. And I'm pretty confident that Cooper did not make that claim either. Did he have to witness it, and at times, oversee such tasks... I believe he did.
Maybe the reviews were not accurate and/or exaggerated? Or maybe some reviews were written based solely on other reviews by people who have not read the book?
Cooper DOES detail what had to take place to repair/restore a knocked out tank/vehicle. Part of that DID include removing human remains, washing the inside of the tank (as best it could be), applying fresh interior paint (as practical), etc. I don't recall Cooper ever claiming to have removed human remains himself.
Maybe the reviewers mispoke?
And maybe this is age or generational or whatever, but... I don't read reviews. I read books.
And having read the book (any book), I can then arrive at my own conclusions... not have others influence what I read or don't read. And I think that is a large part of our society's current devolution... people watch what they are told to watch, read what they are told to read, follow the crowd, stay in line... and then they believe they arrived at their own conclusions. --- Sorry for digressing to current events. I just think where we depart is how we approach historical research.
Where research is concerned... a case-in-point...
In my younger more mobile years (and when I had some disposable income), I drove to a deceased relative's WWII tank battalion reunion several states away, initially to learn more about his war experiences. I ended up returning to subsequent reunions to do (informal) interviews of the surviving veterans (at the time, most in their early to mid 80s). Each one of them, to a man, were fantastic human beings. Just a great bunch of guys, most with families accompanying them. All willing were given interview slots where very casual, private but un-timed question/answer dialogues took place. When the questions ran out, I'd just sit and listen to them talk and remember.
During these interviews, every veteran, to a man... mispoke or misremembered (at least some) technical figures, historical dates, exact measurements, distances, etc.
All of them.
I can't even begin to imagine what I WOULD NOT HAVE LEARNED... if... I had packed up my gear and walked out after hearing the first veteran misplace a decimal or fail to accurately remember a statistic of "this" or "that..." or if I had skipped the reunions altogether... due to an unfavorable review about the men or their war time memories.
At any rate, peace and safety to you.
Hasnt the Sherman the best survival rate of the war?
YES 🤣
The spacy interior, smart ammunition storage and the terrain at which it operated in were what gave the Sherman such high survivability. But post-penetration survivability doesn't negate the problem that was its weak armor protection.
Great video
Despite the book's shortcomings, Death Trap is a fascinating look at a little recognized but critical aspect of war. Cooper's job was to visit the front every night to determine the parts needed to repair the repairable vehicles, race back to the nearest supply depot, and race back with a truck load of parts before dawn. Spark plugs were a constant need. He came under German fire repeatedly and accidently wrecked more than one jeep.
Cooper didn't do that. He only inspected damaged and worn out armor towed back to main repair shop far in the rear. The tankers had a forward repair station about 1/3 mile away from the front lines where they could drive back to for quick repairs or have mechanics come to them if disabled. That repair station had a store of parts with more available at a forward repair depot further back from the front lines where tanks that required more time consuming repairs could be towed. Obtaining additional parts was a time consuming affair due to the paperwork involved so had a parts runner taking in parts orders once a day to keep the repair stations' inventory fully stocked.
Our host and Zaloga are entirely too easy on the ‘authors’ of Deathtraps.
There is no Ghostwriter. In his forward the author(Cooper) thanks his good friend Michael Bennighof for ‘editing’
Bennighof is a prolific writer of rule books for board games that he develops over at Avalanche Press.
He likes to sign off all his work with the following:
Michael Bennighof-PhD, and Fullbrite Scholar and ‘NASA Journalist in Space Finalist’
Wiki has a list of the forty actual finalist for that defunct program(ended when the Challenger blew up) and he ain’t on it.
Deathtraps reads like ‘Forest Gump: The WW II years.
The number of ‘firsts’ Cooper achieves is long and astounding. Shelled by 210 mm German guns, Ordnance officer to be attacked by an ME-262, came into possession of BIGOT maps, etc, etc.
My favorite is his sixth sense telling him there should be dust on the road he was taking that allowed him to avoid a German ambush. The thing is: the date was March 28th. The first week of spring. How much dust are we going to have in Central Europe then?
It’s very clear that Cooper didn’t write this book at all and had little control over the manuscript. If he did read the manuscript before publishing, he either didn’t bother to correct all the misinformation or lacked the power to overrule his editor.
Deathtraps is academic fraud and Cooper’s actual level of participation is unknown.
I think it likely, that the rear echelon antics of an Ordnance Lieutenant was boring as hell and unpublishable.
Why not give Cooper’s memoir to a man NASA chose to send into space?
In the same way Survivor Bias influences perceptions from those that went through something and lived to talk about and promote their views from experience, Attrition Bias can be equally as misleading. Especially when that information is seemingly falsified by someone other than the original source and those without proper base knowledge can't distinguish between falsehoods and decent information.
Oh, is this about veterans calling them death traps and the statistics showing that a lot of crews survived their tank being shot up?
Survivor bias and such?
You got my attention. Never much looked into it myself.
Can’t call a tank a Death trap if you’re actually trapped and dead
Sadly, the statistics aren't to be taken at face value and instead require one to take note of the caveats the report has.
Things that Moran in his blind drive to promote the Sherman utterly ignored
@@Dreachon And what are those?
Everything I have ever seen indicates Sherman's were equivalent or better than the other medium tanks of its era in effectiveness and survivability.
@@88porpoise US data is vastley different from other sherman users. The british canadian and russian data gives another perspective.
The US shermans rarely engage strong German tank units and mostly had to deal with German infantry during the break out from normandy. They never met tiger 1s in combat for example. All the tiger 1s claims by us tankes are falls. They only met some tiger IIs very late in the war.
The british and the Canadians had to fought strong German units like in operation goodwood. While the US tankers rarely saw a German tank during operation cobra.
So the type of threat is very important. Facing handheld anti tank weapons is different from fighting Panzers and at guns.
@@HaVoC117X so where is all this data that shows Shermans performed significantly worse than T-34s or Cromwells in similar circumstances for the Soviets and British?
What is the opposite of survivor bias? Cooper's job was to repair US tanks that had become casualties that could be fixed on the front line by the tankers. He wouldn't have been involved with all the US tanks that took hits and were still serviceable or with German tanks that were knocked out.
Take the time to find a library with a copy of the US Army's multi-volume history on WWII, which includes analysis of what worked, what did not work. It will give you a solid basis to evaluate the history of the M4A in comabt.
The part of the "Death Trap / Ronson " tag applied to the Sherman that gets me , is a lack of research our keyboard warrior friends have on the casualty rates per Sherman Tank. Survivability and comparative death rates amongst Sherman users would clearly refute the Cooper assertions. The Chieftain covered this in a YT lecture .ua-cam.com/video/bNjp_4jY8pY/v-deo.html.Also the nature of the Sherman's work in attacking German defensive formations and positions , leads itself to a high attrition , The repair figures after Operation Goodwood by the British and Canadians in Normandy also refers to the large number returned to service due to logistics , good maintenance and forward recovery.
The main difference is the Pz IV gun was designed for AT warfare however the M4 gun had its ancestry in the French '75, an artillery piece. The German gun was developed by industry to government specifications. The US gun was developed by the artillery part of US Ordnance.
No, is made for Infantry Support, the Pz III that is made for Armored Warfare.
The Panzer IV was originally armed with the the KWK 37 L/24 gun which was optimised for firing HE shells in the infantry support role, so no, it wan't designed for AT warfare.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Reply to both of you,. I am very aware of the L24 gun the Pz IV was equipped through the F1 model. I was referring specifically to the L43 the F2-G had and the L48 the late G to the end had withing the context of the video. The Stug III had basically the same gun up to the F/8 model. So did the Pz IIIN.
Its amazing how people still trash Cooper's book, yet thousand of veteran testimonials from BOTH SIDES say that the Sherman had some serious flaws. I think a bumch of people who poo poo his book haven't really read it. I have. Cooper saw in person the destroyed Shermans, as the narrator says.
There was a series in the '90s called "Fields of Armor," which came out around the 50th anniversary of the D-Day operation. In the "Nightmare in Normandy" segment, the narrator, a prominent military historian, and some veterans of that campaign perpetuate the myth of the Sherman as being a "death trap." The inaccuracies in that segment illustrate how myths can arise, and cause lasting damage to both the reputation and legacy of, in this case, a fine armored vehicle. Here's a link to the intriguing, but imperfect documentary: ua-cam.com/video/v2tWyKfR9_U/v-deo.html
How exactly are they "perpetuating myths" if anything this cherry picking revisionism led by american centric Cheiftain is ten times worse than the nonsense of "you need 10 shermans to kill one tiger" because Chieftain does it under a guise of professional tank expert/researcher and not a random internet troll/fanboy.
These guys were there , they had to watch their guns bouncing as peashooters while the Germans just went through their armor like knife through butter, you can try to pull up skewed statistics without any context, but those are only that, and as many other things those can be made to push an agenda nd are open to interpretation.
Like Chieftain did, claiming how "small" Sherman tank crew losses were, focusing ONLY on US forces and completely ignoring the fact British/Commonwealth forces fought most of the German armor in the west, right until Battle of the Bulge, which was a serious shock to the Americans that never faced anything like that, especially German tank vise).
And even the list for US casualties is problematic, because th documents says it doesnt count ppl that werent prt of the Armored divisions and officers there were no armor officers only infantry and arty branch. This also means that over half of all US tank and tank crew losss arent evne ounted on the lest because most US Sherman units were in fact prt of infatry divisions and not considered "armor" as stupid as it sounds.
The Brits in fact had much more experience fighting German armor than the US did and modified their tank accordingly, which was stupid according to Chieftain who is in his pro Sherman/US crusade to modify the ugly facts into something more cozier claiming Sherman Firefly was a "stupid idea".
We came to the point of discarding info coming from first hand/ww2 veterans only to embrace info from a Guy who sat in a tank firing at third world guerillas firing obsolete RPGs and IEDs, who never saw a tank battle in his life, much less a ww2 one.
The Sherman was designed as an infantry support tank and because of its mass production build philosophy, was available in huge numbers. Massive amounts of spare parts were also part of the equation. This resulted in the tanks being successfully misused to solve many problematic high attrition situations it was never originally intended to solve.
Not sure I agree with you effectively labelling only an 'infantry support tank.' By default isn't any tank an infantry support tank in part. It wasn't designed specifically for this like the British churchill or specific breakthrough tanks like the tiger or some of the other US and UK designs.
"The Sherman was designed as an infantry support tank" -- No it wasn't. It was a general-purpose tank.
In theory the early Shermans are made for all around tank, and become infantry tanks, of course, differently from the 76 barreled guns Shermans...
@@jrd33 Except not really. US Armor doctrine of the time had tanks be infantry support tank destroyers were for fighting tanks
@@Jpdt19 Not really because before the War you had two types of tanks infantry tanks like the Sherman made for infantry support and Calvary tanks meant to destroy enemy tanks. US doctrine had all tanks be infantry tank while Tank Destroyers filled the calvary tank role.
Using statistics alone is often problematic because it does not take battlefield conditions into account. The consensus (including Chieftan) seems to be that generally, he who fires first wins. This would be true with the few Fireflies. However, the frontal armor of the Panther and Tiger would easily ricochet most M4 rounds, so the attacks had to be from the side or rear. The guns on the Panther and Tiger could easily penetrate the M4 (including the Firefly) in any location. See the front-to front battle footage in Koln. The Sherman was no match. It took the larger Pershing to disable the Panther, and the German crew still survived.
Also, it is a shame that enemy POV is often not a source. I remember seeing a former German tank commander who said he felt very bad for the Sherman tank crews because their tanks “always caught fire” when hit. This is most likely due to the regular gas the Sherman used, and not widespread improper ammo storage (though sometimes that might be a factor).
Maintenance was a real issue. In the last year of the war, the Allies had a real advantage over the Germans in logistics and manpower to maintain their tanks. A real problem for the Germans, whose tanks were complicated, often underpowered, with weak transmission/drivetrains for the weight of their machines.
Crew and conditions being equal, I would rather have been in a Panther than a Sherman, hands down, though I would be disgusted fighting on that side!
" I remember seeing a former German tank commander who said he felt very bad for the Sherman tank crews because their tanks “always caught fire” when hit. "
Source? I never read or seen it, I heard people mention it, where did you hear/read this?
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized A fair question. I believe I have it on VHS. His interview was fascinating. The top part of his face was disfigured from being wounded in combat - "the tank commander is just looking out his tank like so". He also talked about the mics they wore on their throats which didn't pick up the noise of the tank - "it was excellent." I will do my best to find it and post!
This is the quintessential example of survivorship bias.
My friend father was a tanker in the afrika corp driving panzer4.
He told me that shermn n britisk tanks were easy to hit n knock out
In Korea the T-34 held its own quite well with the Shermans, until the Pershings were brought in. This does not really speak well of the Sherman, although the Sherman had to be kept for its hill climbing abilities which the Pershing could not match. There are other bad points about the Sherman as well: The one round that could defeat the German Panther frontally, I think it was called the hvap, or apcr, I forget, was rare, and even when you had it it was very inaccurate... 76 mm Shermans were about 15% of the total even in January 1945... While the Sherman did have a gun stabiliser, in WWII, shooting while moving was not recommended because the suspension did not really allow any accuracy. Only the Panther had a suspension that was much better than even the Tiger for stabilising the gun while moving, miles ahead of any other WWII tank, and it could fire accurately while moving at least some of the time. Contrary to legend, German heat treatment of the armor improved to the end, and reliability was lower only because a lack of tungsten in tools forced square cut gears. Despite this, reliability improved to the end. The Sherman was worse in mud than the larger German tanks, owing its high ground pressure, but unlike them it could climb steeply without breaking due to the synchromesh gearing. The Germans would have used equally good chevron gears if they had enough tungsten tooling to spare. The Panther also suffered from a short range. The deadliest German tank killer was by far the Stug IIIG, around 9000 made, and the Hetzer (at over 4000 made in one year!) performed so well they even considered producing nothing else!
It's funny that he claims having advanced knowledge about tanks even foreign ones while not even able to correctly tell apart variants of the one he was trained to work on.
By the way... Although correct that the M4 variants differ in the way their hulls are constructed, I'd point at the engine as the main characteristic of what makes the later variants (A2 and onwards) unique.
There's been more distortion and misinformation regarding the Sherman than any other WW2 tank. The criticism of the Sherman being woefully inferior to the Panther and Tiger is one of those Duh? moments. Of course it was, because the Sherman was not "designed" to best Panthers and Tigers. It was a medium tank designed for exploitation, and more than held it's own against the German Panzer IV, which was the tank it most closely resembled and faced. Actually, later Sherman models with the 76mm using HVAP ammunition could take out Panthers and even Tigers, which to me was like a middleweight fighter knocking out a heavyweight. It punched far above its weight class. The problem was the shortage of such ammunition to Sherman crews, since most went to tank destroyer units. The reliability of a Sherman is of course well-known. It was easy to maintain and fix, much better than the complicated Panther and Tiger. There were Shermans that went all the way from D-Day to the end of the war. How many other tanks could boast that kind of rugged reliability? To me the Sherman, all things considered, was as good as the T-34 and probably the best tank of WW2 (if we recognize the technical capabilities the Sherman had over the T-34 -- gun stabilizer, electrically-powered traverse (something the T-34 didn't have it until very late in the war), better gun, better sights, roomier, spring-loaded hatches for quicker escape, etc) and the versatility of the Sherman chassis to house so many other platforms.
During the year of 1943, apart from the combats in Tunisia, did the Western Allies faced the Tiger and Panther tanks in Italy as well?
Sicily certainly the Germans didn't have Panthers. Perhaps some Tigers there. And the Italian mainland campaign seems like to have had fewer tanks thanks for the geography of the terrain. Salerno could have seen Panthers in action there. People often don't talk much about the Battle of Salerno, seems like a significant battle quite often ignored. And it may have played a role on these perceptions of German armor too.
As far as I know there were some Tigers in Italy and if I remember correctly, about Monte Cassino a German actually complained about the Panther.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized so there's the chance of having Panthers and Tigers in Salerno. The position the Germans had in that battle may have improved the combat effectiveness of such tanks, I guess, and influenced the Allied perspective. It wasn't an easy place to make an amphibious assault as they did.
I find those battles that took place in Italy very interesting, they were quite balanced. And Brazil fought there too!
Do you know if there's any register of Tiger tank fighting in Sicily?
Some tigers were in Sicily and counterattacked Patton's landings in Gela.
The scene in "the Big Red One" movie when navy shells knocked out the tank chasing them is loosely based on a true story.
A book to avoid like the Plague.
Net cree survival rates of shermans vere superlatively good.
Such an accusation can at most be levelled against their early variants, and they were self evidently fixed.
Shermans issues were baing fucking gigantic and mounting a lackluster armament and armour for their enourmous size.
@@alasdairmmorrison74 No they wernt small, they were relatively light however.
Being there and repairing and washing out tank after tank filled with the blood and guts of comrades over and over again, one would certainly want to find a reason for such losses. It may explain the skewed numbers. It's not like you want to shout ''Hey our guys aren't as well trained as theirs''. But Germany had been fighting for a few years before the Yanks had joined in gaining invaluable experience (Not to mention their extensive training). Also on the Tiger ''Propaganda'' Goebbels Did state ''There is no better propaganda than the truth''. With something like a near 60ton beast and a massive cannon like it had, there would be no reason to lie. The Technical advances of the Germans at the time must have wreaked havoc on the minds of everyone. I know in the UK the the V2's explosions were being written in the paper as ''Gas Explosions'' , i remember watching a documentary where a Scottish woman living and working in London said: '' Despite what the Radio and papers said We knew it was a German superweapon, we always had our white bed sheet ready to hang out the window for if the Germans were to invade we certainly weren't putting up a fight!'' To think entire blocks were being wiped out and many would believe the Government. I can see how some could as they travelled faster than the speed of sound, But how many before you'd start to question it? Same would go with Sherman after sherman being brought in for repairs with the crew dead and a hole clean through it. You'd have to start questioning whether your tanks specs were really what was being sold! I don't know what would be worse getting in the sherman with the fresh repair plate or seeing the new crew get in thinking the 100mm repair plate was there to ''protect them'' and not to patch up the 88mm hole through it! Ballsy generation. Now we have people who sook over words and names!
Thanks- a great review of the issue.👍
Okay, I think I get why the M2 75mm comes up. It was the first gun mounted on the M3 Medium (Grant/Lee). The M2 was phased out in favor of the M3 75mm. When the M4 Medium tank came around the Army was running with the M3 gun, and then later other marks. I can see why this mistake is made though. Just writing this little blurb, with all the M designations being tossed around, is making me go cross-eyed. I imagine that it would be confusing for an elderly veteran working with a civilian writer whose experience with US military matters may be suspect.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75mm_gun_M2%E2%80%93M6
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee
Looking better than the T-72 everyday now. At least the Sherman won wars.
You would have a better chance of surviving a Javelin hit in a late war Sherman than a T-72 (or T-90).
It takes 15 seconds to open the hatch on a T-72…(it has to be cranked up with a hand operated jack screw before it will open).
@@allangibson2408 well and the ammo storage......
This kinda highlights an issue I’ve had with people’s logic for a while now. People will quote vets at you, and completely ignore you when you talk real stats. The stats are more representative of reality, because they don’t just come from one person’s perspective. But everyone’s like, “I know a guy” as if it disproves the stats.
If a vehicle doesn't magically deflect point-blank shots from large-caliber anti-tank guns while being ambushed it must be bad, right?
1st off, U have the M2, M3 75mm & the M1 76mm (3"). 33+ ton works for the M4, M4A1, M4A3. 37+ ton represents the "Jumbo". The "Jumbo" started w/ the M3 but was field fitted w/ the M1. @ least @ 1st. Either US gun could fair damage w/ a "trap shot" under the Mantlet - good luck. The quality of tankers were GR8 in the first couple of months but after that the majority of the crews had to be trained on the fly. Training in the US had stop. Everything needs it's grain of salt. Many thanx for the vid 👍👍
The majority if US tankers did not need to be trained on the fly. US lost so few tank crew as casualties there was no real shortage, now infantry losses did exceed projections and there was a shortage of those for a while.
considering that he wrote the book in pre wikipedia days I do not care about the inacuracies cause what sources did he had ?
Most likely US military archives which had written their own reports and summaries out of german documents.
And I guarantee you there a lot of mistaktes in these US military documents - at least in the submarine tech where it caused dangerous situations for american trial cews in post war.
And on top: you will find tons of german documents which use diferent terms and facts than others about the same particular point. And you can not bring those docs together to a match you can not find an explanation - what should the allies do with they docs tother than translate.
Imagine the translators started to interpret the docs having seen previous docs with more or less congruency
To be honest you will find a lot of mistakes in the books of the pre 2000s cause everyone relied on those summary or top executive reports.
He was an ordenance officer means he was organizing the whole repair business and he must of cause have a huge knowledge about the statistics cause based on those casualties and losses he had to pre plan all thwe work, capacity of his shop and tell the commanding generals how many tanks and trucks they will have back in 2 days or so.
Therefore I appreciate his book, the stats he had gotten or made cause those are whitnesses of what had happened.
Without his book we would not even know how many were lost and what means lost ?
lost tank today means forever or can it be revived sooner or later once they have a break.
It is an eye whitness report and tthat is it: needs to be read carefully but if you asked those tank crews how they had felt I guess at least in 3rd army you would get similiar reports: death traps - like the grey wolves fighting in the oceans after mid 1943.
They sunk in reality and the reports were also about how hard it was to survive and that they were nailed in iron coffins those german crews were tallking like that.
It continuously saddens and disappoints me to run into the same person over and over who makes the same misinformed argument about the Sherman's inferiority and the German's superiority in all things armored simply ignoring all the information we have available to us like it doesn't exist and stubbornly refusing or simply ignoring any logical counter argument and sources that have even the slightest notion of denting their skewed perception of history. It's exhausting. We know that Shermans performed well in tank-on-tank engagements. We know that Shermans could deal with Tigers and Panthers. We know that in general it performed acceptably, if not exemplary, and consistently throughout the entire war. Yes it's original 75mm gun was insufficient for more heavily armored targets, but it was amazing against infantry and structures. That's why the 76mm gun existed, to crack hard targets like Tigers which it did very well. No it's armor was not the best, but for when the tank was designed it's armor was both staggeringly thick (again this is for 1941). We also know for a fact it's crew survivability was best in class, maybe for the entire war.
Very nicely done. thank you
You don't need 'the best' tanks when you have comparitively unlimited industrial capacity and enough troops in the replacement pipeline to keep your force manned. It worked for the Soviets, and it worked for the US. Eventually you will win.
i think hollow charge shell of kwk 37 had about 450-475 m/s. Muzzle velocity.
The 1973 British documentary series "The World at War" contains an interview with a former US Army ordnance officer who describes the problems his team documented with the damaged M4 Sherman tanks they recovered. I believe it was Belton Cooper, but I'd have to find and re-watch the correct episode to be sure. He claimed at one point in the fighting a group of untrained soldiers from the troop replacement depot were given some rudimentary instruction on a Sherman and immediately sent into combat where they were quickly killed. Even if his recollection was correct, I have never found supporting information to indicate it was anything more than an aberration, but such stories, once told, tend to take on an exaggerated life of their own.
The only reason untrained men would be "trained on tanks" in theater would be because some unit had acquired some spare tanks from somewhere and decided that instead of turning them over to the proper unit, they would instead create their own organic tank unit.
@@brucenorman8904 How would they maintain them?
I viewed that entire series several times over the years. It was Belton Cooper but they didn't grab green troops to man the tanks. The tankers would lose a crewman to injury so asked for volunteers from nearby infantry units since they had battlefield experience. They had no problem finding volunteers since plenty of soldiers felt they'd be safer inside a tank. New crewman were always made drivers since it was the easiest position to learn. Most received two hours of driving training before heading out to battle since they had the bow gunner as the assistant driver who could take over the controls when needed. The crews were trained to take over others positions when injured. The driver became the bow gunner, the bow gunner became the loader, the loader became the gunner and the gunner became the commander.
@@billwilson3609 That doesn't make sense. Typically a new crewman started as the bow gunner/assistant driver since it was the least important (some most useless) position in the tank. Putting him there may or may not require other crewmen to switch jobs, depending upon what they needed. I certainly would not want the entire crew to change their primary tasks just before going into battle and I definitely would not want to demote my driver to assistant driver. There is such a thing as earned merit and crew morale.
@@Paladin1873 Trained drivers were important since they also were the tank's mechanic. That became moot once they were replaced by a rookie volunteer since the rest of the crew also knew how to work on it. Having an experienced bow gunner/assistant driver was more important since they kept an eye on what was outside thru their periscope, fished out rounds from the storage racks so the loader could reload ready racks and refill rear ammo stowage then go outside when needed to check the out the tank if something wasn't acting right.
The crews changed positions during battle to keep the tank in action. Sometimes the injured crewmen were replaced by experienced crewmembers from disabled tanks for the duration of the fighting. The volunteers weren't kept on the job very long since the crew preferred having a trained driver/mechanic.
Sherman was the best tank in the war, not the strongest heavies beat it, no middle weight did, shermans were easy to repair and had the highest survival rate, it was the best tank by far
I was also left wondering how the USA won? IT seemed that the Sherman could not survive any battles. So reading his book would make it seem that Sherman was horrible. Yet in reports written by the German Army in Italy they want a tank like the Sherman (see the book PANZER Truppen 2) Also when one see's that there were over 49,000 Sherman's turned out and they could be sent all over the world and be kept running when they got there. And at the end of the day the Allies won the war by superior firepower and better supplies and just more. I recall the old adage by a Civil War General , Get there with most's.
Benton Cooper was in tank school in about 1942 when there was no Panther tanks in combat, the Tiger in September 1942 in Russia. It was not in combat in Tunisa January of 1943 .
A veteran Soviet tanker, Dmitriy Loza, who commanded Red Army Sherman tanks during the war thought very highly of his Shermans. Was it the "best" tank? No, but it had its pluses and advantages. You just had to know how to properly employ it like any other weapon system. He also objected to claims that the Sherman was somehow a bad tank. He wrote at least two book detailing his experiences commanding them.
American Tanks
HC Deb 02 November 1943 vol 393 c509509
27. Mr. Hammersley asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the large number of American Sherman tanks lying unused in this country; and whether he will arrange to equip British units with these tanks in preference to less reliable British tanks?
Sir J. Grigg The American tanks in this country are intended for the equipment of British Forces or for the accumulation of the necessary reserves. Naturally I do not propose to give information about the equipment of British formations which might be of value to the enemy but I may say that I do not accept the implications of either part of the hon. Member's Question.
§Mr. Hammersley Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the large numbers referred to in the Question are arrived at after making allowances for reserves on the most generous scale, and am I to understand that there are not sufficient armoured units to be furnished with these American tanks?
Sir J. Grigg The hon. Member is repeating the implication which I expressly refused to accept, namely, that there are tanks in this country which are being wasted.
Mr. Stokes May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether we are to infer that he is satisfied that the British tanks in use in this country are better than the Sherman tanks?
Sir J. Grigg Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put that question down.
Thing is with tanks is that everybody judges them by the socalled hard factors, speed, armor firepower. Which mean that by those metrics the Panther and T-34 dwarf the Sherman. And yet the Panther was not the king of the battlefield and was lost in almost equal numbers as the Panzer IV, and Soviet T-34 tank production could barely keep up at times with the T-34's that the Red Army kept losing. There are also other factors in play, like maintainability, reliability, crew comfort, crew ergonomics, communication in tanks and between tanks. And in those the Sherman scores very well, the Panther not so much and the T-34 atrociously.
I could not disagree more. All those "soft" attributes such as reliability add to the effectiveness of the battalion, the division, where combined arms (motorized infantry, artillery, air support) won the day. In that case, the M4 Sherman is fine for following up retreating enemies and claiming territory. No, we are talking about tank versus tank. Not crew experience, not availability of fuel, etc. Those attributes are just smoke and mirrors to the real issue. An enemy tank appears within range. Would you rather be in an M4 Sherman or a Pz V Panther. It would be hard to justify being in Sherman.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 I'd rather be in a Sherman because the Sherman had a 90%+ crew survival rate.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 Who said 'we' are only talking about tank vs tank? Your post is a gross simplification of combat that fails to understand or appreciate the complete picture. Warfare is combined arms, VERY asymmetrical, and exists in the tactical, operational, strategic, & grand strategic levels, all at the same time.
"Would you rather be in an M4 Sherman or a Pz V Panther. It would be hard to justify being in Sherman." I would rather be in the tank that is defending from a prepared position. They're more likely to win, regardless of how big their gun is, or how much armour they have. Why do you thinking attackers always take more losses in battle? Germany 'benefited' from being on the defense for the 2nd half of the war. That is going to skew the numbers considerably. I'd also rather be on the side with more air support, or artillery support. I'd want to be on the side that significantly outnumbers my opponent. These are but a few things to consider, amongst hundreds if not thousands of other considerations. As it turns out, warfare is actually quite complicated.
I don't think the Panther performed too badly in the 'soft' statistics category. Some of its soft stats were a bit better than a Shermans, but even the ones that didn't weren't that awful. Better trained crews in and of itself (particularly drivers) would have helped the Panthers performance considerably. A luxury Germany couldn't afford. An MHV video on German tank training & overall crew experience levels at various points in the war would be interesting to watch. Unless hes already made one, Ill have to check.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 One of those 'soft' attributes is how well you can see the battlefield and hence your enemy. All round visibility was far better in a Sherman than in a Panther. If an enemy tank appears within range I'm far more likely to spot it first from a Sherman than a Panther.
Veterans vs Historians vs HistoryTubers
How many German Tanks is Lafeyette Poole credited with destroying? just curious. Zollaga have an answer?
10 to 12. With a further 250 armored vehicles and unarmored transports. That number is much more heavily disputed. But while a tangent, it's fairly impressive for 81 days of combat.
I just listened to an interview with Cooper, and didn't believe some of the things he said. He said that 17 drivers were assigned 34 untrained guys to man 17 shermans. They got 3 rounds of ap as practice then off to the front. I could see the russians doing that...
Rob, I went to Desert Storm with a M1A1 Unit, we were given 2 rounds to screen with, 1 Sabo 1 HEAT. Told there was a world wide shortage of 120 ammo. I can believe this.
@@58markstep is there any value to 17 tanks undermanned with untrained gunners and commanders? Is that not a waste of 17 tanks and 51 soldiers? But i would never say something a veteran said was wrong or didn't happen. What do i know?
@@robmarsh6668 You'd be surprised how bad every military sucks. The US military just sucks a little bit less than the other major ones right now and back then.
To make it fair on them, the Germans and Russians both did not exactly put highly trained crack crews into their tanks either, and it's not like the Iraqis in Desert Storm had even a semblance of an idea what they were doing either. Comparatively US tankers were much better trained, as with all other fields. The fire control system does most of the shooting in modern tanks anyway.
@@robmarsh6668 Rob, you misunderstood what I was pointing out. In a war ammo can be in short supply.
The Tiger tank fear reminds me of the propaganda videos of the MG 42 when they stated it's bark was worse than its bite.........spoiler it wasn't.
I think if you're on the receiving end of the MG42 I very much doubt you'd care about its bark, you're being shot at, you should be thinking about hitting the dirt or finding cover.
The MG42 ripped through ammunition so fast that they had to change belts frequently. The MG42 was however absolutely no threat to any allied armored vehicles however - the M2 Browning on the other hand could rip through the armor on all German armored cars and all Japanese armored vehicles without exception…
People laugh at the Bob Semple tank without realising that it had thicker armor than any of the Japanese tanks…
@@allangibson2408 The Type 97 Chi-Ha had a maximum thickness of 25mm while the Bob Semple only had 12.7mm max. Also the Japanese vehicles weren't glorified tankettes like the Bob Semple.
Thanks