LIMITED TIME OFFER
$2 / Month
Subscribe now for only $3.99 $2 a month!
Unlimited Website Access, Thousands of Searchable Articles, Warfare Newsletter, and more.
By Arnold Blumberg
“We had been assured by our officers before we invaded France in 1944,” recorded Bill Harris, “that our Sherman tanks could take care of any Nazi armor we met there.” Harris, a tank gunner in the U.S. 2nd Armored Division, had been told over and over again that the American M4 Sherman Medium Tank (the Allies’ main battle tank) was as good, if not superior, to any armored fighting vehicle in the Wehrmacht’s arsenal. Unfortunately for hundreds of U.S. and Allied tan
Join The Conversation
Comments
2 thoughts on “M26 Pershing: Why America’s Heavy Tank Arrived Too Late for WWII”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
View All Comments
2 thoughts on “M26 Pershing: Why America’s Heavy Tank Arrived Too Late for WWII”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
So the US tanks were never provento be a great Weapon. The Germans were always better engineers. Ha guess we were just a little lucky.
When comparing a single Panther/Tiger vs. a single Sherman at a thousand meters, the German tanks had a decisive advantage. At closer ranges they were vulnerable, and at longer ranges flank shots could easily destroy the German tanks.
The advantages of the Sherman is that there were a lot of them, they were easily maintained, one truck could carry enough fuel to move 17 Shermans 100 miles, and it was easy to transport them across the Atlantic by rail and ship.
In addition to air supremacy, the US had more artillery, more ammo for the artillery, more mobility for the artillery (most German artillery was horse-drawn) and the communications and doctrine to shift artillery assets quickly from one division to another.
When a Sherman with a more powerful 76mm gun was available, two US armored divisions declined them as they were able to handle threats with their current model of Shermans. The fact is, the US (and British) army killed more German tanks than than they lost, and US infantry had a higher casualty rate than did the armored corps. From a strategic viewpoint, the US-equipped army was better than the German-equipped army.
Here’s a good video that discusses the strategic decisions to produce the Sherman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwIlrAosYiM&fbclid=IwAR3jkgpbe_nrWkWTgFgEucfbh9SociqZE-q5MkvFgtlBoj6n7W3FHXmvojY