Fury (Post-release)

[Riceball]

Didn't help that our aniti-tank guns weren't that great either, or that we put off the development of the 3.5" rocket launcher in favor of a puny 2.75" shaped-charge warhead that was grossly ineffective against most German armor for all of WW2. Many GIs would steal a Brit PIAT if they could get their hands on them...
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Yep, this is me, at the trigger of my M1A1 rocket launcher.

Anyone reading this thread has some type of interest in WW2. I strong recommend this book, it's a crushing indictment of the Army in giving a clearly inferior tank to the US Army against superior (yet often unreliable and impractical) German armor: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148 This is IMHO the best book ever written by anyone in Army Ordnance (and I was an Army Ordnance Captain myself, but decades after LT Cooper was).

To be fair, the Sherman was a decent tank when it first came out, it was comparable in armor and armament to the PzKpfw IIIs & IVs that made up the bulk of the German panzer corps. It wasn't until the IVs got their high velocity 75mm gun and the trend of increasingly larger and more heavily armed and armored tanks like the Panthers and Tigers started coming out did the Sherman start to be seriously outclassed. The main reason for that was because of US Army doctrine at the time which stated that tanks were meant primarily for supporting infantry in the assault role while the role of killing tanks would be primarily that to the tank destroyer which had the better gun but thinner armor than the Sherman.

Another idea/philosophy that prevailed and kept the Sherman in the fight for so long was the idea that we could manufacturer and ship over Shermans like mad. Switching over to a different tank design would take time to change the machining and take more room on the transports shipping them over to Europe. Now we didn't just simply produce more upgunned Shermans like the E8 in Fury I don't know. While still no match for even a "medium" tank like the Panther (don't mention Tigers & King Tigers) it at least puts the Sherman back on par with late model PzKpfw IVs and gives them at least a fighting chance against Panthers & Tigers.

 

[Solo4114]

The low velocity 75mm guns mounted on the early Shermans were absolutely outclassed by most of the late-war German armor. However, I thought that the later model 76mm guns with HVAP ammo were up to the task, or at least more up to the task. U.S. optics and crew training was never as good as the Germans at their peak, but as has been pointed out, the Allies won because the German attrition rate was just too high. It's not just that the U.S. had 5 Shermans to send against the Germans. It's that the U.S. had that, the Russians had several T-34s, and the Brits had Crusaders and Cromwells to throw at them, all while the 8th Air Force is bombing the hell out of German manufacturing back home.

 

[Celtliam]

Re: Fury

I think the "Easy-8" variant had a high-velocity 76mm gun with a muzzle break. Just from the trailers, that's what I figured they were driving.



At the strategic/operational level, the Sherman was superior (and I'd argue was only outclassed during the course of the war by the T-34 and its variants). At the tactical level, yeah, one-on-one engagements were extremely lopsided in favor of the Tiger, particularly against Shermans with the 75mm gun. But over time, especially with the Allied air campaign, the Tigers would break down and -- with their factories having been bombed to rubble -- no replacement parts were forthcoming. The Germans had individually superior tanks for much of the war, but their problem was that they couldn't match the allies for production.

Not that any of this makes a difference to the crew in a tin-can facing off against one of these beasts. You'd have to flank a Tiger and get in close enough to penetrate its armor, or pray for close-air or on-target artillery support.


What I've always kind of hoped for is actually a "Band of Brothers" style miniseries featuring the British in North Africa. Man, talk about an uphill battle...

I am part of a reenactment group that is rebuilding some LRDG Trucks. It is part of Eagle Field Foundation check it out.
https://www.facebook.com/EagleFieldFoundation/?fref=ts