Questionable Redemption: Sherman Tank Commentary
What I've really noticed over the past several years is a sea change in commentary surrounding allied tanks in WW2 but particularly a shift in how academics, popular publishing and amateur historians assess the merits of the Sherman tank. I have seen and heard what can only be assessed as an attempt to salvage this tank's historical reputation. What I've also detected across the public discussion is an inconsistency in how the attributes of tanks relative to one another are taken into account.
To capture the kinds of assessments being made is a remark by James Holland when presenting his introduction of the Sherman for 'History Hit' when he claims the Sherman was, 'the best tank of the war'. High praise indeed. What I'd like to share is my uncertainty concerning what we are being told.
RELIABILITY
The Sherman is lauded for mechanical reliability, the advantages of interchangeable parts (between US vehicle types) and the relative advantages of affecting repair. I don't have an issue with any of that. In fact, these logistic advantages are translated by commentators into 'strategic' advantages, and you will hear that this in turn makes the Sherman tank a 'war winner'.
Yet if you look at the well accepted fact that the armour was inadequate compared to enemy types by 1944 and the armament at best, merely adequate, what advantage remains to the crews who can be reliably delivered into the fight only for their tanks to get destroyed and themselves killed or injured?
QUANTITY HAS A QUALITY OF ITS OWN
Okay, I think we all know that the Sherman is a product of 20th century US ingenuity in mass production and they made them cheap. How the Soviets made more T-34s than the Americans made Shermans is to be amazed at but around 50,000 Shermans were build which makes it an iconic AFV to be sure.
Most of us recognise that a troop of Shermans up against a lone Panther or a Panzer IV on a more or less tactically equal footing have perhaps even a better-than-even chance of winning the combat - but at what cost? How may crew get killed or injured fighting with inferior machines before their superior adversary is knocked out?
RONSON/TOMMY-COOKER
Anecdotally British crews were supposed to have quickly and famously dubbed the Sherman the 'Ronson' (named after the fuel cigarette lighter and its slogan, "Lights first time, every time"). Similarly, the Germans were alleged to have referred to the Sherman as the 'Tommy-Cooker' because of their propensity to burst into flames when hit. It remains to be seen if either phrase was used during the war and they may be apocryphal. Nevertheless, myth or not, it speaks to a reputation which certainly did exist at the time.
The 'Analysis of 75mm Sherman Tank Casualties Suffered Between 6th June and 10 July 1944: Report No.12' published in Canadian Military History 7,1 (1998) found results, 'confirming the most pessimistic views about the inferiority of the Sherman tank, and '... documented what every crew member knew: the Sherman was dangerously vulnerable to all calibres of German anti-tank guns.' The proportion of brewed-up Sherman tanks when hit was high and the proportion of AP hits failing to penetrate was low.
This tendency to explode or burst into flames is all too often dismissed by popular historical commentators as having been largely dealt with by the adoption of wet stowage. These commentators then ignore the later war data and build on supply-chain praising and the undoubted numerical superiority of mass produced Shermans taking the European fields. Wet stowage was not a feature of Sherman tanks until the delivery of the Sherman M4A1(76)W in January 1944. Interestingly, this required a significant reconfiguration in the internal layout and resulted in more ammunition being stowed.
The facts are that Shermans continued to explode and burst into flames when hit - particularly when hit in the engine bay. The persistent hazard when hit was exploding ammunition, and in the Shermans it seems this more often resulted in fires turning into major fires right up to the end of the war. As a result, British crews carried fewer rounds and focussed on escape drills aiming for exits under 2.5 seconds - the drivers might get out in 5.
The best comparisons are to be found within British tank units as they operated several other types, not just Shermans. It is true that the Cromwell tank by 1944 was suffering comparable penetrations to the Shermans, but major fires were not as persistent. It would be unfair to compare the heavy Churchill tank which is much recorded as enduring multiple hits and avoiding easy penetration due to its significantly thicker armour.
INTENDED DESIGN
Of course, the pre-war doctrine behind the Sherman tank was that it wasn't meant to defeat enemy tanks - that was the role for tank-destroyers and artillery (ATGs). A medium tank, the Sherman was intended for exploitation and to support infantry. Of course it was suppose to stand up for itself against enemy tanks - hence the AP rounds they carried. Doctrine or not, Sherman crews found themselves in armour vs armour encounters from the beginning - which they were well up for in 1942 but woefully outmatched by 1944.
The armament of the M4 variants (M2-M6 75mm cannon) had persistent HE characteristics which made it a popular gun in the support role. By the development of the M61A1; however, even with the improved cap ammunition the AP characteristics of the Sherman had essentially reached its limits after the introduction of the Panzer IVG from March 1942 - let alone the 'big cats'. The 75mm was only ever a medium velocity gun. By D-Day it could still hold its own against ATG and artillery targets but sadly not against later model German tanks.
The Sherman was a medium tank increasing forced into fighting heavy tanks. Steven Zaloga in his 'M4 (76mm) Sherman Medium Tank 1943-65 (Osprey, New Vanguard 73 - 2003) couldn't be clearer on the issues with the Sherman and that the US army had recognised by the summer of 1944 that they, 'suddenly realised the M4 was inadequate in tank-to-tank fighting' and how even the late introduction of the 76mm armed variant did not redress the imbalance.
Late war variants of the Sherman from mid-1944 were beginning to be equipped with the high velocity 76mm gun but they never achieved greater than 25% of tank numbers fielded. Not surprisingly, demand for these up-gunned Shermans increased following higher than anticipated losses in the field and in response to the presence of the Panther. Calls for the 76mm gun had already been heard from the Italian front since 1943. It's alarming how these calls failed to gain traction for so long. Sadly, when it finally did commence appearing in the front, it was an under-performer. Zaloga's cites it as having 'mediocre anti-armor performance,' and 76mm gun's primary advantage was that it was merely better than the US 75mm gun.
After failure in the field, Eisenhower is quoted to have remarked, "You mean our 76 won't knock these Panthers out?' and 'now I find you can't knock out a damn thing with it.'
US tank development, manufacture and adoption by US military thinking suffered drastically from complacency, which was 'shaken badly during the first month of tank fighting in Normandy' (Zaloga). Anticipated US losses were three times higher than expected and their guns were useless against German Panther tanks which were appearing in greater numbers, and which could knock Shermans, 'from any realistic combat range.'
CASUALTIES
The analysis by Andrew Hills 'British Tank Losses March to May 1945: The War in North West Europe' (The Online Tank Museum) shows that the Sherman was twice as likely to suffer a major fire from penetration than its Cromwell tank counterpart. It is noted that all tanks were susceptible to suffering internal fires from hits and that the Sherman was no more at risk than other tanks in British service from suffering minor fires.
The study also found; however, that penetrations into a Sherman's engine bay had a higher chance of catching fire, often rapidly developing into major fires and with very little warning for the crews when compared to the Cromwell, Churchill and Comet tank.
Whilst engine penetration and fuel ignition was notorious in Shermans, most fires and resultant casualties were from ammunition ignition (66%) across all types including the Shermans. So much for the wet stowage. I might highlight that stowage solutions (wet or otherwise) would be less important if the Sherman didn't keep getting penetrated in the first place.
If you could be in any doubt about the Sherman's inadequacies, I'd suggest we look no further than field modifications and measures taken by the crews. Like the Italian tanks crews before them, by 1944 Sherman crews were fixing extra tank links, tanks wheels, sandbags (sometimes in steel frames), logs and even concrete to the front sections of their vehicles in an attempt to improve their resistance to being hit. It was also known for field engineers to weld extra armour taken from other knocked out tanks in a bid to improve what was clearly a desperate situation.
The Sherman was unlikley to absorb a direct hit from the calibre of guns ranged against it. Compare this to a Churchill tank design commenced in 1941, A heavy tank, the Churchill models by 1944 could shrug off multiple direct hits from those same guns and often did. The Sherman was developed from 1940 on the basis of the M3 Medium (Lee/Grant) before the M3 had even been battle tested at Gazala in May 1942. No one seems to talk about this, but no lessons could have been learnt or applied to the Sherman design - nor were they. The Sherman with a rotating main turret and gun was a design improvement on layout and utility. The persistence with the model and its mass production right through to 1945 had nothing to do with battle-proven combat effectiveness but seems obviously to be a matter of industrial expediency. No doubt it was a financially lucrative arrangement from the producers also.
As far as the weaponry was concerned, the British famously figured how to squeeze in their far superior 17pdr anti-tank gun into the Sherman turret by cantering it on its side and dropping a crew member. I understand this was an awkward arrangement, but it yielded the required results.
Whilst the M4A3E8 (Easy Eight) was heavier, this was due to the weight of the turret needed to carry the heavier 76mm gun and little to do with improvement in armour.
If you want to know how the crews felt about the Sherman tank, there are plenty of comments out there. I would be cautious; however, about reading too much into American veteran opinions of the Sherman. This is because they had very little experience across their entire tank corps with fighting in other vehicle types. Also, the US war in Europe was markedly shorter than the British experience.
The Sherman was fought in firstly by the British units who took possession of 17,000 units by war's end. British tank crews had access to various British makes of vehicle as well as other US made lend-lease vehicles such as the M3 and M5. US tank crews only drove US types and most often one type only. In short, US crews have no point of comparison. There's also a matter of conspicuous and persistent US pride in anything they make ... perspective can be an issue.
Having said that, there were certainly extreme criticisms of the Sherman by US crewmen during the war, most notably after the battle in the Ardennes in 1944 when they came up against superior German AFVs. Performance was exceedingly poor, and the crews suffered greatly.
Precisely because of the consistent positive attributes of the Sherman (mechanical reliability, power to weight drive ratio and constancy of supply/replacement parts) early users from the UK were understandably enthusiastic. The Sherman was relatively fast and adequately armed and armoured compared to allied and opposing AFVs on the North African battlefield in 1942.
Countless repeated commentaries across the internet talk about how admired the Sherman tank was by British crews because of these attributes - the same emphasised today by the new, true believers. Yet those comments almost invariably hark back to that 1942 experience, but times changed.
TACTICAL FAILURE
Notwithstanding all that is said and true about production, reliability, power-to-weight performance, parts, mass production, numbers and cost effectiveness, what counted most and last was their ability in combat on the battlefield. Surely, as a crewman, you need to be able to hit and knock out your enemy before they do it to you. If they get their rounds onto you, you want to be able to survive the hit.
In this (armour and armament) the Sherman can at best be described as a barely 'adequate' tank by 1944 and that is being generous. I would respectfully suggest its fighting attributes by 1944 were poor. It was certainly not a battle-winning machine. The commentators who insist it is the best tank of the war are ignoring the tactical prowess of the vehicle. They are judging the tank not on its own merits but on virtues which reside elsewhere.
The champions of the Sherman defense will refer to the quick firing 75mm and their ability to get off several rounds. James Holland in his 'History Hit' treatment talks about he who fires first generally wins, but of course if you can't penetrate your enemy's armour that's not a particular advantage. Without wishing to keep on about his commentary, Holland makes the statement that, "It's not all about armour and a big gun." Presumably this is why he completely ignores the issues with the 75mm cannon. I find his position lop-sided and misleading.
Again, people who insist on talking up the Sherman claim that most of their actions were not against other tanks. I'm not at all sure how this is quantified but I accept that tank-on-tank actions are not the only considerations in assessing combat performance. Yet the Sherman was by 1944 extremely vulnerable to all calibres of ATG in German service whether they were fixed in the turret of a tank, a tank destroyer, an SPG or a towed artillery piece. Hand-held anti-tank weapons also proliferated the western European battlefields and Shermans were vulnerable to them also.
By 1944 the Americans themselves were pushing the M4A3 Jumbo and even field modified Jumbos into theatre which were sorely needed redesigns because the Sherman A4 was simply outclassed. The M4A3E2 Jumbo was an up-gunned Sherman, several of which were retrofitted with the 76mm gun in the field by the people who knew they needed it.
By the same non-combat and peripheral criteria, criticism is conversely leveled against German late war tank designs and (the Panther for example) which are announced as over-rated because of weight, mechanical reliability, fuel supply, over-engineering and complexity in repair. All true or partly true. Yet when both sides got their tanks into the battle space, how did they perform? Which one would you have wanted to find yourself in?
IN SUMMARY
Tank commentators and military historians often refer to the 'holy trinity' of armoured warfare - armour protection, firepower and mobility. It seems glaringly obvious to me that by June 1944 when the Sherman tank had the majority of its action ahead of it, it can only claim adequacy in one out of three.
The importance of the Sherman tank did not lay in its fighting characteristics - how could it? It lay in its mechanical reliability and its availability. If that's a war-winner, it's a callous and wasteful way to win it.
I can't see how the current trend in commentary on the Sherman isn't anything more than determined, revisionist and exaggerated. The weight of evidence from what I can find and have always known simply contradicts the new Sherman champions. They need to dismiss armament and armour and use mobility and supply to anchor their positive Sherman assessment which depends on 'anchoring' cognitive bias.
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