M4 Sherman vs Tiger

[McIvan]

The fact is tho that hardly any German armour was KO'd by airstrikes. Soft transport heck yes, armour no. Might drive them off, or supress them....hard to do your job when there's aircraft diving on you (assuming the aircraft could actually ID the tank). Might damage them with blast or the odd .50cal round getting through the armour (which would be pretty rare considering the shallow angle they're hitting even the thin top armour at) and actually doing something....spend half a day in the workshop. Didn't destroy them, really....claims running about 50:1 against tanks actually written off.

So it was artillery, AT guns, tanks/tank hunters and men that had to do the job of shifting the German tanks. Considering that Stugs and PIVs were still the most numerous German type (collectively) until the war's end, that wasn't quite as bad as it sounds, but there were still a heap of Panthers and Tigers to make their lives difficult. Against Tigers, the 75mm Sherman didn't really have much of a chance, notwithstanding the odd sucess....needed the 76mm TDs or Sherman 76s, or 17pdrs/Fireflys/Archers for the Brits, or shift the beast back with artillery.

The Lightning was a beautiful plane. Unfortunately it was often used at high altitude in the western ETO and not so often at low altitude where it excelled. Lightnings in the Western eto, according to an exhaustive book on the Lightning that I read a year or so ago, claimed 4 German planes for every 3 Lightnings lost which, given the usual two to one or more over-claim rate, means they were most likely taking more losses than they inflicted by a fair margin. In Italy, as long as they avoided too much of the high altitude stuff, they were worth their weight in gold and of course in the Pacific they were outstanding.

I have always thought, tho, that air support in Steel Panthers is completely divorced from reality in its effectiveness against armour.