M4 Sherman vs Tiger

[McIvan]

"Since 1 August 1944, when 3rd Army became operational, our total tank casualties have amounted to 1,136 tanks. During the same period we have accounted for 2,287 German tanks, of which 808 were the Tiger or Panther variety, and 851 on our side were the M4. These figures of themselves refute any inferiority of our tanks, and let me add that the 3rd Army has always attacked, and therefore better than 70 percent of our tank casualties have occered from dug-in antitank guns and not enemy tanks, whereas a majority of the enemy tanks have been put out by our tanks"

The 743rd Seperate Tank Battalion lost 96 Medium tanks during the European campaign (mostly to antitank guns and Panzerschreck/fausts).
They destroyed 41 Mark IVs, 26 Panthers, 4 Tigers and 10 SP guns along with 100 pillboxes/machinegun nests, 36 AT guns, 9 field pieces, 4 armored cars and 125+ trucks.( [/i]Steel Victory[/i], Yeide 2003) That's a pretty good trade-off unless of course you one of those 96 crews.

The main point being that the big gunned tank was'nt needed in the ETO because large tank on tank battles were rare. Most of the TD battalions were used as SP Arty because there was'nt much to hunt.
And what was the level of distibution of Tigers anyways?(I don't mean in SP games which is likely most games) 1 Battalion per Panzer Korps?
Very bad if it's in your sector, but they can't be everywhere.

I'm a bit dubious about taking kill claims by anyone at face value. Patton was notorious for inflating his force's claims...I've heard it said (can't put my finger on where) that 3rd army collectively claimed it killed/wounded/captured and destroyed more forces than the Germans fielded in the entire Western ETO. I don't see that his argument follows either way. Even if we assume those figures are correct, however, it could as easily be a function of increasingly veteran US crews, and not their tanks as such. Some of the 3rd army tanker units were outstanding.

Very good point, tho, that Allied tanks mostly spent their time shooting off HE and MG ammo at non-armoured targets, or being knocked out by AT guns or fausts that they likely never spotted. But surely the average US tanker would still have been much happier in a fleet of mechanically reliable and well supplied & maintained "Panther equivalents", with a good high velocity gun and still just as much HE and MG ammo? The "we won, therefore our tanks were better" argument seems beside the point to me.

Possibly the Brits had close to the right idea with the 2-3 75mm Shermans and 1xFirefly Sherman with the 17pdr per troop....perhaps not every tank needed to be an armour buster.