M4 Sherman vs Tiger

[General SP]

[wigam]

Hiya Gary

How about our game??

Marcus

[Vesku]

http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tiger1.htm

For those interested in Tigers, excellent info.

[RedDevil]

If a german tanker lasted till the end of the war he was a highly skilled or an extremly lucky warrior.
Jad

Just think if he had been a submariner....

[Montana_Prussian]

[Grumbler]

Some did. Von Luck started off the war as a Plt. leader in a Recon company. That was a pretty high risk hobby. My theory is that no matter how bad it gets, some one will survive. Humans are like that. After all, not every Kamikazi died. Ever catch a cab in Toyko?
Meanwhile, back on topic, if you were a crew, the Tiger was better, if you were a Divisional Commander, the Sherman was better. If you were a REMF in charge of getting beans, bullets, etc. to the front, the Sherman was much better. It wasn't until the Generals were scrambling to get out of the way of the Tigers that ithey thought it might be a good idea to mount a more powerful gun on the Sherman.
The Officers commanding the American Army in the ETO were all either infantry or Artillery officers. The few like Patton and Rose that were capable of thinking and fighting at tank speed were shouted down by those that wern't. In '43, Tank battalions were NOT organic to an Infantry division. The American theory was that the heart of an Army was it's infantry, and the infantry divisions should be as mobile as possible, which meant any units such as Armor, Tank Destroyers, Recon and Anti-Aircraft battalions should be poo;ed and then assigned where they were needed.
This system failed since the Germanys refused to co-operate. The Sherman was the Tank that the American high command wanted, short 75 and all.
If SHAEF had wanted a Sherman with a long 76, they could have had it in late '43. If they had wanted a Pershing with a 90, they could have had it in time for D-day. It was only after the US Generals had the experience of being hunted by German Armor that having more powerful tanks seemed like a good thing.
Then the model that the Ordinance Borad had been developing were put on the front burner and rushed off to the ETO. SHAEF adopted the broad front approach because Ike, Bradley, et. al. were just not capable of thinking in armor speed. The supplies were there for an armored thrust to Berlin in '44. What wasn't there was the bold leadership at the top needed for such an event. A broad front, grind it out assault eats more logistics then a armored thrust on a narrow front. Montgomery was correct about that.

[RedDevil]

you would have thought the Western Allies would have taken a hint from the Soviets.. Big Tanks, Big guns, in large amounts..


Also...the Submarine forces suffered a 90% casualty rate, I doubt he would have been luckier :)

[shortreengage]

Hmmm, Grummi, that is starting to sound a bit like "Methodical Battle".

As for the lack of organics, they usually had attached TD,Tank and AAA Bns. The US had 31 Seperate Tank(nice big Battalions with 77 tanks) and 61 Tank Destroyer Battalions as of 1 Jan 1945 in the ETO. General Patton observed in March 1945,

:bow: "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":bow:

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.

[Greybeard]

Hello JP - yes I stand corrected on Tiger production numbers:

Form our friends at 'wikipedia' I found the following poduction numbers of the major German tank variants:

Pre-war 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
Panzer I 1,893 - - - - - - -
1,893
Panzer II 1,223 15 99 265 848 803 151 -
3,404
Panzer 38(t) 78 153 367 678 652 1,008 2,356 1,335
6,627
Panzer III 98 157 1,054 2,213 1,564 5,435 4,752 1,136
16,409
Panzer IV 211 45 268 467 994 3,822 6,625 1 ,090
13,522
Panzer V Panther - - - - - 1,849 4,003 705
6,557
Panzer VI Tiger I, II - - - - 78 650 1,069 140
1,937 (1350 tiger-1)
Elefant - - - - - 90 - -


-Greybeard

[Greybeard]

well the above is a litle skewed on the collumns.. but I think the numbers are pretty clear :)