Another Post On The Sherman Tank
Recently the debate started again on the Sherman tank and the ‘Ronson(German)’ or ‘deathtrap(US?)’ smear that has gone on apparently since the war about the deficiencies of the M4 medium tank. When the smear started is a bit of a mystery, but I’ve seen the smear go right back to when American tanks started to appear in combat in 1942. The defining theme about the US Army was that the Ordnance Dept. Army Ground Forces or Armored Force leadership and all the people in American tank development were idiots for not anticipating the big German cats in France in 1944 and that got a lot of American GI’s killed. I discussed some of that in a previous post here.
https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/was-the-us-army-really-stupid-during-ww2/
Here’s a typical example of the smear.
https://ss.sites.mtu.edu/mhugl/2016/10/18/m4-sherman-tank/
And another same old, same old.
https://ihffilm.com/allied-sherman-tank-pt-1-blunder-or-wonder-weapon-essay-by-blaine-taylor.html
https://ihffilm.com/sherman-tank-pt-2-improvements-d-day-v-e-day-1944-45-essay-by-blaine-taylor.html
Another one.
For the record, most tanks in WW2 were not Diesel powered, because in WW2 Diesel engine technology was not up to producing compact powerful engines that would fit in tanks. See below for videos of German tanks that killed their crews.
In any case the same things keep getting repeated, over and over again, and like the diesel-gasoline engine issue the people that parrot the same crap over and over can’t be bothered to get it right.
Perhaps the most notorious book about the incompetence of the US Army is Death Traps by Belton Cooper.
