Being a huge WW2 buff, the military channel always gives me all the WW2 programming I could ask for. Gone are the days where I sit on the history channel all day waiting for something.
While all of the military channels shows are a bit biased, I still enjoy them, as I watch them for entertainment value. I would never write a research paper from them.
But a program I just watched made me cringe. It was a program where they line up the Sherman tank VS. the tiger tank. Before the program even came on, I was thinking "How could they even match those two?" But I decided to watch anyways. After 25 minutes of renactments showing the tiger tank blow the sherman away, even a scientific test showing the effects of a 88mm shell VS. the shermans shell against comparable armor, the segments ends with the Sherman being declared the winner.
Wow. Just becuase they made more of them, doesnt mean it was a better tank. It just means they made more of them. They make a helluva lot more toyotas than they do ferraris, but could you call the toyota the better car just based on that?
This is the kind of over-patriotic junk Ive been getting sick of in our movies. These shows are being shown for informational purposes, which means someone less knowlegeable about WW2 might use this as a source for a term paper or something similar... and make an ass out of themselves.
Well, as dissapointed as I am with the program, I still love the channel, and will continue to watch.
A sherman has a small change if it attacks a tiger from behind without the tiger knowing about the sherman's possition. The rear is pretty soft like with all tanks, but still.. the M10 comes way closer tot the tiger and even that is no match against it. The tiger is a class on it's own and can not, and will not ever be matched. Specially since nothing good has seen the tiger in battle and really had the change to fight it 1 on 1. Dumb to make a show about this without knowing the facts. sorry to say so.
There was one version of the Sherman tank that could take on the Tiger tank with a reasonable chance of victory head-on. That was the British Firefly. The 17 pounder gun the Brits mounted on it could penetrate the Tiger at over 2000 yards. Using hyper shot the standard Sherman with a 75mm gun needed to be within about 600 yards to have a chance. The 76mm gun moved the range to 1500 yards with a perfect shot. Unfortunately for the Sherman crews the Kwk36 could penetrate the 62mm armor of the Sherman just about as far as the gunner could spot it. As impressive a weapon as the Tiger tank was, it was vulnerable to later model Shermans in close combat.
dude the tiger wasnt as great as u think. i mean all it was to it was its firepower and armor. you know if u compare the shermans firepower to the tigers firepower o yea the tiger is way better, but the sherman had faster speed and it could manuever way better. the tiger is more of a tank that is good when its not seen and snipes out other tanks but the sherman can go much faster on flanks and support more troops. you see its pretty hard to compare tanks or planes because they are each made to do a specific job and the sherman and the tiger were completly different so i believe that the neither of them are better than one another.
The Tiger was only good in a defensive role while the Sherman was a good offansive tank. Yes the German tank had a 88mm cannon, but the tank had to be statonary to fire it for accuracy and to keep the turret on the tank. The Sherman had a gyro-balanced gun like today's M1 Abrams allowing it to fire on the move and will fire on target. The Tiger was too heavy to travel on most bridges. The sherman can move around on almost any bridge and attack where it was least expected. The Sherman was just like the Pnazer Mk. IV. A Infantry Support Tank. It was to let the Mk-18 Hellcat Tank-destroyer take care of the Tiger.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: dauntless2000,
Comparing the Tiger to the Sherman is a little pointless as they were two different classes of tanks with two different primary roles. The Sherman was an offensive tank designed for infantry support and exploitation. The Tiger was a tank killer and not much useful otherwise. Overall, the Tiger was the poorer machine. It was little more than a mobile antitank bunker.
The Tiger was, arguably, the best built tank of WWII but that precision was also its downfall. "Fragile" is an odd word to apply to a Tiger but it is accurate. They could not stand up to use and abuse whether in or out of combat. Tigers that actually made it into combat and kept running could cause a lot of damage. Otherwise, they were nothing but a hinderance. Its greatest success was in the realm of psychological warfare.
Tigers were slow to produce, expensive, difficult to deploy, limited in range and endurance, difficult to transport and mechanically unreliable.
Dependent upon your expert, it took anywhere from 4 to 10 Shermans/T34s to stop a Tiger. However, a Tiger's actual performance depended more upon the commanders, crew, environment, tactics, etc., than it did upon the tank. Some Tiger units had a kill ratio of little better than 1:1 while others have very high ratios.
Many regard the Tiger's armor protection as superior to the Panthers despite the latter's sloped and interlocked armor (superior steel and construction). Nevertheless, by late '44 the Allies were fielding guns that could kill the Tiger (it took time of course, and American policy makers were idiots on the issue of tank killing). Even the Sherman, when equipped with the 76mm and HVAP, stood a reasonable chance against the Tiger (if only the Army had issued HVAP in large quantities a lot of Sherman tankers would have lived longer). The Sherman Firefly stood a very good chance. At Villers Bocage, if Wittman had encountered a British Sherman troop instead of Cromwells his berserker's charge would most likely have ended badly for him. That is, since a Sherman troop would have most likely possessed a few Fireflies.
The Tiger's 88 was a powerful gun but was getting a bit dated by late war. Better 75's and 88's were being built by the Germans. On the Allied side, antiguns were also improving. Antitank tech had exceeded armor tech by war's end to the point where there was no safe tank.
Once a Sherman got up to speed, the Tiger was in trouble. Its slow turret made it difficult to track a fast moving Sherman. The Sherman could also go where the Tiger could not. It was a case of a medium weight fighter dancing around a heavy weight. Tigers were open country tanks.
Given the choice of a Tiger or a Sherman in a head-to-head fight on open ground, I'll take a Pershing--Heh,heh. I would accept a Firefly or Sherman/76 supplied with HVAP, though. Given a choice of going to war with the Tiger or the Sherman and I'll take the Sherman. Overall, the Sherman was the better tank.
[quote]Humvee: Armor classified - uhm, what armor? there's no armor to classify..[/quote] Sure there is. It's just hard to admit that a lot of it is scrap metal... so they made it Top Secret, I guess.
The fact is, a Tiger in good running order and with a good crew might even be a match for an M-60A1.... one on one. From 1500 meters plus.
Up close and personal, Shermans and T-34's had the advantage because they were faster, lighter and there were lots more of them. But one on one they were NOT any better than a Pzkw IV Ausf. G.
And since someone mentioned Panthers... one on one, they were better all-around tanks than the Tigers, precisely because they weren't so heavy they couldn't maneuver. But the Germans couldn't make anywhere near enough of those, either.
Especially after someone showed Adolf the drawings for Maus.
Shermans were far superior to Mark IV's. The only real claim late model Mark IV's have was a decent gun and the usual German high quality optics. Otherwise, mediocre at best.
Okay, you climb into the Tiger and I'll get into the M60A1. When you put your money down I will have to ask you to put it somewhere I can get it later 'cause you ain't comin' back.
you have to call the sherman the winner because of numbers. this match up is a case where quanity beats quality. while the tiger is a better tank the shermans overwhelming numbers eliminate the advantage that the tigers had. by the way vladimir3d the military began having armor installed on the humvee in 2004 so the armor is classifed
wicingas you are right. shermans are quantity and quality however i think that the tiger is also quality. even though it was slower and less manuverable it still had better armor and a better main gun.
The Tiger was put together very well. Its frontal armor was about as hard as you could get it, which is why some rate its protective qualities as superior to the Panther despite that tank's sloped armor. However, the tank's design incorporated many specialized parts and components, more so than many other tanks, which was limiting. This often made resupply, maintenance and repair difficult.
Thicker armor is not necessarily better either. That in of itself restricts the tank and contributes to its failures. Tigers were mechanically unreliable, were of low endurance and difficult to deploy/transport. Quality of gun and thickness of armor do not override its many failings, which makes its "quality" title a myth.
whoever made that show should go in a sherman and vs a tiger and see what happens hell go up with 5 at a far enough range it will cut them down just like in ww2 freakin dumb@ss show
Cecina, Italy, June 1944: A single Sherman (75) challenged a Tiger head on at about 70 yards. The Sherman hit the Tiger chipping the paint. The Tiger missed. The Sherman beat it down a side road swinging its turret over the rear deck and waited. The Tiger fired through buildings for a few minutes trying to scare the Sherman from hiding. When that did not work, it took off down the street to find it. As it drove past, the Sherman put a shot through its side killing the Tiger.
This isn't the only time that Shermans beat the Big Boys. If the Tiger was in a defensive position with a good field of fire, it would cost a few Shermans to get him. Under any other conditions, the Tiger was not so tough.
while i agree that the sherman is as good if not better i don't think this is the best example. i think this speaks more to the skill of the shermans crew than to the superiorty of the sherman.
How about La Glieze, Belgium, December, 1944. A King Tiger of the 501 SS was moving up to attempt to rescue Germans trapped in a house. As it came through the woods, a Sherman hit it three times. The Americans watched it drive away without any attempt to return fire. Unknown to them, one shot knocked out the intercom system and the German driver retreated on his own initiative. His reason for this was that another hit the base of the turret and deflected downwards into the top deck. That round killed the bow machinegunner and damaged the transmission, which eventually seized up immobilizing the King Tiger permanently. Around the same time and place another King Tiger was abandoned when a Sherman blew off part of its gun tube. Near Bastogne, six Shermans of the 4th AD took on a Panther company as it tried to force its way down the road they were guarding. When the smoke cleared, 11 Panthers were burning and not a single Sherman had been knocked out. There are plenty of examples. Tigers, Panthers and King Tigers were vulnerable to the Sherman, just not in frontal long range duels, which was not always possible. There is even an account of a King Tiger commander refusing to attack a column of Shermans as they were on higher ground and he feared they would put a shot through his turret roof. The human factor is critical, it is just not as easy to judge as a tank's technical data.
