“ was inferior to the German Panther as well as to the heavier Tiger in always every respect save endurance, including armament and defensive armour.” Almost as soon as it appeared on the battlefields of North Africa, the Sherman’s many deficiencies became evident. “Perhaps the most questionable element in American ground fighting power was the American tank,” he wrote. Russell Weigley* made a similar argument. How could American and British industries produce a host of superb aircraft, an astonishing variety of radar equipment, the proximity fuse, the DUKW, the jeep, yet still ask their armies to join battle against the Wehrmacht equipped with a range of tanks utterly inferior in armour and killing power? Great cinematic moments like these are spot on, aren’t they? The Sherman was the tank that won the war, right?Īccording to British historian Sir Max Hastings, “no single Allied failure had more important consequences on the European battlefield than the lack of tanks with adequate punch and protection.” The Sherman, he added, was one of the Allies’ “greatest failures.”
THE SHERMAN TANK - who hasn’t cheered it in Hollywood epics like A Bridge Too Far, Band of Brothers, or The Pacific? Just when all hope seemed lost, a column of Shermans arrives in the nick of time to save embattled American soldiers. (Image source: WikiCommons) “The Battle of the Bulge exposed deficiencies in the M4 so glaringly obvious, what became known as the Sherman Tank Scandal would be splashed across front pages all over the Allied world.” But as a fighting machine, it was easily outclassed by most of the German tanks it went up against.
The M4 Sherman is remembered as the tank that won World War Two.
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