Some interesting discussion is going on here
JaM2013 wrote:
anyway back to Shermans, its very strange how they are perceived by people, yet T34 is never criticized, anyway if you do the direct comparative between models, T34 draws the shorter straw..
True, but one must note that while the T-34 appeared in June 1941, the Sherman only at El Alamein and Torch - one and a half year later. By which time the Germans had better guns and aromour protection on their tanks. Thus the Sherman's effect was not so shocking even though it was indeed somewhat better than the early T-34. When the T-34 made its debut the US was still equipped with M3 Lee and Stuart tanks, which were clearly inferior to it.
JaM2013 wrote:
M4 Sherman when it came, had very comparable armor protection vs T34, except for side armor, where T34 had an edge. Anyway, 75mm M2 and later 75mm M3 were superior guns to T34's F32 and F34 guns, having better penetration. Optics and overall ergonomics benefited Sherman, where only significant advantageT34 had in bogged terrain due to wider tracks.
Technically, neither tank would destroy the other frontally through hull, while T34 with F34 gun would need to use APCR to penetrate the Sherman's Turret below 500m. Sherman using M3 gun (L40) could penetrate T34's turret at 1000m though..
Mobility wise, T34 would have a bonus, but its reliability was much worse than with Sherman. So i think stats wise, Initial M4 Sherman should be at least equal to T34/76, but have higher initiative, higher HA and more fuel range ( best way how to simulate reliability in PC i think)
Yes I was thinking in a very similar way and finally got to the same conclusion when it comes to the early models. In the current v1.8 version of my mod the T-34/41 has Fuel: 32, Ini: 6, HA: 11, GD: 14, whereas the (US) Sherman M1A1 has Fuel: 59, Ini: 8, HA: 13, GD: 14. But the T-34 is obviously faster, has movement 6 as opposed to 5, and in the next coming version of my mod I intend to make the mobility difference even more significant as I will add a new movement type "wide tracked', which will allow tanks with it to move faster on soft ground like snow or mud. The T-34 (and some other tanks) will have it, but the Sherman will not.
JaM2013 wrote:
Later models of Sherman got thicker armor, especially on turret, which was a weak spot on T34/76 (60mm rounded, which means max protection of 70mm), while Sherman had 76mm rounded turret (80mm RHAe)..
True as well, but it is not fair to compare the later Sherman to the early T-34/76. The later version of the T-34 (the one with the 85 mm gun) had 90 mm front turret armour (rounded, which means over 100 mm effective armour).
Also I think the Soviet 85 mm gun should have a bit higher HA, even though it had similar penetration as the 76 mm gun of the late Sherman. Why? The 85 mm gun fired a heavier shell than the 76 mm one (something like 9 kg as opposed to 7 kg) and thus it should have more destructive power if it does penetrate. In addition, in PzC "hard target" not only applies to tanks and other armoured vehicles, but to (concrete) fortifications and bunkers as well. And against these a heavier shell should be more effective than a lighter one with the same armour penetration.
Thus for the Sherman with 76mm I have Ini: 10, HA: 16, GD: 15-16, while the T-34/85 has Ini: 9, HA: 17, GD: 16 - meaning they are quite comparable, but the Sherman still has an edge in Ini due to better optics and stuff. From Wiki, on fighting in Korea:
The M4A3(76)W HVSS Sherman and T-34-85 were comparable and could destroy each other at normal combat ranges, although the use of High Velocity Armor Piercing ammunition, advanced optics, and better crew training gave the Sherman an advantage.
Which probably means that the US had better access to high velocity sub-caliber rounds than their Chinese/Korean enemies, even though there was such an APCR round theoretically availabale for the T-34/85 as well. But, if they were facing each other on equal terms i.e. like experienced US vs. SU crews, both well equipped with sub-caliber APCR/Sabot rounds, the results would have been more equal.
JagdpanzerIV wrote:as for Air Defense, i think if i were in a tank and saw a dive bomber coming at me, i would get inside close all hatches and wait for the bomb to drop and miss. no point at shooting aircrafts with an MG on a ww2 tank, i think its complete waste of ammo.
Quite true. The heavy machine guns were mainly used against ground targets. From a Soviet veteran:
- The Sherman had an antiaircraft machine gun Browning M2 .50 caliber. Did you use it often?
- I don't know why, but one shipment of tanks arrived with machine guns, and another without them. We used this machine gun against both aircraft and ground targets. We used it less frequently against air targets because the Germans were not fools. They bombed either from altitude or from a steep dive. The machine gun was good to 400-600 meters in the vertical. The Germans would drop their bombs from say, 800 meters or higher. He dropped his bomb and departed quickly. Try to shoot the bastard down! So yes, we used it, but it was not very effective. We even used our main gun against aircraft. We placed the tank on the upslope of a hill and fired. But our general impression of the machine gun was good.
http://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/
By the way the above memoir is quite an interesting read as the writer provides some first hand experience with the wartime operation British, US and Soviet tanks and their characteristics.
As for air defense. On the one hand it is true that tanks per se hardly suffered from air attacks. Another Soviet veteran remembers like this:
The main source of tank losses was German artillery. Losses to aircraft were fairly small – maybe 10%. The tank could only be knocked out with a direct hit, otherwise the bomb fragments would just bounce off harmlessly. During the Kursk battles, 76% of our losses were due to enemy guns, the rest due to mines and aircraft.
http://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/ ... j-shvebig/
But, on the other hand, the supply column (munitions, fuel, food, repair trucks, signals, command, recovery tractors, etc.) of an armoured division mainly consisted of soft trucks, haltracks and tractors and an armoured division without its supply column is little more than scrap metal. Without those trucks it can function for a few days at max but after that they run out of just about everything. Needless to say, all these trucks were very vulnerable, even to machine gun fire. Since these are not modelled in PzC I regard them part of any "tank" class unit, which puts losses suffered due to air attacks in another context. So I would be careful to make tank units near invulnerable to air attaks, unless we are talking about a tactical level wargame, in which each tank unit only represent a single tank or a tank formation in a limited time scale. As soon as we move to a longer time scale at a larger area, which is typically the case in PzC, the vulnerable supply column has to be added to the equation IMO.
