M4 (not M4A1) version of the Sherman tank prior to the elimination of the dual forward firing machineguns that are very rarely sen in photographs.
Nick Moran on C-Span on the M4 Sherman.
And then consider his individual presentations on M4s:
Not that it matters. M4 haters are going to believe all the myths about them as its fun to do.
Okay, I know that some thing that this blog never looks at anything more recent than 1917, unless its really recent, but as people know we stray outside the lines here all the time, and we recently did so with our excellent (if I do say so myself) expose on myths of the Korean War.
In that we addressed the much maligned M4 Sherman tank. Indeed, in the context of the Korean War I've been a bit of a M4 critic myself, but I've conceded in that post that the stats just don't bear up the idea that the M4 was a horrific piece of junk that got all of its crews killed in Korea. Indeed, the stats show that the M4 was taking on the T-34/85, which I regard as the best tank of World War Two (Moran does not) and besting it.
And stats are hard to ignore.
But people do anyway.
Now, as I'll note below, I think there some explanations to that which somewhat modified that story, but in general I agree with Moran's opinion, as is obvious, but I didn't come to it through Moran. I've long held the opinion that the M4 was a good tank and frankly the best the US could have hoped for during World War Two. But Moran did add factors to it, such as the ability to load the tank on ships easily, that I had not considered. My opinions has long been based on something else.
Sherman's function, almost all the times.
The German tanks it opposed were often broken down.
A broken down tank is a worthless hunk of scrap steel.
Nonetheless there are zillions of articles, blog entries and some books that roundly condemn the M4 Sherman. It's interesting, inf act that there are those who will post the question "why is it so routinely condemned" while other actually act as if they're breaking new ground on some story. Consider, for example, this recent article on something called "Military History Now".
Tank Busting – Blowing Up the Myth of the Mighty M4 Sherman
“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.”
By Christian M. DeJohn
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. Great cinematic moments like these are spot on, aren’t they? The Sherman was the tank that won the war, right?*
Well, not exactly.
According 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.”
Well, with all due respect to Mr. DeJohn, and to Sir Max Hastings, one of my favorite military authors, "bull".
USMC M4A3R3 on Okinawa. The M4A3 had both the 75 and the 76 (which was really a 75) high velocity gun. This photo provides a good illustration of the way the US had to approach tanks. It's not like the Germans or the Soviets needed to put tanks on a postage size Pacific island after hauling them half way around the world, is it?
Okay, let's discuss the Sherman a bit.
Before we do, however, let's get a handle on the state of tanks, in very general terms, before World War Two, and into it.
Now, this isn't going to be a "history of tanks, 1919 to 1945". That would be a 300 page text at least. No, by general, I mean general.
Generally, there'd been a lot of experimentation with tanks in the decade leading up to World War Two, but the US wasn't one of the nations that was doing the experimenting. Indeed, our best tank designer of the period, J. Walter Christie, didn't receive any contracts for tanks in the US, or at least none of note.
You have to love this photograph of J. Walter Christie, famous tank designer.
Now Christie, like Ferdinand Porsche, was a mechanical and automotive genius, not a tank designer per se, but like Porsche, he turned his attention to tanks. Heck, it was an interesting fast moving field, so why not?
He worked on neat tank designs all through the 1920s and 1930s and never received a US contract. His big success, sort of, was the T-34, which did use his suspension, and if you look at it is pretty obviously a Christie tank.
U.S. T3E2 tank. Nope, we didn't adopt that. Nor would there have been a really good reason to either.
Soviet pre war BT-7 light tank. It's a Christie
As this would suggest, while we were basically ignoring tanks, European nations were not, and a lot of various tank designs were out there. Some were good, some were bad, and hardly anyone really had a concrete idea of exactly how tanks would really be used in the future. Probably the Soviets had the best grasp on it, quite frankly, leading up to World War Two. Some American cavalrymen, who basically lacked tanks, grasped it as well. And Heinz Guderian really grasped it. He was a German.
German Schnelletruppen, fast troops, who were used to develop German armor tactics before the Germans had armor.
Guderian, and others developed mobile tactics but they really lacked tanks. It was only in the final run up to World War Two did the Germans acquire really functional tanks.
The Germans started to build tanks by the mid 1930s, but as they had none, and as their production capaciity was very limited, the tanks they built were of limited type and really not all that useufl in real combat. The first one, the Panzerkampfwagen 1, established the design for most German tanks for the rest of the war, but it only fielded a machinegun for a gun. Pretty useless.
Panzer I in Noraway. Basically, it was a tracked armored car, not a real tank.
The Germans new the Panzer I wasn't great, and rapidly developed it into the Panzer II. But htat tank also was a really light tank. It was a real tank, however, and the chassis established the basic chassis for most that would come after that. And the first thing to come after it was the Panzer III followed by the Panzer IV
Panzer IVG.
No matter what people like to think, it was the Panzer III and the Panzer IV, which sported a 75mm gun, that were the real German tanks of World War Two. They grossly outnumbered anything else thet Germans used, tank wise, and constituted the real armored threat posed by the Germans.
Burning Panzer IV
They were also the basic foundation for nearly everything else that was tank like, or sort of tank like, that the Germans used. As this isn't a history of the zillions of tank like things the Germans used (and I've omitted captured Czech tanks entirely, I'd note) I'll not go into that, other than to note that no matter what an American, English, Canadian, or Soviet soldier was likely to encounter, in terms of German armor, it was probably based on the Panzer III and it likely carried a 75mm rifle at hte most.
And it was a good design.
But it wasn't as good as the T-34. And it wasn't as good as the M4 Sherman.
Indeed, even the rather weird American design the M3 was regarded as pretty effective against the Panzer III and IV, and it doesn't look like it should be.
The M3. It's weird.
Now, I'm not really going to sit here and praise the M3, which was a real throw back as a design, with its strange side mounted 75mm gun. About the most that can be said for it, in my view, is that its armor protection was pretty good and that its gun worked well. But what the real story is on it is that the US, Christie or no, was staring pretty much from scratch and that was a good thing as it turned out.
And it was a good thing as it spared the US from what European nations had to go through. They all had tanks, but nobody really knew exactly how they'd' be used, so there was, in some countries, like France, a plethora of tank designs combined with bad doctrine, or in others, like Germany, barely adequate tanks (at first) with good doctrine.
M3 in British use. The British used the M3 in combat more than the US, as the M3 was rapidly being replaced by the M4 by the time of Operation Torch. Be that as it may, the US did still field M3s in North Africa and the Soviet Union used them at least as late as Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history.
Being an industrial giant, the US was able to skip the nifty but fairly useless light tanks that were supposed to be battlefield fighters (as opposed to scouting tanks, which are also really light) and go right for the useful medium tanks. That meant we skipped the Christie suspension, for good or ill, and went for a chassis design that was used first in numbers in the M3 (and was first used in the M2 medium tank, a very rarely US tank that was around only in very small numbers very briefly).
M4 in use by training crew, Ft. Knox. This photo was taken prior to any US tank action during World War Two.
Unit training with M3s and M4s.
Now, as noted, the British, who ended up using it more than we did, liked the M3 but it was rather obviously a throw back. But soon came the M4. And the M4 was a really good tank. It wasn't perfect, but it was really good, and for the most part it had the advantage on its real opponents.
M4A1 in North Africa.
The Sherman was highly transportable, something that was important in a global war. It came equipped with a 75mm gun at first, which was perfectly adequate for taking on the Panzer III and IV. It had good armor protection, at least as good as the flat armored Panzer III and IV it took on, and it was extremely mechanically reliable, which no German tank ever was.
Common early cast hull production version of M4A1 Sherman.
So what about all the stories to the contrary. Wasn't it a horrible flaming nightmare?
No.
Tank combat is a horrible flaming nightmare.
That contributes to the myth of the M4 being a bad tank, and almost everything you hear about the M4 being a bad tank is, in fact, a myth.
Armored combat is incredibly horrific, if you are in it. If your tank is penetrated by an enemy projectile, and any tank can be, the net results is a shower of molten steel inside the tank followed, in all probability, by a horrible flaming death. If you have any doubt, I suggest you view the long version of the M4 and M26 duel with a German Tiger in Cologne, late war. You can see a dazed Sherman crew escaping from a destroyed tank and you can watch a German tank commander burn to death on a Tiger, a tank that some tank fans think is a fantastic tank.
Not pretty.
And given that, and given American expectations, the general belief is that any American tank ought to be 100% impervious to anything bad happening to its crew. But that's not warfare.
Now, the Sherman was not a perfect tank. It had a very high profile for one thing compared to the Panzer III and Panzer IV. But it could and did match those tanks in combat and really was a better combat tank than they were. And most German armor was made up of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.
But not all German tanks were IIIs and IVs, and that's contributed to the myth.
The Panzer III and Panzer IV served the Germans really well throughout the war. However, on the Russian plains, after the Soviets got their act together, they were no match for the T-34 which not only was a great tank from the onset, it was improved continually by the Soviets throughout the war. Tanking a basic Christie light tank design and ramping it up massively, the T-34 was the first really modern tank. It was revolutionary and nothing the Germans had was a match for it. So they reacted.
Disabled Tiger I that had the distinction of knocking out a M26 Pershing, the first Pershing to be knocked out in combat, even though the M26 was a better tank. After achieving that, this tank became disabled and had to be abandoned. German tanks were frequently disabled.
In fairness, one of the reactions, the Tiger tank series, had been in development since before the war, and its design showed it. But the T-34 made its fielding imperative. The second reaction, the Panther, was a pure reaction to the T-34 and superficially resembles it in a bulbous fashion.
Panther knocked out in the Battle of the Bulge.
Panthers and Tigers were a huge problem for Sherman's and were particularly a problem for the original M4A1.. They grossly outgunned the original version of the Sherman which made it quickly plain that the 76mm gun which had been available, but basically not fielded, should have have been fielded. The 76mm gun was much more capable of taking on the armor of the German cat tanks than the 75mm, which basically wasn't. And the Sherman was grossly outgunned by the excellent 75mm gun on the Panther, let alone the massive tank destroying 88mm gun of the Tiger.
It should be noted here, however that even the Germans weren't really capable of keeping up with the Soviets. The T-34/76 came out in 1940 with a 76mm gun. 35,000 of them were made. In 1943 the Soviets introduced the T-34/85, of which 55,000 were made. So even the highly celebrated Panther, which came into service the same year as the T-34/85, did not sport a gun that was as big as Soviet tank, but only sported one that was as large as the high velocity M4 Sherman. FWIW, during the Korean War the M4 Sherman, by which time only the "Easy 8" variant equipped with the 76mm high velocity gun, routinely bested the T-34/85, although that can be explained in more than one way. Also, as otherwise mentioned here, the later variants of the T-34 and the Sherman were basically identical in terms of armor thickness.
Anyhow, the British had anticipated German armor advances before they were fielded, which is why they'd adapted the Sherman to a heavier British 75 gun before the US really fielded them. That tank, the Sherman Firefly, wasn't perfect either but it proved fairly adept at taking on the heavier German tanks.
It should be noted here, however that even the Germans weren't really capable of keeping up with the Soviets. The T-34/76 came out in 1940 with a 76mm gun. 35,000 of them were made. In 1943 the Soviets introduced the T-34/85, of which 55,000 were made. So even the highly celebrated Panther, which came into service the same year as the T-34/85, did not sport a gun that was as big as Soviet tank, but only sported one that was as large as the high velocity M4 Sherman. FWIW, during the Korean War the M4 Sherman, by which time only the "Easy 8" variant equipped with the 76mm high velocity gun, routinely bested the T-34/85, although that can be explained in more than one way. Also, as otherwise mentioned here, the later variants of the T-34 and the Sherman were basically identical in terms of armor thickness.
Anyhow, the British had anticipated German armor advances before they were fielded, which is why they'd adapted the Sherman to a heavier British 75 gun before the US really fielded them. That tank, the Sherman Firefly, wasn't perfect either but it proved fairly adept at taking on the heavier German tanks.
Sherman Firefly, with its obviously much larger 76mm gun.
Moran, I'll note, doesn't like the Firefly.
But I do.
Anyhow we should have no doubt. The Tiger and Panther were fully modern tanks. If the T-34 isn't the first modern tank in the world, they surely are. The M4 wasn't. It was a good World War Two generation tank.
So let's talk numbers.
Eh?
Yes, numbers. Numbers mean a lot.
There were 1,347 Tigers built and about 6,000 Panthers. There were around 180,000 T-34s built, however. About 50,000 Sherman's were built. About 6,000 Panzer IIIs were built. About 8,500 Panzer IVs were built.
While I hate to go down this road, there were also 6,406 M10 tank destroyers built by the US. This takes us down a weird road, however, because if I discuss these quasi tanks, then I have to mention things like the German Sturmgeschütz III, which is a type of turetless tank destroyer, of which 10,000 were built. And it wasn't alone. There was also the very heavy Jagdpanzer (hunting tank) of which slightly over 400 were built on the Tiger chassis. And the US also built the M36 (about 2,300) and the M18 (2,500). The reason that I mention them is that Sherman's would have to tank on the Sturmgeschütz III while German tanks encountered the various American tank destroyers.
Loading a Sherman in the United States for shipment. If you can't ship them, they don't do much good.
M4 on transport. This tank has just about enough room to be shipped and that's about it. It's not like this ship was going to take on a M26.
While I hate to go down this road, there were also 6,406 M10 tank destroyers built by the US. This takes us down a weird road, however, because if I discuss these quasi tanks, then I have to mention things like the German Sturmgeschütz III, which is a type of turetless tank destroyer, of which 10,000 were built. And it wasn't alone. There was also the very heavy Jagdpanzer (hunting tank) of which slightly over 400 were built on the Tiger chassis. And the US also built the M36 (about 2,300) and the M18 (2,500). The reason that I mention them is that Sherman's would have to tank on the Sturmgeschütz III while German tanks encountered the various American tank destroyers.
M18 in Germany, 1945.
M36 Tank Destroyer. the M36 fielded a 90 mm gun, giant for the time. Most people would think this was a Sherman, as it has a Sherman hull. But it isn't (and the turret has an open top).
M10 in Italy.
This tells a pretty significant story, but not a very clear one.
And what it basically tells us is that there weren't all that many Tigers, but more Panthers than you'd suspect, but also a lot of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and things based on Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.
There were also a whole lot of T-34s. And as the Germans were fighting a whole lot of Soviets who were using a whole lot of T-34s, as well as Sherman's (yes, they used Sherman's) and M3s (even as late as Kursk) the Germans had massive constant armor demands in the East.
Which doesn't mean that there weren't armor demands in teh West as well, but the US, UK, Canada and Free French had a lot of Sherman's, as well as a selection of smaller numbers of British tanks (the British never stopped producing their own designs, even as they used large numbers of Sherman's).
Added to that, as Sherman's almost always worked, and a very high percentage of German tanks were broken down at any one time, the number becomes much more skewed.
So, yes, it would have been much better if all Sherman's had been equipped with the high velocity 76mm rifle by 1944. And it would have been better yet, in a magical world, if just as many M26 Pershing's had been been available as M4s in 1944, but that requires a complete suspension of reality and technology.
Which brings us to this uncomfortable point.
If you are an infantryman in France in August, 1944, and are looking out at field where two or three German tanks show up, and maybe one is a Tiger or Panther, would you rather have one or two, or even three, M26s show up, or ten M4s.
I think the answer that is pretty obvious.
And chances are high, even in that scenario, that the M4s will not be knocked out. If some are, and war is about killing, let's not fool ourselves, it's probably not going to be more than two, and unlikely to be three. And all the German tanks are likely to go down.
And what it basically tells us is that there weren't all that many Tigers, but more Panthers than you'd suspect, but also a lot of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and things based on Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.
There were also a whole lot of T-34s. And as the Germans were fighting a whole lot of Soviets who were using a whole lot of T-34s, as well as Sherman's (yes, they used Sherman's) and M3s (even as late as Kursk) the Germans had massive constant armor demands in the East.
Which doesn't mean that there weren't armor demands in teh West as well, but the US, UK, Canada and Free French had a lot of Sherman's, as well as a selection of smaller numbers of British tanks (the British never stopped producing their own designs, even as they used large numbers of Sherman's).
Added to that, as Sherman's almost always worked, and a very high percentage of German tanks were broken down at any one time, the number becomes much more skewed.
So, yes, it would have been much better if all Sherman's had been equipped with the high velocity 76mm rifle by 1944. And it would have been better yet, in a magical world, if just as many M26 Pershing's had been been available as M4s in 1944, but that requires a complete suspension of reality and technology.
Canadian Ram Mk II, early variant. Those who like to play "should have" with American tank production fail to appreciate that even though the United State's industrial capacity was vast, it was still sufficiently limited that the United States had to rely on Canada in part to help build adequate numbers of Shermans. Granted, that was in part because the Sherman was used by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, people who imagine that the US should have been making something else fail to appreciate that the US couldn't actually manufacture all the M4s required. Beyond the Ram, at least the UK had special variants, with Canadian and American hulls, that were uniquely their own.
Which brings us to this uncomfortable point.
If you are an infantryman in France in August, 1944, and are looking out at field where two or three German tanks show up, and maybe one is a Tiger or Panther, would you rather have one or two, or even three, M26s show up, or ten M4s.
I think the answer that is pretty obvious.
And chances are high, even in that scenario, that the M4s will not be knocked out. If some are, and war is about killing, let's not fool ourselves, it's probably not going to be more than two, and unlikely to be three. And all the German tanks are likely to go down.
And that's really the calculation that had to be made. Lots that worked well all the time, and were adequate almost all of the time, or very few that worked most of the time, and were super all of the time.
Well what about the claims cited by the opponent of the Sherman in the article cited above, that being:
In terms of firepower, okay. But you can blame the Army in Europe, not the tank's designers, on that. Prior to June 6, 1944 the Army had designed a version of the M4 that was as well gunned as any tank on the battlefield except for the Tiger. The Tiger did indeed have a super heavy gun for the time, an 88, but it was also a heavy tank that didn't have eto be shipped by sea and it was not a paragon of mobility. Indeed, the Tiger depicted above is a typical one. It put itself out of action.
But the US could have fielded a M4 with a 76mm gun, and ultimately did. The British did as well. And, and often forgotten, the US fielded three quasi tanks in addition to the Sherman, and those tanks had no other role other than to hunt tanks. The Sherman's role was to be a tank, and while in the popular imagination tanks only fight other tanks, that's never been true.
Armor protection?
The Sherman's armor protection is as heavy as the T-34/85's, and the T-34/85 was the best tank of the war. Even at that, the Army did introduce an up-armored variant of the M4, that being the M5, but it didn't stick around all that long. Anyhow, the Sherman was more heavily armored than supposed, which bring us to the uncomfortable truth hat, armored with the good rifles of the late war period, any tank could turn another into a flaming oven.
Mobility?
Oh please. The Sherman was more mobile than any of hte heavier German tanks. And it actually worked almost all the time. Most of hte German tanks sat around unworkable, and hence not very mobile, most of the time.
Well, what about
It'd have been great if the US could have fielded thousands of M26s. For that matter, it would have been great if the US had introduced the B-36 during World War Two, and perhaps the P-80. But that's a fantasy.
In reality, there wasn't any way to ship thousands of M26s to Europe unless we were going to land on the continent in the spring of 1945, at which time we wouldn't have had to fight Tigers and Panthers at all, as we would have been met with T-34/85s in Normandy. The entire concept that we could have fielded heavy tanks in numbers just flatly wrong as it ignores production and shipping realities.
Which brings us back to the reality of combat. People get killed. And death in combat is violent and shocking. It was far better to have that 50,000 Sherman's than maybe 10,000 M26s, or 5,000, or however fewer it would have been. Is that comfort for anyone whose relative was killed when an 88 from a Tiger hit a Sherman? No. But it might be for the infantrymen saved when rounds from three or four Sherman's went into a single Panther.
The prefect is the enemy of the good. The M4 wasn't perfect, but it was better than it gets credit for being, and the best under the circumstances.
__________________________________________________________________________________
*I wonder if the author of these statements saw any of these films. In none of them do a "column of Sherman's arrive in the nick of time" to save anyone.
Indeed, in A Bridge Too Far Sherman's are shown being fairly easily knocked out by anti tank guns, something that is fairly realistically (and rarely) portrayed in this film. Sherman's are shown in thsi film, which is a highly accurate portrayal of the actual events of Operation Market Garden, as Sherman's were actually used by the British. German tanks are shown in the film, but are not shown in action against Sherman's (which didn't happen much in that engagement), but are portrayed as being correctly fearsome (and are portrayed as contemporary German Leopard IIs).
In Band of Brothers Sherman's are depicted in a tank for German armor engagement, but frankly fairly accurately. The problem here is that, most of the time, Sherman's were in fact more than good enough for the job, naysayers or not.
And in the Pacific, well shoot, darned near any allied tank was more than a match for any Japanese tank. Sherman's, as well as M2s, were used in the Pacific and they were more than a match for anything the Japanese had to offer. . . in spades.
Well what about the claims cited by the opponent of the Sherman in the article cited above, that being:
Certainly, the Sherman was a decent design, simple to build in large numbers and maintain, easily transported, adaptable to multiple roles and mechanically reliable. But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armour protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three.Well, not so much, unless you are operating in a perfect world.
In terms of firepower, okay. But you can blame the Army in Europe, not the tank's designers, on that. Prior to June 6, 1944 the Army had designed a version of the M4 that was as well gunned as any tank on the battlefield except for the Tiger. The Tiger did indeed have a super heavy gun for the time, an 88, but it was also a heavy tank that didn't have eto be shipped by sea and it was not a paragon of mobility. Indeed, the Tiger depicted above is a typical one. It put itself out of action.
But the US could have fielded a M4 with a 76mm gun, and ultimately did. The British did as well. And, and often forgotten, the US fielded three quasi tanks in addition to the Sherman, and those tanks had no other role other than to hunt tanks. The Sherman's role was to be a tank, and while in the popular imagination tanks only fight other tanks, that's never been true.
Armor protection?
The Sherman's armor protection is as heavy as the T-34/85's, and the T-34/85 was the best tank of the war. Even at that, the Army did introduce an up-armored variant of the M4, that being the M5, but it didn't stick around all that long. Anyhow, the Sherman was more heavily armored than supposed, which bring us to the uncomfortable truth hat, armored with the good rifles of the late war period, any tank could turn another into a flaming oven.
Mobility?
Oh please. The Sherman was more mobile than any of hte heavier German tanks. And it actually worked almost all the time. Most of hte German tanks sat around unworkable, and hence not very mobile, most of the time.
Well, what about
The U.S., Dr. Weigley noted, went all through the Second World War refusing “to develop, until too late to do much good, heavier tanks comparable to the German Tigers and Panthers, let alone the Royal Tiger or the Russian Stalin.This is not true either. In fact, the US developed a tank that was better than the German cat tanks and probably the equal of the IS 1, but perhaps not the IS 2.
It'd have been great if the US could have fielded thousands of M26s. For that matter, it would have been great if the US had introduced the B-36 during World War Two, and perhaps the P-80. But that's a fantasy.
In reality, there wasn't any way to ship thousands of M26s to Europe unless we were going to land on the continent in the spring of 1945, at which time we wouldn't have had to fight Tigers and Panthers at all, as we would have been met with T-34/85s in Normandy. The entire concept that we could have fielded heavy tanks in numbers just flatly wrong as it ignores production and shipping realities.
Which brings us back to the reality of combat. People get killed. And death in combat is violent and shocking. It was far better to have that 50,000 Sherman's than maybe 10,000 M26s, or 5,000, or however fewer it would have been. Is that comfort for anyone whose relative was killed when an 88 from a Tiger hit a Sherman? No. But it might be for the infantrymen saved when rounds from three or four Sherman's went into a single Panther.
The prefect is the enemy of the good. The M4 wasn't perfect, but it was better than it gets credit for being, and the best under the circumstances.
__________________________________________________________________________________
*I wonder if the author of these statements saw any of these films. In none of them do a "column of Sherman's arrive in the nick of time" to save anyone.
Indeed, in A Bridge Too Far Sherman's are shown being fairly easily knocked out by anti tank guns, something that is fairly realistically (and rarely) portrayed in this film. Sherman's are shown in thsi film, which is a highly accurate portrayal of the actual events of Operation Market Garden, as Sherman's were actually used by the British. German tanks are shown in the film, but are not shown in action against Sherman's (which didn't happen much in that engagement), but are portrayed as being correctly fearsome (and are portrayed as contemporary German Leopard IIs).
In Band of Brothers Sherman's are depicted in a tank for German armor engagement, but frankly fairly accurately. The problem here is that, most of the time, Sherman's were in fact more than good enough for the job, naysayers or not.
And in the Pacific, well shoot, darned near any allied tank was more than a match for any Japanese tank. Sherman's, as well as M2s, were used in the Pacific and they were more than a match for anything the Japanese had to offer. . . in spades.
