US Sherman Tank
 

What German tank is best match for beating the Sherman? My understanding is that the Panthers and Tigers were overkill and greatly outmatched the Sherman. The PZ IVs (F2 and later)??

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Without any testing and crunching numbers my guess is anything with a 75mm or bigger. PZ-III's with the long 50mm would probably do a number on them as well.

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Any Panzer 4 with the 75/L43 gun and later models are equivalent to Shermans with 76mm (which only appear in 44), so over match the 75mm models.

Any Stug with the 75L43 and better ditto, and they have better front armour than the early P4s (the 5 armour glacis is a weakness). Basically immune at ~1000 yards plus so long as they are facing the 75mm sherman.

Any panzer 3 with the 50mm L60 is about evens with the 75mm Sherman, at ranges 1000m or less while stocks of sabot ammo remain.

However when Sherman/75 first appears the Panzer 3s with the L42 50mm, and the panzer 4s with the short 75mm infantry support howitzer are rather over-matched by the Sherman, which can easily wipe the floor with these. From Alamein to the appearance of the Tiger in Tunisia, the Sherman is a good tank. Once Jerry has the long 75s as standard rather than as rarities, just an average tank, until fireflies and 76mm upgrades become available. A useful infantry support item, and deadly to all German armour (includes panthers) if it can flank it - bar the tigers.

When fireflies with 17pdr APDS appear then Jerry has to take account of these as they are rather deadly. Eliminate any fireflies ASAP!.

And

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Depends on which Sherman and when. Early Shermans had thin armor, bit worse than contemporary Panzer II and IV, but better gun. Later on, Shermans got armor and survivability improvement while Panzer IV got long 75mm so the advantages and disadvantages turned. Yet later on Sherman got 76 or 17pdr and in that configuration had the upper hand over any PzIV. Tigers and Panthers are, of course, another matter.
In fact the devedlopment of Sherman closely resembles T-34 series, only difference being that early Shermans had decent turret front and relatively weak front hull and T-34-76 got it the other way around.

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Thanks for the excellent responses.

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

oops, too late to edit it now, but of course I meant "bit worse than Panzer III", one "I" went AWOL :)

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

The overall armour protection of the Sherman remained much the same through the war. Shermans produced 1942-43 had 51mm of armour on the front hull, sloped at 56 degrees while those made in 1944-45 had 63mm of armour, but only sloped at 47 degrees. The main difference was that the front armour was one piece of RHA armour on the latter ones while the earlier types had a front built up of several pieces of RHA and cast armour with some protruding bulges etc. This probably wasn't as strong as the later type.
The side armour remained 38mm vertical all through the war. There were small changes in the turreet armour as well, but not much.

By the time the Sherman entered the war, the Panzer IV was only made with the long 75mm gun and 80mm frontal armour, but its turret and side hull armour remained weaker than that of the Sherman throughout the war (not counting Schürzen :) )

The 76mm was, if anything, slightly weaker as anti-tank weapon compared with the German 7,5cm L/48 gun and fired a somewhat less effective HE round. With HVAP, it was a superior performer, but just as 75mm HVAP (PzGr40) was rare to non-existant in the German camp, it was in very short supply among American tanks as well.

You are right, that the 17-pdr beat both as an anti-tank weapon, but was of couse a lousy HE performer, just as the 17-pdr APDS round was a somewhat erratic performer.

CBO

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Not only the glacis was upgraded - AFAIK the gearbox cover was at first 51mm, rounded, while later 63...107mm, cast, rounded and it takes up some 20% of Sherman hull forntal profile.


The largest change would be wider moving gun shield, so it covered the entire width of the fixed gun shield. Plus of course better cast armor quality in later times.


Saw somewhere a hint the erratic performance wasn't as much fault of the APDS as the fault of a secrecy - the APDS was simply top secret when it came to use so few people knew how to handle it - ie mostly the difference in trajectory between an AP shot and APDS. Is that true or was there really something wrong with the rounds themselves?

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

I consider the PIIIL/60, 75mm Sherman and T34/76 (except the earliest versions with the short gun) to be in the same category with respect to combat capabilities and the PIV-Long, 76mm Sherman and T34/85 in another.

The StugIII is a bit better still in direct confrontations with these other tanks but is more limited in general use, especially against infantry. If you're looking for a weapon for tank vs tank use against shermans and/or T34's though it's probably the best pick (I too find Panthers a bit on the expensive side considering the overkill).

Another interesting AFV to use against 75mm Shermans is the Italian SMV42. They are closely matched and I've fought quite a few battles this way (from the Italian side).

Narwan

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

With one important caveat, the HE shell.

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Not really. It's one of the many small differences between the types. I think the lesser performance of the HE round is more than compensated for by the PEN values of the 'sabot' rounds they have.
After all it's just a rough estimation of the overall combat capabilities into a broad category.

Narwan

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

The 75 shermans WOULD become useful when german heavies become rare, though it doesn't seems to happen in game, i checked the radio codes for tigers, panthers and koenigstiger, they seem to be all X0(90 i think), shouldn't tigers get a 91 late in the war?

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Why would the heavy tanks, that are in their own specific formations, need to have rare radio codes?. Unless there was some version of the Tigger 2 with IR night sights or some such of course..

You may have been playing as USA in the bulge? - the Nazi pick will go for them a bit more in that time.

Andy

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

I am guessing from your comment AI picks formation types based on area & time. Radio code then works in specific formation to make common units picked more frequently.
All I can say is WOW just how much time did you spend sorting AI pick lists & map codes. Blown my mind we take all these little things for granted but in reality chuck in research & you have got to be talking serious time. :bow:

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

..but it is the lower part and thus the part that wasnt very likely to be hit. The profile of the late war differential housing was perhaps better, but IIRC most of the added thickness was found at the very tip and thus a very small part of the frontal profile. The part highest up was still only 51mm.


The wider gun shield was only found on the 76mm armed tanks and was the same thickness as the shields on other late war Shermans. And this was only 13mm thicker than the shield found on earlier types and only 13mm thicker than the front hull armour anyway. So not much of an issue, really.


Never heard that before. AFAIK the problem with the 17-pdr APDS was occasional erratic behaviour due to faulty sabot separation. If the projectly left the sabot correctly, it was accurate, but when it didn't, there was no telling where the projectile would end up. That is why a pot-type sabot was later introduced for the 20-pdr. The erratic performance of the 17-pdr APDS meant that it was not recommended for use it at ranges beyond 1000 yards, at that recommandation persisted as long as the WWII type sabot round was in service (still in effect in 1952).

cbo

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

Why would Tigers be more rare towards the end of the war?

The inventory of Tigers I+II in February 1945 was 442 which has to be seen against 262 Tiger I at the time of Kursk. The highest number was 726 Tiger I+II in July 1944, but that dropped rapidly over the summer, down to 460 in October 1944.

cbo

Re: US Sherman Tank
 

I'm going to jump in here only because many people seem very confused about radio codes and what they mean and what they do as I have found recently working my way though the 110+ pages of OOB complaints I accumulated since the last SPMBT patch. Radio codes apply the same to both games

First off, let's ensure EVERYBODY reading this understands the codes


X0 is common
X1 is rare
X2 is more than common so call it "plentiful"
X3 is the code that stops the AI from buying them in a game ( but humans can )



X1 can mean a tank is "rare" but normally for really rare vehicles we give it a X3 radio code so the AI won't pick it at all

HOWEVER ( this is important...)

The AI, when buying UNITS for it's FORMATIONS . Formations are set in MBT in picklists and hardcoded in code in WW2. Each nations is completely different than the others and are set up differently if that nation fought on different fronts against different opponents. The German Picklist in winSPWW2 is 1470 lines of code. It's not a simple thing we threw together. Other nations are the same. If you've ever played as the Canadians you may have noticed that in Normandy they seem to fight the SS a lot and later on in '44 and into '45 they seem to fight Fallshirmjaeger a lot. That didn't happen by accident. It was programmed in

Now, back to the radio codes.....

The AI, when it picks units for those formations starts at unit slot 999 and works its way up the list stopping at the first unit that strikes it's fancy. The next time it picks it does the same thing and might skip that unit or pick one with a higher unit number or skip that and look nearer the top of the list ( lower unit number ). Think of it climbing a ladder each time it picks and certain rungs have units it can consider and it deals with them in a simple Y/N. If it's Y it stops there , climbs down and and starts picking the next formation. If it decides N then it continues up the ladder until if finds the next unit the fulfills it's requirements and does a Y/N on that. ( etc etc )

That's just the way it works so we have to adapt the way we manipulate the radio codes to ensure we get the balance we want and sometimes we have to make things X1 ( rare ) or X2 ( more than common ) simply to get the picks the way we want then in most cases ( because there are a lot of randoms built into the game to ensure you don't see the same thing over and over and over )


Radio codes are our way of balancing out those picks so DO NOT assume because there weren't many tanks of a type it *must* get an X1 radio code. It's high up on the list we might give it a X0 or even an X2 simply so that it will be picked sometime

So NO ----Panthers and Tigers should not be "91 late in the war" becasue they exist in their own formations and it's the formations the AI buys for and we are the ones who tell it when to buy and when not to buy those formations that appear in the game

Don