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whdonnelly said:
One possibiliy for the T-34s reputation could be the opposition. The T-34 faced a lot of the earlier German and Italian models, (PzKfw 2,Pz 35t, Pz 38, etc)that the Sherman never got to meet. The T-34 outclassed all these in armor, weapon, and mobility.
By the Korean War the T-34 and Sherman were both a little long in the tooth, but effective against infantry.
Will
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I think you hit the nail on the head.
The T34s reputation was gained in 1941 when it was all but impervious to German 37mm anti-tank gun fire and thus gave the German infantry a real scare. It was also quite a challenge for the 3,7cm and 5cm tanks and made it hard to handle for the German tanks. And with its 76mm gun, it could sit a kilometer away and calmly pick off German tanks from a stationary position where the command and control issues of the two man turret didn't matter that much. With the introduction of the 7,5cm tank and anti-tank guns (and the remanufactured ex-Soviet 7,62cm gun) in 1942, that advantage was rapidly declining and the introduction of the T34/85 only improved things in terms of firepower, not protection.
In the case of the Sherman, it was introduced in battle at a time (late 1942) when the Germans, forced by events in Russia, had already moved on in the gun/armour race. Had the Germans run into Shermans in 1941, they would've been just as shocked as they were about the T34. So by the time it was introduced into combat, the Sherman was a good medium tank but no more than that.
The Sherman really gained its bad reputation in Normandy in 1944 when most allied tankers were fighting in old 1942 and 1943 models with 75mm guns, experiencing much of what the Germans had in 1941 in Russia - their tanks could easily be knocked out by the opposition while their own guns were struggling to deal with enemy tanks. The Soviets had the same problems with their T34/76s in 1943 and 44, but that is something people tend to forget.
The Soviets dealt with the problem by introducing the T34/85 during 1944 and the US did exactly the same by introducing the Sherman with the 76mm gun at the same time. The difference was the bureaucratic infighting (and the failure to make a good 76mm HE round) in the US Army, which meant that 75mm armed tanks were still being produced in numbers while the Soviets switched completely to the 85mm armed tank. But that doesn't change the fact that a 1944/45 76mm armed Sherman was just as good or bad as a 85mm armed T34 of the same period.
Claus B