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Originally Posted by cbo
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.
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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.
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There were small changes in the turreet armour as well, but not much.
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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.
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17-pdr APDS round was a somewhat erratic performer.
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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?