Tom

>Terry;
>
>During WWII and up to about 1960, the propaganda in the United States claimed that M1 Sherman Tank was superior to any other tank. Then a bit of research reveled otherwise.
>
>One 88mm shell from a Tiger would destroy a M1. A standard tactic the M1’s would use was to have three M1’s fire (left flank, center and right flank) on a Tiger with the hope of blowing off one of the tracks.

You only had to see "Kelly's Heroes" with "Oddball " D Sutherland as the anachronistic "beatnik" tank commander to appreciate that. I always understood that the Sherman was like a fly-swatter to the Tiger but the bumff on the one in the Imperial War Museum states that it was one of the few tanks to take out Tigers.

The Stalin, because of its sloping flanks, this effectively increased the thickness of the armour and made it less vulnerable to the Tiger.

>
>By the way did you know that the Tiger Tank was taken from a design by Charles de Gaul? He was very innovative and designed a tank that included tank communications using radio. That would allow tanks to communicate and converge upon specific targets in groups, which had not been used previously. Since de Gaul at the time was a lower ranking officer the Field Marshals (who were in their 80’s), did not accept de Gaul’s offerings. Instead Germany used the plans.

I did know that actually. Ironic or what?

>
>I met a M1 tank commander who lost two crews in M1’s. He was lucky to get out alive and did it twice.

In the British army, the destruction of a tank was known as "brewing it up" (like a cup of tea - typical British understatement).

I could never understand why the allies, when seeing how inferior their tanks were to the Germans' (including the Churchill), didn't think to just build a tougher, heavier armed one in return. Maybe it was something to do with mass production and cheapness (like an army of ants can bring down a monitor lizard) - for every Tiger we've got 10 pussy-cats :-)

Terry