It was the tank that won WW2 in the west … and a deathtrap

November 13, 2014

It was the tank that won WW2 in the west … and a deathtrap

Filed under: History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: AFVs, Army — Nicholas @ 00:04

Last month, Paul Richard Huard did a brief tribute to one of the iconic tanks of the Second World War, the M-4 Sherman. It was not a good tank, but it was good enough (if you ignore the survivability of the crews):

M4A1 Sherman tank at Canadian Forces Base Borden (via Wikipedia)

The M-4 Sherman was the workhorse medium tank of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps during World War II. It fought in every theater of operation — North Africa, the Pacific and Europe.

The Sherman was renown for its mechanical reliability, owing to its standardized parts and quality construction on the assembly line. It was roomy, easily repaired, easy to drive. It should have been the ideal tank.

But the Sherman was also a death trap.

Most tanks at the time ran on diesel, a safer and less flammable fuel than gasoline. The Sherman’s power plant was a 400-horsepower gas engine that, combined with the ammo on board, could transform the tank into a Hellish inferno after taking a hit.

All it took was a German adversary like the awe-inspiring Tiger tank with its 88-millimeter gun. One round could punch through the Sherman’s comparatively thin armor. If they were lucky, the tank’s five crew might have seconds to escape before they burned alive.

Hence, the Sherman’s grim nickname — Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because “it lights up the first time, every time.”

Commonwealth units were allocated a proportion of Sherman tanks with the original 75mm or 76mm main gun replaced by a British 17-pounder anti-tank gun that gave Sherman Firefly tanks nearly the same punch as German Tiger tanks (and better than Panthers). There weren’t enough to go around, so they were parcelled out to allow a few Fireflies per troop or squadron. The 17-pounder gun also lacked a high explosive round for use against thin-skinned or unarmoured targets, so including one or two Fireflies among a group of conventionally armed Shermans was a good trade-off.

Sherman Firefly on display at Bovington Tank Museum (via Wikipedia)

Comments (3)

3 Comments

This is a somewhat mythical reputation. Although I am unable to come up with any solid articles right now, I know it’s been addressed several times by historians who work for the company that makes World of Tanks.

The only article I could find easily simply said that many German tanks also ran on gasoline and didn’t have fire-trap reputations (and it’s also a myth that 75mm Shermans [let alone 76mm or Firefly] were unable to penetrate Tigers and Panthers, so that’s not an explantion), and that that particular Ronson slogan didn’t launch until after the war.

But, yeah. No actual facts to back this up with…

Comment by Liam — November 15, 2014 @ 09:01
Not so much a “myth” as over-generalization of the facts. Compared to other tanks in the same era, the Sherman was reliable, easy to maintain, and very widely available. On the down-side, once hit, they tended to be more prone to fire damage and crew survival rates were lower than other tanks.

Myths are usually built on at least some foundation of fact, like this:

[SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) Michael] Wittmann is most famous for his ambush of elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, during the Battle of Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944. While in command of a single Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger he destroyed up to 14 tanks and 15 personnel carriers along with 2 anti-tank guns within the space of 15 minutes.

The circumstances behind Wittmann’s death have caused some debate and discussion over the years, but it had been accepted that Trooper Joe Ekins, the gunner in a Sherman Firefly of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, fired the round that destroyed his tank and killed Wittmann and his crew. However, in recent years, some historians have suggested that members of the Canadian Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment may have been responsible instead.

With stories like that, it’s no wonder that at least some allied tank crew considered their AFVs to be massively inferior to their German counterparts.

I posted several excerpts from a post by Nigel Davies back in August which at least touched on the role of the Sherman and Sherman Firefly:

This is where the myth of the value of the Sherman tank comes from. The Sherman arrived at a time when it’s armour and weapon were on a par with the Panzer III and IV tanks that it was facing. Despite the fact that its 75 mm gun was greatly inferior as an anti-tank weapon to the new British six pounder guns that were starting to equip British tanks, the high explosive shell that the Sherman could fire was incredibly useful for engaging Rommel’s 88 mm guns at long-distance in the flat desert terrain.

For several months, it seemed as though the mechanically reliable Sherman would be a war winner, despite its notable tendency to explode in flames whenever it was hit. (Allied troops refer to it as a Ronson — “lights first time every time”. German troops just referred to it as a “Tommy Cooker”.) But this concept was fantasy, which could be easily demonstrated within a few months, though it took the US government another two years to admit it.

[…]

So, in contrast to what many history books and documentaries will tell you, the French had the best tanks in 1939, and the British had the best tanks of 1940 and 1945. Also in contrast to what many history books will tell you, the Sherman’s effective front-line role can best be defined as the few months between the battle of Alamein, and the arrival of Tiger tanks in Tunisia. All attempts to use it after that in Italy or northern France just demonstrated how pathetic it was in modern engagements. Even the British Firefly version with the 17 pounder, was extremely vulnerable to any German tank. In fact it is amusing to note, that they came into their own for the blitzkrieg across open country in pursuit of the defeated German armies across France; which has a direct parallel to the inferior German tanks pursuing the defeated French in 1940. (The equally inadequate British Cromwell tanks, being significantly faster, were actually still better at this pursuit than the Shermans.) The best tank of the Sherman’s period of functional use, of course being the T34.

Comment by Nicholas — November 15, 2014 @ 09:28
For counterpoint, there’s this forum post that also makes some interesting claims:

Many works will cite the fact that the M4 series used petrol (or gasoline) as fuel made them more likely to catch fire. The only issue there is that most tanks were not penetrated in the engine compartment. Furthermore, if fuel combusting was a major problem then one would imagine that the designers of the Sherman would try to solve the problem – possibly by adding armour plating to the fuel tanks.

As it was, many early Shermans had applique armour fitted covering the ammunition stowage areas, and later models had wet stowage introduced – the only vehicle in WW2 to have this (wet stowage is a system where ammunition is stored in lockers that have a layer of water or fire-retardant liquid sandwhiched between the inner and outer surfaces of the locker. The system is still standard in all modern MBTs, and its presence in a Sherman is designated by a (w)). According to studies undertaken by the Americans, cases of Shermans catching fire after being hit decreased by 75% after the introduction of wet stowage.

So, most fires on the Sherman tank do appear to have been down to the ammunition being hit. So why was this such a problem for the Sherman? The answer is simple – it was not. At least, not compared to any other tank in service in WW2. Allied tanks were more prone to being shot at by enemy guns, simply because there were more Allied tanks than German tanks, and for much of the war the Germans were fighting on the defensive – and the use of an explosive filler in the common German anti-tank shells greatly increased the risk of internal fires when penetrated. Possibly the most damning nail in this particular coffin is that Belton Y Cooper – whose book ‘Death Traps’ is one of the most anti-Sherman works published – states several times that German anti-tank gunners would often repeatedly fire at disabled Shermans until they caught fire, thus preventing their recovery and repair.

Comment by Nicholas — November 15, 2014 @ 09:38

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