{"id":28651,"date":"2014-11-13T00:04:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T05:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28651"},"modified":"2014-11-12T21:31:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T02:31:12","slug":"it-was-the-tank-that-won-ww2-in-the-west-and-a-deathtrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/13\/it-was-the-tank-that-won-ww2-in-the-west-and-a-deathtrap\/","title":{"rendered":"It was the tank that won WW2 in the west … and a deathtrap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Paul Richard Huard<\/a> 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):<\/p>\n

\"M4A1

M4A1 Sherman tank at Canadian Forces Base Borden (via Wikipedia<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

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 \u2014 North Africa, the Pacific and Europe.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But the Sherman was also a death trap.<\/p>\n

Most tanks at the time ran on diesel, a safer and less flammable fuel than gasoline. The Sherman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s comparatively thin armor. If they were lucky, the tank\u2019s five crew might have seconds to escape before they burned alive.<\/p>\n

Hence, the Sherman\u2019s grim nickname \u2014 Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because \u201cit lights up the first time, every time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\"Sherman<\/a>

Sherman Firefly on display at Bovington Tank Museum (via Wikipedia<\/em>)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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): The M-4 Sherman was the workhorse medium tank of the U.S. Army and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,13,230],"tags":[991,31],"class_list":["post-28651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-military","category-usa","category-ww2","tag-afvs","tag-army"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7s7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28654,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28651\/revisions\/28654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}