Tank Firing in Slow Motion - the Slo Mo Guys

[Pappabear]

I never bought into the whole , "let is stabilize and check groups at 200/300 yards". Hmmm makes me re think

Pretty cool stuff.

PB

[TexHill]

BTW, the cameras that they are using start out at $135,000 U.S. dollars and top out at around $200,000!!!

[vicious_cb]

One of the best books on the Sherman's performance (or lack thereof) is Death Traps by Belton Cooper. The author was there and part of his job was battle damage assessment. He is adamant that the U.S. unnecessarily sent a lot of young men to their deaths because of lack of development and acceptance of superior designs in offensive armor.

I liken the notion that the M4 Sherman was a "death trap" to the M16 is an "unreliable POS" myth. The numbers dont lie, in there entire European theater was there were only 1,407 tankers KIA or 0.4 casualties per Sherman knocked out in the US armored corps.

[NWPilgrim]

He was developing a flinch with the 76mm so normally not a good idea to jump up to a bigger caliber magnum. If he had gone back down to 9mm he might of hit those melons in the first shot!

Very cool videos. I guess there is significant truth to the bullet “going to sleep” at a certain distance. So much interesting things going on with ballistics there is always something more to learn.

[soulezoo]

Shermans were famously called, by their crews, Ronson's. The advertising slogan for Ronson lighters in the day was "lights the first time, every time".
We lost a lot of Shermans as they were vulnerable to various anti tank weapons. Previous post was correct, they were made for infantry support. Not anti tank. Yes, overall tank mortality wasn't high, because tank on tank battles were actually rare. However German high velocity 75's and 88's were a nasty surprise. British Fireflys and Easy 8's were our answer, but they were fielded in low numbers. At best, there was one Easy 8 to 3 regular Shermans. Wanna guess which tank was targeted first? For a really overrated tank, study the t-34. The early ones were real pieces of crap. On paper they were impressive. In reality... terrible ergonomics. The commander was also the loader. One radio per 4 tanks and it often didn't work. One could not see. Poor vision. Optics were bad and had poor field of vision. The gun was inaccurate. The transmission broke often and engine overhaul was 110 kilometers or so. This varies. The sloped armor and Christie suspension took up so much room inside that it made being a crewman intolerable. It could only do its max speed for about 15 minutes then it overheats. About half of max speed was sustainable. The early versions had bad problems tempering their steel and so poor steel quality let to cracking and seams buckling at a glancing blow. It is heralded now because they made so damn many of them. Well over 40,000 for the war. Against 1200 Tigers total for the war. Think if they had 40,000 Tigers or Panthers...

[eightmillimeter]

A lot of that instability you are seeing is due to barrel wear and an improper projectile (not what was designed for the gun, just what is easy to make on a lathe). A lot here just assuming this is something bullets do is in no way true.

[kwelz]

We were so far behind the power curve when it came to developing tanks, we didn't know which end was up for WWII.
Look at the history of it, the hull was developed to move throughout Europe, cross bridges and mover through built up area's, the turret and main gun were a bit of an afterthought. They used a bit of data available from the Navy, then did the math and decided a 75 mm gun should do the trick. For the most part, that was all correct until the krauts started up arming heavier tanks with 88 mm guns.
The difference between German and American Tanks at that point became Mass Production versus Custom builds. The German Tanks were very finicky in some area's, especially transmissions, while the American Tanks were built in a assembly line in Henry Ford's model "T" like mindset. They were adequate, did 75% of the job, but they churned out quickly.
The bad part was actually being a crewman on one of those Sherman's because once the Tiger, Panther and King Tiger hit the battle field it took three to five Sherman's to take one out in tank on tank fights.
Rather than up gun the Sherman at that point and yes the technology was available, they decided the war would end before that was feasible.

I've spoken to a few German Tankers from WWII, they explained to me that they had better training and more experience than their allied counterparts.

I would argue that the Sherman was possibly the best tank of WWII with the Tiger, panther, and King tiger being the worst.

The goal of a tank is to get to a location, protect the crew and take out threats at that location.

The Sherman, even with its flaws did this in spades. Against any tank it was made to fight, it did an amazing job. The Panzer IV was the germans closest equivalent and they were very equally matched. And despite the nickname and stories of them going up in flames at the slightest hit, the Sherman actually had the highest crew survivability of any tank in WW2. Not to mention that most taken out of action were reparable.

On the other hand we had the Panther and Tiger tanks. Big, new, heavy armor and amazing guns. However they failed in one important point. Being able to do their job. Yes when they worked they were amazing. But they didn't work. Transmission and Engine issues were only a small part of it. Don't forget the weight. Even with larger tracks they still had a lot of weight to move around.

A tank is only effective if it can get to the fight and stay in the fight. The Sherman with its modular components and rugged parts did that well. The german tanks did not.

But really the Sherman wasn't meant to fight the newer german tanks. That was the job of the Pershing. And it did it quite well.

Check out this video of one of the final battles of the war. A Pershing took out a Panther easily.

[soulezoo]

I can't disagree with any of the above. That's fairly accurate.
The German large tanks were underpowered and the transmissions overstressed due to the weight. Tha Panther shown in the video was quite well armored in the front but very vulnerable on the sides. This was known and after the first run, Panthers received steel skirts (the one in the video is lacking these skirts) to beef up the side armor. The Pershing would have penetrated the front armor of a Panther even at a longer distance regardless. Ironically, the German armor produced from about '44 on had the same problem with quality of steel that the Soviets had. One, they had shortages of things like nickle and vanadium, second, the slave labor impressed for the production of steel had little motivation to follow procedure and produce proper steel. So things like the face hardening suffered greatly. Another vulnerability was the turret ring. Tank crews were directing their fire in this area.
The modularity of the Sherman is a good point and many, even with a big hole in it were returned to service. Large German tanks suffered more losses from breakdowns and abandonment than actual battlefield kills. The removal of a transmission from these beasts for repair was a nightmare.

[sgtrock82]

Belton coopers book isnt a bad read and I do recommend it but it hardly tells it how it really was. Lots of easily verifiable but incorrect technical information on the sherman. A sample of one as it were, and not an actual user either. As mentioned above "the Sherman tank was junk" is comparable to the "M16/M4 is junk" both widely spouted off about in the media by alot of folks that never knew any better.

For a great read on Shermans check out Steve Zaloga's "Armored Thunderbolt". Most of his stuff on armor is pretty good and very readable


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[Averageman]

I think in the context of a Tank built to support an Infantry advance it was very capable. I do not believe when the Sherman was being designed anyone was predicting large scale Tank vs Tank battles such as what happened at Kursk.
It also wasn't unusual for a Tanker in WWII to have little or no training before fighting in battle on a Sherman, so I would imagine the reputation of the Tank was much maligned by troops who were OJT'ing in battle on them.
I remember reading that some of the slave laborers in the German Tank plants could insert a slip of cigarette paper in a Tiger transmission in such a way that the Tank would make it to the front lines before it would totally disable the transmission.