lightning2000 wrote:Friend, I didnt say the Sherman was useless, I said it was a pile of junk. It helps to read someone's comments before you attempt to take a stand.
"Pile of Junk" is usually a term used for useless stuff , so you should have writen something else if like "inferior" or "outdated"
I also take it, you've never seen any of the documentaries on the Military Channel or History Channel that back up what I'm saying about the Sherman. It had a low velocity gun, went up in flames within seconds of being hit, had poor armor, and had a high silhouette. About the only thing it could do well was move at high speed and traverse its gun faster than some of the German heavies. You're going to dispute all of that when virtually any tanker would have rather served in a Panther or Tiger instead of a Sherman?
I never argued that the Sherman was equal to the Tiger or Panther but it was still very useful in the hand of a skilled commander . And you seem to ignore that the allies improved the armor and the gun on many shermans so that it could take on the german zoo (tigers, panthers , elephants get it ) . The big disadvantage the western allies had was that most of the equipment came from across the Atlantic so it would always take a long time before the new tanks arrived , so it was the slow transportation that kept most of the Sherman's outdated not the design . And the last comment is kind of ignorant since any tanker would prefer something better , I bet most of the german tanker would rather have a JS-2 . But all sides used mostly medium tanks so its that what we have to compare and the later Sherman was better than any german medium tank .
My original comment was that alot of our so-called first line equipment had to be improved by the British to make it more battleworthy.
And I wrote that the US did improve their tanks on their own , what the British did was improve the tanks they used not the US ones .
You're going off on a million tangents explaining why the Sherman wasnt a bad tank. The Israelis had no choice but to use the Shermans since they had few options early on. Making huge quantities of an item doesnt necessarily guarantee its success. We won because we used combined arms better than the Germans later in the war, had complete air supremacy, better logistical system and virtually more of everything as compared with the Axis. Dont confuse all of that with the supposed success of the Sherman on the battlefield.
And to take advantage of all those things you need a fast and reliable tank which the Sherman was , do I still have to remind you that the germans mostly used Panzer III's against t-34's and kV1's in 41 . If the allies had relied on more heavy tanks for the sacrifice of maneuverability and speed they might not have been so successfully in the Normandy campaign (the Churchill is a good example of that ) ,so the Sherman was a good tank in the role it played for the allies .
Oh, and I also forgot how it took the British to perfect the Corsair during landings on carriers before our own forces could use them effectively. Much is written about how the British owe alot to the US for what they did in the war. The same holds true of the US owing alot to the British for making our equipment more capable under wartime operations.
Thats true but the main reason USA didn't rush it was because the Hellcat was smaller (more planes on a carrier) , more reliable ,cheaper (you could get 5 hellcats for 3 Corsairs ) and more than capable to take on any japanese plane . Making the Corsair able to land on carriers is still a very good accomplishment but it didn't really affect anything until USA started to invade the Japanese islands
* 1:72nd. , eh ! ... Figures ! * 
seems we supplied them with enough of the stuff to circle the globe like three times. 
