Quality v Quantity? | Panzer IV v Sherman | Tank V Tank - Normandy, 1944

The Sherman Tank did a wonderful job for a job that the Sherman Tank was never meant to do.

Not only was the Panzer better, it looked so much better as well.

World war 1 was an industrial war. Germany was defeated by the better industial capacity of the tripatate.
World war 2 was a much bigger Industrial war. The axis were defeated by the bettter industrial capacity of the allies.

Not understanding how do win an Industrial war is why you lose an industrial war.

What the Germans did wasn't 'quality,' so much as needless complexity. Half or more of the German tank losses at Kursk were supposedly breakdowns. That is NOT quality.

The real tank battles were in the East. The Battle of Kursk involving 6,0000 tanks settled the issue where Germany suffered 75% of its losses. . A year before Normandy, which was a side show. For quality v quantity you picked the wrong theatre of operations. . It was in the East.

It's a bit weird this video as it almost says that the German tanks were great and the Sherman was well, a bit rubbish, but there were more of them and that's really the only way they were war winning.

I feel like this isn't a fair comparison - the Panzer IV had a far superior main gun at anti armor - yet the Sherman was a superior tank overall in far greater numbers. The smaller quantities of the Panzer IV meant it had a far inferior effect on the battlefield compared to the sprawling hordes of M4 Shermans. Additionally, with the 76mm/3 inch gun, the Sherman was equivalent at anti armor, and furthermore supplemented by 75mm Shermans and M10 tank destroyers whose sole job it was to destroy tanks. The Sherman enjoyed every advantage apart from the armor piercing quality of the 75mm main gun on the Shermans on D-Day. Before the up-gunning and up-armor of the Panzer IV, I think the Sherman was the clearly dominant tank. Additionally, the Panzer IV wasn't "by far, the most numerous tank fielded by each side," its production was around 9000 tanks, and had severely diminished after 5 years of war by the time the Shermans came...in terms of overall production, the StuG exceeded the Panzer IV, and the Panzer V Panther tank wasn't too far behind. If you added together all AFV production in WW2, the Panzer IV was a minority in German AFV production despite being the single most numerous German general purpose tank of the war. By 1944, it was probably in quite pitiful numbers on the western front, and quite outmatched. If there had been 25,000 Panzer IVs produced in WW2 with a fresh German Army in 1944, against the staggering 50k Shermans, perhaps it would have been a plausible comparison - alas, there were pitiful numbers of Panzer IVs available for the western front, and even less were actually combat ready and deployed at D Day to confront the American, British and Canadian landing forces.
I'm quite astonished by the idea that the Panzer IV Ausf H main gun is L/60, perhaps the presenter is confused by the Panzer III upgunned variant? The original upgunned variant of the Panzer IV, the Ausf F2, IIRC, had a main gun with a KwK40 L/43, and the final version had a main gun with an L/48 main gun barrel.

Little error just after 10 minutes: The KwK40 was L/48 not L/60. However, the 3.6 m barrel length was right (=7.5 cm * 48). [The KwK39 was an L/60 5 cm cannon mounted in later models of the Pz III.]

Not sure where I read this but it is a long time ago in a book I no longer have. When the German industries were asked to come up with an answer to the T34 one company simply copied the T34 concept to meet the new requirements for a new German Tank.
But they were warned that Hitler would not be happy accepting that the Russians could build a better Tank.
The real truth is Germany ended up in the same boat as it did in WW1 it needed a quick knock out blow of the major Powers in Europe that they failed to do for several reasons.
Then the longer the War dragged on the more German industries would suffer from the age old problems of a lack of natural resources or the means to produce anything in the quantities to offset any losses.
So once they were defeated at Stalingrad and in the Desert, and the fatal mistake of declaring War on the USA there was no escaping the outcome. Regardless of their advanced designs.

Tigers were great tanks when they weren’t broken down from mechanical failures which was often

Germany lose in Europe, U.S. / West lose in East / Asia

So basically if it wasn't for America having way more s*** we would have lost

In this case quantity worked. But may not in the future. Dont think this is the law of the future

Don’t forget Sherman’s had gyroscopic gun meaning hit kept it self level even while the tank was bucking up or down
Edit: at least American tanks did, we may not have shared that due to limited availability.

Detroit Michigan - the arsenal of Democracy

The Sherman's frontal armour did not stop German shells because it was too thin, the shells just battered their way through rather than bounce off. The presenter says the Sherman catching fire easily was debunked, then for several minutes goes on to say how the ammunition was poorly placed and how quickly the tank caught fire. Quoting several complaints and testimonials from crewmen, confirming the tank was a major fire hazard! The 75mm gun on the Sherman was a peashooter against most German tanks bigger than Pz.IV.

The tank forces that can get the most replacement vehicles and crews, fuel, ammunition and spare parts to the front will win 💯% of the time

Germans like to build Monuments.

Tommy Cooker meets German Steel 🤔

A German tanker was supposed to have said:"Our Tiger could take out 10 of your Shermans, but you always had an 11th."

Stalin said quantity is quality.

Wow that reenactment was cool! Very Great detail.

Actually, moving the radio to the back of the turret was a British thing! US tanks had them in the hull and the Bow Gunner was actually: Bow Gunner, Radio Operator, and Relief Driver (with his own controls)!

The USA had higher quality products. Funny how people don't understand what quality means: reliability, function, reparability, etc. Also funny how anti-Americanism leads to pro-not-see ideology and propaganda. Continue to talk nonsense about the wornderwapon nonsense, while that did not do well in reality. Lets also not forget the lie about "superior German engineering", which proved to be an absolute farce: under engineered trash, which also had high failure rates and poor productivity, while also managing to have tons of band-aid engineering revisions... never ever good engineering for longevity, manufacturability, and reparability. Great engineering is removing complexity while increasing reliability, function, cost, reparability.. aka quality.
Also comparing a tank destroyer against an infantry support tank is dishonest, but I expect that from Brits/ Europeans.

My mother, Louise, welded Sherman tanks together north of Detroit.

Sure the German tanks were big but quality they were slow and had numerous manufacturing issues

The world of tanks sound effects 😂 great video though i love the storytelling

The Sherman beats German tanks in quality also. The Panzers did have better firepower and armor but were gas guzzlers and hard to keep running

A panzer commander once said, "We could knock out 10 of their tanks for every one of ours, but they always had an 11th." It is a myth that German tanks were of better quality. Panzers were constantly breaking down in combat, becoming useless. The Mark IV being the exception. However, the Sherman was its equal. The Tigers were often too heavy to negotiate bridges and burned up way too much fuel. The Panther was probably the best tank of WWII-on paper, that is. It was incredibly prone to mechanical malfunctions, often having to be abandoned in a firefight. The Tigers and Panthers were rushed into service, with the use of inferior steel and shortcuts being taken during their construction, leading to unreliability in combat.

Lol the western allies wouldn't have stood a chance on the ground if it weren't for air superiority.

I think the main difference is that one is a cool looking tank and the other is a Sherman. 😁

You have the latest and greatest panzer 4 vs the welded body m 4. Panzer 4 had the L20 barrel just like the stug, when it first showed up 😊

Well-made video!World of Tanks doesn’t look bad but too arcade-like with health bars I’d rather play WarThunder where they have Tanks, Planes and Ships with Zero health bars. Depending on where you shoot it affects your vehicle differently, So you it’s more realistic. Even Ukrainians are using WarThunder as practice against the Russians😂

The Sherman was absolutely a quality vehicle... British museums have to stop making simple comparisons of "quantity vs quality"

It's weird seeing a German officer riding in a captured Universal Carrier. I never knew US Army used British vehicles.

Firefly version ate tigers for breakfast and lunch. The USA understood that tank on tank would not win the ground. For that you needed a tank that fit infantry assault doctrine so they needed to be fast, reliable, easy to maintain and there needed to be lots of them. Think the Americans built the Sherman out of expediency? They could have easily built a tank on tank version, but too heavy to move, too much fuel consumption and something the Germans found out at Kursk, not fast enough to stop an enemy from getting behind you. The T-54 btw was on a Sherman chassis.

There comes a point when quantity Always wins. One elephant may be able to stomp millions of ants before they take it down, but if there are enough of them, they'll eventually pull it off.

If the Germans just continued to build and pump out panzer 4 in quantity instead of focusing on building heavier tiger 1 tanks it would have probably be a game changer for Germany.

Better, but difficult to maintain. Germany over-engineers everything. I'd argue their fighter planes were the best. The BF109 is an amazing airplane.

The Sherman is one ugly looking tank

What strikes me about Hitler’s war machine is that, despite their early war superiority in command and control, how limited they were industrially with his micromanaging ways and a Germany still staggering out of the Depression. Id say the secret ingredient there is unsustainable debt further pushing Germany into military adventures. This also highlights that vaunted industrial power Germany did not out-produce their adversaries in any major power theater in either war except against the backwards Tsarist Russia. Germany could only barely produce a scant fraction of Allied tanks in the Great War and was outproduced on airframes by France alone despite lacking much of their territory and some population.

Note:
21st pnzr div was most experienced in North Africa, not Eastern fronts.
The battle depicted in this video was hardly a tank vs tank battle, it was outnumbered and attrited panzer IVs vs heavy artillery, naval gunfire and abundant armor and AT guns.
✌️

/smack

The PZKW IV was first upgunned to the 75L43. Then later upgunned further to the 75L48.

The 75L60 (that you mentioned) was the Panther gun. Would not fit into a PZKW IV turret. Only used on the JPZIV "Lang" unturreted tank destroyer.

German General said we Kill they tanks 10-1 but the Americans always had an 11th tank?

I'd argue the Sherman has most Panzers beat in terms of quality as well. You wouldn't buy a car fron a factory which is being bombed day and night.

pick up the following book:
THE SHERMAN TANK SCANDAL
Christian M. DeJohn, a United States Cavalry veteran of service in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is a former Abrams tank gunner and the author of For Want Of A Gun: The Sherman Tank Scandal of World War Two. He has a masters degree in military and American history.

Shermans vs Stugs?

Did they paint the Sherman with a high gloss paint or do they wax it😂 I seriously doubt there were shiny Shermans on battlefields.