The M4 Sherman
The M4 Sherman was the workhorse of the U.S Army in World War II. The M4 Sherman participated in all theaters of War from the harsh and cruel deserts of North Africa, to the vast lands of the Eastern Front. The M4 Sherman wasn’t used exclusively by the Americans, but by the Canadians, the Soviets, the Free French, the British, and the Chinese. More than 50,000 Shermans were produced from 1942 to 1945. The M4 Sherman was designed with production and logistics in mind. Thanks to the American industry, one Sherman was rolled off the assembly line every 30 minutes. The Sherman didn’t just come with one variant, but with 13 variants not including foreign designs.
22nd June of 1940, the fall of France. After France was occupied by the Third Reich, Americans were hit with the realization that their M2A1 Medium tanks were outmatched and outperformed compared to the Third Reich’s armored forces with their much faster and more modern Panzers. The Americans quickly decided that they wanted a new tank armed with a 75mm gun. This resulted in Americans producing the M3 Lee with a hall-mounted 75mm gun and a 37mm anti-tank gun on a rotating turret as a stopgap. The M3 Lee would be produced and used mainly by the British through the Lend-Lease Act while development continues on a better tank with a rotating 75mm gun. The new tank would use as many parts from the M3 Lee to ease production and manufacturing. Soon a prototype tank name the T6 was delivered to Aberdeen Testing Grounds to begin trials. After testing the T6, there were a few parts removed and the T6 would later be renamed the M4 Medium. The M4’s armor is a fully cast hull with a 50mm sloped armor (1.97 inches) at a degree of 57, weighting at 30 metric tons combat loaded, a 400hp radial engine (Continental R-975 C1 Engine), Two .30 caliber M2 machine gun, and an M3 75mm main gun equip with a gyro-stabilizer allowing it to have better accuracy on bumpy terrain or the move while on slow speed.
The original M4 has a one-piece cast hall, which was not very efficient for protection and was later designated as M4A1. To combat this they went from a one-piece cast hall to a welded hall which was easier to produce and it eliminated the weak spots and was later designated as the M4. The M4 was later given the designation M4 Sherman in honor of William Tecumseh Sherman. William Tecumseh Sherman was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War in 1861 and is famous for his scorch earth tactics which translates to destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy. On the outside, the M4 Sherman may look lacking compared to the German tanks like the Tiger 1, especially with their armor and canons. The M4 Sherman may not have an impressive canon or armor like the Tiger 1 but unlike the Tiger, the M4 Sherman is a jack of all trades. The Sherman was never truly meant to be a tank destroyer and the 75mm wasn’t capable of destroying heavy tanks like the Tiger 1 from the front. Luckily, the Sherman’s 75 mm gun could penetrate the Tiger’s armor from the side and the back, which is exactly what happens most of the time in Sherman’s engagement.
The Sherman’s first combat engagement was in Africa mainly armed by the British in the second battle of El Alamein. The British praised the Shermans for their reliability and a few contributing factors that the Shermans have compared to the Germans. Among these factors was that it was easy to gain access to the components for maintenance. The commander of the M4 can also overwrite the gunner’s turret to help find the target if the gunner is having trouble finding it. The Sherman was also easy for the crews to escape in case the tank was hit or immobilized, but the biggest advantage the Sherman has is the 75mm gun which can easily penetrate the armor of the Third Reich’s armored forces in Africa. The M4 Sherman would now join the British army in Africa along with their cruiser tank the Crusaders and the Matilda IIs in the fight against Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.
The Sherman has its flaws. The dry ammo stowage used in the early variants made it so when the ammo stowage was penetrated it was more prone to catch on fire with a burn rate of 82%. Eventually, these problems were fixed with the later variants in 1944 with the introduction of wet ammunition stowage decreasing it to 10% to 15% burn rate. The other problem with the M4 Sherman was the distribution of ground pressure and in softer terrain, the M4 is most likely to sink into the ground troubling the crews. But it to was fixed with a new horizontal volute suspension system in the newer models. The loader of the M4 would also have trouble escaping when it was hit because the Sherman lacks a loader hatch, but eventually in 1943 new Shermans would be produced off the assembly line with loader hatches for the ease of escaping, and retrofit packages were given out to Sherman crews that did not have a loader’s hatch to install. Later models of the M4 Sherman would also have some upgrades like added armor and newer and more powerful engines.
Eventually, older models of the M4 Sherman were starting to be unfit from 1943 and 1944 onwards. The Third Reich was beginning to field their Panthers and Tiger 2s in which the Sherman’s 75mm gun was having a problem penetrating. In July 1943 Aberdeen Testing Grounds were testing the new M4E6 which has the standard M4A1 chassis but the 75mm gun was replaced with a 76mm gun. In 1944 the US Army began to field the 76mm Sherman designated as M4A1(76)W. At first, the Sherman crews weren’t impressed and believe that the M4A3 with the 75mm gun was more than enough, but engagement with Third Reich’s Panthers was more than expected and the Sherman crews began to request the M4A1(76)W. Soon many Shermans would be upgraded to have 76mm M1 guns. The U.S. Army was soon in need of newer heavy breakthrough tanks but the American was having trouble designing one fit for logistics with many failed experiments not going to production. Many of these examples were the M6A1 and M6A2E1. Eventually, they took the design of the M4A3 Sherman added an additional 38mm of armor at the upper hull and sides, better protection for the engine and making the turret much more protected and was called the M4A3E2 Jumbo. The down sight to the Jumbo is that it still uses the 75mm gun. Even though the Jumbo was up-gun to the 76mm gun not many were made and were mainly focused on giving the Shermans the 76mm gun instead. Many of the M4A3 variants were also fitted with flamethrowers and was designated as M4A3R3 “Zippo” and were mainly used in the Pacific against the Imperial Japanese forces. The other M4A3 variant was packed with 60 M8 rocket launch tubes, enabling them to fire a rocket barrage, and was designated as the T34 Calliope. The M4A3 chassis were also used for many more roles like recovery vehicle and combat engineer roles.
When the Lend-Lease Act began on March 11, 1941, more than 21,000 M4 Shermans were sent to many Allied nations with Britain receiving the most. This gave birth to many different designations and foreign modifications to the Sherman. The Sherman in Britain would simply be called Sherman 1, Sherman 2, etc, and in the Soviet Union the Sherman would be nicknamed “Emcha.” Eventually, World War 2 came to an end on September 2, 1945, and many Shermans would end their service in 1957 after the Korean War. Many Shermans would be sold to Asia, the Middle East, South America, and North America. Major use of the M4 Sherman would come to an end after the Yom-Kippur war and the Lebanese Civil war marking it one of the longest service tanks in the world. It is a known fact that a Shermans(105) was abandoned and found by the Australian military in an Iraqi base during the Iraq War in 2003.
The M4 Sherman was not a perfect tank it is not as impressive looking compared to many other nations’ tanks but there is no such thing as a perfect tank. Each nation designs its tanks with its own doctrine in mind and the M4 Sherman just so happens to fit most. The M4 Sherman does not specialize in one role and that is what made the M4 Sherman unique. Though tanks and weapons are built for war I believe that they should only be built to defend one’s nation and not used for invasion it should never be used to inflict suffering on other nations’ people. Weapons should not be used to enrich one’s own country through the suffering of another. Peace can only be achieved through cooperation and unity at the end we are all just humans. We should never look down on our human beings as subhuman or second-class citizens. At the end of the day, we must learn to love each other as fellow human beings.
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
-Albert Einstein