Strategic Decisions: Fury and the Sherman Tank
I have always been fascinated by military history, particularly WWII history, so I eagerly went to the local theater to see “Fury” last weekend. The movie’s fictional plot focuses on the exploits of a Sherman tank crew fighting in Germany during the closing months of WWII.
The Sherman tank was clearly outclassed by the late-war German tanks. For example, the Tiger I and Tiger II tanks featured heavy armor and two different versions of the lethal 88mm antitank gun. The Panther tank had heavy sloped armor, superb mobility and an equally lethal long barreled 75mm main gun. Even the later marks of the Panzer IV tank were armed with a lethal long barreled 75mm gun. Most of the Sherman tanks that saw service against the Germans had a shorter barreled 75mm gun that could not hope to penetrate the frontal armor of a Tiger tank, and would be lucky to achieve a penetration of the frontal armor of a Panther tank, even at close ranges. The Sherman’s gun could handle the Panzer IV’s armor, but the Panzer IV’s gun outranged the Sherman’s main weapon and could easily penetrate the Sherman’s relatively thin armor. The question then is why did the Western Allies make the strategic decision to go primarily with the Sherman tank throughout the war against Germany?
The choice to field the Sherman during the late war period in northwestern Europe was a decision that cost many young men their lives. Belton Cooper wrote about it in his book, Death Traps:
“The 3rd Armored Division entered combat in Normandy with 232 M4 Sherman tanks. During the European Campaign, the Division had some 648 Sherman tanks completely destroyed in combat and we had another 700 knocked out, repaired and put back into operation. This was a loss rate of 580 percent.”
Despite Russian intelligence reports about new German tank designs, and encounters with a small number of early Tiger tanks in Tunisia, the American army felt that its Sherman tank design was adequate for the future. The creation of a new tank design would lead to a delay in fielding that tank in adequate numbers and would also complicate supply efforts on a long supply line that stretched from the United States to Western Europe.
The strategic choice for the American army to accept the Sherman as its standard medium tank reaped some positive rewards. Sherman tanks were designed for mass production and they were rugged and reliable. This combined with a decent amount of firepower made them good enough for combat in Europe. During World War II, scientists found that each time the cumulative production of an item (in the case of the study being referenced, this was for aircraft production) doubled, cost declined by about 20%. This can be reflected graphically as the “learning curve.” It is highly likely that Sherman tank production benefited from this phenomenon.
The Germans wasted time and effort producing numerous over-engineered tank designs, rather than settling on one design. This significantly decreased the total output of tanks available to the German army, an army that was fighting a two-front war against industrial giants. The total number of standard Sherman tanks, both those armed with 75mm guns and those up-gunned with a longer 76mm weapon, almost equaled the German’s entire tank production numbers for WWII! The Soviets had also settled on a standardized medium tank design for the war, the excellent T-34. Soviet T-34 production outstripped the production of all German tanks combined. The sheer number of tanks fielded by the Allied nations went a long way to dealing with the superiority of German tank designs. Quantity has a quality all its own.
Furthermore, the basic Sherman tank design was modified throughout the war to improve its chances against the superior German designs. Some British Sherman tanks received the excellent 17lb gun, a weapon every bit the equal of the German “88.” Some American tanks in the late war period were armed with a long-barreled 76mm gun that gave the tankers a fighting chance against Panthers and Tigers. The Sherman chassis was also used as the platform for two tank destroyer designs, the M-10 gun motor carriage with a 76mm weapon and the British Achilles mounting a 17lb gun. These vehicles were somewhat more vulnerable to infantry and artillery with their open-topped designs, but their mobility and powerful guns made them useful against German armor. The armor, survivability and mobility of the Sherman tank were also improved in later marks of the vehicle and this undoubtedly save lives.
The appalling Sherman tank losses in Normandy and later in the Battle of the Bulge prompted demands for tanks with improved armor and guns, but the answer to those demands, the M-26 Pershing, came too late to make a significant impact. However, the strategic decision by the USA to standardize medium tank production on the Sherman was in retrospect probably the correct decision. The time delays and decreased production numbers that would have occurred in switching to a new tank design in 1943 might have led to a significant shortage of tanks available for combat on the Western front in 1944/45.
If you do decide to see “Fury,” ponder the awesome and significant implications of strategic production decisions in wartime, but also take a moment or two to reflect on the bravery and the sacrifice exemplified by American, and allied, tankers who took their outgunned and vulnerable Sherman tanks into battle against Germany’s “big cats.”
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