M4 Sherman

• 1. Introduction

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  The M4 Sherman medium tank reached the desert war because of one sentence from Winston Churchill. On the 21st of June 1942, Axis forces captured Tobruk, which threatened Egypt and Britain's supply line through the Suez Canal. Churchill was in Washington when the news broke. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked what he could do to help, and Churchill replied at once: "Give us as many Sherman tanks as you can spare and ship them to the Middle East as quickly as possible."

  The British had named the tank after William Tecumseh Sherman, a general of the American Civil War. By 1944 it was outgunned by the best German tanks it met. Even so, it became the backbone of American armored forces. So why did the Allies lean on it so heavily? What was it designed to do in the first place? And how much truth lies behind the grim reputation that followed it?

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• 2. Built For The Factory

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  On the 31st of August 1940, the Ordnance Department submitted detailed characteristics for a new medium tank. Its job was to replace the M3, a stopgap meant to serve until a proper turret for a 75 mm gun could be devised. The M3 sat very high because of its 37 mm turret. Its unusual main gun was mounted in a side sponson with limited traverse, so it could not be aimed across to the far side of the tank. A prototype had to wait while the M3 finished its production designs and went into full manufacture.

  On the 18th of April 1941, the Armored Force Board chose the simplest of five proposals. This design, called the T6, put a newly designed turret carrying the M3's 75 mm gun onto a modified M3 hull and chassis. The T6 prototype was completed on the 2nd of September 1941, with an upper hull cast as a single large piece. The modified design was standardized as the M4, and first production was completed in February 1942.

  Its reliability came from American light tanks of the 1930s. Those machines had given it vertical volute spring suspension, rubber-bushed tracks, and a rear-mounted radial engine with the drive sprockets in front. The designers prized durability and easy field repair. Standardized parts let factories turn out spares quickly. Size and weight stayed moderate, so the tank fit existing bridges and transport vehicles.

  The first production Sherman came from the Lima Locomotive Works. The U.S. Army kept it for evaluation, and the second tank of the British order was sent to London. It was nicknamed Michael, probably after Michael Dewar, head of the British tank mission in the United States. Today it is an exhibit at The Tank Museum in Bovington.

  Railway firms soon joined in. Baldwin Locomotive Works, the American Locomotive Company and the Pullman-Standard Car Company all built Shermans, alongside Ford Motor Company and the Detroit Tank Arsenal. In total, 49,324 were built, making it the most-produced American tank of the war. Only the Soviet T-34 beat that figure, at roughly 84,070.

  Steel set the limit. Before September 1942, Roosevelt had announced a program of 120,000 tanks. But steel equal to roughly 67,000 tanks went into warships and other naval vessels, and only about 53,500 tanks were made in 1942 and 1943.

  The letters in the model names did not mean progress. The Army used seven sub-designations, from M4 to M4A6, and an M4A4 was not better than an M4A3. They marked production variations built side by side at different plants. Most ran on gasoline. The M4A3 had a 450 hp Ford V8, while the M4A4 used a 370 hp Chrysler engine with thirty cylinders. The designation M4A5 was only a placeholder for the Canadian Ram tank, and the diesel M4A6 reached just 75 vehicles.

  The British kept their own system, built on mark numbers. In it, a letter A marked a 76 mm gun, B a 105 mm howitzer, and C the 17-pounder.

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• 3. Doctrine And Its Limits

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  Field Manual 100-5, published in May 1941, told American armored divisions what they were for. It declared: "The armored division is organized primarily to perform missions that require great mobility and firepower." Their main role was offensive operations against hostile rear areas. Tanks formed the striking echelon, with infantry in a support echelon behind them. The manual never said tanks should seek out only other tanks, so target choice stayed with the field commander.

  A September 1942 manual on the tank battalion, FM 17-33, shows how little tank duels figured in the plan. It spent a single page of text and four diagrams on tank-versus-tank action, out of 142 pages. The sweeping early successes of German blitzkrieg had shaped that thinking. By the time Shermans arrived in numbers, calls for infantry support and tank fights far outnumbered chances to raid rear areas.

  Killing enemy tanks was meant to be someone else's job. Towed and self-propelled guns, run by Tank Destroyer battalions, were supposed to rush up from the rear and stop massed armored attacks. Commanders rarely followed this in combat. They disliked holding tank destroyers in reserve, and doing so meant a tank battalion did not have all its anti-tank weapons forward when an attack began.

  The idea's chief champion was General Lesley J. McNair, who led Army Ground Forces from 1942 to 1944. A former artilleryman, he believed tanks should exploit breakthroughs and support infantry. He approved the 76 mm upgrade for the Sherman and the 90 mm gun-armed M36 tank destroyer. But he resisted the T20 series and its descendants, the T25 and T26, because they were not "battle worthy" and he saw no "battle need" for them.

  In fall 1943, Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers asked for 250 T26 tanks for the invasion of France. McNair refused, believing the Sherman was adequate. Devers appealed to the War Department, and Major General Russell L. Maxwell ordered the 250 tanks built in December 1943. In April 1944, McNair's command even asked for them to be down-gunned from 90 mm to 75 or 76 mm. General George C. Marshall then ordered them sent to Europe as soon as possible.

  Soon after the Normandy invasion in June 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower urgently requested heavy tanks. Serious mechanical problems and McNair's opposition to mass production delayed them. That same month, the War Department overruled Army Ground Forces and set a 1945 plan for 7,800 tanks. It included 2,060 T26s with 90 mm guns, 2,728 T26s with 105 mm howitzers, and 3,000 M4A3 Shermans with 105 mm howitzers. McNair was killed in July 1944 in a botched air support mission. The few T26s, by then designated M26, reached combat from February 1945, too late to affect the battlefield.

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• 4. Baptism In Africa

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  More than 300 Shermans, mostly M4A1s with some M4A2s, had reached Egypt by September 1942. American armored divisions had only just begun receiving a few for familiarization. The United States had considered collecting them all to send Patton's 2nd Armored Division to Egypt, but delivering them straight to the British was quicker. In the desert they were modified with shields over the tracks and extra stowage.

  The Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 was their combat debut, with the British 8th Army. At the start of the offensive, 252 Shermans were fit for action. They equipped the 9th Armoured Brigade, serving under the New Zealand Division for the battle, along with the 2nd Armoured Brigade of the 1st Armoured Division. The 8th and 20th Armoured Brigades of the 10th Armoured Division also received them.

  Their first tank-versus-tank encounter was against German Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks with long 50 mm and 75 mm guns, firing from 2000 yards. Losses fell on both sides. Still, the Sherman's 75 mm gun and better armor gave Allied crews an edge over the lighter German and Italian designs.

  The first American Shermans in battle were M4s and M4A1s during Operation Torch the following month. On the 6th of December, near Tebourba in Tunisia, a platoon from the 2nd Battalion of the 13th Armored Regiment was lost to enemy tanks and anti-tank guns. Over the rest of the North African campaign, more M4s and M4A1s replaced M3s in American tank battalions.

  Those two types stayed the main Shermans in American units until the fall of 1944. Then the Army began swapping them for the preferred M4A3, though some M4s and M4A1s served to the end of the war. By then, roughly half the U.S. Army Shermans in Europe carried a bigger gun than the one that fought at El Alamein.

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• 5. The Gun Question

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  The 75 mm gun M3 that armed early Shermans was a 40-caliber weapon. It could penetrate an estimated 88 mm of armor at 100 meters and 73 mm at 1000 meters. Against the early Panzer III and Panzer IV in North Africa, that was enough to pierce their frontal armor at normal combat ranges.

  American planners misjudged what came next. U.S. Army Intelligence discounted the Tiger I in 1942 and the Panther in 1943, predicting the Panther would be a heavy tank like the Tiger and doubting many would be built. Tests seemed to show the 76 mm gun could destroy both. Those tests used armor plate arranged to resemble a Panther's, and captured Panthers were never tried. Eisenhower later remarked that Ordnance had wrongly told him the 76 mm could knock out any German tank.

  Even a lightly armored German tank destroyer like the Marder III could destroy Shermans from a distance. That gap led to production of 76 mm Shermans in January 1944. The new gun, the T1, unbalanced the turret when first fitted in spring 1943. Its barrel also jutted so far forward that it could strike the ground on rough terrain. Engineers shortened it by 15 inches, from 57 calibers to 52. Production models used the turret from the abandoned T23 tank project instead of the original.

  Commanders did not rush to adopt it. The 76 mm had a much weaker high explosive shell than the 75 mm, and Army doctrine prized the tank's multirole ability. Every U.S. Army Sherman deployed to Normandy in June 1944 still carried the 75 mm. Panthers in Normandy changed minds, and 76 mm Shermans reached First Army units in July 1944, making their debut in Operation Cobra. Patton's Third Army accepted them only after the Battle of Arracourt against Panthers in late September 1944.

  The numbers explain the anxiety. At 100 meters the 76 mm penetrated 125 mm of unsloped armor, and 106 mm at 1000 meters. The Panzer IV's 75 mm L/48 gun managed 135 mm and 109 mm at the same distances. The Panther's long 75 mm L/70 managed 185 mm and 149 mm. Its 80 mm front hull plate sat at a 55-degree slope, giving 140 mm of line-of-sight thickness that the 76 mm could not overcome. A Sherman could kill a Panther at normal ranges only from the flanks or rear. A Tiger I could knock out a Sherman from the front at over 2000 meters.

  Combat ranges told their own story. Americans recorded an average distance of 800 to 900 meters for tank-versus-tank action. In late summer 1944, after breaking out of the bocage, tank units attacking German positions at longer range sometimes took 50% casualties before they spotted where the fire came from. Sherman crews also feared long-range shooting because their high-flash powder made their own shots easy to see. In their favor, gunners had a secondary periscope with a far larger field of view than their German counterparts.

  Better ammunition arrived too thinly. T4 high-velocity armor-piercing rounds, built around a tungsten penetrator, became available in September 1944 and let the 76 mm match the Panther's own armor-piercing round. Tungsten shortages kept them scarce. Tank destroyer units got priority, and over half of the 18,000 projectiles received were made for the M10 tank destroyer's 3-inch gun and did not fit the Sherman's 76 mm gun. Most Shermans carried a few rounds, and some units never saw one.

  The British solved the problem their own way. They placed the 76.2 mm Ordnance QF 17-pounder in a standard 75 mm Sherman turret, creating the Sherman Firefly. Its bore nearly matched the American 76 mm, but its cartridge case held a far bigger propellant charge. That let it penetrate 174 mm at 100 meters and 150 mm at 1,000 meters. British tests with two Fireflys firing at a Panther turret-sized target, however, gave a hit probability of only 25.4% at 1,500 yards with the standard round.

  The British offered the 17-pounder to the U.S. Army in late 1943, but Devers insisted on comparison tests against the American 90 mm gun. They ran from the 25th of March to the 23rd of May 1944 and seemed to favor the 90 mm. After the heavy tank losses of the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower asked in January 1945 that only 76 mm Shermans be sent to Europe, and interest in the British gun revived. About 100 Shermans were converted in England by early May. The Army then decided a new ammunition caliber was not worth the supply trouble. None of the converted tanks fought for the U.S., and the fate of most of them is unclear.

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• 6. Fire And Improvisation

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  The British No. 2 Operational Research Section studied tank casualties in Normandy from the 6th of June to the 10th of July 1944. Of 40 Shermans sampled, 33 burned, or 82 percent, after an average of 1.89 penetrations. Of five Panzer IVs, four burned. Of 22 Panthers, 14 burned, after an average of 3.24 penetrations, and four of five Tigers burned. A separate case study by John Buckley, covering the British 8th and 29th Armoured Brigades, found that 94 of 166 Shermans knocked out, or 56.6 percent, burned out.

  United States Army research traced the main cause to the stowage of main gun ammunition in the sponsons above the tracks. A 1945 study found that only 10-15 percent of wet stowage Shermans burned when penetrated, against 60-80 percent of the older dry-stowage ones. Wet stowage moved the ammunition to bins in the hull floor, each surrounded by a water jacket, which cut the chance of fire after a hit to about 15 percent. An earlier partial remedy in 1943 was to weld 1 inch appliqué plates over the bins, though there was doubt they helped. A burned tank could not be recovered, so crews learned to keep firing at an enemy tank until it caught fire.

  Nicknames tell a murkier story. The Sherman allegedly earned the name Tommy Cooker from Germans, who called British soldiers Tommies, and a tommy cooker was a World War I trench stove. No evidence exists beyond anecdote on the Allied side and after the war. The names Ronson and Zippo were allegedly linked to the flamethrower version. The popular story that they came from the slogan "it lights the first time, every time" has been almost conclusively disproved, because the Ronson company did not begin using that slogan until the 1950s.

  Fuel fires did occur, but they were far less common and less deadly than ammunition fires. In many cases the fuel tank was found intact after a fire. Tankers described "fierce, blinding jets of flame," which fits burning pressurized hydraulic fluid better than gasoline.

  The hull armor had its own flaw. The glacis plate began at 50.8 mm thick, angled at 56 degrees, for an effective thickness of 90.8 mm. But protruding cast hatchway structures for the driver and assistant driver sat in front of the turret ring and spoiled the slope. In 1943, 1 inch appliqué plates were fitted in front of them. Later hulls used a uniform 63.5 mm plate sloped at 47 degrees, an effective 93.1 mm, with larger hatches.

  Buckley offered a counterweight to the fear of German heavy tanks: "The vast majority of German tanks encountered in Normandy were either inferior or merely equal to the Sherman."

  Crews added protection of their own. They tried sandbags, spare track links, concrete, wire mesh and even wood, hoping to stand off shaped-charge weapons such as the Panzerfaust and the 88 mm Panzerschreck. In the summer of 1944, Patton, told by his ordnance officers that sandbags were useless and strained the chassis, forbade them. The only known test came on the 9th of March 1945, when officers of the 1st Armored Group fired Panzerfaust 60s at sandbagged Shermans. Side shots blew away the sandbags and still penetrated, while angled shots at the front plate failed to penetrate.

  After the losses of the Battle of the Bulge, Patton ordered extra plates salvaged from knocked-out American and German tanks and welded onto his tanks. About 36 of these up-armored Shermans went to each of the three armored divisions of Third Army in spring 1945. The Army also built a purpose-made heavy version. From May to July 1944 it accepted 254 M4A3E2 Jumbos, with very thick hull armor and a T23-style turret, meant to assault fortifications and spearhead armored columns.

  In the Normandy hedgerows, the U.S. Army's 2nd Armored Division fitted Culin Hedgerow Cutters to its tanks. Three tanks could then push through together. The flank tanks cleared the far side of the hedgerow with canister rounds, which worked like a large shotgun, while the center tank suppressed suspected enemy positions on the next hedgerow. Over 500 sets were fitted to American armored vehicles, and the British called theirs prongs.

  The 75 mm white phosphorus shell was originally meant to mark targets for artillery. Tank crews found that when it stuck to a Tiger or Panther, the burning phosphorus blinded the excellent optics, and acrid smoke drawn inside made breathing hard. Fear of fire sometimes made the German crews abandon the tank.

  The Sherman had a hatch in the hull bottom to dispose of spent shell casings and provide an emergency escape. In the Pacific, Marines often used it in reverse to recover wounded infantry under fire.

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• 7. Many Armies

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  About 19,247 Shermans went to the U.S. Army and about 1,114 to the U.S. Marine Corps. The United Kingdom received 17,184, some of which passed on to the Canadians and the Free Poles. The Soviet Union received 4,102, and an estimated 812 went to China. General Devers ordered that no diesel-engined Shermans be used by the Army outside the continental United States. The Army intended the M4A2 and M4A4 to be the main Lend-Lease exports, while the Marines used the diesel M4A2 and the gasoline M4A3 in the Pacific.

  In the Soviet Union, the M4A2 met a rival it was often compared with. The first 76 mm-armed M4A2s arrived in the late summer of 1944. Soviet records counted 3,664 tanks received, a gap explained mainly by deliveries sunk on the way and by discrepancies between American and Soviet archives. By 1945, some Red Army units, including the 1st, 3rd and 9th Guards Mechanized Corps, were equipped entirely with Shermans.

  The Red Army judged the M4A2 much less likely than the T-34/76 to catch fire from ammunition detonation. It was more prone to overturn in road accidents, collisions and rough terrain because of its higher center of gravity. Soviet tanker Dmitriy Loza recalled that many crews valued its reliability, easy maintenance, and good firepower, especially with the 76 mm gun. They also liked its auxiliary power unit, which kept the batteries charged without running the main engine, as the T-34 required.

  The complaints were just as pointed. Crews said the tall Sherman was easy to hit. Historian David M. Glantz wrote: "The Sherman’s narrow treads made it much less mobile on mud than its German and Soviet counterparts, and it consumed great quantities of fuel..." Soviet tankers preferred American tanks to British ones, Glantz noted, but preferred Soviet tanks most of all.

  The Pacific was a quieter theater for armor. Only a third of the U.S. Army's 70 separate tank battalions went there, and none of its 16 armored divisions. Jungle terrain suited armor poorly, so both sides found light tanks easier to transport and deploy. On Guadalcanal, the Marine Corps' M2A4 light tank fought the Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go, and both carried 37 mm guns. By 1943, Allied forces were quickly replacing light tanks with 75 mm-armed M4s. The Chinese in India received 100 Shermans and used them to great effect in the 1944 and 1945 offensives.

  The Japanese Army still relied on the Type 95 and Type 97 Chi-Ha. To counter the Sherman, they designed the Type 3 Chi-Nu and the heavier Type 4 Chi-To, both with 75 mm guns. Only 166 Type 3s and two Type 4s were built, and none saw combat. High explosive rounds worked best against Japanese tanks, because armor-piercing rounds often passed straight through the thin armor of the Ha-Go. Against fortifications, flamethrower Shermans proved more useful than direct gunfire.

  One Japanese formation spent the war waiting. The 4th Tank Division stayed on the home islands to prepare for an Allied invasion that never came.

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• 8. Long After 1945

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  In July 1950, the U.S. Far East Command scrambled to find tanks to answer North Korea's T-34-85s. Few were ready, because of disarmament after World War II. Command collected 58 M4A3E8 Easy Eights scattered across Japan. The nickname came from the experimental E8 designation of the horizontal volute spring suspension, which gave a smooth ride. On the 17th of July they were formed into the 8072nd Temporary Tank Battalion, later renamed the 89th Tank Battalion, and they landed at Busan on the 1st of August. The unit went straight into the Battle of Masan to support the 25th U.S. Infantry Division.

  In all, 679 M4A3E8s were deployed to Korea in 1950. The Sherman and the T-34-85 could destroy each other at normal combat ranges, but high-velocity armor-piercing ammunition, advanced optics and better crew training favored the American tank. Using 76 mm HVAP rounds, M4A3E8s destroyed 41 enemy tanks from July to November 1950. Its anti-tank power was weaker than the larger-caliber M26 Pershing and M46 Patton. Even so, the lighter Sherman became the preferred American tank in the later phases of the war, thanks to its maneuverability on rough terrain and its mechanical reliability. It often supported infantry in battles for high ground and mountains. From December 1951, around 20 served with the Republic of Korea Marine Corps.

  Israel's first Sherman was a single M4A2 without its main gun, acquired from British forces as they withdrew in 1948. Israel's tank force then consisted mostly of the outdated, 1934-origin French Renault R35, with its short 37 mm gun. The re-armed Sherman looked far better, which led to the purchase of 30 unarmed M4(105) tanks from Italian scrapyards. Three of them, plus the original M4A2, saw extensive service in the 1948-49 war of independence. The rest were rearmed with 75 mm guns as parts became available and formed a large part of Israeli tank forces for the next eight years.

  Before the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel replaced them with 76 mm M4A1s imported from France, after realizing the 75 mm could not penetrate newer tanks such as the Centurion or the Egyptian T-34-85s. French help produced a conversion kit with the long 75 mm CN 75-50 gun from the AMX-13. About 300 tanks received it and were designated Sherman M-50. Before the Six-Day War in 1967, about 180 M4A1(76)W HVSS Shermans got the French 105 mm Modèle F1 gun and Cummins diesel engines, becoming the Sherman M-51. Fighting alongside Centurions and M48 Pattons, they defeated the T-34-85, T-54/55/62 and IS-3 tanks of the Egyptians and Syrians.

  In Indonesia, British forces used M4A3s during the Indonesian National Revolution until 1946. The tanks passed to the KNIL, which used them until 1949, and then to the Indonesian National Armed Forces. Shermans also served briefly with South Vietnam in the Vietnam War and on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

  The U.S. Army replaced the M4 in 1957 with the M47, M48 and M60 Patton. The American transfers of Shermans to allies continued, which is why so many armies kept them in service.

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