Hellcats were fastest tanks in WW2! 60 mph!! can we speed them up?

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[acker]

British tanks definitely had reliability issues, to say the least. Luckily, they had a good logistics/resupply system, so it didn't matter as much. It also helped that they had America for nonessential production so they could focus more on producing war stuff like spare parts.

The Hellcat would indeed be death incarnate. For the sake of gameplay, that is not so.

[Tymathee]

Very true, the Hellcat was named Hellcat for a reason Now, a Tiger may be able to hit a hellcat and take it out cuz of the hellcats thinner armor but if you have good sights and a good camo and good bunkering position, then it comes down to the gun on the tank thats bunker down and if it can penetrate the armor of the tank its shooting and hellcats had really really really good guns. Yet, for some reason, they can't penetrate the front armor of a stug in coh lol so funny...

[NCOIC]

Unfortunately as much as I'd wanna agree with Gamesguy US armor was in the main inferior to german armor. This was a as we've already discussed more of a doctrinal difference, the US had it's head up it's asss in terms of tactical armor usage at least in terms of design. But where US stuff did excel was in reliability, ease of maintenance, ease of use, lower cost and greater numbers.... we did catch up slightly near the end of the war. But not soon enough

I don't expect to be allowed the 5-1 ratio of tanks that the US had over German but hopefully the other stuff can be modeled relative to the Axis gear.

The ardennes incident quoted was probably a combo of good training, awesome tactics, good positioning and luck. Luck is always there. Murphy rules in combat. I'd like to know more about that if ya could give me the source

[acker]

US armor...inferior to German armor? What time period, and what theater? I need specifics, I don't want to reply to your generalities.

Are you expanding this to division layout, training methods, tank dispersal, noncombat vehicle allocation, and and armor production? Are you just looking at the tanks? How about logistics or grand strategy?

Please make your question more specific so I can agree to it or, most likely from your lack of qualifiers, try to burn it to the ground.

[NCOIC]

Oops read more posts that appeared before I posted above. British stuff was in the main crap also, designed with a flawed doctrine. But the Brits did make up fer it by the wars end with the 17 pdr  gun on the sherman, the achilles and the  development of the comet/cromwell?. There just wasn't enuff of them to go around. The best overall allied tank to see general use was the firefly which wed american design ingenuity with british ordnance.

About the 300,00 man hours that a tiger needed.... that's the stuff that lost the war. Too many hours created too few tanks. The Tiger had it's issues but was good when used as it was designed to be. Stand off shots with that 88. What clobbered them was airpower, production rate and that huge allied superiority in numbers and as Stalin once said in response to a comment about axis armor being of better quality "quantity has a quality all it's own'.

The P4 was a good tank and upscaled very well. The Sherman was a match for it overall. They were fairly evenly matched.

Frankly the best tank was probably the panther (with T34 too)  but again the above conditions apply. Too few, too complicated mechanically, too little air support.

[NCOIC]

US armor...inferior to German armor? What time period, and what theater? I need specifics, I don't want to reply to your generalities.

US stuff was under armored and under gunned pure and simply. Great mechanically, easy to use and maintain but in combat they could not go toe to toe with much of axis armor. As I said though the P IV and the Sherman were roughly comparable. but we started running into the panther and such and only won because of numbers, air superiority, and arty superiority.

The inadequacies came to a head when we invaded europe and were never fully addressed, the mindset was what we had was good enough factoring in the things I mentioned above

[dravidian]

if you want realism the allies should get 100 shermans the and axis 2 king tigers

[NCOIC]

if you want realism the allies should get 100 shermans the and axis 2 king tigers

Ok as I said I don't expect that. I understand the limitations vis a vis numbers

[Jazlizard]

If you want realism, enlist in the army. These threads are pointless.

[gamesguy2]

.

The ardennes incident quoted was probably a combo of good training, awesome tactics, good positioning and luck. Luck is always there. Murphy rules in combat. I'd like to know more about that if ya could give me the source

From wiki:

Team Desobry's high speed highway journey to reaching the blocking position is one of the few documented cases[3] wherein the legendary top speed of the M18 Hellcat (55 miles per hour (89 km/h), faster than today's M1A2 Abrams) was actually used to get ahead of an enemy force as envisioned by its specifications.[3]

The attack of 1st Battalion and the M18 Hellcat tank destroyers of the 705th TD Battalion together destroyed at least 30 German tanks and inflicted 500 to 1000 casualties on the attacking forces in what amounted to a spoiling attack. A Military Channel expert historian credited the M18 destroyers with 24 kills, including several Tiger tanks, and believes that, in part, their ability to "shoot and scoot" at high speed and then reappear elsewhere on the battlefield and therefore appear to be another vehicle entirely played a large part in confusing and slowing the German attack, which subsequently stalled, leaving the Americans in possession of the town overnight

There were only 4 M18s and they were facing literally an entire panzer division.

[acker]

...I was right. I apologize in advance if I go too far, I do that a lot.

Oops read more posts that appeared before I posted above. British stuff was in the main crap also, designed with a flawed doctrine. But the Brits did make up fer it by the wars end with the 17 pdr  gun on the sherman, the achilles and the  development of the comet/cromwell?. There just wasn't enuff of them to go around. The best overall allied tank to see general use was the firefly which wed american design ingenuity with british ordnance.

I have no clue what you are trying to say.

About the 300,00 man hours that a tiger needed.... that's the stuff that lost the war. Too many hours created too few tanks. The Tiger had it's issues but was good when used as it was designed to be. Stand off shots with that 88. What clobbered them was airpower, production rate and that huge allied superiority in numbers and as Stalin once said in response to a comment about axis armor being of better quality "quantity has a quality all it's own'.

Even more generalities, but I can find one specific. Tell me this. The Tiger was designed to be a breakthrough tank, a tank designed to open an exploitable breach in enemy lines. Now, tell me, how exactly does a Tiger "break through" anything if OVER HALF OF THEM DON'T EVEN MAKE IT TO COMBAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? If you produce one spare engine for every ten Tigers, how exactly do you replace your losses if the breakthrough FAILS? And tell me, if the tank was designed to "break through" and be disposable, why did it take 300k man-hours to make?

You think I'm exaggerating? I kid you not. And you're telling me that Allied tank doctrine had problems greater than this one? At least the Tank Destroyer doctrine worked sometimes.

Stand-off shots with an 88? This is not a video game. Stand-off shots against the US Army led to artillery fire. And artillery kills tanks better than tanks kill tanks. Tigers had limited success in the propaganda field for when the stars lined up just right, and the Allied tankers feared them when they didn't find one of their abandoned tanks. But not much else. Not nearly enough success to justify their production.

The P4 was a good tank and upscaled very well. The Sherman was a match for it overall. They were fairly evenly matched.

Your first comment makes little sense. You do realize that the upgunned Panzer IV (model H in particular) suffered from power strain? Just from an uparmoring that was still inferior to Sherman armor level (accounting for slope) and the addition of a high-velocity gun? The Sherman could tank armor levels more than a Tiger before its suspension started to strain out. In terms of upscaling, Shermans are pretty much unparalleled, the turret ring could and did fit a 90mm gun and beyond. Though only up to 90mm was contemplated for WWII, the Isrealis shoehorned a 105mm gun into the thing, and Chile is still using the Sherman as a MBT. That's more than can be said of any other WWII tank. In comparison, later versions of the Panzer IV, during World War Two, started using manual traverse. They went backwards, not forwards.

If you want to talk about simply comparing the Sherman to the Panzer IV in the context of WWII, just PM me. Let's just say that the Sherman kicks the PzIV's ass in terms of functionality and rivals its lethality within an armor division.

Frankly the best tank was probably the panther (with T34 too)  but again the above conditions apply. Too few, too complicated mechanically, too little air support.

"Panther" and "best tank" do not mesh well. In 1943, with the earlier Panther Model As/Ds, no panzer unit equipped with Panther model D/As was able to sustain an operational ready rate over 35%. When Panther As were originally distributed to the SS-Leibstandarte in Italy, every single one of them was rejected for service. Reliability was so bad that they were transported on train tracks much like the Tiger. Some medium tank, huh?

Later-model Panther Gs were not as bad, but were still awful. The suspension was still overstressed, and the single-toothed spur gears stripped very easily. The transmission could wear out in as little as 150 km, and the Maybach engine was....bad. Right before the Battle of the Bulge, in outfits equipped with the Panther Gs, 35-40% of the Panthers were unavailable for, you guessed it, "mechanical problems".

Air power does not destroy tanks. Air power overrates tank kills by a factor of 20. Air power harms tank divisions. There's a very big difference between the two.





Please make your statements more specific so I can actually understand what you are trying to say.

[gamesguy2]

US stuff was under armored and under gunned pure and simply. Great mechanically, easy to use and maintain but in combat they could not go toe to toe with much of axis armor. As I said though the P IV and the Sherman were roughly comparable. but we started running into the panther and such and only won because of numbers, air superiority, and arty superiority.

The inadequacies came to a head when we invaded europe and were never fully addressed, the mindset was what we had was good enough factoring in the things I mentioned above

Yes they could and they often did.   Battle of arracourt, the 2nd largest tank battle in WWII and the biggest single tank battle in the western front.    The 4th armored division took on the 5th panzer corp and destroyed 107 tanks(mostly brand new panthers) and 30 assault guns for loss of 14 shermans and 7 stuarts(M5).   By the end of the battle, 4th Armored had destroyed 285 German tanks and AFVs for the loss of 25 medium tanks and 7 tank destroyers.

The sherman was superior to the Panzer IV in every way.  It had sloped armor, better quality armor, better gun, much superior ammo for the gun, better reliability, better turret, etc.

Panthers were vastly overrated.    You have to remember there is more to a gun and armor than just size.    The Germans had a critical shortage of the materials needed to alloy good quality armor and basically no ammo other than straight HE.  While the Americans had superior steel in their armor and much better AT ammunition(especially HVAP).

[acker]

Arracourt...you NEVER hear about this anywhere, only if you search in some obscure Lorraine campaign book. I've never figured out why.

http://www.ww2f.com/battle-europe/25518-us-37th-armored-regiment-arracourt-battle-tanks.html

A more accurate transcription of the engagement around Arracourt would involve a library.



You always hear about Whitman...but I bet no one here knows about Lafayette G. Pool. Or even Creighton Abrams.


Allied tank doctrine worse than German tank doctrine? Give me a time frame and theater, and I'll answer that. It surely can't be mid-1944, though, because Germany was using wood-powered vehicles to train its tank recruits by then, and couldn't even afford to zero their guns before shipping the tanks to the front, or even burn enough gas to teach recruits anything but the basics of driving. With results like Arracourt.


Incidentally, the British tried to study ten captured Panthers after the War to find out German technology. 9/10 of them caught fire when turned on.

[Tymathee]

So....then why do my shermans constantly lose 1v1 vs p4's I'm guessing they're just the early model m4 shermans right off the assembly line fresh no upgrades. Frealin relic...they've ruined history.

[acker]

It's known as Hollywood History. That's why people believe in the Tiger 5:1 kill ratios and other crap about wundertanks and the Maus or Ratte.

Video games are not reality. The Germans were not supermen. Americans were not John Wayne.


...Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. But that is a rough explanation.

[AmPM]

Actually, the majority of Shermans, even in 1945 were 75mm using vehicles. They are roughly the same as a P4.

In CoH the two units are sooo close that the part that really matters is who does damage first.

People keep comparing their vet 0 infantry company shermans to vet 2 HEAT round P4s......

[acker]

Panzer IVs fire faster in COH than Shermans. They also beat Shermans around 70% of the time in a flat engagement. They also have the exact same aim time, and have nearly-identical accuracy modifiers against each other on the move.

That's Hollywood history.

[AmPM]

Barely faster =)

And they have 36 less HP. It really comes down to who shoots first.

And no, its not Hollywood history, its a game, based around the facts off WW2, the allies won through logistics, numbers, and artillery/air support.

The Axis focused heavily on powerful single units.

This plays out in CoH as axis units costing more and being better, and allied units being slightly worse and costing less, allowing more of them.

[dravidian]

so meaning the a xis should only be able to buy 3 p4's and the allies 4 shermans? seeing as they focused on more single powerful units

[AmPM]

Check your costs, the Sherman costs less, allowing you to diversify more.

So yea, you can get more tanks.

The most startling example is this, all Axis companies are limited to 2 true heavy tanks, Allies can field 3 pershings in a company.

It gets even better, stop using shermans to fight p4s, use an m10, the m10 costs a ton less, and does just as well vs armor as a sherman.