Profile of Zansibar

Imagine complaining about BP historical accuracy when the skies of coh2 are filled with german planes

Rofl.

Everybody gangsta till the Luftwaffe is relevant again

Stug and jagpanzer are the only cost effective german armour.

Nah, the Panzer IV is amazing. So is the Brumbar.

Panther is good too on urban maps.

In a discussion about the Jackson, this interesting off topic discussion emerged.

Firesparks wrote this reply to the Gentlemen Troll :





https://www.coh2.org/topic/68096/about-jacksons/page/2#here

But the question (for me) is: had the Sherman been improved that much by D-Day?

British tank troops usually had one 'Firefly' in each troop of four, the other 3 tanks being 'ordinary' Shermans. The Firefly was undoubtedly capable of taking on the Panzers in a way the other Westerm allied tanks could not e.g. the Churchill, or the Sherman, or the Cromwell. The Firefly carried a 76.22mm gun (which was the equivalent of the UK 17lber) This is without the Sherman Tulips, which did not arrive until the Rhine crossing at Wesel in 1945.

I want to suggest that while the Shermans were the best of the Western Allied tank fleet, nevertheless the design was profoundly flawed for facing the Axis Panzers - equivalent at best to the Panzer IV, and worse than the Panther or the Tiger, or the King Tiger.

Anyone disagree?

In 1943 they introduced the M4A1 76w that sported the new M1 76mm gun and also a wet ammo stowage that decreased cases of tanks "brewing up" down to 10%. Combine this to any equivlent tank either Russian or German, they would have ammo rack detonations at a way higher rate compared to the 1943 Sherman.


Most 76mm variants are easy to distinguish because of the lack of extended HVSS suspensions

The 76mm M1 and M1A1 was easely capable of dealing with a Panzer IV at any range, beyond impractical ranges. While the Panzer IV would struggle to deal with any Sherman model beyond 500m because of the slope coeficcent with 51mm armor at 56 degrees which equals an armor efficiency at about 110mm (more than the Tiger against 75mm shells) according to WWII Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery by Robert D Livingston.



The 76mm Sherman variants are the following:

M4A1 76w
M4A2 76w (lend lease tank sent to the USSR, was told by Sherman tanker Dimitry Loza to be a very safe tank to drive in that would never explode even how much you hurt the ammo racks.)
M4A3 76w
M4A3E8 (the easy 8 with HVSS suspension)
M4A3E2 Jumbo 76w (101mm armor at 56 degrees, more armor than a Tiger 1 and a Panther.)

All these were produced in a total of 10.000, more than all the Panzer IVs ever produced.

The 76mm M1 and M1A1 were extremely potent and the most accurate gun also according to WWII Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery by Robert D Livingston, it even surpassed the 75mm PAK40 and the 88 models.



Heres the penetration satistics for the 76.

106mm of penetration at 1000m with APCBC

175mm of penetration at 1000m with HVAP (APCR)

And then you need to take into account that the average range for a tank fight was about 800m according to Canadian studies. Beyond that it starts getting impractical.



Basically the 76mm Sherman is considerable more armored than the Panzer IV, has a much more potent gun and much less likely to brew up in an ammunition detonation compared to any other tank in the war. (Both the Americans and the Germans used petrol/gasoline, only the Russians used diesel which didnt catch fire, although fuel catching fire was seldom the cause of fatal tank knockouts, it was almost always related to ammunition detonation.)

Had a semi rough early game with low resource income, managed to recover with nice use of team weapons and well timed nades.

The Panther is alright on city maps, otherwise pretty meh.

I think the panthers could use an AI buff and the ost panther a slight armor buff.