Muttley zei:
Mannekes wa gaan wat te ver in de tijd nu hee. Polen hebben we overgeslagen.
Ik vind het eigenlijk raar dat polen altijd wordt overgeslagen, we spreken altijd van de oorlog ´40-45, maar eigenlijk is die al gestart in 1939 of als we het extreem bekijken pas in ´41 wanneer Amerika begon deel te nemen.
Allee ja, dus Polen. Dit is toch de eerste grote test voor de Duitse Blitzkrieg, maar een zware. Vele tanks werden vernietigd doordat de infantrie achterbleef. Terwijl de Luftwaffe goed werk heeft geleverd met allee Poolse vliegtuigen te vernietigen.
Wel 1 ding snap ik niet echt maar da is al meer bij Frankrijk; waarom spreekt iedereen van de onoverwinnelijke Duitse panzer, die had in 1939 (behalve tegen Polen) toch niets te zeggen tegen geallieerde tanks. Geen luchtmacht====>gedaan met Duitse tanks.
Allee ja nu Polen hee
Het is zo dat de duitse panzers kwalitatief superieur waren in vergelijking met bv de amerikaanse tanks. Vergeet niet dat Amerika pas in 1941 betrokken geraakte in WO2 en er ginds nog geen oorlogeconomie bestond tot op het punt van de aanval van Pearl Harbor. Na die aanval zijn de Amerikanen vollop tanks en dergelijke beginnen bouwen.
Het gaat niet om de kwaliteit van de tanks maar eerder om kwantiteit van de geallieerden. De duitser hadden niet productievermogen van de geallieerden als je enkel amerika's potentieel bekijkt i.v.m. materialen alleen...
EDIT:
A winner by numbers
But as I wrote, the M4 Sherman was a winner by numbers, so let's check those numbers. The total number of german Tiger and King Tiger tanks produced was 1835, that's all. They were extremely powerful and armored, but also technically unreliable and complex to produce. There were also 4800 german Panther tanks. A majority of these tanks fought against the russian T-34s in the eastern front. The others were to fight the great majority of the more than 40,000 Sherman tanks produced (a minority fought in the pacific), and one should remember that the sky above the battlefields were then dominated by swarms of allied fighter-bombers such as the american Thunderbolt and the british Typhoon which excelled in hunting german tanks and kept doing it whenever the sky were clear enough to fly.
I don't have the exact division of tanks to the various war fronts, but if we conservatively assume that 3/4 of the Shermans faced 1/3 of the german tanks (the other tanks went to the pacific front and to the russian front respectively), these are the numbers we get, which are not exact, but very clear: 30,000 M4 Shermans vs. 600 Tigers and King Tigers and 1500 Panthers.
This is a 14:1 ratio vs. the modern german tanks, and a 50:1 ratio vs. the formidable Tigers. There were earlier german tanks and powerful tank destroyers, but the Sherman could engage them more easily. It gives a perspective to the immense superiority of the american war industry over its rivals.
If we also consider the strong air support provided by fighter-bombers, [ for example, at the end of the battle of the bulge, british Typhoon fighter-bombers destroyed 175 german tanks in one day, and the larger US air force was not on vacation either ], then we must come to the conclusion that although the Sherman tank was inferior to the german tanks, especially the Tigers, it massively outnumbered them, so although combat engagements between Sherman tanks and a german Tiger tank were an unforgettable and terrible experience for the Sherman crews because they usually meant death to one or more Sherman crews, it also meant the death of the greatly outnumbered Tiger's crew. It also meant that such encounters were statistically rare. Most of the time Sherman crews met threats they could more easily deal with and fight them very well.
BRON:
http://www.2worldwar2.com/sherman.htm