Quote:
Originally Posted by tater
Yeah, jap tanks were crap. They had little in the way of artillery, either, actually. WTF were they thinking?
The Sherman was indeed not a great tank, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Nothing on the battlefield does. The Germans made many designs, and didn't make any of them in enough quantity. They also lacked reliability. The US tankers, being Americans, were used to cars, too. Look at the stats on vehicle ownership/familiarity before the war. Most US troops has first had experience keeping a car of that era running (since they could only afford "clunkers" that needed plenty of shade-tree work to keep running). Others were farm boys who had to fix engines as a matter of living on a farm. The Sherman fit well into that milieu. They were easy for our boys to keep running, and at least were not too slow.
And, as was said during the war: quantity has a quality all its own.
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The Japanese I think simply made the best of limited resources. Against Infantry their tanks worked fine (assuming they had no AT Weapons which the Chinese lacked). The IJA was still a foot and bayonet army of the 19th century.
Another advantage of the Sherman was size, it was designed to fit right in to the hold of a transport ship. Can't say the same of an M1A1.