A considerable amount of footage I'd never seen before.

Shermans were as big as was feasibly reasonable due to logistics. It was a medium tank produced in huge numbers that had to be shipped across the Atlantic. Larger tanks were not feasible with all the extra weight & size. Also, the really big tanks were very limited as to where they could go and operate, because of natural terrain problems and inadequate bridges. The German Stug 3 did more damage than any big tank.

I lived in Juelich in mid-1980s and used to ride my bike through Puffendorf, Immendorf, Gereonsweiler etc. Many villages still had pockmarks and other visible reminders of the battles there.

The Shermans were outclassed at distance.

My uncle was a S Sgt in the 99th, tank destroyers. He talked of how large the Tiger IIs were

I might add the Germans feared and hated the 155 MM artillery as that destroyed them

12:16 just look how many hits the king tiger took to the side and rear. a real BEHEMOTH

Well done, unseen footage, and ive seen alot. Instant subbed

American: your tank is as good as 10 of ours. German: but you always have 11.

I don’t know why people get so caught up with this. America got Sherman tanks, crews, maintenance crews, fuel, motor oil, spare parts and ammunition on ships and sent them all over the world in numbers large enough to win.

nice mention about the Sherman Firefly at the end of the video !!

TWO THUMBS UP! Great videos, that I have never seen! VERY IMPRESSED!

Some excellent combat footage to be sure.

After the Normandy campaign Eisenhower ordered all Sherman tanks coming over be 76mm armed. The Tank Destroyers already were 76mm armed. But all those 75mm armed Shermans were used till the surrender

Great storytelling! Where did they find some of this footage? I love this kind of research .

VERY well done & interesting video!

Gotta love the Tigers...that is the 2nd Armored Div Tiger Brigade!

Most tanks were NOT killed by other tanks. The short barreled 75 from American tanks worked just fine for the tanks primary role, infantry support.

Great video and narration.

At 8'30" the video makes reference to the village of Gereonsweiler. Gee, that was my mother's hometown. She was 20 in 1945 and still lived there. I can also see the woods and country highway where my uncle lived. My father met my mother in that village when he was stationed there as a German soldier in 1944/5. He was a truck driver pulling a 8.8 flak gun.

Tiger 56 metric tons, Panther 45 metric tons & Panzer IV light armoured.

There was a small battle during the Ardenne, when a single Jagtiger, in an ideal ambush position, caught a few dozen Shermans advancing across a large open field. The destruction of Shermans only stopped when the Jagtiger ran out of ammunition.....leaving behind a scene of utter carnage.

Just remember the Germans tanks without much fuel did not have any chance, hardly ever mention.

Good film footage.thanks interesting

Hey, George Patton sure liked the M4s....

The 76 was shortened so the turret didn’t need to be enlarged with a counterweight. That dropped muzzle velocity from 3900 to 3400 ft/sec and assured that the AP round couldn’t penetrate German armor. A bad decision back home killed a lot of tankers in the ETO. A similar situation to the Navy’s Mark XIV torpedo.

Well done, and not a cartoon either, thank God!!!

What has always mystified me is why panzer ll, lll and lVs had such slow turning turrets. Surely, this was a major design fault if the tank cannot manoeuvre fast enough with its tracks and its gun can only pivot at the glacial pace of 11 degrees per second?

You should do a video on Lend-Lease Shermans used by the Soviets.

What we all fail to realize is Sherman medium tanks were facing heavy tanks this fact alone explains the losses!

0:37 Puffendorf is actually in Westphalia, west of the Rhine river. The allies didn't start crossing the river into the Rhineland until March at Remagen. Interestingly enough the 7th Armored division was hanging out in Puffdorf and nearby Ubach on 16 December when the Battle of the Bulge started. Cheers!

Thanks!

To the narrator: It's not an artillery barge, it's a barrage! One is a float to carry goods on water, the other is a concentrated volume of projectiles..

Myths of American Armor. TankFest Northwest 2015, debunked most of what has been said.

I can see so many types of Sherman tank. I guess repair division needed so many parts.

Did this battle have some night engagements? I recall reading that Panthers with Infrared sights knocked out US tanks. They worked with an IR searchlight- equipped halftrack (skfd 251 "Uhu") that illuminated a large area.

The Americans very rarely met any tiger tanks.

The mantra that the Sherman tank was better because there was many more of them is the best argument that it was an inferior tank. If it takes 4 or 5 tanks to overcome an enemy's tank, probably means it's not a good tank.

2:27 "the Panzer IV boasted thicker armor plating" Perhaps depending on the M4 model, but generally speaking, no, this is not true.

Another advantage in the German's favor was their superior gun optics. They could see hit farther with better accuracy than the US. Those US tank crews who switched to the Pershing's notice a huge improvement with that tank's gun optics, that made for greater accuracy at longer ranges

In the early Tiger vs. Sherman battle's were 2 or 3 Tigers that destroyed 100 Shermans. Lets not be stupid that Sherman's were terrific Tiger killers.

It is interesting to note, that the Panzer 4, the most common German Tank, was armed with a long barreled 75mm gun. So the round fired from it was going much faster when it left the barrel. The British also armed the Cromwell with a long barreled 75mm gun. Plus, the British installed some long barreled 17 pounders on about 400 Sherman tanks, thus creating the Sherman Firefly. The US never did catch on to this idea.

Second. Thanks for video ❤

Great video of tank on tank action!! Reminded me of the movie with tanker Telly Savalas driving his sherman back to US lines totall destroyed with no turret, cant remember the name of it.

Puffendorf sounds like a village near Hogwarts.

Lots of Canadians also died in these Sherman iron coffins

Lot of interesting info but way off on so many aspects.The standard German medium, the Panzer IV did not have wider tracks than the Sherman, nor more direct frontal armour! The Sherman had 430 mm wide tracks, the Panzer IV was up to 400 mm. The Sherman had 50.8 mm armour at 57 degrees, equivalent to 93 mm horizontal, the Panzer IV went up to 80 mm flat on the better versions. The Pz IV did have a better gun, and was a lighter vehicle, but that came with shortcomings, too, they were well balanced really. Also the 75 mm M3 gun in the Sherman wasn't short barrel or low-velocity, it was more medium of both accounts but closer to high-velocity than low. Additional: mentioned was the 2nd Armoured losing 70% of tanks to combat or repair between July and August, but the German equivalents they faced lost between 90 and 100% of their tanks at the same time... At the conclusion of this battle, the US lost 18 medium tanks and 7 light, 25 tanks total, and the Germans lost 17 tanks mixed of medium and heavy. Not quite as bad and decisive as the claim of "US tanks being outclassed" or"obsolete"...

I was in 2/67 AR at Fort Hood, when we got the XM one

The effectiveness of the Sherman is such a thorny issue. We can understand and empathize with Sherman tank crews who said negative things about it in the heat of battle; i.e. when you see your buddies getting killed / 75mm HE rounds bouncing off of enemy tanks its hard not to feel the way they did. But if we look at the Sherman from a greater perspective, it really was the best all around tank of the war. Easy to manufacture, ship to Europe, easy to maintainen and repair with less moving parts than German tanks, fits on narrow bridges, highly maneuverable once you picked up a little speed (not as maneuverable from a dead stop), faster turret rotation rate, far superior transmission and escapability than the Soviet T34. It's high profile could also mean the difference in spotting the enemy first which becomes a huge advantage once Sherman crews became more experienced. What many Sherman crews didn't know were some of the more serious issues with German tanks - WAY over engineered, a lot more moving parts means more stuff that can break and more parts you have to stock in your supply chain, TERRIBLE problems with their straight drive train gears breaking constantly with heavier Panther and Tiger tanks, slower turret rotation rate and sluggish acceleration from a dead stop. U.S. tank destroyers also kept the situation being worse than it was. Yeah, I know that there were issues with deploying them in battle in a timely manner but like with everything else, as the war ground on the Americans got better tactically with leveraging the Sherman's strengths as well as with how they deployed tank destroyers. By the end of 1944 into 1945 is where you start to see American tank tactics greatly improve with experience.

Not many Shermans (none in WW2) had gyrostabilisation 3:05. Even the early Pershing didn't. The first widely deployed and effective gyrostabilisation was the Centurion.

My Dad was in the 772 tank destroyer battalion. They had 90 mm. He said they would blow the tracks off the German tanks if they couldnt get them sideways.

All in all the brave men who new they were Outgunned most of the time in their shermans has to be admired I really can't comprehend how it must have felt knowing Those beasts were out there targeting them.

When they designed the Sherman, data suggested that it would be in Tank vs Tank about %15. of encounters. By the end of the war, it was %13. When armchair worriers bitch about the Sherman, they ignore the use it was designed for.

Regardless how you feel about anyone this, no one can deny that Puffendorf is an adorable name! It sounds like a brand of pastries!

The M4 Sherman with the 50mm short canon could penetrate the side and rear armor, true, but within 200 meters it could penetrate any tank armor. The advantage of the 76 long was it achieved more acceleration, so in close the 75 short was as good as any other.

A common mistake made in this documentary is a simple comparison of armour thickness. While the Pz IV did have marginally thicker armour than the Sherman, the fact that the Sherma's armour was sloped meant that effectively the Sherman's armour was thicker. He also ignores that fact that ther Sherman was modified during the war, for example, the M4A3E8 had considerably thicker armour than tne Pz IV and it was sloped to boot, the sherman jumbo M4A3E2 had even thicker armour than the Panther or the tiger, and the tiger's armour was not sloped. Frontal armour on the Tiger was 100mm, frontal armour of the jumbo was 140mm and sloped, and the Panther's side and rear armour was was only 30mm, later upgraded to 40mm, easily penetrated by even the 75mm AP shells of Shermans. This documentary does what most do, and assumes all Shermans, throughout the war, were the early M4 or M4A1.

The 75mm gun was kept because 99% of a tanks duty is infantry support and the HE round is the main round fired. The 75mm HE round was excellent for this and did well, the armor piercing ammo was good but not great. It could destroy a Tiger 1 from the sides or back, as well as a Panther, but couldnt handle the front armor. This was worked around by sending them out in groups to swarm, youll lose a couple Shermans but others get around the Tiger and take it out. Shermans were easily repaired/replaced, Tigers were not. Thats why they kept using it, the assembly lines were solid pumping out new ones daily, similar to what the Russians did beat the enemy by outproducing them.

The real issue here is that the U.S. didn't know they would actually be using these tanks until almost 1942. The Germans knew they would be using theirs in 1933 AND they knew what they would be facing. I believe we had a standing Army of a mere 169k as of 1940. We started expanding but still had kess that 1.6M when we joined the war. We were behind in every way with the Army. Fortunately we had a huge industrial capacity.

The Pershing tank was a much more formidable tank than the Sherman, unfortunatly it entered the war later.

The Sherman was designed for infantry support not tank on tank fighting, also it had to light enough to be shipped over seas, the shear numbers of tanks by the allies defeated the German armor which was better than the allied armor.. can’t beat numbers

Dislike the auto-generated dialog

What's a contrast to battle on Staszow 13th 08 1944!

H. R. Puffendorf

Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job enabling viewers to better understand what/whom the orator was describing. Special thanks to veteran soldiers/civilians sharing personal information/combat experiences. Thru diaries memoirs enabling historians to replicate those stories. For future generations to better appreciate the hard ships/sacrifices suffered by the tank crews. Fighting/perishing/ surviving knowing certain death/debilitating wounds were often times possible. Yet still advanced forward regardless of the consequences. True grit style determination to succeed!!!

Takes courage,discipline and balls of tungsten to go head on With German heavy tanks in defensive position.By 1944,American tank doctrine of tank destroyers and medium tanks to support infantry breakthrougs was all theory,paid with massive losses.The French,the Britts and the Soviets committed the same errors.

The is very little true documentation of Shermans v. Tigers

By the latter part of 1944 German armour for its tanks was not as reliable as it had been due to Allied bombing of the various factories that produced the tanks , it was more brittle due to the weaker alloys used in its manufacture , which meant that it could not afford the ( full ) protection given to crews in earlier years

German recollections are informative here, Allied air power dictated their situation and forced tactical compromises as well as making preserving their AFV's prior to battle a priority. At that stage of the war they were basically trying to hold defensive lines until overwhelming firepower forced them back.

Very cool video. Just one criticism from me, the way you say “milee-meter” and “glasee” instead of millimeter and glacis was a bit distracting to me. Lol. I know that is a ridiculous complaint, but it was like nails on a chalkboard to me. Lol.

Control of the skies was a complete allied advantage and in many cases more than compensated for our inferior tanks.

Lol the 75mm Sherman was obsolete by mid 1944? Was it obsolete to all the German infantry it came across that didnt have a tank or any heavy weapons that couldnt take it out from a distance? Tank on tank battles were rare on the Western front most us tanks were destoyed by anto tank guns most german tanks broke down on their own or taken out by planes and artillery.

Correction: even today Puffendorf is not a small town. It's three houses, 5 farms, one church and a pub. The crossroads was of some importance. 2nd Armor couldn't have much experience fighting Tigers, because this was probably the first time they actually met some. And these were Tiger II.

It was just a game of numbers

German tanks often could not be repaired in the field. A tank that was returned to the factory for repairs isn’t helpful, no matter how powerful it is.

Some of the beliefs here are myths or without context. The M4 75mm was a shorter round with a larger HE component than the German 75mm. The Sherman was better at taking out pillboxes, bunkers, and gun emplacements than it's German opponents. The larger tank treads gave better floation (less ground pressure) making it easier to deal with mud or snow. However, they put extra torque on the transmission and drive train. German heavy tanks like the Tiger and Panther already had transmission issues and would burn them out faster than the PzIV. The PzIV and PzIII were what the Sherman fought against the various assault guns/TDs (Hetzer and Jagdpanzer). Tiger and Panther encounters were extremely rare. And it turned out that the 76mm could take them out just fine. However, the more powerful 76mm unpopular since it was an AP round and not an HE round which was better for supporting infantry. While the 2nd Div lost half of their tanks, the Germans lost all of theirs. The fighting was mostly close quarters in the tight streets and ambushes.

An Easy 8 Sherman with a 17 pounder might have worked. Also, a locking mechanism that would permit the tank to turn in place. G.k.

Sherman when he met a Tiger (that was in reality probably just a PanzerIV): damn who should I call? artillery, tank hunters, fighter bombers, or just retreat until Hans runs out of fuel? Most Shermans never met a german tank and were good enough for what they were for. And some just ran out of luck.

Tank vs tank conflicts were very rare in Europe during WW2. 99% of the time Sherman tanks were used as mechanized infantry support, provide line of sight artillery during advances.

The Germans were known to refer to the Sherman tank as the 'tommy cooker'. I noticed one Sherman in the video with a portion of track on the front... smart fellows...some track on the sides and a longer barrel might have saved a few allied tankers.

Don’t know if the footage of the story is all location appropriate, a lot of M10 tank destroyers also pass through the screens.

The Sherman was conceived and brought to life as an infantry support vehicle and not designed to do combat with superior tanks...and therein lies the fundamental flaw and weakness...by the time the US entered the war...the next generation Panzers were already on the drawing board if not entering the production line

This video is of much better quality than the majority of WW2 videos on KZfaq. Nevertheless it suffers from two failings. 1. It's written from the USA side only. For example: - The narrator tells us exactly the name of every USA unit involved, but not the German ones. He mentions "9th panzer division" once only. It's like he is reading the American battle reports and nothing else. In fact there was a Tiger unit in this battle, the 506 Heavy Tank Battalion. I will come back to them in a moment. - The narrator discusses the American tanks and SPGs at some length, explaining the different guns and ammunition they used. But he doesn't cover the Germans in the same detail. I don't recall him even saying the name of the German "88", which was critical to this battle. 2. The narrator seems to think that two distinct German tanks are the same tank! From the very start of the video, he repeatedly mentions "Tigers", which generally means the Tiger I. Several times he shows us footage of the Tiger I. He also tells us that the Americans had experience in fighting "Tigers" in France, which seems unlikely. A serious historian discovered that Americans in NW Europe almost never met the Tiger I. As I said, there was a Tiger unit in this battle, but they didn't have any Tiger 1 tanks at the time. They were equipped with a different tank, the King Tiger. At 11:16 the narrator starts to mention King Tigers and show us pictures of them. He gives no explanation about why he switched from one tank to the other. He never explains that they were two different vehicles.

Then the Shermans made Puff...

A Tiger tank on the western front was a rare sight.

Wasn't there a kid's show In the 1970s about HR puffindork, or something?! Puffindorf sounds like German for " Small town with a lot of smoke".. I think today it's grown into Amsterdam? They do a lot of puffin' there!!

According to British tankers the Sherman’s most important asset was the rate of fire it could achieve. Sure this does not apply in all circumstances but smoke , AP and phosphorous could aid in confusing the enemy to destruction. They relate that panzerfaust were continually killing them. Despite the Sherman’s many capabilities some US army officers were moved to despair at their under armed and armoured machines being employed almost suicidally when appropriate improvements should have arrived on the battlefield 9 months earlier .

The battle of Puffendorf was similar in many ways to the battle of Arracourt, remnants of German armour came under sustained air attack before the tanks moved in. It is therefore impossible to tell if the German tanks were destroyed from air or ground. However US tanks were under-gunned, the 76 was only marginally better than the old 75mm. US doctrine dictated enemy tanks should only be engaged by Tank Destroyers, so all the 76mm HVAP ammo was reserved for them.

WW2 in Europe was about Quantity versus Quality. Quantity won hands down.

You question honor they knew they were at a great disadvantage and still came with their all and won

I once read that the US lost around 6 to one in tank on tank battle.

The British 17 pounder was offered to the Americans, and refused - a case of "not invented here" syndrome? The 17 pounder was better than the German 75mm and their 88mm.

if your strategic, economic, and logistics decisions mean that you only have mediocre tanks, then you had better use operations and tactics accordingly. nothing wrong with the shermans. they were great tanks, and definitely the right ones for that army. but it's guaranteed that they could not slug it out with the german armour, so therefore, it was necessary to always have OTHER anti-tank capacity on hand.

The 75mm Sherman were designed NOT for tank on tank..but for infantry..half-trax..artillery..light tanks..and tankers loved them..make no mistake

The problems with most o those videos are the actual numbers. The U.S. lost 1,000 tanks EACH month, for the duration. Not counting British tanks and other armored vehicles. (official U.S. war statistics) At the same time Russians lost up to 450 per day, day after day. Total losses were between 80, 000 to 120, 000.

The "Steel and Fire" text on the thumbnail for this video caught my attention--let me explain: My late father was a heavy machine gunner (MOS 605) in C Company, 163rd Engineer (Combat) Battalion who survived the war, despite an MOS with a life-expectancy of mere minutes in combat, from his landing at Utah Beach not long after D-Day through to the end of hostilities. A source of Dad's pride in performance of American forces, and a recurring point of many of his war stories, was American's freedom and ability to employ individual initiative and innovation to adapt to challenges on the battlefield. From an elevated position overlooking Bitche, France, my father witnessed an inventive tank crew defeat a "superior" German tank. The German commander, evidently confident and relying upon his weapon's defensive armor, held a static position among the town's buildings, but could not train his gun quickly enough to land a shot upon the Sherman that was popping out of cover at various points and quickly firing upon the German tank (I don't know the model, though I seem to recall my father saying that it mounted an 88MM gun if that helps identify it). Watching the engagement, my father was initially frustrated at the American's poor marksmanship, as the gunner continually over-shot the enemy tank. After a few such rounds (how many is another detail departed along with my parent) it dawned upon my father what the American was up to. Sure enough, a final strategic round slammed into the building in front of which the German tank had taken its position. The collapsing building buried the enemy tank under a mound of masonry rubble, which American infantry (Dad believed they were Nisei troops) saturated with Molotov cocktails, making a horrid end for the trapped German tank crew.

In the Kursk battle there were approx 800 tanks fighting on both sides with the battle of Prohorovka being the largest tank battle with 200 tanks from each side in a single day. They say it was hell.

The early Sherman tank was a result of recommendations by Patton who valued speed and mobility over firepower and armor. That is why so many tankers lost their lives!

I'm Polish. My father was a tank company commander (T-72 in 80' and 90'). He used to repeat me on many occasions: an army is a system composed by a bunch of the systems and so on. The best tank that German had was Panzer III. It was also the most common German armour, because Stug where based on Panzer III. Soviet in 1940 made a test of 2 Panzer III they bought and they arrived to the conclusion than it was better than T-34.

One on One the German tanks might have been superior, however, without suitable air cover, logistics, adequate fuel supplies & no reserves left of anything , their army groups were as good as sitting ducks.

is that a real voice? Sound mechanical. Or "AI" as some would say.