The Germans used to call the Sherman the Ronson After the Ronson cigarette lighter that used to always light the first time. The Sherman always catching fire with the first hit. Rather amusing and disheartening at the same time.
Robert De That had to do with ammunition propellant fires (rather, not stowing it properly or commanders fearing a supply shortage, ordering excess ammuniton be carried outside of stowage) not the design of the vehicle itself. With the addition of wet rack stowage and (when properly loaded) it was no more or less fire prone than any other armor of it's day.
Robert De All tanks caught fire when hit - take a look at aerial views of Kursk, you will all German and Russian tanks on fire all over the battlefield
My dad was at Fort Dix, N J before he shipped out for England. He was involved in tracks tests. Only Sherman to power out of the pine barrens’ salt marshes was a radial, five cylinder diesel job. It was rejected because if the oil seeping into the bottom cylinder, wasn’t drained, it could bend the bottom connecting rod. Think of how many U S Tankers burned to death over these army officers’ decision to use Cadillac V 8 gas engines in our tanks in Africa and Europe?? The Israelis used Sherman’s with diesels and French Turrets with 100+ mm mIn guns, in the 67 Arab Israeli war, successfully.
My dad was a tracked vehicle mechanic with the 4th Armored Division in WWII. He always told me about changing the radial engines and cleaning piles of spark plugs. He made it as far as Nancy and Metz before he got shelled bad and sent home. Terry from South Carolina
@@hailexiao2770 Т 80 когда движется на тебя слышен только шелест гусениц, рев слышен только когда находишься позади танка. когда служил рядом боксы танкистов стояли, когда нам было лень лопатами разгребать снег, мы просили танкистов отвалом почистить до бетона.)))
Sounds like it's hardly running to be honest, I laughed hearing it especially at 0:30. You can see why radial tank engines never took off that thing sounds like it would stall all the time hahaha
Commander (probably): "Alright men, You'll be fighting Tigers, Panthers, and all sorts of scary German stuff. You'll need the best tanks we have." That one guy: "What's our tank called? The [insert big, scary, animal name]?" Commander: "The Squirrel"
@@AFT_05Gthere were also 76 mm variants with pretty good firepower. Other Sherman's had up to 102 mm of armor if I'm not mistaken. The greatest strength of a Sherman was adaptability
@@AFT_05G besides of course excellent visibility and crew comfort, good armour for a medium tank, the gun stabilizer, the excellent HE shell that it packed that the pz iv lacked, it was just all around a good tank
M4 was so tall because the engine is in the rear and the transmission is in the front. The drive line between the two has to pass underneath the turret bustle. The fact that the M4 could be powered by a variety of power plants was a great strength. Also in the desert in Africa when the M4 was introduced the radial engine was a godsend. No radiators consuming limited water rations and the air the engine fan sucked in provided ventilation for the crew stuck in a metal box under the sun.
@@ridgerunner5772 There actually was provision for that. There was a selector that closed off the fighting compartment from the engine air intake. This made all the engine air be drawn from outside. Granted there was no heater but the infantry around the tank did not have it any better. Can not think of any ww2 tank with heaters even when liquid cooled.
@@Cragified, the Twin Ridley Brothers, former Mayor(s) of Smyrna, Tennessee manned an M36 during the Battle of the Bulge and said the doors never really worked and they would stuff rags to ward off the powered draft to no avail..... They both won Silver Stars for their actions in knocking out German tanks at intersections... They would shoot and scoot.... They said you had to hang on when the TD took a shot and went into Combat Scoot... Anyone not hanging on outside the thin wall, open turret would tumble off the back.... They also mentioned driving on ice was dangerous as hell for the lack of weight and traction...and you could be in a ditch, all but upside down if you turned to quickly on a road or next to a ditch.....
On the plus side, these radials were powerful, reliable, needed no water cooling system, often continued to operate even if one or two cylinders were damaged, and were reportedly easy to change out.
The radial engines might have been reliable and Powerful but they still didn't have near enough power for the tanks and where notoriously underpowered, this is one of the reasons they started sourcing new engines for Sherman's pretty early on
Just imagining what it would have been like to be an 18 year old kid in one of those things, moving through France and Germany, just praying that you'd fight well and survive to make it home.
@@deutscherfischer55 where do yall keep coming up w these comparisons....nobody had any gripe w the regular German people it was the regime in charge is what people didn't like...nobody hated Germany because it's Germany, it was what was happening in and around Germany by the leaders of Germany...where do yall seriously get these comparisons from
@@starfighter1043 Yeah it's a pretty dumb comparison, but to be fair the Russians did do a lot of messed up stuff as they pushed into Germany, and the allies weren't perfect with there bombing placements either.
A Tiger had the same effective armour thickness as a Sherman from the front, due to the angling on the Sherman. Slightly thicker from the side. At typical combat ranges in Western Europe and Italy (under ~500 metres) both could penetrate the other easily enough, albeit the Sherman with the 75mm was on more dicey ground there from the front.
+iatsd Under 500 meters was not the typical combat range for Tigers lol. Why the hell would it, their greatest advantage was their long range cannon, something no Sherman ever matched. Tigers were dropping Allied tanks like flies because of their superior firepower, range and accuracy. At under 500 meters the Tiger could completely penetrate one Sherman and knock out another Sherman behind it. "One of his Shermans turned the corner of a house and got off three shots at the front of a Panther, all bounced off. The Sherman then backed behind the corner and was disabled by a shot penetrating two sides of the house plus the tank." - Lt. Colonel William B. Lovelady, commander of the 3rd Armored Division’s 2nd Battalion
Fuzzy McFudger i would love a sherman radial engine.....it can push a 30 tonn tank 25 mph at least, imagine dropping that into a large car or truck........f*** yah, the sound alone I love..... obviously the tigers engine is more powerful, I still love the sound of a piston radial
Aircraft radial engine in a tank, that's why it almost stalls when the tank stops. Aircraft tend not to like stopping in flight as they have a gravity issue. So they like to keep moving.
Radials always idle roughly. Watch the videos about WWII radial-powered fighters and you'll hear a similar sound. Since some of the cylinders are upside down (gravity working against fuel flow) and some are right-side up (gravity working in favor of fuel flow) a low RMPs there is always a tendency of rich mixtures in some cylinders and lean mixes in others. This evens out when the manifold pressure rises with higher RPMs.
@@thebakedtoast the sweet sound of the safest tank to be in when hit and after its hit as well. Pretty much everything else would brew up and ammunition detonation would kill survivors.
In fairness the radial engine used in the M4 Sherman made something between 350 and 400 hp. So a LS could power one. Hell drop a 5.7 super charged iron block LS in one and it would be faster than the stock engine. One from having more power and two from shedding a lot of weight.
As a kid, I had the pleasure of riding in an M3 Stuart Tank that had a radial engine. Drove it on the open road. I’d seen Kelly’s Heroes, and I definitely channeled Oddball! Had a car come up behind us. The look on the drivers face: priceless. One of my best memories as a kid.
I can conferm they still live to this day in rural Tennessee. Go for a drive on a Saturday, and it's like a car show everywhere you go. Everyone just drives around the town with no destination.
Its like a time traveller went back in time to record World war 2 using modern HD camera and played it back in this present time...It makes 1940s feel like it was last year..
That sound is distinctive of large displacement gasoline engines at idle with minimal sound suppression! I would sometimes pump extra gas into my 350 truck engine to get a similar sound for a few seconds on start up! I love it!
I also now see I kept the 75mm going instead of a 76mm.It is also notable that the Sherman platform seen conversions to alternate tanks such as the M10 Wolerine tank destroyer, and a mobile rocket launcher.The powers that be at the time were reuuctant to make any changes to Shermans,but necessity finally required it,and the Sherman really came through.Hard to imagine WW2 without a Sherman.
I just imagined a bunch of Wehrmacht Anti-Air cannons scanning the skies whilst an M4 Sherman rolls on by. German Soldier: I didn't see scheiße! Did you see anything?
There were bigger tanks, faster tanks, far more heavily armed tanks, and far more heavily armoured tanks during WW2. But the Sherman was the undoubted all-round workhorse that so much helped to win the war.
@@paullangford8179 lmao you gotta read a book or two. I would recommend Zaloga's work, especially "Armored Thunderbolt" which is entirely about the development and deployment of the Sherman In short, the thing was quite a dependable machine. Sure it had its drawbacks but when you compare it to what the Germans were fielding in numbers (remember, only about 16% of German tanks were Panthers or Tigers) they were quite superior.
@@paullangford8179 the only known variant of the Sherman made to bullet sponge is the E2 Jumbo. and that has 139mm of armor in the front glacis and 150mm+ on the turret shield. The regular Sherman was 90mm+ on the front glacis(armor depends on model and hull variant) and that was close to the 100mm of the Tiger and the Sherman was lighter.
Just so, so impossibly tall. I don't deny they were effective and got the job done, but we definitely learnt more as time went on. As one might expect.
i learnt to drive a manual on one of those willys back when i was 14. it was an authentic ww2 willys that has serviced in north africa according to what the owner told me. it also had a bullet hole the size of a thumb behind the passenger seat, pressumably from an aircraft. it was a bit sketchy to drive on the road because the steering wheel had a lot of play but i managed to drive to a gas station and back home with it no problems. shifting gears was very easy and accurate. the clutch had a bit too much travel imo, like 15cm or somewhere around that. stepping on the gas didn't feel like you where going anywhere. i'd say it would take around to 20s to do 0 to 100kmh on that thing but it didn't go faster than 60 or 70kmh because 3rd gear was too short (it only had up to 3rd and reverse of course). off road that thing was absolutely NUTS. locking the differentials and engaging low transformed it into something completely different. mud? easy, near 25° uphill? easy, deep mud? sketchy but if i made it alive with no driving experience prior then easy as well. in fact it was so good the owner used it to tow cars that would get stuck on the mud or fall on the ditch (used to drain water on rural dirt roads) at the side of the road during rainy days, were the mud would get so slippery you can't even stand on it. same for cars and trucks. if you stopped, you would fall to the ditch nearly 100% of the times. oh, and the fuel tank was right under the driver seat and the cap leaked, so you would smell a fire hazard entire time lol
Can you just imagine being there back in WW2 and hearing a battalion of tanks coming in, god some of the stuff our grandparents and great grandparents would’ve went through back then
Must be great to drive especially when you know an 88 isnt going to take your turret off at any moment. The sound also reminds me to book my wifes car in for a service.
Might be a little bit to late for a comment but still. Well with the recon troops, scour cars, grasshopper recon planes, photo recon planes and light recon tanks always driveing ahead of the Shermans and scouting every bush, tree, barn, building, trench and hill the sherman crew realy did know when their head could be potentialy cut of by a 88 and they also knew exactly where the 88 was standing while the 88 didnt know where the Shermans where. Complete air supiriority is realy powerfull in war.
@@jakobc.2558 you talk like there where 88s everywhere. Most M4s where Not killed by 88s. Your comment was and still is, misleading. That why i posted my sarcasm comment.
@Mosella M88 is the best sounding military vehicle when the turbo kicks in they sound amazing. Just listen to this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QGfr2M3z9wI.html
Not knowing a lot about Sherman’s, I was really stunned to find that some of them had radial engines, but logical, saved space without sacrificing power!
it didnt save space, actually, it was a bodge to make sure they could use excess engines from the aircraft manufacturing. it made the sherman really high, the driveshaft had to make a bend to accomodate it.
Brilliant camouflage. **Rolling slowly into enemy positions** Karl: "What iz dat noize?" Hans: "It zeems to be a zome zort of zquirrel. No need to worry, Karl."
