The Sherman Tank

An effective WW2 armoured vehicle

Every now and again I think that a change of direction is useful. Having spent some years working on aircraft since returning to building scale models, I thought that a slight change of direction might be good. Some viewers may recall that I started on a Ryefield Challenger 2, but didn’t finish it. This kit now resides in my wardrobe and I keep making half hearted commitments to finish it, but have decided that it would be good to complete something a little simpler in order to hone my nascent wear and weathering skills with armour models. I think that it is more that just a case of throwing some oil paints and a couple of washes onto the bodywork and hoping for the best. We shall see…

My selection of a Sherman tank seemed a sensible one because it is indeed a simple kit and hopefully a short project which could be completed quite rapidly by a dedicated modeller- probably in less than a week. Of course, a dilettante such as myself takes a little longer, but I have timed all of the operations so far and we are up to around six hours. Not that bad really. Anyway, you can see the first video here and there is a series that comes after this one:

As I may have mentioned a time or two, it seems to me that the main challenge with this sort of project is to make the finished article look as real as possible. This means that wear and weathering is most important and I will attempt to explore these techniques in a later video. As of today, that video is not yet made, but it will be, so if you’d like to stay tuned, it will pop up at some time in the future. As I am amongst experts in the field of armour modelling, (but not one of them), it is fair to say that my efforts here will be amateurish by comparison, but one must be a fool before one can be an expert, so I am happy to present my workings whatever the result.

Feel free to point and laugh!

The M4 Sherman was originally designed as a medium tank and developed from the M3 Grant, (Lee) tank. It will be seen quite quickly that there are similarities in certain areas between the two vehicles, principally the lower hull and chassis which is identical between the M3 and M4. The main gun of the M3 was mounted on what is known as a “sponson” on the upper hull, so if you ever wondered what a sponson is now you know.

The placement of the M3’s main gun will also seem unusual by modern day standards and it limited the tank’s capabilities somewhat owing to the fact that in order to bring the weapon to bear quickly often involved moving the entire tank. The placement of the Sherman’s 75mm gun into a revolving turret on top of the hull allows the weapon to train or traverse whilst the tank is moving in any direction and confers an advantage that should be obvious when compared to the M3.

The Sherman turret was set up to traverse quickly, covering the 360 degrees in just 15 seconds in order to engage rapidly with potential targets and this fast traverse speed proved to be a huge advantage against not only the lighter tanks against which it was initially pitched (and to which it was superior), but also against heavier tanks like the Tiger or Panther which it met in combat later in the war.

A device which governed the vertical plane adjustment of the gun barrel also meant that Sherman crews could bring fire to bear more quickly than German tanks which weren’t equipped with such devices. The machinery used to gain this function was known as a gyrostabiliser, although it was a somewhat rudimentary apparatus compared to similar systems of the present day. As tanks normally had to come to a halt in order to fire, the stabiliser allowed the gun to be trained or “laid” (to use the parlance), following which the barrel would remain in position in spite of the tank moving over rough terrain. It is said that getting the first shot away in an exchange could give an advantage, so it is certainly possible to see that rapid aiming would be an important feature in a tank battle.

The early Sherman stabilisers were not used at all often which seems to have had a lot to do with the briefing of tank crews and the rather hurried way the tanks were deployed. As sometimes happens in such cases, the lack of use of the gyrostabiliser was explained away by tank crews and the myth grew up that the device was not easily useable. This error on the part of tank crews was rectified later in the Second World War and served to further improve the capability of the Sherman.

In addition to this mechanism, the 75mm gun was able to fire at a rate of 15 to 20 shots/ minute which was considerably in excess of the enemy tanks of the day and this, coupled with the volume of M4 tanks in theatre probably tipped the balance in favour of the allied forces, particularly when they were fighting more heavily armed and armoured tanks later in the war.

Some later Shermans that were equipped with the 105mm gun did not employ the gyrostabiliser and it isn’t clear whether or not this was viewed as a disadvantage, but such as it was, I would imagine that the punching power of the larger calibre weapon would probably have been preferred against heavily armoured late war axis tanks.

Weight of fire is important even if the round being fired may not penetrate the hull of the enemy tank because even a glancing hit to the body work or driver’s periscope (for example) may lead to that crew bailing out as it becomes impossible to fight the tank, especially if the battened down driver can’t see where he is going for example.

The early Sherman tanks did have one rather significant problem which was that they burned fiercely much of the time when they were penetrated. I gather that the axis forces called them “Tommy cookers” as a result of their propensity to combust very quickly. The reason for this was established to be the ammunition catching fire. A solution proposed and implemented onto tanks was to bolster the armour. Evidence of this can be seen in the picture above that shows two rectangular panels placed on the side of the mid hull just above the wheels. You will also be able to see a further armour panel to the left of the gun mantlet. These panels protected the ammunition storage cabinets to a greater degree, but still did not cure the problem and it was only when “wet storage” was introduced did the Sherman become rather less incendiary.

“Wet Storage” would perhaps benefit from an explanation. Very briefly the ammunition is stored in a cabinet that is surrounded by a liquid jacket, (typically a glycol mixture with water) which if hit, would leak into the ammunition and created a reasonably effective means of preventing much of the fire from moving quickly through the crew spaces. This solution was much more effective than adding more armour, although I am sure that there can be no situations where more armour might not be a good idea. Additionally, there is much evidence of Shermans being clad in spare tank tracks, wheels, sand bags and other ephemera, some of which probably increased the vehicle’s resistance to high velocity penetration rounds.

You will note as you research that there have been many variants of the Sherman. So many in fact that it is rather difficult to follow what precisely the differences between all of them are. Some of the obvious changes were to guns and other easily visible ephemera like armour plates and additional hatches being installed. Some of the changes that were introduced in certain marks were added to previous ones so proper recognition of various versions is made more difficult.

It seems that, (according to what I have divined from a local internet to me), that correct Sherman recognition depends on knowing from which factory it emerged when built. I suspect that this allows modellers a lot of latitude to build something and change parts to suit themselves and create a unique finished project. There is perhaps a limitation to this because I am not sure that WW2 tanks were ever equipped with ion blasters or phasers, but I am sure that you get the point.

In terms of a modeller’s perspective, Scalemates offers an excellent window into the variation in Sherman tanks. For example, a search for “Sherman tank” which is filtered to “full kits”yields up 877 results, whilst a further filter to “1:35 scale” (can I suggest that this would be the most popular scale?), narrows the numbers to a mere 296 as of today. One could certainly spend many years just building Sherman tanks if one was minded to do so.

The Sherman became one of the most influential armoured vehicles of the second war, operating as it did in almost every theatre across the world. Some fifty thousand were built across a number of variants and the modular nature of their construction, their ease of maintenance and overall reliability contributed to the justifiably high reputation they gained during their operational lifetime.

It is possible to see both gate guardians and restored examples of various M4 tanks around the world and, from this, one can gain an idea of the size of the unit. Clearly and, to a greater extent than with aircraft of the day, it is easier to restore and run a tank and so seeing running examples is certainly possible. After all, if a vintage aircraft stops working, it is likely to fall from the sky in a most unceremonious manner, but the worst that can happen to a tank is that it gets bogged down in mud or perhaps tips over because it was driven in a careless way. Neither of the latter things are life threatening to the occupants of course, although they might prove irksome to the owner as recovery of an upside down tank probably isn’t the easiest task.

Anywho, it has been argued by those more expert than I, that the Sherman was probably the best tank of World War Two, surpassing even the German heavy tanks like the Tiger, King Tiger and Panther. It had much better around visibility, especially in the later versions and was highly reliable- much more so than the Tiger for example. Maintenance of a Tiger was also difficult to the say the least of it and they were very complex to operate. Coupled with the considerably slower rate of fire, slower turret traverse and lower numbers in the battlefield, Tigers often came off worse in battle.

The Sherman continued to be deployed up until the Korean War- an indication of the quality of the thinking behind this piece of hardware. Modular construction and mass production techniques made this tank simple to produce in large numbers and this has often been a deciding factor in engagements. These days however, the application of deadly force from a tank is much more surgical- engagements with guided missiles fired from the tank barrel and very accurate targeting of modern “discarding sabot” armour piercing rounds has meant that volumes of tanks in theatre are lower than they used to be. They still tip the balance however and I will explore some aspects of more modern armour in later pieces.

Perhaps I may finish off that Challenger 2- I suspect that some of the viewers of my YouTube channel would like me to do so.