LeuCeaMia

Annual PLA red vs. blue exercise "Zhurihe part F" has red armor force suffer crushing defeat to blue armor force.   Pic related is the blue tank, the type 59-II which is basically a Type 59 with the Royal Ordnance L7 and modern FCS.    The red force employs latest ZTZ-99 and ZTZ-96.   Chinese netizens respond that it's merely a game of laser tag and that the Type 59s are are supposed to simulate M1A2s.    This has been the consecutive year that China's red force has been trashed by its professional OPFOR army. It's rumored that the OPFOR's ORBAT is similar to US army combat teams. Indeed, despite their obsolete equipment, the blue force is equipped with the latest informationized hardware the PLA has.     
Despite the questionable relevancy of large combined arms warfare and how late China is to wargames, this is probably one of the last places where you can see rows of the T54 chassis rolling over hills like it's the 1950's.         TFW lost to T-55s, TWICE   BIG POST BEANTH   TLDR:     Basically, back then the RedFor were predetermined to win and Bluefor was told to roll over to give RedFor face infront of the high-brass.   But now, when Xi Jinping is cleaning up the army of corruption and tells everyone to prepare for actual war and stop playing games, the BluFor, crewed by Xi's own chosen and most loyal commanders, are told to wreck the shit out of RedFor to shake them out of decades of complacency.   The Zhurihe excercises are basically Stalin's Purge Xi-style. The commanders who are proven to be incompetent in even puttin up a fight against the BluFor get thrashed and demoted.   Pic: The commander of the sole RedFor brigade who has won a phyrric victory against BluFor.   It has to be said, though, that BluFor has access to tactical nuclear weapons, biologic and chemical weapons, instant reconaissance, unlimited airpower and quantum-datalinks that are unjammable. Most of RedFor got taken out while transiting from their home military regions to the Zhurihe excercise grounds by simulated air-interdictions or nuclear strikes against their motorpools. So, shit wasnt fair. But that's how the PLA under Xi Jinping is envisioning a possible war with the US.

The Royal Iraqi Army 1957 Military Parade
 

The Royal Iraqi Army 1957 Military Parade
 

I am playing Far Cry lately (game version of a "B" action movie) and still surprised how AI had interesting ideas behind it. I really like games with sophisticated AI, this is a sort of my soft spot in gaming (FEAR from older games is also in this list of shooters with interesting AI enemies). 
 
   In Far Cry mercs have commanders, that act as a unit commander. Mercs with and without those commanders act very differently, with unit leader presented on field, they flank, suppress, advance with the whole flanks (3-4 mercenaries moving together, pushing or flanking you). Leader and squads act differently when number of people in unit is different.
   Far Cry AI have weakspots in form of enemies handling situations when they know that player is around, but they don't have LOS.
 
   I am looking at this AI and this is just incredible how, for example, Arma 3 AI is worse than 10 year old game had. In fact, there is not many interesting enemies in shooters, you just click them to death without any involvement of your brain. I hope Rainbow six will have hard AI (not only because of HPs or damage that they can deliver).
 

 
Go to hell, modern main stream gaming.

I'm not terribly impressed by the Saudi ships honestly, because as usual the article talks all about the toys added into the hull without talking about operating range.
 
It's relatively easy to load a small hull to the gills with various toys and weapons so long as they're only meant to operate very close to your coastline. The Israelis already did it with the Sa'ar V and what nobody ever points out about these boats is that they've never operated far beyond Gaza and their operating range (and crew endurance) is a lot of theory. 
 
Moreover I really have to question the utility of most of the added toys to begin with. A launcher with 64 Sea Sparrows sounds really nice except that the Sea Sparrow is really short-ranged and can never replace an AEGIS as an air-defense platform (and this is before we get to the fact the real solution to an air superiority problem is to deploy a carrier - SAMs are just a stopgap).
 
Despite what the article claims, the Sea Sparrow realistically is just a self-defense system with an overly excessive ammunition count, since Sparrows aren't fire-and-forget and need shipborne guidance (limiting the number of missiles in the air). If faced with a really heavy air attack, the Saudi LCS won't be able to put up enough guided missiles into the air to survive. When faced with a small air attack, it may be sufficient but renders most of the high ammunition count pointless. Indeed, I'm extremely leery of a VLS missile system that can only engage enemy targets 30 miles out - an Exocet can travel that distance in about 2 minutes and needing every intercepting missile turn mid-flight before engaging the vampire is probably going to end with the defending ship blown up.
 
It's also telling that they repeat the same mistake as the Israelis - who also installed a 64 missile SAM pack on the Sa'ar V (Barak missiles). Despite this impressive theoretical defensive capabilities a missile still got through in 2006 and nearly sank one of the Sa'ar Vs. The LCS actually makes a lot more sense just having a much smaller number of RIM SAM onboard for CIWS. Had the Saudi boat gotten a CIWS gun system on top of the RIM, I'd be more impressed - because that would make much more sense for a boat capable of self-defense against low-intensity surprise air attacks.
 
Most of the other ASuW capabilities are kinda meh. Harpoons are kinda old and I doubt that they can go through the missile defenses of the combatants deserving to be fired at by one of them (e.g. a modern Chinese Destroyer). A lot of smaller missiles like the Hellfire actually made more sense because the LCS didn't have delusions of surface vs surface actions against major enemy surface units; it was always meant to pick on smaller craft. The bigger gun is more interesting, but there hasn't been an abundance of scenarios requiring the navy to use its guns to begin with.
 
ASW capability was improved, but without a proper towed sonar array like in the bigger destroyers and cruisers it will have limited detection capability and adding those six anti-submarine torpedoes are pretty much a complete waste of weight as no surface vessel wants to get within torpedo range of an enemy submarine. The helicopters are there for a reason - they can hunt subs without risk of retaliation - and that's the one capability the LCS has.
 
In short, the Saudi LCS is trying way too hard to be a mini Oliver Hazard Perry; which sounds really good for an underdeveloped export market that has no real navy yet and wants all the shiny new toys on their ships. Problem is the OHPs were meant for a pretty specific Cold War scenario - which is blue-water convoying of merchies across the Atlantic in the face of Soviet submarine and air threats - and the Saudi LCS is only as good or even worse compared to the OHPs in virtually all regards. Worse, it doesn't recognize that the OHPs were deeply flawed ships in an age of supersonic anti-ship missiles where the tiny range of the SM-1 (even with upgrades) simply doesn't give it enough time to engage and shoot down the vampires. What you need is really long-ranged and accurate fire control radar on top of longer-ranged missiles. Only AEGIS and maybe the Horizon/Daring class gets you that in the West (and the Russians theoretically have this also on the old Kirovs).
 
So why didn't they just get actual frigates to begin with (I'm pretty sure the Saudis have the money for them) that would have resolved all the shortcomings and maybe fit an actual good air defense system?
 
The problem with the LCS program is that people keep trying to make these ships into full frigates or destroyers. That's not what they're for. All you really want from the LCS is that they get somewhere (accounting for the long distances the USN has to travel), and deploy its mission-specific helicopter. If it gets into trouble it has the minimum needed for self defense and evasion - not to stand up there and try to fight it out as though it was an Arleigh Burke (the Burkes would probably run too anyway). Bringing all of the other stuff like air defense when you're just fighting Somali pirates is a waste of resources. Every non-essential system removed adds to reaching its cost-effectiveness objective; even if it leads traditional thinkers to worry that they won't have a SAM system to defend the ship with "just in case".
 
This is why the most important stat and benchmark of the LCS had always been operating cost - which is the bulk of the USN's cost. It was always about making the ship as cheap as possible to do the mundane jobs that didn't require an AEGIS (of which the USN has eighty-four in service - a mix of Ticos and Burkes - and anyone telling me there is a shortage when there are at most 19 US carriers on the roster including the Marine mini-carriers is crazy). And the jury is still out on that - if the operating costs end up being very high then and only then can the program be considered a waste.
 
Oh, and I still have no bloody idea what the hell the 40 knot speed is actually for.

The Royal Iraqi Army 1957 Military Parade
 

The Royal Iraqi Army 1957 Military Parade
 

guy who wrote this add

Best AA system ever.

In the original trilogy we hear that Jedi Knights were the protectors of the Old Republic.  And yet, the first we see of them in The Phantom Menace, they're being dispatched to do trade negotiations.  This is a little weird; aren't they supposed to be psychic wizard combat monks?  Why would they know anything about general agreements on tariffs and deficits?
 
Well, you see, it's all a mis-translation. Jedi Knights are the protectionists of the Old Republic.  The Sith are supply-side laissez-faire Austrians, who are trying to put the hard-working Naboo out of a job by flooding the market with cheap, foreign-made space products.
 
This theme was elaborated in a scene that was later cut from Return of the Jedi:
 
Emperor Palpatine:  You are no match for the power of the Invisible Hand!
 
Luke:  Your overconfidence in the Law of Comparative Advantage is your weakness.
 
Emperor Palpatine:  Your faith in trade barriers is yours.

You guys do realize Star Wars was about the Iraq War? A superpower invades a desert in search of WMD plans only to turn a farm-boy into a religious fanatic.

But the Southern USA doesn't have any similar bizarre sexual predilections.  I mean, they obviously have a reputation for being into whips and chains, but that is for entirely different reasons.

The B-24 had better be a better bomber. It's nearly five years newer than the B-17. And while the overrated -admittedly even for this Seattle boy - Flying Fortress and the notion of unescorted bombing missions was very nearly functionally obsolete by the time it was used in the war from 1942 on, the B-17 was still light years ahead of anything that the Germans and its Axis minions could produce.

This shit is fucking weak, its fucking shark week compared to when the wind blows
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdtpvoOXn2o

Forczyk says the main reason was that the MAN Panther could be put into production earlier "this decision was a disaster for the Panther tank development program since it meant that getting the best tank possible to German tankers was set aside in favor of merely fielding a new design as rapidly as possible" and that the MAN being advertised as more Germanic while the Benz too Russian was a ploy by Kniepkamp, who used to be a MAN employee, and Oberst Fichtner, who prefers torsion bars, with some industrial espionage thrown in.
 
In Jentz's "Germany's Panther Tank" it states that Hitler recognized that the "decisive factor was the possibility of quickly getting the tank into production" despite his preferring the Daimler Benz.

Hey Marsh, you work for Osprey...
 
I'd buy it.  Just sayin'.

Grave of the Fireflies is the only anime movie I've actually watched
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePAbxN-nY4E

Another updated section!
 
How It Compared To Its Contemporaries:  How Did American Tank Design Stand up?   It Did Just Fine.
 
   The Sherman compared well to the other tanks in its weight class. It even fared well against vehicles much larger. The US spent a lot of money lavishly equipping these tanks, even the lend lease tanks shipped with sub machine guns for the crew and vinyl covered, sprung, padded seats, a full tool set, basically all the same things a Sherman issued to the US Army would come with. The Sherman was not designed to be comfortable for its crew, but due to way it was designed and built, it was fairly comfortable as tanks of the time go. They were not cheaply built, and had finely fitted hulls, with beveled armor and a lot of attention to detail, that was not dropped in favor of production speed in many cases until very late in the production run. Quality control at all Sherman factories and sub-contractors was tightly controlled. Parts were not modified to fit if they did not match the specifications and didn’t fit, they were discarded, if to many parts had to be discarded, the contractor was dropped. Sub-assemblies as big as turrets a4nd hulls or whole tanks needing overhaul were shipped between factories and no parts had problems interchanging between factory models. One factory could rebuild another factories tank using its own parts with no problems at all.
 
German Tank three or PIII:
 
   This tank fought from the first days of the war, and the Sherman, all models, had a big advantage over it. The Sherman had better armor, firepower, and similar mobility. Even with its most potent gun, a long 50mm, the PIII had trouble with the Grant and Lee, let alone a M4. This chassis was at the end of its life and larger guns or more armor could not be fitted to this tank. It was a good tank, but nowhere near as good as a Sherman, but to be fair, it was at the end of its development life and the M4 was just beginning its long, long life with many countries around the globe.
 
   In many ways this was the best tank Germany produced during the war. This was one of the tanks used the short time the Germans really did things in the war, this is the tank that took them to the outskirts of Moscow. And it was a great little tank; its turret ring was just too small to fit a real gun. They solved this with the StuG, but I’ll cover that later. They produced 5774 of them.
 
  This tank continued to be used throughout the war, and was up gunned to a short 75mm howitzer for infantry support. This tank also suffered a long period of teething problems at the start of the war, but when they were worked out the vehicle was fairly reliable.
 
German Tank four or PIV:
 
   The PIV was a closer match to the Sherman, but still inferior in most important ways. It had weaker, un-sloped armor. Its suspension used leaf springs and was inferior to the Shermans VVSS suspension. It had weak enough side armor, without the use of skirts, the tank could be penetrated by Russian anti-tank rifles. It started off with a low power 75mm gun that had no chance of hurting a Lee or Sherman, and was later up gunned with a 75mm similar to the one mounted on the Sherman, but slightly better. At this point the PIV became a threat to the Sherman, but the Sherman still held all the cards with better overall armor, mobility, reliability, spotting, getting off the first shot and crew comfort. The Sherman also had room to grow and would take a whole new turret and a whole slew of larger guns. The PIV was at the limits of what the hull could handle, and its turret ring was too small to accept more powerful guns. The final version of this tank, the J was a simplified version that lacked a power turret drive or skirts, it was not an improvement in combat ability, it was done to speed up production because the Germans were desperate. Nazi Germany produced 8569 of these tanks, from 1937 to 1945.
 
  This tank allowed the Germans to use maneuver warfare, and it wasn’t tied to the rail system, because it was much more reliable than the Panther or Tiger. One argument ‘wehraboos’, (for those not in the know, a wehraboos is a German WWII Armor fanatic, who believes anything and everything German was the best in WWII. You can find these people trying to push the often mythical abilities of Nazi war machines, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary these chaps often have deep seated pro-Nazi feelings, and in some cases of the worst offenders, are out and out neo Nazis. They can often be found on game forums for any WWII game, talking about how the 262 was the best  fighter of the war and the King Tiger could penetrate an M1 Abrams, often misspelling the names like this Aberhams.) like to make is, Nazi Germany couldn’t really have produced more Panzer IVs and StuGs because they didn’t have the manpower to crew them.
 
  The counter to point to that argument is, if the Germans had not produced the two ridiculous heavy tanks. Tiger 1&2, the huge maintenance tail these vehicles required could be broken up; a Tiger Company had the same number of mechanics and maintenance personal and their transport, as a full Battalion of PIV or III tanks.  You could take all these men, and put them into units that didn’t bleed resources, when Nazi Germany had few to spare. They could also fire and send to these units, all the fools who designed them, though they would probably make poor soldiers, they could probably turn wrenches without screwing that up much.
 
   They also could have manned these new units with all the men they put in the many captured tanks they used. They used large numbers of T-34 and M4A2 Shermans captured from the USSR. They should have stuck with the tanks they considered producing that were closer to these, the VK3001 (d) was almost a direct copy, Germanized to make it much harder to build and work on.  This tank looked a lot like the T-34 that inspired it, but apparently fears of friendly fire losses because it looked to much like a T-34 and a lack of aluminum to make the copy of the diesel the T-34 used, were probably the real reasons this tank didn’t get produced.
 
   At any rate, they didn’t do this; they produced a pair of heavy tanks that wasted far more resources than ever could be justified by the tanks propaganda inflated war records. They probably best served in a propaganda role since they had truly fearsome reputations, but once they were met in combat a few times that wore off and the American and British tankers found ways to beat them, like just making them drive around a bit until they broke down or ran out of fuel.
 
 
German Tank VI Tiger:
 
   This tank had a big weight ‘advantage’ over the Sherman, it being a heavy tank and all, but for the most part, was so rare it had almost no impact on the war. In fact most of the SS units that used this tank lied so much about its prowess there are some doubts it got even 1/3 of its actual kills its Nazi crews claimed. It also had to be moved by train giving it limited useable mobility, and these tanks sucked up the maintenance resources of a much larger unit. The US Army faced very few of these tanks. When they did face them, they didn’t prove to be much of a problem.
 
   The Sherman had an advantage in being able to spot the huge Tiger first in most cases, it could out maneuver the bigger tank, and its guns could take it out from the sides and back, or if it got lucky, even the front. The Sherman did face this tank in British hands, but we will cover that later.
 
   The tiger ultimately did the Allies a favor by making it into production. It just wasted men and resources that could have been turned into more PIVs and STUGs. It was more of a propaganda tool, used to prop up the home front by lying about the prowess of the tank and their Aryan crews, like Michael Whitman, who was not nearly as good as the Nazi histories would have you believe, and in fact he got himself and his crew killed by trundling off by himself.
 
   Living, well, recently living, tank aces like Otto Carius have admitted many of their “kills” were added for pure propaganda reasons. SS unit kill claims were often discounted by half by the regular German Army and even that was probably being generous since there was no effort to confirm the kills. Most authors who write books about German tanks take these kill claims at face value. When someone bothers to compare the kill claims to the units they faced on the Soviet, American or UK records, more often than not, they were not even facing the claimed unit, and often it was not even in the same area. When they did get the unit right, the losses rarely come close to matching up.
 
   Another thing to note is these tanks were essentially hand built.  Some people assume that means painstakingly hand crafted, and it’s sort of true. The Germans wasted a lot of time on finish items to make the tanks look nicer. I’m not sure if this was some need for the Germans to have nearly ‘perfect’ weapons, at least appearance wise, or if it was a way for the German tank industry to charge more for the tanks and make more money off the Nazi regime. On a Sherman, it’s just like your car, you need a spare part, you put in an order and quartermaster corps sends one to you through the supply system if one wasn’t in stock at a spares depot. When the part came, in most cases it would fit, and only if damaged caused a problem would hand fitting be needed. This was not the case for the Tiger, or any other German tank. For the Germans, most parts would need adapting to the individual tank, making field repairs a difficult job.   
 
   Only 1347 of these tanks were even built. Numbers were not needed to kill these silly tanks, but they were nice to have anyway.
 
   For another view on the Tiger, check out:
 
German Tank V Panther:
 
   Much has been said about this tank, and most of the positive stuff is just, well, there’s no way to say it other than this, it’s BS. The panther was a medium tank as big and heavy as any heavy tank of the time. What kept it from being a heavy was its pathetic lack of armor for a tank of its size. The side armor was so weak Russian anti-tank rifles could and did score kills on these tanks through it. This is why later models had side skirts covering the thin side armor above the road wheels.
 
   Here is a list of the top of my head the Panthers problems: It liked to catch fire due to a fuel system that leaked in more than one way. The hull didn’t let the fuel drain, making the fire problem worse. The motor had a tendency to back fire or blow up and cause fires as well. The cooling system was very complicated, a damaged fan or clogged duct could cause a fire. Tilting the hull to much could cause a fire because pooled gas would hit exhaust pipes, since the fuel system was leaky. It was found the radiators were vulnerable to damage, so plates were added above them on the engine deck. All these add-ons just pile more weight on an overstress automotive system.   
 
    Let’s move away from the fire problems and move onto the turret problems. To rotate the turret, you had to rev the engine up. The engines were fragile. You want full traverse speed; you needed to be redlining the engine. This is because they used a power take off system and tied the turret drive to the engine. This was a really bad way to design a turret drive. If you want a good laugh, go find a diagram of the Tiger or Panthers turret drive system and marvel that it worked at all. It didn’t work if the tank was on even a mild slope. The drive was so weak in these cases it couldn’t even hold the gun in place.  I’m sure if you took a electric driven hydraulic or just strait electric system it would weigh a lot less than all the parts they had to use to make the PTO system work, and not well.
 
    While we’re covering the turret, let’s talk about the gun, gunner, and commander. One of the commander’s jobs is to find targets for the gunner and get him onto them. He has pretty good all-around views from the turret with his nice cupola. The gunner is stuck with just his telescopic sight. He would need up to several minutes in some cases to find the target the commander was trying to get him on due to him not having a wider view scope and the commander having no turret override. The gun was a good AT gun, but not a great HE thrower, since the HE charge was smaller to accommodate thicker shell walls to keep the shell from breaking up at the higher velocities. It’s HE was far from useless though. The turret was very cramped for these men as well. And the Turret sides and rear had very thin armor. The Shermans 75 would punch right through it at very long ranges.
 
   Some more tidbits on the Panther, its automotive systems were terrible. They were designed for a 30 ton tank, and even for that, they were not that robust. The motor and tranny would get at best, 1500 kilometers before needing to be replaced. The tracks, 1000, the suspension would start to break down around 800 or less with lots of off road use. The front dual torsion bars breaking first, and then the extra stress kept killing them. The true Achilles heel of the automotive parts was the final drives, and their housings. The housings were weak and flexed under load, allowing the already weak gear train to bind and then destroy itself. The best they ever got these final drives to last, on the G models of the tank, was 150 kilometers on average. Replacing them was a major chore that would keep the tank down at least a day. This was confirmed in a report on post use by the French, using captured and new production tanks. You can find it here.
 
   We haven’t even talked about the ridiculous road wheel system that only insane people would put on a combat vehicle.  A late war British report on a captured early model Panther said at higher speeds the suspension was terrible and essentially became solid, making for a awful off road ride. You can find the report here. The report is very interesting, if not very flattering to the Panther.
 
   It is a total myth that you needed five or more Shermans to take out one Panther or Tiger. If a Panther makes it to the fight, it’s a formidable tank, and in particular when set up as a long range anti-tank pill box they could be deadly. When called upon to be part of a mobile tank force, they failed, and they failed hard. In many cases they would lose three or more Panthers to one Sherman.
 
   By the time the Sherman crews of the US Army started to see Panthers in bigger numbers, they were the elite tankers and the Germans the newb clowns. It showed in just about every battle. The Sherman handled these supposedly better tanks just fine. While the poorly trained, green, German crews struggled with their tanks, a tank a bad driver could cause to break down almost instantly. It makes you wonder how many Panther crews did just that to avoid fighting.  
 
   In all the ways you need a tank to be good, the Sherman tank was better than the Panther.
 
  For another view on why the Panther was just not a good tank for anything other than looking at, this post. Some of this is based on my readings of Germany’s Panther Tank by Jentz. If you get past looking at all the pretty pictures, it has a pretty damning combat recorded in that book.
 
   The Germans managed to build around 6000 of these mechanical nightmares. The final production version of this tank the G version only solved the final drive housing issues, the weak gears were never solved, and this is why the post war French report was so damning. They were not even operating them under combat conditions.   
 
StuG III:  Short, Stubby and Underrated
 
   This armored fighting vehicle more than just about any other was a real threat to the Sherman. The Germans built a lot of these vehicles. Since it was just about the most common AFV, the Sherman ran into it much more often than tanks like the Tiger and Panther.
 
   The StuG was not as good of a vehicle as the PIV from a combat perspective, since it lacked a turret, but it was very good for what it was used for and a much cheaper vehicle to make. It was very popular, and when it was time to cease production, German generals threw a fit and kept it in production. They didn’t say a word when the Tiger I production was stopped.  Speilberger has a good book on this tank, it covers the PIII tank and its variants including the StuG. The book is titled, Panzer III and its variants.
 
    The StuG, was up gunned with the same gun as the Panzer IV and was good at AT work and infantry support. Its low profile helped it stay hidden and it was mobile enough to be able re-locate and get to trouble spots. It had ok armor and well-liked by its crews. Cheaper, easier to build, and very effective for the price, it’s no wonder it doesn’t get much attention.
 
 
Tiger II: Fat, Stupid, and Overrated
 
   The Tiger II, was not a very good tank. Only 492 were built, and its impact on the war was less than marginal. Everything said about the Tiger I applies to this tank, just more so. It weighed more at 68 tons but used the same engine. So it was a huge, under powered, waste of resources. The US Air Force bombing campaign actually had an effect on this tanks production. The factory was heavily damaged and about half the total production in tanks was lost as well, in a bombing raid.
 
   This tank was a non-factor in the war and the first ones lost on the eastern front were knocked out by a handful of T-34-85s they never even spotted. The US Army ran into a few as well, and dispatched them without much trouble. They were so slow, ungainly and problem prone, during the Battle of the bulge, they were left at the rear of all the column’s, and barely made it into any of the fights.
   
   The Porsche prototype turrets had a big shot trap and were filled with ready racks, easy to ignite. The production turret got rid of the shot trap but did nothing for how cramped it was. The gun was extremely hard to load when not level.   It was an accurate and deadly gun though. The trouble, like with all the cats, is getting it to the fight.
 
   German armor fans like to talk about influential the Panther and Tiger designs were, but as far as I can tell, they really had zero real impact on future tank design. In fact the Panther and Tiger series were technological dead ends that no one copied and only the French spent any time playing with the engine tech and guns. The thing that stands out for me about German tank design, is they never figured out, like all the other tank making countries, that putting the motor and final drives in the back of the tank, was better than putting the tranny and final drives in the front, and having the motor in the back, and a driveshaft running through the fighting compartment, was a bad design feature. This was a drawback the Sherman shared, but all future medium tank designs dropped this and went to the whole power pack in the rear setup. From the T20 series on, though the T20 tanks never went into production because they were a small improvement over the Sherman, they all had rear motor/tranny/final drives. This tank layout still dominates current tank design. The Nazi design teams seemed unable to come up with a design using this layout, other than their aborted copy of the T-34. 
 
Another new section
 
British Shermans: Is it a Tank or a Teapot?
 
  The British took the Lee and Sherman into combat for the first time and they offered a lot of input into both tanks design. They even had a specific version of the Lee never used by US troops the M3A5 Grant.  The Sherman and Lee design saved their bacon at El Alamien. As we saw in an earlier section of this document, the US produced a lot of Sherman tanks, and the British received more than 17,000 Shermans. It would become the backbone of their tank force and remain so until the end of the war.
 
  They came up with their own naming system for the tank:
M4 = Sherman I
M4A1 = Sherman II
M4A2 = Sherman III
M4A3 = Sherman IV
M4A4 = Sherman V
 
 
  The British had their own set of modifications for the Sherman that  they received through LL.  They added sand skirts, racks for jerry cans and an armored box on the back of the turret in some cases. They installed their own radios as well, the British wireless set no 19, and this went into the armored box in the back of the turret on Firefly’s, or just replaced the US radios in their normal location in regular models. Legend has it they installed some sort of stove to cook tea.  The only Sherman Mk I and Mk IIs they got were because Churchill practically begged Roosevelt for more Shermans just before El Alamien. 
 
  As the war progressed, the US Army put priority on the M4 and M4A1; the British had to settle for M4A2 and the M4A4. They when the Russians refused to take any Shermans but M4A2s, the Brits really had to rely on M4 and M4A4s. From what I’ve read they didn’t want the nightmare that everyone feared the A57 Multibank motor to be, in service it proved to be reliable enough, and more so than its British counterparts. I don’t think they got many M4A3 tanks at all. The M4A4 was by far the most common Sherman type, and the Brits like them enough they took a batch of refurbished M4A4, and would have taken more if production hadn’t been stopped.
 
  This presented a problem for the British, they did not like the M1A1 gun, and the T23 would not take the 17 pounder without major modifications to the gun or turret. The US did end production of 75mm tanks and when stocks of 75mm gun tanks ran low, they were forced to take M4A1 76 tanks these tanks would be designated Sherman IIB. The British sent most of the IIBs to their forces in the MTO, or gave them to the Poles.   
 
 
Another updated section
 
Silly Myths: Things You Don’t Want to Say.
 
The Sherman was gas powered and a fire trap, German tanks had diesels, and they called it a Ronson.
 
   As we know from this document, not all Shermans were gas powered. We also know the Sherman was no more prone to fire than any other tank, including German tanks. We know that the Sherman, when it did burn, the fire was most often caused by an ammunition fire, and not fuel fires. This was solved with wet ammunition racks making the Sherman the least prone  to burn tank of the war. We should also know that all German tanks were gas powered as well, and very prone to ammo rack fires, and in many case gas fires caused by poor designs, and horrid quality control.
  
The Only Shermans to come with HVSS suspension had 76mm M1A1 guns.
 
  As has been mentioned in this very document, HVSS suspension was pretty common on M4A3 75 W tanks produced in 1944. Several hundred if not thousand got HVSS suspension. We also know the M4 105 was produced with HVSS, as was the M4A3 105.  This can all be confirmed through the wonderful Sherman Minutia site.
 
The Sherman was made to be basic, cheap and easy to produce, and not last.
   
   This is not true. The Sherman was an advanced tank for its time. It incorporated a gyro stabilized gun, a full set of radios, and a auxiliary motor for charging the batteries. The design could use either a cast or welded upper hull, without changing the other parts, and that’s pretty amazing considering the tank was designed with slide rulers. 
 
    The design tolerances were so close parts manufactured at any factory would work on any Sherman. That may not sound like a big deal, but at the time it was, and the Germans could not say the same thing. Many of their tanks required hand fitting of parts. The early Shermans were all finely fitted, with beveled edges on the armor plate and all casting finely machined. The interiors included cushions for crew comfort and each crewman had at least one periscope. The radios were cutting edge tech for the time.  The huge castings used to make the upper hull of the M4A1 were a technological feat as well and not reproducible by any of the Axis nations.
   
    The Sherman was certainly not built to be easily worn and replaced. One of the reasons the basic 75mm M3 was chosen, was because it had a 1000 round or more barrel life. All the motors were good for more than 5000 miles.  The transmissions and final drives more than that, and that miles, not kilometers, like the with Panthers 150 kilometer final drives or 1500 kilometer transmission or 2500(lol maybe, I’m being nice) kilometers on the motor.  You could get up to 2500 miles on most of the track models the Sherman used. The road wheels were easily replaced, and the springs in Shermans are holding up fine to this day on most.  The Brits put 2500 miles on M4A4 in a single test if I recall right, 10,000 miles on most of the motors, in the A57 wouldn’t be impossible if no one was blowing the tanks up.
 
  For suck a reliable tank, it was designed with ease of maintenance in mind and it was relatively easy to swap out the motor or transmission/final drive. The suspension units bolted on, so replacing one damaged beyond repair was very easy.
 
  These tanks also took upgrades well, being up gunned to guns up to 122mm, and re engine with more modern motors. The French and Israelis did most of the work in this area and these tanks will be covered in their own section. The point is, no other basic tank chassis lived as long as the Sherman did. 
 
US tank production wasn’t optimized, and their supply system was overburdened by the number of different sub types of tanks they used. With the Sherman in particular using four different power packs.
 
  This myth is absurd. The main reason the United States produced Shermans with four different power packs, was they thought the bottleneck in producing the tank in great numbers would be outstripping of the supply of R975 radial engines. That never really happened, in part because the Army had three other viable engines, and produced them all. They were able to keep this from complicating the supply situation to much by limiting who got what models, with the US Army using version with the R975, the Brits using the diesel and A57 multibank, and the Russians getting M4A2s.
 
  This never hurt tank production speed in any way, and since the continental US was damage free, shipping parts between factories was easy enough. The US had a massive rail system. When the Army started to move to the M4A3 as its primary tank they released more M4 and M4A1 tanks to their allies. The US actually had a tank production surplus, and was able to close down all but the best three tank producers. Hell, they even built a factory to produce the M7 medium tank and then never built it. These are the types of errors you can make when your country is an untouched industrial powerhouse.   

One of my favorite things about going through the old back issues of ARMOR magazine is reading the letters to the editor. Sometimes you find ones by well known figures in the armor community, sometimes you find stuff by veterans.  I will start the thread with this exchange from 1987.  In the Sept-Oct issue, there is a lengthy letter by a LTC Kingsbury about deficiencies of WWII US tanks.  This letter is quite interesting as it contains several well worn myths concerning US Armor in WWII.  I'm not posting this as a criticism of LTC Kingsbury, for all I know he was an exemplary soldier.  I'm sure he honestly believed everything he wrote in this letter.  The issue is that some of his statements are just not true, as shown by postwar research and scholarship.  This is a pretty good example of how things can look a certain way to the people in the middle of something, while being quite different when viewed from a higher perspective.  I have also included two letters in response to LTC Kingsbury which appeared in the Nov-Dec issue.  
 
 

 

 

New sections!
 
 
The Radios: I don’t know much about tank radios, but I will when done with this section.
 
   The Sherman tank came with a SCR 508, 528 or 538 radio set. Command tanks had an additional SCR 506 mounted in the right front sponson. This let the tank listen on the net for the HQ he answered to while still talking to his own unit. The main radio set also had the tank intercom built into it. This intercom allowed the crew to talk to each other, but not transmit on the radio, only the commander could do that.
 
   Here is a fascinating transcript of a Marine tank company radio chatter, taken by a US destroyer off shore. You can find this on page 64 of Michael Greens M4 Sherman at War.
 
“This is Red Two, Red One, heartburn says that he is ready to start shooting at those pillboxes”
“Tell Heartburn I can’t receive him. You will have to relay. Tell him to give us a signal and well spot for him”
“Red Two wilco”
“Heartburn, raise your fire. You’re firing right into us”
“That’s not Heartburn, Red Two, That’s a that’s a high velocity gun from our left rear. I heard it whistle. Red One out.”
“Red Three, this is Red One. Can you see that gun that’s shooting into us?”
“Red One, I think that’s our own gunfire.”
“Goddamnit, it’s not, I tell you. It’s a high velocity gun and not a howitzer. Investigate or there on your left. But watch out for infantry; they’re right in there somewhere”
“Red Two, tell Heartburn down fifty, left fifty”
“Red Two wilco”
“Red Three, what are you doing? Go south west!”
“I’m heading south west Red One.”
“For Christ sake, get oriented. I can see you, Red Three. You are heading are heading northwest.Fox Love with hard left brake. Cross the road and go back up behind that house”
“But”
I don’t know why I bother with you, Red Three. Yellow One, take charge of Red Three and get him squared away. And get that gun; it’s too close.”
“Red One from Red Two, Heartburn wants to know if we are the front lines”
“Christ yes we’re plenty front right now”
“This is Red Two, artillery on the way”
“Red one wilco”
“Red One from Yellow One. I can see some Japs setting up a machine gun about 100 yards to my right”
“Those are our troops Yellow One, don’t shoot in there”
“The man at my telephone -  I think he’s an Officer, - says we have no troops in there.”
“Yellow Two, go over there and investigate. Don’t shoot at them; that man at the telephone probably doesn’t know where the troops are. If they’re Japs, run them over.”
“Yellow One, wilco.”
“Go ahead, Yellow Two. What in God’s name are you waiting for?”
“I’m up as far as I can go and still depress my  machine guns.”
“The hell with your machine guns! I told you to run over them! Run over them, Goddamnit; obey your orders!”
“Yellow Two, wilco”
“Yellow One, what have you to report on that machine gun?”
“Red One, a Jap stood up and threw a grenade at us so I gave him a squirt.”
“Did you run over that gun like I told you?”
“No. Red One, we put an HE into it and wrecked it.”
“Christ, won’t you people ever learn to conserve your ammunition…”
“Red One from Green Two, I’m stuck between two trees.”
“Green Three stand by him. After the infantry has cleared up around there, get your assistant driver out and tow him clear.”
“Green Three, wilco”
“While you’re waiting, Green three, keep an eye out on that house on your right. I see troops coming out of there with bottles in their shirts.”
“Can I send my assistant driver over to investigate?”
“Stay in your tank”
“Yellow One, from Red Three, where are you going?”
“Red One from Green Four. I am moving out to take out a pillbox the infantry pointed out I will I will take care of it and let them catch up.”
“Where is it, Green Four?”
“In that clump of bushes to my right.”
“Can you see it? It is all right to fire? Wait Green four”
“Green Four wilco”
“Green Four, you better not fire. The 4th Marines are over there somewhere.”
“Run up on the box and turn around on it”
“It’s one of those coconut log things. It looks like it my be to strong to squash. Is it all right if I fire into the slit?”
“Affirmative, but be careful, wilco”
“Red One, this is Hairless. We’ve got some Japs bottled up in two caves in Target Area Four Baker. We’d like you to leave two tanks to watch them.”
“You know damn well that’s infantry work. We’re a mobile outfit, not watchdogs. Put your saki drinkers in there.”
“Ok Harry, Red One out.”
“All tanks start ‘em up. Move out now. Guide right and form a shallow right echelon. As soon as we hit the flat ground around the airfield, spread out to one hundred and fifty yard interval. Al right, move out, move out
 
 
 
This section is just a major update with a chart, and a bit of a test to see how the chart will transfer. 
 
Guns: Things That Go Boom and Ratta-Tat-Tat
 
   The M3 75mm gun was a great tank gun for the time, and was based on a well-liked WWI French field gun. When introduced it could punch through any German tank it faced, from just about any angle. It’s a myth the Sherman was designed to only support infantry, though it’s primary role was not anti-armor, it was still designed to face other tanks.  The gun worked well in the infantry support role as well, with an effective HE and WP smoke round, and a canister round. This gun had a very high rate of fire in the Sherman (20rpm) and was mated with a basic stabilization system. This system did not allow shooting on the move accurately, but did allow the sights and gun to be put on the target faster when the tank came to a stop to shoot. No world war two tanks could shoot on the move with a real chance to hit even a stationary tank sized target. With a twenty round a minute rate of fire, the Sherman could pump out a lot of HE in support of the infantry, and it was not unheard of for the tanks to be used as artillery. The Sherman tank was equipped with all the gear to act as artillery if needed and was a regular occurrence in the MTO.
 
   Tanks with the 75mm gun carried between 104 and 97 rounds of main gun ammo.
 
   Much of the later large hull tanks were produced with a larger turret to accommodate the M1 family of 76mm guns. This gun had some issues. The M1 and M1A1 often came without muzzle brakes. When firing during dusty conditions the view of the target would be obscured by dust stirred up from the guns blast, the fix for this was for the commander or another crewman to stand away from the tank and talk to the crew over the intercom, via a long wire, and correct the shots onto target. Not a great fix...The final fix was muzzle brakes; it took a little while for supply to catch up with demand but they were showing up on Shermans in Europe by late 44.
 
    Another problem was the gun was not a huge improvement over the M3 75mm as a tank killer, and was not as good as an HE thrower. As mentioned before, several tank divisions didn’t want the improved Shermans at first. The penetration problem would be partially solved with HVAP ammunition, but by the time it was common, German tanks to use it on were not.   Post war, ammunition would be further improved and there would be no shortage of HVAP ammo in Korea.
 
   The M1 series of guns were also stabilized, but it was the same system used with the 75mm gun, offering limited advantages. The Nazi Germans never fielded a stabilization system of any kind on their tanks. Tanks with the M1, and M1A1 guns carried 71 main gun rounds in wet storage racks in the floor, with a armored 6 round ready rack on the turret floor.
 
   One gun that I have not covered so far is the US 105mm M2/M4 howitzer, the versions of the Sherman with this gun were developed to replace the M7 Priest, but never fully did so during WWII.  They were used in the same role, or in limited direct support roles. These tanks did not have a stabilized gun or wet ammo racks, but did have the large hatch hull. All 105 Sherman tanks, either M4 (105)s or M4A3 (105)s were produced exclusively by Chrysler. 105 tanks carried 66 rounds of main gun ammo, in dry ammo racks.
 
Gun specs:

 
  The vast majority of Sherman tanks came with two M1919A4 Browning .30 caliber machine guns.  Some very early versions came with four. This machine gun was a solid, proven, design and served well in the fixed coax mount or ball mounts on the Sherman. These guns were the same type issued to the infantry, and the tanks were even issued a whole tripod kit for use with the tanks machine guns. They carried almost 6500 rounds of .30 caliber ammunition. I won’t spend to much time on this gun, it did its job well, and large books on the subject are already out there. See Collectors Grade Publications book on the subject.
 
   The Shermans all came with an M2 .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the turret roof. On early tanks the mount was in an awkward place and hard for the commander to use from inside the tank. This was not improved until the T23 76mm turret and later production 75mm turrets went into production. Most of the time this machine gun was used by the infantry riding along with the tank to protect it. The gun was well liked, but the mount was not, and the tanks carried little ammo for this gun, only 600 rounds.  The M2 heavy machine gun was an excellent anti material and personnel weapon, but not much of an AA gun. Most crews under the rare air attack would rather take their chances buttoned up behind the armor than trying to shoot the plane down.  It was well liked for shooting up anything that might hide a German anti-tank gun as well, since it could be used at pretty long range.
 
   Some tankers would move the M2’s mount so the loader could fire it, and then mounted a smaller M1919A4 for the commander. This was a popular modification late war on tanks with the T23 turret.
 
   The tanks also had a dozen hand grenades, 16 rounds for the two inch smoke grenade launcher, and 900 rounds in magazines for their M3 SMGs. Each crew member was issued one. On early tanks it was a Thompson issued instead of the M3.     
 
Another new section
 
 
The motors: Why so many, and why the weird ones?
 
   The Sherman had four different motors that made it into production tanks. The R975 radial, The GM 6046 ‘twin’ diesel, the A57 multibank, and the Ford GAA V8.  There was also a Caterpillar motor they were playing with I’ll cover at some point.
 
   There are several reasons the US went with the radial aircraft engine instead of a dedicated power plant, and this was mostly due to lack if money to develop tanks and there drive trains between wars. When the US got serious about tank motors, there was a limited number of choices and the R975 was the best one. Then they turned to the US auto industry for other motor ideas.
   
   GM came up with their twin bus motor 6046 and it was well liked right from the beginning. Then Chrysler came out with the nutty but fantastic A57. The US Army didn’t like either, and didn’t want to even use them for training. If the British hadn’t been willing take the A57 versions, the Army would have regulated them to training use only. It wouldn’t be until Ford figured out the bugs in the GAA v8 that the army would make the switch from the R975.
 
The Continental R975 C1/C4:
Type: 9 cylinder, 4 cycle, radial
Cooling system: Air Ignition: Magneto
Displacement: 973 ci Bore and stroke: 5x5.5 inches Compression Ratio: 5.7:1
Net Horsepower:C1/C4 350/400 hp Gross Horsepower: C1/C4 400/460 hp
Net Torque: C1/C4 800/ft-lb/940/ft-lb Gross Torque: C1/C4 890ft-lb/1025ft-lb
Weight: 1212lbs dry Fuel: 80 Octane gasoline Engine Oil Capacity: 36 quarts
This motor was a license built version of the Wright R-975 built by Continental for tank use. It had been around nearly ten years and used in civil aviation before the army started putting it in tanks, starting with the M2 medium in 1939 and would go on to produce more R-975s than Wright ever would, 53,000 motors. The military version put out more horsepower than the civil version as well.  This was a solid and reliable tank motor, but not ideal. It was a little underpowered, and had to be revved up a lot to get the tank moving. The Army considered this a superior choice over the 6046 diesel and A57 motors.  This motor would be swapped into M4A4 hulls by the French post war.

(image courtesy of the Sherman Minutia site.)
 
The General Motors 6046:
Type: 12 cylinder, 2cycle, twin in-line diesel
Cooling system: Liquid Ignition: compression
Displacement: 850 ci Bore and stroke: 4.25x5 inches Compression Ratio: 16:1
Net Horsepower: 375 Gross Horsepower: 410
Net Torque: 1000ft-lbs Gross Torque: 885-lb
Weight: 5110 lbs. dry Fuel: 40 cetane diesel oil Engine Oil Capacity: 28 quarts
First used in the M3A3 and M3A5 and then in the M4A2. This motor tied two GM super charged truck diesels together on a common crank case. The motors could be run independently, so if one was damaged the other could be used to get the tank back to a repair depot, or to keep fighting. The engine weighed more than the R975, but had better torque characteristics, and the tanks with this motor handled low speed operation better because of the superior torque. 
This version was ruled out for use by the Army because they didn’t want to complicate the tank supply chain by adding another fuel to it. This motor was well liked by its users, and the only version of the Sherman the Soviet Union would take via lend lease were the ones powered by this motor.  The Army testing of this motor found it was as reliable or more so than the R975.

(image courtesy of the Sherman Minutia site.)
 
The Chrysler A57 multibank:
Type: 30 cylinder, 4 cycle, multibank
Cooling system: Liquid Ignition: Battery
Displacement: 1253 ci Bore and stroke: 4.37x4.5 inches Compression Ratio: 6.2:1
Net Horsepower: 370 Gross Horsepower: 425
Net Torque: 1020ft-lbs Gross Torque: 1060ft-lbs
Weight: 5400 lbs. dry Fuel: 80 octane gasoline Engine Oil Capacity: 32 quarts
This motor was a bit of an orphan in US Service. It powered the M3A4 and M4A4. The Army used the motor for training, and tried to pawn a few off on the Marines. That lasted about two months at the Marine Tank School. The ever growing need for tanks by the British ultimately solved what to do with the tanks that ended up with this motor. They would end up taking over 8000 of them Chrysler sent tech reps to England with these tanks and showed the maintenance crews how to keep them running.  This worked well and the engines served their purpose well. Often powering the best pure AT version of the Sherman, the Sherman VC firefly.  This motor saw a lot of use, during the war, and after with many countries being given Firefly Shermans to help out their recovery military. Some even ended up in South America, but I’m not sure what versions. This is my favorite Sherman motor, because it so absurdly complicated, it’s almost German, but actually worked, so not German at all.

(image courtesy of the Sherman Minutia site.)
 
The Ford GAA:
Type: 8 cylinders, 4 cycle, 60 degree V8
Cooling system: Liquid Ignition: Magneto
Displacement: 1100 ci Bore and stroke: 5.4 x 6 inches Compression Ratio: 7.5:1
Net Horsepower: 450 Gross Horsepower: 500
Net Torque: 950ft-lbs Gross Torque: 1040ft-lbs
Weight: 1560 lbs. dry Fuel: 80 octane gasoline Engine Oil Capacity: 32 quarts
The Ford GAA only made it into one Lee as a test bed. But it powered a lot of Shermans, both large and small hatch. It would go on to be the motor of choice for the US Army for the rest of the war, and in the next tank, the M26. Just look at the numbers above and compare them to the rest of the motors. The GAA is really a much better motor for a tank in the Shermans weight range. This tank was not lend leased to the other allies in large numbers if at all. The USSR may have gotten one to evaluate, the UK too, but the Army wanted to switch over to this and stop using R975 powered tanks. After the war, the only Shermans they kept were M4A3 76 w tanks, and over time they converted as many of these to HVSS suspension as possible. They went as far as swapping T23 turrets from M4A1 76 W tanks onto M4A3 75 hulls. The army would produce several other gas powered tank engines, but none would really shine like this one did in the Sherman. 

(image courtesy of the Sherman Minutia site.)
 
Another updated section!
 
Sherman use by the United States Marines:  “The enemy’s power lies in his tanks.” Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, Okinawa.
 
   Most people have the idea the Marines used the M4A2, and only the M4A2, and list things like it was a diesel like Navy landing craft used as the reason the marines chose the tank.  The real reason they got A2, was that’s what was available when they asked, there wasn't much choice involved, and they should feel lucky the army didn't dump M3 Lee’s on them. At various times the Marines also used M4A1s, and M4A3, all with the 75mm gun.
 
   By the end of the war the Marines would be experts in employing the tank, Infantry team. The marines, like their European counterparts used, Yankee ingenuity to modify their Shermans to help them survive combat their designers had no idea they would see. These modifications included improvised water proofing and deep wading kits. They also included improvised add on armor made of wood and concrete, and the use of spikes and screens over the hatches to help prevent the Japanese from using explosives directly on the periscope ports.
   
   The Marines had toyed around with tanks in the 20 and 30s but never had the budget to buy many. The ones they did buy were all light tanks that wouldn’t see combat use. The first tank they would use in combat in WWII was the M3 light, using it on in all major campaigns until 1943 when the Sherman entered the scene. The first combat for the Sherman would be Tarawa, were they used a battalion of tank that was mixed, two companies of lights and one of mediums. After Tarawa, the use of lights would not be fully suspended, but the Sherman would be the tank of choice for the rest of the war.
 
   The marines ultimately ended up with six tank battalions and a training school at Camp Eliot California. The first two battalions formed, the 1st and 2cd formed and deployed without training at the tank school. Most of the Marines tankers went through the school from that point on and the school trained almost all the new NCOs and officers.  When the war ended, all but the 1st and 2cd were disbanded, and the they have remained active since the beginning, and are still in operation today.
 
  When the fighting was over on Okinawa, Major-General Lemuel Shepard, the Marine ground commander had this to say: “If any one supporting arm can be singled out as having contributed more than any others during the progress of the campaign, the tank would certainly be selected.”
 
Another updated section!

For the record, just because something is "overrated" doesn't necessarily make it "bad". At least in my opinion.

So I dug this up again (the images having now gone the way of the dodo) and it struck me that it might be useful to have a place to gather as much good information on historical armour testing as we can in one place.

This thread shall be our general thread about interactive entertainment - "games". News, gameplay, predictions, reviews, links to interesting games, videos are welcomed in this thread! 
 
   I will begin with gameplay videos - TheBeef channel is pretty funny and have a little bit unusual content. Short videos that don't eat much of your time:
 
   His recent cool Mechwarrior videoguide to how to make game more interesting that it is - 

 
   This one is just gold 

 


 
 
   Here is something for those, who have too much free time now - Gyle. He almost always cast Supreme Commander FAF battles:

 

 
   His shorter vids:

I had a BMP and Scorpion prior to the wipe. When I say handle like boats I mean they feel like they are floating and behave like a pleasure boat. The lights feel like jet skis and the tanks feel like pontoon party barges. 

So I was just searching on the M4 Sherman I ran into this. I hadn't seen these images before. 
 

 

These were lost when the ship they were on was sunk in september of 1944. These are M4A1 76 W tanks, and note how the engine deck plates are cracked and crushed in on the first pic. They must have bounced off each other as they fell out of the hold. 
 
Anyway, here's the story.