what weapon could $16,000 bought in 1944?

[LWD]

...The losses of Shermans were very heavy, they lost about 1,000 Shermans per month once the western front was opened (considering that the Allies lost over 12,000 tanks in 11 months only in the western front, the majority of these tanks were Shermans).

Where did you get these numbers from? According to http://en.allexperts.com/q/Military-His ... sses-2.htm
The US lost ~4,400 Shermans in the period from D-day through May of 45. Or ~4,500 if you include M4(105)s. andhttp://208.84.116.223/forums/index.php?showtopic=30346&pid=732087&start=&st=#entry732087
makes it look like British total losses were under 5,000

According to your beloved co-forumer, MKenny, the Allies lost around 12-13 thousand (he gave an exact number, like 12,550, or something) tanks and AFVs in the western front. ....

Now I see the source of your problem. AFV includes both tanks and other vehicles ie a tank is an AFV but an AFV is not necessarily a tank although in modern terminology even the former is not necessarily true that is tanks are sometimes now considered a seperate catagory from AFV.

[LWD]

That assumes the tanks were being destroyed by tanks. The data suggest otherwise.

According to Zetterling's study, the bulk of tank losses were caused by other tanks. That's because Normandy was a tank intensive battle (over 10,000 tanks involved). How did he calculate that? Since you cannot differentiate a hole caused by an 75 mm anti tank gun and the same hole caused by an 75 mm tank gun. He used the kill claims of the German divisions involved in the fighting, and since these kill claims tend to be inflated for all type of weapons, the degree of inflation couldn't be much different from type to type of weapon.

The 29 June tank kill reports of 6 German divisions had (Zetterling, Normandy, page 73):

273 tanks killed by panzers, panzerjäger and sturmgeschütz.
99 tanks killed by anti tank guns.
36 tanks killed by artillery.

That's about 400 tanks, 70% killed by other tanks and fully tracked AFVs.

The problem here is that you are using German kill reports rather than allied loss reports. The later are widely acknowledged to be more accurate. For instance not the total absence of mine kills from the above. The various OR studies lead to pretty much the opposite conclusion.

[Michael Kenny]

Present for G

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm4/ite ... SOPTR=3332

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cgi-bin/ ... e=3346.pdf

[vszulc]

I suspect from our friends silence, that he realized that I was correct in my criticism, and he just realized that there was no free trade and capital movement before 1945.

I also suspect, since we haven't heard from him in awhile, that this was quite a chok to him.

[ljadw]

G is as the proverbial cat:he is always returning.

[nebelwerferXXX]

$ 16,000 in 1944 could buy 355 Thompson SMGs...