"it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

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aurelien wolff
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"it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#1

Post by aurelien wolff » 07 Mar 2019, 15:30

Where that one come from? What are the argument against or for that phrase?

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#2

Post by Richard Anderson » 07 Mar 2019, 17:00

aurelien wolff wrote:
07 Mar 2019, 15:30
Where that one come from? What are the argument against or for that phrase?
Oh God, not again! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

It is a creation of war gamers of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by the Mythtry Channel and the Internet. The original trope was NEVER "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger". It was "DID IT take THREE Shermans to destroy one Tiger." :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#3

Post by Yoozername » 07 Mar 2019, 19:18

You might try here...you will find it takes 5 smiles for RA to respond in a thread...

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=238985&hilit=5+shermans

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#4

Post by Richard Anderson » 07 Mar 2019, 20:28

Yoozername wrote:
07 Mar 2019, 19:18
You might try here...you will find it takes 5 smiles for RA to respond in a thread...

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=238985&hilit=5+shermans
:welcome: :thumbsup: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Sheldrake
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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#5

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Mar 2019, 02:11

On the British side....

#1 First Tiger KO'd by a 6 Pounder Anti tank gun
#2 M10 detachments were willing to take aggressive action individually to stalk Tigers. They had great confidence in the 17 Pounder if they could get the first shot.
#3 There was an issue re British RAC Morale about the relative quality of their tanks Shermans, Cromwells or Churchill's
#4 At fvarious times a few well handled Tigers and Panthers had KO#s a lot of British AFVs: Villers Bocage - 31 Tank Bde @ Hill 112. PM Operation Op Totalize.

I have not read of a wartime mention of a ratio. If anything the British were happy for overkill. E.g. Op Totalize death of Wittman charge of five Tigers against two armoured brigades = five dead tigers.

In the Chieftain talks Moran makes the point that American tanks never deployed in less than platoon strenght so automatically the odds are five shermans v X , where X might be a single tiger, Two Mk IV or an anti tank gun.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#6

Post by Richard Anderson » 08 Mar 2019, 02:45

Sheldrake wrote:
08 Mar 2019, 02:11
In the Chieftain talks Moran makes the point that American tanks never deployed in less than platoon strenght so automatically the odds are five shermans v X , where X might be a single tiger, Two Mk IV or an anti tank gun.
Yeah, I think we touched on that in the last circle-the-drain thread Yoozername linked. The problem of course is that is not entirely true...U.S. yank battalions suffered attrition and breakdowns just like everyone else, the poorly thought out War Department replacement system meant that by fall 1944 most tank battalions were operating with a modified TO&E that reduced battalion medium tank strength to 50 instead of 54 tanks, so in many cases the platoon would be only four tanks...and occasionally even fewer.

I think it was also well demonstrated that the whole "five-to-one" ratio business was a postwar artifact - long postwar in fact. It was a creation of the Avalon Hill, Strategy and Tactics crowd (of which I was one) that got even more play after Belton Cooper wrote his memoir and then the internet denizens got hold of it and solidified it as "truth".

The thing is, when it was raised during the war, it was a "three-to-one" ratio that was questioned...there was never a mention of a five-to-one ratio.

Cheers!
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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#7

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Mar 2019, 12:24

Richard Anderson wrote:
08 Mar 2019, 02:45

The thing is, when it was raised during the war, it was a "three-to-one" ratio that was questioned...there was never a mention of a five-to-one ratio.

Cheers!
As a young soldier I was taught that you needed roughly 3:1 odds to attack. If there was an enemy rifleman you mounted a section attack, if it was an enemy section you mounted a platoons attack... This has WW2s precedent up to the Army Training Memorandum on the Corps Artillery Oct 1943 that started with the analysis that when the Germans had stopped to fight in 1943 they did so as complete divisions and the British army needed to get jolly used to mounting corps attacks.

There isn't anything special about an army on the offensive requiring a 3:1 odds at the point of engagement.

According to the OR study ORS 17 it took an average of 6.2 hits to KO at Tiger and 1.65 to KO a Sherman. So logically it should take a few Shermans for each tiger, and that assumes that the Shermans have a gun capable of penetrating the Tiger.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#8

Post by Avalancheon » 09 Mar 2019, 11:06

Richard Anderson wrote:
07 Mar 2019, 17:00
Oh God, not again! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

It is a creation of war gamers of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by the Mythtry Channel and the Internet. The original trope was NEVER "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger". It was "DID IT take THREE Shermans to destroy one Tiger." :lol: :lol: :lol:
Richard Anderson wrote:
08 Mar 2019, 02:45
I think it was also well demonstrated that the whole "five-to-one" ratio business was a postwar artifact - long postwar in fact. It was a creation of the Avalon Hill, Strategy and Tactics crowd (of which I was one) that got even more play after Belton Cooper wrote his memoir and then the internet denizens got hold of it and solidified it as "truth".

The thing is, when it was raised during the war, it was a "three-to-one" ratio that was questioned...there was never a mention of a five-to-one ratio.

Cheers!
I myself have done research into this topic. These are the two oldest references I have found of the five to one legend:

''An unofficial rule of thumb in the U.S. Army was that it took five Shermans to knock out a single Panther.'' -Panther in Action, by Bruce Culver. (1975)

“It took four of our Shermans to equal one of their Panthers and about eight to equal one of their Tigers.” -The G.I. Journal of Sergeant Giles, by Henry Giles. (1965)


Given that WW2 veterans were familiar with the 'five to one' legend, and actually mentioned it in their memoirs, I don't think its purely a postwar legend. To be sure, the further back in time you go in the literature, the more the numbers seem to fluctuate. But there is clearly a belief that the Panther\Tiger was highly superior to the Sherman tank, to the point that you couldn't beat them without numerical superiority.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#9

Post by Michael Kenny » 09 Mar 2019, 13:25

Avalancheon wrote:
09 Mar 2019, 11:06
But there is clearly a belief that the Panther\Tiger was highly superior to the Sherman tank, to the point that you couldn't beat them without numerical superiority.

The same survey mentioned in replies above found the 'burn rate' was 82% for the Sherman, 80% for the Tiger & PzIV and 63% for the Panther.
Also that the penetration rate was 62% for the Tiger, 75% for the Panther, 100% for the Pz IV and 95% for the Sherman

Example: 75% of all hits on the Panther penetrated and 63% of Panthers burned when hit.

It puts the 'Ronson' claim in perspective.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#10

Post by critical mass » 09 Mar 2019, 14:38

Micheal,

while a x% tanks were burned each, every event is associated with a condition in regard to number of hits sustained, which then is ignored by the reproduction of a simple descriptive statistics producing frequency irregardless of the condition under which the frequency was obtained. I do not expect a p-value for significance but an inclusion of condition in the statistic. Else, we don´t know if the "burn" happened after one hit or after sustaining 6. The question isn´t trivial, because some, I think, continued to pound tanks even after they were rendered inoperative in order to set them ablaze on intent for visual kill confirmation.

This is one of the classic examples where bayesian statistics are superior to frequentist approaches in handling conditional frequencies.

The M4 sample at Normandy studied had 62 penetrating 75 or 88mm hits, resulting in 33 tanks brewed up after penetration. That´s a P("burn") = 0.533 if one would be willing to assume a uniform prior distribution. I n my opinion, the presumption of a UPD is quite demonstrably an incorrect presumption judging by the histogramm of hits:

1 hit = 21 AFV
2 hits = 11
3 = 2
4 = 1
8 = 1

Therefore the P("burn") will have to change towards what will be an exponential prior distribution.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#11

Post by Yoozername » 09 Mar 2019, 15:30

Good post CM.

The really funny thing is that some are claiming that the 5:1 'statistic' is a post war construct (perhaps true). Yet, we have here a poster that likes to make his own constructs. Repeating them, like a mantra, till he thinks they become historical facts.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#12

Post by Richard Anderson » 09 Mar 2019, 17:58

Avalancheon wrote:
09 Mar 2019, 11:06
I myself have done research into this topic. These are the two oldest references I have found of the five to one legend:
I myself have done research into this topic. This is the oldest reference I have found of the legend:

"Specifically, the Panther and the Tiger tanks, according to the fighting men, are far superior to our Shermans. It is said that it takes three of our Shermans to knock out a Tiger." ("Death of a Myth”, Washington Post, 22 March 1945. This editorial was reprinted by the New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, 5 April 1945. It was clipped out and sent by Lieutenant General John C.H. Lee, Deputy Theater Commander, ETOUSA under Eisenhower, to General Holly who included it in Appendix C, ETOUSA Armored Fighting Vehicle and Weapons Section, Final Historical Report: Covering Period D-Day to VE Day and VE Day to Final Inactivation (6 June 1944 to 24 May 1945), (NP: 1945), Records of the ETOUSA (SHAEF) AFV&W Section, RG 492, NARA II.
Given that WW2 veterans were familiar with the 'five to one' legend, and actually mentioned it in their memoirs, I don't think its purely a postwar legend.
I see a veteran, singular, making a statement in 1965 that it was a four-to-one ratio for Panthers and an eight-to-one ratio for Tigers.
To be sure, the further back in time you go in the literature, the more the numbers seem to fluctuate. But there is clearly a belief that the Panther\Tiger was highly superior to the Sherman tank, to the point that you couldn't beat them without numerical superiority.
Yes, there was clearly a belief that the Panther was superior...and a partially imagined belief (given how infrequently American tankers in the ETO actually encountered Tigers) that the Tiger was even more superior, but the way that belief took hold and its effect is slightly different than I suspect most believe.

The famous "I.D. White letter" is something of an anomaly and it is unclear exactly why White ignored Eisenhower's direct request that he not “make a general staff study out of this matter” and instead turned out a voluminous 168-page reply written on 20 March. In fact, White really only answered one of Eisenhower's three requests, the last: "(a) Your own personal convictions about the quality of our tank equipment as compared to the German, and having in mind the necessity of our shipping our materiel over long distances to get it to the battle field; (b) Your opinion as to the ability of the new T-23 [sic, Eisenhower meant T-26] with the 90 mm gun, to meet the Panther on equal terms, and (c) A digest of the opinions of your tank commanders, drivers, gunners, and so on, on these general subjects." Eisenhower was actually asking for a critique of the T26, not the M4, so made the same query to both divisions...which may explain White's confusion since the 2d AD hadn't received any T26 at that point - they went to the 3d and 9th AD. Anyway, Rose's reply was more succinct (five pages) and to the point: “It is my personal conviction that the present M4 and M4A3 tank is inferior to the German Mark V [Panther]”. On (b) he said, “It is my opinion that the new T26 with its 90mm gun is capable of meeting the Panther tank on equal terms.” For (c), Rose included commentary gleaned from officers and enlisted men, most of whom felt the only way to knock out a Panther was with artillery or air power. Typically, one enlisted man said, “We can’t compare with the Jerry tank”.
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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#13

Post by Richard Anderson » 09 Mar 2019, 18:05

Yoozername wrote:
09 Mar 2019, 15:30
The really funny thing is that some are claiming that the 5:1 'statistic' is a post war construct (perhaps true).
I have yet to find anything that says it was not a postwar construct and feel I have searched pretty diligently, but if you have evidence that it was used in wartime, please let us all know. :D
Yet, we have here a poster that likes to make his own constructs. Repeating them, like a mantra, till he thinks they become historical facts.
Oh, you mean christianmunich? But he hasn't posted in this thread and has been banned... :D
Richard C. Anderson Jr.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#14

Post by Michael Kenny » 09 Mar 2019, 18:07

Yoozername wrote:
09 Mar 2019, 15:30
. Repeating them, like a mantra, till he thinks they become historical facts.
You mean the fact that 75% of hits on a Panther penetrated?
It is a fact and I can give references to anyone who claims otherwise.
So to repeat 75% of the hits on a Panther penetrated.

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Re: "it took 5 sherman to destroy 1 tiger"

#15

Post by jpz4 » 09 Mar 2019, 18:56

Michael, just for my understanding, is that percentage based on vehicles left on the battle field or does it include vehicles that made it off as well? Either number would be interesting, but would tell somewhat different things.

(I'm asking because this reminds me of the story of the US Navy analysing damage sustained by their planes to improve their armor... But those were the survivors. Planes with catastrophic damage never made it home. Examining wrecks left on the battle field would not be the whole sample set either.)

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