Shermans in the USSR Question ; Has anyone any knowedge regarding the effectiveness of the Sherman in Soviet service in WW2? In fact, here's what Loza has to say about the Shermans: In regards to early fears about spalling--"The Shermans took more than a few direct hits on the turret and did not manifest the infirmity that had plagued the early T-34s. Enemy rounds failed to penetrate their armor, and not one bit of spray erupted inside the fighting compartments." The dimples and melted scars left in the armor were dubbed "Hitler's kisses." "Until the end of the war in the west, and in the conflict with the Japanese Kwantung Army, there was not a single incident in which the projectile warheads of the main-gun rounds of a burning Sherman exploded." "... when our 233rd (46th Guards) Tank Brigade began to receive their Sherman tanks. .. other units envied us. We had enough radios to give them away as precious gifts for special purposes, particularly to our friends in the artillery. Each Sherman came equipped with two radios, one very high frequency and one high frequency. .. No jolt or vibration of the tank would dislodge this radio from the frequency." "I must also say a good word for one other indispensable piece of equipment in the American tank: the auxiliary generator unit for recharging the vehicle's storage batteries.. .. T-34 tanks were never equipped with such a component. .. they had to start their engines to keep their storage batteries in working order. Five hundred horsepower to charge batteries was not only noisy, but it used up both fuel and engine hours." "serious defects were not a problem with the engines, transmissions, and clutches of our foreign-made equipment. But it was a different story with the suspension components. Our rubber road wheels and support rollers did not withstand long road marches in combination with high ambient temperatures. In our 5th Mechanized Corps, 75% of our Shermans lost road wheels in these circumstances." At one point he describes a typical rear-area raid employing Shermans in which they used the tanks' sirens to increase panic: "The powerful shrieks of the sirens assailed our eardrums. The surging, fire-breathing night raid with Shermans is difficult to describe with words. One had to witness the carnage, to experience these adrenaline-filled minutes, the stupefying speed. The M4A2s crushed and then pushed aside everything they encountered along the route of their movement, including cargo trucks and buses. We ran over crates, barrels, field kitchens, and light wagons with our tanks and poured machine-gun fire into supply troops rushing out of the buildings." He notes that tank crews would remove the seats from their Shermans before turning them in for maintenance, because infantry would steal the seats while the tanks were parked in order to make boots from the faux leather covers. Back to Frontline Vol. 2 Iss. 3 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolfe Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com