M4A3 Sherman Restoration

[lilreddodge]

Since the site has been down, I got the remaining suspensions reassembled and onto the the hull. I also painted the rear idlers and exhaust tail pipes. Here are some pictures.

Thanks for the kind words from everyone following the post. I'm sure most understand that none of these parts are light weight. I restored a Stuart years ago and those parts were heavy enough to handle, but nothing compared to these. Most of the Sherman parts have to be handled by a hoist or lift. Next up will be getting the road wheels on it so I can push the hull inside for the winter. More to follow.

 

[lilreddodge]

Very nice, very nice indeed. Do you have pix of the motor?

I love the front transmission, such a lovely little bit of iron. Reminds me of the stuff out of our tractors.

Here is the only picture of the engine I have right now. In a couple of weeks I will be able to get some better ones. It is the Ford GAA, 500 hp-1100 cubic inch.

 

[lilreddodge]

Here are a few pictures of the new road wheels installed and the tank getting ready to be moved in side for the winter. If you look closely at my M818 you will notice that I have the 5th wheel pretty well armored.

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[Another Ahab]

Great​ photos.

Was that armoring of the 5th wheel a G.I. detail (i.e., was that standard to armor like that)?

 

[lilreddodge]

Great​ photos.

Was that armoring of the 5th wheel a G.I. detail (i.e., was that standard to armor like that)?

Only standard from retired G.I. who needed a place to store his turret and needed extra ballast to be able to move his tank.

 

[Scar59]

Oh man, what a job. Beautiful work and attention to detail. -and I thought 5 ton truck parts were heavy....
Keep us posted.
JC

 

[battlecr]

Wow nice! Your doing a wonderful job, She'll be a beaut
when she's done.

Don G.

 

[Another Ahab]

Only standard from retired G.I. who needed a place to store his turret and needed extra ballast to me able to move his tank.

Ho boy, what a hoot! I wondered what would be the point of armoring the 5th wheel if the whole rest of the tractor was gone! I'm laughing. Thanks for making my day!

 

[Stretch44875]

Your right down the road from me, Shelby area here.


Very good looking work being done. Can I trade labor for drive time?

 

[panzerwillie]

great job

 

[steelypip]

Regarding the German Blitzkrieg of WWII, I read where the French debacle was summarized by French general Charles Delestraint:

- "We had three thousand tanks and so did the Germans. We used them in a thousand packs of three, the Germans in three packs of a thousand."

Churchill's memoir has a bitter story of this as well: When the Germans attack he flies to Paris to coordinate UK assistance of the defense, looks at the situation map at HQ and says, "Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?" (Where's the reserve force?). Gamelin answered, "Aucune." (There is none.). It's referenced in the wikipedia article as well.

There were two good things for the allies about the Battle of France. 1. It settled the 'armor is support for infantry actions' vs. 'armor is the new heavy cavalry and is supported by infantry.' argument early and quite conclusively. 2: Britain got a lot more of its forces back off the continent than it had any reason to expect.

The history of the M4 Sherman is as illustrious as it is in part because the US, thanks to the battle of France, got a clue very early about the necessity of a large caliber main gun on any tank that might ever meet opposing armor. It's true that by 1944 the 75 MM Sherman was sometimes outgunned in Europe, but the Germans had needed to build an entirely new generation of tanks (with 88s) to make that happen.

The US could afford to turn out another thousand Shermans here and there. The Germans had to divert scarce resources to be able to meet Shermans and T34s (lots of lend-lease Shermans, too) in the field.

 

[Another Ahab]

The US could afford to turn out another thousand Shermans here and there. The Germans had to divert scarce resources to be able to meet Shermans and T34s (lots of lend-lease Shermans, too) in the field.

I was reading that the combined U.S. (daytime), and British (nighttime) heavy bombing towards the war's end effectively overwhelmed the German production. On the Eastern Front Russians were pumping out T-34's like popcorn, and in Europe any disabled Sherman m4 was replaced in 36 hours.

History: it's hard to know too much of it (or at least knowing it never seems to hurt anything).

 

[steelypip]

Well, we are talking about historic military vehicles here. They all come wrapped in history, be it mundane (like a certain M38 jeep I know that probably never left CONUS) or famous, like a Sherman tank.

 

[SCSG-G4]

I read in a wargamming magazine a couple of decades ago that the Germans (and their allies/overrun countries) produced less than 10,000 tanks from 1933 to VE day. The Soviets produced over 70,000 T-34's, plus other tanks. The US produced over 44,000 Shermans, plus another 10-12,000 other vehicles using the same chassis, plus the M-3's, the M-26's and the M-10's. The Brits, Canadians and Australians were also producing tanks as fast as they could. When your available armor is outnumbered by 11 - 15 to one, your factories are being bombed into oblivion, and there's not enough fuel to keep everything running - it's hard to keep fighting, but they did!

 

[Another Ahab]

When your available armor is outnumbered by 11 - 15 to one, your factories are being bombed into oblivion, and there's not enough fuel to keep everything running - it's hard to keep fighting, but they did!

My father was a Forward Observer with artillery (8" Howitzers) during WWII (Le Havre to Brandenburg). He had a low key, laconic description of the Germans he fought (the Wehrmacht). It was always essentially just three words: "They were good." He was never speaking in terms of morality, ethics, or spirituality of course; but in terms of professionalism, as fighters. The little he spoke about it, he inevitably put it that way: "They were good". It was never praise. I always took it as his acknowledgement.

 

[toddbe]

Always a big YES of interest and photos - please.

 

[ordkhntr]

very cool thread! thanks for sharing your work

 

[steelypip]

Until DoctorCheney223's 'identify my Sherman' thread, I hadn't ever seen photos of a Sherman hull without anything in it. My only exposure to battle tanks in any detailed way until then was an M1 Abrams MBT I crawled over back in the '90s.

It has been fascinating to compare the complex and compartmentalized structure of the Abrams to the Sherman restoration photos here. A Sherman lower hull is basically a box made of armor plate with stuff (bogies, idlers, the transmission) bolted/welded to it or (the engine, ammo racks, seats, etc) bolted inside it. It's almost like I handed my son a shoe box and an X-acto knife and said, 'make me a model tank from this, and just glue the tracks and stuff on the outside'

No multilayer armor (look at the top three decks of a WWII battleship for comparison), no compartmentalization. Just stuff everything you need in the box in a way that works and go to war. There's a sort of brutish elegance about it. Structural engineering is a non-issue - armor plate is plenty strong. The armor plating the hull is built from is also the chassis - it's a true monocoque design, but instead of being optimized for light weight like an airplane or race car it's optimized for total armor coverage.

And then there are the experiments. You know that a design is a success when people (both in the field and at the proving ground) start tweaking it, instead of just trying to replace it wholesale. Duplex drive, several different main guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, pistol ports/no pistol ports, different track sizes, four completely different engines, even doubling the armor (the Jumbo), which should have broken the suspension and overloaded the drivetrain, but didn't. The only other allied WWII machines I can think of that got so many variations and tweaks on such a fundamental level were the B-25 and (to a lesser degree) the B-17.

And then you compare the artisanal nature of Germany's tank-building during WWII. Five perfect tanks welded up by artists or 500 'good enough' Shermans welded and cast by the dozen on assembly lines in truck and locomotive factories. And, for the record, the later German tanks often had big problems (see Porsche Tiger) that didn't make them all that perfect. Maybe the first 50 Shermans in a subtype did, too. So weld a scab armor patch on the upper hull over the ammo racks, send it off to war, and get on with building the next one.

 

[battlecr]

Look at the jeep designed for 90 days in combat. I'm sure the Sherman was the same thought process. Build it fast, make it simple to operate and easy to maintain. What else is there? Look how much of the stuff lasted past WW2. The Izzy's used the halftrack clear into the 90's Does the word robust come to mind?

Don g.

 

[Another Ahab]

When your available armor is outnumbered by 11 - 15 to one, your factories are being bombed into oblivion, and there's not enough fuel to keep everything running - it's hard to keep fighting, but they did!

Not meant as a hijack, but another m4 story of historic note to add:

- My uncle was a tank commander (m4 Shermans) in WWII (saw action during The Bulge), and later after crossing the Rhine decorated with one of two Purple Hearts, for wood fragments that splintered him through the observation slit of his tank. He said it was wooden bullets.

- That was late in the war of course, and I guess the Third Reich war machine was down to scraping the barrel, but I have never read or heard anything about this (wooden bullets) except from my uncle.

Anybody know anything about this?