Reddit reviews Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

SWS is on the low-end of the BadAcademia spectrum; there've been recent attempts to reduce the shitposts and circlejerking- including a meta meta sub to highlight egregious offenses -but there's a definite slant involved, and there aren't usually that many sources.

We tend to take things a bit far in the opposite direction, sometimes. A lot of that stuff wasn't total shit, but watch the downvotes roll in if you say it in the wrong spot.

And, of course, anyone citing ^Cooper, ^B. ^Y. ^(1998). ^Death ^Traps: ^the ^Survival ^of ^an ^American ^Armored ^Division ^in ^World ^War ^II. ^Navato, ^CA: ^Presidio ^Press, ^1998. is a top-of-the-line memester.

If, however, you would prefer -even- lower standards and a thriving shitpost economy, try r/DerScheisser for all your meme needs.

There were also multiple incidents of poison gas canisters leaking and triggering local detection gear. These canisters were close enough to the front that the chemical teams often thought they were under German attack, until they found the leak.

I believe that one such incident is detailed in the book Death Traps

Historically, the 105 on its many mountings (the Sherman included) was one of the few reliable methods the US had to take out German tanks at longer ranges.

In WT, well. My squadron and myself had a four-man squad - two M6A1s (later a Jumbo, one've them) and two Sherman 105s, putting them at a 5.0 BR.

They can kill Tigers that aren't angling properly, and Panthers pretty easily. This is due to hitting their mantlet with HE (the HEAT's not so great), as both tanks don't have very good upper hull plating, and doing so sends shrapnel right into that (on the panther) 15mm plate beneath - with the ammo racks right beneath such on two sides.

Also worth noting that US crews were fairly well known for their ability to reload guns, to the point that neither the Ordnance Corps or Wermacht could believe it. According to Death Traps - the memoir of Belton Cooper (an ordnance corps lieutenant with the 3AD's Maintenance Battalion) - their artillery detachment ran the barrels of their guns out so fast from firing so much faster than anticipated that the Corps sent their state-side expert on barrel wear to the front to determine if their shot-logs were being fudged. Case in point: They weren't.

There's also an instance noted in Forging the Thunderbolt of german prisoners asking to see the Americans' new 'automatic artillery gun.' So much so was it that American artillery in Tunisia accounted for half of the German infantry losses.

By Gela during Sicily the majority of German tank casualties could be attributed to truck-drawn artillery - a fact that was not wholly lost on the Army. The 105mm fit for the Sherman was aided by this in wider adoption, and it was greatly liked by its crews as memory serves.

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Needless to say, it should seriously have its BR reconsidered, given these constraints. It does roughly even against Panthers and Tigers, as both can pen it fairly easily (pending the oft-'lel learn to play' demarcated 'known where to shoot' - though assuming highest skill on both ends, the odds are pretty fairly split). 5.0 seems to be an even match. 3.7 is painful undertiering, given how measurably it can take on the big cats in the right hands.

>The reason I think the Sherman gets a bad wrap is a combination of propaganda, people looking at casualty figures outside of their context, and people fixating on flashy stats like thickness of the frontal armor and size of the gun.

Propaganda from whom??

Didn't testimonies from Sherman crew members also contribute to this "bad rep". In Particular, Death Traps (http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148) , written by Armored Veteran, who was in charge of maintenance and salvaging the tanks. I mean , he explicitly doesn't say the Sherman was a bad tank but he sort of reinforces this notion of Sherman being a sub par tank.

Hey, if you want a good read about Shermans in WW2 from the perspective of a guy who had to fix them I highly suggest checking out Death Traps.

Firing from head on, the anti-tank guns could have penetrated the Shermans from over 1000 yards. Of course the gunners could have been distracted/inexperienced/scared, the scenario is plausible, but having them seemingly manned by storm troopers sounds a little unrealistic to me.

If this is the book you're referring to, there's a lot of debate as to whether the author's statements beyond his personal experience are worth considering.

Cool. Thanks for the book links. I just finished a great book entitled Death Traps, the story from the viewpoint of a maintenance guy for armored forces in the European Theater. A odd person to write a book that is fascinating, but he did.

Thanks again.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891418148/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465013172&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=Belton+Y.+Cooper&dpPl=1&dpID=51k4tqorPQL&ref=plSrch

"Death Traps" by Belton Cooper

Autobiography of a junior officer of one of 3rd armored division's maintenance battalion from Normandy to V-E. Critical of Patton (as you'd expect from anyone who saw the aftermath of nearly every Sherman knocked out in the division.

Talks about modifying Shermans for various tasks, including how they modified German beach obstacles and welded them to the tanks to bulldoze hedgerows. Fantastic detail about tank recovery ops and details about damage to both allied and axis armor.

In the book Death Traps, it's mentioned that it was typical for the Germans to not stop firing on a tank until it was on fire. This was Vs the Americans anyways.

So it could be a tank from an actual battle.

I read it in this.

Logistics:

Death traps: Survival of an American Armored Division in WWII by Belton Cooper

A must read for any Ordnance guy who wants some pride in their branch. Its an autobiographical account written by Belton Cooper, a Maintenance Officer during the advance towards Berlin across western europe. Great read of WW2 on the ground tactics, cool stories of a WW2 Loggie Officer (which may seem hard to believe, but seriously some cool shit), and some takes on tank warfare from a maintenance perspective. Cooper gets really critical of eisenhower though on not implementing the pershing tank sooner.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

you realise by the end of the war AT guns were everywhere? how good is a tank if it's hit by a AT gun from 1940 and it gets knocked out? From the 50.000 shermans built, only ~10.000 survived

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

"Life & Death on a Tank - Tank Crews Documentary"

Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

This book could be a very interesting read for you: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148/

The reason of high crew turnovers was not because the old crews got new vehicles, it was because the old crew was dead. As tanks were valuable, knocked out tanks were often patched up. If the hull was a loss, they would re-use the turret and vice versa.
Cooper describes that if they were 'lucky' the would find the projectile that knocked out the tank inside the tank so they could use it to patch the hole (as the projectile and the hole often had the same diameter.

Edit: apparently there are inaccuracies in the book that I was unaware of hence my downvotes. Still think it's a valuable perspective to gain, even if you have to take some of the details with a grain of salt.

I highly recommend the book death traps which was written by an american armored officer in a pretty unique position during WWII. He was a trained engineer whose role was basically tracking all of the damaged and destroyed tanks for his unit and helping coordinate their repair/replacement.

He has a lot of in depth knowledge about the tanks, doctrine, and field effectiveness of WWII tanks on the western front, particularly the Sherman, and a ton of really interesting stories and anecdotes.

The Sherman was a mishmash of ideas from people who didn't know what the fuck they were doing. American armored warfare theory at the time of it's production centered around on the idea that our tanks should always bypass enemy tanks so that they could move into enemy lines and destroy other targets. A sound strategy on paper that resulted in American crew and vehicle losses that will boggle your mind. The army was losing Sherman's so fast in combat that both crew size and training were diminished to simply get more units on the field. At some point some Sherman tank crews were reduced to three men who were soldiers that had basic training and were given an opportunity to shoot the main cannon three times before being considered ready for action. These Sherman units suffered around 500 percent causalities, no that isn't a typo.

Anyone who is interested in the experiences of Sherman crews owes it to themselves to read Death Traps.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420849729&sr=8-1&keywords=Death+Traps