G’day,
Sorry this is a late note in this thread as I only joined recently. One of the limiting factors in US tank design was the transport equation. All US tanks at the time were required to fit within the US railroad loading guages.
US companies did design and build some ‘super heavy’ types, but the Pershing was the first such US ‘heavy’ tank to fit into the transport criteria.
Regards to all,
Digger.
Very true, the U.S. also designed some tanks that would have flattened the Tiger I. But they were expensive to produce and difficult ship over to the Atlantic.
G’day,
I know some of the designs which lost out to the Pershing were quite formidable. I no longer have the reference source, but wasn’t one design a 140ton tank destroyer specifically designed to take on the German super heavies?
Regards to all,
Digger.
See George’s thread on the M26 here.
Scroll down to the bottom of his enormous first post and read the T-29 to T-34 “heavy tank projects” that were never adopted, although I believe one did see eventual post war service in evolutionary form. But suffered from the same problems as most enormous tanks: slow, unreliable, easy to flank by smaller, faster tanks, etc.
Got it Nick, thanks.
Regards to all,
Digger.
anyways, my english teacher said that the Shermans are inspired by Canadian tank before the war?
Hmmm… not completely correct.
Excellent find PN. I’ve always wondered why the Canadian Army used M4 Sherman chasises as APCs since this seemed to be a bit of a waste, now I know what it actually was…
The Ram Kangaroo APC.
The Ram was in some aspects better than the early Shermans, especially in the frontal armour.
As APC it was much better than the equivalents half tracks like the SdKfz 251, but a bit expensive.
Wasn’t this primarily in the early years when some fool designer decided that storing the ammunition inside the tank just next to the engine was a good idea? Too bad, the idiot wasn’t informed that engines get hot. The idea of the Tommy Cooker was born after some Shermans burst out in flames without the Germans having to shoot it…
No question. I wonder if the Canadians can lay claim to adopting the first fully tracked, modern APC to see service, or at least combat? I can’t think of any dedicated armored personnel carrier that wasn’t a half-track at the moment.
I assume the old tin can APC in the shape of the Mark IX (WWI era) doesn’t qualify to be ‘modern’? 
I couldn’t find any fully tracked APC’s in WWII, so I guess the Canadians indeed were the first.
Yeah, I think the Mark IX never saw combat, and it’s operational life was cut short by post war budget cuts and it didn’t really seem to be very practical.
BTW, the Sherman was also called the “Ronson” by the Germans, after the American lighter that was also popular in Europe at the time.
The slogan of the Ronson? “Always lights on the first strike.” --Oooof!
All tis a shame that neither the allies or te axis tried experimenting with different types of armor besides iron and steel.
The Bren or Universal carrier
Well, you might have point there. I didn’t even think of that one admittedly. But I did qualify “modern,” meaning the Ram Kangaroo was fully enclosed, thereby its crew could be protected from air-bursts.
Couple of points about the Sherman:
The problem with the stowage was a design fault, it had nothing to do with any supply problem, Wet stowage was only introduced on later models, when as you have stated, the problem went away
ps What do you mean, you didn’t see it ???
Ha! that’s an interesting pic. I’d really like to know the back story around it. I’m assuming the Sherman was knock-out as well…