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RE: Sherman Tank frustration & strategies?
Sigh. ;-)
The Sherman should have an armor rating of 4. I've heard the game design decision was that it was a large target. Well, the Panther was larger but does not get a lowered rating for being so. It is hard to put the nuances of different vehicles in a platoon game that basically uses 0 to 6 for armor ratings, so I grudgingly accept it.
Go read Zaloga's Sherman vs. Panther. His main point as to why the many Shermans were killed in 1944 was that the Allies were attacking and attacker losses are always high.
Zaloga also brings out an important point, and he is not the only one, that German crew ability had declined and kept on doing so by 1944 that they could not effectively use their vehicles. This is not reflected in the game (But Panzer Leader it with reduced values for Wehrmacht vehicles)
All players in WWII had tanks that burned, almost all of them did when hit and penetrated. Shermans burned, Mk IVs burned, Panthers burned, T-34s burned, etc. One thing to remember is that gun/ammunition capability, for the most part, outperformed armor for most of the war.
Yes, actual Sherman crew members complain that German tanks were better, but I bet if you try to dig deeper, they can't really tell you why. But their experiences of seeing buddies die horribly would leave a lasting impression that it was likely the equipment and not poor tactics, crew ability or just the sad fact that in WWII, if you were hit, at the common tank ranges on the Western Front (400-800 meters), your tank was going to die regardless of what tank it was. However, the statistics show, that if you were drafted and went in the Army and went to combat, you were much much much more likely to die if you were an infantryman than a Sherman crew member. Always take anecdotes with a grain of salt. And BTW, that is what I considered Belton Cooper's book "Death Traps" to be (before somebody cites it as an authoritative source).
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