M4 Sherman tank

Allied tank design was sadly lagging behind the Germans in the 1930's and although the British invented the Tank in WWI, their later designs tended to follow the 'infantry support' line of thinking making their tanks slow and under armed but with massive armor. Indeed German Anti-Tank crews were shocked to see their shells bouncing off of Matilda tanks during the Battle of France! The Americans were on the right track with the Sherman but still couldn't figure out that armor and armament needed to be greater. Built by various manufacturers under licence, the Sherman was the main allied battle tank. The version in the photo above is an early mark with a welded hull, later marks of Sherman had rounded, 'cast' hulls and were easier to produce. Although relatively fast and maneuverable, its high profile, relatively thin armor, a totally inferior 75mm 'pop' gun and a gasoline engine that ignited if a shell got within 'sniffing' distance (leading to the crews nickname of "Ronson" because it lit up so easily!) made the M4 inferior in nearly every way to the later German heavy tanks that it was pitted against. The only advantage (if you can call it that) was that it was cheap and easy to produce (no comfort to the crews). Indeed, the general rule of thumb was 4-5 Shermans to knock out one Tiger!!!! Used in the Pacific campaign also, it was far superior to the Japanese tanks of the day, although it was limited in its use as most of the Pacific islands were not good tank country. I shudder to think of all the poor guys having to go up against superior German armor knowing that they'll probably burn to death in this piece of junk, just because the allies didn't learn from the Germans how to produce a quality tank and were more concerned with cranking out vast quantities of this outdated pile of tin because it was cheap. The losses suffered by the allied tank crews during WWII were behind the thinking of modern tank design. The British Challenger, The American Abrams and the German Leopard are all designed with crew safety in mind, they are fast, well armed, have excellent armor and are the worlds cutting edge armored fighting vehicles.