Talking about unbiased books, if you want a true unbiased book about the sherman tank, wich also explains how it truly faired against the panzer, go get Steven zalago's armoured thunderbolt. No Yankee murica favourtism, no German panzer fanboy writing. Authetic, factual info.
Your spelling it wrongly again.
Theirs no Steven zalago but Stephen Zaloga. Speaking of factual info (
much data, unless
your being Doge)...
But General patton fans better not buy this book, as this book has many data about how Patton stalled much of the tank development together with General Mcnair
Actually, that argument was the dead pet horse of Belton Cooper (in his book "Death Traps") up to the point where he substantiated scuttlebutt around the motorpool as "facts" that supposedly overrule piles of documents in which "Patton" is curiously spelled "McNair", but I guess Patton personally forged each and every page then. Are you sure you don't mean Cooper instead of Zaloga? Nevermind that a field commander such as Patton was not in a position to decide in the first place what was actually produced to begin with...
That being said, McNair was partly right for all the wrong reasons (ie. the loony tank destroyer doctrine that worked in one single battle during the entire US campaign in Europe). However, from a logistical point of view the 76mm Sherman (improvement on a tested and true design) made infinitely more sense than Pershing (completely new type). Especially so since the M26 was a bit
too good a copy of German heavy tanks: underpowered engine and unreliable transmission leading to constant breakdowns, limited cross-country mobility, slower speed, and inferior range, being much slower and more expensive to produce, versus having marginally better armour than late-model Shermans still penetrable by German guns (no wait, Jumbo actually had better armour that
was proof against anything except 88 at point-blank distance and 128) and slightly better gun than the 76mm one. And bumrushing Pershing to the front would also have copied the insufficient training of late-war German crews.
Guderian was right too, especially given the situation Germany was in. Panzer IV was easily produced, reliable, and easier to maintain, consumed less materials, and the missing invulnerable front armour is not that much of an issue when most of the kills are made from the sides anyway (if a tanker is in a situation where he relies on "impenetrable" armour instead of hitting the enemy's weak spot first, he's doing something very wrong or he's a German in 1945) and if most of your supertanks are destroyed by their own crews when they break down, they are simply not worth it. And metals needed for higher strength steel were simply not available to Germany from 1944 onwards (and even up to that there was a constant shortage), so that alone should have dictated what to produce, but then again, Hitler.
There is a funny but appropriate anecdote in Thomas Anderson's "Tiger": in Italy, Germans captured a Sherman, which they adapted to tow broken-down Tigers and Panthers. When they had used it as a tow truck for
half a year without breakdown, the story was actually printed in one of Wehrmacht's newspapers, supposedly highlighting the importance of proper maintenance (or as a snarky poke at the quality of the
Wunderwaffen, take your pick on the way to nearest KZ).
tl;dr: a mediocre tank that's available is infinitely better than a supertank that's not