Whats your thoughts on the Sherman Firefly? Do you think the Germans would have been better off with a gun like that on the Panzer IV?
For what end? Sure if they had produced the PzIV with that gun from the beginning or retrofit PzIV with them sure. But if the question is either a PzIV firefly or a Panther then of course the Panther. Both tanks did cost more or less the same and the Panther basically is what a PzIv Firefly would look like anyway with a better gun and frontal armor.
That the US thought of the Panther as a heavy tank is one reason why they underestimated the numbers and then struggled to field more Fireflies after D-Day. For the Germans the Panther was a medium tank and produced as such.
And you still fail to see that Panthers weren't the pillboxes on tracks you make them out to be. Yes, the early models had reliability problems as much as Shermans easily caught fires. Both flaws corrected in later designs. On wet terrain the Panther was actually better than Shermans because of lower ground pressure. And the HE round of Panthers was equal to the Shermans 75mm HE round, so its not really worse than M4s for infantry support.
Yes, the Sherman could be upgraded to match the Panther in one aspect. But its always was just one aspect while others were left untouched. Panthers on the other hand were simply a all around balanced and powerful package.
By the way I put the bad in "" on purpose in my last post on purpose because you talked about the Soviets giving their guard a bad tank. The Sherman wasn't bad. But it certainly was not the best tank. To be the best it would have also needed to have superior battlefield qualities the Sherman did not have. Most of its successes relied on numbers and combined arms. And while the ease of production certainly is part of the quality of a tank, imo the Sherman does not have much besides it. And that is simply not enough for the label "best tank".
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