WWII in 1942 saw the nation develop the M4 Sherman tank. It was a medium tank, a step above the M3 Lee.
Aside from the sheer scale of the devastation it wrought, World War II changed the face of the planet in countless ways. Geographically. Socially. Technologically. The countries involved engineered monstrous weapons from the atomic bomb to increasingly sophisticated models of tank.
During the war, a wide range of tracked vehicles were developed. Some, like the formidable Tiger 231, absorbed tremendous punishment and were behemoths. Defensive potential has a tendency to diminish over time as ever-more-powerful shells and artillery are developed, however. The thing that has set timeless tanks like the iconic M4 Sherman apart, though, has been the strong faith, and even stronger materials, that its creators have put into them since their introduction.
In some aspects, the Sherman that was deployed in World War II was a rather different beast to the one that would serve in conflicts to come. Sherman features and capacities would be subject to several revisions and upgrades, but, at its core, it would remain the same successful tank that the Allies used to great effect during the conflict. Here’s how the Sherman was introduced and how it fared during World War II, as well as a look at its story afterwards.
