M4A2

M4A2

M4

M4A1 (76) W

M4A2

M4

M4A1 (76) W

USA

II Rank

Battle rating:

AB	RB	SB
4.0	4.0	4.0

Class:

Medium tank

Research:6 900

Purchase:32 000

Show in game

Description

The M4A2 is a Rank III American medium tank with the battle rating of 4.0 (AB/RB/SB). It was introduced along with the American ground tree in Update 1.45 "Steel Generals". It is the third of the Sherman medium tank series and the last 75 mm variant before unlocking the 76 mm equipped models. The in-game model represents a "Sherman 2.0" design with the new front armour model angling at an uninterrupted 47 degree and a better cast turret.

Compared to its predecessor, the M4A2 is the only 75 mm Sherman with an uninterrupted and welded front glacis sloped at 47 degrees. This eliminates most of the weak points of the earlier M4A1 and M4 models, though by this battle rating most enemy weaponry could penetrate the front glacis of the Sherman. A compensation for the better enemy is that the M4A2 Sherman has access to the T45 APCR ammunition for its 75 mm gun.

Another noted difference is the loss of the turret appliqué armour on the right side of the gun mantlet. This does not sacrifice armour as the turret base armour at that location is thickened to compensate the loss.

Finally, the M4A2 runs with the General Motors 6046 diesel double-engine. This does not impact automotive performances greatly, but it does changed the engine deck shape, exhaust emission, and engine noise.

General info

Survivability and armour

Armour type:

• Rolled homogeneous armour (Hull, Turret roof)
• Cast homogeneous armour (Turret, Transmission area)

Armour	Front (Slope angle)	Sides	Rear	Roof
Hull	63.5 mm (47°) Front glacis 51-108 mm (12-56°) Transmission housing	38.1 mm	38.1 mm (7-10°)	19.5 mm
Turret	76 mm (3-65°) Turret front 89 + 51 mm (2-62°) Gun mantlet	51 mm (2-64°)	51 mm (2-60°)	19.5 mm
Armour	Sides	Roof
Cupola	51 mm	19.5 mm

Notes:

• Suspension wheels are 15 mm thick, the bogies are 10 mm, and the tracks are 20 mm thick.
• Small applique armour are placed on the side hull armour over ammunition that gives an extra 25.4 mm
• A small patch on the turret front right side is thinner (51 mm) than the rest (76 mm).

Mobility

Mobility characteristic
Weight (tons)	Add-on Armor weight (tons)	Max speed (km/h)
31.5	1.2	51 (AB)
		46 (RB/SB)
Engine power (horsepower)
Mode	Stock	Upgraded
Arcade	635	782
Realistic/Simulator	363	410
Power-to-weight ratio (hp/ton)
Mode	Stock	Upgraded
Arcade	20.16	24.82
Realistic/Simulator	11.52	13.01

Armaments

Main armament

75 mm M3
Capacity				Vertical guidance	Horizontal guidance
97				-10°/+25°	±180°
Turret rotation speed (°/s)
Mode	Stock	Upgraded	Prior + Full crew	Prior + Expert qualif.	Prior + Ace qualif.
Arcade	14.28	19.80	24.0	26.60	28.20
Realistic	14.28	16.80	20.4	22.60	24.00
Reloading rate (seconds)
Stock	Prior + Full crew	Prior + Expert qualif.	Prior + Ace qualif.
6.50	5.75	5.30	5.00

Ammunition

Penetration statistics
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Penetration in mm @ 90°
		10m	100m	500m	1000m	1500m	2000m
M72 shot	AP	110	109	92	76	62	51
M48 shell	HE	10	10	10	10	10	10
M61 shot	APCBC	90	88	81	73	65	59
T45 shot	APCR	143	137	127	106	86	70

Shell details
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Velocity in m/s	Projectile Mass in kg	Fuse delay in m:	Fuse sensitivity in mm:	Explosive Mass in g (TNT equivalent):	Normalization At 30° from horizontal:	Ricochet:
								0%	50%	100%
M72 shot	AP	619	6.3	N/A	N/A	N/A	-1°	47°	60°	65°
M48 shell	HE	463	6.3	0.4	0.5	666	+0°	79°	80°	81°
M61 shot	APCBC	618	6.8	1.2	20	63.7	+4°	48°	63°	71°
T45 shot	APCR	868	3.8	N/A	N/A	N/A	+1.5°	66°	70°	72°

Smoke characteristic
Ammunition	Velocity in m/s	Projectile Mass in kg	Screen radius in m	Screen time in s	Screen hold time in s:	Explosive Mass in g (TNT equivalent):
M89	259	3	13	5	20	50

Ammo racks

Ammo racks of the M4 Sherman.

Full ammo	1st rack empty	2nd rack empty	3rd rack empty	4th rack empty	5th rack empty	6th rack empty	7th rack empty	8th rack empty	Visual discrepancy
97	85 (+12)	73 (+24)	61 (+36)	49 (+48)	37 (+60)	25 (+72)	13 (+84)	1 (+96)	Yes

Machine guns

12.7 mm M2HB
Pintle mount
Capacity (Belt capacity)				Fire rate (shots/minute)	Vertical guidance	Horizontal guidance
300 (200)				576	-10°/+25°	±60°

7.62 mm M1919A4
Coaxial mount
Capacity (Belt capacity)				Fire rate (shots/minute)	Vertical guidance	Horizontal guidance
3,000 (250)				500	N/A	N/A

Usage in the battles

The general play style of this tank is to be a support tank. This tank doesn't have the armour to be on the front lines. Surviving on the front lines will be quite hard, though not impossible. Try to stay in the 2nd or 3rd line and support the team, or hide behind heavily armoured teammates and help them assault the enemy. Capturing cap zones is also good for this vehicle. This Sherman is pretty fast. Be note, be wary of T-34 and Panzer IV tanks. These have guns that can easily penetrate the M4A2's armour even if angled well. It is best to use hull down tactics, or shoot first and knock-out their gunner. T-34s are tougher and they can very easily one shot the M4A2 from the side so keep the sides protected. T-34s have thin armour but sloped, and if angled, are hard to destroy, so aim for the turret. T-34E STZ's are very hard to take it and once again, the turret.

The tactics which should be used; is not to stay in the same place. Move after every shot so the enemy has to counter that move thus leaving the enemy unit exposed.

Once the M4A2 has access to different camouflages: it will be able to blend into the background (Works very well with a flanking maneuver), then wait for enemy to drive right past the tank.

It is recommended to use the M61 Shot; when this happens.

• Step 1: Wait for them to drive past.
• Step 2: Locate a flat surface on them e.g. Side/Rear of a turret or tank.
• Step 3: Think where the enemy critical parts are e.g. Crew and parts
• Step 4: Take aim.
• Step 5: Fire away.

Game modes

Arcade Battles (AB)
When in this Game Mode Game Mode: The tank is: fast, but weakly armoured. It's gun is pretty decent with enough penetration. Capture zones and support the team by firing at enemy medium tanks.

Realistic Battles (RB) and Simulator Battles (SB)
The tank performs it's role as medium tank very well. It uses speed; as an advantage and very thick frontal armour. Which gives this tank, an edge over the enemy. However, It offers; some very thin armour around the side and the rear of tank. Which can be penetrated;- by almost all the tanks in and on. So watching the sides and rear are very important, neglecting to protect them can often result in a destroyed M4A2.

When engaging the enemy forces; It is recommended to turn into their fire with the front of the tank. Since the front is one of the thickest armoured front installed on a tank. This can often save the tank from its end. However, if a skilled enemy player aims for one of the critical components of movement, such as the tracks, engine, transmission, or the driver, they could stop the M4A2 from performing this action.

A weak point of this tank is the machine gun port on the front. A single well placed shot could end the tank.

Modules

It is advisable to research Parts first, then Fire Protection Equipment, then the M62 Shot Round.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Decent 75 mm gun with APCR.
• Sloped, uninterrupted front armour that can still bounce incoming shells.
• Pintle mounted HMG provides anti-aircraft defense.
• Good gun depression.
• Lowest requirement for camouflage unlock from all Sherman variants.
• Access to additional armour.
• Very mobile once accelerated to a certain speed.
• Thick gun mantlet, small turret also makes it a hard target.
• Very versatile on the battlefield.

Cons:

• 75 mm gun is no longer a "good" gun at the rank, just "decent".
• High profile makes it an easy target.
• Weak side armour.
• Thin armour, front will only work if angled very well.
• A good T-34 or Panzer IV will send the M4A2 back to the garage.
• Ammunition is highlighted by bulges in the side armour.
• Fuel tanks and ammunition stored in upper hull; penetrating shots are prone to setting these off.

History

Development

The Battle of France in 1940 proved to America that their current tank arsenal would not be able to withstand a German assault. The only tanks in their inventory at that time was the M2 Light Tanks and the M2 Medium Tank, both are inadequate against the German Panzer IIIs and the Panzer IVs. The US Army, in response, ordered for a tank armed with a 75 mm gun. While a 75 mm gun was available for use, a turret able to mount the gun was not. So while the turret and tank design underwent development, the 75 mm would be mounted on the stopgap design, the M3 Lee tank in a sponson mount. This interim design put the 75 mm on a lower and limited traverse mount that restricted its firing angle, but it did give the Allies a tank with the gun, so it was issued by the thousands until a better design could be made.

During the M3's development, the designs of the 75 mm armed vehicle were being drawn up and submitted by the Ordnance Department. Specifications on the tank design were strict in order to maximize logistical support. Restrictions were made on the tank's height, width, and weight in order to make it able to be transported over bridges, roads, railroads, and on naval ships. These specifications would help the Army by making the tank be very flexible on strategic, logistical, and tactical grounds. On April 1941, the Armored Force Board chose the simplest of the designs, which was a redesigned M3 hull and chassis with a turret mounting the 75 mm gun designated the T6, completed in September 1941. This tank would then designated the Medium Tank M4 in American service. The tank would eventually become the most used Allied tank during World War II as it was lended out by the thousands in the Lend-Lease program to the Allied countries. The British called the M4 the "Sherman", which coined into the tank's name M4 Sherman that it would be known as in history. The production for the Shermans began on October 1941 and would continue to be produced until the end of the war in 1945 with around 50,000 units produced, making it the second most-produced tank in World War II before the T-34 tank.

Design

Many variants of the Shermans were produced, but they all followed a similar layout. The driver and bow gunner sat in the front driving compartment, the fighting compartment in the middle housed the turret its three crew member, and in the back was the engine compartment. The Sherman used many features present in previous American tank designs, the vertical volute suspension system (VVSS) and radial engine from the M2 Light Tanks, and the sloping armour of the M2 Medium Tanks. This became a contributing factor on the Sherman's reliability on the field, as most of the design flaws were ironed out with the previous tank designs. The tank mounted the 75 mm M3 gun, giving the tank very good AP and HE capabilities. The Sherman's turret traverse speed was very fast, able to traverse a full 360 degrees in only 15 seconds, which is considerably faster than the traverse speed on most German tanks. Another unique feature on the Sherman was the installation of a gyroscopic stabilizer on the gun and sight, making the Sherman one of the first produced tanks to incorporate those features. While the stabilization was only done for the vertical plane, it kept the gun stable enough to be able to shoot on the move effectively, with a study showing a 70 % hit probability on an enemy 300 to 1,200 yards away when moving at a speed of 15 mph. However, this feature was controversial among the crew and experiences with it vary.

The M4A2 Sherman model ran on a GM 6046 diesel engine. The Sherman model in-game is one of the later production models, featuring improvements on the turret and hull design to maximize armour thickness. The tank's hull was welded, with the earlier models having the front armour plate placed on a 56 degree sloping angle. However, this design had protrusions on the driver and assistant driver hatches that created "shot traps" as these protrusions gave less protection than the frontal armour plate. This was fixed on later models with a 47 degree angling instead, which eliminated the shot traps and made the frontal armour more effective than before. Up to 8,053 M4A2s were produced from April 1942 to May 1944, out of the 49,234 Sherman units produced in the war. Throughout the war, the M4A2 was mostly given out to other allies or used by the US Marine Corps as the US Army doctrine called for the use of only gasoline-engine Shermans such as the M4A3.

Combat usage

European theater

The Shermans first saw combat in the North African Campaign in the Second Battle of El Alamein on October 1942 in the hands of the British. It was much quicker to reinforce the British armoured divisions with the more than 300 Shermans sent to North Africa than it was to create new American ones. It proved much better than the German Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, able to eliminate them at distances more than 2,000 yards away. The Americans received their first Shermans in the next month in Operation Torch. However better the Shermans were to the German tanks at the time, the Allied armoured units still suffered casualties against the German tanks and anti-tank guns, most notably in the Battle of Kasserine Pass. In Italy, the Shermans proved much more mobile than the German Panzers, able to travel cross-country on the hilly terrain with ease. However, it was at this stage that the Sherman's shortcoming began to take face in the advent of the newer German tanks, the Tiger Is and Panthers. These two tanks featured armour that proved impenetrable when fired at the front, and with guns that could take out the Shermans from farther than the Sherman's effective combat range. The Shermans have to hit the side of these tanks for a penetration, and at ranges that were considered suicidal. Although programs were initiated to up-gun the Sherman with a 76 mm gun, American leaders determine that the Panther and Tigers would not be produced in large quantities and were not as great as a threat as these two vehicles could still be destroyed by the 75 mm gun and standard anti-tank equipments.

During the Invasion of France, it was clear that the Sherman's current build with a 75 mm gun was no longer going to cut it against the German armoured forces. While the Sherman was adequate against what little Panzer III and IVs the Germans have left and against infantry and fortifications with the 75 mm gun, the Panthers and Tigers were in much large quantity than expected, and proved better in armour and firepower to the Shermans. Though in the bocage country of France, the Allies lost more tanks to hidden anti-tank guns and infantry weapons than to tanks. Despite these losses, the mass production of M4 Sherman back in the United States ensured that enough tanks were available for the Allied Forces as they spearhead through France, plus the lack of any other capable tanks meant they had to use the Shermans for the time being. The large quantities of Shermans produced during the war gave the Allied armoured units a major advantage of being fully equipped as the German panzer divisions were rarely in full strength, with some US infantry divisions having more tracked vehicles than some of the panzer divisions. Due to the high attrition rates, tank crews sometimes add improvised armour onto their Shermans in the form of sandbags and logs in hopes of increased survival, but these were determined to be ineffective from evaluations. A more effective method was to have metal armour welded on in improvisation, and an official project was made for such "assault tanks" that ended with the M4A3E2 "Jumbos" with 250 made for the Battle of Normandy. During the Battle of Normandy, the first 76 mm Shermans on the M4A1 were put into combat in Operation Cobra in limited numbers. The Allies continued to primarily use the 75 mm Shermans until the Battle of the Bulge in Winter 1944, when the commanders request only 76 mm Shermans to be brought into Europe as the battle showed the intense armour disparity with the German's large numbers of Panthers and Tiger II's. While new units arriving in Europe were armed exclusively with 76 mm armed-Shermans, the veteran units kept the 75 mm Shermans, to which it continued to do well against softer targets with little threat from German armour due to their extreme declining numbers.

Pacific theater

The M4 Sherman's importance in the Pacific theater was less than that of the European theater due to the different tactical doctrine established from the amphibious nature of combat. Only about 20 tank battalions fielded by the US Army were sent to support the Pacific theater of operations, compared to the total 16 armoured Divisions and 70 tank battalions they have in service. The low priority in tanks were due to the following reasons. Firstly, the jungle terrain on most of the islands fought for against the Japanese were unsuitable for the deployment of large-scale armoured units, relegating armour support to light tanks such as the M3 Stuarts. Secondly, the Japanese forces' armoured units were rather inferior to the American tank forces by 1943. While the Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go tank was comparable to the M2A4 Light Tank, the Shermans out gun these tanks by a large margin. Such a large margin that the tank crew prefer to use high-explosive shots against the Japanese tank than regular armour-piercing as the AP rounds would penetrate straight through without causing much damage in the interior of the tank. The Japanese developed the Type 3 Chi-Nu and the Type 4 Chi-To to fight back the Shermans, but these two never saw combat as they were kept at the Japanese Homeland for the defense against the Allied invasion.

The Shermans, when deployed, were superior to most of the Japanese anti-tank equipment and often were essential to some of the Marine's advances on some of the island assaults. In 1945, the equipping of flamethrower Shermans known as M4A3R3, nicknamed "Zippos", were a significant boost to the infantry's firepower in having a very long range of fire compared to the standard infantry-modeled flamethrowers with the benefit of being in an armoured vehicle. The Zippos are able to flush out enemy combatants from within heavily fortified bunkers and caves that would be dangerous for even flamethrower infantry to take out. The Japanese solution against the Shermans, other than with their 47 mm anti-tank guns, were often suicidal tactics ranging from placing satchel charges right onto the tank, using pole-mounted anti-tank mines to reach and destroy the tank, or even simply throwing oneself underneath a tank with a mine or other explosive and triggering it manually.

Lend-lease

The Sherman tank was given out in large numbers to American Allies during World War II under the Lend-Lease policy. While America retained about 20,361 Shermans in the Army and Marine Corps, 17,184 went to Britain (about 34% of Shermans produced and 78% of Shermans given out) and the Soviet Union obtained 4,102 Shermans. China obtained 812 Shermans, Brazil with 53, and New Zealand and Australia for 153 Shermans total. Other countries using the Shermans were Poland, Free France, and Czechoslovakia. The British deployed the Sherman among their armoured squandrons in such a large number to become the standard tank of their armoured forces. The increased threat of German tanks in the European theater also provoked the British to upgun the M4 Sherman with a more capable gun, resulting in the Firefly.

Post-war

After the war, the Shermans continued serving America and its allies as the M4A3E8 with a new suspension and 76 mm gun. The M26 Pershing that was introduced late in World War II was phased out for the Shermans due to its unreliability, and the Sherman stayed until the M46 Patton was introduced. After being phased out of American service, many other countries still used the Sherman as their main tank, mainly Israel where they up-gun the tank with the much powerful post-war French 75 mm and 105 mm gun as the M-50 and M-51 respectively (nicknamed "Super Shermans"). These proved successful as they were able to fight against the Soviet-supplied T-54 tanks and T-34-85s in Middle East service, proving the Sherman as a successful and adaptable design for many years to come.

Media

Skins and camouflages for the M4A2 from http://live.warthunder.com

Read also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example,

• reference to the series of the vehicles;
• links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.

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Sources

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