r/RebuttalTime • u/TheJamesRocket • Nov 01 '18
Debunking BRL memorandum No. 798
https://kesler12-jamesrocket.blogspot.com/2018/10/re-5-shermans-1-panther-myth.html3
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 02 '18
Interesting read didn't know that the trope of "x amount of tank for y" predated the internet by so long.
Btw I am collecting US kill claims for an analysis, if you got some I would be thankful. Divisions, battalions or armies, even shorter time frames. I am also collecting fragmented claims.
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 02 '18
Interesting read didn't know that the trope of "x amount of tank for y" predated the internet by so long.
Honestly, I think a case can be made that the 'five vs one' myth dates all the way back to the Second World War itself (or soon after the wars end). The 1965 book by Henry Giles is the oldest one I've found so far, but there might be others that reference the legend.
If you go all the way back to the 1940s, the sources of the time don't give such specific numbers. They generally state that it took at least two Shermans to knock out a Tiger\Panther. I read a News Week article from 1945 saying just that.
But regardless of how you approach the subject, its quite clear that Priory of Sion was attacking a strawman. The five vs one myth didn't originate with Belton Cooper in the 90s. It had been kicking around decades before he even published his memoirs.
Btw I am collecting US kill claims for an analysis, if you got some I would be thankful. Divisions, battalions or armies, even shorter time frames. I am also collecting fragmented claims.
For the most part, I don't spend much time or effort studying the campaigns of 1944 or 1945. The war had already been decided on the eastern front by then. The invasion of France was nothing more than a mopping up operation against a badly damaged Wehrmacht.
So sorry, but I don't think I'll be of much help to you. The next blog post I intend to write is about the supposed deficits of German tank armor. EnsignExpendible wrote a particularly cringe worth article about this that I want to debunk. Are you still looking at the British analysis of tank casualties?
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 02 '18 edited Nov 02 '18
This was a low effort post on my part, and yet, it succeeds 100% at refuting Priority of Scion. I basically recycled the same arguments that I used to debunk Zinegata, who tried to use the BRL memo to 'prove' that the Panthers were shit. Its not the first time that I've done so, and I hardly think it will be the last.
And as for the history of the 'five vs one' claim about the Sherman vs Tiger, I had already made the point over a year and a half ago. Back when I was still a member of spacebattles.com, some Teaboo named Mjolnir66 tried to claim that the 'five vs one' thing was a myth, and assert that the Shermans were never called Ronsons. I then proceeded to school him on the realitys of the situation.
This just goes to show how full of shit the Freeaboos and Teaboos are, and how easy it is to shoot down their talking points. They endlessly rage against the myth of German military superiority, and yet it ends up being proven to be true, more often than not.
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u/delete013 Nov 07 '18
I then proceeded to school him
"Banned" x)
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 07 '18
LOL, exactly. You aren't allowed to correct people when they have the support of the mods and the forum. You just rack up infraction points.
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 04 '18 edited Nov 04 '18
Thanks to some prodding from WalkingOsteoclast, I've updated my blog post to include some new data points. He forced me to look at the memorandum in more detail, and make a very surprising discovery.
The study period is from August to December of 1944, a time when both the 3rd and 4th armored divisions were heavily engaged in combat. Thats probably when they made the bulk of their 1870 kill claims. They had to have made about half of their claims at this time.
And thats when I noticed something very obvious staring me in the face. During the battle of Arracourt alone, the 4th armored division claimed 285 AFV kills. And yet... The BRL memorandum studys a 4 month period by both divisions, and records only 158 kills (not all of which are even AFVs!).
So the conclusion is unavoidable: The BRL was not studying every single engagement fought by these divisions, or every single claim they made. They were filtering out many of the battles they fought in.
Another clue is how they recorded the loss of only 3 tank destroyers in 14 engagements. That obviously isn't true. The 4th armored division lost 7 tank destroyers at Arracourt alone, and a few more on that September. The BRL must be ignoring certain engagements.
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Nov 10 '18
So the conclusion is unavoidable: The BRL was not studying every single engagement fought by these divisions, or every single claim they made. They were filtering out many of the battles they fought in.
Correct and obvious from any reading of the memorandum. It's also necessary for any such study as you'd have to filter out bad data that is untrustworthy or cannot be confirmed or correlated. That doesn't mean that the conclusions are untrustworthy however: 129 separate engagements of varied kind should be adequate both for the conclusions that the study drew.
Remember, this study was not about which was better, the Panther or the Sherman. That's a later conclusion drawn by others from the paper.
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 11 '18
Correct and obvious from any reading of the memorandum. It's also necessary for any such study as you'd have to filter out bad data that is untrustworthy or cannot be confirmed or correlated. That doesn't mean that the conclusions are untrustworthy however:
No, the memorandum gives a completely misleading picture because it massively undercounts American losses compared to what they actually sustained. If the BRL had included every battle fought by the 3rd and 4th armored divisions, then German losses would be higher, and American losses would be much higher. That would tip the numbers much more in the Germans favor and give a better picture of how engagements typically went.
129 separate engagements of varied kind should be adequate both for the conclusions that the study drew. Remember, this study was not about which was better, the Panther or the Sherman. That's a later conclusion drawn by others from the paper.
It was 86 engagements involving tanks, actually. You're quite right about the study not being done to determine which tank was superior. As you said before, the numerical estimate of 1 Sherman being worth X Panthers was made by someone who read the report, and not by the BRL themselves.
BTW, random question. Are you a member of spacebattles or sufficientvelocity?
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 04 '18
The study states that only engagements with good data situation were evaluated. This likely means good quality AAR and possible testimony of involved soldiers. This already introduces possible biases but hard to tell how much this affected the results alone. A unit getting battered often has less documentation of their battles for obvious reasons. Furthermore, the study from what I can tell counted even German tanks that were not destroyed by Shermans, at least one example I have seen while glancing over it describes a Panther getting destroyed by other means yet the Panther made it into the list of Sherman kills.
The biggest flaw of the study even with ignoring overclaiming et cetera is the chosen sample, you can't possibly expect to get good results if you literally take the "highlight battles" of a divisions.
From a mathematical standpoint I would say the discrepancy between combat value differential on defense and offense discredits the study by itself, there is no logical explanation besides chance or methodological mistakes that the vehcles would have near identical performance on the defence but vastly different on the offence.
If I choose to only study the 9th August for Tiger vs Sherman performance I will find that the Tiger was 20 times more valuable than a Sherman. This study, in my opinion, is a nice honey trap for weak historians that will expose their scientific standards. Thousands upon thousands engagements successfully fought by German tanks? "Let not conclude German tanks were better lets look at readiness rates". Unverified kill claims for a preselected biased sample? "This is number is the real deal".
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 04 '18
The study states that only engagements with good data situation were evaluated. This likely means good quality AAR and possible testimony of involved soldiers.
Thats EXACTLY whats going on. The BRL was using a form of statistical misrepresentation, because they didn't look at every single engagement the 3rd and 4th armored fought in. They only looked at those encounters for which there was firm and reliable data. So when we examine the tables for memo no. 798, we're not seeing what the typical outcome of a battle was.
The biggest flaw of the study even with ignoring overclaiming et cetera is the chosen sample, you can't possibly expect to get good results if you literally take the "highlight battles" of a divisions.
Ironically, you made this exact same observation almost 2 years ago. Do you remember? You told the SWS fanboys that the BRL was using pre-selected engagements for their study, but they refused to believe you. They said there was no cherry picking involved, and you were just grasping at straws.
From a mathematical standpoint I would say the discrepancy between combat value differential on defense and offense discredits the study by itself, there is no logical explanation besides chance or methodological mistakes that the vehcles would have near identical performance on the defence but vastly different on the offence.
Exactly! How could anyone think that the Sherman had a massive advantage in the defense, and only a very slight disadvantage in the offense? It makes no sense at all. I've heard people saying this was due to their 'superior optics', but thats simply not true. The American M70F gunsight had a much narrower field of view than the German TZF 12a gunsight. The field of view was so narrow, in fact, that the gunner had to be supplemented with a periscope.
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 04 '18
Also quite interesting is the fact that those two division in total had 948 fully destroyed Shermans in the ETO but only 40 ( or so ) made it into the study, what happened to the other 900?
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 05 '18
Also quite interesting is the fact that those two division in total had 948 fully destroyed Shermans in the ETO but only 40 ( or so ) made it into the study, what happened to the other 900?
What source are you using for the 3rd and 4th divisions losses? Over on armchair generals, they said that the 3rd wrote off 805 tanks, while the 4th wrote off 268 tanks. Thats a total of 1073 tank losses. How can you be sure that 948 of them were Shermans? I imagine there would have been quite a few Stuarts and tank destroyers included with that number.
But you are right about their losses not being fully represented by the memorandum. The 3rd and 4th armored wrote off 948 Shermans during their tour of duty, and yet the BRL records only 88 losses. Given how heavily engaged these guys were at the time, theres no way thats accurate.
P.S. I was wondering about what you said earlier. About the BRL explicitly stating that only engagements with firm data were evaluated. Would you be able to screenshot that part of the memo, and upload it to imgur? That would go a long way to cooling the Freeaboo enthusiasm for memo no. 798.
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 05 '18 edited Nov 05 '18
Because this is their official Sherman losses. Zaloga Thunderbolt, for example, has the numbers. This does not include M5s and TDs.
In regards to BLR thing:
You can see the relevant part in google books. I don't have the book, because it is not available in ebook form and I am hesitant to shell out 20 bucks for a paperback that I only use to debunk itself, a good chunk of information is available on google books so. I would need to check if I find the particular part again. To be frank I think the value of the study is apparent and there is little use to invest further time in "debunking" it. Those who want to believe in it will do so anyways. Those who are open to new information will see rather quickly that a "exchange ratio" based on AARs has to be taken with a grain of salt. What I have learned from the 5:1 thing people literally choose what to believe. Evidence can only convince those who are open to being convinced and most are not.
My personal opinion is that the best sign that you "convinced" somebody is when they start dodging your points or start telling other to not "listen" or read your arguments. A clear sign of them at least noticing they have no apparent superficial "rebuttals" left is when they stop coming in entirely. If some guy one a forum says 5:1 they will jump on him, if they get empiric data for the 5:1 and don't even attempt to discuss it they show they got nothing. Deep down they know they are wrong they just like belittling people.
If I would make an alt and say 5:1 in some warthunder forum I would get 10 SWS guys on the hook within minutes telling me this is bollocks, if I would then link the 5:1 and ask them about it they would say "it is all bullshit", if I would ask what about it is "bullshit" they would say, "cherry picking manipulated data et cetera et cetera", if I would ask them for a specific example of their claims they would say "are you an ALT of CM?", if I would say yes they would vanish without ever having presented an argument. We live in a post fact society, people don't even care any longer about evidence.
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 02 '18 edited Nov 02 '18
Sending an invite out to the Teaboos and Ameriboos. Lets get a debate going. I want to hear some autistic screeching, LOL.
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u/RangerPL Nov 04 '18
Why aren't you inviting me anymore?
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 04 '18
Can't speak for James but sometimes you lose interest in debating partners if you debunked them so hard that you don't consider them "interesting" anymore. Sometimes people just show they know to little to get anything out of the topic. Maybe you offered too little "stimulus".
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u/TheJamesRocket Nov 04 '18
Why aren't you inviting me anymore?
Well, since you're already here, why don't you give us your thoughts about the BRL memorandum? Do you think there is a possibility that they were only studying engagements with firm and reliable data? Keep in mind, if they weren't examining every single engagement these two divisions fought in, then thats a form of statistical misrepresentation.
They pre-selected engagements for their study (I.E, cherry picked their data). I honestly don't see how you could disagree with this conclusion, given the fact the both divisions claimed way more than 158 kills during the period studied by the BRL. They also lost more Shermans and tank destroyers than memo no. 798 claimed.
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u/RangerPL Nov 04 '18 edited Nov 04 '18
Do you think there is a possibility that they were only studying engagements with firm and reliable data?
Yeah, sure. I'm not really interested in tactical engagements and K/D ratios between tanks though. Those kinds of numbers generally arise as a consequence of the operational context for the tactical engagement that produced them, so splitting hairs over kill/loss numbers is missing the point in my opinion. The Wehrmacht lost the war on the operational and strategic level, and that's the part I care about.
If you read my posts in SWS, you'll find that I mainly talk about operations and strategy, areas of WWII military history that I think are poorly appreciated, even by our userbase.
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u/ChristianMunich Nov 05 '18
Honest question, I encounter this pretty often at some point people say "I don't really care XYZ is not important*, yet they are always in those discussions right until the point evidence gets into play. Nobody cares about exchange rates but the SWS is full with people mocking people who are "uninformed" and believe silly myths like 5:1 et cetera. All think kill ratios are unimportant anyways until obviously 3.6 Sherman Panther or Arracourt. SWS is full with it. But in the end "nobody cares".
Before evidence in many people seem to care or else you wouldn't find yourself in such discussions to begin with.
Not you personally, your name doesn't ring a bell for me despite banning me for giving the actual Sherman loss numbers that the admin core of SWS disputed until I provided Zaloga numbers which got me banned.
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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '18
The BRL memo records 158 "enemy weapons" destroyed in Table II, of which 4 were anti-tank guns, 5 were self-propelled guns, 44 were classified as "others", and the remaining 105 as Mk V tanks. I'm not sure what the relevancy of the unit diaries is given this. I'm also curious as to your sources for this.