Y2K: An ordinary gasoline-powered Sherman with the short 75 could turn a PzKpfw III into DOLL-RAGS with one round...... and do it far enough away that the 5cm on the III would be rather on the ineffective side.
As far as a Panther is concerned, they were a whole new generation in AFVs, designed and built particularly to turn large numbers of T-34s into scrap...... which they did.
Toward the end of the War, the Sherman got the Diesel motors and the British 17-pdr gun. Once they had that, along with that super-reliable chassis, they were a beast to behold. They could do a side-shot on Panther or Tiger for a kill: just don't try one dead-on. Any Sherman was just about 50% faster than PzKpfw III or IV, Panther or any of the Tiger series; you could get 35 to 37 mph out of one, so not much different than a T-34.
That 76.2mm HV gun had the same performance as a .30-'06 (2750 ft/sec MV). One million nine hundred and eighty thousand foot-pounds of ME is nothing to sneeze at.
In the '60s, we still had Shermans, the late version as above. We called them Fireflies and, when Kennedy was making ugly noises at Khrushchev, we were supposed to be getting ready to use our Fireflies to take on T-55s. Now THAT would have been right ugly, but it's like a street race: you run what you brung. Problem these days, as then, is that our Gummint has purchased very little to bring to the races....... and the Fireflies are all gone for target practice and the 6-71s are running mud pumps on the drilling rigs.
Sic transit gloria whatever....
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