My own experience with SPWW2 is that it’s rare for tank crew members to survive unharmed if their tank is knocked out.
Two unscientific examples of my last two battles, where I coincidently had 10 tanks destroyed in each battle:
In the first battle, out of 10 tanks, 2 tanks had at least 1 crewman escape the tank unharmed. One of those crews were then knocked out, the other crew had 1 man survive unharmed. Out of 50 men only 1 crew member survived unharmed.
In the second battle, out of 10 tanks knocked out, 4 tanks had at least 1 man get out unharmed. Which is higher than average in my experience. But two of those crews became casualties. The other two crews only had 1 man unharmed in each. Out of 50 men only 2 crewmen survived unharmed.
So out of 100 crew men, only 3 were not killed or wounded as a result of their tanks being knocked out.
Is it possible that the current tank crew casualty rate - resulting from a knocked out tank - is a little high?
I did a little research and found some data that includes:
1.
A British postwar study done in 1950 looked at 3710 tanks lost in Europe (35%) Italy (18%) and North Africa (47%).
The study shows that when a tank was lost to an Anti-Tank gun, the crew suffered an average of 40% casualties (18% killed, 22% wounded).
When a tank was lost to another tank the casualty rate goes up to 46% (about 22% killed, to 24% wounded)
Infantry AT weapons caused 38% casualties, and mines 22% casualties (only 5% killed 17% wounded by mines).
Apparently these figures even include crew who were lost after bailing out.
2.
A Sample of 506 tanks lost (destroyed and damaged) in the US First Army from 6 June to 30 November 1944.
Tank loss due to:
Mines 18.2%
AT/Tank guns 46.2%
Artillery 7.3%
Mortars 1.8%
Infantry AT 13.6%
Other 12.9%
From this sample it was determined that 39.7% burned (all were M4 and M5)
57.5% of those lost were repairable.
In 104 cases there were no casualties incurred in the loss (20.6%)
For 50 the number of casualties was unknown (9.9%)
In the remaining 352 cases, there were a total of 129 KIA (0.37 per loss)
and 280 WIA (0.80 per loss) for a total of 409 casualties in 352 losses (1.16 per loss)
3.
The crew casualty rates among US formations in the ETO averaged something on the order of one dead, and one injured, per Sherman destroyed.
That count was across many formations over quite a bit of time. It was not a count conducted from the bottom-up, reviewing details tank-by-tank, but rather by accumulating casualty data across units, and dividing by tank loss data. So it includes crew casualties received both in and out of the tanks, from sniper fire, from mortar and artillery attacks, from mines, etc. (And as most tankers would probably guess, a large portion of casualties to crew occured outside of the tanks.)
4.
A survey of casualties amongst armoured units in North West Europe by Captain H.B. Wright RAMC & Captain R.D. Harkness RAMC WO 205/1165 noted that 38% of tank crew casualties were fatalities (note this applies to all British tank types in aggregate and not just Shermans) and the majority were caused by AP shot, which typically caused 1.4 casualties per tank. 25% of all casualties were burns.
Interesting stuff…
Don,
This post has no ulterior motive. It is not in any way intended to question the quality and the excellence of your work. It is merely my observations, and reporting what I found on the web. I have a genuine interest in real crew survival rates and the accuracy of SPWW2. It may be that SP crew survival should be adjusted, but perhaps not. But don’t go off on some rant. Keep the pin in the grenade buddy
Tank Crew Casualties
Linear Mode
