List of British Sherman serial numbers

[Seahawk]

Thanks to people like Joe Baugher, Dana Bell and the Detail & Scale crew, one can correlate to a tolerable degree of accuracy the serial number of British lend-lease aircraft with their US Bureau Numbers and from that work back through the US number batches arrive at the modification state of individual airframes (I've done it mostly with Hellcats and Corsairs).  Has anyone done any similar work to correlate British Tank (T-xxxxx) numbers with US serial numbers?  I would like at least to be able to identify from British serial roughly when the tank was built and by whom: any more on build features of the tank would be a bonus.

 

I've had a look at the excellent Sherman minutia website and found various other sites where, for example, people were compiling list of serials of tanks used by the US 7th Armored Div.  However nothing on the link to UK serials.  Just too difficult?

[John Tapsell]

I'm not sure you can cross-reference British census numbers to US serials as I'm not convinced US tanks delivered to the UK were allocated a US serial in the first place (could be wrong on that). 

 

However, the 'blocks' of census numbers issued for British armoured vehicles are listed in Dick Taylor's excellent Warpaint Vol.1.

 

Mushroom Model Publications (2008)

ISBN:978-8389450630

 

[Seahawk]

Thanks for humouring my rather anoraky query.

 

According to the Sherman minutia website the US Ordnance serial is stamped or cast into/onto the tank in various locations:

 

http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/data/sherman_serials.html

 

Thanks for the pointer toward the Dick Taylor book but that only tells me whether a given UK War Dept census number is valid for a Sherman as opposed to something else.  I was hoping for something that might tell me (or enable me to work out) who built a given tank and roughly when, so that I could have a sporting stab at guessing its appearance accurately.  I'm particularly interested in "small hatch" M4A2 Sherman IIIs at the moment, which were built by 5 different manufacturers, each with their own evolutionary path.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Seahawk

[EwenS]

There is another problem to bear in mind. Looking at the M4A4 Sherman V as an example, Britain eventually received nearly 7200 of the total of 7499 built. But although production stopped in Nov 1943 deliveries to Britain continued into early 1945. Approx 1600-1700 were received in this period. Most of these tanks must have been amongst those remanufactured by Chrysler  between Nov 1943 and Aug 1944 from those tanks originally supplied to the US Army and used for training purposes only in the US. So I would expect that the order they came off the production line originally was not the order they were remanufactured in and therefore any correlation with British census numbers would be all over the place.

 

The same thing happened with the M4A2 deliveries in the period, which were all small hatch, production of which ceased in late 1943. From memory there were approx 530 such tanks.

 

I did some research on overall production numbers and where they went a couple of years ago. Unfortunately what I found about lend lease deliveries will only take you back to models. I couldn’t find a breakdown of what factories producing M4A2s sent how many to Britain. M4A4 were easy as the entire production run came from the same factory.

 

Over 5000 M4A2 from the early production runs came to Britain eventually.

 

So it’s possible that tanks with late British census numbers have features from early in the production runs plus differing degrees of modifications acquired at different times in their lives.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by EwenS

[EwenS]

On a more positive note, have you had a look over on the ww2talk forum? Some of the guys there have related census numbers to War Dept contracts. It won’t take you back to the US serials but might offer some clues. They cover both British and Lend Lease contracts.

 

http://ww2talk.com/index.php?forums/vehicle-names-and-census-numbers.133/

 

You will I’ll need to register to access their spreadsheets.

[Seahawk]

1 hour ago, EwenS said:

There is another problem to bear in mind. Looking at the M4A4 Sherman V as an example, Britain eventually received nearly 7200 of the total of 7499 built. But although production stopped in Nov 1943 deliveries to Britain continued into early 1945. Approx 1600-1700 were received in this period. Most of these tanks must have been amongst those remanufactured by Chrysler  between Nov 1943 and Aug 1944 from those tanks originally supplied to the US Army and used for training purposes only in the US. So I would expect that the order they came off the production line originally was not the order they were remanufactured in and therefore any correlation with British census numbers would be all over the place.

 

The same thing happened with the M4A2 deliveries in the period, which were all small hatch, production of which ceased in late 1943. From memory there were approx 530 such tanks.

 

I did some research on overall production numbers and where they went a couple of years ago. Unfortunately what I found about lend lease deliveries will only take you back to models. I couldn’t find a breakdown of what factories producing M4A2s sent how many to Britain. M4A4 were easy as the entire production run came from the same factory.

 

Over 5000 M4A2 from the early production runs came to Britain eventually.

 

So it’s possible that tanks with late British census numbers have features from early in the production runs plus differing degrees of modifications acquired at different times in their lives.

Which raises an interesting point: at what stage did US-manufactured tanks acquire their British T serial numbers. at birth in the factory or when received into British hands at, say, an ordnance depot?  Either way, in the cae of the remanufactured M4A4s you end up with early tanks with late features.  Another complication is that, as someone, I think @Mike Starmer, observed in another thread, tanks could sit in storage in preparation for D-Day for months, during which time they might or might not undergo all manner of upgrades: apparently an issue of Sherman IIIs to 13th/18th Hussars before D-Day included all 3 types of small hatch glacis plates.

 

It's probably just too difficult, otherwise someone would have done it.

1 hour ago, EwenS said:

On a more positive note, have you had a look over on the ww2talk forum? Some of the guys there have related census numbers to War Dept contracts. It won’t take you back to the US serials but might offer some clues. They cover both British and Lend Lease contracts.

 

http://ww2talk.com/index.php?forums/vehicle-names-and-census-numbers.133/

Thnaks for this steer which I'll follow up once I'm registered.

[EwenS]

I believe that they would have mostly been applied at the factory. Why?

 

Firstly monthly allocations of tanks to the US and Britain were agreed in advance by the relevant lend lease committee. For example in 1944 Britain was allocated 150 M4A1 (76mm) in each of the months Aug -Oct 1944 (Sherman Minutia site). So it would be logical to differentiate between each country’s vehicles as the left the factory.

 

Secondly there is photographic evidence for this. From Sherman Minutia site take a look at pictures of Grants being unloaded in the U.K. and M4A4 on rail cars at a US port prior to shipping with T numbers already painted on. Also on the Lima M4A1 pages very early M4A1 & A2 being unloaded in Egypt.

 

But as with everything else lend leased from the US, there are almost certainly bound to be exceptions. For example possibly the 80 Sherman M4A1 DD transferred to Britain just before D-Day. 

[Kingsman]

Deliveries to customers were allocated at the US Ordnance Tank Depots such as those at Lima and Chester.  So there is no way of knowing which plants supplied which customers as the plants themselves did not know.  Ordnance numbers were allocated at factories, so knowing that number would give a factory clue.  Ordnance records do not link deliveries in to deliveries out.  M4s of each sub-type from different factories were considered to be interchangeable so mixed outward deliveries from depots would have been common.

 

Having said this, there are 2 exceptions that I can think of.  USMC insisted on Fisher-built M4A2s  The first 500 M4A1 from Lima Locomotive were a British cash contract, not Lend-Lease.  They would not have received Ordnance numbers.  At some pont that contract was folded into Lend-Lease.  The first Shermans ordered from Pressed Steel Car were British contract too, but US Govt took over PSCs Hegewisch factory (after UK had paid for its refurbishment).  SEE BELOW.

 

T numbers were indeed allocated at the Ordnance Tank Depots.  Each hosted a representative of the British Tank Purchasing Commission, who allocated the numbers from blocks they were sent.

 

The UK was sent 5,061 M4A2s.  5,041 of these were small-hatch 75mm and 20 were 76mm large hatch, 5 of those with HVSS.  We received tanks from all M4A2 producers with the probable exception of Baldwin Locomotive, who only built 12 M4A2s.

 

Fisher built about 4 times more A2s than all the other producers combined, so Commonwealth M4A2s are more likely to be Fishers than anything else.  From the front the square driver's hoods are the recognition point.  ALCO, Federal and Pullman Standard tanks are hard to tell apart: little details.

 

Correction to the struck-out section above.  While Lima owed the UK 400 Shermans from an un-fulfilled Grant contract, that contract was folded into Lend-Lease after 28 tanks were produced and the UK probably only paid for 1 of them.  Shermans ordered from PSC were all folded into Lend-Lease, and while the UK had paid PSC to regenerate their derelict Hegewisch factory for tank production before that we did receive free tanks well beyond the value of that investment.

Edited March 11 by Kingsman
Correction