Talk:Lend-Lease Sherman tanks

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Contents 1 Article name and first photograph 2 Grizzlied veteran 3 Ram 4 Lend Lease to Canada?

[edit] Article name and first photograph

Is it really a good idea to show a Canadian Sherman in an article on Lend-Lease. Canada didn't receive Lend-Lease aid in World War Two.--Ggbroad 11:56, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Reading further, I understand that the article wants to be clear about Allied variants of the Sherman, but surely it's confusing to include, for instance, Canadian Grizzlies - as these were, once again, not received under Lend-Lease. --Ggbroad 12:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello. You could change the article name to "Allied Shermans" but someone could complain that the United States is not covered here even though it was an Ally. Canada not being an official, direct recipient of Lend-Lease does not address the issue of Canada's use or non-use of Lend-Lease tanks so it would be nice if we had documents or sources for the claim that Canadian troops never used a single Lend-Lease Sherman. Thank you.Wikist 20:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the title is just not right. Canada was a major Lend-Lease provider of Valentine tanks and universal carriers, but I don't know if any Canadian Shermans were shipped out.

How about moving this to Sherman tanks in foreign service during World War II? —Michael Z. 2006-11-22 18:04 Z

A Britisher would consider the US Army as "foreign service." Non-US WWII Sherman tanks might be OK with the current title (a good search phrase) as a redirect.

However, Canada did not give "Lend Lease" but if you count Canada's mutual aid program to Britain as "lend lease" then you understand how someone might call (and search for) US mutual aid to Canada as "lend lease" (i.e. technically a different program but in the spirit of Lend Lease's loose definition). Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, I am hesitant to repeat the common claim that Canada never used any Lend Lease because I have no confirmation that Canadian units did not receive actual Lend Lease Shermans from British depots or British units as a result of UK-Canadian mutual aid (US to UK to Canada).Wikist 18:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: The Grizzly was not a Lend-Lease tank, and should not be listed as such. They were built entirely in Canada, and no Grizzlies were subject to Lend-Lease. In fact, only four (4) M4 medium tanks were supplied to Canada by the U.S. under Lend-Lease during the entire war!

14thArmored 1000 Hours, 26 November 2006

Hello. We know the Grizzly was not Lend Lease and the article does not list Grizzly as a Lend Lease tank. See Ggbroad's posts above, see the article's first paragraph, and see the article's Canada section. The article is designed like many other Wikipedia articles (e.g. the M7 is in 3-inch M1918 gun even though the M7 is not an M1918) but we are entertaining new title suggestions. Thank you.Wikist 13:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The title of the article includes the words "Lend-Lease." For this rather obvious reason, the Grizzly should not be mentioned in the article. The four Shermans I mentioned above should be referenced. Source: "Lend-Lease Shipments of WWII", War Department. 14thArmored 0900 Hours, 29 November 2006

[edit] Grizzlied veteran

Maybe I'm being fussy, but I changed Grizzlies to Grizzlys. They aren't bears, so the "-ys" is correct. Trekphiler 15:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

That's just a misspelling. The plural of grizzly is grizzlies, capitalized or not.

I suppose you are one of those who refers to more than one computer mouse as "mouses" for some reason. —Michael Z. 2006-11-22 17:53 Z

I expect that usage experts can argue but "ys" would be used for a proper noun (usually a name of an individual) but here we have a class name so "ies" might be better (just as "Grizzly" for the bear is a class name, not the name of an individual bear). A rule of thumb is "ies" for plural if using "the" before the singular noun makes sense ("the Grizzly was a Canadian Sherman" but you would not say "the Sally was a Canadian soldier"). If an individual Grizzly was named "Sally," you might refer to hypothetical "Sallys" (plural of a proper noun, whether or not Sally was a bear or a tank).Wikist 19:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do you think that a noun made proper loses its normal pluralization and has some new awkward form fabricated for it? Is there a reference supporting this?

The Sally argument is a red herring. Words are pluralized they way they are pluralized, and that's all there is to it: Hawker Furies, Brewster Buffaloes, Chrysler Town and Countries. —Michael Z. 2006-11-23 17:20 Z

Hello. The reference is The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., p. 150 so I understood the editor's reasoning for "ys" even if I think there is a weaker case for applying "ys" to a class name. Thank you.Wikist 04:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have access to a copy. What does it say?

If it's suggesting how to form the plurals of proper names, then that has nothing to do with this. The dictionary already tells us that the plural is grizzlies. Capitalizing it doesn't turn it into some new unrelated word. —Michael Z. 2006-11-26 18:37 Z

R.P. Hunnicutt uses the term "Grizzlies." This is consistent with correct usage according to the dictionary. It is a little perplexing to read that someone might think the "Grizzly" is a "class" of tank. It is not. It is merely a Canadian variant of the M4A1 medium tank meant to replace the Ram II. 14thArmored 1000 Hours, 26 November 2006

"The Chicago Manual of Style," Section 6.7 states: "Plurals of nouns ending in "y" preceded by a consonant are formed by replacing the "y" with "ies." 14thArmored 1000 Hours, 28 November 2006

Section 6.7 is about brackets according to the 15th ed. (p. 242). Section 5.18 says to use "ys" for plural proper nouns (15th ed., p. 150), Trekphiler's point was that the dictionary gives the plural for bears but not vehicles, and NATO uses "Grizzlys" for plural vehicles ( http://www.nato.int/sfor/indexinf/114/p07a/t0107a.htm ) so Trekphiler wasn't completely crazy. Thank you.Wikist 13:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I am using the 14th edition of "The Chicago Manual of Style," but I will bet you dollars to dougnuts that the 15th edition says exactly the same thing. No offense, but I think this is another case of your misunderstanding a source, willfully or otherwise, just like your use of Zaloga's comments about the 75mm gun (HE) on the Sherman Talk page. See "plural anomolies" in "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" by H.W. Fowler, pp. 456-457 or for that matter, almost any freshman (college) text on English grammar. 14thArmored 0900 Hours, 29 November 2006

I see this is more controversial than I dreamed. I've seen "-ys" as the preferred form somewhere, but I can't cite a source. It's because it's a proper noun, & more accurately a name, that I use it. It's not "Kennedies" or "Kerries", but "Kennedys", after all. Trekphiler 03:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

BTW, Michael, thanks for the tip on Fury & T&C. I changed them, too (with a link back here so anybody who's as nutty about this as us ;) can complain here, where we're well underway...). Trekphiler 14:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ram

I should point out as well that the Grizzlies were not intended to replace the Ram per se - the Sherman was intended to replace the Ram; the Grizzly I was a very short (less than 250) production run of Canadian Sherman M4A1s with a few very slight mods made quite late in the war.--Ggbroad 22:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

R.P. Hunnicutt, "Sherman: A History of the American Medium Tank," p. 131 states that the Grizzly I was "intended to replace the Ram II...." and that specifications were issued for the production of this tank in September 1943. He goes on to say that 188 Grizzlies were produced by the end of production in December 1943. 14thArmored 1000 Hours, 28 November 2006

Yeah, I know, fair enough. In fact, the decision to replace the RAM with American-built Shermans was made well before then. I quote: "As early as August 1942, however, AGL McNaughton, commander of the First Canadian Army, had decided that standardization of tank forces and production on a North American basis should be acheived as quickly as possible, and that the American M-4 Sherman, by then rolling off American assembly lines in huge numbers, would be the tank of choice" from Graham Broad, "The Ram and Canadian Tank Production" journal of Canadian Military History, Volume 11, No. 1, Winter 2002, p 24-36. Disclaimer: I wrote this article but my research (on that issue, anyway) was solid. By the time specs were issued for the Grizzly, trials testing the Ram against the Sherman had been made, Ram production had stopped, and the Canadian army was already beginning to receive M4s.--Ggbroad 17:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lend Lease to Canada?

One person says Canada had no Lend Lease Shermans and another person says that Canada did have Lend Lease Shermans. Can we please get verifiable sources with specific page references for these claims? Thank you.Wikist 13:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I suspcect there's some confusion over what "Lend Lease" means in context. M4s (among other equipments) were provided to Canada under what (I think) was a separate deal akin to "Lend Lease", not the main program, nor as part of the British alotment, nor transferred from Britain. They thus didn't technically fall under "Lend Lease", but could be (tho I'm not sure docs ever did) referred to as "Lend Lease" equipment. (Don't ask me to cite a source; I'd have to check at least three dozen books to find it...) Trekphiler 03:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)