Getting back to the subject of this thread (we go all over the place, don't we?), many of the American tank crews who came ashore on D-Day and those who liberated Western Europe were trained in my home state of Arizona at a place called Camp Bouse. This was one of several installations in California and Arizona which became collectively known as the Desert Training Center. At one time, given the total acreage it covered, it was the largest military installation in the world.
I understand Gen. George S. Patton selected these sites himself for three reasons. First, they were remote. Second, they were accessible by rail. Finally, he knew the harsh environment of the desert would be perfect for training the crews for the conditions they would face in combat (If you've ever been to Phoenix or Tucson in July and tried driving a car with no air conditioning and the windows rolled up, you have some idea of what it was like to drive a tank at Camp Bouse).
Every year, the community of Bouse has a day to honor those who trained there. I've had the privilege of meeting some of the vets who trained at Camp Bouse and went on to North Africa, Italy, Western Europe, and the Pacific. Most of those I spoke with were grateful for the training they had, as they soon found American tanks, like the M4 Sherman, were at a disadvantage when they came up against the German Panzers.
Simply put, the Panzers should shoot further, hit harder, and be hit harder themselves than the Shermans. The Germans called the Sherman the "Tommy Cooker." Tommies was a slang term for British and Allied troops.
American tank crews soon learned how to use the mass number of Shermans against the Panzers. While a Sherman was toast in a one-on-one battle with a Panther, Tiger or King Tiger tank, the mass firepower of many Shermans was enough to negate the advantages individual Panzers had against a single Sherman.
I should add that American and British tank crews became quite adept at figuring out methods of beating the Panzers that weren't included in the training manuals.
What the Germans thought of the troops who trained at Camp Bouse was seen in a poem entitled "Und Still Sie Kommt" (And Still They Came). It was based on a conversation between an American officer and a former German officer some years after the war ended. The German marveled at how they threw everything they had at the American troops, and they kept right on coming.
"Where is this Camp Bouse, where such young lions were trained?" the German asks at the end of the poem.
People everywhere can be grateful those troops trained at Camp Bouse, Arizona kept right on coming.
- Big Bad John
if I had to pick, I would take the Tiger for survivability. And having read Canadian Armour tactics of the period, and the men that survived, I would not have wanted to be the 4 Shermans trying to distract a Tiger for the Firefly -- by letting it blow holes in me 
War really is hell.
