Best Tank Destroyer

What do you think is the best tank destroyer

 

Jadgpanther. Hands down the best. Low silhoutte, excellent gun, very effective in ambushes.

 

The Jagdpanther wasn't nessisarly low, not in comparison with TDs like the Hetzer.

 

Hetzer. Small, cheap, efficient, capable of handling the vast majority of it's opposition.

 

Please, please... Do you really believe we haven't covered this intriguing topic?

http://www.fun-online.sk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34

I agree with Johann on this one. The Jagdpanther was fearsome in armour and armament, yet very reliable and even useable for infantry support. The Hetzer's gun was running out of punch by the end of the war, when Allied tanks started carrying more than 100mm of armour. No such thing occured on the Jagdpanther.

 

It all depends on your point of view of what makes a vehicle "THE" best. One on one, I'll take the Jagdpanther too. But they were expensive to build and there were only around 300-400 built. I don't think the individual quality made up for the cost and limited numbers available. If I were in charge of a nation's armaments industry, I'd be looking for something like the Hetzer.

 

But I think we all agree that the doctrine of the tank destroyer was a flawed one, do we not?

 

The U.S. tank destroyer (and armor) doctrine was defintely flawed. I think the Germans and Soviets deserve a little more credit since their tank destroyers were basically tanks without turrets and reflected some basic economic problems as much as a deliberate doctrine of their armies.

 

Precisely. The turretless tanks produced by the German factories from 1943 onwards allowed them to increase their output significantly in spite of incessant bombing. Their effectiveness on the battlefield is perhaps less than that of an MBT but the SP gun still has tremendous killing power, especially since the gun applied is usually heavier than what would fit a turret on the same tank.

 

Did the Germans ever use their tank destroyers in the infantry support role? To provide artillery fire for their infantry, I mean.

 

Yes, they were used in a direct fire mode to support infantry, but for the Jagdpanzers it was definitely a secondary role. Assault guns were all around players, if not almost exclusively infantry support (such as the Brumbar).

 

Archer

The British Archer

The arguements for

Based on the hull of the obsolete Valentine tank. Allows the British to turn a proven but obsolete hull back into something competitive. This is likely to make it much, much cheaper than the Jagpanther.

The Seventeen pounder. A weapon with excellent hitting power, better in fact than most American or Soviet contemporaries.

The Gun. Rearward facing, sounds bloody stupid but it does make the design as compact as possible, useful for moving units to battle zone. British thinking on tank destroyers is to allow the enemy to come to them so no real disadvantage.

Popular in service by all accounts


Arguement against.

Thin armour and opened topped, crew vunerable. A trait share with American tank destroyers

High profile.

Can't fire on move. Trait shared with soviet and German Tank Destroyers



Conclusion

No single clear advantage but better all rounder in a war of mass production as WW2 was.

 

Another 'slight' disadvantage of the Archer was that the driver had to leave his seat before it fired, otherwise the recoiling breech would knock his head off!

Therefore it is a rather static tank destroyer compared to others.

I do agree that it was effective, though.

 

True enough but then British thinking on tank destroyers was that the enemy be allowed to come to them. This remained true of the American TD they received. Shoehorning a Seventeen pounder in had left it with only a manual tranverse making it less than ideal for firing on the move

 

Hi.
Whata about Jagdtiger??, He was high, heavy, slowly, but he had great gun and armour.

 

Hi Sokal, welcome to the forum.

The Jagdtiger was simply too heavy. At 72 tons there wasn't a bridge it could actually cross, and in the field it was practically immovable.

 

The SU100 and ISU122 were pretty good too. Too bad the Soviets were on the offensive and couldn't really use them for the TD role.

I paticulaly like the SU100. It was built on the t-34 chassis with a gun compatible to the German 88/71.

 

Yes, of course, but if he had been used on good area, he would have been undestroyed. Maybe he wasn't so nice like Jagdpanther but I think he was pretty good

 

Well, essentially an up-armoured and up-gunned Elephant.

Good as a defensive tool for holding up an enemy advance, especially if you have a reasonable number in action...

For any other purpose, nah!
Better to build a load of Panthers, or even King Tigers! At least they could cross some bridges!

 

The most effective in terms of losses vs. kills is the Ferdinand.

The most effective overall is, in my oppinion, the Panzer IV/70 V. It had the same height as the Jagdpanzer 38 overall, but had better armour and a better gun.

The only real disadvantage was that it was rather nose-heavy, due to the long gun, and quite long too. These two disadvantages are of second importance to Panzerjäger, though, as these were intended for ambushes rather than attacks.