The "best" tank another look

Are you sure? I can find neither of these figures. Can you give a page/section reference?

 

Re: The Sherman question, hmm, okay, maybe I sounded more certain than I should be. I'm sure I've seen stuff somewhere, but now I can't find it. Doh.

 

In terms of producability I think there's no doubt that the Soviet & US tank designs were above the rest. In terms of technical engineering though I am gonna have to go with the German tanks.

Now the reliability of some of the late war panzer such as the Panther could definitely have been better, the final drive being its' main cause of problems. But in the end with the Panther Ausf.G the Germans actually had a decently reliable tank.

Moving on to internal layout & crew accommodation (ergonomics), German tanks really were above the rest, and buttoned up vision was very good on late war panzers.

Next is the drivetrain. The Tiger Ausf.B and esp. the Panther had some issues with their final drives, and they were never completely worked out. The problem wasn't a design problem though, failure of final drives was mostly caused because of poor assembly, lack of lubricants, lack of proper/regular maintenance halts and finally a lack of skilled drivers. That having been said one must also remember that German final drives on average had to haul a lot more weight around than the allied ones, and extra weight means extra strain which in turn means extra wear, and that is regardless of final drive bulk. Nevertheless tanks such as the T-34 had some issues with their final drives initially as-well, but they were quickly completely worked out, so much so that farm boys could be let loose in these machines without any fear of breaking the final drive. As for the Sherman, it never had any issues with its' final drive, and by design it was also easily fixed if broken. The Brits didn't have too many issues with their final drives either.

Then comes suspension design, and here I think the Germans were ahead with their later designs because while the interleaved wheel design put on the Panther & Tiger was complex, could clog in the winter and was difficult to replace, it was nonetheless the most advanced put on any tank during the war. The interleaved wheel design suspended from individual swing armed torsion bars with hydraulic shock absorbers provided better floatation & stability characteristics whilst negotiating rough terrain than that of any suspension system put on any Allied tank during the war. And that has got to count for something.

As for armour plate quality, the Germans were up until the beginning of 1944 building their tanks from very high quality steel, but as material shortages started to hit the German industry harder and harder the quality of the armour put on tanks stared to decline. As a result the armour quality of German tanks from late 1944 until the end of the war was nothing to yell hurray about. The Soviets had similar problems, but had had these since the very beginning of the war and till the end. Soviet tanks featured very brittle armour which allowed projectiles which didn't even penetrate the armour to the kill the crew regardless as the impact caused the armour to spall on the inside. On top of this the Soviets were fond of using cast armuour, which didn't offer as good a protection as rolled homogenous armour. The British & US however, while not producing the best quality armour of the war, did make lots of average quality armour with a very high consistency. The western allies were however also guilty of using cast armour alot. So in this category I think everyone was even.

All in all the best tank of world war two when taking everything into consideration, firepower, protection, mobility, reliability, cost & producability, is really a toss up between tanks such as the Tiger, Sherman, Panther & T-34. They were all great, but none were perfect, and thus defining which was the absolute best is really a matter of opinion.

Cheers.

 

A rather classic example of why most advanced doesn't equal best.

You also left off some of the more advanced features of both the Sherman and the Panther. Those being stabilization and IR sensors respectively.

 

If by upgrades he means the differences between an M4A3E8 used in Korea and baseline M4/M4A1 that composed the bulk of US tank fleet in WWII then he's right. If he meant there were upgrades to the E8 than no.

I suspect you already know all this. M4A3E8 had the HVSS suspension, rolled homogeneous armor (63.5mm frontal), three-piece glacis, a thick mantlet, a 76mm gun and allegedly a better gyro-stab. In Korea M4 crews received a plentiful supply of HVAP rounds.

M4/M4A1 was manufactured in massive numbers during early stages of the war and were used right up to the end of the war. It had a x3 gunnery scope, cast steel armor (51mm frontal some of dubious quality), a bumpier HVVS suspesion and of course the 75mm gun.

 

Well the Panther & Tiger's suspension did provide the best floatation & stability characteristics of any tank suspension system used during the war, so in that sense they were the best. But their complexity was a problem.

As for the gyrostabilizer in the Sherman, well according to all I've read about it was more of a nuisance than a help and wasn't very well liked by the crews. Crews apparently had them switched off or removed completely on many occasions. And to be honest I can understand why, the system itself was very simple, the gyro would keep the barrel level at some preadjusted angle, but unlike modern gyros it didn't adjust for increases in height whilst driving over rough terrain, so it wasn't capable of keeping the gun pointing on the target. Furthermore the system wasn't linked to the turret traverse engine, so you couldn't track a target whilst on the move. So accurate fire on the move was pretty much out of the question.

As for the IR equipment put on some Panthers, well it first entered service in 1945 and hardly any Panthers got to use it in combat, so not really worth mentioning.

 

IE the were sub optimum.

I have heard that also but I've also heard that one US general was a real believer in the system and that he insisted his troops learn how to use it and once they did it helped. May have been Abrams. I can't find the reference right now. But it like the Panther's IR system probably best fits in the technically advanced but utility still to be determined.

And there were counters to it but it was the first tank so equipped to see combat. I think it also required an IR light to be effective so stood out if anyone on the other side could see IR and there were some US systems that could.

 

I have heard it before and it was probably in Creighton Abram's biography (or autobiography). He was a colonel than, commander of the 37th tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division. One of the most prolific tank killer in the US Army, latter to take over Westmoreland's mess in Vietnam.

 

Not sure if the US had IR detectors in Europe, but I know the British had a bunch laying ready in England. So if the Germans were to start using active IR equipment then the Brits could've sent the IR detectors over. And in the case that a German was to illuminate his target with an IR searchlight when Allied IR detectors were around, well, lets just say he might as-well have been holding a torch.

Only the passive IR equipment the Germans had developed near the end of the war were of a large threat to the Allies. Cause unlike the active sets these didn't need an IR searchlight to see well in the dark, so detecting them by use of IR detectors was impossible. But fortunately for the Allies the war was all but won before any of these sets could be put into major use.

 

The US apparently had IR sniper scopes in WWII but this article mentions them being used in the Pacific.
Infrared Sniperscope M1, with M3 Carbine
This article has some general info
Heat‐Seeking Technology – FREE Heat‐Seeking Technology information | Encyclopedia.com: Find Heat‐Seeking Technology research
Some where I read a good acount of most nations use of IR in WWII but can't locate it right now.

 

Oh the US had IR equipment alright, and like you said they used them at Okinawa, and in the close quarter combat that took place there it worked very well. The US did have problems with image quality however, which meant their IR equipment didn't work beyond 30 yards. The British had similar problems, and afaik they didn't make it as far as to actually put an IR device on a weapon during the war. Only the Germans were able to manufacture high quality image forming equipment because of their lead in chemistry & optics, having by the end of the war passive IR detectors usable out to a 4 km range (FuG280 Kiel). The active sets used on Panthers (FuG1250) provided high quality imaging out to 700m., and the ZG1229 Vampir mounted on the StG44 out to around 150m.

Interestingly enough there also severa Allied veterans who remember being shot at by German snipers at night with deadly accuracy. This must have been by ZG1229 Vampir equipped Germans.

But that having been said these devices were rare, and they didn't see a huge amount of combat, atleast not in the west. The Germans were well aware of the fact that the Allies had IR detectors, and so they knew that if they started to use them in a major way then the Allies would've been quick to equip their units with IR detectors. Hence the German emphasis on passive devices towards the end of the war.