Top 10 tanks of the war

Oh im sure the Germans thought the Tiger II was a hybrid

 

T34

 

Here ya go:

http://www.battlefield.ru/
http://gva.freeweb.hu/


I had plenty others but with the formatting of my computer I lost my bookmarks.



Cheers...

 

That is just untrue. The penetrative performance of those guns are known. They are not classified.

http://www.freeweb.hu/gva/index.html


Generally, it did not matter much what gun you shot, as long as you sat still and let them come to you.

No such statistic existed anywhere within the US archives, except a strategic research totally unrelated to kill ratio... that was about Panther, Sherman and T-34 tanks.

T-34-85 has 47mm of armor at glacis and 90mm at turret front, as opposed to M4A3 tank's 64mm glacis armor and 90mm turret, of a higher metalurigal quality. Hmm....

Check out Steven Zaloga's books. The titles are: The M4 Sherman Tank, The M4 Sherman (76mm) Tank, The T-34-76 Tank, The T-34-85 Tank, and Sherman v. Panthers. All are in print.

 

You don't do much figure gaming, do you? The last rules with simultaneous moves went out the window at least 15 years ago as totally unworkable. Computer games are something else, I'm familiar with Combat Mission at least, but then I don't do much computer gaming. I prefer my human feedback, with beer, whisky and all

Sorry if I sound rude, but I'm taking lessons from JCFalkenberg IV, or how many of them there are.

 

That would be interesting but my readings have brought me to believe that things like crew layout and vision are at least as important to fighting efficiency as a few more millimeters of armour. How are you going to factor those in?

As a counterpoint to your analisys it would be interesting to find reports by people who used both or who fought one against the other.
The soviets used a lot of Shermans as well as T34s but I found no first hand accounts by units that actually switched from one to the other.
In Korea M26s where rushed in as M4s where believed to be inadequate against North Korean T34/85s, the 2.36in bazooka that was the main US AT weapon initially available definetly was so it may have been overreaction, but where there actually any encounters between the two?
In the middle East the Arab countries received many T34/85s but I believe that was after Suez and by the 1967 war Israel had reworked it's Shermans into something that had little resemblance to the originals.
Any other instance where the two may have met in significant numbers?

 

In that regard, Sherman tank was vastly the superior to the T-34-76. M4 had a three-men turret and two scopes of the gunner, one of which was a 0 magnification periscope with a wide field of vision for battlefield observation and target spotting. No other medium tank of World War II have this figure. This gives the Sherman two spotters while not engaging. T-34-76 had a two men turret, an acknowledged poor design because the tank cannot spot any other target or for that matter observe anything while laying its gun. T-34-85 had a three man turret. However, its turret still lacked a secondary observation scope for the gunner, was very cramped and the design of the hatch obliged the commander to stand straight up if he wishes to fight out of the hatch.

M26 was rushed in along with M4 because the M24 light tanks were inadequate. The first medium tank unit that reinforced the line was a M4A3E8 battalions from Japan. Its men savaged dead-lined E8s from unit depots and restored them to running condition, before shipping to North Korea with almost unseemly haste. The M4A3E8 killed more T-34s than any other type of US tanks in the Korea War and achieved a kill ratio of 10:1 against NKA's T-34-85s, mostly due to superior training. The 76mm gun was adequate in killing T-34-85 in regular battle ranges with HVAP and APC ammo, but its armor was inadequate in resisting 85mm shots from regular ranges. Post war analysis suggested that the M46 Pershing were 3.6 times the superior to the Sherman in combat power.

A note of interest: the US Army found that on the average a "wet" Sherman lost 1-2 crewmen when it suffered a penetrating hit from AT weapons. A T-34-85 would lose an average of 3-4 crewmen when hit. Part of the disparity was attributed to US doctrine, which commands the troops to hit a tank until it burned; however the T-34-85's lack of protect storage bin as well as combustible shell casing might well contributed to lower crew survivability.

 

Thanks for the info, I know that M4 is probably better than T34/85 in layout and optics, I remember a story of soviet crews scrouging damaged vehicles to get additional seats as one crewmember had a a very bad one in "from the factory" tanks. I don't know if true but gives the idea. What I was looking for was any "system" on ranking that sort of stuff, as I'm developing a wargame/simulation and looking for ideas. It's relatively easy to rank armour, at least if you "forget" about metal quality and assume if all hits are at 0 degrees horizontal so only consider vertical slope not horizontal slope, but when you try to model the effects of things like the "semplification" from a Pz IVh to a Pz IVj or the change of turret from a T34/41 to a T34/43 on combat effectiveness it gets really hard. AFAIK the North Koreans did not use all that many T34s so the early arriving units most likely got most of the "kills" which probably explains the better performance of M4s compared to M26s. In a direct confrontation both had a gun that would penetrate the other at most combat ranges so it boils down to who can get a hit first and that's where the "hard to model" training and optics come in. What I would really like is records on M4 - T34 combat frorm comparatively trained forces, but can't think of any. One possibility is soviet equipped comunist - US equipped nationalist chinese immediately after WW2, but I'm guessing. I would be very interested in how they got that 3.6 figure, my guess is the assumptions they made where for a European scenario of massive tank combat not for Korea where most opposition was infantry. In Korea I would rather have two M4s than one M26 far less 3.6!

 

I had no idea these existed so soon!!! Can you please substantiate?

 

I can understand a certain admiration for German WWII Tanks, such as Panther, Tiger I & II, Jagdpanther or Jagdtiger due to their impressive weight (beauty - Jagdpanther) and partially their armarment.

But I can't follow on the generalising assumtion that they were better then e.g. T-34 or the ugly M4. The Pz.IV was partially outdated and only came back as a kind of equal due to the upgrading with the 7.5 KwK 40L/48.

It took the Germans a 45-75 tonnes design to cope with 27-32 tonnes allied tanks? this to me isn't a sign of superiority in design or brainwork but rather a total wrong direction taken by a country with limited to extremly limited resources.
In many books I read about German tanks having been designed around the gun - okay - but the Russians and Americans managed to place a effective gun into a 30 tonnes design whereas the Germans needed a 45-50 tonnes Panther design?

I think it is understood that if the Germans could have succeeded in producing 40-50% of the allied numbers that logically they would have had an edge on the allied tanks.

But these figures would be totally out of the question, so what's the point? In most cases AFAIK these massive Teutonic Tanks became feared due to being used in static defensive positions making use of the long range 88 effect. But would this be enough to consider them to be superior as a tank?

The best tank in WWII? A reliable, massproduced M4 with an experienced German crew maybe ?

View attachment 3885

Regards
Kruska

 

Top 10 tanks of the war :

1. Koenigstiger


2. Tiger


3. Panther


Sorry, no place for Allied tanks!

 

Nope. I thought I read it in a source, but cannot find the reference after an hour. Getting old before my years? Got nervous, checked my references for the rest of the post. Can't find references for Korean War tank kill ratio either, but it was "lopsided" in Sherman's favor. All other information was substantiated. Sorry!

 

Actually, the weight of the German tanks had to do with engine placing and size. You'd be more comfortable on a Panther or Tiger than on a T34

On a more serious note, I don't think one can compare the Sherman or T-34 with a Panther. It's just a different scale! If you do, obviously, the Panther will appear to come out on top simply due to sheer size. However, should a tank be based on theoretical performance, or on actual relevance? Sure the JagdTiger is huge but with barely 70 built, what impact did it cause to the allies? Even if they had destroyed 1000 tanks in total, and would never break down and could actually move, 1000 Shermans or T34s were replaced faster than 1 of those beasts.



Cheers...

 

Could you give us your proper list now?
But that joke was great! The Koenigstiger the best tank of the war! Ha!

 

Hey Joe! He got at least one right LOL . One out of the three. But I don't think the model of the Tiger I belongs on it LOL.



2. Tiger

 

Rats! I'm not challenging you, I was interested in that combustible case ammunition, I was convinced it had appeared much later.

Wow, a model And that Panther in the pic has a Yank sitting on it, but that's not all:
that burnt and perforated Tiger II wreck is on an American tank-transporter and there's a bunch of them standing on the road :lol:

Alif, if you were trying to be sarcastic you succeeded !

 

I wasn't going to mention the Americans in the photos LOL. I do like the irony of his stating the Pather was best and that the photo shows it as knocked out with a SHERMAN driving by LOL.

 

M4 Sherman was the most pathetic tank of the war. But wait, it's American so it has to be the best!

Besides being mass-produced it was just lame.
I can't believe people are bashing some of the german tanks that had a 10:1 kill ratio. No, they weren't perfect, but the Sherman was? "Steel coffins"

Can someone post how many sherman were destroyed by Tigers and Panthers?

 

No one has claimed that the Sherman was the "Best". Or "Perfect". It had its defects just like all other tanks. The German tanks sure as hell have theirs too. And they have been presented over and over in these lame "Best" threads. But you have just shown a perfect example of the bias and ignorance that occurs in these threads.

 

Members of this board had already showed with technical knowledge and historical data that this is not the case. The Sherman tank was a perfect match to the the T-34 series in all categories of performance and both were superior to Pz III/IV series. Would you like to prove your statements with facts?

Lame? In Normandy Allied armor outnumbered the Germans 4:1. After Patton's rampage in Lorraine the disparity of armored forces was 20:1. And let me tell you something. On defense, a numerically equal or inferior Sherman force is more than capable of inflicting disporportionate losses on a Panther unit and win in field conditions.

That is pure rubbish.German tank losses in all major operations roughly equaled or far exceeded that of the allies. The American Tank Bn with the wrost casualty rate lost less men and machines than in three years of sustained combat than the average German Pz Rgt. in three months of fighting in Normany.

Would you like to check out the Battle of Arracourt, Krinkelt-Rocherath and Celles? In the Battle of the Bulge, the most heavily fought and bloody battle the Americans fought in World War II, total M4 tank losses were 330 written off from December to January. The Germans lost 180 Panthers to complete destruction alone, that is not including the losses in Pz IV, StuG and other far more numerous tank types. Generally, the issue of who would prove the victor in an engagement between any medium tank is resolved by asking who is defending. An alert defender usually inflicted 4 times the casualties on the defender.