The top 10 worst tanks of the war

Drucius; no specific sources. Its just that I've been reading books on the germans fighting in Normandy and have never seen anything that said they were feared by the germans.They lost a lot in normandyto the tigers,panthers,88mmat guns etc.Thats all I was saying.The germans knocked them all out shermans churchills etc.And the main gun was as far as I know not anly better than the main gun on the sherman.I am not an expert on allied armor(or for that matter german armor).I just sometimes let thing get to me.

Sorry

Bernie

 

Although the Tiger (not so much the Tiger II, oddly) certainly inspired some great trepidation and even dread, many of the sources I've read put no exceptional value on fine tanks like the Panther, the StuGs, the tank hunters. They were just dealt with as best they could. This doesn't mean that they're bad tanks.

 

Let's keep this fair,
Comparing the M3/M5 at 12-15 tonns with a a 6 tonn L6 makes as much sense as comparing it with an 18 tonn early Pz IV.

So keeping weight += 2 tonns we have:
- M13/40 (13t)
- Pz II (10t)
- The early cruisers (12 to 15t)
- Pz 38t (10t)
- H39 (12t)
- CHI-HA (14t)
the T70 at 9 tonnn does not qualify

I dont't really care if some countries call a 15 tonn tank a medium and others a light. None of the above (except the linx variants of the PzII) is a recon tank and was used mostly as such, they are light "general purpose" tanks used as MBTs for lack of anything better like the M3 was early in it's career.

 

IIRC didn't there occur some PZ III/IV kills by Stuarts in North Africa? How about the M13/40 , Pz II or CHI-HA ? Or any other tank in other theaters?

 

Now that you mention it, I believe there were. Especially vs the earlier models of PzIII and IV. I think the M3/M5 tanks are excellent tanks for what they were intended to do and, they had an excelent career serving in the post war years. Their replacement however, was probably the best light/reconaissance tank there ever was.
TOS, From the list you posted, the best matches would be against a Pz38(t) ausf G... The armor was approximatly equal (the M5 had better shape tough), same crew layout, ground pressure approximatlly the same and they had similar gun performance.




Cheers...

 

The 38 was what I had in mind as best comparison too. But the Pz38 had 125 Hps to the M3s 250 so less speed and more range, take your pick. The M3 occasionally did pretty well even against the Pz IV long gunned versions, but it usually was from ambush.

 

INdeed some of the German tanks did it spontaneously.

 

Well it was clearly inferior to the M-24 light tank.

 

At 18+ tonns and a 5 person crew the M24 would qualify as a medium in most 1939 armies, but it was a big jump forward in performance vs the M3/M5 series.
By 1945 the light tank concept itself was loosing favor except for situations were no enemy tank opposition was expected, the gap in performace between even a very good design like the M24 and a medium like the T34/85 was too big. In a "balanced" tank design your armour should have some chance of surviving hits from your main gun, once you get to 75mm guns and above there is no way to do that on a turretted vehicle and still call it a light. Post war light AFVs usually carry only just enough armour to stop rifle caliber bullets and rely on speed and vision against anything nastier.

 

Going back to the original "Light" tank opinion statement that was made by SMLE shooter that the M3/M5 was one of the "Worst" tanks of WWII. It would appear that the concensus is that it is not.

 

Indeed my reading is the consensus is in the diametrically opposed opinion. IE it was one of the best especially for it's time and weight.

 

In my veiw the Matilda tank was a very funny and terrible tank

 

Then how can you explain it's nickname, "Queen of the battlefield"?

 

It would be a "very funny and terrible tank" in 1944, but in the campaign of France it struck terror with "le Boche" during the Arras attack in 1940.

 

I would not state the Japanese as the worst tanks, they were useful in the Manchurian campaing and devastating by those times 1931 as infantry support weapons. They were unmatched against the Shermans but these were far more modern.
The Fiat tanks however sucked hard. I particulary hate the massive and useless multi turreted T-35 and the first Challenger ( not compared to the nowadays great modern Brit challengers )

 

There's a real classic picture of a Sherman carrying a Japanese souvenir tank on it's engine deck....

Japanese tanks proved to be just about useless vs other tanks in the 40s. I do seam to recall they had a decent design near the end of the war. Of course by that point getting it produce in any numbers was rather beyond them and keeping it fueled would have been if they could have produced them.

 

Any tanks would be fine against masses of rifle armed troops, even Japanese. When they came to face decent armour then, well, they were not so good, but what could you expect of tanks from the late 20s, early 30s? Problem is that they never went much beyond that, even their late war tanks, if they appeared in useful quantities which they didn't, were rather pitiful.

 

I have a suspicion the Japanese tanks were designed without much thought to the possibility of tank vs tank combat, after the poor performance against the soviets during the frontier clashes of 1939 (and the opposition would be T26s and BTs so nothing to write home about) they replaced the low velocity 57 of the CHI-HA with a high velocity 47mm. The CHI-HA and it's derivatives (CHI-HE, CHI-NU, CHI-TO), that was the heavviest design they fielded in any significant numbers, started as a 15 tonn design so in the same class as the M3 Stuart. The final CHI-TO weighted in at 24 tonns and was roughly comparable to a late PzIV but was produced in very small numbers that were kept for home defence and never saw combat, the 37tonn CHI-RI is a prototype. So we could say the Japanease, like the Italians, never fielded a true medium tank. This could be because the Army was mostly concerned with the China front, where any tank or even tankette would do.

 

Japanese tanks were designed to the principles of the day. Most of their armor was designed and built well before the outbreak of the Pacific War. For the mid 30's most of their designs were on par with those elsewhere.
What happened was that when they, like everyone else, came out with newer designs in the late 30's (like the Type 97 Chi Ha), the Japanese really only upgraded the automotive systems of their designs as the firepower (small low velocity HE firing cannon, machineguns) and armor (bullet proof) had proved sufficent for the tasks their tanks had faced up to that point. Tank on tank combat was not high on their list of needs when it came to tank design.
The other restriction the Japanese faced was that their tanks had to fit into ships for movement to where they would be used. This restricted their size and weight to ones that their average merchant ship's equipment and holds could accomidate.
Then too, they had to recognize that their steel industry could only produce about a 1" thick armor plate easily making this roughly the thickest armor a tank could have and be mass produced.
If anything, their designs were adequite for their needs up until they faced a new generation of Western tanks like the Grant or Sherman.

 

Queen of the battlefield was Matilda II A12, justdags was propably talking about Matilda I A11.

AFAIK Matilda II was the only allied gun tank that served throughout entire war.