Well I was thinking about WWII tanks and I was wondering what everyone thought was the best one. It's essentially down to the Panther, T-34/85, and the Sherman, none of the others could really touch them. Now I nomiminate the T-34/85 for this title. The panther, while having superior armor and gun, was unreliable, expensive, and hard to maintain. This stopped more than about half a dozen thousand from being produced. The Sherman, while reliable, and possessing good radios, suffered from having inferior guns to the other two except in the sherman firefly, which was rare. It also had a very wide turn radius and was very very tall for it's strength, making it a big target. The T-34/85, while cramped had a better gun and armor than the sherman and was much easier to produce and more reliable than the Panther, it was so easy to produce over 50,000 T-34/76 and T-34/85's were produced during the course of the war, around 10,000 more than the number of shermans made! It also had a low ground preassure and very long range, letting it outmanuver it's opponents. So over I'd say the T-34/85 wins as best tank of WWII. I'd like to see what other's think. Now while some very very late war tanks like the british Comet tank and the previously mentioned sherman firefly, but these never played an major part in the war.

Question:
Which was the Best WWII Tank?

Choices:
T-34/85
Panther
Sherman

 

In terms of a combination of speed, armour, firepower and maneuverability, the Panther (Panzerkampfwagen5) is said to be the best WWII tank.

In terms of how much damage it inflicted on the enemy, the Köningstiger (Panzerkampfwagen 6-II) was the best.

1. You can't just look at speed, firepower, armor. You have to look at it's reliability, cost, and easiness to maintain. The panther had poor reliability and was very hard to maintain, and only about 4-6 thousand were made vs over 50,000 T-34's and over 40,000 Shermans.
2. Also the Tiger II did not inflict the most damage on the enemy, it didn't see battle that much as it's reliability and ease of maitenence were even worse than the Tiger I which had considerable problems in these areas. It did not by any means inflict the most damage on the enemy.

quote:

Originally posted by Hyperion:
1. You can't just look at speed, firepower, armor. You have to look at it's reliability, cost, and easiness to maintain. The panther had poor reliability and was very hard to maintain, and only about 4-6 thousand were made vs over 50,000 T-34's and over 40,000 Shermans.
2. Also the Tiger II did not inflict the most damage on the enemy, it didn't see battle that much as it's reliability and ease of maitenence were even worse than the Tiger I which had considerable problems in these areas. It did not by any means inflict the most damage on the enemy.

blah! blah! blah!

Rather be glad that I actually took notice of your post.

And there were NOT 50,000 T-34s constructed in WWII. More like 24,000. Get your facts right. Furthermore, I was basing damage inflicted on the enemy on the bases of "damage per tank".

It is well-known that Allied tankers were in constant fear of Köningstigers attacking them. Oh that's another thing: get reading glasses, I was talking about the Köningstiger, not the Tiger. Shows how much you know.

My god you're a pompous jerk.
1. People were afraid of the Tiger II or King Tiger as you call it, both are accepted names sorry bout that, people were afraid BECAUSE IT
WAS HUGE! It was certainly a scarey tank, but it was not that effective and was a horrible waste of resources taking away from tanks that were really effective like the panther.

2. Actually you're right on one count, 50,000 weren't made, MORE than 50,000 were Read this:
"By the end of 1945, over 57,000 T-34s had been built: 34,780 original T-34 tanks in 1940–44, and another 22,559 T-34-85s in 1944–45 (The Russian Battlefield 1998a, 1998b)" From wikipedia with source cited.

3. And I know which tank you were talking about, the Konigstiger or "King Tiger" or as I called it the "Tiger II" all perfectly legitimate names, by which I refferred to in my post, you my friend are the one who misread. Sorry bout that.

4. Also for those who voted for the panther, one must remember that armor, speed, and firepower are not everything, the T-34 was VASTLY more reliable, and MUCH easier to produce and required much less maitenence.

The only factors that halted the Tiger I&II reliability, was the fuel consumption and production costs.

There was a "thing" in WWII-for every Tiger, you'd need 4 Shermans.

quote:

Originally posted by Hyperion:
My god you're a pompous jerk.

I'm a Christian Fundamentalist. Do not use the Lord's name in vain where I can see it. It just..pisses me off. Capiche?

1. But this doesn't matter much, as there were FAR more than 4 shermans per tiger, both lines of tiger made about 2000, there were over 40,000 shermans, so that's about a ratio of 20 to one.
2. You know auf, if you had shown me any respect in this thread up to this point, I might refrain from saying the word god and offendeding a religon I don't believe in. But you've been rude to me, so why should I cater to your overly delicate sensibilities. I don't belong to your religon, why should I conform to your religon's rules, ESPECIALLY since you've been rude to me, maybe if you showed me some respect. So look auf, you decide to show me some respect and stop being so rude, I'll show you some respect in return, Capiche?

Hmm, I got sued to some other forums where I had an argument with a bunch of retard idiots. I guess I got a bit carried away in here too.

geez guy's.....there's more to the question that just tossing around facts and then arguing over whose facts are more correct.

Perhaps the questions should have been: which tank won the most battles? Which tank was the hardest to kill?

Well the tank build with the most experience behind it was most definitly the T-34 out of those. Because the soviet union bore more of the brunt of the nazi's than just about any of the other allies combined. This is reflected in both military and civillian casualties, significantly more than the other two allies combined. So I trust their combat experience much more than I trust the american designers who got into the war late and didn't fight as many or as large tank battles, and who operated on the completely unrealistic tank destroyer doctrine.

The one thing you all forgetting is time line. Each year in the war produced tanks that where up graded or designed to counter act what the other side had.
The Germans reconfigured the Mark III and IV with high protection and upgraded main guns to counter act the T-34 which didn't fair to well against the high vilocity long barrel 75.
It also came to how mant the other side had and what alternate weapons, artillary, tank busters, etc where also deployed.
Just my 2c

Hmmm, one should also consider why our Sherman tank was considerably smaller and had less armament than our enemies. One item many fail to add into the equation was the simple fact of logistics involved. We had to ship all of our equipment overseas in order to even engage on the ground. Ever try to move a tank without driving it? Even in todays world, it takes alot to place an Abrams tank into the theater of operations. During WWII, the Gremans were already there and fully entrenched long before we were able to ramp up and get over there in sufficient numbers to fully engage them. The Russians had geography and sheer numbers of men and equipment to repel the Germans. The Russians also used the weather to thier great advantage.

Ous was upgraded to, with a little better protection and a 90mm main gun. The armor was to thin though as a one to one tank. I had an Uncle with the 10 Armored,one of the main reasons for my MOS, and he told me of the hits that the Sherman took and how fast they caught fire.

yeah, I always liked the M-60 series tanks, much more than those turbine powered armored offices we have now.

Now your bringing a tear to my eye. I'm 6'4" and I still fit in them. My last one a a M-60 blade tank. the bugger bounced all over the place when it moving.

scroll down the page for video of recovery of WWII German tank from a pond, completely intact!

If I am not mistaken, that's a T-34 with German markings. They often did that with captured equipment.
By the way, thanks for the great sight Gunny, have a Jack or beer on me!

I remember that the airborne units in the Army were still using the M-60 a number of years ago because it was easier to move.

Ysure it was a 60 Harry? That baby is 64 tons of muscle.