Best Tank Destroyer

The Nashorn weighed 24 tons, one ton less than the Panzer 4H so I don't know why it's Panzer 4 engine and suspension would have been strained by the weight. Also it was reliable and if damaged easily recovered. The Jagdpanther had great protection and mobility but it suffered from the fact that it was on the Panther chassis and therefore had the same problems with complexity, difficult access to the transmission and the problem of recovering a 45 ton machine.
I guess the trade off with the two vehicles is between protection and reliability/recoverability. Which do you value most? I read somewhere that while the Nashorn was succesful with a very good kill ratio it was never popular with it's crews, probably due to the lack of protection.
Basically if you had to go into battle in a tank destroyer and were given the choice between them which would you choose? I guess most people would go for the Jagdpanther in spite of reliability issues as you would want all the protection, and therefore most chance of survival, that you could get.

But I think the best German tank destroyer was probably the Jagdpanzer 4 as it had low height, good gun and sloped back armour. Unlike the Stug 3 it could take 85mm fire frontally. And it was reliable and recoverable.

 

Best tank destroyers?
These gents, along with other less well-known foot-sloggers...

 

As usual, my opinions float back an forth, influenced by what I'm reading - and as I'm just now reading accounts of Operation Bluecoat, the accounts of how three Jagdpanthers made a terrible mess of a group of Churchill tanks really bring it home how effective a weapon the PaK/KwK 43 was.It's perhaps fortunate for the Allies that Jagdpanthers were always quite rare to find on the battlefield.

 

my 5 cents...pound for pound the SU-85B or the SU-85 big brother...fast, manouverable, with a gun sufficient for most armoured carriers.

 

US destroyers did a pretty good job when they got a target. Nigh on to invulnerable to the Axis tanks and no trouble taking out even the heaviest ones.

 

I would have to say the best Tank destroyer/ assault gun would be the Stug III or Stug IV do to there easy to build and cheep build and the fact that for the most part they had a good gun on them. A low profile and okay armor. they weren't great however they were antiquate and worked fairly effective in combat.

 

Stugs rule! Were they not the most AFV produced by Germany? Started out as infantry support and then led in the pzrjager role.

 

Actually, I thought the Panzer III was the most produced at over 15,000, next was the Panzer IV at over 13,000, followed by the Stug III with over 10,000. The Stug IV only added about 1,100 to the Stug total.

A Stug is what you build when you cannot afford to or produce a tank fast enough.

 

But how many Panzer 3 were turned into stug 3's?

 

Putting in my small bit, I'd have to agree with Che. The Hetzer would be on the top of my list. It had good sloped frontal armor, a gun that could take on all tanks except the JS Soviet heavies and had very quick acceleration and speed. Oh yes, the Swiss thought they were good enough that they used them after the war.

 

None. The Panzer III and StuG III were separate doctrinal developments using the same basic chassis. The Panzer III was the intended mainstay of the Panzertruppen. The StuG was the answer for how to deploy a modern version of the "accompanying gun" with the Infanterie...and since it was to be manned by the Artillerie it gave an opportunity for them to get their oar into the modern mechanized-warfare pond.

 

The Jg.Pz. 38(t) was so cramped as to make it one of the most impractical designs of the war...the loader's job was about as difficult as it was possible to make it. Yes, the front was reasonably well armored, but there was virtually no protection from flank or rear. The Swiss used it postwar because they got them cheap from the Czechs who were selling anything they could to anyone to get foreign exchange. Essentially it was built because the BMM and Skodawerke couldn't produce anything else...it was a better design than the various Marder variants, but that is damning with faint praise.

 

Most armored vehicles were cramped. Crew comfort is a small price to pay for survivability. The Hetzer's small size and quick acceleration made it a difficult target to hit. The sides of the vehicle were proof against small arms fire and artillery fragmentation only, but very few AFVs could shrug off a direct hit on their sides anyway. At least the thin armor might have let an AP shot go cleanly through both sides instead of bouncing around on the inside. From what I've read they were fairly well liked by their crews.
The only ones I've heard of that didn't like it was the men of a Heavy Tank Bn that right at the end of the war was re-equipped with Hetzers. If you're used to fighting in a Tiger, a Hetzer might be something of a comedown!

 

I guess I just can't figure out how an eight-year old Czech engine producing 150-160 horsepower, designed for a tank weighing under 10 tons was supposed to make an assault gun weighing 16 tons quick?

Considering you had four men, a 75mm gun, 40 rounds of ammo, an engine and transmission in a box not much bigger than a VW Bus, I would be surprised if anything ever went through and through without hitting something.

If the option was Hetzer or Marder, yeah, I'd take a Hetzer too. The problem was, they replaced the assault guns in the infantry divisions in the fall of 1944, but they made a poor substitute...less ammo and no provision for the 10.5cm howitzer StuH, found in the StuG Brigade.

Which s.Panzer-Abteilung was that? I have the replacements allocated through March 1945, nor in the late, great Ron Klages fairly complete listing of unit allocations through 17 April 1945. I just can't see where they would have done that?

 

Scherer PanzerAbteilung 507. Picked up 10 Herders in late April, 1945. I think it had been disbanded and reformed as a panzerjager 507. Will check.

 

Wasn't one of the Hetzer's quirks was that the gunner had to stand on the other side of the gun because of it's offset position? The very low silhouette of the Hetzer, Stug and even the jagdpzr IV made them great pzjgrs. The Jagdpanther/tiger, Ferdinand/Nashorns were too high in my opinion. That little Hetzer gives a big bang for the buck

 

I personaly would still go with the Stug 3 because they were the 3rd most produced vehicle by the German army. They had to be worth there weight in gold, and had a 75 mm anti tank gun.

 

German Wikipedia gives the date as May 6 1945. Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507 – Wikipedia

 

Jagdpanzer 38(t)...they were never "Hetzer" until postwar. That could be, s.Panzer-Abteilung 507 two weeks before the end of the war.