Which tank is the most cost effective tank in the war

Well, the KV and JS tanks were acronyms for Kliment Voroshilov and Josef Stalin, but that was only a quirk of that design bureau, everybody else stuck to a number (T-34, T-28, T-70, etc).

Now, the Brits did have a 'Harry Hopkins'

 

Za

I choose oven mittens!!

It isn't built in a caring fashion either. The welding looks apaling. But hey it just keeps on running. Rather have a working vehicle that looks like it has been put together in somebodys backyard, that a pretty piece of scrap bogged down somewhere.

 

Haha!

It seems I got lucky then, I saw a few T-34s (76 and 85) in a museum and Finland, and was surprised especially with the 85, really good welds. The 76 was austere but not bad as you say. I wouldn't like to generalise.

 

I found a few nicknames for the Soviet T-60 tank.

The Russian Battlefield - T-60: combat employment

 

Has to be the tiger king

talking about shermans and t 34's

took 5 shermans to compete against a tiger king

 

Welcome aboard dragunov.

Having said that ... The Tiger B must be about the least cost-effective vehicle fielded by any nation for the entire course of the war.
And the 5-1 thing is frankly... wrong, and apparently based on nothing. A use of the search function will reveal some explanations of this.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Hello Dragunov, If you wish there is special section for new members who wish to introduce themselves.

 

What he said.

Most cost effective? If we're including tank destroyers... the Hetzer. Used already-existant Pz. 38t components, could be manufactured with less materials in factories that couldn't handle the production of larger tanks, and the Hetzer was pretty good on the battlefield (though I don't have any specific numbers here at work to back that part up.).

 

Comparatively, yes the German system of manufacturing for most of their industry was "sub par." The Germans made very little use of true production lines at the time. For the most part they were still doing individual hand work using master craftsmen. Their plants were typically much smaller than those of the Allies as well. This translates into a much poorer volume of scale.
While everyone made use of subassemblies and materials produced in other plants, the Germans had a much higher volume of such assemblies, and in many cases things that would not have been such in a US or Soviet plant.
The Germans because of their batch sytem of production also introduced constant changes to their equipment in manufacture. This is why you see so many variants of tanks and aircraft compared to the Allies. The Allies were careful only to make large manufacturing changes slowly. These were introduced such as to not disrupt production badly.
With the German system of using small batches and lots of hand work introducing changes was easily done but kept volume low.

 

I read the same thing about their aircraft production. If say a throttle lever was not with in 1/100's tolerence then it was not accepted. They continued this until mid 1944.

 

I think Krupp made the guns for the tanks as they did during ww1. t-34 gets my vote here....cheap and effective if not very comfortable for the crew. then again, most german tanks weren't very comfy either

 

What I find interesting today is that many nations with older Soviet armor are doing this sort of modification to their vehicles. That is, they are dumping the Soviet engine and transmission for a Western one like a Continential or Cummings diesel and a hydromatic transmission. They are opting for Western style rubber bushed tracks with double end connectors. Fire control is going laser and using British, German, or US systems and in some cases even the gun is getting replaced with such venerable favorites as the British L7 105mm.
Its pretty clear when given the choice and opportunity that Soviet armor greatly benefits from Western technology.

 

No problem with that. So they pick up a basically good 20- or 30-years old hull (T-55, T-72, whatever), and bring it up to date with quality and relatively cheap western goodies.

IIRC, the Ukrainian tank plants already offer newbuild German 120mm guns as alternatives, choice of the customer.

By the way, I have already lost track of the many many variants of T-72, T-80 etc, as made in Russia, Ukraine, China, NATO Eastern Europe, etc, etc, etc. plus local mods and rebuilds

 

I'd say the Panzer IV as the most cost effective tank of WW2, easily uparmoured and upgunned, if Germany had produced more Panzer IVs instead of the Panthers and Tigers ,they could have made more of a difference on the number of Panzers available to the Panzerwaffe. For example, you could build 4 Panzer IVs to every Tiger and 3 Panzer IVs for every Panther. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I suppose the Panzer IV could be the most "cost effective" tank for the Third Reich, but they really didn’t take advantage of their simple and relatively reliable design. After all there were only about 8,500 of them made in all their years of production from 1938-‘45. From the "A" to the "J", I don’t know how to count those which were converted to "other" occupations. And when you are fighting thousands of other tanks of equal or superior quality, the IV wasn’t going to "deliver the mail".

In the three years between February of 1942 and July of 1945 the US put out just over 49,000 M4 "Shermans" of all variations, and the early M4 was equal/superior to all the PzK IVs up to the G, and then a bit less so . Add in that in the five years between 1940 and 1945 the USSR probably produced over 60,000 of the T-34 in both 76mm (35,000+) and 85mm (29,000+) main gun versions, both of which were far superior to the IV, and cheaper to make as well.

Those two were the allied nation’s most cost effective tanks, but the IV might have been the most cost effective German unit. Don't know if that is saying all that much though.

 

1st place: M4, sloped glacis plate like a T-34, equally powerful gun, much more reliable, radios, a three man turret, massive room for improvement. The Shermans wins by a landslide.

2nd place: Pz.IV, a sound design that had room for much improvement and remained competitive even in 1945.

3rd: T-34, unlike the M4 it also has sloped sides but was at first very unreliable, lacked a radio, didn´t get a commanders copula until 43 and a three man turret until 1944!

honourable mention: Vickers Valentine, 65mm glacis plate, highly reliable(which was most unusual for early war tanks from the UK), the turret ring was wide enough to allow the installation of the 6pdr, it also cost less time and material to build than the Matilada II.