Best armor unit of world war two

In my opinion it was Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503. It performed well at Kharkov destroying the main Soviet offensive force there. It also did very well at Kursk with minimal losses. It also did well at Normandy. In the Battle of Debrecen in Hungary it did outstanding claiming 1,500 vehicle kills along with 120 anti tank guns. Pretty impressive performance.

 

Is your criteria based solely on kills? What about other factors such as offensive/defensive tactics? In the offense, the US 3rd Armored Division could be considered for slicing the Ruhr Pocket up the middle in March 1945. What about the doctrine of exploitation? In that regard, the US 4th and 6th Armored Division could be considered for the breakout in Normandy, and a 200 mile race to Brest. But here cooler heads realized that armor was unsuitable for siege tactics. Command and control and survivability could also be other criteria.

Greg C.

 

You've made strong points. 503 had minimal losses except if I remember right part of that unit was bombed at Normandy and destroyed but other than that they did very well. At Kursk their nature was offensive while in Hungary it was defensive. I believe they were a well rounded unit. Interesting facts about those American divisions.

 

4th Armored Division and in particular the 37th Tank Battalion under Creighton Abrams. In fighting around Nancy and Averranches in France they ran rings around their German panzer counterparts and gave better than they got in almost every action.... using 75mm Shermans for the most part. They relieved Bastogne. They sliced across France in a style that matches any German panzer division.

After 1943 German Tiger units never performed well outside local tactical actions. They never achieved breakthroughs, rarely stopped enemy advances and, generally under performed quite badly given the usual hype about their equipment.

 

As I have said before, the best armored division the Americans ever fought was the 2d Panzer according to SHAEF's S-2. Another outfit that was closely watched was the 11th Panzer Division. Both of which were regular Heer outfits. I don't know enough about British armoured divisions to comment on that.

Based on operational success, the best American armored divisions would be 2d, 3d and 4th Armored. All of which had been the spearhead and at numerous times the Schwerpunkt of the entire US Army.

 

I think in part because they had lost most of their veteran soldiers after Kursk. What impresses me is how quickly our troops adapted to the German way of war and outperformed them after the very initial confrontations. I believe our air support was also a huge factor.

 

Blitzkrieg in reverse! It was all about combined arms of infantry, armor, artillery and tactical air support. In my opinion, even with the armored infantry battalions, American armored divisions never had enough infantry. Infantry regiments, or "combat teams" were always being attached to armored divisions. Armored commanders, particularly General Wood of the 4th Armored, didn't like it too much, arguing that conventional infantry (although assigned trucks) could not keep up with the armor. But time and time again, especially when more urban areas were encountered, Dogfaces rode the tanks or followed closely in trucks.

Greg C.

 

4th AD got all the publicity because they led the dash across France and wiped out two Panzer Brigades in that big tank brawl near Arracourt. Relieving Bastogne also helped their reputation. But the quality of their opposition was often second rate. The Pz. Bde. were easily the worst mobile formations the Germans created during the war. The 2d AD, though, fought from North Africa to Sicily to Europe against some of the toughest German divisions and made a very good account of themselves. 3d AD was younger, but it accomplished some amazing feats of arms including advancing 50 miles in one day to close the Ruhr Pocket.

The British 7th, 11th and Guards Armoured must have been pretty good for Montgomery to put them up front to lead his Army Group. But that's for someone more familiar with the British to write...

 

I think it is a combination of poor orgainzational usage and operational tactics that make the Germans armored / mobile warfare performance dismal after about early 1943.

In the first case, orgainzing a large number of seperate battalions many with specialist vehicles was a mistake. These units were great tactically but gave up the operational and strategic advantage larger organized units would have had. I think giving every panzer division a company of Tigers would have been far superior to having a handful of seperate battalions.
The reason for this is that seperate battalions end up fighting tactically attached to some unit or another. Frequently, the attachment is made for tactical rather than operational reasons as well. This means that the Tigers often end up supporting units not at the point of decision.
In addition, their numbers would be concentrated on a small portion of the battlefield where they could not have a porportionate effect to their fighting power. This is because as AFV they were too much vehicle for most missions. That is, they were too effective in their small area of operations. By thinning them out to each panzer division on a company scale they would have been available as a division reserve or as a breakthrough unit in small quantity just where needed tactically.


The second problem here is that by mid-war the Germans had learned all the wrong lessons on mobile warfare and began to apply them against the Western Allies who were no longer playing at the amateur level. These problems included:

Regularly using ad hoc units (eg., Kampfgruppen) made up on the fly and consisting of little more than a company or two of tanks supported by a small contengent of infantry.

Making attacks and counterattacks with no reconnissance or evaluation of the enemy's positions.

Little combined arms support. Artillery was generally neglected in mobile operations. This was due to a combination of lack of good communications, lack of tubes, lack of ammunition, and poor ability to coordinate artillery fires on the fly. Armor units often attacked without infantry support or with inadequite support. There was usually a lack of other supporting arms as well.

At the operational level, there was a lack of adequite engineer support. Mobile units had very little engineering support that could really be effective in opening roads, building bridges, etc. At the Our River in the Ardennes it took German engineers 72 hours to get a tank bridge across what was really just a minor river. A US engineer battalion would have done the same job in half a day. One US engineer battalion (the 281st) bridged the Rhine three times in 48 hours.

There was a lack of adequite maintenance and repair facilities and equipment. This was excerbated by the German industrial choice to end heavy prime mover (large half tracks like the Sdkfz 7, 8 or 18) at the beginning of 1943 among other moves. German panzer units never had really adequite first line maintence support in any case. This meant more tanks that broke down stayed that way longer and both battlefield recovery and retrevial of tanks in retrograde movements were generally lost. This wastage adds to German uint shortages and problems.

Leading with your face. This is another bad German habit. They would use panzers very aggressively and usually end up losing them in the end. Villers Brocage is a perfect example of this. While tank ace Michael Wittmann was able with his three Tigers and a Pz IV to shoot up a British unit for something like 30 or 40 vehicles lost he ended up losing all of the tanks he had and in the end was unable to hold the town.
So, while he managed a tactical victory in the sense of inflicting heavier losses on his oppoonet he lost the operational battle as the British ended up holding the battlefield. In this light Villers Brocage was a spectaular German defeat.

Lack of coordinated effort. The Germans frequently sent small columns in parallel against the Allies. These columns on their own lacked the firepower to deal with an organized and alert defense. In the East against the Russians such columns could defeat uncoordinated units in detail where the Soviets lacked a good communications system to coordinate their defense. In the West such columns were quickly discovered, the defenders became alert to them and, quickly moved first to stop them in their tracks and then shoot them up in detail using combined arms attacks against their flanks. German columns would regularly find themselves not only facing determined and prepared defenders but heavy artillery fire and more enemies maneuvering on their flanks. The result was usually the loss of the German column in a defeat in detail.

 

Yes Greg, I would say you are right on the money. US armored divisions, when tasked with making a breakthrough or making an opposed advance, often had the detachment of one motorized RCT--I don't think the First Army's lighting thrust in the Ruhr would have been possible without this practice.

In my opinion US infantry in general lacked sufficient lasting power because tooth-to-tail ratio was too low and too few men were assigned to be riflemen. The problem was even worse armored divisions. Three battalions of armored infantry does not last long in combat and according to Zaloga, armored infantry had some of the highest mortality rate in the ground forces because the nature of their mission meant they were almost always on the attack.

Ironically, the early war Germans had the best divisional organization for armored units but A. Hitler pissed it away to double his panzer divisions on paper: Old German panzer divisions used to have a Panzer Brigade of 4 panzer bn and a Schützen Brigade of 4 motorized infantry Bn. The Americans misread the signs and trimmed down their own armored divisions, though their original conception of the "heavy" armored division was almost ideal: 4 Bn of medium tanks, 3 Bn. of armored infantry and 2 Bn of light tanks.

By Cold War US armored divisions had an Armored Brigade and a Mechanized Infantry Brigade, for the total of 5 tank battalions and 4 mechanized infantry battalions. The original German division structure was superior.

 

T.A I totally agree with everything you pointed out in your reply. As for the above quote, I would add that I always thought it admirable how the Germans could collect ad hoc formations, and remnants of such, and quickly form them into a fighting force. Some historians like to declare that (I paraphrase) "oh the Germans there were not mobile, therefore presented no threat." It was not so much the equipment that the Germans salvaged in retreats in Tunisia or the Falaise Gap, but intact headquarters that played a vital role later on. The Germans could not make a major penetration with a small Kampfgrupe, but they could certainly buy time in delaying tactics, or, I would argue, infiltrate and hit a vulnerable exposed flank, because a US unit had pushed out too far.

Greg C.

 

hobarts funnies. Mission scarcity obviously..but nonetheless...

 

IMO
2nd Armoured for the US
7th AD "desert rats" for Commonwealth
6th Panzer for the Germans

Considering the relative levels of opposition I believe 6th Panzer carries the prize for performance, going up against the occasional KV and T34 and masses of T26 and BTs with Pz35(t) looks harder than facing assorted medium and heavy panzers with M4s and plenty of support.

I don't agree with the praise of the 1940 panzer formation it usually was armour heavy as the infantry brigade usually contained 2 rifle and one M/C batallions while most had 3 if not 4 armour batallions. IMO in WW2 a 1:2 to 2:3 armour infantry ration was best, the Germans achieved it at division level with the 1942 TOE while the armour heavy allied divisions remained "brittle" unless reinforced with attachments, of course as most allied inf was motorized the tanks never operated for long as isolated spearheads like the Germans did so the low rifle count was not an issue unless the unit found itself facing bad tank terrain.

The soviet approach was entirely different as the smallest late war "balanced" formation was the Army though the other countries would call a soviet "army" an oversized corps.

Urqh how would the 79th face up in defence against a 1944 panzer unit? I think that for "unbalanced" it holds the prize, did it have any arty at all?, IMO it was really just an adminstrative HQ for some very specialized units (I do like the funnies too but ... as division 79 is a non starter).

 

it wouldnt tos but it depends on criterea raised as to best unit..what is the criterea?

 

Based on overall performance do you think we(Americans) were a tougher egg to crack for the Germans than the Soviets? Some of the comments here lead me to believe that.

 

I like the 6th Panzer division myself along with Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf , and the 19th Panzer. For the Americans the 1st,2nd, and 4th armored divsions.

 

My guess would be whatever unit that was left at the end of the war with the most tanks.

IT seems to me that the Marine Tank Battalions did pretty well in the Pacific.

 

in that case jugs...the swiss tank corps..if they had any...seriously though..if its most successful..based on successful missions id still go for hobarts as that units work in relation to the immense mission worth is surely a major success..but i aint daft..tos is correct and ill bow out. but i would still be interested in what makes you guys choose what criterea equalls best..a regt of 7th armoured stuarts gave more than their worth in Burma..yet i wouldnt expect them to stand an earthly against a company of tigers or panthers...best...or most successful?

 

The 79th Armored Division was just an administrative headquarters in reality. It never operated as an intact division. In fact, it never operated as anything but a group of brigades and regiments that were defacto attached to something called "the 79th Armored Division."

Variously, it had under its command:

35th Tank Brigade (CDL)
1st Tank Brigade (CDL)
27th Armored Brigade (DD tanks)
30th Armored Brigade (CRAB tanks)
1st Assault Brigade, RE (AVRE Churchills)
43rd RTR (experimental establishment)
31st Tank Brigade (Crocodiles)
49th RTR (Kangaroos)
1st Canadian Armored Personnel Regiment (Kangaroos)
5th Armored Regiment RE (Buffaloes)
11th RTR (Buffaloes)
33rd Armored Brigade (Buffaloes)
4th Armored Brigade (DD tanks)
There was no artillery, engineering, signals, or supply component within the division.
RAMC, RAOC and, REME support was limited to specialists for supporting the various vehicles in the different brigades.

 

so it operated as a group of brigades. thats a unit in my book..original question is what unit not division etc..but im being pedantic maybe..leave you all to it