The Best Tank in WW2

Which is all very well as long as the ships, railways and bridges you need to get your tank to that field are able to cope with a 70 ton load. If they're not, then there's just an empty space where the Tiger was supposed to be and your dirtbike would win the contest.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
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Im seeing the wrong info here.

According to my info and sources, only 40,000 T34s were built in all models. The most numerous tank is the sherman with 49,000 built. The numbers of T34s built are still surprising considering the disruption to the industry by the German invasion.

 

Welcome to the forum Lfunn. The point you bring up is the old discussion of stand-alone power vs. tactical and practical use in real battles. Because you must realize, a tank that can stand alone in a field and hold off everything thrown at it does not make this tank the perfect one or even a good weapon at all.

In combat a tank should be able to adapt to terrain and different kinds of enemy forces; the King Tiger is not well suited at all for unstable ground, bridges (as pointed out), and places where its 6-meter barrel cannot be wielded. It is good in defence against other tanks but not really in the attack, facing flexible forces of infantry and tanks. It is as vulnerable for air attack as any other tank. So while being entirely indestructible in certain specific scenarios, this superiority only offers a limited advantage in actual warfare, which could also have been provided by other tanks such as the Panther.

 

According to Russian Tanks of WWII by Tim Bean and Will Fowler, there were 34,091 T-34s and 19,291 T-34/85s built (and 200 T-44s).

lfunn is mistaken, the T-34 could not fire with any accuracy while on the move. Only US tanks were equipped with gyro-stabilization which gave them some limted ability to fire on the move.

 

HA HA HA

 

yeah , if if if but were talking riding onto a battlefield and taking on a king tiger because your tank is better.now i agree on average the tiger is flawed by breakdowns, limited mobilty, and dont forget to bring an unusual amount of extra petrol,but the poor disfunctional tiger got it's rep for something,that being nobody in any tank felt so comfortable as to charge the enemy in one because it proved not a good idea.what if they have enough gas?
what if it did 'nt rain enough to soften the ground?what if the tank commander is any good and positioned the tank right? now name the tank or dirt bike you rolled up on the tiger with ? nobody but if the tiger could get there it would roll up on anybody. and as good as the panther g,mkv,or ir version were.it's still no match.tank for tank, one on one.now a days we have the best tanks to go a long with the best soldiers and equipment here in the u.s. but back then all armies called air support when tigers were in the field. and they did nt even call on the mighty dirt bike.

 

yeah i keep reading different numbers for different sites myself but i get the idea, we can all agree there were a far superior number of shermans and t-34's in comparison to tigers and panthers combined. and thank the good lord germany had the production problems it did thanks to their leader,der furor or doy furor or derrrrrrrrr furor. anyway from the u.s. standpoint we did 'nt care for tank to tank warfare at the time instead opting for air superiority,mobile tank killer technology, and we fielded the best soldiers as always. someone said the t-34 couldnt shoot while moving well besides the t-34 being a diesel somthing many other tanks if any could boast the main function was to out flank the big slow tiger and the nimble panther the only problem with the main gun was it was 'nt the terror of say the long barreled 88mm and the russians did nt like the fact you can't point the gun downward somthing to do with the shoot on the fly technology i 'm told the t-34 did 'nt have. so if your t-34 is positioned on a rise the gun can point staight but not downward that could be trouble so its good the tank could get out of its own way.

 

Canambridge: The info u have is right!

What i was saying was there were 40000 t34s built during WW2.

T34s were produed well after WW2 as well.

 

Lfunn: no Allied tank could face the King Tiger in one-on-one combat in ground that favoured the King Tiger. Maybe the IS2 had a shot, like the heavier Allied tank destroyers (ISU-122S, M-36). However, very few such situations will have occured; overall the German units were outnumbered and faced with Allied air superiority, so that the mighty King Tiger simply wasn't invincible.

Also, there's the points of overweight, much too much fuel consumed, relative immobility, production costs... The KT was no war-winning machine overall.

 

I'm strongly of the opinion that the King Tiger was a real German own goal - they are facing enemies who are churning out reliable, easy to repair tanks in vast numbers, so Germany produces a beast of a tank that takes more man hours to make than (I think) about 30 Shermans or T34s, that guzzles huge amounts of the fuel Germany dosn't have and is such a masterpiece of prescision engineering that rough field repairs are all but impossible. The King Tiger was a battlefield titan, but was not what Germany needed.

 

Speculations and more speculations...

 

Its not easy to make comparison from just pure stats as there are more factors on a battlefield than just tank to tank comparisons .
given that all the odds were stacked against the german tanks there records are even more impressive .
Having read some of the comments on these forums sounds like some nationalitys want to rewrite history . i wonder who that could be !!

 

Agreed! add to it that it leaked fuel and oil like a sieve and was a heavy monster whose high silouete made an easy target even for an average an average gunner....

 

The M4 was almost as tall as the Tiger II...

Christian

 

You can always expect the defenders to have an easier time than the attackers. Thats how it works.

Oh I can't wait for you to finish this sentance.

 

True enough, but it was far more reliable, more maneuvrable . It was easy to produce and easy to operate-None of the above appplies to the Tiger... 8)

 

The Tiger II had better cross-country capabilities than the Sherman. The main advantage of the Sherman was that it was about 50% faster in terrain. The Tiger II had better step climbing, better climbing in degrees, better trench crossinf, better fording and better ground pressure - and it only used about 20% less fuel per kilometer on road.

Christian

 

You always hear these negative comments on the Sherman's height, but these same people never once bring up the fact that the Panther G is taller than the Sherman.

 

Don't try to put words in my mount - it was mentioned that the Tiger II was very tall, to which I replied that the M4 was almost as tall. I never implied that this made the M4 a worse tank, only that the height shouldn't be used against the Tiger II when the M4 wasn't any better itself.

 

Indeed!The earlier versions of the Shermans had a height of 9 ft,-latter versions (76 mm gun_ 9ft 6 in, The Panther Ausf A : 10 ft, 3 in, the Ausg G 10 ft,-the Tiger 9 ft 5 in, and the Tger II AUSF B 10,ft 3 in-and look at the target the rear of the Tiger afforded enemy gunners...