Sherman's vs T-34/85's vs PzIV's...

I don't know the US system, so I can't comment on that in particular...

 

Try to prevent that a discussion on the three most common tanks and probably most influential machines of the war turns into such petty detail. Please! :-?

 

I hate to say it again, but all 3 of these machines are garbage. I rather be in a Pershing, a Panther, a Tiger, or a JS-2.

 

So, an Army lead by Liang would feature no Medium tanks to fill the void left by an assault of Heavy tanks? Interesting.

KBO, Greg Pitts: I propose a truce. Let us focus our combined efforts instead on proving the worth of Medium tanks over heavy ones.

 

Allright, since you don't consider the Panther a medium tank, then I will take the T-34/85 then.

 

The Panther is only medium by Germanies standards. Germany doesn't classify tanks by weight, but by size of the gun. And you'll take the T-34/85? Isn't that one of the tanks you called "garbage?"

 

Panzer IV with the L75 and the side skirts.

Remember the question was the best between the Sherman, not the Fire Fly, and the T-34 which in the begining only the command tank had the radio comm units installed.

 

But the panther had one of the most powerful german guns made during ww2. Why would they claasify that as medium in your opinion?

 

It was still 75mm.

Size of gun, not power of gun, is what Danyel said.

 

liang
Just because a tank is inferior to another tank in a larger weight class doesn't make it garbage. Furthermore, the tanks you mention came out several years later than the vehicle the question is based on. If you follow your own logic through, you have disproven yourself, since both the Pershing, the Panther, the Tiger and the JS-2 are garbage - sompared to the Leopard 2 and M1 'Abrams'.

Danyel
Germany didn't classify tanks by gun size - the predecessor to the Tiger (the Durchbrauchwagen) was designed with the same gun as the contemporary Pz.Kpfw. IV, the 7,5 cm Kw.K. L/24.

 

What is this 'Durchbrauchwagen'
I cannot find any mention of it anywhere...

 

The best dvelopement history I've seen is in THOMAS L. JENTZ & HILARY L. DOYLE. GERMANY'S TIGER TANKS - D.W. to Tiger I: DESIGN, PRODUCTION & MODIFICATIONS. Atglen, PA : Schiffer Military History, 2000.

By the way, I see I misspelled the name - it's Durchbruchswagen...

 

http://gva.freeweb.hu/weapons/germany.html

 

That still doesn't explain how a medium and a heavy tank can hen have the exact same gun at the same time.

By the way, I haven't seen anything which suggests that the Pz.Kpfw. III was a light tank.

 

I think what Danyel refers to is a late-war or even post-war classification system, which would call the Tiger a heavy tank because of it s gun and consequently call the PanzerIII a light tank because of its gun.

All of this appears to be a way to explain the fact that the weight of the Panther doesn't qualify it as a medium tank by Allied standards while it actually was.

I hate it when people call the Panther a heavy tank because it wasn't; it was used as a medium tank, for troop support and troop AT cover, not specifically for front bashing and tank killing like heavy tanks should. It was the standard Panzer division tank during the Ardennes Offensive; standard divisional tanks simply aren't heavies, because the Germans organized those in separate Heavy Tank Units.

 

BTW what advantages did the Tiger I have over the Panther? It seems as though they had more or less equal firepower and protection, with the Panther coming out on top when mobility and cost are taken into consideration.

(Hey I'm a sergeant now!)

 

The Tiger had superior HE capability, and better side and read armour.

The Tiger also arrived prior to teh Panther, and the Panther was overall also a much newer design than the Tiger.

 

The tiger's side armor was not surperior to the Panther's.

 

The Tiger had 80 mm. side armour overall.

The Panther had

• 40 mm. at 90 degrees at the hull sides,
• 40 mm. at 50 degrees at the superstructure sides (about 52 mm. relative armour)
• 45 mm. at 65 degreen at the turret sides (about 50 mm. relative armour)

 

the Tiger I was more manueverable and had better cross country performance . it had a wider hull and shorter track contact. ( these differences are really almost negligible and the panther made up for it with an extra HP to weight ratio ) the negative was that it had less bridge crossing ability and was more difficult to transport. It had double the penetration of the Panther but half the cruising range between refills. The Tiger was there as a breakthough vehicle on the attack. The Panther was more mobile and cheaper to produce ( about half the cost ) One of the drawbacks with the tiger was that it had to be produced individually whereas the Panther was mass produced. Also the Panther was extremely weak on the flanks - side armor was bad. the tanks at the front of a wedge are exposed to a crossfire which necessitates a heavier tank up front.