Interesring link about T-34 - NOT the best tank in the war?

[No idea]

How why didn't the tank division just surround a singular tank????

The whole history of that action is given by a first hand account of Gen. Raus (by then he was the C2 of 1st Panzer, Iirc). To make it short, it was blocking a bridge and, since it was the very first encounter with "the monster", the germans had no idea how to deal with it (they would learn later). Their anti tank weapons and tanks ammo simply bounced off. They had to bring the 88s up to 500 meters to put it out of action. But all that took several days. If you want to know how that particular kv came to be there, you can read Robert Forzyk "tank warfare in the east front 1941-1942". As it happened that kv was part of a larger force of a few kvs and t 34s that had attacked and defeated one infantry division just north of 1st apnzer division. They passed through the lines and kept on going. One of them was the kv that Raus tell us about and that gave so many headaches at that bridge.

Anyway, regarding the T 34, it cant be argued that it was a very good tank during 1941, probably the best in the world at that year. It had sloped armour, wide tracks (which allowed it much better mobility through difficult terrain than most other tanks), very good armour and firepower, a diesel engine and it could be produced in much larger numbers thanks to a simple design. The fact that the germans feared encountering it, and the fact that they started producing a new tank design (the Panther) and gave top priority to another one (the Tiger) speaks volumes of theT 34 quality, even when they were being destroyed by the germans in 3 or 4 to one rates.

The T 34 problems during 1941 were not in its design, but in other things, mainly a horrible supply situation, bad drivers, awful C&C of soviet tank units and the soviet doctrine of fighting closed into the tank, which made the crew unaware of their surroundings, somethign made even worse by the lack of a radio (only command tanks carried a radio in the soviet tank units)

 

[lodgers]

"The war" is way too broad a category. Keep in mind that tanks in 1939 were considered well armed if they had a 50mm main gun and 50mm of unsloped front armor. Just some three years later that would be considered very inadequate with the gold standard having become a 75-76mm gun and at least 50mm sloped armor. In 1941 the T-34 was a revolutionary tank with some glaring drawbacks (two man turret, poor vision, inadequate radios) that could stand virtually uncontested by any contemporary German tank. In 1943 the T-34 was a fairly average tank with the same drawbacks pulling it down immensely compared to what other nations had begun fielding (upgunned Panzer IVs, M4 Sherman). In 1945 the T-34/76 was just short of antiquated and the T-34/85 was pretty mediocre when compared to what other nations had in service (Panthers, M4A3).

Best tank of the war? As others have said, if we are to decide on a best tank of the war it would have to be from a "strategical impact"-view, since the measure of what was a competitive tank changed rapidly all throughout the war. From the strategic impact view it only comes down to two tanks: The T-34 and the M4. They were the only tanks that were produced in sufficient numbers, performed the same role adequately throughout the war and showed a reliability that most other tanks lacked. Both the T-34 and the M4 (all variants for both tanks) allowed their respective users strategical freedom thanks to availability, overall performance and reliability. Whatever it is the T-34 or the M4 is a toss up in my opinion, both where good tanks and became great due to how well they fit into their respective nations doctrinal use of tanks.

"best tank" has nothing to do with "Strategic" impact, it has to do with what your crews want to be in and what works best in combat. Why do you think the M1A2 Abrams is so deadly and feared and hence VERY EFFECTIVE, it's not because we produced a billion. Also, just because gun is 75mm doesn't mean it's any good. The 75mm l70 on the panther can penetrate more than double the armor the T34/76c guns, plus with the German optics it can actually hit the T34 at 1500m reliable and kill it.

 

[Denkt]

All tanks are designed differen't because there are so many factors to take account. It is not so simple as if one tank can destroy another tank it is plain better then the tank it can destroy.

Like take for example Stridsvagn m/42, a swedish tank built in the later part of the war. At 22.5 ton with a low velocity 75 mm gun and at best 55 mm armor it may look like a complete obsoloete design straight from the go but the terrain for Sweden may not be optimal for tanks in the same way as in europe mainland.

A low velocity gun is more effective against infantry (which may be a bigger threat for Sweden then tanks), armed with 4 machine guns (which would likely be one for each crew member), it is optimised to fight infantry, probably at close range.

The tanks was eventually uppgraded to a high velocity gun but that was late 50s which would say that such ability was not valued as important by the swedish military.

There is just to many factors that make it impossible to say which tank is the best because everyone build the tanks they need.

Like all modern swedish ship designs was designed so they could lay mines, including the Tre kronor class crusiers which was the largest warships sweden ever built, the ability to use all ships to lay mines was very valuable for Sweden, and was worth eventual tradeoffs.

The T34 cost seems suspiciously low, likely that cost is so low because alot of the numbers are repaired tanks.

 

[zyphial]

Dark Horse Argument: The Sherman was the best tank, by a landslide. Why? Because every other tank was a detriment to the economy producing it. With the US' unique geographic and economic position, it was a cog in the apparatus that launched the US from a distant regional power into a world superpower.

The purpose of a nation is the prosperity of its people, and the purpose of the military is to enforce, defend and expand that prosperity (emphasis changes depending on whether you're in a moral nation or not). Killing other tanks is merely a small fragment of the purpose of any weapon, so direct comparisons between tank's kill ratios or armaments assigns a rather arbitrary goal post that doesn't respect the larger picture.

Producing Shermans shattered unemployment and bolstered the economy. Show me another tank that did that

Spoiler

 

[Cowsnipe]

I've seen numerous interviews from american tankers in the korean war that said that quote "north korean tank crews had no clue what the hell the were doing" or things of that nature.

The US and UK forces had a massive experience advantage, I don't doubt that to them the north koreans appeared clueless

Speaking of the korean war, the curchill tanks were crucial in holding certain hilltops since no other tanks could climb them

 

[Zupanicarr]

But glorious tanks of the Motherland though?...

 

[Caesar15]

But glorious tanks of the Motherland though?...

Ah yes, 1 of 2 animes I've actually been able to watch.

 

[Zupanicarr]

Ah yes, 1 of 2 animes I've actually been able to watch.

Is the other one Hetalia?
Admittedly, I've never seen Girls und Panzer, and I really despise and tend to stay away from any creepy anime, which is kinda most of it... But there are a lot of really good ones that aren't creepy, and some I've seen are actually pretty great. If it has a good story, who cares what art style it's in?

Spoiler: Give some of them a shot...

Cowboy Bebop
Samurai Champloo
Attack on Titan
The first series of Fullmetal Alchemist
Hetalia: Axis Powers, the most offensive historically accurate show ever...

The Big Blue Blob...

Anyway, T-34s will always be close to my beating red heart!

 

[Caesar15]

Is the other one Hetalia?
Admittedly, I've never seen Girls und Panzer, and I really despise and tend to stay away from any creepy anime, which is kinda most of it... But there are a lot of really good ones that aren't creepy, and some I've seen are actually pretty great. If it has a good story, who cares what art style it's in?

Spoiler: Give some of them a shot...

Cowboy Bebop
Samurai Champloo
Attack on Titan
The first series of Fullmetal Alchemist
Hetalia: Axis Powers, the most offensive historically accurate show ever...
View attachment 162025
The Big Blue Blob...

Anyway, T-34s will always be close to my beating red heart!

Girls Und Panzer? Creepy? Please. What on earth would make you call that show, creepy? It is quite innocent.

For the record, Attack on Titan was the other one I saw. And if you can handle all the violence in that, then you can handle whatever GuP can throw at you.

 

[Zupanicarr]

Girls Und Panzer? Creepy? Please. What on earth would make you call that show, creepy? It is quite innocent.

For the record, Attack on Titan was the other one I saw. And if you can handle all the violence in that, then you can handle whatever GuP can throw at you.

I guess I could have worded that better, I didn't mean to imply it specifically was creepy, just that I hadn't seen it.

 

[aruon]

You are forgetting the human cost of having a POS tanks to DIE IN! If you produce ten T34's and lose NINE of them before you can even got a shot off, your crews are still DEAD! The sloped armor is a 2 edge sword and the Russian tanks were massive cramped inside, had lousy optics and guns and were NOT reliable at all and the crews almost always died when hit.

like i said on a previous page- which tank model? there were like ten versions of the damn thing. yeah most soviet tanks had no sense of ergonomics, but most of the problems were fixed with successive models. even with the lousy gun, all you're talking about is the 1st model, the T-34 1940 which fitted the underwhelming L-11 turret. each successive model with a 76.2mm cannon fitted either the much better F-34 cannon. like most other tanks, it started off rocky and got better over time.

 

[Mjarr]

The revolutionary design of the T-34

Well, we do have all kinds of common knowledge such as hakkapeliittas being super mega heavy elite shock cavalry that cut through Catholic steel like butter (light cavalry which merely earned its reputation over time), Bf 109 was a bad design as it needed ballast to fix centre of gravity (which model? and modern fighter jets need ballast to balance centre of gravity which means they all suck I suppose), Napoleon was near midget (average height surrounded just by guys of above average guys most of the time) and whatnot. There's also a saying x being greatest invention since sliced bread and sliced bread dates back to what, very late 19th century or so? Early 20th century?

Serious design flaws

Fair enough, but same serious design flaws plagued many early WW2 tanks regardless was it French, British or Russian, Germans perhaps being only notable exception to this.

Armor spalling

Not really exclusive to T-34. We can make an argument that hard armour has its benefits in some situations. Bigger issue is consistency of metallurgy vs different standards, as noted that theoretically Panther should not penetrate more than 162mm of steel with combat grade ammunition @ 100m against 0 degree target yet anecdotes and testing data from the Americans imply it penetrated over 190mm of their plate constantly.

Automotive performance

Most Russian\Soviet gear of the era tends to have certain Spartan element that crew comfort is secondary to pure function, but once again fair enough.

Powerful gun?

Between 1939 and 1945, AT technology reached the kind of funny zenith that by 1944 there were very few tanks that were actually safe from enemy tank even if the tank models tend to favour certain German panzerjägers and big cats. Is it any surprise that tank that entered production far earlier may lack firepower (relatively speaking) compared to a one that entered several years later?

Quantity vs quality

Fair enough but we could also make a point that five tank aces with the best tanks out there sooner or later cannot do much against 200 shitty tanks unless thye somehow can find the perfect bottleneck and the 200 enemy tanks are willing to fight like gentlemen. Obviously, the issue can be mildly put, complicated to favour both directions.

Production and losses during the war

Do the losses separate actual writeoffs or is it lumped together like Luftwaffe did? That is, accidents, downed and damaged aircraft were usually lumped together statistically which in turn gave birth to the myth 2\3rds of Bf 109 were lost in accidents.

Golan Heights

Granted, I'm no expert on cold war Soviet AFVs and whatnot but isn't the general performance of that era still disputed because of the monkey model question? Even if T-55 is at disadvantage against newer tank in head on fight quite obviously?

The T-34 legacy led the Russians to invest in quantity over quality. A mistake that their Allies paid dearly

Arguably that backs several hundred years ago as Russia has always had certain knack for massed armies given in that kind of warfare pure numbers had plenty of advantages, and once we enter era of conscription as we currently know it, difference of running things and many gear prioritised on the idea they need to be low-maintenance not to interfere in drawn out situations, that was hardly a new thing. Arguably we can make a case the Western allies started favouring heavy tank killer type of design in Cold War due influence of German big cats which are still controversial whether or not they were actually decent all-around-service or more of a kneejerk reaction to certain perceived issues, whereas Soviets had different plans in mind.

Edit: Typos

 

[shri]

How why didn't the tank division just surround a singular tank????

Twice in 1941, this incident happened, first was in late June 1941 during the battles in the Baltics, collectively known as the "Battle of Raseinai", where a single KV1 held up the 6th Panzer division for almost a full day, knocking out upwards of 20 Tanks (mainly PzII and PzIII) until it ran out of ammunition and retreated.
The single tank defended an important bridge.

Later in mid-August 1941, again on the Road to St. Pete (Leningrad then), Lt. Klobanov (one of the top Russian Tank aces) and his company of 5 KV1 +2 KV2 held up the 8th Panzer division for more than a day, ending up destroying some 43 Tanks (mainly PzII and PzIII) and delaying the entry into St.Pete and perhaps saving the city.
The Germans reportedly fired some 500 rounds of which some 150 hit the tanks but none of those 7 tanks were destroyed, the rounds were fired using the "Door Knocker- 37mm AT" as well as the guns of the PzII and PzIII tanks all of which were useless.
The Russian company was defending an important bridge leading right into the city of St.Pete.
The Soviet victory was the result of a well-planned ambush in advantageous ground and of technical superiority, the majority of the German tanks were Czech or PzII with some PzIIIs.
Russia made a great propaganda of the battle, unfortunately the Lt. in question was nearly sacked for "supposedly anti-national activities like Fraternising with enemy" during the "Winter War".

P.S.: As per WIKI-
A monument dedicated to the battle was installed in the village of Noviy Uchkhoz in 1980, at the place where Kolobanov's KV-1 was dug in, due solely to the demands of the villagers. Unfortunately it was impossible to find a KV-1 tank, so an IS-2 heavy tank was installed there instead.

 

[thedarkendstar]

Twice in 1941, this incident happened, first was in late June 1941 during the battles in the Baltics, collectively known as the "Battle of Raseinai", where a single KV1 held up the 6th Panzer division for almost a full day, knocking out upwards of 20 Tanks (mainly PzII and PzIII) until it ran out of ammunition and retreated.
The single tank defended an important bridge.

Later in mid-August 1941, again on the Road to St. Pete (Leningrad then), Lt. Klobanov (one of the top Russian Tank aces) and his company of 5 KV1 +2 KV2 held up the 8th Panzer division for more than a day, ending up destroying some 43 Tanks (mainly PzII and PzIII) and delaying the entry into St.Pete and perhaps saving the city.
The Germans reportedly fired some 500 rounds of which some 150 hit the tanks but none of those 7 tanks were destroyed, the rounds were fired using the "Door Knocker- 37mm AT" as well as the guns of the PzII and PzIII tanks all of which were useless.
The Russian company was defending an important bridge leading right into the city of St.Pete.
The Soviet victory was the result of a well-planned ambush in advantageous ground and of technical superiority, the majority of the German tanks were Czech or PzII with some PzIIIs.
Russia made a great propaganda of the battle, unfortunately the Lt. in question was nearly sacked for "supposedly anti-national activities like Fraternising with enemy" during the "Winter War".

P.S.: As per WIKI-
A monument dedicated to the battle was installed in the village of Noviy Uchkhoz in 1980, at the place where Kolobanov's KV-1 was dug in, due solely to the demands of the villagers. Unfortunately it was impossible to find a KV-1 tank, so an IS-2 heavy tank was installed there instead.

I know the panzer 3s 50mm didn't have the best pen I thought it could pen the KV1 and 2 if it got close enough.

 

[frolix42]

You are forgetting the human cost of having a POS tanks to DIE IN! If you produce ten T34's and lose NINE of them before you can even got a shot off, your crews are still DEAD!

I FORGOT my crews are DEAD?!?!?!

lik dis if u cri evrytim

It's not really pertinent here which tank was the best to be assigned to IRL. If fantasizing about crewing WW2 tanks what the thread was about, this would belong in the OT forum.

Spoiler

Personally I wouldn't want to be in any tank from the USSR or Germany. This has nothing to do with the quality of any of these tanks. I would rather crew a Bob Semple and enjoy the peaceful scenery of New Zealand than fight for either of those regimes.
If we blinded ourselves to all other factors and placed paramount importance on the immediate survivability of a type of tank, I suppose I'd want to be in a Maus.
Of course many other factors make the Maus an abominably terrible tank.

You're also making some strange assumptions:

• You invent a hyperbolic scenario that imagines nine T-34 tanks are somehow destroyed "before they can get a shot off". Why? I am absolutely certain that 90% of T-34 were not destroyed before they fired a shot. I think in most circumstances the utility of ten T-34s are higher than one Tiger II.
• In your invented hypothetical, you're ignoring the fact that nine potential German crews have literally no armor protection at all, because you think that it would be better to give one German crew an extreme amount of armor.

The sloped armor is a 2 edge sword and the Russian tanks were massive cramped inside, had lousy optics and guns and were NOT reliable at all and the crews almost always died when hit.

The Panther and the Tiger II both had very sloped armor. Both were very cramped more or less to the same degree as the T-34, though this is a hard thing to measure. I think in general having sloped armor is worth being more cramped, virtually every nation designing tanks after 1944 thought so. So long as your gunner and loader are trained and can function in battle, being uncomfortable is a part of being in a tank.

By 1943 the T-34 had a larger turret and a German-style cupola, this more or less brought the T-34 to parity with the Pz4 in regards to optics. I've read that the 76mm gun of the T-34 performed well, I haven't head of any reliability problems relating specifically with the gun.

 

[Gethsemani]

"best tank" has nothing to do with "Strategic" impact, it has to do with what your crews want to be in and what works best in combat.

How about no? The individual crew member of any tank (or even the entire crew of any individual tank) has no understanding of the broader war. They usually have incomplete information both about their own equipment and the equipment of the enemy and are lucky to have even a cursory understanding of the operational and strategic situation around them. Point in case being how US tankers have dubbed the M4 Sherman a death trap, gave it nicknames like Ronson ("Lights up the first time, every time") and generally considered it a piece of shit... When post-war studies show that the M4 Sherman won all its major engagements with Panthers and was the safest tank to be in, with less then one crew member dying on average when an M4 was knocked out (compared to 2-3 crew members killed on average for all other tanks).

Why do you think the M1A2 Abrams is so deadly and feared and hence VERY EFFECTIVE, it's not because we produced a billion.

Because the M1A2 has never faced the enemies it was designed to face (the T-80U and T-90)? Besides, the M1-series of tanks has been built in numbers around 10,000 according to Wikipedia, compare this to 3,480 Leopard 2s, 450 Challenger 2s, 5400 T-80 and 3,200 T-90s. The M1 Abrams is very much a mass produced tank and it is effective because the USA can allow itself to lavishly equip a tank and produce insane numbers of them.

Also, just because gun is 75mm doesn't mean it's any good. The 75mm l70 on the panther can penetrate more than double the armor the T34/76c guns, plus with the German optics it can actually hit the T34 at 1500m reliable and kill it.

I know that caliber isn't the only measure of a gun. For simplicity's sake I didn't go into the minutiae of what affects a guns armor penetration capability. My point, which stands, was that from 1939 to 1943 or so there was a constant increase in gun caliber for the standard tank guns. From guns with fairly small caliber in 1939 (20-50mm) to somewhere between triple and 1,5 times that in 1943 (75-76mm).

 

[shri]

I know the panzer 3s 50mm didn't have the best pen I thought it could pen the KV1 and 2 if it got close enough.

PzIII was initiated on the design specifications of Heinz Guderian in 1934, finished the design and testing process by 1937 and commenced production from 1938-39 onwards till about early 1943 or so.
The variants produced till 1940 were having the 37mm gun which was far too underpowered, there were very few 50mm ones at the start of Barbarossa.
Out of the ~3300 Tanks used in Barbarossa less than 1/3rd had the 50mm PzIII guns or the 75mm PzIV guns, rest were all PzII, 37mm PzIII and Czech tanks. Almost all of them useless against the KVs.
See this image for representation purpose only:

 

[Tasmosunt]

The T-34 wasn't the best tank of the war because the T-44 was technically fielded during the war and took part in operations for 3 days before the war ended.

 

[Caesar15]

I guess I could have worded that better, I didn't mean to imply it specifically was creepy, just that I hadn't seen it.

No worries, I just faintly remember a team where I think you or someone else called it creepy. Well, it isn't too long, so if you have the time, do watch.

 

[Opanashc]

Arguments "which tank was the best" is along the lines "what is better - pick-up trucks or ferraris".