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

[Shatterfury]

I read that pretty much all Panthers were also sabotaged on the production lines.

There's also the issue when comparing kills/losses on what these count, e.g. not all Soviet tanks were T-34s, not all T-34s were knocked out by P4s or Panthers.

I'd then also look at the Germans being on the defencive most of the time the T-34 and Shermans are in their stride. You expect the attacker to take higher losses.

Except the Germans also had comparable ratios against USSR even when on the offensive but I guess that is a point.

 

[Had a dad]

Here the Swedish army compares the cross country capability of the Panther, Sherman and the Swedish Strv m/42.

Guess who won....

a volvo?

 

[Denkt]

Im pretty sure tank vs tank favor the attacker because you should generally know the position of the defending tanks but the defender may not have the same advantage. Also the attacker may have the mobility and numbers at their advantage as well.

The dangerous things for attackers are generally hidden guns and possibly hidden tanks which is why such areas should be avoided by tanks if possible.

The biggest advantage of the attacker is generally the control of the battlefield after the battle which may save most of the losses while the defender lose everything.

 

[3ishop]

Except the Germans also had comparable ratios against USSR even when on the offensive but I guess that is a point.

But most of that time was early war with the main bulk of Soviet tanks being the outdated BT5/7s and T26s which the Germans knew from the SCW and the insane orders from political officers and Stalin. Which is again one of the details that needs to be looked at for "best" what ever. T-34s and KV series did hold up well even though in the early war even with the terrible ergonomics, crazy orders, lack of intel, airsupport and logistics.

Logistics was a huge issue for the Soviets in 1941 and with them counting break downs in their losses would boost the numbers. Will never know the combat losses which is a shame.

*Note I do have a soft spot for the BT tank series tho

 

[keynes2.0]

Everyone should have a soft spot for the BT series. It's fly as hell. Hating it is like hating on the M3 tanks. Tanks were awesome before they converged to the logical 30 ton design.

 

[Loke]

a volvo?

The Panther...

The Youtube video shows that the Panthers cross country performance was quite good compared to the Sherman, Strv m/42 and isit a Churchill?
Its a Swedish-military-test-of-performance video and one can see where the tanks gets stuck or not...

 

[scroggin]

I want to point out to everyone that Scroggin's argument is essentially that because the frontal glacis plate of the Panther was resistant to the Sherman's gun outside of common combat ranges, that this made the entire tank superior to the Sherman, even though the Sherman could reliably penetrate the Panther at even those extreme ranges when it hits the Panther's sides, its turret, and its lower frontal glacis
You are still arguing as if combined arms were a crutch, when in fact they were central to armoured warfare doctrine.

It doesnt do you any credit to misrepresent and exaggerate other peoples arguments

 

[hkrommel]

It doesnt fo you any credit to misrepresent and exaggerate other peoples arguments

To be fair you were quoting statistics for ranges (1000 meters IIRC) that were far beyond common, or even plausible combat ranges in which a Sherman would face a Panther. Just look at the career of Lafayette Pool (the greatest tank ace IMO because he accomplished a huge amount in only 81 days of combat). While that may have not been the crux of your argument, and he may have misrepresented it, the way you phrased your statement made it seem like you were evaluating combat effectiveness at absurd ranges.

 

[scroggin]

Here the Swedish army compares the cross country capability of the Panther, Sherman and the Swedish Strv m/42.

Guess who won....

Thanks for sharing that it was fascinating, my guess as to which would have the best off-road performance was totally wrong.

 

[scroggin]

To be fair you were quoting statistics for ranges (1000 meters IIRC) that were far beyond common, or even plausible combat ranges in which a Sherman would face a Panther. Just look at the career of Lafayette Pool (the greatest tank ace IMO because he accomplished a huge amount in only 81 days of combat). While that may have not been the crux of your argument, and he may have misrepresented it, the way you phrased your statement made it seem like you were evaluating combat effectiveness at absurd ranges.

Yes well it sounds like my quote from wiki wasnt all true either.

I had mentioned penetration ranges far beyond the ability to score a hit which is correct for the panthers gun the extreme limit for getting a hit would be 1500m but penetration figures go way beyond that. The extra penetration power would of course allow penetration to occur at all sorts of wierd angles within hitting range.

 

[Shatterfury]

But most of that time was early war with the main bulk of Soviet tanks being the outdated BT5/7s and T26s which the Germans knew from the SCW and the insane orders from political officers and Stalin. Which is again one of the details that needs to be looked at for "best" what ever. T-34s and KV series did hold up well even though in the early war even with the terrible ergonomics, crazy orders, lack of intel, airsupport and logistics.

Logistics was a huge issue for the Soviets in 1941 and with them counting break downs in their losses would boost the numbers. Will never know the combat losses which is a shame.

*Note I do have a soft spot for the BT tank series tho

And Germany`s Pz IIs and Pz IIIs were so much better....

 

[panzerzombie]

I feel that the "best tank in world war II" is a misconcept in itself. If you don´t factor in the earlier years then you could even say 44-45 was THE WW2, forget 39-43 and now lets compare....
I´d rather strongly relate it to the war year and then even to the season of that year ( was it mud, was it snow ?), .... and the tank of the year goes to........
If there was A BEST then it should have been in the whole war, right ?

Such a tank would have to face following questions ( in addition to the usual: versatility, reliability, ease of production : was it employed from ´39, did it kill ( directly ) more enemy tanks than it lost to its main adversary ( and if not what was its purpose and did it achieve it regardless ?). What about the crew and tactics - which has nothing to do with the machine itself but since normally ( except for lend lease ) the producers used them themselves - did it dilute the theoretical performance or rather excelled it ( russian tactics and training on par with Axis and Western Allies in general ?). I feel too much is rolled into a mush of arguments to force a "winner" .... cough .... according to own tastes and its too easy to shift factors to enhance own POV.

Examples:

Very few of the above posters mentioned Tanks from the early years ( e.g. Mathilda was mentioned ), a good tank in its time but soon outclassed by its long barrelled foes ( which could also fire HE ) - but still it WAS excellent. The Renault R-35/H35 ( plagued by its inadequate turret ) but still best of its class at the time. And now mostly forgotten in these kind of discussions.

Sherman had its first live action debut against AT-capable enemies in Kasserine´43, can it be the most important tank when it only took part in the war for less than 2 years against a weakened foe ? Or is it the strong urge of americans "we won it so it must have been because of our Shermans", or would they even have won with M3 Lees or M5s ? Probably yes.....
Or are the events before Kasserine / Italy / Normandy not so important, because the US didn´t (directly) play a role in there ?

What about the PzIV which was fielded before the war and still into ´45 ( even though it could be considered a "real tank"( or the WW2 MBT definition of Nato) only after ´42 F2 version but still usable in the last years) The Panzer IV/F2+ was considered the best available medium tank for a limited time span ( before T-34/85 came out ), so was the PzIII for a even more limited time span. The Panther was a nice one ( loved that swedish video about the comparison of mobility), but is having a tank with such a bad side armour which could be killed even by the mucho obsoleto ATRifles in unfavorable circumstances a really good idea ( the PzIV was even worse in that regard but it did not weigh 44 tons, right ?)

T-34/76 was in theory best tank, not so in reality obviously ( as many mentioned before, lack of radio, Turret too small/commander overwhelmed and so on ) on the field it got shot to pieces by allegedly inferior tanks ( and not even from the usual suspects ... the ATG ( being mostly early german useless 37mm ATGs ), so did it lose "being best tank" in ´42 already ?
The T-34/85 shared the same hull, but was it still the same tank ? Could you even say THE T-34, I think not.

 

[frolix42]

To be fair you were quoting statistics for ranges (1000 meters IIRC) that were far beyond common, or even plausible combat ranges in which a Sherman would face a Panther. Just look at the career of Lafayette Pool (the greatest tank ace IMO because he accomplished a huge amount in only 81 days of combat). While that may have not been the crux of your argument, and he may have misrepresented it, the way you phrased your statement made it seem like you were evaluating combat effectiveness at absurd ranges.

Americans with relatively underpowered 75mm guns would have wanted this to be true. But it's not.

BRL Memo no. 798, "Data on World War II tank engagements involving the US Third and Fourth Armored Divisions", by D. C. Hardison, June 1954, is based on 86 tank vs. tank and tank vs. anti-tank engagements fought by the divisions mentioned. It gives the average ranges at which tanks were destroyed, in yards, as follows:

Allied tanks__Enemy tanks__Place
476____________N/A_______Vicinity Stollberg
959____________733_______Roer to Rhein
1000___________833_______Belgian Bulge
1260___________936_______Vicinity Arracourt
1116___________831_______Sarre
731____________915_______Relief of Bastogne

The overall mean casualty ranges are given as 946 yds for Allied and 893 yds for enemy tanks. The distribution of combat ranges was found to fit approximately to a Pearson
III distribution.
http://www.amazon.com/Data-World-War-Tank-Engagements/dp/1470079062

"Red Army Handbook 1939-1945", by S. J. Zaloga and L. S. Ness, 1998 (Alan Sutton, Thrupp) gives on page 179 a table of the ranges in metres at which Soviet tanks and assault guns were knocked out by 75mm and 88mm guns in 1943-44, as follows:

Range_______75mm gun_____88mm gun
100-200_______10.0%_________4.0%
200-400_______26.1%________14.0%
400-600_______33.5%________18.0%
600-800_______14.5%________31.2%
800-1000_______7.0%________13.5%
1000-1200______4.5%_________8.5%
1200-1400______3.6%_________7.6%
1400-1600______0.4%_________2.0%
1600-1800______0.4%_________0.7%
1800-2000______0.0%_________0.5%

The original has omitted the line for 600-800 metres, so I have calculated the entries for that line by subtracting the sum of each column from 100%.

 

[Gethsemani]

And Germany`s Pz IIs and Pz IIIs were so much better....

Well, they did have three man turrets and radios... >.>
More importantly though, the Red Army tank fleet of 1941 was a disaster. The vast majority of the 11,000 tanks that supposedly faced Germany were in varying amounts of disrepair and at least 2/3rds never even got into combat, either because they were already broken at the outbreak of war or because they broke down before reaching the battlefield (according to Zaloga & Ness, 2010). The USSR had prioritized building lots of tanks in the 30's but had neglected production of spare parts, that oversight along with the rampant corruption and poor organization in the Red Army prior to Barbarossa had led to a "paper army" consisting of rusting hulks that hadn't been used in years.

In that context, the 11,000 tanks the USSR fielded against Germany ended up being only some 3-4,000 tanks that actually were available to fight the Germans. When they did the lack of training, leadership, radios, spare parts, ammunition, fuel and pretty much everything else a tank unit needs to function led to them performing incredibly poorly. On paper the Panzer II, III and IV might not have been that much better then the T-26 or BT-7, but in reality the German units consisted of well-trained tank crews with a functional supply chain under able leadership with a clear doctrinal use of those tank forces.

Barbarossa is a good example of how something can look very impressive on paper, only to be revealed as incredibly poor in real life. The Wehrmacht could get the most out of their mediocre tanks, while the Red Army struggled to get anything out of equally mediocre tanks.

 

[shri]

Is someone actually claiming this piece of metal-
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-382-0248-33A,_Im_Westen,_Panzer_II_und_Panzer_I.jpg
to be a good tank?

The Specs-
3 Man crew- with commander and main gunner being the same. Not 5-man as suggested.

Main armament of 20mm gun. - so powerful that it can penetrate a truck at 500 meters distance, for comparison late war FW190 had 30mm cannons. for Comparison, the Tanks that it faced like the T-34 had a 76mm gun and the KV2 a 122mm Howitzer. Even the Matilda with 40mm gun (supposed to be under-gunned) etc had a huge advantage in fire-power.

Weight- 7.5 Tons, smaller in weight than a fully loaded "Studebaker Truck". Over 200000+ of these Studebakers were produced with over half being sent on LL to the USSR for their Katyushas and heavy transport work. For comparison, the M3 Halftrack weighed 15 tons.

Armour - between 5-15mm with 15mm on the front, so strong that a 25mm gun could easily penetrate.

Speed- 40kmph (max) on good roads, much slower on off-roading, so fast that the "Studebaker" truck could easily outrun it twice over.

 

[holoween]

What the source actually says is that the British, when testing the 76mm HVAP were unable to penetrate the 80mm upper glacis on the Panther from distances above 1000 meters.
Since common combat distances were bellow 1000 meters, that is irrelevant.

The 76mm HVAP was able to penetrate the lower glacis plate, the turret, and the sides; all at very long distances (2500 yards).

What Nicholas Moran actually says is:



[/QUOTE

and if you read the next sentences:
"As the tests at Isigny showed, neither could reliably penetrate the front of a Panther, except at close range. There was perhaps a narrow band from at closer range where 17pr had a more reasonable expectation of killing Panther, while the 76mm was being a bit optimistic (The short range band at maybe 400-500m where SVDS might still actually go in the direction you were aiming while 76mm was of questionable penetration)"

 

[keynes2.0]

for Comparison, the Tanks that it faced like the T-34

I believe his point is that the T-34 was not representative of the tanks the Soviets had opposite the Panzer II and P(t)38. If you think a 20mm cannon on the Panzer II is crappy, look at the T-37A or T-38 tanks which had nothing more then a machine gun. That's over 2000 tanks from the soviet arsenal which make the Panzer II look like a king tiger in comparison. The T-34 was 4% of the soviet arsenal. The T-26 was over half.

 

[shri]

I believe his point is that the T-34 was not representative of the tanks the Soviets had opposite the Panzer II and P(t)38. If you think a 20mm cannon on the Panzer II is crappy, look at the T-37A or T-38 tanks which had nothing more then a machine gun. That's over 2000 tanks from the soviet arsenal which make the Panzer II look like a king tiger in comparison. The T-34 was 4% of the soviet arsenal. The T-26 was over half.

Well, even in front of the T-26, the PzII comes out short-

Weight: 7.5 to 8 tons vs 9.5 tons - - somewhat equal.
Armour: 5-15 mm vs 6-15 mm -- nearly equal here
Crew: 3 man vs 3 man - - advantage for PzII, considering the early war Panzer Crews had excellent training and battlefield experience.
Gun: 20mm vs 45mm, huge dis-advantage. . the 45mm can easily penetrate the frontal armor of 15mm but the 20mm will find it difficult to do against the 16mm armor.
Speed: 20-40kmph vs 15-30 kmph - - some advantage here.
Numbers fielded in Barbarossa: about 1500 vs over 10000 - - huge advantage for the T-26 here.

So, primary advantage is- slightly better speed and immensely better crews + radios vs hugely weaker gun and numbers.
Can't say, PzII is a king tiger now, can you?

P.S.: Over 1100 of the total Tanks fielded in Barbarossa were T-34 or KV series compared to the 1100 or so Tanks of 50mm or bigger guns fielded by the Germans.

 

[keynes2.0]

Okay, for one thing I think you are overstating the gun advantage. The 20mm was smaller bore but smaller bores tended towards higher velocity in the early war.

But more significantly, you are comparing the lightest tank in the german fleet to the mainstay of the soviet tank fleet in the western districts. The Panzer II was supposed to be a scouting tank for a force relying on Panzer IIIs and P38(t) tanks. The T-26 was supposed to be the infantry tank of the soviets until the T-34 was built in numbers.

I said that the Panzer II looked like a King Tiger in comparison to a tank with nothing but a machine gun. Such tanks were over a quarter of the soviet arsenal. So if we take the lightest tanks the Germans had (Panzer II) and the lightest tanks the Soviets had (T-27, T-37A, T-38, T-26m31), the Panzer II does in fact look ridiculously powerful in comparison. I think that this is a silly comparison, done mostly for fun. But keep in mind that all four of those obscure tank models I just mentioned were more common then the T-34 when the Germans invaded!

 

[Kovax]

During the initial Barbarossa offensive, a LOT of the German PzKw.IIIs were still armed with the 37mm gun, and the first model with a 50mm gun (IIIH?) was only a medium-length barrel (50L43?), not the later high-velocity 50L60. The later Panzer IIIJ model finally had at least enough firepower to contend with a T-34 from the side, or from the front at essentially point-blank range.

Germany's Panzer III was envisioned as able to engage enemy armor; the IV was intended for infantry support with its short 75mm howitzer, but the inability of the III to deal with French and then Russian armor led to the up-gunning of the IV into a MBT role.

Meanwhile, the Soviets went from mostly 45mm guns on the BT-7 and T-26, to a 76.2mm gun on the T-34. That is a massive increase in firepower, especially when you consider that the effective hitting power of a projectile needs to be roughly cubed for a meaningful comparison (LxWxH - using radius squared times length would be more accurate). For example, a 20mm round cubed would be very roughly 8000 cubic millimeters, a 50mm round would be 125000, so it's not 2.5 times the power, it's closer to 15x. Going up to 75mm, that's 421875, which is well over triple the power of the 50mm, and 50x the power of the 20mm. As I mentioned, using a Pi times radius squared formula would be a lot closer (still not accounting for taper at the point), but the rough calculation conveys the relative effectiveness. Shell velocity only has a multiplicative effect, so a 25% increase in velocity only offers a 25% increase in hitting power.

Speaking of "Pi" formulas, if you define the radius of a pizza as "z", and the thickness as "a", you can determine the volume of the pizza by the formula Pi * z * z * a.

Anyway, back to T-34s.....