What was the best tank of World War 2?

Slightly OoT: what would have said the designers of Tigers about the "pathetic" Japanese tanks? I'm talking about the "Type 97" stuff, but not only those; acording to wikipedia, the Japanese tried to design some tanks inspired by the German Panthers and Tigers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japan...the_WWII_period

I'm sure they would have said "I can make better, here comes the snake tank, great speed, cannon and medium armor"

To MMM
Because the main objectives pursued by the military leadership from Tokyo were in the Pacific, the need of modernization of land troop weapons was not a priority, and this is easy to see! The japanese planes and warships were in many ways very advanced, and only the U.S. industrial capacity beat the will and discipline of Japanese Forces.
About the japanese tanks, the new 'Type 4 Chi-To' was a tank to be taken into account as a modern one, and one that probably would have success in face of the most advanced U.S. and Soviet tanks from 1945! But Japan could not sustain in 1944-45 the production of such a tank in the context of lack of resources and continuous bombings of U.S. aviation! Even the Type 3 medium tank "CHI-NU", which design I compare with the Panzer IV Ausf G was produced in low numbers, and never see combat, so that we can only speculate about his performance on the battlefield.

Oh, I am/was aware of the strategic/objective limitations of Japan's army; also, for their role, those tanks very pretty qualified; I was just comparing apples with bananas

From a russian forum :

For the first time the Germans got the new technology only in May 1944 when one IS tank, damaged in battle near Tirgu Frumos, was captured and then towed to the rear for examination and testing. Based on these data, The General Inspector of the Armored Forces of the Wehrmacht, H. Guderian concluded as follows:
"Do not get into a fight with" Stalin "without overwhelming numerical superiority in combat power. I believe that for every" Stalin, "shall be on a platoon of Tigers." Attempts "Tiger" fight "Stalin," one-on-one can only result in the senseless loss of combat vehicle ... The most successful is the following tactics to combat "Stalin": should surround them from the flanks or rear, and a powerful shot aimed fire ".
In other words, proposed to the German tank crews to fight the new Soviet tanks from ambushes and fortified positions.

From a text from internet :

During the battle, Hasso von Manteuffel, CO of the Grossdeutschland division, first encountered the new Soviet Stalin tank.
"It was at Târgu Frumos that I first met the Stalin tanks. It was a shock to find that, although my Tigers began to hit them at a range of 3,000 metres, our shells bounced off, and did not penetrate them until we had closed to half that distance. But I was able to counter the Russians' superiority by manoeuvre and mobility, in making the best use of ground cover."
Manteuffel also noted that the Stalin tanks had several "disadvantages: slow, not manoeuvrable enough; as well, in my opinion their crews were not sufficiently familiar with the tank."

This post has been edited by Petre on March 01, 2011 09:01 pm

IS-2 was no bad...
But the germans produced the Tiger II, who had no rivals on the battlefield :
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen10.htm ... of course outside their own weight and improper engine. The IS-2 was not a rival for this monster, and it's normal to be so since the IS-2 tank weighs 46 tons and the Tiger II 68 tons! So the Tiger II remains the ...King (Tiger)!

All right, but the bridges? It was too heavy to cross on most of the bridges... also to be transported on the railroads... What about that?

Look at this monster tank - after some repairs it's functional even after 65 years :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5p3KCli6YM
and do you believe they have found spare parts for it? I bet there are the original ones from WWII. Our tanks were so unreliable that after 1995 (so 15 to 20 years after they were produced) were the first scrapped (the old russians T-55 were kept in service). Don't you think that is a quality of the KingTiger?
Answering your question : rivers can be sometimes crossed by a ford, not always on a bridge! In practice the crews have found solutions as you can see if you read the book Kingtiger Heavy Tank 1942-45 (New Vanguard) by Tom Jentz, Peter Sarson. I say seriously that after reading it I changed my mind. I must admit that before I read this book, I didn't like at all this tank who was too big, too cumbersome and to slow for my opinion. Now I must say that I respect him, as the russians and the americans did after WWII (the russians who build the IS-7 as a replica to Tiger II and the americans inspired from him in building the Patton series of MBT).

...by the way, I just found this : http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tiger2.htm
Interesting informations, even if there is nothing new (maybe even inspired from...) to what I read in the book "Panzer VI Tiger und seine Abarten" -Walter J. Spielberger, Hilary L. Doyle Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 2010. Convince yourself...

I voted for Sherman Firefly, the best british tank to wide spread servive during the war, and a very good killing of Tigers and Panther tanks!

Because apparently the Panther tank won the 1st position by your votes, I want to revive this topic through a discussion on this tank: http://survincity.com/2012/05/panther-tank...he-third-reich/
Admit that I like this tank very much, I had the chance to see him rolling and it's impressing... but was it really the best?

Quite a poor translation job (probably using an online translator).

The article seem to be far from impartial (why am I not surprised). Reasoning like this:

doesn't make the author very credible. It's like saying Me-262 wasn't such an outstanding machine because it could not utterly defeat the Allied Air Force.

Agree, I was playing the devil's Advocate to hear the arguments of the Panther objectors! I noticed the Red Army fans (from the USSR countries) and slightly less people from the West provide as argument against the Panther being one of the best ww2 tanks the fact that in reality this tank was a heavy tank in the same class with KV-85 or IS-1/-2 heavy soviet tanks considering their weight, so that their success against T-34 tanks (or Sherman) was normal, because any heavy tank would have had as much success in front of a medium tank. But even if we play their game still the Panther was better against KV-85 or even IS-1 tanks of contemporary time (date of their occurrence in battle) with the Panther (autumn 1943), and not significantly worse than the IS-2, that appeared on the battlefield in spring 1944. I say, however, that the Panther tank was a medium tank not a heavy one, significantly being the way he was used in battle, his distribution in the german armored formations, the large number in which it was produced a.o. What do you think about this issue - Panther tank being a medium or a heavy tank? Is this a legitimate question or a "invented" one?

This post has been edited by ANDREAS on March 13, 2014 08:43 pm

doesn't make the author very credible. It's like saying Me-262 wasn't such an outstanding machine because it could not utterly defeat the Allied Air Force.

agree.


Nice to see this thread active again.

IMO you need to include issue of reliability/durability/maintainence expense. T34 may have an edge there? What good is a tank that requires big crew of expensive mechanics to keep it running?

(same reason I'll never buy a german car)

Everybody consider Panther a medium tank except for the russians. For various reasons the russians prefer lighter tanks as main battle tank even today compared to the Westen countries. As for the panther being the best tank of the ww2 , or not the best it was for sure it was the most effective tank. Many concentrates on the german tanks during the ww2 and way thei made that or chose that insted of that etc and not so many on the erors or missjugment on the allied side.

Andreas where did you spw the panther tank live in France, Germany ?