What is your favorite WWII tank?

[JudgeDredd]

My favourite, by far, is the Tiger.

I never really liked the KonigsTiger, but the original, contrary to the above posters thoughts, was beautiful...always has been and always will be my fav.

[ezzler]

Has to be the Goliath remote controlled demolition tank.
Somehow the project never got cancelled in the pre production stage.

[hank]

I have to second the Jagdepanther ... and I also second the Tiger Ie.  The Tiger I was ugly but gosh was it the baddest beast on the field for a good part of the war.
 
There was another thread (here I think) about what "gun" would you most like to fire from WWII.  My choice was the 88 dual purpose flak.  That was such an awesome weapon ... and well advanced for its time.   

[anarchyintheuk]

My two cents. Panther = sexy.

[undercovergeek]

ill go with dredd - Tiger. Great big ass looking man-tank, looks almost indestructable, and was so strong - my fave tank in any game

[Goblin]

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: Yohan

King Tiger

Too heavy, too slow, to unreliable. But a good looking tank [:D]



My take is on the "Sherman Firefly"

This is in the UK OOB. I didn't even know it existed. A Sherman with a 17 pdr gun? And I thought that only the Germans made so many different mods to vehicle chassis. From what I can tell, the Sherman chassis was used for a bewildering number of vehicles.

Sounds like the basis for a trivia question -- what single vehicle chassis in WWII was most used to create new vehicles?

A list of US variants on the Sherman. There were obviously other Allied variants.

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/usa/tanks_m ... erman.html

I believe the M4 would probably be your answer to that trivia question.

[Goblin]

British variants
 
 
http://www.wwiivehicles.com/unitedkingdom/foreign/sherman.html

[Krec]

Take a guess

[Marauders]

My favorite?  The Panther.

The Sherman Firefly with 17pdr gun was a good allied tank, but I often wondered why the United States could not build a better tank in 1944 and 1945. That cost many tank crews their lives.

The overall best? The T34-85

I wonder how well the Daimler-Benz VK 3002 (Panther contender) would have done. It had advantages of the Panther and T34.

[gunny]

The M24 Chaffee -- arguably the best light tank of World War II -- was a fast light armoured vehicle with the ability to deliver relatively large caliber direct fire with the excellent 75 mm M6 gun. More than 4.000 produced by Cadillac and Massey-Harris during 1943-45.

[tocaff]

Panther, speed. armour, good optics and a lethal gun with a good rate of fire. The best medium tank of WWII and into the 1950s before something better came along. Those T-34s were good, but unrefined and many even lacked a radio.

[hueglin]

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: Yohan

King Tiger

Too heavy, too slow, to unreliable. But a good looking tank [:D]



My take is on the "Sherman Firefly"

This is in the UK OOB. I didn't even know it existed. A Sherman with a 17 pdr gun? And I thought that only the Germans made so many different mods to vehicle chassis. From what I can tell, the Sherman chassis was used for a bewildering number of vehicles.

Sounds like the basis for a trivia question -- what single vehicle chassis in WWII was most used to create new vehicles?

With the Sherman, it wasn't just that it was modded into different types of vehicles, like flails or DDs, there were also different versions based on the availability of engines. They were trying to produce so many that they modified the design to fit different engines e.g. M4A2 - twin diesels, M4A3 - 500hp Ford gas, M4A4 - 370hp Chrysler gas. I have a reference that lists it as having been produced at 17 different plants (including in Canada) for a total production run of 88,410.

My vote for favourite goes to the Panther - beautiful, well-designed (once the teething troubles were taken care of) and powerful. It barely made it into the war, but I would add the Centurion as a tie for what it was able to become in the post-war period.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Marauders

The overall best? The T34-85

I never understood why the Germans didn't simply copy the T-34 chassis, engine, and drive train, throw on their own turret, weapons system AND A RADIO, and gone with that. It couldn't have taken any longer to arrange than the development of the "uber" vehicles, and the Russian turreted designs were cheaper and easier to construct than those of the Germans. National pride, AFV as symbol of Aryan superiority, perhaps?

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[Ursa MAior]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl
National pride, AFV as symbol of Aryan superiority, perhaps?

A little of all the above plus they DID NOT HAVE the technology to copy the diesel which were made of aluminium )at least partially). Plus the german PAk crews were so nervous about the T34s that they fired on them without asking (using captured ones a problem, and there were a lot of them mostly 40 and 41 models).

[Rooster]

Well, maybe I'm being nostalgic about CC2, but I still love the Churchill ARVE

[pauk]

Tiger than Panther.

[SemperAugustus]

ORIGINAL: Ursa MAior

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl
National pride, AFV as symbol of Aryan superiority, perhaps?

A little of all the above plus they DID NOT HAVE the technology to copy the diesel which were made of aluminium )at least partially).

I heard that too, anyone know the technical reason for their problems?

[.50Kerry]

ORIGINAL: Marauders



The Sherman Firefly with 17pdr gun was a good allied tank, but I often wondered why the United States could not build a better tank in 1944 and 1945. That cost many tank crews their lives.

The overall best? The T34-85

The US Army could have built a tank by 1943 that was superior to both the T-34-85 AND the Panther, that it did not owes more to the bueracratic battles the Armor branch faced at the AGF conferences when the TD Branch and Inf branch ganged up on it rather than some glaring inability of US weapons smythes to "build a better tank". I once penned an epic series of posts highlighting the battles in US procurement and how "legacy building" hahampered either an upturreted and gunned M-4 from coming forth in '43 or the M-26 rolling out in numbers by early '44.

The US for better or worse learned the lesson from the superiority of the M4 in Africa and Italy that "we have got a tank that is good enough".

Thread on a similar topic.

Actually I have several. R.P. Hunnicutt states in 'Sherman' that there was a plan that would allow for heavier guns to be place in the Sherman's CURRENT turret by 1)reducing size of the cartridge case, or 2)mounting a lighter specially designed for tank use gun purposefully off-balance with the trunnions placed at the center of gravity.(the way the Brits mounted the 17 pounder)page 212 by the way. Armored forces then countered with a proposal to mount the PERSHING turret (including 90mm)on M4a3s in July 1944.(after we figured out that even the 76.2mm was a joke as compared to the 88mm and german armor) Both the M4 and M26 turret rings were 69 inches and had similar tolerances.(General Motors even amended the proposal with a suggestion that the silhouette be reduced by reducing the height of the hull whilst maintaining the slope). also page 212 (see the only requirement was that the damn M26 turrets be placed on M4 bodies) more later, sven [ May 21, 2001: Message edited by: sven ]

"Although the upgunned Sherman appeared to be a good solution to the problem of increased firepower, General Holly was informed(might I add in July '44 a year after torpedoing the initial proposal)that it would be about six months before production quantities could be available. By that time the new Pershings would be coming off the assembly lines so the decision was taken to drop the 90mm gun Sherman and concentrate all efforts on speeding up Pershing production. In retrospect, it appears that a wise course would have been to procure some of the 90mm gun Shermans as a hedge against further delays in the procurement of the Pershing. However the real problem was the late hour when the decision was made in favor of a high power tank gun. (Sherman pages 212-213) The delay in accepting that tanks needed an anti-tank capability of their own cost us having eqpt. that could have allowed us to break the German's backs immediately after d-day perhaps. there, sven [ May 21, 2001: Message edited by: sven ]

[morvwilson]

One of the things I learned about the sherman and the reason for its dimensions was the railroad tunnels it had to negotiate to get to port. (the japanese tanks had the same problem but with smaller tunnels!). Also the Liberty ships were designed and constructed with the Sherman in mind. So, to redesign the tank to something bigger or heavier would have meant rebuilding railroad tunnels and redesigning the Liberty Ships. Not an easy task at a time when all designs were done on drafting boards with pencils and slide rules!

[Ursa MAior]

ORIGINAL: SemperAugustus

ORIGINAL: Ursa MAior

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl
National pride, AFV as symbol of Aryan superiority, perhaps?

A little of all the above plus they DID NOT HAVE the technology to copy the diesel which were made of aluminium )at least partially).

I heard that too, anyone know the technical reason for their problems?

The body of the engine was a molded aluminium block IIRC. Plus it was diesel. Oddly enough the germans failed to priuce any usable diesel engine for their tansk in WWII. (Maus was turbo electric the rest normal otto engined even the Tiger II). BTW the Porsche engine used in the tigers was the first V10 engine.