ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
This you may find interesting:
http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/Myth ... ters2.html
Reason why T34 was declared the best ww2 tank, is because it was. It entered in war theatre in 41 in mass numbers way before anybody else could deploy their's with similar tech. specifications , Panther saw action in the east in some numbers only in 43. So T34 had atleast 2 years start. German designers after the introduction of the T34 heavily copied the T34 designs. It negative attributes were ofcourse the bad optics, no radio in the beggining and no trained tank crew, they just shepperded some peasants into the tank, literaly. The true value of the performance of the T34 was seen on the last military campaing in ww2, manchuria, when they just drove over the Jappanese.
And finaly why its was the best medium tank of the ww2 [:D]. In 1997 i volunteered to be drafted into the army (infantry), and we were in the field training infantry assault tactics, were told to go into ditch in the middle of the muddy road [&:], where in the front of the ditch had a big pool of mud (relevence will be shortly observed). We were then ordered to crouch and wait for the tank (which was T34 [&o] in very good working order) to drive over us (I was in the middle). When the 26 ton monster speeded at full speed over us, suddenly the wall of the mudy sludge of the pool was splashing [X(] over me, and it was splashing endlessly - at least from my observation, thought the mud was going to drown me [:@]. Needles to say i have really fond memory of the T34 [:D]
br.
Dr.Jones