Best/Favourate Tank in the west

m kenny said:

A bit like the Curate's egg then?

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Actually in regards to the German tanks, I have not seen any logic to your points.

Hi TP
In reply to your earlier Post.....


I disagree. The Brits, Israelis, US and new European (Leo2 and Leclerc) opted for more armor, and then the gun engine as big as it's possible.
The Brits wanted the heaviest armor most notably, and their most successful tanks were the ones with the heaviest armor available. From Matilda on.[/I]

Doesnt explain why postwar tanks actually dropped in weight relative to the end of war heavies being designed and built by the major combatantsat the end of the war.....the tiger II weighed over 150000 lbs, the IS-3 were about 115000, the British Tortoise were 174000 lbs, the Pershings were about 95000 lbs. The Maus represents the "next generation" of the "Heavy Tank" design and had a weight of over 410000 lbs!!!

Compared to this the 1st generation postwar tanks were actually lighter in many cases, but were far more mobile and carried a far heavier armament. The Leopard I weighed 93000 lbs, the AMX-30 about 80000 lbs....Soviet Tanks were about 90000 lbs. Second and third generation tanks are still about 83000 to 145000 lbs, with some nations abandoning the armoured component almost entirely and producing light vehicles under 40000 lbs (such as the Brazilian X1A2).

Whilst todays MBTs are beginning to approach the weights of the end of war heavies, they do not by any means represent the "heaviest armour" that can be installed into the design. The difference is in the power to weight ratios....modern MBTs typically are powered by engines in the 800-1500 hp bracket, whereas the end of war "heavies" were powered by engines in the 600 hp bracket. On the basis of engine power, which was one of the major constraints to heavy tank development at the end of the war, there is no reaon that I can see to prevent tanks in the 2-300000 lb range...But countries dont do that, because the Heavy tank concept cannot fulfil all the functions of mobility, and firepower is far more important than protection, and simply because tanks of that size and power would be prohibitively expensivei



The most expensive part of armor unit are not the tanks themselves, but the trained/experienced crews. If one puts them into the tinclads, the result would be disastrous in any war against a tough opponent.
But, since the bean counters (politicians) control the armed forces, for most of the countries the cheap tank is a good tank, so that's why T-55/Leo1/AMX-30 were so popular during the cold war.


Err only half true. The cost of a Panther Tank was RM 176K, whilst the cost to train its crew to a high standard was about RM 135K. One could reasonably expect similar costs for the other medium and heavy tanks produced by Germany .

By comparison, the cost to train a Soviet T-34 Tank crew has been estimated at under RM 10K, whilst the cost of the tank itself costs about 25K. I dont know the crew training costs for the US or the british, but I expect it will be less than the Germans, because training times were shorter (about 7 months, to about 9 months, and the costs of fuels, accommodation, and just about everything else you can think of to support the crew whilst they are being readied was cheaper for the allies. The Americans in particular got the training regime for their various specilaist arms (including tank crew training) down to a fine art .

So it is just not true that the crew training costs are more than the cost of the hardware. It varied massively from nationality to nationality, but consistently it was less than the cost of the hardware.

And lastly, the tanks you mention as being the products of political intervention (AMX-30 etc) were in fact representative of every modern tank of their era....I know of no tanks that tried to outweigh these tanks to any significant extent....even the Chieftain was only moderately heavier at 120000 lbs, and in my opinion suffered serious mobility issues as a result. It was not a case of nations penny pinching, rather it was a case of nations relaizing that numbers do count, mobility does count, andd making tanks too heavy simply makes them expensive, imobile (and unable to be moved across the existing infrastructure) targets in innsufficient numbers

The weight : protection isn't always higher protection, higher weight. Armour technology is far superior to that of the WWII machines - for example, the Chobam armour on the M1A1 is equal to 600mm, but it certainly ain't 600mm! Hence the reason post-war and modern MBTs were lighter than their WWII counter-parts.

Oh yeah, and you're all completely wrong the Renault FT-17 was the best tank in the West - 2,500 machines stemmed the tide of the Wehrmacht...for a couple of seconds; was the most modern design in 1917 though.

vikingBerserker said:

Actually in regards to the German tanks, I have not seen any logic to your points.

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I feel the same way about your inability to get to the point.

Lets not let this get out of hand.

m kenny said:

A few posters have taken grave exception to the fact I will not say the Tiger was 'best'.

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You seem very fond of lying all of us right into the face. Show me proof that anyone here ever took you on for not saying the Tiger was the best. I find the very idea very humorous as pretty much no'one here has ever claimed the Tiger to be the best tank of the war, and that includes me. So just what the heck is it you're on about m_kenny ??

I think the truth of the matter here is that you can't stand it when someone compliments a German tank, you get so upset that you do your best make anything German seem bad and then when no'one will listen to your nonesense you end up feeling that you've been singled out. Fact of the matter is YOU single YOURSELF out!

Hello m kenny
have you info on Churchills? From the books I have gleaned that it did not catch fire as easily as Sherman when hit and even when it catch fire the crew had usually more time to bail out.
And do you know how commonly used the 20mm applique armour was ? I know from photos that at least some Churchills had it but how many?

TIA
Juha

Catch22 said:

If I'm out of line Chris, feel free to delete this.

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No you are not out of line. I have been banging my head against the wall as well.

m kenny said:

A few posters have taken grave exception to the fact I will not say the Tiger was 'best'.
That about sums it up.

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No one has!

Just because not everyone has the same opinion as you, you feel pushed against wall and offended! Get over it!

This is getting pretty pathetic. It's obvious this discussion has become more of a personal matter than a discussion about the "best" tank in the West.

m_kenny, if you believe there's any game being played then simply remove yourself from it. I'm not going to go all out and claim you're anti-German, because if you are that's an issue you really should be dealing with, but I am going to point out that you need to deal with the idea that some people are going to be supporting the German armour over the Allied armour, and they will argue point after point after point.
You're probably getting infuriated by Soren because of his love of German armaments; been there, done that. I can't remember the amount of times I've argued with him, but he's a knowledgeable person and you discuss with facts and he'll chuck some back at you - turn it personal and you lose.
And I'm not having a go at you; everyone on here knows what I've called Soren in the past - in fact, there's not many people on here who haven't heard abuse hurled at them from me. I know there may be from time to time personal insults from Soren too. And there's certainly no place to be having a go at Adler, he's not here to win an argument like some people - he's actually got a passion for it.

As for the discussion itself, I personally believe the Panther to be the superior design of the war. There were tanks with thicker armour, more powerful weapons, more reliable and faster but I don't believe there was an all-rounder like it.
You could say the Churchill had thicker armour; ask the 6th Coldstream Guards to compare the Panther G to the Churchill. You could say the Tiger II had a more powerful weapon (being the most powerful tank of the war), but when could it operate effectively compared to the Panther...maybe the Tiger II could be considered an overkill.

Whatever the job, the Panther could do it. Give the Tiger a pursuit role, no chance. Give the T-34 a breakthrough role, no chance (unless in massive numbers). Give the Valentine an anti-armour role, c'mon.

plan_D said:

I am going to point out that you need to deal with the idea that some people are going to be supporting the German armour over the Allied armour, and they will argue point after point after point.

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They can believe what they want because opinion won't change reality of the survey.
I stick firmly to those points that can be refuted with solid evidence. Thus the claim that 10 shots would bounce of the front of a Tiger/Panther brought forward the studies that showed it was on average 5 hits per Tiger into play.

More interesting figures:

NW Europe, % of destroyed tanks lost to gunfire
source ORO-T-117 and BRL-MR-798.

German..............43% (sample 1100)
British/Canadian...56% (sample 1350)
US....................51% (sample 2100)

Juha said:

Hello m kenny
have you info on Churchills? From the books I have gleaned that it did not catch fire as easily as Sherman when hit and even when it catch fire the crew had usually more time to bail out.
And do you know how commonly used the 20mm applique armour was ? I know from photos that at least some Churchills had it but how many?

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I have read accounts that say it burned more slowly than other tanks but I don't have any hard evidence. The crew casualy study did find that a Churchill crewmember was not much safer than a man in a Sherman.
A note in The War Diary of 9th RTR says:

"The Churchill stands up well to A/T fire. If set on fire it burns slowly and the crews have a good chance to bale out. Panthers on the other hand tend to blow up"

The above is from Fletcher's' Mr Churchill's Tank'
Mr. Churchill's Tank: The British Infantry Tank Mark IV: David Fletcher: Amazon.co.uk: Books
Fletcher is unable to say how many Churchills were upgraded.

Hello m_kenny
Churchill was an infantry tank so its crew might well be more susceptible to dangers of infantry and artillery fire and anti personnel mines in bail-out situation, but because Shermans were also used in infantry support role, the statistical effect of that might well been insignificant. So it seems that there is not at the moment hard facts in our knowledge which would support the view, which seemed to have been fairly common among Churchill crews that their tank catch fire more seldom and when it catch fire burnt more slowly than Sherman.

Juha

Plan_D
in fact T-34s were often used as infantry support tank, they took losses but Germans themselves noted that after 43 Soviet breakthrough attemps as rule succeeded.
Most famous use of Panther as breakthrough tank was at Kursk and we all know how that went, and its weak points as a break through tank are well known, a bit weaker side armour than that of T-34, the difficulty to repair mine damage because of overlapped roadwheels. And they remainned through its career. I cannot recall other real breakthrough actions by Panther units but in Normandy during counter attacks against intrenched troops they tended to suffer badly just because of the thin side armour. Proportion of side hits tended to be higher in attacking tanks than in defending tanks so the weak, for 45 ton tank, side protection had more significance in attack than in defense.
And I doubt how suitable Panther would have been in deep penetrations, during the retreat from Normandy many seems to have been lost because of mechanical breakdowns even if Panther's reliability was better in 44 than in 43 and Germans had more or less solved its technical problems but those of final drive, at least that was Guderian's opinion at the time.

Of course Panther had excellent frontal armour and its gun has excellent anti-tank performance and it was very accurate, but it also had small HE shell for a 45 ton tank. Also the commander cupola was excellent but the loader was "blind", without means to observe what happened outside. etc Panther design had many excellent features but it had also its weak points as all tanks.

Juha

Juha said:

I cannot recall other real breakthrough actions by Panther units but in Normandy during counter attacks against intrenched troops they tended to suffer badly just because of the thin side armour. Proportion of side hits tended to be higher in attacking tanks than in defending tanks so the weak, for 45 ton tank, side protection had more significance in attack than in defense.

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As a rule attackers of any type suffered greater losses than the defenders. This can be seen in BRL-MR-798. 129 actions from August-December 1944 were studied in detail. The attack/defend data said:

The "advantage" of the defender is used in the sense of lower expected loss rate and does not consider the success or failure in accomplishing the mission of the engagement or the practicability of its extensive use in mobile warfare.
Shown in Table III is a breakdown of the considered engagements with respect to the attacker, defender,
and weapon type. In the forty considered engagements in which they were on the attack, the Allies lost 100
of 437 employed weapons while the defending enemy lost forty-five of 135. In the thirty-seven engagements in which the enemy were attacking, they lost eighty-three of 138 weapons while the Allied defenders lost fourteen of 205.
The figures in Table III indicate that both the Allies and enemy had fewer casualties when used in the defensive role. This simply reaffirms that it was more costly in terms of local losses to take a position than to hold it once it was obtained.

Note: A = Allied and E = Enemy

Hello m kenney
thanks a lot for the info

Juha

The T-34 being used as an infantry support tank, doesn't make it a breakthrough tank. I am aware of the usage of Russian AFVs, and will point out that generally the Russians used the T-34s as a flanking weapon (the sword) in conjunction with masses of infantry (the shield). The Germans may have noted a success in Russian breakthrough attempts, post 1943, but that's simply down to the situation that the Germans were in; rather than the ability of the T-34 as a breakthrough tank (which it most certainly isn't).
Ideal infantry support AFVs would be heavy armour, slow moving and low-velocity HE weapons - the T-34 was not an ideal machine for this job; just as much as it wasn't ideal for the initial breakthrough. The Red Army had a lot of them though...

In Kursk, the Tiger was the main breakthrough tank of the German battle - the Panther was a supporting machine and a debut. Of course, there's no denying the Panther's weak-points - everything has weak points - but as an all-round performer the Panther (in my opinion) excelled in more areas than any other machine.

Hello D
if you look Kursk, southern sector, III PzCorps had Tiger battalion to support its breakthrough, IISSPzCorps had only the Tiger Coys of its 3 SSPzGrDs and XXXXVIIIPzCorps, number from memory, which attacked straight towards Kursk with GD, 3PzD and X, cannot remember the 3rd unit if any. had the Panther Brigade as its heavy mailed fist plus the Tiger Coy of GD. The use of Panthers explained the very heavy Panther losses on the first day of the attack. This is from memory can check from literature if you want.

On T-34s, there are much Soviet film material of T-34s helping infantry through German trench systems. Also in Finnish front one can see from unit attachements that also T-34s were used as infantry support tanks on the main attack sector. And on the other hand the most effective deep penetration group was eguipped with JS heavy tanks, not T-34s/T-34-85s.

Juha

Hi, parsifal,

Think that we should compare weights for the mainstay-tanks, not for the one-offs oddities (eg. Maus). The Brits went from 30-40 ton (Cromwell, Churchill) to 50-60 (Centurion, Chieftain) tank, US didn't stay in 30 ton range (M4) and went for 50 tons (M-26, M-47/48), russkies continued to develop their heavy tanks (up to the T-10), while the armour tickness for the medium tanks almost trebled (T-34-85 vs. T-55).
So it's safe to say that armour protection (=mass + quality), along with cannon power, was almost all the time in the ascendance from the WWII days.

As for the engine power, the correct numbers would be 1500HP for the M1, Leo2, Merk 4, Arjun and Type 90, while Russians, Brits, Italians and Chinese are fielding circa 1200HP engines. So no 800HP for any modern MBT.

The crew vs. tank prices you've stated represent only a tip of an iceberg, not the whole iceberg. In order to replace the losses, one may buy produce tanks more easily than it is possible to wait 20 years for a man to grow to the fighting age, plus the training itself. The German armed forces after 1943 are the clearest best known example.
The thing we missed when talking about prices is the vetronics (situational awareness, ballistic aids, hunter-killer capabilties with all that thermo-vision, GPS, best radios money can buy), the most expensive non-human piece of a tank.
So if one thinks it's better to buy 1000 medium tanks then, say 700 heavy MBTs (thinking that the price per fleet would be the same), he'd better think again.
There is 300 extra vetronics sets to buy, at least 300 more crews to train, 300 more tanks to maintain. So the price would be higher for the 1000 mediums, then for 300 heavies.

The country with the largest post-WWII usage of tanks, Israel, decided to go for a 55 ton tank to build from the scratch. On it's sucessful combat debut, attack at Lebanon in 1982, the only thing Israely tankers had to say about Merkava was: "We want more".

(addition)Regarding the AMX-30 and Leo1, it is quite telling that both French and Germans discarded the medium tanks class quarter a century ago. And Japanese did the same with their Type 90.

Juha,

I'm not being funny, but you have just stated that the Tigers were the main fist of the Kursk battle - where available. "Supporting" units of Tigers were the knuckles of the armoured fist, hence the reason they were there. The Panthers were mostly following behind, the heavy and hard hitting Tigers.

There's film footage of Valentines racing across the North African desert, it doesn't make them suitable pursuit tanks. I've never denied that the T-34 was not used as an infantry support tank; I'm saying that the T-34 was not an ideal infantry support tank - and probably was only used because that's pretty much all the Soviets had; armour is armour, when it comes to the crunch - you'll use anything.

The most effective deep penertration group? Explain. Given the lateness of the war when the IS-2 entered service, I can't help but feel it might have had something to do with a German fighting retreat? Then again I never said that the IS-2 wasn't capable of deep penertration, but for routs the T-34 was better equipped for the job, while the IS-2 would be better suited to infantry support; given it's heavy armour and low velocity, high calibre weapon.

PlanD
the main Heer attacking unit didn't have other Tigers than the Coy of GD and the Panther Brigade attached to it, III PzCorps, which had a Tiger battalion attached and its coys attached one to each PzD under the Corps,was a flank protection force to whole souther pincer, was attacking further east. SSPzCorps Tigers were needed in that Corps sector, so the XXXXVIII Corps, which was the Corps which object was Kursk itself had only one coy of Tigers, that of GD= PzGrD GrossDeutchland so there were need to use Panthers in breakthrough.

On JS in deep penetration As I wrote, in Finnish sector. That group slipped trough a hole in Finnish VT line opened by attacking SU forces, moved diagonally to rear and surprised the HQ of FInnish Cav Br, whose troops were holding the line from breakthrough area to the sea, causing panic and helping to unhinge the southern part of VK line. That was a very much simplyfied description of very complex operational situation.

Just an example that SU forces could do unexpexted things

Juha

ADDUM
checked the third PzD under XXXXVIII PzCorps was 11th, Corps' attacking force also incl 332 InfD and 2/3 of 167 InfD, so almost 5 div force attackin all divs side by side with only some 14 Tigers, the two other attacking Corps (IIIPz and IISSPz) had ca 45 Tigers each

Hi, plan_D,

Just a disagreement about the muzzle velocity for IS-2's gun: it was not a low value; 800m/s is quite a decent muzzle velocity even today, when firing full-caliber projectiles.