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The Sumoa was much better than the Char B1bis. The latter was an outdated design and broke down quickly. I remember reading they lost most of them due to very frequent mechanical breakdowns.I voted "other". The Souma S35 would have been my pick for the Medium category, though the Char B1 is my favorite but considered a heavy. The only problems with the French tanks was that the one man turrent required the commander to be both operator and loader, plus other manuevering tasks that were required. An inexperienced commander would have found the multi-tasking daunting and exhaustive. However, well trained crews were quite effective against the Panzers IIs and IIIs like at Gembloux and Stonne.
I have a book by J-P. Pallud, "Blitzkrieg in the West", and it has some interesting photos of what resulted from encounters between Soumas and Panzer 2 and 3. How the Souma could have fared against the Stuarts or Crusaders I don't know.
For sheer speed I probably would prefer the Stuart. I didn't realize the Grant was considered a "medium".
I agree. And for the same reason we cannot consider the Panzer Mk IV (Originally designed for 18 tons. Overloaded to 24 tons.) to be in the same class as a 30-35 ton T-34 or Sherman.Pz-III and T-70 weren't really competitors; the former weighted double as much as later.
I agree. And for the same reason we cannot consider the Panzer Mk IV (Originally designed for 18 tons. Overloaded to 24 tons.) to be in the same class as a 30-35 ton T-34 or Sherman.
Your characterization of the PZ III and short barreled MK IV is inaccurate. They were easily "stoppable". Just read about what happened to everybody's favorite overrated Nazi Rommel at Arras in 1940 when he ran into well trained British armored forces. They shot the heck out of the 7th Panzer Division and were only stopped by the quick placement of a few 88mm anti-aircraft guns. The PZ III and PZ IV were very lightly armored and easily penetrated by the British 2 pounder, the French 47mm and 75mm. Even the US 37mm penetrated both models at 500 yards in side, rear, and sometimes frontal engagements depending on where they were hit. The Mk III did not have much more armor than a US M5 Stuart. The key to German armored success in the early part of the war was not the vehicles but the tactics, crew training, and the fact that every German tank had a radio in it. They were not unstoppable and in fact were rebuffed on the battlefield quite often. The Matilda, Char B, and Russian T-70 were more than a match for these vehicles if crewed properly. That is why the T-34 and early Shermans were such a shock to MK III and IV crews in Russia and North Africa. By the way, in the initial year of the Barbarossa campaign 1/2 of all German tanks were Panzer IIs. The Germans were successful not because of their vehicles but because of the men and equipment in them.
The M-24 could hold its own in a firefight.