Best Medium-light tank

Best Medium-Light Tank

  • M5 Stuart

    Votes: 6 8.3%

  • M3 Grant/Lee

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • Pnzer II

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Pnzer III

    Votes: 36 50.0%

  • Crusader series

    Votes: 6 8.3%

  • Russian tank

    Votes: 11 15.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 12 16.7%
  • Total voters
    72

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Same goes for the M-24 it's true counterpart in the German forces would be the 8 wheeled armored cars.
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The USA produced over 4,000 M24 tanks. About 40 M24 light tanks per U.S. combat division. How could they all have been assigned to division recon battalions like German 8wd armored cars were?
 
Shortround6 said:
part of the problem with this poll is that categorizing tanks by weight pits tanks from different time periods against each other regardless of the intend role they were supposed to play in combat.
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Agreed. Same with all the 'best fighter/ bomber/ etc' threads here. No single tank or aircraft was or ever will be good for everything. Each has it's specific role(s), and that only for a limited time and place.

Take for example my favourite, the M3 Stuart. She was too lightly armed and armoured for effective use against most german equipment. She was however very fast and manoeverable and proved very effective in the jungle fighting against the Japanese. She was also a very effective reconnanissance vehicle with turret removed and extra Mg's fitted. So how do we decide how good or bad she was?
 
i think the thread is to interpreted like the best battle tank before of "classic" medium tank (Pz IV, T-34, Sherman..), this also explain the absence of M24 in poll. this has some trouble in timeline, (early the common enemy of T-34 was Pz III) but is workable.
 
A4K said:
Agreed. Same with all the 'best fighter/ bomber/ etc' threads here. No single tank or aircraft was or ever will be good for everything. Each has it's specific role(s), and that only for a limited time and place.
Click to expand...

To be fair...I started this thread way back in the day when I was inept at most military theories and what not...
 
M3 Stuart light tank. March 1941. 15 tons.
37mm main gun. plus 3 .30cal machineguns.
44mm frontal armor.
Two man turret.

All the Sherman medium tank needed was a better main gun. All the Stuart light tank needed was a three man turret. Not sure why the U.S. Army couldn't get these details right. Both tanks had the potential to be world class at the time they entered service.
 
In theory I would agree but and its a big but, the US didn't have a better gun than the 75mm, so there was nothing to put in the Sherman. As for the M3 anything with a 37mm wasn't going to be good enough.
 
There was nothing wrong the Sherman's gun when the Sherman was introduced. The problem was in keeping it too long.

Changing to 3 man turrets is sometimes easy and sometimes hard. The hard ones are where you need a bigger turret ring, which needs a bigger hull top plate which may need either a wider hull (or in the case of the M3, a longer one?). In some cases you can get three men into a small, cramped turret without a bigger turret ring. But a 3 man turret is not an automatic big advantage. The layout of the turret can affect each mans efficiency and the provision of adequate vision for the commander is important for getting the best from a 3 man (or even a 1 man) turret.
 
davebender said:
Why could we create an atomic bomb yet be unable to design a tank cannon similiar to the German 7.5cm KwK 40?
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We did come up with the 76mm cannon which had superior performance to the German gun. AND we even got it into action ahead of the atomic bomb. Of course the old 3in M7 tank cannon had identical performance to the 76mm but was a somewhat heavier, bulkier weapon. But then it was installed in prototype tanks in the fall of 1941. Isn't that about the time the Germans were fooling around with the 7.5cm KwK 40? Of course the US skipped right over that 7.5cm KwK 37 step.
 
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76mm Gun M1. HE round contains about .9lb of explosive filler.
7.5cm KwK40. HE round contains about .66kg of explosive filler.
7.5cm KwK40. HEAT round contains about .51kg of explosive filler.

I disagree and I think the U.S. Army did also. The German tank cannon had a more powerful HE round. Even the German HEAT round contained more explosive filler then the American HE round. Tanks typically fire more HE then AP so a tank armed with the American 76mm Gun M1 was at a serious disadvantage compared to a tank armed with the 7.5cm KwK40 cannon.
 
Now you are reaching, and confusing gun design with shell design. While high velocity guns will have less HE filler than low velocity guns there is nothing magical about a 200fps difference (or less) that would mandate such a low He filler weight for the American shell. It simply used an old design from the 3 in AA gun that may have used lower quality steel in the shell body.
 
The gun and shell work together to get the job done.

I've got to assume the U.S. Army designed the best possible HE shell for the 76mm gun M1. To do less would be dereliction of duty by U.S. Army Ordnance Department leaders.
 
Quick to indite the US Ordnace officers aren't you.

US Ordnace, on the whole, did a rather good job in WW II. They screwed up. On occasion, but there were times they had designs in hand and were turned down for production priority by the Army ground forces (the actual users) or by the production planners.

The US 3 in gun (M7) was an adaptation of an old AA gun which was an adaptation of an old coast defense gun. The 76mm M1 gun was a new gun (and recoil system) that used a new, smaller cartridge case to fire the old projectiles. By the time the 76mm showed up tank battalions were being issued small numbers of Shermans armed with 105mm howitzers for the HE mission.

Why don't you critique the German ordnance dept for some of their less than steller designs, like the 37mm HE round, the provision of a tear gas pellet in the base of the 7.92 Anti-tank rifle bullet and others.
 
The US-produced ground ordnance of WW2 served fairly well in post-war Yugoslavian army, M7 Priests, M3 M4 tanks, M18 M36 TDs, 105 155mm howitzers (they used many of UK, USSR German pieces, too). M36s were used even in operations of liberation of Southern Croatia in 1992/93.
So I'd say that US ordnance (and the producers themselves) did quite a good job. That German army was rehearsing for a major was from 1936 in Spain, unlike the USA, need to be taken into account.
 
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