Panther and Tiger, designed by the Allies....

Shortround6 said:

and here we get into the same can of worms as with aircraft. Claims vs actual kills and losses from ALL causes vs combat losses.

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It's a far bigger can with a lot more worms.

what is even worse for tanks is just what was considered a "loss". The US in NW Europe didn't consider a tank a "loss" unless it suffered catastrophic damage or burned. A large fire ruined the heat treatment of the armor making it rather questionable. Many a "knocked out" tank had the crew's bodies removed, the inside cleaned, equipment repaired and shot holes plugged and welded and returned to service. Some tanks were back in service in just a few days.

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The German's used almost exactly the same classification, they only counted tank losses where the tank was totally destroyed/lost or had to be sent back to Germany for a complete re-build.
The Western nation we have the greatest difficulty with for tank losses is Britain, there is no easy way to work out the number of tanks totally destroyed as the figures most easily available are for tanks out of service at the end of the day, which until recently has been the most common basis for working out British tank losses. This has lead to situations like during Operation Goodwood where British tank losses are often reported as being around 500, but if we use the German method of counting losses the figure falls to just over 150, against admitted German tank losses in the battle of 75-100 (The 100 includes tank destroyers).

Now if the allies suffered 3,000 "total" losses and yet held the battlefield/s and were able to recover/repair a fair number of tanks and the Germans "lost" 1500 tanks but a fair number of lightly damaged/broken down tanks are included in this it rather skews the actual day to day combat results.

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The 3000 and 1500 are the figures for tanks totally lost (unrepairable/captured).