The us tank destroyer was the reason that america built lightly armed tanks.
americans wanted the sherman to avoid fighting panzers but to concentrate on infantry support.
the TD would engage the german tanks from long range ambushes, using speed and surprise to get away.
unfortunately, this role rarely materialized as tds were often used in infantry support roles and their very thin armor and open top made them vulnerable to all infantry weapons.
very good post,thanks 
yes a truly fucking excellent bodacious mammoth fucking immense great brilliant marvellous post
:lol: :lol: I’d say that you are drunk, but, never knows… I’ll don’t consider your post as insulting, only provocative (it is the right term??)
Anyway consider my post as an informal warning.
provocative is the correct term, but my intention was infact Parody. However dani I repect you as you have shown yourself to be an MOD worth his salt.
I havent seen you get invoved in Flame wars, invate dullards to post in threads that you also moderate or infact seen you send offensive PMs to any members of this Forum as a result I understnad that a criticism from you is noteworthy and I shall attempt to amend my parodies in future (possibly even indicating when they are intended to highlight other issues)
bluffcove,i will always ignore your attempt to make a war,and make me angry.
Back on topic ,write something and stop the war . :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Well, if you insist on going back on topic I’d like to point out that the Sherman actually did a better job than any of the German tanks in 1944/45. Very rarely was the battle Sherman .vs. Panther/Tiger. More commonly it was Sherman + US Infantry .vs. German Infantry. In that role the Sherman did stellar work and saved an immense number of American lives. By the end of the war the German tanks simply weren’t doing this work, largely because there weren’t enough as they were too busy concentrating on building super-tanks - and the German infantry suffered as a result.
I agree with you ,but i still think Tiger is best then sherman this is out of topic ,we have debate about .
Good points pdf27 and nice post.
Well, if you insist on going back on topic I’d like to point out that the Sherman actually did a better job than any of the German tanks in 1944/45. Very rarely was the battle Sherman .vs. Panther/Tiger. More commonly it was Sherman + US Infantry .vs. German Infantry. In that role the Sherman did stellar work and saved an immense number of American lives. By the end of the war the German tanks simply weren’t doing this work, largely because there weren’t enough as they were too busy concentrating on building super-tanks - and the German infantry suffered as a result.[/quote]
This is the very thing Ive been banging on about. While the allies concentrated on a few versions of armoured vehicles the Germans diversified to the extreme. It was very frustrating for German mechanics to have to work on all the various marls of AFV’s the Germans were producing. In my opinion, if they had concentrated on the STUG, Panther and Hetzer it would have been far more profitable for them in the last year of the war. The Tigers and King Tigers and Uber Tigers, only ended up sucking down even more fuel and steel and were ultimately pointless.
actually firefly, the reason why the germans didn’t build that many hetzers or stugs was because they had a higher loss rate then regular tanks. no turret, slow to aim, lower ammo capacity, very weak side armor. when the tracks were knocked off the tank by a mine or at weapon the assault gun was nothing but a useless piece of metal. stug iiis and hetzlers cost around 85,000 reichmarks, which was only 20,000 rm lower then the cost of building a panther.
and the reason why they continued to build panzer ivs , hetzlers, stug iiis, was that it was too expensive to retool their factories to build all panthers.
however, i don’t think that it was that bad to build king tiger tanks. they were tremendously destructive for their lifespans. also, the crews in tigers tended to survive A lot, so an elite armor force would be useful. the cost of building one king tiger one could build 2.5 panthers.
That doesnt really explain then why the Germans built so many assualt guns. Interesting though, can you publish where you got the relative costs from?
stug IIIs are built on obsolete panzer III chasis. hetzlers are built on obsolete czech tank chasis. panzer iiis and the czech tanks were main weapons of early war. these factories were always present, it was just much cheaper to keep the factories the way they are instead retooling.
in early war, the panzer iii was meant to be germany’s main tank, it got all the factory space, but once the t-34 was encountered, the panzer iv became preferred. however, teh german’s couldn’t just get rid of the factory space so they continued building cheaper stug iiis while expanding their panzer iv factories.
“handbook of german military forces” US war department
So what was the first German AFV to deal effectively with the T-34?
i think it was the panzer IV F2 with the medium length gun.
Correct, Panzer IV F2 with 75mm-L48, also the Stug III F, armed with the same gun.
Both in service from March 1942. Although the Stug had better armour and I think was considered the mobile AT weapon of choice.
the main battle where tds were actually useful was in the Ardennes offensive.
being heavily forested w/closer ranges, us tds were able to actually utilize their superior speed/manuverability and staged costly ambushes on enemy panzers. Since most us tds had the 90mm gun,it had a good chance of breaking enemy armor, provided that it shot first.
unfortuately, many tds were lost by ambushing german infantry, who killed the personel w/ grenades and small arms. Batches of tds were lost, some numbering 30 or more by panzergrenadiers.
yes, sarge-major!