PzKpfw V Panther....the best tank in WW2 ?

World War II German Military
#261

This is something that really irritates me about the Sherman. Sure, it wasn’t the world’s best anti-tank-tank. Who cares? You design armoured vehicles to fit in with your doctrine - and US doctrine of the time was for tank destroyers to fight tanks and tanks to fight infantry. Sadly this doctrine was complete tosh, but German armoured forces were thin enough on the ground that in reality the Sherman mainly fought German infantry. The 75mm gun may have been weak against tanks, but it had rather a good HE shell and the Sherman as a whole was very effective against non-armoured enemies (good main gun, good MGs and high speed/good reliability).

Even the issues with Shermans catching fire too easily in Normandy were overrated - the problem was that due to poor resupply, crews took to stuffing as many extra rounds as possible anywhere in the tank. This of course meant it was pretty much guaranteed to brew up when hit. Later in the war when they only used the rounds stored in wet charge bins the problem largely went away. The M4A3E8 was certainly getting close to the standard of the German tanks or T-34/85.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the Western allied armies had a major restriction that didn’t apply to either the Soviets or Germans. They had to be able to get their tanks ashore using landing craft built to non-naval standards. This is a really, really big deal - tanks are a truly awkward load for a ship, particularly if you need to be able to drive it off a ramp. Unless you’re building them to naval standards (which needs a full-on shipyard - and building enough landing craft in shipyards would set Overlord back a decade) that sets an upper weight limit of just over 30 tonnes. The T-34/85 is just about OK, but all the German tanks are right out, as is the Pershing.

#262

Hi for sure the US won the War and the Nazis lost and the Sherman played a part in that and yes you are right that the Sherman was an effective tank against infantry but practically anything with tracks, a gun and a machine gun with a bit of armor will do if you are up against somebody armed with nothing more than a rifle and a tin helmet for protection. The T-34 was built using American technology in so far as its running system went, so there is no credible reason why America could not have built a tank using American technology when Russia which was a foreign country with a far less developed industrial base was able to use such imported US technology in the T-34. If I have not misunderstood you, you are something of a fan of the Sherman, I think you might have been less impressed with it had you had to go up against a Tiger in Normandy after several of your colleagues Shermans had already been shot up by the Tiger. Furthermore, if the Allied forces had even lost local air supremacy over the battlefield with the Sherman as the best tank the Allies could field they would have been in deep trouble.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#263

About the only US import was the suspension design (Christie), and that was a bit long in the tooth. The rest was a Soviet design, and some way ahead of the rest of the world in most aspects (the human factors ones were however very poor).

Irrelevant, and something of a case of waving a bloody shirt. About the only allied tank able to go up against the Tiger on roughly equal terms was the Centurion. This was WAY too heavy to land in Normandy (it required a proper port, i.e. Antwerp) and arrived too late to see action. Had the roles been reversed and the Germans landing in Normandy, they would have been unable to land anything bigger than a Panzer IV - roughly equivalent in performance to a Sherman.
Finally, remember that Normandy was bloody awful tank country. Any attack the Germans put in using tanks suffered just as badly as those with Shermans. The Tiger wasn’t some super-weapon, rather it had a good gun and heavy armour - suiting it as a defensive weapon, which is exactly what was required defending in Normandy.

#264

Errr… that’s kind of like saying you could do so with enough nuclear weapons, Challenger 2s or pointy sticks. They were impossible to produce in sufficient quantity, so the original point about them not being a war-winner stands.

That is why I said, enough numbers there was no enough numbers mostly because the disruption caused by the continued allied bombing campaing against the german industry, I think that cause was more important that any Panther complexity.

Close up to the turret in the Panther Panzerbefehlswagen.

#265

Well the suspension design is a big issue, in that if one has to face a more powerfully gunned and more heavily armoured opponent, one has to get the tank profile as low as possible in order to present the least effective target to the enemy and there is an issue at a strategic level if one’s tanks come off substantially worse in combat with an enemy in that if the problem is big enough one could get to the stage where one’s tankers would refuse to fight. Granted it would have presented logistics problems for the Allies to have shipped a tank in the weight class of the centurion to Normandy, in that it was easier to transport several relatively light tanks than one heavy one, but that does not mean a tank could not have been built within the weight class of the Sherman which carried a heavier gun, such as e.g. the 17 pounder used by the Sherman firefly and done so on a lower body. And if the Sherman was such an intelligent and useful design, why did nobody post WW2 build tanks to the Sherman design? And I never claimed the Tiger was some sort of wonder weapon, it merely was a tough opponent, in fact I would be contradicting myself if I had claimed that the Tiger had been some sort of wonder weapon, in that if the Tiger had been some sort of wonder weapon it would have been a creditable achievement for the Sherman to overcome it, even at a loss of several Shermans to one Tiger.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#266

The suspension wasn’t crucial to that - the T-43 had torsion bar suspension and the same frontal area.

Certainly not for the Soviets or Germans - they would have executed a number of tank crews for cowardice, and the rest would have gone back to work.

“logistics problems”??? That’s one way of phrasing it. Another is that Overlord would have had to be an infantry-only operation.

but that does not mean a tank could not have been built within the weight class of the Sherman which carried a heavier gun, such as e.g. the 17 pounder used by the Sherman firefly and done so on a lower body.

Irrelevant - nobody built Tigers postwar either, and only very small numers of T-34s in Eastern Europe.

#267

The Sherman was used by the American and British armed forces, hence your argument is not relevant.

I was not suggesting that the Allies, should have used a substantially heavier tank than the Sherman, merely a better designed one and I believe I made that abundantly clear, so I can not understand why you got the apparent impression that you did.

Nobody was going to build Tigers, since German industry was under embargo in the immediate aftermath of World War 2 and certainly in the case of the Tiger 1, it is a mere brute force solution to a problem and hence unworthy of being copied except as an emergency ad-hoc solution and the T-34 though an excellent design was becoming long in the tooth by 1945 since it was essentially a 1930s design and with the Soviet Union committed to: heavy industry, maintaining a large standing army and reserve forces heavily equipped with tanks, full-employment and an aggressive military and diplomatic policy, it made perfect sense for Soviet industry to churn out new and better tanks than the T-34. I most certainly was not talking about nations producing carbon copy versions of the like of the T-34 or the Panther in the post world War 2 era, that would be plainly idiotic, my point being which I believe it would have been easy to see is that that post World War 2 tanks did not have the shape of the Sherman with all the problems that went with it.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#268

Hmmm the only thing I know is that I can name a few Tiger commanders who destroyed a dozen (or more)of allied tanks (T-34’s/Shermans/Cromwells) in one encounter but can’t say the same about allied tank commanders against panzers(maybe Lieutnant Billotte in the Battle of Stonne but French armour was superior to the German one in 1940).
Surely it means something in terms of what is the most effective tank of WW2?

#269

I love the way people try and give credit for the T 34 to Christie. His idea was for a fast tank that ran on tracks and wheels. Actually the tank the Soviets tested was crap on tracks. It broke 3 idlers in 43 km !! Although good on wheels it didn’t reach the speeds claimed and was hard to drive at high speed.The Soviets soon ditched the track and wheel idea (although it was used in the early BT’s). The heavily modified suspension was used on the T34 but it’s other world beating features like sloped armour, wide tracks and heavy gun owe nothing to Christie.

#270

I agree with you, that on an individual basis the Panthers and Tigers were far superior to any of the Tanks fielded by Americans and the British, [ with the exception of the Pershing which only saw action during the final days of World War 2 ( and only in tiny numbers ) and I would include the Centurion too which IMHO was a better tank than Pershing but I don’t think it used in combat in WW2? ] but my opinion is that the German Tanks can not qualify on the basis they were produced in too few numbers and that is why my vote goes to the T-34.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#271

Hi not disagreeing with you, just interested in the story behind this, like if some journalist had written that Christie had played a big part in Soviet tank design, well I would put that down to the bs factor but like George Forty gives considerable credit to Christie for Soviet tank development?

http://browse.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ath=George+Forty

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#272

Obviously, I was wrong about this thread being played out. It looks like it could go on forever, which is the point, I guess. That is, if you compare the tanks feature by feature, component by component, but that’s a clinical laboratory approach, which has its place for sure, but not on the battlefield. Unless one tank posessed something so superior that there was nothing to counter it, which was certainly not the case so, realistically, we are forced to look at all the inherently fluid mitigating factors in order to come to a reasonably valid conclusion(s). Given that criteria, there will be many different conclusions, all valid within their own unique set of circumstances. To summarize, everything must be viewed in context.

That said, it would be useful to look at each major combatant’s primary goal and/or strategy. The Allie’s joint strategy was essentially attrition via MASS; men, armor, airtillery, aircraft, etc. on land, sea, and in the air.

Russia’s initial goal was to survive the German invasion, and eventually, victory. Of all the Allies, the Russians were the greatest practicioners of mass. They (Stalin) willingly accepted horrendous losses of men and material because they knew the Germans would run out of same, first. Their equipment was initially inferior then, eventually good to excellent, but their (political) leadership, training, and tactics posed significant limitations. The T-34, an excellent tank in its own right, played a very significant role in the Russian strategy with their numerical superiority, alone.

The Americans and British were also employing mass, but valued human life much more. They soon concentrated on achieving air superiority, both strategic and tactical, which was a huge factor that the Germans were constantly forced to devote considerable resources to counter. Also, as someone else has already pointed out, the Americans had major logistic obstacles to overcome. That fact made airpower the most expedient and effective way to take the war to the enemy, given their circimstances, and air superiority is still the primary prerequisite for successful war fighting to this day. (In Tiger vs. P-47, the Tiger didn’t stand a chance.) The Sherman was employed to maximize its few strengths with infantry and air support, and minimize its weaknesses in tank vs. tank combat by their numbers and tactics, and being a very reliable infantry support tank.

The German (Hitler’s) goal was complete domination of Europe by conquest, and beyond. Hitler’s biggest mistake was picking too many fights with too many opponents at the same time**, and those opponents each had greater resources than he did. And his so-called allies were not that much help, either. Consequently, from 1943 onwards Germany was, for all intents and purposes, fighting defensively in a reactive mode. Their equipment was generally on par or superior, and their training and tactics were probably the best, overall. To their enormous credit, they made the best use of comparitively limited resources. But they were steadily running out of everything. The Tiger and Panther, and their derivatives, were superior to all their opponents, but their numbers were too few, and too late to change the eventual outcome of the war.

The German field of battle was steadily shrinking from 1943 on, too, which gives the advantage of being able to consolidate your defenses more effectively, but that is also a sure sign you are steadily retreating (ie: losing). The end of the war was unnecessarily prolonged for over two years and Germany paid a very, very high price. They could/should have surrendered in 1943, and been much better off than they ultimately were. All of Europe, and the rest of the world, would have been much better off if they had surrendered only to the Americans and British. Instead, we had to trade a hot war for a Cold War.

I hope this provides some context for this discussion.

**It’s like walking into a Biker Bar alone on Saturday night and yelling, “Harley-Davidson and anybody who rides one, SUCKS!!!”.
You may know Kung Fu and be armed to the teeth, but eventually, innevitably, you are going to get your ass kicked.

#273

Hi Kent great post and I am not criticizing the part I selected above as it is merely a statement of fact, but that is the thing which is the issue for me, in that it was a hugely risky strategy in that the Third Reich did not have to regain air-superiority as it had in France in 1940 but merely had to achieve point defense air protection of its tank forces and the Allies would have been in deep trouble in Normandy and could have been pushed back in to the sea. The Luftwaffe certainly had the equipment to do it in the shape of the Me 262 Jet fighter and I would not have given a lot for the life expectancy of a pilot of a Thunderbolt laden down with anti-tank ordnance mixing it in a dogfight with an Me-262 and if the Me-262 forces the P-47 to drop its anti-tank load before it can hit the German tank, its job is done. Okay in the event the Nazis were able to make little or no air-defense of their forces in France, but that says more about the chaos that was the Third Reich’s organizational basis than what the Nazi war machine could have done if it had got its act to together, lucky for us the Reich was a state run by a madman surrounded by a bunch of thugs, incompetents and brown-nosers.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#274

There were no known or hypothesised tanks - apart from the T-34 - out there in the same weight class as the Sherman that were in any way demonstrably superior. Indeed, in many ways the Sherman was superior to the T-34.

What was so very wrong about the Sherman, particularly the late model ones? It had just about all the features of a modern MBT - sloping armour, three man turret, highly mobile, etc. The only real criticisms are the armour and the gun - both resulting from faulty intelligence about likely opponents. Critically, the Sherman was intended as a “Universal” tank, capable of carrying out both the “infantry” and “cruiser” tank roles - and it was probably the first western allied tank to do so.

Prior to Normandy the US believed that the Sherman was at least as good as the likely opposing tank, the Panzer IV. There were responses to the advent of the Panther and Tiger from the allies - the Pershing and Centurion tanks - but they arrived too late for the end of the war.

#275

Okay pdf27 I surrender, you evidently know a lot about AFVs and the Sherman was a lot better than most people give it credit for.

LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsEAXNlfv0

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#276

I hope I’m doing this response thing right. Wish me luck, Adrian.

The Third Reich did not have to regain air-superiority as it had in France in 1940 but merely had to achieve point defense air protection of its tank forces and the Allies would have been in deep trouble in Normandy and could have been pushed back in to the sea.

Wishful thinking, aka Operation Bodenplate. The Germans already had their hands full just defending their cities and infrastructure from the bomber streams out of England, and the bulk of their tactical aircraft were on the Eastern Front. Any concentration of Panzers would have drawn masses of fighter bombers. Most movement of anything substantial had to be done at night, or in weather bad enough to keep aircraft on the ground and once the weather cleared, you’d better be under cover. Also, any Panzer force large enough to be effectiive against the Normandy beachhead would have been met by the combined force of medium bombers, fighter bombers, and an intense naval bombardment. Game over.

The Luftwaffe certainly had the equipment to do it in the shape of the Me 262 Jet fighter and I would not have given a lot for the life expectancy of a pilot of a Thunderbolt laden down with anti-tank ordnance mixing it in a dogfight with an Me-262and if the Me-262 forces the P-47 to drop its anti-tank load before it can hit the German tank, its job is done.

The Me 262 was a marvelous fighter, ahead of its time. But there never were enough of them to make a difference. They were only a flash in the pan. Besides, the tactic of shadowing their airfields and shooting them down on takeoff and landing proved very effective. As for the P-47’s ordnance, its normal armament of eight BMG .50 caliber M2’s at a combined rate of fire of 8,000 rounds a minute of HEI and API was more than enough to kill any Tiger. Remember, the P-47 is shooting DOWN at the Tiger, and the Tiger’s least armored areas are the hull and turret roof’s.

Okay in the event the Nazis were able to make little or no air-defense of their forces in France, but that says more about the chaos that was the Third Reich’s organizational basis than what the Nazi war machine could have done if it had got its act to together, lucky for us the Reich was a state run by a madman surrounded by a bunch of thugs, incompetents and brown-nosers.

Agreed. Chaos usually afflicts the losing side, and the madman was no small contributor. Hitler was probably our best asset, short of early surrender. If he had let his generals run the war there probably been a much different outcome, one much less to our liking. Thank God he didn’t.

#277

I’m not replying to myself. Just something came to mind. I have not seen it mentioned in this thread, and I kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. Early in the war, the Panzers discovered their ace in the hole; the Flak 88.

The Panzers continously worked with the Flak 88 and it became an intergal part of their tactics, both offensive and defensive. No other combatant I can think of managed to combine armor and towed artillery so effectively. It’s probably the unsung hero of the Panzers, at least by the opposing sides, as it must have accounted for a significantly larger portion of Panzer tank kills than we realize because the Tigers and Panthers were usually the center of our attention. Meanwhile, the Flak 88’s were picking us off with great regularity. I don’t know this for a fact. Perhaps, someone more knowledgable will speak up.

#278

the sherman tank sucks the tiger could take it out in 1 hit at over 1 mile

#279

the weak spot of a panzer or tiger is the back the sherman would have to shoot the engine and then “boom”

#280

Agreed. This is one of the reasons the British suffered such high tank losses in North Africa - the Germans were very good indeed at conning the British into counterattacking straight into an ambush.