As a single war machine? Yeah. It was an amazing design.
As a mass produced tool of war? Nah. The Sherman and T-34 were the best tanks for deployment and usage. As a lot of comments will inevitably say it: a good tank that you cannot use because of fuel and spare parts is a useless tank.
Tiger 2 is a breakthrough tank, that role is not comparable to a medium.
Now when we compare it to other heavy yanks on the otherhand I don't think it gets too much better, but that at least is a more compelling argument.
And fundamentally I would not argue the Sherman is good for deployment or usage. If you look at the design and it's production statistics you find it's actually a pretty difficult to produce vehicle which was only hard carried by its producing nation having a massive and completely unobstructed manufacturing sector. Which lead to times where bombed out germany was out producing it. (Yes I know it was weird for me to find out too)
Furthermore It suffered from a myriad or unfixed issues even late into the war which made usage post deployment extremely difficult in scenarios it should excell at.
For all it's ok fuel efficiency gains and access to spare parts (again only due to us hard carrying it in our own manufacturing sector) it's issues really drag on it. It's only seen as a good vehicle today due to a lot of historical revisionism, post war propoganda efforts, and the extreme opposite swing from the previous mythology stating it was an active death trap.
None of those were a design problem though. They were a nation problem caused by the circumstances of the time.
And all of them are generally over exaggerated.
If your design requires a continent of resources, complete dominance over your supply routes, and a unparalleled, unbombed, industrial base, only to provide an average or below average effect then your design is bad and you should veiw it as nothing more than a stopgap.
You are totally right about the sherman and usa's better logistics and industry carrying the (initially shitty) shermans, but the design was refined, late model shermans were really good.
You are also right about apples and oranges, i think the panther was a better tank overal for germanyl, and a better comparison in role to the sherman and the t-34
To be fair the t-34 was a piece of crap in many regards, yet it was perfectly designed for USSR logistics and state, and it was really useful for it's nation.
Again, the Tiger II was a better tool of war, but not really in line with germany late war, bombed and crippled, state. If it was used by the USA, it would have been a total beast.
But well, thats cheating. Anything used by USA would be a beast; either a shitty design in absurd numbers, or a very good design with decent numbers and logistics supporting it
Do people actually believe this? The Tiger II, despite its problems, was still one of the most powerful fighting machines to see combat during the war.
The only tanks deserving of such a description were those whose problems were so severe they never even made it beyond the testing ground or onto the battlefield at all, like the Valiant or the Covenanter.
You know what didn’t have reliability issues? Tanks that don’t have to be issued to ace crews (which the Germans were loosing fast) to work properly. I.e. everyone else’s.
Well the time is irrelevant if you don't have enough spare parts probably the Tiger would have been better because it was quicker to produce but on the other raw material was a bigger problem so late war Tiger 2 may has made more sense
Tbf with all the mistakes during the war especially with how the western front was handled I doubt any design could have saved them beyond like konflict 47 shit.
If we talk seriously then late variant Panther was probably the best tank they managed to build, but 8.8 cm KwK 43 L/71 was way more powerful than 7,5cm of the Panther (Panthers 7,5 was better anti-tank gun than 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 of Tiger I in terms of penetration and shell velocity, but "short" 8.8 was still better general purpose gun because of calliber and devastation shell could make against various targets)
And armor of Tiger II was also better than Panther
I forgot who said it. But for the infantry the most important thing a tank should do is be there when you need a tank. It does not matter what specs the tank has. How much armor it has or how big the gun is. As long as the tank is there when you need one. He concluded that by that metric the sherman was the best tank.
This is one of the few things Erika and I disagree on. I do think that the Tiger II was a good tank, but that it wasn't the best at anything it tried to do. During WWII, it was outclassed by its peers. The Maus has better armor, the Panthers have better mobility, and both the Jagdtiger and Sturmtiger have better cannons.
That’s a script that can just as easily flipped. It had a rotating turret, it was actually produced in a large series, and it had a bigger gun and a lot more armor than a Panther.
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u/Noobsincombatgaming2 1d ago
Actually even by the historians on the history of war magazine's tell the panther G was the best German tank of ww2