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[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by frinik

Even then to Soviets consistently lost more tanks than they could produce except in 1945 and it was the tanks provided by the Anglo-Americans during the landlease that saved their skins and allowed them to be able to replenish their terrible losses.

Lend-Lease tanks saved the Soviets? I don't have the numbers right now, but IIRC the total amount of Lend-Lease tanks that arrived in the Soviet Union amounted to less than 7,000 tanks. Compared to the tens of thousands of T-34s and other Soviet tanks produced during the war, this could not possibly have been the factor that "saved their skins". Lend-Lease trucks and similar items were much more important to the Soviet war effort.

I think the Panther and Tiger comparison is somewhat flawed, not only because both were designed and introduced much later (In the case of the Panther, as a direct result of the T-34's early superiority), but also because they were significantly heavier. The Panther was nearly 50% heavier than the T-34/85 (Despite being a medium tank by design, it weighed almost exactly as much as the IS-2, a heavy tank by all means), while the Tiger was almost twice as heavy. For example, you could equally take a Panzer IV and compare it to an IS-2 (Well, almost equally, since, as I said, the IS-2 was designed as an infantry-support tank), which would easily win, but that does not make the IS-2 an inherently superior design.

The T-34 was tactically superior to anything the Germans had early in the war. It was, after initial problems, much more reliable than the later German tanks, was much easier to produce and maintain, and was still effective by the end of the war, especially against other tanks of comparable weight and purpose.