Quote:
Originally Posted by August
The quality of German armor is well known but the Russians put out some darn good tanks too, especially towards the end of the war, and the T-34 proved to be a far more versatile weapons platform than anything else on either side.
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While the T-34 was the tank of its day that everybody else scrambled to cope with there is little doubt that by mid 44' the German's held the upper hand in armor design in anything but numbers.
Also the doctrines of the armored forces were different. The Germans had the tank destroyer role down to an art form with their Stug's, Jagdpanthers, Hetzers, Jagdpanzer IV's, Hummels which no other Army of the time had many equivalent. The American M-10's and M-18's were good.
The Soviets still thought of their armored corps as heavy break through and exploit force and put only a second emphasis on Armored to Armored showdowns.
But back to German optics. The Germans could see farther and more accurately then their oposition, couple that with the hitting power of the 75mm and 88mm guns and you can see why the Germans preferred an ambush tactic engaging and knocking out Soviet armor at 2,000+ Meters
Soviet optics were usually 3 or 4x German optics were 8 and 12X and much better quality.
Tank for tank I would say the Panther is the best compromise of everything in a WWII battle tank. Armored protection, Gun, Rate of fire, cross country maneuverability and speed.
I would make it my choice over even the IS-2 heavy tanks the Soviets fielded at wars end.
By the way the medium Panther and heavy IS-2 were actually about the same tonnage!