So was the Tiger actually a good tank or not? Could it stand

Troll? I'll bite.

No, 1 on 1 Tiger was better than a Sherman, this does not make it a good tank, it just means 1 on 1 a Tiger beats a Sherman. Historically it was never 1 on 1 though, it was 1 on 4 or 8 or more, and while a Sherman could be fully fixed, reset, and recrewed in 1 afternoon, Tigers were hard to fix, expensive to fix, and hard to recover due to size. Tiger is better tactically, Shermans are better strategically.

>>31097627
They were good, though maintenance-intensive. That, combined with late-war shortages of just about everything made them unfeasible as the war went on.

Also, they were almost always outnumbered in any engagement, and the German army developed a somewhat poor doctrine for using them in the field.

>>31097641

So basically, while the Tiger had some positive characteristics, they weren't enough to justify its downsides, and overall it just sucked.

>>31097627

It was a good tank at the beginning of the war. Other nations eventually fielded tanks or upgrades that reached rough parity.

It was mechanically complex and required sophisticated support networks to repair it. As the war dragged on this meant it was difficult for the Nazis to repair them.

The Nazis knew about sloped armor, it's fucking simple stuff, the Soviets didn't invent the concept. The Nazis built the Tiger with flat front armor to increase the internal dimensions.

The 88 mm on the Tiger could punch through Allied tanks. Like I said, with advances in gun and projectile technology the allies reached parity with the Tiger as the war dragged on.

The Tiger and Tiger II greatest failing was that they were logistically expensive to make. It wasn't a case of LOL5SHERMANS vs every Tiger or something, there were hardly any Other Vs Sherman battles. But since the Nazis didn't build more StUGs sooner the Nazi infantry lacked the fire support that the Allied infantry enjoyed.

>>31097641
>Sherman could be fully re-crewed in 1 afternoon after the 5 fools inside die horribly
>now your sherman is ready to go lose 5 more crew members
>better strategically
Only if you're a moron.

>a sherman blown to pieces by 88mm will be combat-ready after an afternoon
also hilariously retarded fiction.

Tigers easily paid for their cost and had the kills to prove it.
Had Germany been handed the blueprints for a Sherman and been producing that, they wouldn't have done any better.
They couldn't win a war of attrition against Britain+Russia+United States by trading tank crewmen for tank crewmen or trading any type of machinery for any enemy machinery.

Had the German airforce been using P51 Mustangs, they would've done worse than with BF109s and FW190s, because the P51's loiter time (wasting fuel with drop tanks) wasn't beneficial for a fuel-shortage nation, nor were the 12.7mm non-chemical machine guns adequate for attacking guarded B17 swarms.

It's always hilarious hearing an ignoramus spouting the wonders of american/british/russian equipment when all 3 of them were flawed as fuck minus the fact they were on the side that had more men, more money, more fuel, more raw materials, more factories and could win by raw numbers with inferior equipment. Quantity is a quality all its own.

>>31097957
>t. wheraboo
I'm only joking, you made some very good points, and overall a good argument. I agree that Germany was fucked fighting a war of attrition on 2 fronts and 3 superpowers.

>>31097957
>Sherman could be fully re-crewed in 1 afternoon after the 5 fools inside die horribly
>now your sherman is ready to go lose 5 more crew members
>better strategically
plus the fact that there were an average of 1 death and a couple injuries per knocked out tank

>>31097627
The Tiger is able to destroy any number of Sherman Tanks at a superior range.

Its armour was superior, its armaments were superior. Its communication systems was novel for its time.

The only allied tank on the Western front that is able to beat it is the Firefly.
This shit is designed to DOMINATE Russian armour.

The main problem is that it normally breaks down before it reaches the battle site.
Either or they get destroyed by artillery/bombers.

>>31097957
Shermans had a lot of shit that was more sophisticated than what the Tiger and most other German tanks had. Safer ammo stowage, better crew ergonomics, better gunsights and stabilization, powered turrets, etc. Not to mention even the M4A1s had as much effective frontal armor as a Tiger thanks to sloping. A tank isn't measured by just the armor and gun it carries.

>>31097627
Pretty much>>31097641

The cost-performance ratio for the Tiger is considerably worse than the Panzer IV/Jagdpanzer/Panther.

Shoddy war-time construction and lack of materials results in the Tiger becoming less armoured (Cost-cutting), unreliable and inefficient.

The fact that Germany basically lost in terms of aerial dominance meant that German Tanks on the Western Front are unprotected from Allied aircraft.

Coupled this with the fact that most German troops are stationed on the meatgrinder that is called the Eastern Front, it is not a surprise why the Tiger did not perform to expectations.

>>31098121
Shermans are lightly armoured as fuck.
Are you retarded?

German Tanks are designed to take down heavier opponents (T-34s/KVs) on the Eastern Front.

>>31098162
>Are you retarded?
you haven't looked at any measurements, have you? of course german heavy tanks are going to be more thickly armored than medium tanks, but the sherman is not armored lightly as fuck when compared with contemporary mediums

>>31098078
>The Tiger is able to destroy any number of Sherman Tanks at a superior range.

Very good on the open Russian steppes, but this advantage was pretty much nonexistent in Western Europe thanks to all of the densely packed towns, forests, and mountains that were common there.

>Its armour was superior, its armaments were superior. Its communication systems was novel for its time.

It did have thick armor, but it was horribly inefficient. Shermans had as much effective frontal armor as Tigers thanks to sloping while weighting 30 tons less. I do give you that the Allies initially didn't have anything that could match the 88mm, but as the Tiger proved, you needed a really big, heavy, and expensive platform just to mount a gun that was only ever good at engaging other tanks and not much else.

>The only allied tank on the Western front that is able to beat it is the Firefly.

Allied tanks almost never encountered Tigers in battle. Plus the 76mm Shermans were just as effective as Fireflies without having to make so many design compromises.

>>31098162
For medium tank, the Sherman is pretty damn well armored. It can't stop an 88mm (not much can), but it could withstand 75mm, which was the vast majority of German guns.

Also, note that I mentioned sloping, which can add additional EFFECTIVE armor protection over just plain thickness.

>>31098237
>withstand a 75mm
They can't. Check wikipedia for the 7.5cm KWK 40, which can penetrate the sherman's armor from a kilometer. The Sherman's frontal armor is like, 51mm at the front with a 51 degree slope, which increases the effective armor to around 91mm, but still loses out to a long 7.5, which has around 100mm of penetration on armor at 1500 meters.

>>31098217
Add to that the fact that the Tiger was encountered only three times in the western front. First time around, the Tiger was beat by the Sherman. Second time around, the Tiger beat the Pershing. Third time around, the Tigers were on train carts so it didn't really count.

>>31099252
Where did this bullshit story come from?

Tigers were encountered more than "Three times"

>>31099250
The KWK 40 was only found on later variants of the PzIV and StuG. The closer match to these guns would be the 76mm since the US never really had a long barrel version of their own 75mms. Older German tanks that were still using the KWK 37 had a lot of trouble dealing with Shermans.

>>31099358
idiot

>>31099358
More specifically, there's only three documented tank v. tank battles with Tigers during the fighting in Western Europe. Tigers were encountered in Africa and Italy, but they were generally knocked out by aircraft and AT guns.

Germany shouldn't have even bothered with heavy tank designs. They should have continually pumped out StuGs and Pz. IVs until the Panther was thoroughly tested and ready for action.

>>31099426
Wonder how they would have done vs the mass of T-34s and whatnot without heavies.
Probably better.

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>>31099358
>>31099252
Do you mean "King" Tigers?

>>31099252
>>31099358
Tigers were only encountered by the US twice during Operation Overlord.
They were encountered a lot by the British at Caen and later by the Americans a lot in general, but most Tiger sightings were actually just PzIVs or StuGs being misnamed due to TigerScare.

>>31097627

It could beat anything from the Sherman to the T-55, but in hindsight, it was inefficiently designed for its purpose; there was a variation in armor thickness that could be as large as 10 mm between individual tanks, and its armor layout in comparison to later models was rather poor for its weight; too much thickness was invested in armoring its back when it did jack but make it more likely to fail due to overburdening the transmission. The King Tiger and theoretical E-75 were needed replacements.

>>31099362
>later variants
The L/42 was used to upgun Panzers and Stugs from 1942 and onwards, which was also the year the Tiger I was introduced. And the US 76mm was used to upgun the Sherman in 1944. I mean, yes I bet the first engagements before the tanks got refitted didn't go well for the Germans, but they better guns were planned anyways because of the T-34 and KV-1 on the other front. If we're talking the same time period, in 1942-1943, the Panzer and Stug had better weapons, while when the Sherman got upgunned the 76 was better than both.

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>>31099528
>t-55

>>31099541

If the Sherman could take out a T-55, what makes you think the Tiger wouldn't be able to?

They were very advanced for their time, but they were so expensive and time consuming to produce that the German Army could never field them in large enough numbers to make any difference on the battlefield.

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>>31099559
Do you know what a T-55 is?
Or uh, when it was designed? Let alone actually in service.

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>>31099559
>implying WWII Shermans were the same as the Six-Day War Shermans
Yeah man, totally. WWII Shermans had a 105mm gun and better armour and engines and everything else. I'm sure of it.

>>31097627
The number one thought I have on a lot of German WWII vehicles is "Dear god, I am glad I don't have to replace an inner road wheel on one of those fuckers". Interleaved suspension is a maintenance nightmare.

Also, changing the track every time you move by rail (pretty much required for such a strategically immobile vehicle), waterproofing on early versions (because hey, let's pool all those lovely fluids inside the tank), no wide-view low-magnification optic for the gunner, and a few more livability issues, I'd rather go to war in an E8 model Sherman. I would definitely pick it over a Panther, though, because I don't want to even think about replacing a final drive every 200 miles.

>>31099528
>beat back anything from the Sherman to the T-55
Then how come its gun can't penetrate an IS-2 from the front unless it's within 100m?
>King Memer and a 75-ton shitmobile were needed replacements
Yeah man, when you're fighting a defensive war you want expensive unreliable heavy tanks and not anything cheaper that can mount the same gun and is way more concealable, like a Nashorn. Don't forget to base a tank destroyer off of the hull and not even give it a fucking machine gun or anything. If only Germany managed to build a Maus, after all with tanks the only thing that matters is how well they can fight other tanks and not infantry support or anything like that.

>>31099528
>Tiger I
>killing a T-55
Never go full wehraboo.

>>31099559
The Shermans the kikes had would have slaughtered Tigers, so your rationale is rather lacking.

Approx 53 Tiger sent to the
British line of Normandy. See how many operation failed by the British to drive toward Paris.

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why is this so fucking difficult.

The tiger had an excellent gun. accurate, powerful, and with a lot of HE payload to lob at infantry. It could shit on any allied tank until the russian IS series, with the later front glacis (think it was late IS-2 models, i could be wrong) It was easy to operate (dont misunderstand me wrong here, i mean it wasn't heavy work, most controls inside were hydraulically assisted). And while it was a heavy machine, the engine was powerful, and the suspension system with the clusterfuck of roadwheels gave it actually lower ground pressure than the sherman/ T-34.
Now the Tiger might have been the most "reliable" of the cats (and no, thats not much of an achievement). and yes it needed a lot of maintenance, and it guzzeled fuel like crazy and was generally fucking expensive.

The sherman on the other hand was the best tank of the war. Easily. Easy to produce, maintain, and operate. Enough armor to stand up to most early war weapons, and could shit all over the PZ IIIs in north africa, until the got the longer 50mm gun, and i dont think they had those in africa (aus. L, iirc). The early 75mm had a goood HE payload (and honestly, since tanks rolled with infantry most of the time, that was really more important than AP penetration). The later 3 inch gun had good pen, and could take on tigers at shorter ranges (or at longer if sabot rounds were used). Besides, it was upgradeable, and was used for a long time after the war. 10/10, would tank again

>>31101531

The British were awful at combined arms mobile warfare.

The American observers attached said the Brits had a nasty habit of attacking with infantry and armor spread way too apart.

The Tanks would outstrip the infantry advance, lose their support, and get killed. Then the infantry would advance up without tanks and get killed sometime later.

The "Infantry Tank" doctrine wasn't replaced despite the Infantry Tanks themselves being replaced.

>>31098078
Apart from speed over open ground the Tiger's mobility was also better to the Sherman

>>31099559
>>31099617
Granted that guy is probably dumb but 76mm gunned Walker Bulldogs were killing t-55s in nam so theoretically slightly modified sherman with HEAT shells could do it.

Still kinda dumb though.

>>31099887

They would be no better than the firefly in practice, and their armor is just as vulnerable to the 88 as it would be if they were coming at the Tiger stock. It would come down to who could hit who first, and the Tiger still has better fire control.

That the T-55 was beaten by Shermans speaks more of the fact that the people the Soviets handed the things to had 0 idea how to use the bloody things, as opposed to any fault of the machine itself. Nork and Sand Nigger T-55s would have been slaughtered by the Krauts because they actually know how to use their tanks in spite of the fact that they're technically inferior.

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>You will never know the joy of knocking out a tiger with a 37mm on a M8 greyhound.

Sigh.

>>31101646
I think the later model Panzer IV's were the best all around tanks of the war. Cheaper to build than the V's and the VI's, up gunned, up armoured, if production would have been focused on these models a significant increase in armoured units could have been achieved by the Axis. As the T-34 was to the Russians, and the Sherman was to the US, the Panzer IV was to the Germans. The G or H variants are easily formidable against everything but the M-26 and IS2, which were really only available right before the war ended.

>>31097641

I have actually known two WWII era tankers, both of whom were in Shermans.

It would take a little while longer than an afternoon to fix a seriously damaged Sherman. Not much longer, but longer.

>>31098237
The 75mm kwk 42 was better at penetrating armour than the 88mm was. Even the shorter kwk 40 mounted on Panzer IVs could penetrate nearly 100mm armor at 1000m.

>>31098217
>a gun that was only ever good at engaging other tanks and not much else.
You're thinking of the 75mm kwk 42 on the Panther. The 88mm was supposed to have been quite effective at destroying soft targets as well as tanks, which is why it had more of a reputation in spite of being less effective at penetrating armor.

>>31097671
not really. it was still a soild tank, just not the tank germany needed

>>31102998
>They would be no better than the firefly in practice
Fucking Wehraboos.

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So was the MG24 a good weapon or not? Could it stand up to the tokarev in battle?

>>31103054
The problem wasn't just with the armor, it was the soldiers. The axis just didn't have the men to crew their fancy machines.

>>31103054
the panther was slightly more expensive and it was much more appreciated by infantry. the panzer 4s armour was shit and the design was outdated

>>31097627
>So was the Tiger actually a good tank or not
Yes.

>Could it stand up to the Sherman in battle?
Pffft of course. No matter what rednecks on this board have to say, it wont change reality.

Why Is everyone forgetting about Challenger (a30), Cromwell and Firefly?
Even the british 57mm/6Pdr had better pen than the gun on sherman.

there was a crazy incident where a german tiger crew saw another tiger crew get killed from vibration from repetitive close range HE shells thrown at them in quick succession

>>31101782
Op goodwood memes.

Its called the "normandy breakout" or good reason.

So what are you going to use? Your slow infantry with slow tanks? Or your rapid cruiser tanks to just try and slip them through?

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It's as though we are seeing the death of all the old Hitler channel memes, only for them to be replaced by a whole new set of equally false ones.

>>31098078
>The only allied tank on the Western front that is able to beat it is the Firefly.
The Firefly was trash and the 76mm armed M4 was better than it in pretty much every way.
Inaccurate to the point of useless sabots aside.


>>31098121

>Safer ammo stowage
Only on the wet storage equipped M4's and at the cost of the loader having to pull every round out through the floor.
The regular ammunition layout could easily be argued to be more dangerous than the Tiger's.

>better crew ergonomics
A spacious interior isn't all there is to ergonomics.
The M4 had probably just as many ergonomic flaws as the Tiger.

>better gunsights
No.
The M4 had shit gunsights, from the early models with their 4 mills of inaccuracy to the later telescopes with no range finding scales and fixed X6 magnification.

>stabilization
So useful that all of the tanks that succeeded it until the M60 was upgraded with the AOS lacked stabilization.

>powered turrets
Pretty much every tank after 1940 had powered traverse, you'd have to really be reaching for features to even mention it.
You might as well point out that it had a coax or hatches that open and close.

>>31105585
>there was a crazy incident where a german tiger crew saw another tiger crew get killed from vibration from repetitive close range HE shells thrown at them in quick succession
Do you have a source for that?

>Tiger

20 Shermans

1 Panther.

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>dat bovington tiger doe

>ITT: people compare a medium tank to a heavy tank over twice its weight


70 years later and people are still just as fucking stupid.

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Tiger was the best tank in WW2.

The whole "le quanity over quality XDDDD" meme is just that, a fucking meme.

A solid tank in small numbers would shit all over a trash tank in big numbers.

By that logic, the allies should have just spammed Bren Carriers with Boys AT rifles on top and somehow that would be the "Best Tank of the War".

Daily Reminder: Hitler wanted peace and Churchill was a warmongering asshat that cried to America after he got shit on by peaceful German troops in self defense.

>>31103054
>I think the later model Panzer IV's were the best all around tanks of the war.

You thought wrong then. The Pz IV was the very definition of a polished turd. By 1944/45 the chasis was loooooong obselete. The Pz IV was never really intended to be used for a tank-on-tank role, only getting put in that position because the Pz III could not a fit a turret able to accommodate a 75mm main gun. Upgrades delayed the tanks inevitable relegation to the scrap pile, but by the Ausf. H the design was really showing its limitations. The thing just couldn't take anymore weight that what was added on to it, with 80mm frontal plate armor upgrade, L/40 main gun, shertzen etc. Even with all the upgrades, the tank struggled to keep up with it's contemporaries. It's biggest weakness was probably it's lackluster armor, the 80mm upgraded plate was still quite easy to penetrate and it's side an rear armor was a pitiful 30mm. Sure, it could hold it's own, but just barely by the war's end.

>>31108424
>posts WebM called wehraboo delusions
>spouts wehraboo delusions

like pottery

I wrote a 6000 word essay on the effectiveness of the Tiger tank and whether or not it was truly an effective tank.

Books you should read :

>Tigers in The Mud - Otto Carius
>Panzer-truppen : The Complete Guide to the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany's Tank Force - Thomas L Jentz'
>Knights of the Black Cross - Bryan Perrett
>The Combat History of German Tiger Tank Battallion 503
>Germany's Tiger Tanks : DW to Tiger I - Thomas L Jentz & Hilary L Doyle
> Germany's Tiger Tanks : VK45.02 to Tiger II - Thomas L Jentz & Hilary L Doyle
>Sledgehammers. Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Batallions in World War 2 - Christopher W. Wilbeck
> Tigers in Combat 1 and 2 - Wolfgang Schnider

All these books are pretty good and will help you form an understanding of the effectiveness of Tiger Tank Batallions.

From what I gathered, yes, the Tiger Tank was a superior COMBAT vehicle, but logistics wise it was a monster to produce and maintain. And overall, the Tiger Tank did not really have an effect on the theatre of war. Only on a tactical level did it produce results.

>>31108647
There were further weaknesses to the Tiger Tank, for example the lack of variants. An example is the complex track system of inter-locking wheels. If one of he inner wheels were blown off, it would mean that 9 outer wheels would have to be removed to fix. That's stupidly crazy. This made it highly vulnerable to mines.

In a massed charge, for "breakout" engagements, there are very few actual battles recorded by the Tiger tanks. The most notable one was Operation Citadel - the sheer amount of men and mines on the battlefield left the Tigers vulnerable to attack. The Tiger batallions were also split up, reducing their effectiveness as a "concentrated fist".

>>31108677
If anyone wants my collection of books when writing the essay (it also includes things like Ian Kershaw's Hitler, Speer's Inside the Third Reich, The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich for contextual knowledge), then please ask and I will upload them.

One thing that we should probably note is the effect of the Tiger tank on the politics of the Third Reich, especially Hitler. We can argue that the obsession with wonderweapons (Tiger I/II, Elefant, Ferdinand, Maus, etc) : because Hitler obtained such fantastical power and complete dominance over all aspects of decisions in the Third Reich, his obsession with these tanks led him to make tactically unsound decisions.

For example, delaying Operation Citadel by a couple of months for a few hundred Panthers, allowing Russia to build up it's defenses. It's actually very interesting.

>>31103511
Except, also the Panther had some terrible designs with the engine that led to constant logistics and maintenance.

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>>31108564
>shertzen

>>31098078
There's a case of an M8 Greyhound killing a Tiger 1 with a 37mm gun. Given it was nearly point blank to the rear, it's still pretty embarrasing. There was also a Tiger 1 destroyed by an M4A3 Sherman with the 105mm howitzer firing HE shells. Tiger 1 is seriously overrated

>>31103054
>I think the later model Panzer IV's were the best all around tanks of the war. Cheaper to build than the V's and the VI's, up gunned, up armoured, if production would have been focused on these models a significant increase in armoured units could have been achieved by the Axis. As the T-34 was to the Russians, and the Sherman was to the US, the Panzer IV was to the Germans. The G or H variants are easily formidable against everything but the M-26 and IS2, which were really only available right before the war ended.

Panther was barely more expensive than PzIV to manufacture and was way better in pretty much everything.

Most cost effective armored fighting vehicle in German inventory was StuG. Way cheaper to manufacture, but that mostly effective in defensive fighting.

The reason PzIV stayed in production as long as it did is because Germans needed more tanks all the time. Retooling production lines would have interrupted production too much.

>>31108643

I believe that was the joke anon.

>>31097671
Not at all, it was costly and difficult to produce but it had a superb combat record.

>>31108814
After two reports of Tigers downed in simple, embarrassing ways, it can be conclusively stated that the Tiger I was overrated. Many Shermans were immobilized because they tipped over, and they were just in transit, this doesn't mean the Sherman is bad. No tank is perfect, any tank can go down like a bitch.