Why did the Soviets not build any armor as good and reliable

Nice meme

Something about illiterate farmers and shit metallurgy

Also

>any panzer
>reliable

>>32748840
The Pz IV was extremely reliable.

Panzer IVs WERE reliable...at first.

As the war went on however, and they began being fitted with heavier armor (30mm up from the original design if I remember correctly) and more powerful and robust 75mm guns, their outdated and overloaded suspension systems started to become a problem. In particular, it was nose heavy, making steering difficult and causing undue wear to the front suspension units.

Also, it was underpowered. T-34 had a 500 horsepower V12 diesel. Even the least powerful Shermans had 350-400 horsepower radial engines, and the later 500 horsepower Ford V8s were some of the best tank engines fielded throughout the war. Obviously this was less of a problem in the early forties, but after the heavier armor and guns came into play, it would appear that nobody gave thought to equipping them with more powerful engines. Even the new transmissions were having a hard time dealing with all that extra weight.

On the plus side? Despite all that, the Panzer IV still beat out the T-34 in terms of mechanical reliability on long road marches. And unlike the T-34, it wasn't a deathtrap or an ergonomics nightmare. They also benefitted from higher quality optics and better radios.

At the end of the day though, the T-34 beat it in terms of armor and firepower, which I imagine was all the Soviet government really cared about. And whatever the Panzer IV did better than the T-34, the M4 Sherman did better than both of them.

>>32748936
The Panzer III is more reliable off road than the Panzer IV. They were too autistic to just have the Panzer III turret replaced, and they almost did with the Ausf. N.

>>32748936
The Panzer IV was extremely unreliable. The only reliable Panzer the Germans made was the PzIII.
In fact one of the biggest reasons that the Germans were slow to adopt the PzIV as their main combat tank was that the IV was much less reliable than the III. By the time Barbarossa happens and the Sherman is being introduced the III is just too outclassed, so the shift happened regardless. And the IV only got more and more unreliable as time went on. The chassis was designed to support a 30mm frontal plate, and by war's end it was supporting an 80mm plate. The chassis was heavily overtaxed.

Meat Shields > Metal shields

>>32748976
Including burning

>>32749140
Panzer IVs burned when penetrated at a similar rate to the M4. It's called a catastrophic kill, and it can happen to any tank. T-34 wasn't immune either. In fact, Soviet tankers who crewed both 76mm M4s and T-34-85s have said that T-34s burned up even faster than the Shermans due to the higher propellant charge in the 85mm rounds, which were stored haphazardly all around the tank's interior. Plus, when a Sherman burned, you were actually able to get out of one quickly. By the late war years, the Sherman had four large, spring loaded hatches located directly above the crew stations where they were located, plus a fairly large escape hatch in the floor for the bow gunner. T-34 had a hatch directly to the driver's front which was difficult to get out of due to the front armor slope and the cramped conditions of the driver's position. It also compromised the frontal armor. The bow gunner had no hatch aside from a tiny floor hatch. The commander's hatch was smaller than the Sherman's, and the gunner's hatch was offset from where the gunner actually sat. Plus there were fuel tanks right there in the crew compartment. Which tank was the real firetrap here?

And all of this ignores the fact that the introduction of wet stowage made the Sherman one of the LEAST fire prone tanks in the world. Catastrophic kill rates were reduced to just 15% on average.

The T-34 was yet another Soviet pogrom designed to get rid of undesirables.

>>32748703
CURVED
ARMOR