Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Not to mention that the M26 was woefully underpowered. It's engine was designed for a much lighter tank.
Were Soviet Tanks Ever Better Than Western Tanks?
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
Tank designs also undergo constant modification as how they perform in the field is a much different story than how they perform in trials. This is one thing that people still don't get even to this day. I see so many tank enthusiasts referencing tank trials as to what they claim to be a good or "best" tank, and it would be comical if it wasn't so sad. It seems to be a trend, that if you want to know what makes a tank great, you ask a movie or game buff - if you want to know what makes a tank suck, you ask the crewman. So many points and counterpoints brought up about a tank are based on certain variants, or anecdotal circumstances that have so many factors behind it that the layman figures it easier to just blame the tank instead of the fifty other reasons why.
Tanks of WW2 are skewed by the theaters they were in. The Eastern Front saw a lot more tank action than the Western Front did. It was rare for American tanks to even see a Tiger, much less engage with one. And tank engagements are rarely like they are portrayed in pop-culture. Tanks are most commonly used to breakthrough enemy fortifications, rather than fighting each other.
I am reminded of a story The Chieftain told, I believe in this video of one engagement in Europe where a group of American scout tanks of Stuarts and Greyhounds happened across a Tiger, and proceeded to lob shells at it for quite some time. The Tiger crew abandoned their tank despite it not being disabled. Though no other information can be found about this engagement (at least by me), one could imagine the Tiger crew's nerves were heavily rattled after dozens, perhaps a hundred or more shells just kept pinging their tank. Imagine you're inside that tank, wondering if the next shell will be the one to end you. This highlights another thing that people seem to forget - the most common way a tank is taken out of action is by forcing its crew to abandon it. This is also why so many tanks burn after penetration, is because the tank will sit empty long enough for the the fire to spread to something critical and set the tank ablaze. For example, most people thought the ammo or fuel were the reasons why Shermans were burned, but it turns out that hydraulic fires were the boogeyman of Sherman tanks. Ammo was still a concern, but many burned Shermans didn't suffer ammo explosions until the fire had raged for a time, and many burned Shermans were found with fuel tanks intact, further indicating that hydraulic fires were to blame. Despite this, wet stowage of ammo was introduced to lessen the chances of catastrophic destruction.
American tank design was (and to this day still is) contingent to the fact that the US has to ship the tanks across an ocean. Several heavy tank designs before and during WW2 were rejected in favor of the cheaper, lighter, and easier to ship Sherman. The problem wasn't if the Sherman was good enough to square up against German tanks, it was how many you could get to Europe and how reliable they'll be since you have to ship replacements and parts as well. Soviets could load up destroyed or damaged tanks onto rails and ship them back for repair or salvage. The US had to fix the tanks virtually right on the battlefield. So as a result, the Sherman is actually lauded as one of the easiest tanks to maintain and repair. It was noted to take only a few hours to replace a transmission.
Armor is crucial for a tank, and this is not something the Sherman design was bad at, for the time. In 1941, the Sherman was a match for anything else in the field at the time. I read a few posts here where people claim the lend-lease Shermans to the Soviets weren't used or well-received, and that is just false (someone went so far as to say they only served in Guards units as if the Guards units didn't see as much, if not more combat than other Soviet elements). Several memoirs of Soviet tankers who crewed Shermans confirm that Shermans were preferred over T-34, especially upgunned Shermans that were capable of engaging Tiger tanks at range. Key to this sentiment was crew comfort, reliability, and perhaps most important, crew survival rate. This are areas the T-34 fell behind the M4 design in. The T-34's armor on paper was better than the Shermans, but in reality, the T-34 only really beat the Sherman in profile and side armor. Frontal armor of both models were universally poor against German guns, especially the quickly-made T-34's that had either poor welding quality or were built using rivets and stamped metal. M4 production quality was superior in almost every regard.
Some more on how Soviets viewed the different variants of Shermans they received
If you ever get a chance to read WW2 tanker memoirs, I do recommend adding the one by Dmitriy Loza, who crewed a Soviet lend-lease Sherman against both German and then Japanese forces, and commanded a battalion that had a mix of Soviet and lend-lease tanks. Not many people are familiar with Soviet tanker memoirs, unfortunately, as they have not been around as long as German ones. Since it wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain did the West get a more accurate picture of the other side.
The only thing that the Sherman met that it couldn't kill was the King Tiger and the Jagdtiger. But even then, the German heavy tanks were forced to withdraw due to taking too much damage or being unable to sustain fire. This is another thing that is often glanced over when it comes to tank effectiveness, which is that even if you make the perfect, "best" tank, if you can't supply it, if you can't maintain it, and if you can't crew it with professionals, it's a roadblock. The US did fall short of tank crews during WW2, but this was mostly due to training rather than losses. US tankers were more likely to survive combat than infantry, and especially more than pilots. Yet for some reason, the Sherman gets characterized as a death trap. This is odd, considering that German and Soviet tankers were more likely to die inside of their tanks than Americans were. US M4 losses were at almost 600%, yet crew survival rates were 80%. This goes to show you what superior tank design really is, which is based on its crew. And let's not forget, that the US did load up infantry into tanks due to crew shortages, and this led to critical failures in combat that resulted in more tank losses than if the US would've just trained more crews.
Moving on from WW2, Sherman tanks performed very well against North Korean T-34's. I saw someone mention they didn't, and that is either bad information or disingenuous. While M26 did knock out more T-34's and suffer less losses, considering the ratio of numbers between them, the M4 saw more action and was more successful than the M26. Consider as well, that the M26 was deployed immediately to Korea, whereas the M4 arrived about two months later. US forces in Korea initially had no medium tank support. The best armor they could muster in June and July were M26 heavy tanks and M24 light tanks. Also add to this, that tanks were used in mixed units only (mainly infantry divisions), and no tank divisions were sent to Korea since the landscape and urban environments weren't ideal for large-scale tank deployments. Most armor vs armor engagements happened during the summer, and after the fall there were hardly any reports of it. So it is difficult to truly rate how effective the M4 vs the T-34 was, but of what little that we can see from the Korean War, the M4 was the better tank. A lot of people take crew training into account, but it should be noted that North Koreans were probably better trained than the US forces were. The US went through a huge cutback of military strength following WW2, and was proverbially caught with its pants down when the Korean War broke out.
This is not to say that Soviet tank design was poor or always inferior. Especially during the early Cold War, the West had good reason to fear tanks like the T-55, T-62, and especially T-64. Even with giants like the Leopard, Chieftain, Centurion, and M60. But if nothing else from past conflicts sinks through in how feeble it is to compare which tank is the "best," then the recent Ukraine war should show us that tanks have two comparisons - paper and reality. The tanks of the Russian Federation are ample enough to scare the socks out of infantry units, and ill-prepared armor units. However, their current state is quite poor. This has less to do with the tank, than it has to do with the boss. One has to wonder how much mismanagement and purging Putin has done to Russia's military. The Russian forces of today are much closer to those of post-USSR Chechen war one than it is to the 2008 Georgian war one.
Having said all that, if we are to rank a tank, we really should look at three basics before anything else, especially minor details like "this sight is 1.24% more effective than this" or "this tank has 8.5767% more power in five inches of mud compared to this tank" or "this tank can go 5 meters deeper in water than this tank." Crew survival rate and comfort (comfort makes survival rate higher), maintenance reliability and ease, and logistics. Your favorite tank can go 5000 miles further than any other tank, but if your army can't supply it or crew it, it is nothing more than scrap metal. Your favorite tank's gun can penetrate 500mm more at 500m more than any other, but if the crew can only shoot ten shots of that modern shell before having to switch to Soviet-era munitions due to supply shortages, then it's a moot point. Russian T-90's in Syria were reported to have to turn their Shtora jammers off unless they knew they were being targeted by ATGM, because those "red eye" jammers would have power and reliability issues the longer they were left on. Stuff like this gets overlooked when comparing tank stats on paper. This isn't unique to Russian/Soviet tanks. I could write just as long of a post talking about US tankers complaints about various models.
The key rule that most tankers will tell you, is that the first to see is often the first to fire and thus the first to win.
Tanks of WW2 are skewed by the theaters they were in. The Eastern Front saw a lot more tank action than the Western Front did. It was rare for American tanks to even see a Tiger, much less engage with one. And tank engagements are rarely like they are portrayed in pop-culture. Tanks are most commonly used to breakthrough enemy fortifications, rather than fighting each other.
I am reminded of a story The Chieftain told, I believe in this video of one engagement in Europe where a group of American scout tanks of Stuarts and Greyhounds happened across a Tiger, and proceeded to lob shells at it for quite some time. The Tiger crew abandoned their tank despite it not being disabled. Though no other information can be found about this engagement (at least by me), one could imagine the Tiger crew's nerves were heavily rattled after dozens, perhaps a hundred or more shells just kept pinging their tank. Imagine you're inside that tank, wondering if the next shell will be the one to end you. This highlights another thing that people seem to forget - the most common way a tank is taken out of action is by forcing its crew to abandon it. This is also why so many tanks burn after penetration, is because the tank will sit empty long enough for the the fire to spread to something critical and set the tank ablaze. For example, most people thought the ammo or fuel were the reasons why Shermans were burned, but it turns out that hydraulic fires were the boogeyman of Sherman tanks. Ammo was still a concern, but many burned Shermans didn't suffer ammo explosions until the fire had raged for a time, and many burned Shermans were found with fuel tanks intact, further indicating that hydraulic fires were to blame. Despite this, wet stowage of ammo was introduced to lessen the chances of catastrophic destruction.
American tank design was (and to this day still is) contingent to the fact that the US has to ship the tanks across an ocean. Several heavy tank designs before and during WW2 were rejected in favor of the cheaper, lighter, and easier to ship Sherman. The problem wasn't if the Sherman was good enough to square up against German tanks, it was how many you could get to Europe and how reliable they'll be since you have to ship replacements and parts as well. Soviets could load up destroyed or damaged tanks onto rails and ship them back for repair or salvage. The US had to fix the tanks virtually right on the battlefield. So as a result, the Sherman is actually lauded as one of the easiest tanks to maintain and repair. It was noted to take only a few hours to replace a transmission.
Armor is crucial for a tank, and this is not something the Sherman design was bad at, for the time. In 1941, the Sherman was a match for anything else in the field at the time. I read a few posts here where people claim the lend-lease Shermans to the Soviets weren't used or well-received, and that is just false (someone went so far as to say they only served in Guards units as if the Guards units didn't see as much, if not more combat than other Soviet elements). Several memoirs of Soviet tankers who crewed Shermans confirm that Shermans were preferred over T-34, especially upgunned Shermans that were capable of engaging Tiger tanks at range. Key to this sentiment was crew comfort, reliability, and perhaps most important, crew survival rate. This are areas the T-34 fell behind the M4 design in. The T-34's armor on paper was better than the Shermans, but in reality, the T-34 only really beat the Sherman in profile and side armor. Frontal armor of both models were universally poor against German guns, especially the quickly-made T-34's that had either poor welding quality or were built using rivets and stamped metal. M4 production quality was superior in almost every regard.
Some more on how Soviets viewed the different variants of Shermans they received
If you ever get a chance to read WW2 tanker memoirs, I do recommend adding the one by Dmitriy Loza, who crewed a Soviet lend-lease Sherman against both German and then Japanese forces, and commanded a battalion that had a mix of Soviet and lend-lease tanks. Not many people are familiar with Soviet tanker memoirs, unfortunately, as they have not been around as long as German ones. Since it wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain did the West get a more accurate picture of the other side.
The only thing that the Sherman met that it couldn't kill was the King Tiger and the Jagdtiger. But even then, the German heavy tanks were forced to withdraw due to taking too much damage or being unable to sustain fire. This is another thing that is often glanced over when it comes to tank effectiveness, which is that even if you make the perfect, "best" tank, if you can't supply it, if you can't maintain it, and if you can't crew it with professionals, it's a roadblock. The US did fall short of tank crews during WW2, but this was mostly due to training rather than losses. US tankers were more likely to survive combat than infantry, and especially more than pilots. Yet for some reason, the Sherman gets characterized as a death trap. This is odd, considering that German and Soviet tankers were more likely to die inside of their tanks than Americans were. US M4 losses were at almost 600%, yet crew survival rates were 80%. This goes to show you what superior tank design really is, which is based on its crew. And let's not forget, that the US did load up infantry into tanks due to crew shortages, and this led to critical failures in combat that resulted in more tank losses than if the US would've just trained more crews.
Moving on from WW2, Sherman tanks performed very well against North Korean T-34's. I saw someone mention they didn't, and that is either bad information or disingenuous. While M26 did knock out more T-34's and suffer less losses, considering the ratio of numbers between them, the M4 saw more action and was more successful than the M26. Consider as well, that the M26 was deployed immediately to Korea, whereas the M4 arrived about two months later. US forces in Korea initially had no medium tank support. The best armor they could muster in June and July were M26 heavy tanks and M24 light tanks. Also add to this, that tanks were used in mixed units only (mainly infantry divisions), and no tank divisions were sent to Korea since the landscape and urban environments weren't ideal for large-scale tank deployments. Most armor vs armor engagements happened during the summer, and after the fall there were hardly any reports of it. So it is difficult to truly rate how effective the M4 vs the T-34 was, but of what little that we can see from the Korean War, the M4 was the better tank. A lot of people take crew training into account, but it should be noted that North Koreans were probably better trained than the US forces were. The US went through a huge cutback of military strength following WW2, and was proverbially caught with its pants down when the Korean War broke out.
This is not to say that Soviet tank design was poor or always inferior. Especially during the early Cold War, the West had good reason to fear tanks like the T-55, T-62, and especially T-64. Even with giants like the Leopard, Chieftain, Centurion, and M60. But if nothing else from past conflicts sinks through in how feeble it is to compare which tank is the "best," then the recent Ukraine war should show us that tanks have two comparisons - paper and reality. The tanks of the Russian Federation are ample enough to scare the socks out of infantry units, and ill-prepared armor units. However, their current state is quite poor. This has less to do with the tank, than it has to do with the boss. One has to wonder how much mismanagement and purging Putin has done to Russia's military. The Russian forces of today are much closer to those of post-USSR Chechen war one than it is to the 2008 Georgian war one.
Having said all that, if we are to rank a tank, we really should look at three basics before anything else, especially minor details like "this sight is 1.24% more effective than this" or "this tank has 8.5767% more power in five inches of mud compared to this tank" or "this tank can go 5 meters deeper in water than this tank." Crew survival rate and comfort (comfort makes survival rate higher), maintenance reliability and ease, and logistics. Your favorite tank can go 5000 miles further than any other tank, but if your army can't supply it or crew it, it is nothing more than scrap metal. Your favorite tank's gun can penetrate 500mm more at 500m more than any other, but if the crew can only shoot ten shots of that modern shell before having to switch to Soviet-era munitions due to supply shortages, then it's a moot point. Russian T-90's in Syria were reported to have to turn their Shtora jammers off unless they knew they were being targeted by ATGM, because those "red eye" jammers would have power and reliability issues the longer they were left on. Stuff like this gets overlooked when comparing tank stats on paper. This isn't unique to Russian/Soviet tanks. I could write just as long of a post talking about US tankers complaints about various models.
The key rule that most tankers will tell you, is that the first to see is often the first to fire and thus the first to win.
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Zardnaar
Deity
No the Germans shouldn't have build more tanks. They didn't have the oil to fuel them.
Tiger paid for itself things like the King Tiger did not. Broadly speaking the Americans, Japanese, Soviets and Germans made the right decisions for what they needed for conditions they had.
Britain and Italy got it wrong.
Zardnaar
Deity
Soviet memoirs are interesting. Seems the crews liked the Sherman but the other western tanks not so much.
One was written by a tanker that survived a Sherman being knocked out. He said in a T-34 he would be dead.
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One Guards unit came out of the war with 0% of their Churchill tanks surviving. The Eastern Front was brutal.
Zardnaar
Deity
I think the Churchill was called the tank of 5 dead comrades.
Tigers used the fuel of two Panzer IVs or two Panthers, while being less reliable. Especially when defending, tanks are mostly moved via coal not gasoline.
Zardnaar
Deity
Tigers also got around a 10-1 kill ratio. 1 tiger uses less crew than 2 panzers as well which saves fuel training them. Germans were correct in quality over quantity in concept. Execution was off though (King tiger, Jagdtiger etc).
Problem for the Germans was retooling time they couldn't really switch a tiger line to PzIV or back again that fast.
Hence why they mounted big guns on Czech chasis until end of the war.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
T34 was good in its own ways, simplistic and crude.
Russians cut a lot of stuff to keep the production numbers high, as well as holding back important improvements and fixes.The postwar archives dont paint such a positive picture
Russians cut a lot of stuff to keep the production numbers high, as well as holding back important improvements and fixes.The postwar archives dont paint such a positive picture
Didn't the T-34 pretty much ruin the german tanks? At least for that time period, they were better.
And even I, from my passing familiarity with ww2 tanks, already know that most of the german heavy tanks ended up being used as glorified turrets, immobile for indefinite periods of time.
And even I, from my passing familiarity with ww2 tanks, already know that most of the german heavy tanks ended up being used as glorified turrets, immobile for indefinite periods of time.
Lexicus
Deity
The Russians have upwards of 10,000 (obviously a lot of those are probably in warehouses somewhere, not deployed) according to the estimates I've seen. I've actually seen higher estimates for the numbers of Russian tank losses, but I think that number (600-800) likely included all AFVs, not only tanks (not that most media understands that not all AFVs are tanks).
They need infantry support which by all accounts is not really there - the Russian infantry we've seen so far are, in the main, unmotivated and not well-trained. I'm not sure this shows the tank being obsolete so much as it hammers home the need to support your armor with competent, motivated infantry.
GinandTonic
Saphire w/ Schweps + Lime
- Joined
- May 25, 2005
- Messages
- 8,898
When I wrote that the number of confirmed photographed and geotagged MBT losses were IIRC 180 something. Another three hundred or so armoured bits and pieces. A thousand including trucks and jeeps.
It does seem that the key failure is in terms of doctrine rather then materiel.
If the people cried "lions led by donkeys" in wwI this, at the most generous assessment, is Lamborghinis driven by donkeys.
Zardnaar
Deity
They've got around 2000-2500 T-72 in vaguely combat ready condition the rest are in warehouses.
Around 2/3rds of them are modernized T-72's the rest are T-72B which are an 1985 model. Only a relative few hundred are the latest version.
Then there's a few hundred T80's and a few T-90's.
That's total not deployed in theatre.
The other 7000+ probably not in much shape to deploy or are death traps (older models)
Zardnaar
Deity
Ruined German infantry. Early T-34's kinda sucked. On paper they were great but they were essentially blind. Very poor visability, sights, no radios, crappy transmission.
German light tanks often flanked them (couldn't see them) and it wasn't impervious to the 37mm from the front.
T-34/85 was kinda decent by Soviet standards but they lost a huge amount of them.
It's main ability was rapid production.
Over rated though.
Sarin
Deity
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- Aug 18, 2013
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That's insulting to both Lamborghini and donkeys.
r16
not deity
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2008
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- 12,147
there is nothing wrong with tanks , infantry and doctrine . They don't have electronics that go with the fancy TV and comfy sofa . So , they scout . Which really means you will be driving into places to get people shot at you . Those nasty tales of 88s torching Shermans ? Happened before America had satellites and phones in the pockets of everyone . Actually some German officer interrogated by Americans for the post-war lessons learned project said if Germans had the density of anti-tank guns in the West at the same scale of they had in the East , no American attack would ever succeed . And yes , it is the unhuman treatment of the troops in Russia that has allowed to come this far . And had it been 150 to 200 thousand Americans with the same setup , there would have been 4 or 5 tactical nuclear explosions already . So , when drawing fire you pull back , if you are not dead . If Ukranians are not suffering equally bad , how come Russians are defeated everyday at a new location which is somehow to the West of the previous location ?
edit: This was probably my #8400 post . As per the tradition , am still alive , who would have guessed ?
edit: This was probably my #8400 post . As per the tradition , am still alive , who would have guessed ?
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danjuno
Cole Phelps, Badge 1247
I remember reading somewhere that the T-34 was a fairly modern design for 1941, but the emergency of war meant that most wartime T-34s were built on the cheap, resulting in a lot of issues. Building a simple crude design from scratch is one thing, but cutting corners on an existing model that wasn't designed with that in mind can cause issues.
Like Nanuk said, how something looks on paper is a whole different ballgame from making deploying and supplying it.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
The factory cut corners in order to meet production qoutas. Some of it made sense like the prototype had rubber rim wheels, given the rubber shortage these were cut from the production model
But they cut important things like steel hardening process for internal parts like the final drive, removed sealent from hatchs which meant water got inside, insufficent welding might be a skill issue, it was not a joke when they considered T-34s almost like a one use weapon, good for one battle due to the unreliability at the manufactoring stage
Issues like the high death rate of Russian crews were identified, to the ammunition storage in the turret ring and the engineers worked out solutions with ammo racks. But these improvement were held back by stalin to keep production numbers high
Even better couplas for viewing were ignored only highly decorated tank aces were premitted to voice these sortcomining to higher command and ask for fixes.
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