Panzerkampfwagen IV was the best tank of WWII

I'd say it was a pretty mediocre medium tank. The StuGs were very cost-effective and the Panther was besides reliability a lot better, it didn't even cost that much more to produce.

Stug was not a tank you moron.

Autism

Just because it isn't labeled a tank in English doesn't mean it's not intended like a tank, built like a tank, and used like a tank.

>it's not intended like a tank, built like a tank, and used like a tank.
And stug wasn't intended like a tank, built like a tank, and used like a tank.

Superficially resembling a tank does not make it a tank

>A regular tank is an AFV that provides infantry supporty, destroys armored targets and is used for offensive operations.
>The StuGs were AFVs that provided infantry support, destroyed armored targets, and were used for offensive operations.
So just because it didn't have a turret it wasn't a tank. I mean you might be right in theory, since it isn't classified as a tank, but it was used almost exactly like any medium tank and became the most numerous AFV of the German Army during the conflict.

>but it was used almost exactly like any medium tank
Stug III was not used like a medium tank at all. It was used like an assault gun and mobile AT gun carriage.

It was a lightly armoured artillery gun that could move itself

Germans didn't call the Stug AFV, aka Panzerkampfwagen, aka, Panzer. Does that tell you something? It should.

>lightly armoured
Its armor is comparable to that of a Sherman.

>Its armor is comparable to that of a Sherman.
what the fuck am I reading

I suppose a horse drawn cannon is an early tank as well?

The truth, look up the armor layout of the F and G models, which would be somewhat contemporary to the Sherman.

Stug armour was like 3 inches at the absolute heaviest

See the pic I posted, it was de facto the standard tank of the Wehrmacht, along with the Panzer IV and later the Panther.
It was armored more heavily than the Panzer III...
You didn't read what I posted, did you?
No, because it's not armored completely, not built on a fucking tank chassis, not operated by tank drivers, and not self-propelled...

80mm in the G model, while Sherman had 63mm.

Sherman's one was sloped
Stug was just a flat plate on front

Sloped. Sherman's armor at LOS was close to 100mm. That's Tiger I equivalent.

>You didn't read what I posted, did you?
I read it. It was uneducated garbage.

>See the pic I posted,
Do you think your pic shows a bunch of Stugs charging enemy tanks?

>It was armored more heavily than the Panzer III
So was the M8 Greyhound. I guess that makes it a tank.

Against the German long 75mm that would come out as around 100mm of effective armor, which can be penetrated by a StuG from more than 1000m out.
That's just about the same as the range a 76mm Sherman could penetrate a StuG. Which means the armor of the two is functionally very similar. And that's not taking into account that the Sherman was high as fuck and the StuG easy to conceal.

Fucking retards, do your research before you post autistic garbage.

None of the dumbshit you posted has anything to do with Stug III being a tank or not.

Was it used as a tank replacement and commissioned to tank divisions?

>Was it used as a tank replacement
No, and neither was the Stug III.

>commissioned to tank divisions?
Yes.

>commissioned to tank divisions?
Oh this is great. I bet you think a tank division is 100% made up of tanks.

Obviously the the Panther is. It costs roughly the same as a Pz4, better armoured and armed than a Tiger and most of it's reliability problems were solved with A model.

"hurr durr reliability XDD le panther burns" is the last resort of an Amerifat when confronted with superior tanks.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgeschütz
>By a thicker armouring and an optimization of the form (pothole), the bombardment sensitivity was reduced. In addition to their use in infantry division, the so-revised assault guns were now also allocated to the Panzerdivisionen - as a replacement for classic combat tanks.

It also lost to shermans all the fucking time.

You are translating "Ersatz" as "replacement"? That's kind of dishonest, isn't it? Ersatz implies that it can't truly replace what it is forced to replace by necessity.

You can't really determine which tank is better strictly by looking at the K/D ratios. American tank crews were way better than German tankers, especially after 1943. They also had air superiority, infantry support, mortar support and every possible advantage in their side.

Otto Carious states a terrific event in his book "Tigers in the Mud". A Jadgtiger crew of 6, died without even firing a single shell after getting spotted by P-47s, the crew was so unexperienced that they tried to run away from Americans by turning the tank around, it didn't end well obviously, they all died. They didn't know that their front was invincible to any AT gun.

Crew is a very big factor in these statistics.

>You can't really determine which tank is better strictly by looking at the K/D ratios.
But you can tell things like engagement type and who fired first. To have the Shermans fire first over 50% of the time when the Pantehrs are defending implies horrendous problems actually seeing their adversaries.

>American tank crews were way better than German tankers, especially after 1943.
[citation needed]

> They also had air superiority, infantry support, mortar support and every possible advantage in their side.
No, they didn't. For instance, since most tank combat is ambush based, and the biggest killers of tanks are mines and anti-tank guns, the defenders have considerable addvantage given that those things are hard to use when you're offensively.

Otto Carius was talking about 1945, after pretty much everything had been destroyed. And an anecdote does not prove that there were front wide qualitative differences in crew ability.

I just used Google Translate. My point wasn't that it WAS a tank, but that it was used as such and that it didn't really make much of a difference (except maybe close range fighting in cities or somewhere were a turret is very advantageous).

Not him, but Stugs were NOT used as tanks. They were used as mobile anti-tank guns in ambush positions, and occasionally for assaults on fixed positions. They were not used in an exploitation role when an enemy line was breached, which was what German tank doctrine posited their use was for.

So when the Germans startet producing more StuGs and replacing their lost tanks with them they didn't have something to fill the tank role?

Iirc they built ~15k StuG III but only ~8k Panzer IV and ~6k Panthers

their offensive days were long gone and they were on the defensive in all fronts
that's why they used so many AT tanks like Stug, Jagdpanzer, etc.

I guess when Germans started putting old men, cripples, and children in their army, they suddenly became just as good as veteran young adult soldiers.

They weren't fulfilling the tank role. They were fulfilling the anti-tank gun role with something that was more mobile and less vulnerable to indirect explosive fire.

That's why when they were on the offensive (1939-1942, roughly) they were building almost no assault guns, and when they were thrown on the defensive, they suddenly start turning them out.

German tanks are garbage
>early in the war completely outclassed by the French and Soviets 1 on 1 so they're only saving grace was to use them in coordinated attacks (helped that the Allies and Soviets were incompetent as fuck when it came to mobile warfare)
>late in the war completely overengineered garbage that broke down more often on their own rather to enemy fire
i want wehraboo "german tanks were best" meme to end

It's not as simple as you depict it, though:
>>early in the war completely outclassed by the French and Soviets 1 on 1
that's exactly how Wehraboos argue for the superiority of late war German tanks: good armor and gun isn't all that makes a tank, the French tanks were inferior because they had a one man turret (Somua S35) or because they were designed as mobile bunkers (Char B1) just like the Tiger II later. The Soviet tanks like the early T-34 and KV-1/2 were alright for early war standards, with strong armor and gun, but they were cramped, lacked radio equipment and were built with poor quality control.

The reason why mostly the Panzer III was successful until ~1942 was because it had all the qualities the Sherman perfected later: sufficient armor and gun, good reliability, and very good crew layout (3 man turret, radio, cupola).

>completely overengineered garbage that broke down more often on their own rather to enemy fire
true for early versions of the Panther especially, but that was due to it being rushed into service prematurely. German tanks generally weren't as reliable as say the Sherman, but Soviet tanks were at least equally unreliable due to bad production standards. Also breakdowns on German tanks were worse for the troop unit because it was very often not possible to recover the vehicle in time (due to the Wehrmacht being on the defensive since 1943).
It's true though that German tanks were generally harder to repair than say a T-34 or M4.

Stugs were used and built a lot even during the early years of war,you mean Marder tank destroyers which were basically AT guns on a hotchkiss chassis.

80% of Stug III were the G model.

I simply pointed out that Sherman's armor was thicker than that of StuG or Panzer IV.
Furthermore it was thick on entire frontal profile, meanwhile Panzer IV had 50mm turret armor until the end, and both StuG and Panzer IV didn't have slopes, which means there was no chance of shell just bouncing off.
And no, StuG isn't a tank you dumb moron. It wasn't designed as a tank or employed as a tank.
Only thing you are correct about is low profile.

There were 192 built in 1940, 540 built in 1941, and 788 built in 1942. In those three years, the Germans built 5,143 real Pz 3s.

>you mean Marder tank destroyers which were basically AT guns on a hotchkiss chassis.
No, I mean Stugs. They were never used to break through or to exploit. They were used again and again in ambush roles.

it isn't their primary use that determines their armored title, but HOW they were used.

A comparable example is the hellcat. for all intents and purposes, it is a tank, but you'll still hear it frequently called an SPG or GMC, and primarily a tank destroyer, not tank.

the casemate vehicles Germany made were used similarly to the hellcat, as defensive anti-armor vehicles. or that was at least the intent of their design, thus Germany called them SPGs, not tanks.

however the autismo in this thread is tangible. call them tanks, no one will fault you as long as you understand they're technically defined as SPGs first.

>I simply pointed out that Sherman's armor was thicker than that of StuG or Panzer IV.
I said that their armor was comparable, which it absolutely is, in response to you claiming that it was "lightly armored". It was armored about as well as an American medium tank, which is not "light". You talk as if a StuG was like a Nashorn (actual anti tank guns strapped to some chassis with armor that was only protective against small arms fire). It was not.

I already explained you why it's not comparable. 50mm versus 100mm is a huge difference. Sloped versus flat is a huge difference. Paper-thin side armor is a huge difference.
Sherman was the best tank of WW2, it's only problem was mediocre gun, but that gun had no problems fighting StuGs and Pz IVs. Later up-gunned versions corrected that.

Why wasn´t that the T34?

honest question

While there are a lot of different criteria for how you determine the "best tank", it's hard to posit the T-34 was the best. It's only real virtue was that it reuqired low amounts of resources and man-hours in production to make a tank with decent armor and guns, but it had a lot of soft problems (visibility, breakdowns), and enormously poor Soviet armored doctrine, especially early in the war, robbed it of effectiveness even when the tanks themselves were good. Add in a whole host of manufacturing issues related to literally packing up entire factories and railing them to Siberia to re-do the work with untrained laborers, and you get a tank that is at best, the good enough tank.

StuGs (Assault guns) were quite decisively used for breakthrough. In Infantry divisions instead of Tank ones, but that was still literally their job description.

In infantry divisions, they were literally classified as artillery and usually thrown into the artillery regiment, where they provided fire support, which is distinct from breaking through (charging forward through enemy lines). I am unaware of instances where they did this, as opposed to simply firing upon enemy positions.

STORM artillery. Big difference. StuGs were not supposed to fire indirectly like tank artillery and instead accompanied the infantry to support it with fortified position, using direct fire. I understand that this is not the type of strategic/operational breakthrough a MBT (like later versions of the PzKpfw. IV) was supposed to achieve, but rather a tactical one. The one thing you have to remember is that breakthroughs on a large scale aren't what defines a tank, or else it would have been invented in the interbellum and been next to absent in the French army.

*support it against

>STORM artillery. Big difference.
No, it's not a difference. Anti-tank guns that were towed into place were also considerd artillery and fired directly. I guess this is a tank then.

> The one thing you have to remember is that breakthroughs on a large scale aren't what defines a tank, or else it would have been invented in the interbellum and been next to absent in the French army.
It's what defines a German tank, since that is what German tank doctrine posited. It was the British and French who had the split between cruiser and infantry tanks. Since we are after all, talking about German vehicles and not French or British ones, stop evading.

>Anti-tank guns that were towed into place were also considerd artillery and fired directly. I guess this is a tank then.

Ugh, really?

>It's what defines a German tank, since that is what German tank doctrine posited.

Not any German tank, but a Kampfpanzer (MBT).
Also some wikipedia quotes:
"When more money became available the Sturmgeschütz III was taken into use by the artillery, in its original role of an infantry close support vehicle—the counterpart of the Allied Infantry tanks."
Source: Infantry Tank

"A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat, with heavy firepower, strong armour, and tracks providing good battlefield maneuverability."
Source: Tank

So, I think I'm done now, have a good day.

>wiki
How about something that's actually pertinent? Your definitions are shit. The M-10, M-18, and M-36 are all tanks, not tank destroyers. What does the U.S. army know? The m3 GMC, the M7, the M12? They're all tanks too, not self-propelled artillery! The M-16 self propelled anti air gun? TANK! After all, they all have armor, are designed for front line combat, heavy firepower, and tracks.

Have something actually relevant. mudandblood.net/downloads/number08.pdf Note how it recommends that tanks attack from a different direction than the infantry, something you don't see with Stugs because they can't cover their own flanks.(Page 57)
ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/index.html

Here is a handbook on German military apparati, and here ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/HB-7.html you can find the system of weapons. It is contemporary to WW2. It lists the stugs as close support and assault guns, not tanks.

But clearly, wiki is right!

What museum?

>The M-10, M-18, and M-36 are all tanks, not tank destroyers
But according to the US Army doctrine these tanks are and were used as TDs

>has a shot trap that points the round into it's fucking top armour
lol

The danger from Soviet anti-tank rifles wasn’t thru penetration, it was due to spalling; flakes of metal breaking off _inside_ the hull and wounding or killing the crew.

Thus the Germans started putting 5mm mild steel skirts around the turret and hull side, which later in the war served to defeat HEAT (shaped charge) rounds, which is why this late war Panzer IV has wire mesh skirts;

Please cite a contemporary document from the U.S. calling those vehicles tanks.

>>but it was used almost exactly like any medium tank
>Stug III was not used like a medium tank at all.

Yes it was, it was the German army's "infantry tank" even if it didn't have a turret like a conventional tank.

Calling Stugs "tanks" in the broad sense is perfectly acceptable.

Except the German army rejected the doctrine of infantry tanks altogether. That's why you don't see tanks on the rosters in infantry divisions.

>Not him, but Stugs were NOT used as tanks.
>They were used as mobile anti-tank guns in ambush positions, and for assaults on fixed positions.
>occasionally

80% of the rounds fired by Stugs in WWII were HE in support of infantry attacks.

Sure, the Germans upgraded the Stug's gun from the 75mm L/24 to the 75mm L/48 for anti-tank work but the vehicle was still primarily an infantry support tank.

Do you simply not realize how none of what you said is relevant to the point I made in that post?

They were put in artillery regiments. They were under the command of artillery officers. They were used for roles that Germany assigned to artillery. They were not exploitation vehicles, which is what the tanks were doctrinally supposed to do.

That is why they are self-propelled artillery pieces, not tanks. That they fired predominantly HE shells in infantry support roles doesn't even fucking matter.

Saumur I think.

>doesn't break down
user....

What about documents from the war?

>Except the German army rejected the doctrine of infantry tanks altogether.

Except they didn't.

>That's why you don't see tanks on the rosters in infantry divisions.

Indeed, the Germans instead called them "sturmgeschütz" (assault guns) but they were still "infantry tanks" because that's how they were used.

Those would be contemporary to their usage, yes. Do you have any?

>Except they didn't.
Please show me some WW2 era documentation of the Germans advocating the use of infantry tanks.

>Indeed, the Germans instead called them "sturmgeschütz" (assault guns) but they were still "infantry tanks" because that's how they were used.
The. Germans. Didn't. Use. British. Tank. Doctrine.

I have no idea why you are having so much trouble with this simple concept. Were your mother and father brother and sister?

Muh documents

You sound like a cunt desu lad

> They were not exploitation vehicles, which is what the tanks were doctrinally supposed to do.

Neither was the British Churchill but it’s still a tank though.

> That is why they are self-propelled artillery pieces, not tanks.

If you’re going to get all autistic about naming conventions then no, Stugs were not self-propelled artillery. Those vehicles had much lighter armor and were open topped.

> That they fired predominantly HE shells in infantry support roles doesn't even fucking matter.

Except that was the Stug’s fundamental purpose.

>>Indeed, the Germans instead called them "sturmgeschütz" (assault guns) but they were still "infantry tanks" because that's how they were used.
>The. Germans. Didn't. Use. British. Tank. Doctrine.

There is nothing British or German about it, it's simply using armored vehicles equipped with guns to support infantry.

Everybody did it, only the designs were different.

>Please show me some WW2 era documentation of the Germans advocating the use of infantry tanks
On paper they didnt, in reality they did.
For example in the winter of 1942, elements of the blue division were asked to take a village with the help of a german platoon and a Panzer IV, this happened in other places as well.

>The. Germans. Didn't. Use. British. Tank. Doctrine.

I have no idea why you are having so much trouble with this simple concept. Were your mother and father brother and sister?

Despite this bullshit I will tell you that the STUG III are not tanks but infantry support guns
T. Von Manstein idea

>Neither was the British Churchill but it’s still a tank though.
You are a fucking idiot. Germany and the UK, in case you didn't notice, are two different countries. They developed two different tank doctrines. That the British used tanks for a role that the Germans used artillery in means absolutely fucking nothing. If you want to talk about doctrinal role USE FUCKING GERMAN DOCTRINE, NOT BRITISH DOCTRINE.

Hey, did you know the Bismarck and Tirpitz were cruisers? Nevermind that they were 50,000 tons each, had 16 inch guns, a shit load of armor; they were used for commerce raiding and threatening of commerce raiding, British doctrine posited that that was a cruiser's job, so THEY ARE CRUISERS AND IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE YOU'RE WRONG!

Did you know that a horse is a tank? Tucashevksyian deep battle doctrine held that the role of cavalry was to exploit holes made by other elements and chew up rear echelon areas. German tank doctrine said that was a tank's job, SO HORSES ARE TANKS!

I realize the above examples are ridiculous, but it is literally the exact same logic you're using. Use the doctrines of the country that built and employed them, or you're going to arrive at nonsense.

>If you’re going to get all autistic about naming conventions then no, Stugs were not self-propelled artillery.
Yes they are. They are artillery pieces, since they were in artillery regiments, and they move themselves, since the gun is attached to a vehicle. Lack of armor is not a requirement for self-propelled artillery. What's next? The SiG1B isn't self propelled artillery? The Hummel? The Wespe?

>Except that was the Stug’s fundamental purpose.
Which, according to German doctrine, is artillery's function, hence why the Stug is a piece of artillery, not a fucking tank.

>the French tanks were inferior
Only retards that never saw the German armored composition at the invasion of France could claim this. There were only 350 Panzer III's availabe as opposed to over 500 Panzer I's and 900 Panzer II's, the former being equipped with machine guns and the latter with a 20mm auto-cannon, along with another +300 Czech tanks.

The Panzer III was also not a very successful tank, despite your claims, it was outdated by 1941 due to it having such a narrow turret ring it was unable to house a large enough turret to fit the 75mm high velocity guns and the 50mm was not adequate against the T-34's and KV's. They stopped producing them by 1943 and turned the Panzer IV into their main-stay tank while the Panzer III was turned into an infantry support tank equipped with the low velocity 75mm gun while its chassis was also used for the Stug III assault guns.

>There is nothing British or German about it, it's simply using armored vehicles equipped with guns to support infantry.
No, it's a part and parcel of your doctrine. The Germans posited tanks were for one purpose. The British posited specialized tanks for different purposes. Applying doctrine willy-nilly like that is retarded, because you get all sorts of idiotic conclusions: The Lynx is an infantry tank! The BT-7 is too. The Ju-88 is a strategic bomber, and the P-47 is a ground attack craft, and there's probably loads more nonsense you can arrive at by picking and choosing battlefield roles to suit your purposes.

>For example in the winter of 1942, elements of the blue division were asked to take a village with the help of a german platoon and a Panzer IV, this happened in other places as well.
And hey, sometimes motorized infantry would exploit gaps in lines and break through the rear, happens in Poland, France, and Barbarossa. I guess an opel truck is a tank now! Not on paper, of course, but in practice it is.

French tanks are dramatically inferior. The little twats had paper thin armor with crews of two. Terrrible coordination with infantry led to shitty performance.

That is a sexy panther.

>The little twats had paper thin armor
lol, most of the German tanks deployed couldn't penetrate it
>Terrrible coordination with air support led to shitty performance
FTFY

...

>And hey, sometimes motorized infantry would exploit gaps in lines and break through the rear, happens in Poland, France, and Barbarossa. I guess an opel truck is a tank now! Not on paper, of course, but in practice it is.
Is that your counter argument? Doesnt even makes sense, heck you didnt even adressed the point

Read it twice, dumbass
>infantry support
Blind retard

> > Neither was the British Churchill but it’s still a tank though.
> Germany and the UK, in case you didn't notice, are two different countries.
> They developed two different tank doctrines.

No, the British, Germans, Soviets and Americans simply used differently designed armored vehicles.

Infantry support:
British = Churchill
Germans = Stug
Soviets = SU-76
Americans = Sherman

Armored divisions
British = Crusader
Germans = Panzer III
Soviets = T-34
Americans = Sherman

>one man turrets
That alone makes them inferior to anything, you can be frontally impenetrable to all the panzerIIs you wish, but it means shit all when the commander has to juggle five different jobs

Not him, but are you actually fucking stupid?

>The British posited specialized tanks for different purposes.

And a Stug is a specialized tank.

That it doesn't have a turret is irrelevant, unless you want to get into splitting hairs over what constitutes tanks vs. assault guns vs. self-propelled guns vs tank destroyers, etc.

If one is having a general conversation about armored warfare, the term generic "tank" is perfectly acceptable.

>"infantry tank"
Uh no, Stugs were used like direct fire artillery that happened to have more operational mobility. Only thing that set Stugs apart from Pak 40 was that you could move it faster. You wouldn't have stormed a fortress leading with Pak 40 any more than you would've with Stugs.

>And a Stug is a specialized tank.
And the Bismarck is a swimming tank.
And the Bf 109 is a flying tank.
And the 8,8cm Flak is a shooty shooty tank.
And the Model 39 Einhandgranate is a explody-throwy tank.
Your logic is retarded and so are you.

So what exactly constitutes a tank in your mind?