Please, Veeky Forums, tell me everything you know about ww2 tanks. The different types, roles, crew positions...

please, Veeky Forums, tell me everything you know about ww2 tanks. The different types, roles, crew positions, significant events, anything. I'm fascinated by them but don't know where to start learning

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just play World of Tanks

Well give us more than that to start with. What exactly do you want to know? Doctrine? Designs? History? Important operations?

>Implying he doesn't want to start another Are StuGs really tanks baitfests, just like the last 3 times this was essentially copypastaed out.

I'd really like to know more about different types and designs first, especially the most prominent ones of each country

Please user, I just wanna know more about tanks. Would /k/ have been better?

Or fucking don't play that trash.

OP, going to /k/ would be better for this, but I'll give it a shot. There were a few main different kind of tanks during WW2.

Light, medium, and heavy. There were a few other types of vehicles closely related, namely tank destroyers, self-propelled guns, armored cars and assault guns. They're similar but the role differs. which is what matters. I'll cover the other vehicles later, for now I'll stick to the proper tanks.

Light tanks are small and lightweight, usually less than 20-30 tons or less. Light tanks are generally lightly armed and armored, but are generally quite mobile. Examples are the M32 Chaffee, the BT-7, and Panzerkampfwagon 2.

Medium tanks are the middle ground of the tank families of WWII. They tend to have a good balance of armor, firepower and mobility. Many of the classic tanks fall into the medium category. Bigger and more powerful than light tanks, but smaller and more nimble than heavy tanks. Think tanks like the M4 Sherman, T-34, and Panzer Ivs and Panther tanks.

Heavy tanks are the big boys of the tank world. They often have the thickest armor and biggest guns around, but tend to be slow and have other issues. The ever famous Tiger and Tiger II, the KV and IS series, and the US Sherman Jumbo.

Most tanks have a crew of between 3 to 5. Some have as many as 11 crewmen, others as few as 2. This depend on the vehicle; light tanks tend to have smaller crews than heavy and medium tanks.

There are five basic crew roles: Commander, Gunner, Loader, Radio-Operator / Bow Gunner, and Driver.

Some roles are omitted or combined in certain vehicles. Like in the T-34 and most Soviet light tanks, the Commander also acts as Gunner, and in some such as the T-70, loader as well. Others have more crew, such as the French Char 1B or the US M3 Grant.

As for major events, there are a ton of major tank battles to read about! The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history. And more to read about.

thanks user that's pretty neat. What were the different types used for, in battle and in stuff like reconnaissance?

Well for different types, there's a few prominent ones.

The Germans were famous for their late-war heavy tanks like the Tiger and Tiger 2, but the bulk of their wartime armor consisted of Panzer III and Panzer IV medium tanks, as well as assault guns like the Stug III which fell into this gray area between assault gun and tank destroyer. They also had a surprisingly heavy reliance on capture Czech types like the Pz 38t. Famous tanks like the Panther and Tiger were mid-war developments that IIRC were never really as prevalent as the earlier medium tanks, and the meme-tier ones like the Tiger II or Jagdtiger were almost strategically irrelevant with how few of them they built.

The US had a weird doctrine intended to counter the armored thrusts the Germans were famous for, leading to a unique class of tank destroyers that supplemented their main-line medium tanks. The most common American tanks of the war were the M4 Sherman medium and the M3/M5 Stuart light tanks, which, despite a lot of the memes that were thrown around, were generally good designs. Supplementing these and intended to sit in reserve to counter any armored breakthrough were turreted tank destroyers like the M10, M36 and M18.

The most common Soviet tanks you'd see would be the T-34, KV-1, and IS. The T-34 and KV were both in service at the outbreak of war, and although a lot of the memes aren't completely true, they did prove themselves as good tanks in Barbarossa. The KV heavy tank was near-invulnerable to a lot of German tank guns, and the T-34, while flawed, would prove a good platform for progressive upgrades through the war. The IS was a mid-war replacement for the KV heavy tank notable for its large 122 mm gun.

This is a *very* general overview, though.

When discussing which tank was better, you shouldn't only look how big its gun and armor was, but also at the crew layout, optics, speed, mobility, reliability etc. Both the Panzer III and M4 Sherman performed very well against enemy tanks that appear to be better on paper.

The cannons are referred to like 50mm or 122 mm. As someone who knows even less about guns than tanks, what does that mean, and what is the implication of a smaller or larger cannon?

It all depends on the specific time and country. The British doctrine at the start of the war broke tanks into slow-moving "infantry" tanks intended to provided fire support for infantry and fast moving "cruisers" intended to create and exploit breakthroughs.

The Soviets would have their doctrine solidify around the concept of direct fire support rather than an emphasis on engaging enemy armor, with prominent assault guns and heavy tanks like the Su-152 or IS-2 optimized more for engaging hardened targets like bunkers rather than tanks. They weren't necessarily poorly suited for killing tanks - the Su-152's HE shell could rip the turret off of german tanks, IIRC - but they tended to use higher caliber guns with large HE loads as opposed to the smaller-caliber high-velocity antitank guns the Germans were famous for using.

The size of the shell it shoots

>what does that mean
The mm number refers to the caliber of the gun, sometimes there's an indication for the length of the gun as well, the 75mm L/48 gun of the late Panzer IV variants had for example a weaker armor-piercing capability compared to the 75mm L/70 gun of the Panther tank.
>what is the implication of a smaller or larger cannon?
the larger the cannon, the larger the shell it can fire, the larger the destruction it can cause. This is especially true for HE (high explosive) shells, but for armor-piercing shells, other factors such as the material of the round or the length of the gun barrel are very important too.

You should also be looking at doctrine and general tactics. Tanks need things like infantry and artillery support to be able to function on a WW2 battlefield, and the performance of an armored unit is very much influenced by how on the ball the rest of the army is.

That would refer to the diameter of the gun barrel that whatever it is is firing (And this holds true for something like a 75mm gun artillery piece, not just a tank). A wider barrel means a bigger shell, which means you can pack more explosive power into each shot if you're firing an explosive, or blow a wider hole if you're just shooting something solid.

When discussing tank to tank combat, another important statistic is muzzle velocity; tanks are armored, and it doesn't do you much good if your shell just bounces off of the other tank's frontal plate. (Although it actually isn't completely useless, but I digress). You want to actually slam through their armor, you need to fire quickly., build up more speed and therefore force. Muzzle velocity often correlates with barrel length; despite the 76mm sherman gun not having much more width than the 75mm gun, the 76s had a barrel length much longer.

Cannons are almost always listed in bore diameter - so 50mm or 122mm means the shell is 50 or 122mm in diameter. A lot of the time you'll also see an "L/number" - L/50, for example - going with it, which gives you a barrel length in terms of calibers, or bore diameters. So a 50mm L/50 gun would have a bore 50mm in diameter and 50mm*50 long. That doesn't tell you all the information about the gun, as there's often multiple different types of rounds of the same caliber for different guns and even different ammunition of different capabilities for the same gun, but as a general rule, you can follow this:
>higher calibers means higher high-explosive charge
>smaller caliber usually means better armor penetration
>high caliber, short barrel means it's most likely going to be shooting high explosive shells
>small caliber, long barrel means it's most likely an anti-tank gun

>panther
>medium

"Military History Visualized" is quite good for a start
youtube.com/watch?v=NuQjzuaLkU4
"Inside the Chieftain's Hatch" is excellent if you already know the basics
>smaller caliber usually means better armor penetration
only in the context of interwar and early WWII where they were shooting simple lumps of steel
invention of shaped charges and sabot rounds makes this completely wrong statement

The other user who responded to you is also quite right, so I'll just give you the broad overview.

Light tanks are usually used for reconnaissance or to help provide fire support for other recon units or infantry units. Not that they can't fight on their own, light tanks did a lot of the armored work in the Pacific theater, but they generally can't hold their own against medium tanks or well prepared infantry. Even late war light tanks were pretty weakly armored.The M24 Chaffee only had 38mm of armor over the front ( although it had more effective armor, but that's another discussion), which was light for medium tanks at the start of the war. Sort of like a rouge, if you think about it like a role-playing game. They're best used when mobility is important.

Medium tanks were the jacks of all trades and did most of the fighting. They could give the infantry direct fire support, take out hardened targets like pillboxes, knock out other tanks, and give the enemy something to panic about other than the infantry. Many US tanks and tank destroys acted as artillery too, to the point where they were build with artillery sights along with their normal gun sights.

Heavy tanks are the tip of the spear; great for pushing through well defended areas and taking out other tanks. Although they were much more powerful, they weren't as versatile as medium tanks. Think a traditional image of a tank; slow moving but tough as nails and able to dish out the damage.

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It was a medium by German classifications, even though the Allies called them heavies.

try playing Red Orchestra: Ostfront. Darkest Hour is most likely to still have a dedicated American playerbase though and they know how to tank.

epic man,