I know that Tiger is considered pretty bad while iconic. But what is considered the best german, nazi era tank?

I know that Tiger is considered pretty bad while iconic. But what is considered the best german, nazi era tank?

Best, in terms of paper characteristics, would be Tiger II. It was even pretty reliable.
In terms of strategic impact, you posted it.
Best AFV would be StuG III and IV.

I've never really got why people always praised German engineering, everything they make, while impressive in action, sometimes, is usually rigid and compact, even the Brittish tank used in WWI (Mark IV I believe) looked more better.

>Tiger II
>Reliable
Where are you getting that information? It's drive and engine were totally fucked

That's true for early ones, later problems were mitigated.
>The introduction of modified seals, gaskets and drive train components, as well as improved driver training and sufficient maintenance improved the tank's mechanical reliability.[32] Statistics from 15 March 1945 show reliability rates of 59 percent for the Tiger, almost equal to the 62 percent of the Panzer IV and better than the 48 percent of the Panther that were operational by this period.[27]

In term of total vehicle production the Stug was the most produced German AFV at around 11,000. The most widely used actual tank of the war would be the PZ IV at around 8,500 vehicles. Also the PZ IV with the added track and turret shielding made it the coolest looking tank of the war in my opinion.

Paper characteristics.

Learn to read.

The answer is the Panther, with it its kinks worked out, it was only slightly more expensive to produce than the outdated PZ IV

Later problems were mitigated because they were consistently on the defensive where the issues of a 150KM total range limit before an overhaul didn't matter as much

Tiger II
The Panther was also pretty good

Panzer IV

The Tiger II isn't reliable on paper either, when you're only achieving an under 60% operational rate it's not a good sign

It's a first draft being rushed out to combat, I wonder why they were achieving these mediocre rates?

Tiger II had no business existing. The resources should have went into casemate armour, Panthers and personal anti-tank weapons

Panther's sucked dick too, a 150KM total range before needing a complete overhaul of the engine is unacceptable, not to mention how much fuel they drank for a nation with a critical lack of said fuel, and which fucking idiot designed the road wheels to get clogged with mud and need to remove all of them to fix one in the back?

It was slightly more expensive because of creative accounting and slave labour. It would be a lot more expensive otherwise. It was, de facto, a heavy tank.

I wanna meet the guy who thought that kind of wheel layout would be good for a combat vehicle

tiger 2 was not reliable. it was a wrong use of resources. best tank pz 4

Some fucking idiot at MANAG, Hitler didn't help either
>Since the Tiger had originally been designed to weigh fifty tons but as a result of Hitler's demands had gone up to fifty seven tons, we decided to develop a new thirty ton tank whose very name, Panther, was to signify greater agility. Though light in weight, its motor was to be the same as the Tiger's, which meant it could develop superior speed. But in the course of a year Hitler once again insisted on clapping so much armor on it, as well as larger guns, that it ultimately reached forty eight tons, the original weight of the Tiger

I believe they only built about 400 Tiger II's, so I'm not certain you can make a firm judgment on its performance and reliability. Even Tiger I only amounted to about 1,400 units as I recall. They don't seem to have truly got either of those 2 models out of the development stage, if you think about it. Others' tanks were far more mature, whatever their characteristics.

I guess the Panther, at least for the 500km you could drive it before the final drive breaks. But they were just imitating the Soviet tanks, so I don’t really give them much credit for it.

That’s pretty bad then considering the Panzer 4 was obsolete by 1942.

>500km
Overestimating that by 350 km

Upgunned PzIV's were a better use of resources than garbage shit that sucks dick like the Panther which couldn't decide if it was a medium or heavy tank and broke down all the fucking time, hell even the Tiger was a better option because it had the 88mm meme gun and wasn't constantly shitting the bed

remember that even if the nazis had good equipment they didn't know what to do with it on a strategic level

Yeah but by ‘44 the Panzer 4 would be seriously outclassed by the T-34 85 and IS-1/2, and even by the Sherman (in the M4A3E2 configuration). At least the Panther had a gun that could penetrate enemy armor, the Tiger’s 88 was the wrong kind of 88 to work well against sufficiently advanced heavy tanks.

Yeah, the krauts were autistic. Forming new units constantly promoted too much chaos, as Speer seems to be implying. The guy who wrote "Hell in the Hurtgen" made the same point, that while the krauts always formed new units and let existing units disappear in the flames of combat, the US put newer personnel into existing units until the combat efficiency of a given unit dropped below acceptable levels. The so called Repple Depot concept also had its flaws, but was perhaps a shade better than the Germans'.

Pz IV Ausf H and its KwK 40 could penetrate a T-34 or M-4, they had shit range though

Right, but the heavy tanks would do them in. A Sherman Jumbo or an IS series would laugh off the KwK 40.

Sherman Jumbos had the exact same armour as a Sherman M-4 on it's flanks, of course it can't be expected to penetrate IS2's, Pershings or Churchills the same way

The Tiger wasn't a bad tank, from what I can tell - it was one of the best tanks of the war given its high (damage dealt out / production cost) ratio. It's just that there's been a backlash among serious history buffs against Wehraboos who basically stroke themselves while thinking of German weaponry, so now the Tiger might be a bit underrated if anything - not among Wehraboos I mean, they still think it's worth stroking themselves over - but among history buffs in general.

The Tiger is unironically the best late war German tank design, Panthers and Tiger II's are fucking shit, and overrated because of stupid shit like alternating track drives

Panther

>Design a medium-to-heavy Tank
>Hitler orders it to be super heavy
>Design something to plug the gap you just created and make a medium Tank
>Hitler orders it to be heavy
So this... is the power... of National Socialism

Depends on how you define "best" tank. If you gho by the sense of which tank won the greatest victories, it's probably actually the Panzer 3. If you're going by some sort of mechanical engineering index, probably the later era panthers. If you're doing the same but modifying for time (because obviously, the later era tanks are going to be more powerful than the early ones) probably one of the Panzer 4 variants.

He just liked his tanks thicc

>Sherman Jumbo
Fucking WarThunder fag think Jumbo's were a common thing. There was some 20 built entirely and arrived near the end of the war contributing nothing at all, I don't think it even saw combat

>IS
The IS2 (not 44 mod) could still be penned in the front with that genius flat armor/driver hatch, and that laughable side armor

It has also has the same lower machine gunner port [spoiler]jumbos weak spot[/spoiler]

Are you high? The Jumbo was made specifically for the Normandy campaign as a stopgap measure due to other US heavy tank designs not being ready and was deployed in ‘44, with 250 out of the 254 sent to England in May, all of which were assigned to Army units that would be deployed in France. They weren’t that common but assuredly saw combat, they were the standard point tank and used to find enemy AT guns and tanks, since they looked like normal shermans and could thus take the hit from most German guns and survive. And we aren’t even getting into the M4A3E8s, many of which were modified into field effective Jumbos by welding additional armor to the hull or were produced with the Jumbo’s extra frontal armor in the factories they were made in. I installed War Thunder only after somebody told me that the Jumbo was in it, I fucking love this tank.

-Wernher von Braun
-Mercedes Benz
-BMW
-Volkswagen
-Porsche
-IG Farben (now AGFA, BASF, Bayer, Sanofi)

Tiger ii, hetzer, panther

Ahh i remember reading something like Hitler wanted to keep seeing more and more divisions on paper,

you should play it in WoT as well, fun times

just always use the stock turret

Panther obviously

>Panther's sucked dick too, a 150KM total range before needing a complete overhaul of the engine
citation seriously needed

>fucking idiot designed the road wheels to get clogged with mud and need to remove all of them to fix one in the back?
far superior pressure distribution. Even the overweighted and underpowered Panther was faster off road than the fucking 'agile' Sherman

The Allies tested Panther G's after the war, they found it could only go around 150km before the drive needed an overhaul or replacement, this isn't super secret info

>be gunner
>laying the gun
>get my head taken of by a fucking 88mm through the sights

Bet he never...saw that coming?