Originally Posted By: bbhero
If I'm not mistaken the reason why they did it because of their invention of the jet engine.. Amazing what they did at that time. And candidly if they had produced many more tiger tanks the second world war would have lasted a fair amount longer. That tank was far superior to any other tank on the battlefield. The Sherman tanks were nicknamed Ronson's by the Germans. Because they literally burst into fire after being hit. But the massive number of the Sherman and Soviet tanks overwhelmed the small number of tiger tanks. The bombing of their production and manufacturing really helped a lot more than people realized.
Well, both flavors of the Tiger were also massive tanks for the time that were difficult to produce. The rear of the Tiger I turret was made from one giant slab of steel that was bent into a horseshoe shape...this provided great protection, but you can imagine how long that process took. The Tiger II was so massive that it could barely move and was often just dug in as a sort of pillbox. True to the stereotype, the Germans often overengineered their equipment and their perfection was the enemy of production. Guderian himself advocated for the production of a large number of Panzer IVs, a fairly simple tank with decent firepower by the end of the war, as opposed to smaller numbers of the heavier and more complex Panthers and Tigers. Hitler was obsessed with magical wonder weapons and the heavy and superheavy tanks were an easy sell with him.
The Sherman had a lot of problems, one of which was not being updated quickly enough to keep up with German developments after being considered a wonder tank when it was first used in North Africa, but it was relatively easy to produce and sized to be shipped to Europe in massive numbers. 5 Shermans could usually knock out one Tiger, and most of the Shermans that were damaged could be repaired and returned to the battlefield...the tragedy was the men who died or were crippled because their semi-obsolete tank was lacking in protection and firepower. At least the Army did take note of the "Ronson" problem and the wet ammunition stowage that was introduced later in WWII did save a lot of lives. The issue with burning due to a hit was really due to poor ammo stowage, not the gas engine as was often blamed.
The Russian T34 was often viewed as far superior to the Sherman, and certainly its low height and excellent armor shaping were design features that helped it survive on the battlefield. Strangely enough, when the Russians themselves compared the 85mm cannon used on later T34s to US lend lease tanks, they found it to be sorely lacking compared to the 76mm cannon on later Shermans in terms of armor penetration (the 85mm had better HE ammo). The 76mm is often considered to have been a pea shooter that was of little use against the Panthers and Tigers, so one would think the Russians must have been in real trouble...the truth is that the Soviets used tank destroyers and heavy tanks with 100mm and 122mm cannons against the better German tanks, while the Americans generally knocked them out using planes and also had 90mm cannons that were somewhat effective (the Brits had the 17pdr, their own 76mm with a huge powder charge that the US refused to use because it was so punishing to the crews that fired it).
