Tiger1 202

[howard burnside]

Front armor never penetrated in WW2
88mm destroyed Sherman cast iron turrents
Had telescopic range finder, 56 tons of destuction

[Raja Ahsani]

I heard Tiger's 88 cm kwk can punch a hole on sherman's turret from the front and out again in the rear
Very nice model anyway! awesome work on the wheels

[CharlieC]

I think you are mixing up the Tigers - the Tiger I frontal plate was 80mm thick and vertical - it was penetrated on a few occasions by heavy shells. The Tiger II glacis plate was 100mm thick and sloped at 40 deg - as far as is known it was never penetrated in action.

The Sherman turret was cast but wasn't cast iron - it was cast steel.

The advantage the German tanks had was that they could engage at long range, often over 1500m, and have a reasonable chance of getting a kill, long before the Sherman's gun was in range. The longest range kill in WW2 was 4300m when a Nashorn (8.8cm L/71 gun) got a lucky hit on an IS-2.

Regards,

Charlie

[howard burnside]

From wikipediaThe Tiger I had frontal hull armour 100 mm (3.9 in) thick and frontal turret armour of 120 mm (4.7 in), as opposed to the 80 mm (3.1 in) frontal hull and 50 mm (2 in) frontal turret armour of contemporary models of the Panzer IV.[4][6] It also had 60 mm (2.4 in) thick hull side plates and 80 mm armour on the side superstructure and rear, turret sides and rear was 80 mm. The top and bottom armour was 25 mm (1 in) thick; from March 1944, the turret roof was thickened to 40 mm (1.6 in).[3] Armour plates were mostly flat, with interlocking construction. The armour joints were of high quality, being stepped and welded rather than riveted and were made of maraging steel. This made the Tiger immune to the American Sherman tank's

[airdave]

Nothing was immune to a Sherman! lol I think their speed and agility made them extremely dangerous to any Tank.

After reading the specs on the Tiger (armour thickness, etc) I think the Germans
are lucky the Centurion didn't appear sooner, otherwise the Tiger would have been in serious trouble.

[CharlieC]

The Tigers didn't only face the M4s but also the more heavily armed Russian AFVs. The 100, 122 and 152mm guns of the SU-100, IS-2 and SU-152/ISU-152 could (and did) penetrate the frontal armour of a Tiger I.

Both the T-34/85 and Panther were faster and more agile than the Sherman. Both had better guns than the Sherman even when the Sherman was upgunned to the 76mm. Belton Cooper (wrote the "Death Traps" book) would likely disagree about the superiority of the Sherman.

Agree that the Centurion was an outstanding tank design - it took the British the whole of WW2 to finally come up with a good design but it was a real winner. The slaughter of the Syrian tank corps (T-55s and T-62s) in 1973 by Israeli Centurions says a lot about a tank design which was nearly 30 years old in 1973.

Regards,

Charlie

[Mike1158]

It's not ALL about the tank. The T34/76 was one of the worst tanks of its day due to the commander being doubled up as the gunner in a two man turret. Work rate and situational awareness meant German crews kept up a high kill ratio against better armoured and armed Russian types. This is true in ALL engagements, that and better training meant M4's in Israeli hands was more than a match for T34/85's etc. What this means for the new Russian T14 is yet to be seen.

[Raja Ahsani]

Hmm.. Yes I agree with mike, many other circumstances contribute to tank performances, such as reliability (which late war german tanks kinda lacking), ease of maintenance, logistics and supply lines (see commander daskal's quote on my signature), crew training, and production rate which leads to number of operational tank available (e.g. 1300 unit of Tiger I compared to 84000 unit T-34-76/-85 )

[John Dell]

I can highly recommend the book “United States vs. German Equipment: As Prepared for the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force” for a rather somber assessment of the Sherman by those who actually had to use it.