Comparing a Heavy Tank with a Medium Tank is like comparing the Yamato with a Brooklyn Class light cruiser and wondering which one is best. If you want to make soundable comparison, you have to make it among different Battleships class.
Same with tanks. :-)
now, if you ask any person who knows just a little bit about tanks, which was the best tank of WW2 he or she will tell you that the T-34 was the best all-around tank of the war
… but… even so the answer is not that easy
Which was the best tank… in what year?
on 1940, T-34m40 was probably the best designed tank in the world, but it had too many mechanical problems (so you probably would like to drive a Pz-IIIf instead)
on 1941, T-34m41 were the best medium tanks in the world. No discussion about it – except that you want to include the KV-1 and KV-2 heavy tanks in the picture.
but on 1942, upgraded models of German Pz-IV and even Pz-III (upper-armored and upper-gunned with the 50mm 60L high velocity gun) were better than the T-34m42 (except maybe for some upper-armored versions)
on 1943, Tigers and Panthers were better… only that Panthers being a new weapons-system, had so many engine and technical problems that were the best only when they were not suffering breakdowns.
(given the amount of Panthers breakdowns during Kursk Campaign, German generals estimated that if they had had Panthers instead of Pz-I and Pz-II during the blitz on France, they couldn’t had sustained the speed needed on the race to the Channel due to frequent mechanical breakdowns… Panthers would probably had lost the Battle of France)
on 1944 and 1945 Panthers were the best all-around tank probably… closely followed by T-34/85 and Sherman ‘Firefly’… but Panthers where expensive and out-numbered… you you probably wanted them for wining a one-on-one duel against a T-34/85, but the next two or three T-34 were going to fry you. So Panther was a great tank for winning duels but loosing battles. :roll:
Sherman also known as Firefly (Great Britian Medium tank)
“Sherman” and “Firefly” were not the same tank
M4 Sherman (come in many variants) was an American medium tank
Firefly (come in many variants too) was a British upgrade of the Sherman (basically a Sherman mounting a 17pnd gun).
but I guess you knew that already :-)
Js-3 (Russian Tank destroyer)
JS-III wasn’t a tank destroyer, it was a heavy tank.
SU-57, SU-85m, SU-100, those were Soviet tank-destroyers :-)
Type 95 (Japanese heavy tank)
Type 95 Ha-Go was not a heavy tank, it was light tank (about 8 tons), 37mm gun
Chi-Ha was a ‘medium tank’ for Japanese standards, but it was only 16 tons (compared with about 29 tons of T-34m41 and almost 45 tons of Panther)