Quote:
Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta
I always thought the German Tiger was one of the most feared?
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It definitely was but it was plagued with problems mentioned by others. It's relative rarity would have helped it's reputation as well, with few enemy tank crews coming into contact with it, experience fighting it was low too.
The Panther tank was another notorious German tank, it was produced in higher numbers but was not without some problems of it's own, it had above average battle success. Both the Tiger and Panther tanks did fantastic against the western allies though, in part due to USA's tank Command underestimating the enemy armour and sticking with a low caliber gun, too low to penetrate on most shots.
For tank to tank combat the real killers was the StuG.
Though they are typically forgotton, some units in these tanks have reported 20:1 kill ratios using them, and nearly all others have had high positive ratios too. While the tank destroyers aren't as good in the assault role they really excel on defense, which was the case for most battles for the Germans in the latter half of the war. The Germans had some other good tank destroyers but these were the most numerous and successful. Most German tanks were terrific at long range and in the open field too, but as the war wore on and the German's lost production power and resources they definitely fell behind in tank advancement.