Top Ten Tanks

[seabolt]

Why not just rate them by the production numbers? I'm pretty certain that it reflects quite well how cost effective and modern it was at it's age .... excluding Sherman of course :)

Hm, a good argument could be made that no one really knows what some of those incredible Cold War Soviet production runs translated into in real military effectiveness, and we're all the more fortunate for it. The Sherman isn't the only craptacular U.S. design that got overproduced and pawned upon the Third World's strongmen. I don't see a huge correlation.

And of course there's the Tiger. A handful made, nearly all of them died in action ... but man, if and when it could get there it made an impression. The Tiger most decidely was anything but cost efficient, in and of itself. But it cast a shadow far exceeding its actual battlefield triumphs, one that made every lurking panzer into something dreadful. Chris argued that any tank is fearsome to the other side, but you never heard of a Tiger commander begging his air support to drop rockets right on top of him to kill a Sherman. A U.S. commander did that once, explaining to the pilot that his chances were decent with the rockets, nil with the panzer. Hard to argue the Mk VI's rightful place near the top of that list.