Top Ten Tanks

[seabolt]

I like the T-34 choice [...] Many nice features and some poor features.

Well, it had a *lot* of poor features, which is why some people would disagree with this list. In fairness, the T-34 probably struggles to crack the Top 10 Best Tanks list but deserves top billing in a Top 10 Most Important Tanks list.

The Sherman [...] Could be repaired or recieve canibilized parts from another KO'd or disabled Sherman in relatively short period of time

While you make many valid points on the Sherman, I feel obligated to point out that this one is mostly legend. The Sherman was a maintenance headache, because it was built by several different companies using several different drivetrains.

Three factors led to the Sherman gaining this unearned reputation.

One, as can currently be seen in Iraq (ice sculptures on the buffet tables ...), the U.S. Army does not go to war without re-establishing the bar in logistics. Despite a tail that had to cross the Atlantic, the ETO Army had a wonderful supply train compared to its contemporaries.

Two, internal combustion was the personal computing of 1944. Any red-blooded American boy knew how an engine worked, how to keep it working, and how to make it do things it wasn't designed to do. His British and German contemporaries had yet to pick up this enthusiasm. (Being far from obtuse, both countries tried to close the gap with their prewar youth clubs and the like. But these were childhood pastimes only for the affluent in Europe. Any determined American teen could get his mitts on an old "jalopy.") European enlisted technical MOSs had to be trained from a mean knowledge level close to zero. U.S. techs could be advanced straight to the military specifics.

Third, U.S. gear was the only truly mass-produced gear of the era. Though you needed a bewildering array of parts for a mixed Sherman group, if you had the right part you pretty much knew it would fit. This could be an iffy proposition for a panzer part, and the cynical took it for granted that no British replacement part would actually match spec well enough to do its job.

Most other designs were far to complex and over engineered for the time when a tanks life expectancy was just months, weeks or even days.

To be fair, I would argue that the most thoughtfully designed tank of the era was the Panzer III. In real terms it was cheaper than the Sherman. It maximized what few concessions were made to crew comfort. Given that panzer crews had to change powerplants more often than you and I change our oil, its engine compartment was designed to make this process ludicrously easy.

It and the Panzer IV were developed by steely-eyed military professionals, with the luxury of a prewar development lead time, and it showed. The Sherman was a potluck of whoever had an assembly line, the T-34 had to be buildable with the crudest tools, and both the Tiger and Panzer had Hitler and his yes men poisoning their design objectives.