General? Rommel, no doubt about that.

Tank? I can't decide between Jagdtiger or King Tiger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdtiger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_II

any general who put morality over duty,
patton and von were good strategist but also cunning, thus no less then warmonger

Probably Rommel or Zhukov. Though I'm pretty sure Zhukov, as great a tactician as he is, believed in and used human wave tactics.

As for the tanks, T34. One of the turning points in the war was attributed to the tank alone.

Aye, lots of popular suggestions :).
Will go for Heinz Guderian for the general. as for the tank? I do love me some
Tiger I. That was very nice tank. And of course can not go against the Pershing. That also was a shame it never was produced much to any detriment. Also Firefly as my absolute favourite. Call me crazy there :). And Cromwell :). Will not even mention t-34, KV, and all the Russian good stuff :)

It seems the Tiger I is the most popular. Is it because of the way it looks or the name, I wonder...

Rommel.

T34.

Tank is the T34, probably the finest all around tank of the war in terms of fighting ability, durability and being able to enter mass production. I was so tempted to jokingly name an Italian tank, but not even on the Internet would anyone have actually believed that. :)

General is...actually a harder choice than I expected. But I think I'll take Erich Von Manstein.

LOL at Italian tanks.... The Japanese tanks of WW2 seemed laughable too but that is probably because the Japanese didn't need tanks so much. Tanks aren't very useful in the jungle. It now seems the most popular tank in this thread is the T-34.

I would say it has to do with an awesome 88 mm gun that was able to smash tanks 2 km away :). Awesome design that allowed many crews to survive direct hits and hence to contribute to superior training of German tank crews.
Or if you get your knowledge off milk cartons, then it is because of the name :).

The Tiger was such a rare beast that I doubt it really had a significant impact on training, because otherwise the British should have had the best crews in the world due to their ridiculous infantry tanks like the Matilda II (which predated the Tiger by half a decade) and the Churchill, a vehicle so slow I almost regard it as a crawling pillbox rather than a tank. Besides, the Germans were good at drilling the shit out of their tank crews before the war started, and back then the flagship of the German armoured corps was the Panzer III.

Meh I don't really count failarmy tanks as real ones. French had best tanks at the beginning of WW2 and managed to do nothing with that. They weren't produced nor used enough to make any difference.

Panther was vastly superior to Russian designs of the time, even though it was based on t34 as it.was designed not to be destroyed in less than two weeks of service. I don't think they continued producing pz3 at the time Panther was massproduced. Probably Stugs, as P3 was phased out from service as they couldn't fit big enough gun to penetrate Russian/US armor effectively. Maus was logistically disaster, and probably most idiotic design that was ever made, as even if they managed to make more than two, it would get bombed to death by aviation the very moment they spotted it. Situation is even worse for (thankfully never made) rat.

It's quite sad that T28(29, 30) and T20 didn't get accepted as Shermans were moving coffins by the end of 1943.

George S. Patton

German Tiger I

Favourite general is Rommel.

My favourite tank is probably Tiger I. Sure, it had its problems because Hitler rushed its use, but it was a great tank anyways. Also no other tank has managed such a daring action (and even succeeded) as Wittmann's Tiger did at Villers-Bocage.

"The tank's extreme weight limited which bridges it could cross and made drive-throughs of buildings, which might have had basements, risky. Another weakness was the slow traverse of the hydraulically-operated turret. The turret could also be traversed manually, but this option was rarely used, except for very small adjustments."

You sound like I should know that the Tiger I was an unstoppable killing machine but it wasn't. I also read the Tiger I broke down a lot.


If you need an example of an unstoppable WW2 killing machine, look here
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M13_40_CFB_Borden_1.jpg]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M13_40_CFB_Borden_1.jpg[/url]
Italy’s primary tank during WW2.

Which doesn't mean some of the designs were rather good, at least on paper. I believe the Germans captured a fat load of them, but their combat performance went largely unrecorded; I suppose they were mostly stationed in occupied non-combat territories.

I agree that the Panther was vastle superior to the T-34 and probably remained so throughout the war, but it did have a few disadvantages related to external factors. For instance, it was more expensive (not that Germany would've won even if it wasn't) and it ran on petrol, which created logistical difficulties. The Panzer III was produced alongside the Panther, although not for very long. I think the IV was built throughout the war, though.

It's a hilariously impractical thing. Large areas of the deck are covered with grilles that are just begging for an artillery strike or a 250kg bomb. It also chugs petrol at the rate of about 2000l/100km (0,14 mpg for you Brits and 0,12 mpg for Americans) or about the same as four Tigers. The mere thought that the Germans ever though of wasting resources at something like that makes me facepalm. The smaller E-100 wasn't that great either.

Heavy tanks in general are more unreliable than light ones because of the high stress their mechanical components have to take, and the Tiger was no exception. The Tiger's wheel design (seriously, look at it) let mud and ice to build between the wheels, potentially jamming the drivetrain. Imagine trying to access one of the rearmost wheels for service: you'd have to strip a load of wheels off three bars before you could even get to whatever it was you were doing, then stick all the removed ones back in place.