Tanks Were the Most Important Ground Weapons of WWII. These 5 Packed the Biggest Punch (2024)

Tanks were first invented in World War I, where they were envisioned as invincible land ships that could break the stalemate of trench warfare and lead to victory. Technological shortcomings meant that tanks were not able to live up to that promise in World War I, but by World War II they were the most important weapon on the land battlefield and the principal means of conquering—or liberating—enter societies.

These were the five most important tanks (and not quite tanks) of WWII.

T-34 (Soviet Union)

The Soviet T-34 tank was conceived and built in the USSR in total secrecy, and German forces that encountered it in late 1941 experienced a rude shock. About 40,000 T-34s were built from June 1940, and production continued in Warsaw Pact countries until the late 1940s. The T-34’s combination of firepower, protection, and mobility, coupled with its importance on the Eastern Front in the overall war effort, made it easily the most important tank of the war.

The T-34 featured a weight of 26 tons with a 500-horsepower diesel engine, wide waffle pattern tracks, and a suspension system pioneered by American inventor J. Walter Christie. This made for an agile tank capable of traversing terrain that German tanks could not. The tank’s armor was made more efficient by sloping angles that effectively increased the thickness of the steel plate. The turret design was changed three times, and the caliber of the gun was increased from 76mm to 85mm to deal with heavier German tanks.

T-34s also saw action in the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the Vietnam War, and the Iran-Iraq War.

Panzerkampfwagen IV (Germany)

The Panzerkampfwagen IV, also known as the Panzer IV, was the latest in a long line of German tanks that began with the Honda Accord-sized Panzer I. Although Germany later developed larger and heavier tanks, the Panzer IV remained the Wehrmacht’s workhorse from 1941 to the end of the war, balancing armor, protection, mobility, and reliability in a way that more powerful, complex German wunderwaffe (“wonder weapon”) tanks did not.

The Panzer IV offered decent protection that was augmented in time by suspended steel plates known as Schürzen. By 1942, the 75mm low velocity gun was replaced with the longer barreled, high velocity KwK 40 75mm gun to better penetrate the T-34’s armor plate. Like the T-34, larger guns and additional armor taxed the tank’s engine, which remained unchanged, resulting in an increasingly sluggish tank. Germany built 8,553 Panzer IVs of all types.

After the war, Panzer IVs served in the Syrian Army, fighting in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars.

M4 Sherman (USA)

Although the M4 Sherman entered service more than 80 years ago, it is considered the quintessential American tank. The M4 was not particularly well armed, protected, or mobile, but it was easy to build, maintain, and ship from the continental United States to Europe and the Pacific. America’s Arsenal of Democracy built more than 50,000 M4s in just three years, supplying tanks to armies including Britain, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and India.

The M4 was often outmatched by German tanks, but its excellent reliability meant more of them were available to fight at any particular time. The most advanced version to serve with the U.S. Army was the M4A3E8, a larger, beefier tank with an improved suspension system and a more powerful 76mm gun.

Even more powerful was the Sherman Firefly, a conversion project undertaken by the British Army to mount the 76.2mm “17 pounder” high velocity gun on a Sherman turret and chassis. The Firefly was the only Sherman that could penetrate the frontal armor of Germany’s vaunted Tiger heavy tank at greater than point-blank range.

Panzer V “Panther” (Germany)

As the war went on, German tanks became larger, heavier, and more powerful than ever. At the same time, however, German supplies of raw materials worsened, as did the skilled labor pool, and manufacturing farmed out to forced labor in occupied countries was frequently of poor quality or sabotaged outright. These factors affected the production and reliability of larger, more complex tanks. In 1944, the best tank in the world—at least on paper—was the Panzerkampfwagen V.

The Panzer V, also known as the Panther, was a direct response to the T-34 tank. The 44-ton tank was exceptionally well armored, in part due to sloped armor copied from the T-34. The 75mm Kwk 42 L/70 main gun was superior to any allied gun, with the possible exception of the Firefly’s 76.2mm gun. With an engine more than twice as powerful as that on the Panzer V, it was faster and more agile than the older tank.

In 1944, the Panther became the first tank in the world equipped with a night vision system, the F.G.1250 Ziel und Kommandanten-Optic. The Panzer V was likely still the world’s best tank into the early 1950s.

Sturmgeschütz III (Germany)

The last tank on the list isn’t a tank at all, but an assault gun. The Sturmgeschütz III, or Stug III, was the German Army’s ace mobile tank killer, with an astonishing 40,000 tank and armored vehicle kills to its credit. Although Germany eventually lost the war, the Stug III undoubtedly helped delay Allied victory, especially on the Eastern Front.

The Sturmgeschütz III was originally conceived as an “assault gun”—an armored vehicle that was not a tank but armed with a 75mm gun to provide fire support to infantry. The Stug was built without a turret, with the gun mounted directly in the hull, a process that made it mechanically simpler, faster to produce, and cheaper. Because it lacked a turret the Stug could only engage targets in its frontal arc, pivoting in place to change the direction of the gun.

As the war progressed, the Stug III’s mission set expanded to include destroying enemy tanks, and later models mounted the same gun as the later models of the Panzer IV.