Top Five Heavy Tanks of The Second World War

Firepower was provided by an 8.8cm KwK 43 that was seventy one calibers long, meaning the weapon was seventy one times as long as the diameter of the bore. It was incredibly long, as is obvious at first glance. Out of all the weapons listed in this article, this gun has easily the best anti-armor performance out of the whole lot. Firing a heavy, dense projectile at a high muzzle velocity it could slice right through even most heavy tank armor at a kilometer out with a very flat trajectory that meant minimal range correction was required. The gun was highly lethal, and highly accurate. This was the most lethal weapon (against enemy vehicles, anyway) to be mounted on a tank in the second world war and anyone who wants to try to argue that has their work cut out for them.

Its armor protection is nothing to ignore, either, and was probably what the tank was best known for. The sides of the hull retained an 80-mm thickness, same as its predecessor. They had a slight slope given to them, however, marginally increasing their ballistic resistance. It also inherits the odd characteristic of its predecessor of having weaker sides than its aft, though it’s doubtful this was done purposely for any sort of combat advantage. The real star, though, was of course its glacis plate which has reportedly never been penetrated during the conflict (though there is evidence suggesting that some guns were able to do it with the right ammo.) It is very thick, at 150-mm. It’s also very well sloped, at 50°. The result is that the glacis plate was equivalent to 283-mm of protection.

So, obviously, the tank has some of the best armor protection and the best antitank gun, which makes it an easy pick for this list. The top, actually. That being said, it did have some weaknesses. This beast of a monster was heavy, and I mean really heavy. Before now the Tiger was the heaviest at fifty seven tons. But make way for this glutton, because it comes in at roughly seventy. A lot of bridges couldn’t support its mass without collapsing. It was a puzzle just to get this thing where it needed to be. And even when it got there, it was guzzling down fuel at such a rate that it was quickly accelerating one of Germany’s chief problems of running out of petrol. The transmission was picky, leading to reliability issues and there are sources that even indicate that that the quality of the armor took a nosedive and wasn’t performing at the level that it could have been.

So how useful is a powerful gun and beastly armor when it’s such a ritual just to get it where it can be effectively used? Well, that depends largely on who you talk to. Despite Germany’s efforts to close the gap with Allied numerical superiority in the only way it really could, the Third Reich fell and with it came the cannibalization and split of Germany for decades. A lot of people say outrageous machines like the Königstiger were precisely the reason that Germany lost the war. I don’t know about that; I think there were much more frivolous projects that Germany  should have probably put on hold that would have had a bigger impact, and earlier, than canceling the Tiger line.

But at the end of the day it was a tactical presence on whatever battlefield it was on. I can’t imagine any tanker, in any vehicle, getting into his position and saying “Boy, I really hope we get to fight one of them King Tigers today.” Well, on second thought, they probably didn’t really feel like going up against any enemy armor. But with hands down the best weapon system for the job, and giving its crew the best protection out of all the tanks outlined here, it is the best at what a heavy tank does, and that’s to destroy enemy armor while advancing. Though, of course, because of the nature of the war by that point Germany really wasn’t doing a whole lot of advancing, period.