Tech & Auto
The 5 Most Powerful Tank Destroyers Of WW2
By JOWI MORALES
StuG III
The StuG III, or Sturmgeschütz III, was the most produced German armored fighting vehicle in WWII. It could penetrate the front armor of tanks like the KV-1.
The powerful tank destroyer and its later variants continued serving on the front lines until the war's end and was officially retired in the 1950s.
M10 Tank Destroyer
Formally called the 3-inch Gun Motor Carriage M10, this tank destroyer was based on the M4 Sherman chassis while mounting the 3-inch gun M7 in an open-top turret.
The M10 traded armor for firepower and mobility, allowing them to use their superior speed and mobility to avoid enemy tanks and take up positions ahead to set up ambushes.
SU-152
The Soviets discovered they needed a mobile heavy gun to dislodge the Germans during the Stalingrad counteroffensive, thus creating the SU-152 from the KV-1S chassis.
Equipped with a 152-millimeter howitzer, the SU-152 was used to destroy fixed emplacements and mobile armored targets. It earned the nickname Zveroboy, or Beast Slayer.
M18 Hellcat
Armed with a 76mm M1 gun, the M18 Hellcat weighed even less and could move faster than the M10 Tank Destroyer, with speeds of 55 mph on the road and 26 mph in mud.
Despite being thinly armored, it claimed 526 kills with only 220 Hellcats lost, the highest kill-loss ratio of any armored vehicle in the U.S. inventory.
Jagdpanther
After the heavily armored Ferdinand and the lightly armored Nashorn performed poorly as anti-tank weapons, Germany created the Jagdpanther.
Based on the Panther medium tank, this tank destroyer had a powerful gun that could penetrate most of the Allied forces' tanks and had thick frontal and side armor.