Ray, Bob and Ed join John on Christmas to discuss WW 2 Tanks / Tank Destroyers and rankings. A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat and intended as an offensive weapon on a tactical and strategic level. Tanks are a compromise of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield manoeuvrability provided by tracks; usually their main armament is mounted in a turret. They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a key part of combined arms combat. A tank destroyer, tank hunter, or tank killer is a type of armoured fighting vehicle, armed with a direct-fire artillery gun or missile launcher, designed specifically to engage and destroy enemy tanks, often with limited operational capacities. The most effective tank force proved to be the German, composed in 1939 of 3,195 vehicles, including 211 Pz. IVs. What made the German panzers so formidable was that, instead of being divided between various infantry and cavalry tank units, they were all concentrated and used in massed formations in the panzer divisions. The successes of the panzer divisions during the first two years of World War II led the major armies to reorganize most of their tanks into similar formations; this resulted in a dramatic increase in production. The campaigns of 1939–41, in which armoured forces played an important role, also intensified the technical development of tanks and other armoured vehicles. The German Pz. IV and Soviet T-34 were rearmed in 1942 with longer-barreled, higher-velocity guns; soon afterward these began to be displaced by more powerfully armed tanks. In 1943 the Germans introduced the Panther medium tank with a long 75-mm gun having a muzzle velocity of 936 metres (3,070 feet) per second, compared with 384 metres (1,260 feet) per second for the original Pz. IV and 750 metres (2,460 feet) per second for its 1942 version. The 43-ton Panther weighed almost twice as much as its predecessor and was correspondingly better armoured. Germany also introduced the still more powerful Tiger tank, armed with an 88-mm gun. Its final version (Tiger II), at 68 tons, was to be the heaviest tank used during World War II. To oppose it, the Russians brought out the JS, or Stalin, heavy tank, which appeared in 1944 armed with a 122-mm gun. Its muzzle velocity was lower than that of the German 88-mm guns, however, and it weighed only 46 tons. At about the same time the T-34 was rearmed with an 85-mm gun.