Cannot believe no mention of the German WWII tank, the Tiger tank.
This tank was easily the most powerful in WWII. It had a powerful 88mm gun which could take out Allied tanks at a distance of two mile away. It’s frontal armor was so thick (100 mm) that Allied shells bounced right off it even at close range. The Tank was virtually indestructible on the battlefield and Allied tanks were pea shooters in comparison. The Tiger was so big and so complicated it was not possible to manufacture them in vast numbers unlike the Allied tanks. It was also a gas hog at a time when Germany was desperately short on fuel.
The best tank of WWII however was probably the German Panther tank. Faster and more mobile than the Tiger, it too carried a power gun. Like the Tiger it had complex engineering and was difficult to mass produce.
The author was looking at historical impact not what was the best tank from some technological viewpoint. As you mention the Tiger and Panther were an impressive machines but so complicated as to make it not suitable for mass production therefore in the scheme of things not a war winning weapon like the T-34 or Sherman.
I don’t think the list is “best tank” or “most innovative.”
It’s “tanks that changed history.”
The Kentucky Rifle, for example, was a fine rifle, not the best, but it changed history.
The M1 is a fantastic tank, arguably among the best ever. It also has not been that game changing in any way.
Which makes it historically irrelevant.
There were too few to significantly affect military operations. Tank-vs-tank battles were usually small in scale and fairly rare compared to all other sorts of military encounters in WWII. There are a few exceptional cases where this was not so, but that what they are, exceptional, and generally the outcome was not decided by a quality difference between tanks.
I’m a huge WWII Aircraft fan. As a high school kid I idolized the B17. But truth be told, their big claim to fame was they could take a beating and they were making 16 PER DAY at the end of the war. We were literally producing them faster than they could shoot them down.
But their bomb load was paultry.
I read where one of the Germans' big mistakes was handing out tank orders to companies who built locomotives and dockyard cranes. They were used to a much slower rate of production and didn't have the mindset to ramp things up.
We, on the other hand, went to the automobile manufacturers, who were used to high production runs.
Check out the German Tiger 2. A 70 ton monster with up to six inches of armor and a tapered 88 main gun to increase it’s muzzle velocity.