Quote:
Originally Posted by Imp
Char B1bis & KV were infantry support tanks / breakthrough tanks with slightly improved guns to help deal with armour. Char B after all carried as its main gun what was basically a howitzer not a high velocity tank gun, it didn't even have an APC round to start with because its an infantry support tank. Both it & the KV were I think designed originally to take out heavy targets like bunkers
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Both the B1bis and KV-1 had good enough guns to destroy any German Panzer in service frontally, the B1bis of course with the 47mm SA35 gun in the turret, while being completely impervious to German tank and AT guns frontally (except the 88mm AA gun of course). The 75mm gun of the KV-1 even had a wide margin in summer 1941. I fail to see how that was much different from the Tiger in 1942. The armament choices of the B1bis and KV-1 came to be specifically in order to improve their anti-tank capability over previous generation tanks (the original B1 and the T-28/T-35, respectively). In case of the KV tanks there might have been more emphasis on bunker busting, but really, armor is armor whether it is reinforced concrete or steel. In any case, the actual bunker-busting version was the KV-2 (the 152mm gun fired Semi-AP ammunition ideal for bunker busting due to its devastating after-armor effects).
So, in my opinion there was at best quantitative difference between the Tiger I and the earlier heavy breakthrough tanks.