Elefant

Whrrrrrrrrrrrr *CHUNKIKCK* "Mein Gott Jonas! It did it again!"

"SLOWEST. PORSCHE. EVER!"

– Elefant Commander, Company of Heroes 2

The Elefant, also known as the Ferdinand, also known as the Panzerjager Tiger P (Sd.Kfz 164), or more simply, THAT FUCKING PIECE OF JUNK, was a brilliant combination of everything wrong with German tanks during the Second World War. It is THE example of how to fail at tanks. It does mount the same lethal 88mm cannon that went into the Tiger, but that was the only thing that went right with the Elefant. It was a bad idea from the start, and it got a lot worse in a hurry.

Mid War

Don't look at these stat's too hard Freund, they just may break.

It's a bad tank.

Late War

It's still a bad tank. But now Germany is really, really losing the war.

IRL

Look upon the faces of these men, do you think, they're having a fun time?

The abomination of God called Elefant was one of the many attempts to mount the 88mm AT gun into a vehicle. Overall, it could have been far worse: the general design and weight of the 'acht-acht' made this a daunting task, but a skilled engineer could work around this. The problem is that said 'skilled engineer' happened to be Ferdinand Porsche, a man who was known to overengineer anything and everything humanly possible besides the fucking Volkswagen. He designed a mechanical system so complex even motherfucking Adolf Hitler (of all people) found it was too complicated. The hybrid drive Porsche designed was a pain in the balls to repair, small hills could cause the thing to break apart, and on top of that, the already strained drive system was fucked over by additional tons of armor. On top of it, Porsche was so certain his design would be chosen he started mass-production before being awarded the contract. Queue a gigantic waste of one-hundred heavy tank chassis just rotting around.

In order to at least do something with that ungodly waste, the hundred-odd chassis were converted into Elefants, which were by and large one of the worst German tanks ever produced. The Elefant was also a massive death trap, as it's large flat space was perfect for an APCR shell to pass right through and slice half the tank crew into mincemeat. The thing required Panzergrenadiers and the addition of an MG34 just for it to not be vulnerable to infantry assaults. But the real kicker? At the Battle of Kursk, nearly half the damn things were detonated by their crews and/or captured primarily because they had mechanical failures.

By a miracle of Hitler or some shit Because of a combination of the ungodly effective range of the 'acht-acht', the fact the battle of Kursk was widely fought in open plains where said range was put to good use and the Russians kept coming in order to curbstomp the Germans rather than just hold the line; the Elefant was able to claim tons of kills and make it appear like it was an efficient tank-hunter on paper and kill/death ratio only. They survived until the end of the war, but some units sent to Italy found themselves entirely useless as pretty much any given Italian bridge couldn't handle the 70 tons of Bullshit that was this tank.

While all of the above things are quite valid, the tank really was nothing more than a METAL BAWKS with the WW2 equivalent of a Lascannon, it continues to be a favorite among Wehraboos, weaboos, and people who mistake video games for real-life. The Elefant, and the chassis it was based on, had 200mm of (very heavy) armor, which as noted above, was extremely flat (this was because when the underlying chassis was designed, no one had yet thought to angle the armor, even the final Tiger design was totally flat). Porsche thought the only way to ensure its survivability was just slamming more armor down, which led to all the weight, transmission, and power failures described above. That being said, 20cm of armor did absolutely nothing when hit by heavy HE artillery. The Soviet counter to the Elefant and Tiger was the SU-152, a massive 152mm artillery piece mounted on the similarly failed-heavy tank KV-1 and the closest thing to direct-fire artillery. The shell was so large, the blast could simply wreck the vehicle and kill everyone inside through shrapnel flaking off the armor.