# Tiger tank from aircraft thread;



## Shortround6 (Nov 5, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Tiger was unquestionably a backward step for the resilience of german armoured formations. Whilst individually these vehicles were peerless engineering marvels, well protected and requiring an inordinate expenditure of resources to deal with the, their individual unit costs, on a real basis, was such that they contributed to the dilution of strength for each of the panzer formations. Tiger was never an easy tank to build, never an easy tank to use and limited in several areas (notably range and mobility) that damned it to mediocrity throughout its career.
> 
> Cost is the first demerit of the tank. There will always be massive disagreements as to the final unit cost of the tiger. Suffice it to say it was exorbitant. Massively so….some sources suggest that at least 30 T-34s could be had for the same cost as a single Tiger I. Tigers are known to have an exchange rate of about 10:1 in battle, but those odds shortened considerably if total losses are compared. Many tigers were lost to mechanical breakdowns running out of fuel as the hordes of T-3s simply bypassed them.
> 
> ...



I know we have argued about this before but in some cases people apply post war (or even 1960s ) standards to the Tiger tank.instead of the standards of the day. 

Roles for tanks changed and sometimes just classifying a tank by it's weight overlooks the intended role of a particular tank and the intended role sometimes is not the role it was actually used for. 
Most armies in the 30s were stuck, at least somewhat, in the mindset of WW I and thought that tanks should be used to break through fortified positions or trench lines. There was also the penetration/deep raid/shoot up the rear areas role. WIth the technology of the time and the cost/weight limits one tank could seldom, if ever, perform both roles in the 1930s/early 40s. 

Most large armies wanted "breakthrough" tanks (tanks that could breakthrough a defended position while absorbing/deflecting anti-tank fire up to a certain standard). Speed and range were not high on the list.
WW I Breakthrough tanks went around 5mph (if they were lucky) and ranged 35-50 miles. SO tanks that went 12-18 mph and ranged 50-90 miles looked pretty good. 
Main argument here was, given budgets of the time, a few big breakthrough tanks or lots of little ones? The latter were often called Infantry tanks as their role was to accompany the infantry in the assault. 
Some armies (French in particular) tried for both.
Due to the lack of speed and range armies also bought faster tanks with hopefully better range, but these were lightly armoured in order to keep weight down. The_ intended role_ being to go through the gap made by the assault tanks and accompanying infantry and drive on into the rear areas (which would hopefully have less AT guns) and shoot up the supporting artillery, headquarters/supply depots and such causing a general collapse of the front in that area. The British had cruiser tanks, the French had several categories of tanks for this role and the Russians were building the fast BT tanks by the thousands. 
Please note the inted role was NOT reconnaissance or scouting (many prewar tanks didn't have radios) although many wound up doing that role. 

Point of this very short and simplified background is that the requirement that lead to the Tiger tank was formulated in 1937 for a tank that would be 50% heavier than a MK IV (then at 18 tons) and armoured to withstand heavier guns. As with most projects weight grew substantially. But this project was never intended to replace the MK IV on the production lines but to be used for special purpose set piece battles. Which turned out not to happen at anywhere near the anticipated frequency that pre war generals thought. AT guns also got better faster than new tank chassis could be designed.

The Tiger was never a counterpart to the T-34 or Sherman or even the Cromwell. It was a counterpart to the KV, the US M6 and perhaps the Churchill. 
US M6






The end of the war and post war super heavy tanks were intended for a somewhat different role. At least in the west they were biased more towards anti-tank work and were intended to engage in gunnery duals with the enemies heavy tanks in support of their own medium/standard tanks and not for bunker busting (although useful for that) or over running trench lines (the multiple auxiliary machine guns had disappeared.) as the heavy tanks were to rare (and expensive ) to used to take the point position in attacks on heavily defended areas. 

The last of the superheavies didn't disappear until the guns on the "mediums" (that now weight 40-50+ tons) improved or were provided with ammunition that would defeat any practical amount of steel armor that could be put on a tank. Comparing a Centurion or M-60 with 105mm gun firing APDS to a superheavy with a 120mm gun firing full bore solid shot is not a fair comparison. Especially trying to back date it show the Tiger was a faulty concept.

Many tanks suffered from high numbers of breakdowns. Especially in retreat, when they cannot be recovered. 
The French lost more Char B1s due to breakdowns and running out of fuel than they did to combat. 




lost due to broken steering mechanism, French had equipped Char B1 units with tracked fuel carriers and armoured fuel trailers but that was not enough to overcome the short range and chaotic supply situation the French were caught in. 

The Tiger was far from perfect but the idea that the German forces would have done significantly better without it may need a rethink. Cost in money is not always a good way to measure things as it includes labor and cost of tooling. I doubt very highly that you could build even ten 30 ton tanks for the _cost in raw materials_ tha one 56 ton Tiger cost let alone 30 tanks. 

Germans held on to the MK III and MK IV too long. Stugs are not true replacements for turreted tanks. 

A better comparison to the Tiger than the T-34 was the KV tank. And please consider that the KV had some mobility issues that do not show up in a simple list of speed/s and range. Using the same engine and transmission as the T-34 (and the transmission was none too good on the early T-34s) the KV drivers often only used one or two gears out of the 4 speed transmission due to the difficulty in shifting. Running in 2nd or 3rd gear instead of 4th can cut the listed range considerably. Not to mention trying to drive on slopes. Clutch and brake steering systems may work on light tanks/vehicles but give lots of problems with large heavy ones. Russian KV tanks were also too heavy for most existing Russian road bridges and Russian Army temporary bridges/ferrying equipement. 

The Panther might be a bit more suspect than is usually give credit and the Tiger II was simply all the bad points of the Tiger I amplified with few,if any, real advantages. (Yeah the long 88 was more powerful but if the short 88 could knock out well over 90% of it's opponents at most practical battle ranges, 2-3km shots being rarities, what was the point?) Using the same engine in a 75 ton tank that you used in a 56 ton tank sure doesn't solve any mobility problems.

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## taly01 (Nov 5, 2018)

I don't mind the resources spent on the Tiger I as it did perform a role very effectively, the Tiger II though was too much as you say, let alone the JagdTiger! The engineering time and development were more of a waste than pure material and labour on these. The german method of dovetailing armour plates also reached its limit with the big 100mm+ plates as they would buckle at the dovetail when hit. 

I'm not a big fan of the Panther either, the Panther was a very high target with only 40mm side armour, okay on the open plains but very vulnerable if flanked. In Normandy wooded country the PzIV performed as well as the Panther and some preferred it as it was easier to hide it.


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## parsifal (Nov 5, 2018)

_I know we have argued about this before but in some cases people apply post war (or even 1960s ) standards to the Tiger tank.instead of the standards of the day. _

In many ways, particularly in the west, the development of armoured warfare concept atrified after the war. The Germans were ahead of everyone in armoured warfare theory in 1942, took a bit of a hit 1943-5, but were still ahead of everyone even at the end. The only area where I think the Americans were ahead was in the formalised ideas around Combat Commands, as compared to the more adhoc arrangements used by the germans in their formations of Kampfgruppen. Americans in theory at least were ahead in their ideas of all arms teams, from the perspective of that formal division of units into flexible combat teams, but in reality were less well developed than the germans. Had the war been still contested in 1960, and extrapolating what the western allies did with the lessons they learned, the german advantages would have been even more pronounced.

_Roles for tanks changed and sometimes just classifying a tank by it's weight overlooks the intended role of a particular tank and the intended role sometimes is not the role it was actually used for. _

The MBT classification is not just a function of its weight. Leopard II for example is one of the heaviest tanks by weight but easily meets the tenets underpinning the MBT classification. The Soviet T-10 (a derivative of the IS series) do not. To be classified an MBT, you need a blend of three components, mobility, firepower and protection. They need to be a balanced compromise……if you have a design that is clearly lacking in any of these areas you cannot call the weapon system an MBT. It might be a Light Tank, or it might be a Heavy Tank.
The classification of MBT didn’t exist in WWII, but that does not mean that there weren’t tanks that fulfilled the role. Tanks that could be classified as MBTs (in a contemporary application of the term, might include…….Pzkpfw Mk III (for early war), Mk IV, Panther (for late war), Somua (early war), Shinhoto Chi Ha (early war), Sherman, Grant, Comet, Cromwell. Some of these tanks weren’t particularly good, but they do fit the criteria for MBT in the time context of their design.
Tanks that fall outside these classifications have some usefulness, but fall short in the classic roles for armour. Tigers are very much in that category.

_Most armies in the 30s were stuck, at least somewhat, in the mindset of WW I and thought that tanks should be used to break through fortified positions or trench lines. There was also the penetration/deep raid/shoot up the rear areas role. WIth the technology of the time and the cost/weight limits one tank could seldom, if ever, perform both roles in the 1930s/early 40s. _

The nations that mattered were not “stuck” in this way. Germany developed concepts on armoured warfare that continue to form the basis of modern armoured breakthrough warfare even today. The concepts of mobility, concentration of force dislocation of rear areas, remains as valid today as it ever was when first formulated. Guderians genius was that he married concepts from some very diverse sources to create a thoroughly modern concept of armoured warfare. He combined the ideas of fully integrated armoured/Infantry/ artillery together, threw in direct air support and provided radio communications that are still to this day the essentials of armoured combat. It is no accident that men like Rommel, Manteuffel, Guderian, even Manstein dismissed the Tiger philosophy as a wasted effort, they all considered mobility to be the single most important element of tank design.
Other nations were far less well developed in terms of armoured warfare, but neither is at all true that they were preparing to fight the next war according the tenets of 1918.
Both Britiain and the US were probably the least well developed, but even they were envisaging their breakthrough battles being fought in the manner prescribed by JFC Fuller. In France nothing could be further from the truth that they intended to fight the next war according to the 1918 principals. The French army was probably the second most advanced nation on mobile warfare in the world. They had 10 fully motorized Infantry divisions, something nobody else had, 4 armoured divs (DCRs), 4 Mech Cav Divs (DLMs) 5 armoured Cav Divs (DLCs) and over 60 autonomous armoured support bns for the Infantry, backed up by a further 45 reserve bns equipped with a rather depressing array of WWI equipment. Unlike the Germans, very little importance was given to air support, radio control 9in the C&C mix). Whereas the Germans measured their rapid responses in a matter of hours, the French measured their ideas on mobile warfare as a matter of days delay. Compare this to the weeks or months delays factored into one of Fochs or haigs “big pushes” and the invalidity of comparing the early WWII efforts becomes readily apparent.
The Russians prewar also had some very unique concept on what armoured warfare might need to be like. The purges kinda killed the Soviet efforts to develop a workable concept on armoured warfare. But in any event their prewar concepts on armoured warfare had to be massively adapted to suit the unique conditions the Russians faced. In the west, the general trend was towards the formation of all arms teams, focusing on a balance of mobility, firepower and protection, with the armoured spearheads a supported by integrated teams of armour infantry and backed up by airpower. For the Red army, with its acute, and never solved shortages of trained leaders and experience, this all arms concept was tried at ther beginning of the war and failed because the Red Army lower and middle leadership lacked the experience to make it work…….so the Red Army adapted the model to suit their own capabilities. Therer greenhorn officers were given simplified TOEs with which to work….rifle brigades were often just that, as were the so-called submachine gun bns. With or two wepon systems to get a handle on, this simplified the battle problem considerably. Later as experience levels improved the Soviets were able to reform formations with more of an all arms capability
All of the armies that went to war 1939-1941 had given some thought to fighting wars differently to the way the campaigns in 1918 had been fought. Some were more successful than others at it.

_Most large armies wanted "breakthrough" tanks (tanks that could breakthrough a defended position while absorbing/deflecting anti-tank fire up to a certain standard). Speed and range were not high on the list.
WW I Breakthrough tanks went around 5mph (if they were lucky) and ranged 35-50 miles. SO tanks that went 12-18 mph and ranged 50-90 miles looked pretty good. 
Main argument here was, given budgets of the time, a few big breakthrough tanks or lots of little ones? The latter were often called Infantry tanks as their role was to accompany the infantry in the assault. 
Some armies (French in particular) tried for both._

True that most armies toyed with the concept but there are enough significant exceptions to challenge the validity of the basic positioning of this statement. The main Brekthrough Tank of the heer was the MkIII. This had a range of 110-165 miles and a normal speed of up to 25 mph. the mk IV is often touted as its heavy support, but in fact the Mk IV was designed for Infantry support, to provide HE capability at the rear of the schwerpunkt. As far as emphasis not being on speed and range, in the case of the germans, this is absolutely untrue. Downright misleading actually. Guderian from the early 30’s always considered mobility THE most important facet of tank design. And this included range and speed both.It is true that those with more of an Infantry based emphasis were less concerned about this element of design and purpose, but these proponent s were ultimately proven wrong. Even so some designs did acknowledge the need and importance for range. The Somua S-35 had a range of between 95miles (offroad) and 150miles (off road) and 150 (on road), T-34s, designed prewar, had a design range 150-200 miles, increased later to nearly 300 miles with the external fuel tanks fitted.
Breakthrough tanks were not the priority for the most advanced armoured nations. It is simply untrue to claim that.

_Due to the lack of speed and range armies also bought faster tanks with hopefully better range, but these were lightly armoured in order to keep weight down. The intended role being to go through the gap made by the assault tanks and accompanying infantry and drive on into the rear areas (which would hopefully have less AT guns) and shoot up the supporting artillery, headquarters/supply depots and such causing a general collapse of the front in that area. The British had cruiser tanks, the French had several categories of tanks for this role and the Russians were building the fast BT tanks by the thousands. 
Please note the inted role was NOT reconnaissance or scouting (many prewar tanks didn't have radios) although many wound up doing that role_.

Most nations developed concepts of breakthrough tanks and support tanks, the T-34 and KV series being a prime example. The Germans were not ardent fans of this concept, but their reliance on training vehicles, Mk Is and IIs forced the ideas of a support element supporting the lighter tanks (generally MkIIIs supporting Mk Is and IIs) has a lot ot truth to it. The difference between these early renditions and the later insertion of Tigers in the support role is that whereas the mkIII as a support tank retained a good degree of mobility so that it could keep up with an advance, a tiger could not. It would generally either break down, run out of fuel couldn’t get into position or simply was too slow to support a blitz style breakthrough.

_Point of this very short and simplified background is that the requirement that lead to the Tiger tank was formulated in 1937 for a tank that would be 50% heavier than a MK IV (then at 18 tons) and armoured to withstand heavier guns. As with most projects weight grew substantially. But this project was never intended to replace the MK IV on the production lines but to be used for special purpose set piece battles. Which turned out not to happen at anywhere near the anticipated frequency that pre war generals thought. AT guns also got better faster than new tank chassis could be designed._

Tiger tanks were very much conceived in the light of the “support tank” concept. That much I agree with. But it was a concept that was changed so much and so completely failed to take into account the wishes of the front line commanders and most importantly failed to take into account or retain some of the most essential components of a true assault support weapoin system as to make the argument that it was responding to prewar dictates, a nonsense basically. It is certainly true that the germans wanted a proper support tank, but as guderian repeatedly said, what was needed was a tank that was agile and long legged enough to keep up with the advance. The design of the tiger ignored those repeated requirements. Faced with the crisis that arose from the early encounters with the t-34 (and also the KV) the Germans panicked and designed a tank, at hitlers insistence that was at once the biggest, meanest, most heavily armed and armoured weapon system on the battlefield. That this weapon system was nearly useless because it could hardly move, and therefore was hardly of any use in mobile warfare, got lost in that panic.

_The Tiger was never a counterpart to the T-34 or Sherman or even the Cromwell. It was a counterpart to the KV, the US M6 and perhaps the Churchill. 
US M6_

It was a failure in this support role because it was a static line weapon…..nearly useless in mobile operations. Most support weapons of other armies also suffered some loss of mobility but not nearly as badly as the Tiger

_Many tanks suffered from high numbers of breakdowns. Especially in retreat, when they cannot be recovered. 
The French lost more Char B1s due to breakdowns and running out of fuel than they did to combat. _

Tigers and Panthers (the early panthers at any rate) suffered the same problems……for the panther 206 went into action at Kursk, about 25 were destroyed in battle, 108 were sent to rear workshops where all but 7 were captured by the advancing Russians. During the Ardennes, of the 40 or so tiger IIs used in the advance to the US fuel dumps, they were all lost, but nearly all of them to fuel and breakdowns. l
_ 
The Tiger was far from perfect but the idea that the German forces would have done significantly better without it may need a rethink. Cost in money is not always a good way to measure things as it includes labor and cost of tooling. I doubt very highly that you could build even ten 30 ton tanks for the cost in raw materials tha one 56 ton Tiger cost let alone 30 tanks._

Very few of the general officers renowned for their skill in armoured operations supported the tiger concept. Those that expressed opposition to its development and existence included Guderian, Manteuffel, Rommel, and Manstein. These officers all considered the type lack of mobility to be a fatal and major drawback. In the case of Rommel and guderian they went further, the unit cost of the tiger and its reliability issues were both considered in very adverse terms. Rommel after his recall to Europe favoured the total abandonment of turreted AFVs in favour of Tank destroyers, which on average were 40% cheaper to build. Guderian wanted heavy tank production to remain focused on Mk IV improvements and he too later favoured tank destroyers over tanks…..the so called “Guderians Duck”. For the officers that were there and were in the best positions to know, none of them favoured the tiger tank. Even some of the SS idiots that called themselves officers were not great fans. During the Ardennes offensive, when offered the choice of any tank to equip his KG, Peiper xhose the Panther (which by late ’44 was finally starting to catch up to the t-34 reliability wise) over the tiger. .

_Germans held on to the MK III and MK IV too long. Stugs are not true replacements for turreted tanks. _
And yet the MkIII/IV combination remained the mainstay on the eastern front well into 1944, achieving exchange rates with the Russians at least equal to thos touted for the tiger overall. The exchange rate, incidentally exceeded 7:1. As far as the stugs issue is concerned, both Guderian 9at the end) and Rommel (somewhat earlier) advocated replacement of turret AFVs with these weapon systems. Turrets represented a major chokepoint in out for the Germans, some sources claim that availability could have been boosted by as much as 40-50% if a full changeover to Stugs had been accepted. There is little or no evidence to support the often quoted notion that were at some disadvantage against turret tanks. Perhaps so in fully offensive mobile operations, but not in the kind of defensive situations Germany was being forced in to from 1944 onward


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## The Basket (Nov 5, 2018)

Reality or theory?

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## parsifal (Nov 6, 2018)

You will have to clarify a bit please


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## Ivan1GFP (Nov 6, 2018)

I am somewhat curious as to where your information is coming from.
First of all, as I commented on in the thread that spawned this one, the range of the Tiger was actually pretty comparable to other German tanks. They all had ranges from about 120 to 150 miles on roads and about 1/2 to 2/3 that cross country.
The Tiger wasn't really all that bad on soft ground because of its wide tracks and relatively low ground pressure.
It wasn't really significantly slower than any of the German medium tanks with the exception of Panther.
They were all around 25 MPH plus or minus a couple MPH. None were fast nor did they have particularly good cross country performance. The slowest of the bunch actually appears to be the Panzer III.
The biggest problem was the weight and size (mostly the width) of the vehicle which made a lot of road bridges unusable.

As for all the German Panzer Leaders wanting fast and mobile tanks, I am curious as to what was actually ever built that fit into that category. The only real tanks I can think of would have been the Lynx and the Panzer II and those were typically carrying guns no larger than 20 mm and armour that would not stop anything bigger than perhaps a heavy machine gun. That is hardly useful in armoured combat. Perhaps the Czech T-38 was a little better but it was still a light tank with no great firepower or armour.

If the Panzer IV had exchange ratios similar to Tiger in actual combat, that would be quite amazing.
It never really had particularly good armour protection or speed.
It started with a 75 mm L/24 (?) which was useful only for throwing high explosive shells in support of infantry attacks.
It didn't have enough velocity to do much against real armour.
The L/43 was better but came along a bit later as did the final L/48. 
They would have been great if they had been available in 1941 but didn't make it into a Panzer IV until 1942 and then only in fairly small numbers. I believe the L/48 didn't make it into the Panzer IV until about 1944 and that was a bit late.
Against the Soviet 76 mm guns, they were certainly better, but a bit underpowered compared to a Soviet 85 mm that was eventually mounted on the T-34 and KV or the bigger stuff carried by their other heavy tanks.
Against the frontal armour of a Soviet heavy, they really were not effective except at well under 500 yards or perhaps not at all.
The Panzer III with just a 50 mm or a short 75 simply had no chance other than a mobility kill or shooting through some thin side or rear armour.

THAT was the next step down from the Tiger or Panther: vehicles with inferior armour, mobility, speed, and firepower.


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## The Basket (Nov 6, 2018)

My concern is the usual German over engineered fantastic wonder weapons Vs 1300 unreliable tanks.

Part of tank warfare was the recovery of wrecked or broke down tanks after the battle and the only thing that could recover a tiger was another tiger. 

If tigers were perfect then that's the theory of the tank but 1300 tanks over the size of the fronts was not going to work.


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## parsifal (Nov 6, 2018)

Ivan1GFP said:


> I am somewhat curious as to where your information is coming from.
> First of all, as I commented on in the thread that spawned this one, the range of the Tiger was actually pretty comparable to other German tanks. They all had ranges from about 120 to 150 miles on roads and about 1/2 to 2/3 that cross country..



And your source material is at odds with some rather weighty reference materials. There are numerous references that could be used. I cross referenced against 2....Millers "Tanks of the World"; Groves "WWII Tanks" and did a bit of cross referencing to one or two on line references.

Some sources do specify a nominal range for the tiger of 120 miles, but that is highly misleading That is a reference to the types "road transit range".....how far it can travel whilst on roads and not in combat. Grove quotes a combat range of 62 miles in open terrain which accords pretty closely to what happened at Kursk ((based on the account given by Barber in his book "Kursk"). Miller quotes the same combat range. For comparison, Miller quotes the combat range of the mk IV as 135 miles for the earlier marks and 190 miles for the later types. Both references give lower values for the mk III, but they are still generally 1.5 to twice the range for the tiger. 



Ivan1GFP said:


> The Tiger wasn't really all that bad on soft ground because of its wide tracks and relatively low ground pressure.
> It wasn't really significantly slower than any of the German medium tanks with the exception of Panther.



Miller states " The tanks weight proved a severe limitation. Its range and battlefield speed were severely limited and its power to weight ratios were poor". Most other sources corroborate this position.
As far as your critiques of the german mainstay tanks and the opinioons held by some very eminent german tank specialists, you will have to take up your pet positions with them im afraid. Facts are these. Mk IV had vastly superior mobility to the tiger, greater reliability and overall achieved exchange rates with Soviet tanks that overall were better than those achieved by the tiger. Various tank specialists rejected the Tiger when offered to them, and most considered it to be an overall waste of resources for the heer .


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## parsifal (Nov 6, 2018)

The Basket said:


> My concern is the usual German over engineered fantastic wonder weapons Vs 1300 unreliable tanks.
> 
> Part of tank warfare was the recovery of wrecked or broke down tanks after the battle and the only thing that could recover a tiger was another tiger.
> 
> If tigers were perfect then that's the theory of the tank but 1300 tanks over the size of the fronts was not going to work.




I see your point and don't disagree. Tigers are among the most overrated pieces of junk in the German inventory. that should make my position pretty clear I think



Kellys heroes tigers are a piece of junk - Bing video

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## The Basket (Nov 6, 2018)

Not junk
But typical of the German wonder weapons. All smoke and mirrors.
In attritional warfare is the Tiger a luxury or a genius weapon of war. If it was perfect then one can allow it's issues but it wasn't.
How Germany could have done anything else is a good question but tanks should be designed with been disposable so spending too much or money or too much time on a object with a very limited life span has to be questioned.


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## soulezoo (Nov 6, 2018)

Say what you want about the Tiger I, Franz Staudegger at Kursk showed what the Tiger was capable of. I'll bet ol' Franz was pretty happy with it. 

Unreliable, yes. Expensive and hard to produce, yes. Universally feared by opposing tanks and troops whenever they happened across one? Also yes. That is a quality that few implements of war achieve and has an unquantifiable value.


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## Ivan1GFP (Nov 6, 2018)

parsifal said:


> And your source material is at odds with some rather weighty reference materials. There are numerous references that could be used. I cross referenced against 2....Millers "Tanks of the World"; Groves "WWII Tanks" and did a bit of cross referencing to one or two on line references.
> 
> .......
> 
> ...



Hello Parsifal,
Keep in mind that I am not saying that Tiger I was great. I just say that they were the best that was available because of a lack of follow-ons in German medium tanks. Panther was great but had its problems as well and was much heavier than a typical medium and came along a bit later.

No argument that weight and width was a limitation on mobility and transport. The comment about underpowered is interesting because the power to weight ratios of the Tiger and Panzer IV were pretty comparable. The Tiger weighed a bit over twice what a Panzer IV did but also had 700 HP to the 300 HP of Panzer IV. (Comparison is Tiger I Ausf E versus Panzer IV Ausf H.)
There were probably other mobility issues, but simple power to weight wasn't it.

As for gun power, it isn't hard to confirm (or dispute) my assertion that the Panzer III was pretty much worthless in a Tank v Tank battle regardless of which gun it carried and the Panzer IV with 75 mm L/43 was pretty marginal by mid-war on the Eastern front and (even the L/48) was not sufficient against the Soviet heavy tanks.
One has to wonder how far tactics can go to compensate for lack of speed, armour protection and firepower when compared to the opposition.
To deal with them, bigger guns as found on Tiger, Panther and Sturmgeschutz were needed.

- Ivan.


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## mikewint (Nov 6, 2018)

The Wehrmacht’s original heavy tank was the PzKpfw NbFz V, a multi-turreted design from the mid-1930s. To mask its production, which was a clear violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty‘s ban on German offensive weaponry, Berlin designated the machine the Neubaufahrzeug or ‘New Construction Tractor’. It was built by Rheinmetall and although it never reached full production, three prototypes did see action during the German Invasion of Norway. Trundling along at around 10 mph (16 km/h), the Neubaufahrzeug was the embodiment of the ‘land battleship’ – an enormous heavily armored vehicle designed to dominate the battlefield. The Neubaufahrzeug had a large main turret that mounted the same 75-mm short-barreled gun that was later fitted to the Panzer IV, as well as two smaller secondary turrets – borrowed from the production line of the Panzer I – mounted fore and aft. 

Now let’s look at the Tiger I. The average cost for a Tiger I ran between 250,000-300,000 Reich Marks (RM); if a Tiger I in 1943 had cost 300,000RM, it would cost just over $1.2M in USD. By comparison, a Sherman in 1942 cost $33,000 to produce- adjusted for inflation, it would cost just over $500,000 in 2017 USD to build. This meant that the Tiger cost six times what it cost to build a single Sherman- it was even far more expensive than other German tanks. The Panzer III cost 96,000RM, the Panzer IV cost 103,000RM, and the Panzer V “Panther” cost 117,000RM. What was more, the mechanical complexity of the Tiger and the constant aerial bombardment of German industrial targets by Allied bombers meant that production of German armor, and the Tiger in particular, was stunted. It reportedly took 300,000 man hours to produce a Tiger I, twice the amount of time required to build a Panther. Kassel, Germany, a site of Tiger production, was attacked 40 times over the course of the war by Allied bombers- on one occasion in October 1943, an RAF raid caused substantial damage to Henschel’s facilities and killed a large number of workers, delaying production. Production of the Tiger maxed out in April 1944, with 105 tanks produced that month. Final production of the Tiger I totaled 1,347 vehicles for the entire war. In comparison Sherman tank production averaged over 1,200 tanks per month. Over the course of the war over 49,000 Shermans were built.

The Tiger was built with combat performance in mind; everything else was a secondary consideration. This made it a firm favorite with Panzer crews, but an object of hatred for mechanics. The problems with the Tiger’s design came not just from its complexity, but also from the lack of thought that was given to how a component could be removed for repair or maintenance. Take the Tiger’s wheels for example. Each suspension arm held an axle with three wheels on either side. These combined to form two interleaved courses, known as a schachtellaufwerk, supporting each track. If one of the inner wheels became damaged, mechanics had to remove as many as nine wheels from the outer course (undoing 54 bolts in the process) before they could access the damaged inner wheel. Furthermore, not all the wheels were the same, so service personnel had to carefully label each one as they removed it to make sure it was reattached in the correct position. Imagine if you will, doing this while standing ankle deep in mud or snow in a field maintenance depot somewhere in the Soviet Union.
During the winter, mud and snow would pack into the tracks and freeze up, thus jamming the tracks. When the Russians realized this, they timed their attacks for the early morning before the snow/mud could thaw out.
The original Tigers were also underpowered. The first versions were fitted with a Maybach V12 engine with a 21 litres capacity. This was later increased to 24 litres capacity in December 1943.

Bad though the Tiger was for maintenance teams, it could have been much worse. While evaluating the prototypes, then known as the Henschel VK4501H, Berlin considered going with Ferdinand Porsche’s competing VK4501P design. Instead of the Tiger’s Maybach V-12 engine, the Porsche tank had two highly temperamental V-10 gasoline engines, which sat side-by-side in a cramped and poorly ventilated engine compartment. Overheating was a common problem and the cramped design made for difficult maintenance access. Worse, neither of the engines directly drove the wheels. Instead, they were connected to a pair of generators that ran two electric motors. These in turn powered the drive wheels. More than 70 years before it was really technically feasible, Porsche had designed a hybrid.
VK4501Ps broke down constantly during trials and some even caught fire. Nonetheless, it was enough of a contender for the heavy tank contract that Porsche still felt it was worth committing himself to a production run of 90 vehicles. When the VK4501P was not selected, Porsche was forced to come up with a variety of unconventional uses for his surplus hulls including the Ferdinand tank destroyer and the Rammtiger, a turretless ram used for knocking over buildings. (It was as stupid an idea as it sounds).

Sources differ on the exact date of the Tiger’s battlefield debut (although it was probably sometime between Aug. 19 and Sept. 22, 1942). It is generally agreed that Tigers first saw combat somewhere near the town of Mga (about 70 km southeast of Leningrad). Four machines from the 1st Company of the newly formed 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion were reportedly involved in the action. Moving up to the frontline over swampy ground, two of the new Tigers became bogged down and were unable to take part in the attack. The remaining pair fired several rounds in support of the infantry, but encountered no enemy tanks and withdrew without incident. Afterwards, one of the immobilized Tigers was pulled from the mud by a recovery vehicle; the other was completely stuck. The tank stayed where it was until November, when the commander of the 502nd – worried that it might be captured by the Red Army – ordered it to be destroyed with demolition charges. But on January 12th, 1943, four Tiger’s , with eight MKIII’s, faced 24 Russian T34’s near Leningrad. The ground was frozen solid which greatly aided maneuverability. 12 T34’s were destroyed and the other 12 retreated. Given the correct terrain to fight on, the Tiger easily proved its fighting worth.

Many losses such as these were attributed to the unnecessary haste with which the Tiger was rushed into service. Many crews had no more than a week or two of familiarization with the enormous vehicle before heading into the field. Inexperienced Tiger crews frequently blundered into impassible terrain and became stuck. This premature deployment gifted the Red Army a fully functional Tiger, hull number 250427, when it became stuck in a marsh near Leningrad in January 1943. The captured Tiger proved to be an invaluable resource for Soviet intelligence.

The Tiger’s ability to terrorize enemy troops tends to be somewhat exaggerated. Many stories of British or American tankers refusing to engage Tigers reflect different tactical doctrines, rather than fear. Allied fighting vehicles were simply not supposed to engage Panzers in gunnery duels; that was the artillery’s job. If a Sherman crew sighted a Tiger, they were trained to radio the position to the artillery and get the hell out of there. Furthermore, with the Tiger being such a rare sight on the battlefield avoiding confrontations with them was a sound strategy. Allied troops just had to keep their heads down and hope that the Tiger didn’t do too much damage before it ran out of fuel and returned to base.
There were undoubtedly occasions when tank crews fled or abandoned their posts to escape Tigers, sometimes endangering their comrades in the process, but this was not an endemic problem. Typically, Allied commanders had more of a problem with excessive bravery – Shermans or T-34s launching doomed charges against Tigers – than they did with fear or cowardice.

According to a report compiled by Fort Knox from reports of 100 US tank commanders, engagements with other armored vehicles, especially tanks, were relatively rare-an estimated 15%. This was even more evident on the Western Front, which at least initially did not see an abundance of German armor. A German estimate puts the number of tanks and armored vehicles in France on D-Day at 2,000-2,400 vehicles, though postwar figures put that number much lower at 1,200 tanks and 800 assault guns. These numbers were not equal to those deployed on the Eastern Front. As a consequence, Allied tank casualties were not caused primarily by tanks but by anti-tank guns. A postwar survey of US, British and Canadian tank losses during the war found that of the 12,140 destroyed or knocked-out tanks sampled, 54% were lost to gunfire from tanks or anti-tank guns. Of those tanks lost to gunfire, 86% were lost to 75mm and 88mm guns. The survey also notes that of the losses inflicted by 88mm guns, most were caused by dual-purpose guns operating in the anti-tank gun role- not by tanks. The report further notes that 88mm guns armed only a limited number of vehicles.
The vast majority of the damage done by the 88mm gun was caused when this gun was on its antitank or dual-purpose mount. German production figures clearly indicate that only a limited number of tanks mounting the 88mm gun, or 8 percent of the total, were being produced in the summer of 1944.

The Tiger appeared more commonly on the Eastern Front, and even then was never present in anything even approaching the numbers of the T-34 and Sherman. It seems likely that the tank acquired its reputation as a result of anecdotes of the Tiger’s seeming imperviousness and Allied inability to destroy them with anything less than overwhelming numbers. Coupled with this was the Tiger’s ability to destroy targets at much greater ranges than its adversaries with its 88mm gun. Such was the fear of the 88 that the survey notes that US soldiers believed that “every heavy-caliber flat-trajectory weapon that fired at him was an “88”…” This was in spite of evidence that 75mm guns in the ETO caused 40% of the destruction of the surveyed tanks.

Data on German tank casualties is more limited. Reports on the subject are incomplete and do not provide a full picture. The survey estimates that of the German tanks inspected, 44% had been lost to “miscellaneous causes, of which non-enemy causes accounted for over 98 percent. Mechanical or terrain causes knocked out about 10 percent of the miscellaneous total. Coming in just below losses to miscellaneous causes is losses to Allied gunfire, which amounted to 43%. Though greatly feared by German tankers, USAAF and RAF fighter-bombers are estimated to have caused only 8% of armor losses, and these were mainly due to direct hits from rockets. While these records are not complete, they do seem to substantiate German accounts of being forced to abandon vehicles to mechanical losses.

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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The MBT classification is not just a function of its weight. Leopard II for example is one of the heaviest tanks by weight but easily meets the tenets underpinning the MBT classification. The Soviet T-10 (a derivative of the IS series) do not. To be classified an MBT, you need a blend of three components, mobility, firepower and protection. They need to be a balanced compromise……if you have a design that is clearly lacking in any of these areas you cannot call the weapon system an MBT. It might be a Light Tank, or it might be a Heavy Tank.
> The classification of MBT didn’t exist in WWII, but that does not mean that there weren’t tanks that fulfilled the role. Tanks that could be classified as MBTs (in a contemporary application of the term, might include…….Pzkpfw Mk III (for early war), Mk IV, Panther (for late war), Somua (early war), Shinhoto Chi Ha (early war), Sherman, Grant, Comet, Cromwell. Some of these tanks weren’t particularly good, but they do fit the criteria for MBT in the time context of their design.
> Tanks that fall outside these classifications have some usefulness, but fall short in the classic roles for armour. Tigers are very much in that category.



To get a MBT of a certain weight you need a certain level of mechanical technology. And be willing to to spend the money to acquire that design in numbers. Both conditions changed over the years and from country to country. It is not just engine power. Transmissions/steering gear and suspensions/tracks for the desired weight and speed are needed.
For most countries in WW II the MBT was the one called a medium tank. Most of the time they weren't the best at any one thing but were general all round units.
The Tiger was a bit slow and short of range but with 600hp trying to move 56 tons it really wasn't that far off 265-300hp trying to move 23-25 tons (later MK IVs). Obviously 28-35 ton tanks with 400-600hp engines have a huge advantage in mobility. 
The Tiger did have combat persistence. Enough ammo to keep it in the firing area for a longer period of time than some other larger tanks (Like any of the Russian 122 armed vehicles). 



> The nations that mattered were not “stuck” in this way. Germany developed concepts on armoured warfare that continue to form the basis of modern armoured breakthrough warfare even today. The concepts of mobility, concentration of force dislocation of rear areas, remains as valid today as it ever was when first formulated. Guderians genius was that he married concepts from some very diverse sources to create a thoroughly modern concept of armoured warfare. He combined the ideas of fully integrated armoured/Infantry/ artillery together, threw in direct air support and provided radio communications that are still to this day the essentials of armoured combat. It is no accident that men like Rommel, Manteuffel, Guderian, even Manstein dismissed the Tiger philosophy as a wasted effort, they all considered mobility to be the single most important element of tank design.
> Other nations were far less well developed in terms of armoured warfare, but neither is at all true that they were preparing to fight the next war according the tenets of 1918.
> Both Britiain and the US were probably the least well developed, but even they were envisaging their breakthrough battles being fought in the manner prescribed by JFC Fuller. In France nothing could be further from the truth that they intended to fight the next war according to the 1918 principals. The French army was probably the second most advanced nation on mobile warfare in the world. They had 10 fully motorized Infantry divisions, something nobody else had, 4 armoured divs (DCRs), 4 Mech Cav Divs (DLMs) 5 armoured Cav Divs (DLCs) and over 60 autonomous armoured support bns for the Infantry, backed up by a further 45 reserve bns equipped with a rather depressing array of WWI equipment. Unlike the Germans, very little importance was given to air support, radio control 9in the C&C mix). Whereas the Germans measured their rapid responses in a matter of hours, the French measured their ideas on mobile warfare as a matter of days delay. Compare this to the weeks or months delays factored into one of Fochs or haigs “big pushes” and the invalidity of comparing the early WWII efforts becomes readily apparent.



You are overstating the case for the French just a bit. Of the 4 DCRs only two (one?) existed over the winter of 1939/40. The 3rd may not have been created until after the germans attacked and never fully equipped and the 4th was even later in timing and was basically an ad hoc formation thrown together. Not trying to take anything away from their bravery of fighting skill.
However the actual role envisioned for the DCR divisions was not the same as the German Panzer divisions.
We may be getting hung up on the word "breakthrough" and confusing it with break out? The French DCRs were intend to facilitate/effect the breakthrough, but not to exploit it. The Units that would go through the gap created by the DCRs (and the infantry) were the Mech Cav and Armored Cav divisions and they would do the exploiting/deep penetration.
That is what I mean by set piece battles and WW I thinking. In WW I both sides kept large reserves of horse cavalry on standby for years waiting for the big breakthrough, By WW II nobody really expected the Horse Cavalry to perform that role anymore. It was to be done by the Mech Cavalry or armoured cavalry.(with motor rifle divisions/units?) 
For the French the DCRs had the Char B1 tanks and the Renault R-35s while the Souma 35s were in the Cavalry divisions along with the faster Hotchkiss light tanks. 
Due to the late formation of the French armoured divisions at least one had NO infantry units attached. 

The Germans, by design or circumstance, didn't intend to send their tanks against heavily fortified positions but instead to find weak spots, and send the tanks (and accompanying infantry and artillery) through the weak spots/gaps into the rear areas leaving the traditional foot infantry and artillery to mop up the cutoff strong points. This may have been reinforced when the German 4th Panzer division tried to attack Warsaw and suffered heavy losses. The vast majority of German tanks in 1939/early 1940 had armour of only 15-20mm on the sides and rear so overrunning positions that had any sort of antitank weapons no matter how crappy was a risky proposition. The Germans had also given at least some thought to armored support for direct attack of defended positions as in 1938-39 projects were started for derivatives of both the MK I and MK II with 80mm frontal armor and 50mm side armor and while initial orders were for 100 or more of each, production priorities and poor test results would up with severally limited production and late service. 
The Germans would go on to kudge together small quantities of specialized vehicles for urban or assault fighting. 



> True that most armies toyed with the concept but there are enough significant exceptions to challenge the validity of the basic positioning of this statement. The main Brekthrough Tank of the heer was the MkIII. This had a range of 110-165 miles and a normal speed of up to 25 mph. the mk IV is often touted as its heavy support, but in fact the Mk IV was designed for Infantry support, to provide HE capability at the rear of the schwerpunkt. As far as emphasis not being on speed and range, in the case of the germans, this is absolutely untrue. Downright misleading actually. Guderian from the early 30’s always considered mobility THE most important facet of tank design. And this included range and speed both.It is true that those with more of an Infantry based emphasis were less concerned about this element of design and purpose, but these proponent s were ultimately proven wrong. Even so some designs did acknowledge the need and importance for range. The Somua S-35 had a range of between 95miles (offroad) and 150miles (off road) and 150 (on road), T-34s, designed prewar, had a design range 150-200 miles, increased later to nearly 300 miles with the external fuel tanks fitted.
> Breakthrough tanks were not the priority for the most advanced armoured nations. It is simply untrue to claim that.



The MK III was bit of a late comer (under 100 used in Poland?) but yes, it was intended to be the main equipment of the Panzer division. However the MK IV was not intended for infantry support but support of the MK III (or Czech tanks or MK IIs ) few, if any being attached to infantry units. The early MK IVs had painfully thin armor to accompany infantry in the assault. when supporting the lighter panzers it was not only with HE but with smoke shells, much like many British units had 2-4 smoke firing tanks out of every 16 or so tanks in a company or squadron. 37mm and 50mm guns (and British 40mm) fire lousy smoke shells. The Early German light tanks were lucky if they managed 100 miles on the road without refueling. The MK IVs,once past the first 35, were good for 40-42kph and about 200-210km on the road (hard road?) The MK III wasn't even that good (160-165km?)figures may be hard to come by as later versions may just copy early numbers despite gaining 3 tons (15%) in weight over the early (37mm) tanks. 

The Stug III (at least the early ones) were the infantry support vehicles but often not in the way imagined by many war gamers. 




Frontal armor was 50mm when most MK III and Mk IVs had 30mm or less. However there was no direct gun sight, gun was aimed by a periscopic artillery sight through the roof. Every battery of 6 stugs had an armoured half track as a forward artillery observer vehicle. Not the _ONLY _ machine gun on the vehicle is the one being maned by the soldier on the left who may be the loader for the main gun. A 37mm armed MK III tank held 4500 rounds of machine gun ammo for it's hull gun and turret MGs. 

Break though tanks may not have been a priority for many nations but they were not being ignored either. 





> Most nations developed concepts of breakthrough tanks and support tanks, the T-34 and KV series being a prime example. The Germans were not ardent fans of this concept, but their reliance on training vehicles, Mk Is and IIs forced the ideas of a support element supporting the lighter tanks (generally MkIIIs supporting Mk Is and IIs) has a lot ot truth to it. The difference between these early renditions and the later insertion of Tigers in the support role is that whereas the mkIII as a support tank retained a good degree of mobility so that it could keep up with an advance, a tiger could not. It would generally either break down, run out of fuel couldn’t get into position or simply was too slow to support a blitz style breakthrough.



Here is part of our disagreement. The T-34 was not really a breakthrough tank, It was a breakout tank or tank to exploit a breakthrough with. The KV wasn't a very good support tank in that it often did not have a more powerful gun than the T-34. It was more resistant to gun fire and held more ammo. But was slower and shorter ranged. 

An early MK III could support the lighter German tanks with gun fire due to it's larger gun (and/or greater ammo capacity) but in the early versions was just as vulnerable to side and rear hits as the lighter tanks so it should not be put in a position where it would take hits from the side or rear. 



> It was a failure in this support role because it was a static line weapon…..nearly useless in mobile operations. Most support weapons of other armies also suffered some loss of mobility but not nearly as badly as the Tiger



You might want to check the range and speed of the Churchill tanks and go over that statement again. The Churchill tank was rather useful for attacking prepared positions, It sucked at doing deep penetrations of enemy territory or pursuing an enemy force and yet they built around 5,600 of them. It was actually rather good at handling obstacles at low speed.

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## fliger747 (Nov 6, 2018)

The USA could have fielded the Pershing much sooner in Europe but my understanding was that Patton didn't want it. Somewhat the same with regards to the 75 mm gun on the M4. The British adaption of the 17 Pounder on the "Firefly" was a fairly effective modification for tank vrs tank combat. 

Perhaps not a mature armored strategy in some ways, but good enough to win by one means or another.


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## parsifal (Nov 6, 2018)

Firstly, I am kidding when I say that the tiger was ‘junk”. Its not junk, but neither was it a solution in any sense to the problems facing Germany at the time

Unquestionably the existing tank park in the heer was beginning to show its age. Mk IIIs were up against it in combat when pitted against the t-34, and the mk IV was thinly armoured a starting to show its limits in terms of off road capability The Mk IIs were outright obsolete by 1941. Despite this obsolescence, the Panzerwaffe was still enjoying massively one sided exchange rates on all fronts. What was defeating them was that re-supply rates were simply not keeping up with attrition.

Adoption of the Tiger and the Panther did not substantially alter the exchange rates for the panzerwaffe. In fact for these two types in particular, the exchange rates took a decided turn for the worse, due, in my opinion, to the appalling reliability and limited mobility of both types. When I say mobility, I mean it in the broad sense………with its limited range, high BAR (breakdown adjustment rating) inability to deal with certain types of terrain, it suffered appalling attrition rates outside the battlefield, as witnessed by the massive losses it incurred immediately after Kursk. Pretty much the same deal for the Panther, though at least the panthers problems could be partially solved.

Despite attempts to correlate a need to introduce the Tiger/Panther as an answer to the obsolescence of the Panzer arm, this is not in fact the case. Far from solving the panzerwaffes reliance on obsolete equipment, it increased that reliance. There were so few of the wunder tanks and they were so often non operational that the tank arm was simply forced to continue its reliance on these older types. Even as late as Fenruary 1944, the main type on the eastern front, by a wide margin, was the Mk III.

Clearly this was an unsatisfactory situation, but instead of trying to make unreliable and mismatched types do a job that they were not ready for, all the while whilst the heer was being hammered by unrelenting blows from her enemies. Surely, given the choice between types that were not working and arriving in insufficient numbers anyway, to obsolete (but still effective) types in greater numbers that had demonstrated reliability, range, mobility and lethality, the obvious better alternative is the latter. I will call it option B for convenience at this point.

There are issues with both options. Historically the germans went for a bet each way, mainting some production of older types, whilst at the same time trying to introduce a range of new heavy tanks and AFVs. The results were a disaster for the heer, with a handful of unrelaiable heavy tanks, and a massively outnumbered cadre of reliable obsolete types unable to win the attritional war that Germany by that stage had no choice but to fight. Nobody was more aware of these limitations than the Germans themselves. Their socalled _Entwicklung_ series called for the wholesale redesign of the Panzerwaffe. By the time it was adopted, it was far too late, but it demonstrates that the germans were aware of the strategic blind alley they had driven into by the adoption of the heavy tank concept. There earlier motorisation rationalisation plan (the Schnell plan) was an earlier attempt that was only ever partially implemented because of German complacency.

See Entwicklung series - Wikipedia

Germany needed to adopt a rationalisation plan far earlier than they did and they needed to remain true to the pre-war tenets of mobility being pre-eminent in the blitzkrieg formula for them to win the changed battlefield conditions they faced after 1942. One short term solution may have been to divert SG production to the panzers, but here again the jealous “fiefdom” mentality that permeated nearly every aspect of german decision making at this time is evident. It would have been logical to divert assault guns to the Panzerwaffe to provide much needed firepower immediately and at very low cost. This never happened until way too late. Assault guns were under the control of artillery arm, who refused to pass their control to the Panzer truppen. It is debatebale as to just how much real effect this had, but a divided command, with divided training and procurement priorities could not have helped.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2018)

The Tiger was only produced in one factory at the rate of about 25 tanks per month (?)to start and averaged about 54-55 tanks per month over the production life.
Obviously this is nowhere near high enough production to equip more than a few units and keep up with attrition. 
No other factory was brought in. The Tiger was recognised fairly quickly (if they ever thought otherwise) as a special purpose tank.
Perhaps i don't read enough books (or the right ones) but I have never seen where the Germans planned to replace larger numbers of MK IIIs & IVs with Tiger tanks.

It is the Panther that seems to have screwed things up as being a bit too ambitious. It was intended to replace the MK III & IV as a general issue tank. It seems to have been too large and complicated to really be able to do that and many divisions had one Battalion of each which may have hampered movement on long Marches. 
I am not trying to claim they should have stuck with the Tiger but the Panther actually used a bigger cartridge case for its 75mm than the Tiger used for it's 88mm gun. Tiger carried 92 rounds compared to the 79-81 in the Panther or the 87 rounds in a MK IVH. Granted due to german supply problems they rarely had full ammo racks in the last year or two of the war but............... Tiger held a bit more mg ammo than the Panther.
Had the Panther used a smaller gun the whole tank could have been smaller, lighter and placed less stress on the drive train ( or been able to use a smaller engine?)


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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2018)

fliger747 said:


> The USA could have fielded the Pershing much sooner in Europe but my understanding was that Patton didn't want it. Somewhat the same with regards to the 75 mm gun on the M4. The British adaption of the 17 Pounder on the "Firefly" was a fairly effective modification for tank vrs tank combat.
> 
> Perhaps not a mature armored strategy in some ways, but good enough to win by one means or another.



Patton was only one general in the middle of 1944 and not in the best position to be deciding anything until the late summer or fall of 1944. Generals higher up than Patton (or in different parts of the army) made those decisions. 

The Firefly was a mixed bag as a tank. While the gun was certainly powerful the ammo was of such size that the ammo capacity was cut to 42 rounds and that is after the hull gunner was replaced by an ammo rack. Due to the size of the ammo in part the rate of fire of the 17pdr was about 1/2 the rate of fire of the US 76mm gun so if your target was NOT the front plate of a Panther tank???????


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## parsifal (Nov 6, 2018)

Sorry, but Tigers for a time were expected to form a significant component of the rebuilt panzer forces after 1942. Later this was modified to incorporate Panthers as the Panzer mainstays. in both cases these efforts proved futile.

After his appointment to the Panzer Forces inspectorate, Guderian produced a report which advocated every panzer division contain as a permanent assignment, at least one battalion of tigers. Obviously the plan came to nothing, but it wasn't for lack of trying or lack of resources being poured into the program. Somewhere I have a report that states nearly 40% of the procurement budget for heavy armoured components (and this in turn was a massive proportion of the overall budget) were being diverted to tiger production. it is simply untrue to try and claim that the germans never entertained ideas of making the tiger their MBT for 1943 or were not really trying. They made extraordinary efforts to try an make it so.....the fact that those efforts failed is not 'proof" that didn't expend large amounts trying to achive it.

They were trying alright, and wasting massive amounts of money in making that attempt. . They poured in massive resources to try and make that a reality. Those resources were largely wasted.


As a proportion of actual production achieved, the tiger program was significant, but highly wasteful. The mainstay tanks 1943 were tigers, Panthers and mkivs. Im not including spgs in this straw poll. In the period 1942-5, MkIV production ran at something like 4500, Panther was about 6000 and tiger production was 1800 tanks. unfilled orders for the tiger were at least twice that number


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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2018)

Can you please give some sources for the 1800 tiger tank production as that looks like it includes the Tiger II.
Most sources give around 1340 Tiger 1s. 
Or that unfulfilled orders for the Tiger went to 3600 vehicles (unless that includes some grandiose scheme for Tiger IIs in 1945 to go with thousands of jets)

One sources gives 69 Tiger 1s delivered in 1942. and a further 549 in all of 1943. Peak months were Oct with 82 delivered, Dec with 80, Aug with 63 and July with 53, all other months were 49 tanks or under. This includes command vehicles and rebuilds. 
Nov saw only 34 tanks delivered but that may be because the RAF dropped 1800 tons of bombs on Kassel on Oct 22/23 damaging the Henschel works and killing, wounding some of the workforce. 

If the Germans were actually trying to equip every panzer division this would be an epic fail (production in the first 6 months of 1944 averaged 87 tanks per month before winding down in the July and Aug)) 

From Wiki so..........
"Tigers were usually employed in separate heavy tank battalions (_schwere Panzer-Abteilung_) under army command. These battalions would be deployed to critical sectors, either for breakthrough operations or, more typically, counter-attacks. A few favoured divisions, such as the _Grossdeutschland_, and the 1st SS _Leibstandarte_ Adolf Hitler, 2nd SS _Das Reich_, and 3rd SS _Totenkopf_ Panzergrenadier Divisions at Kursk, had a Tiger company in their tank regiments. The _Grossdeutschland_ Division had its Tiger company increased to a battalion as the III Panzer Battalion of the Panzer Regiment _Grossdeutschland_. "

Intentions and what actually happened are two different things but only one division ever got a battalion of Tigers of it's own.

and " The Tiger was originally designed to be an offensive breakthrough weapon, but by the time it went into action, the military situation had changed dramatically, and its main use was on the defensive, as a mobile anti-tank and infantry gun support weapon.[67] "
the foot note is for 
Wilbeck, Christopher (2004). _Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II_. 


for such a massive effort to build a Tiger Battalion for every Panzer Division it seems more than a bit strange that only one factory was ever tooled up (or produced a Tiger tank) and that factory didn't seem to work a full 2nd shift? (production of 2nd shift was about 50% of first shift?)


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## GrauGeist (Nov 7, 2018)

OK, so in retrospect, what should the Germans have done to replace the PzKfw IV.

As terrible as the Tiger was, it sure seemed to cause a great deal of concern not only with the ground forces that had to face it, but with the various leaders.
When the Soviets captured a Tiger in '42, it brought about a decision to create a new heavy tank, which led to the development of the IS series.

When a piece of captured equipment dictates a new threat upgrade, there must be merit to that enemy's machine, certainly?


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## parsifal (Nov 7, 2018)

This was series of lectures by two authors on Kursk and costs of production dated 2013. 

I found the most interesting bit starts around the 25th minute of the clip




The man hours attributed to T-34 production are probably overstated. According to Steven Zaloga, in “Armored Champion: The Top Tanks of World War II”, the number of man-hours required to produce a T-34 was never more than 10,000 and declined significantly over time. In early 1943, Plant No. 183 at Nizhni-Tagil needed as few as 3,719 man-hours to make a T-34.


The book “Soviet Economy and the Red Army: 1930 - 1945” doesn’t give absolute numbers of man-hours but states that between 1941 and 1943, the labor cost of producing a T-34 was reduced by 51%. So whatever the real, comparable number was, there can be no doubt that by 1943, the T-34 man-hour was only a tiny fraction of that of the Tiger.

There is a claim of 300,000 man-hours to produce a WW2 Tiger 1 tank. Its a reasonable question to ask where this came from. This claim about a Tiger tank’s man-hour seems to have originated from the official Tiger’s manual (Tigerfibel). In that book, the Germans brag that a single Tiger tank required 300,000 man-hours and about 800,000 Reichsmarks to produce. The Tiger’s manual stated that 300,000 man-hours was equivalent to one week of hard work from 6,000 workers (I did the math: 6,000 workers * 8.5 hours a day * 6 days a week = 306,000 man-hours. According to one source, the t 800,000 Reichsmarks price tag was equivalent to the weekly wages for 30,000 workers.

I notice that it is claimed that only a single tank factory in germany was engaged in Tiger production. Seems fairly innocuous, but then again there were only 7 major tank factories in germany at this time.....Kinda pulls that statistic back into reality a bit.....

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## parsifal (Nov 7, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> OK, so in retrospect, what should the Germans have done to replace the PzKfw IV.


Copy either the Sherman, and/or the t-34. Instead of building tanks like they were a piece of art, the germans should have built tanks like they were a toaster, just like the US and USSR were doing.

And as the preceding talks do show, the Germans were better placed to do that thasan the Russians, and had less worldwide commitments than the US, thus allowing them to concentrate theior efforts more effectively, if they had possessed the nouse to do that. instead they decided to p*ss their advantages up the wall producing a ludicrously complicated and unreliable vehicle unsuited to their operational doctrines.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2018)

See this site for some information. 
Tiger I Information Center | PanzerKampfwagen VI: The Legendary Tiger I
3 pages on the factory. including 
"The factory employed a total of 8000 workers for tank production. They worked in two 12 hour shifts and the night shift was said to have only 50% of the output of the day shift. "
and 
"The total time to complete a Tiger, including the various machining processes, was estimated to be 14 days. An average of 18 to 22 tanks were carried at any one time in the hull assembly line and approximately 10 tanks were carried in the final assembly line "

Raw Hull and turrets were subcontracted out to Krupp, Dortmund-Hoerder Huettenverein and Wegmann und Company 

Trying to figure out the cost, in either man hours or marks/rubles might be mildly entertaining but without some very careful analysis become meaningless real quick. 
Are the people doing the figuring including the guns, where are the engines and transmissions coming from? 
can you really build a dozen (or more) 4/1 speed transmissions (or 5/1) for the same effort and materials as a single 8/4 transmission? Or a dozen or more 500hp V-12 diesels for the same effort/materials as a single 700hp V-12 gas engines? a dozen 76.2 cannon for one 88mm cannon? 

Cost for the Tiger 1 was calculated when? when they were building 30-40 a month in the beginning or over 80 a month in the last 6 months with no major change in plant space or work force.? 

I would also note that Henschel was making Panzer IIIs well into 1942 (I don't know about 1943 ) and also produced some of the early Panther Ds.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2018)

Copying the Sherman would have too little too late. 
Sherman doesn't see action until late Oct 1942. The Tiger I is already in production and the Panther D goes into production in Jan of 1943 which means most of the design work was already done and indeed a mild steel prototype was running in Sept of 1942. 

The early T-34 wasn't really a very good tank. It's paper stats look good but it's ergonomics and usability in combat were horrible. Which is one reason the Germans were able to defeat hundreds of T-34s (and KVs) in 1941 using MK IIIs and MK IVs with short barreled guns. 

Nick Moran makes a point about a t-34 that took 23 hits (?) from a German tank before being knocked out. It is certainly an example of toughness but his point was why didn't the T-34 shoot back and destroy it's attacker with it's superior gun? Possibilities include that due to lousy vision (number and type of vision devices) they never spotted the unit shooting at them!

The Germans would have wanted a new turret at the least and that may have involved a new hull top (or higher turret?) and so on. 

Heinz Guderian wasn't appointed (or accepted) the position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops until 1 March 1943, which is a little late to cancel either the Tiger 1 or Panther programs and start over with a new design/program. Unless it is a modification of the Pz IV nothing started at this time would make it into service until sometime in 1944. 
He could disagree all he wanted with the Tiger 1 and Panther programs but he was sort of stuck with them. Especially as the Stug III production and use was taken away from him. 
He needed the Tiger 1s and Panthers, even at low production until they could come up with something else, which for whatever reason, didn't happen.
Changes in the German tank Programs needed to made in late 1941 or early 1942 in order to have any real effect even in the beginning of 1943.


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## Glider (Nov 7, 2018)

I think there is one factor that is missing from the debate and that is the importance of tactics. The reason why early T34's and KV1's were destroyed in large numbers by less powerful guns was the tendency to attack the Germans in large formations but without recce units. Vast numbers ran into mines and swamps and had to be abandoned.
In the early stages the T34 was a very formidable tank horrible to use by our standards but formidable, and the KV1 was close to invincible, 37mm and 50mm L42 guns could barely scratch it and the 50mm L60 was just about good enough. What saved the Germans in 1941/2 were the poor tactics and exceptionally poor logistics in the Russian forces.

The Germans noted that by July 1942 there were far fewer T34 and KV1 tanks on the battlefield but they were far more dangerous since they were now fully armed and fueled.

As an aside German tank losses in 1942 were approx. 3,000 of which about 570 were lost in the Middle East. It one of those what if's but had the Germans not fought in the Desert the Russians would have had a very difficult time


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## Peter Gunn (Nov 7, 2018)

I am of the opinion that the Germans could have upgraded the Pz IV and mass produced it. While it does suffer from the typical German "Box Tank" syndrome, a little thicker armor, the long 75 mm and a more powerful engine may have helped alleviate German panzer issues mid war. It's easier said than done I know, but the Pz IV would have been a pretty good departure point for something to counter the larger numbers of Sherman's and T-34's.

Also as far as the Sherman, it was intended as an infantry support tank, not to go head to head with enemy armor on a consistent basis. That it could and did speaks pretty highly of its initial design and upgrades. Also the 75 mm was kept (too long in my opinion) because of durability and it had a very respectable HE round good v infantry. Although in my research I find crews really liked the 105 mm equipped models for the upgraded firepower, albeit at the cost of number of rounds carried.

Just my $.02.


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## parsifal (Nov 7, 2018)

Im siding with the experts and the positions they very clearly demonstrated in that video. Germany was better placed than the USSR to adopt better production techniques, but failed to do so. Parshall in that lecture, an expert in the field if ever there was one, demonstrates very clearly that the germans made conscious choices in the way they went about producing tanks that ultimately destroyed their chances of winning.

it could have been very different as Parshall shows.

The decision to build tanks like the tiger and Panther made it worse, not better. A lot worse

And the Tiger was about the worst production choice the Germans, with the inherent limitations they CHOSE to adopt, could opt for.

Seldom in the annals of modern warfare has such stupidity been displayed by such key people for so long.....

Watch the video....


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## GrauGeist (Nov 7, 2018)

The one thing that the Germans did get right, was the StuG III/IV
Easy and inexpensive to manufacture, modest maintenance requirements, good deployment qualities and very effective in both anti-tank and assault roles.

Reactions: Agree Agree:
2 | Like List reactions


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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> I am of the opinion that the Germans could have upgraded the Pz IV and mass produced it. While it does suffer from the typical German "Box Tank" syndrome, a little thicker armor, the long 75 mm and a more powerful engine may have helped alleviate German panzer issues mid war. It's easier said than done I know, but the Pz IV would have been a pretty good departure point for something to counter the larger numbers of Sherman's and T-34's.
> 
> Also as far as the Sherman, it was intended as an infantry support tank, not to go head to head with enemy armor on a consistent basis. That it could and did speaks pretty highly of its initial design and upgrades. Also the 75 mm was kept (too long in my opinion) because of durability and it had a very respectable HE round good v infantry. Although in my research I find crews really liked the 105 mm equipped models for the upgraded firepower, albeit at the cost of number of rounds carried.
> 
> Just my $.02.



A lot of this is not quite as simple as it seems. The MK IV was getting pretty close to maxed out as it was. The first 200 or so went 19 tons or under. and the H went 25 tons.
Wider track is heavier track, a more powerful engine will burn more fuel. The Mk IV J added fuel by taking out the power traverse for the turret. There isn't any more volume inside the hull for more powerful power plants (the engine may not be much bigger but you need bigger radiators/fans)
I am not sure the MK IV suspension was really that good for high speed.
Turret was already cramped with the L/48 gun.

Yes a few things could have done but the MK IV was an old tank.

Some of these comparisons get a little simplistic. The Sherman for all it's *simplicity and standardization* used 5 different engines ( Ok one of them was not that common). It used welded hulls and cast hulls and hybrid hulls some of which came in two different lengths depending on engine, it used three different transmission housings (nose piece) and two different hull fronts even on the welded hulls. Two different suspensions and several different turrets and/or gun mounts.
I would also note that the 105mm versions had the power traverse system removed due to space considerations.

And here we hit a difference of opinion. Shermans are considered good infantry support tanks and they held almost twice the amount of machine gun ammo as a MK IV tank and ten times the amount of machine gun ammo as a Stug III (and twice the cannon ammo) and yet the Stug III is considered by fans to be a good infantry support vehicle. On the MK IV and Sherman 
There are two machine guns that can be fired from within the vehicle unlike the Stug. 
The Stug was a good self propelled AT gun with the long barrel, it was not a tank.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 7, 2018)

Interestingly enough, the StuG started out as mobile artillery for infantry support. By the start of Barbarossa, they transitioned to both mobile Artillery and Ad-Hoc Anti-tank roles.
The value was seen in the StuG's ability to engage enemy tanks as a supplement to the armored units, so the transition was made.
With the StuG IV, it did receive a 7.92 MG34 and was up-gunned with the PaK42 and there was provisions for more ammunition storage.

The Stug (both versions) have an impressive kill record for not being an actual tank, not many mobile artillery vehicles can match that record.


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## parsifal (Nov 8, 2018)

I don’t have any argument that the mkIV was approaching obsolescence, as was the Sherman, T-34, Churchill and bunch of other tanks. However against the opposition it was facing the MkIV was good enough in 1943-4, ie when it mattered, to achieve exchange rates of over 7:1 . That means a number of things. One of them is that at the time of decision it was still good enough to win battles. Moreover the exchange rate of the MkIV versus its opposition, to the later supposedly more advanced types like the panther and tiger, the mkIV was no more vulnerable than either of those later tanks. The reason for that is because of the poor reliability of the uber tank park.

Parshall mentions that T-34s were built to a low standard of finish because of the short life span of these tanks….perhaps 6months I think he mentions, with a few days life expectancy once in battle. I can accept that, and I note he makes no attempt to look at the life expectancy of German tanks. He does say that the Germans spent a lot of time and resources on the quality of the finishes, which can only be justified if the expectation was that their tanks would have a relatively long shelf life. There is no complete study to determine what the shelf life of German tanks actually was, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem to be very long, which suggests that this mania on QA was a wasted effort. If the tank is going to be lost in a short space of time, what is the port about worrying how well it is finished. The standard of finish is irrelevant if the tank is only going to last a few months at most.

The anecdotal evidence that I can think include the following…..during the opening months of Barbarossa, the Germans crossed the border with 3500 MBTs (which at that time included a large number of obsolete light tanks) Within 60 days according to Christian Ankerstjerne, ran to somewhere between 15 and 22% unrecoverable losses ….say 18%, or 10% of the force structure per month.

During Kursk, to the 23 August, , German tank losses amounted to 1200 AFVs from a total of 3500 committed. A loss rate of 21% per month. However the losses amongst the Uber tank formations were much higher than compared to the overall sample.

During the fighting at Metz in late 1944, US forces discovered that the tanks that they had destroyed (Panthers) were less than a fortnight old

Tigers used in the Ardennes were not more than a month old when committed. The majority of these tanks ended up lost or abandoned.


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## Peter Gunn (Nov 8, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> A lot of this is not quite as simple as it seems. The MK IV was getting pretty close to maxed out as it was. The first 200 or so went 19 tons or under. and the H went 25 tons.
> Wider track is heavier track, a more powerful engine will burn more fuel. The Mk IV J added fuel by taking out the power traverse for the turret. There isn't any more volume inside the hull for more powerful power plants (the engine may not be much bigger but you need bigger radiators/fans)
> I am not sure the MK IV suspension was really that good for high speed.
> Turret was already cramped with the L/48 gun.
> ...



I never said the Mk IV was a panacea, but sticking to a proven design might have alleviated some of the issues Germany's panzer forces faced. I'm well aware of the Pz IV's shortcomings, I just maintain an extra several thousand of them would have been a better bargain than a thousand Tigers.

Re: the Sherman, yes, it had welded and cast hulls, Chrysler Multibank's, Continental R-974's, General Motors GM-6046's, Ford GAA's and Wright RD-1820's. It had different suspensions and lengths as you say, not to mention different hatch placement and size. I say that was the brilliance of the initial designers/engineers either by luck or choice that the design could be adapted to changing technology and still be mass produced.

I'm not sure where we have a difference of opinion (your last paragraph). I totally agree, the Sherman was an excellent infantry support tank (it should be, that was what it was designed for). And the removal of the power traverse system for the 105 mm equipped model was cause for a major complaints from combat crews, but in today's vernacular... Dat 105 yo'.

I'd also note that although the Sherman indeed did have different hulls, hatches, guns, suspensions, engines etc., it was still incredibly reliable/dependable/useful and in my humble opinion, qualifies as one of the best tanks of WWII.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 8, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Interestingly enough, the StuG started out as mobile artillery for infantry support. By the start of Barbarossa, they transitioned to both mobile Artillery and Ad-Hoc Anti-tank roles.
> The value was seen in the StuG's ability to engage enemy tanks as a supplement to the armored units, so the transition was made.
> With the StuG IV, it did receive a 7.92 MG34 and was up-gunned with the PaK42 and there was provisions for more ammunition storage.
> 
> The Stug (both versions) have an impressive kill record for not being an actual tank, not many mobile artillery vehicles can match that record.




The long barreled Stugs didn't show up until March of 1942 and the short barrel ones were pretty crappy AT weapons. 
The ability to move from one threatened area to another or to rapidly shift firing positions compared to towed AT guns was huge advantage. The low silhouette and thicker armor than the open topped SP AT guns was also an advantage. 
Only the Russians really built comparable vehicles in any numbers. The US going off on it's own tangent of turreted tank destroyers. 

A fair number of mobile artillery vehicles didn't carry guns suitable for anti-tank work. And anti-tank guns don't make very good general artillery support weapons. As partially shown by the German production of around 1200 10.5CM Sturmhaubitze 42s. (Stugs with 105mm howitzers) Requirement came out in 1941. due to delays (and the need for SP AT guns?) production only really got under way in March of 1943.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 8, 2018)

parsifal said:


> I don’t have any argument that the mkIV was approaching obsolescence, as was the Sherman, T-34, Churchill and bunch of other tanks. However against the opposition it was facing the MkIV was good enough in 1943-4, ie when it mattered, to achieve exchange rates of over 7:1 . That means a number of things. One of them is that at the time of decision it was still good enough to win battles. Moreover the exchange rate of the MkIV versus its opposition, to the later supposedly more advanced types like the panther and tiger, the mkIV was no more vulnerable than either of those later tanks. The reason for that is because of the poor reliability of the uber tank park.
> 
> Parshall mentions that T-34s were built to a low standard of finish because of the short life span of these tanks….perhaps 6months I think he mentions, with a few days life expectancy once in battle. I can accept that, and I note he makes no attempt to look at the life expectancy of German tanks. He does say that the Germans spent a lot of time and resources on the quality of the finishes, which can only be justified if the expectation was that their tanks would have a relatively long shelf life. There is no complete study to determine what the shelf life of German tanks actually was, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem to be very long, which suggests that this mania on QA was a wasted effort. If the tank is going to be lost in a short space of time, what is the port about worrying how well it is finished. The standard of finish is irrelevant if the tank is only going to last a few months at most.
> .



Tanks in general have lousy service lives, at least without constant repair. To pick on the British (mainly because I can remember a few stories) the Matilda II sometimes burned out it's steering clutches in 600 miles. It was considered a near miracle (or at least worthy of note) when some Valentines in NA made 1500 miles on one set of tracks. ANd that was with one of more links taken out because the track (all metal) had stretched beyond the capability of the track tension system to take up the slack. 

The Russians had a different mind set. To them the tanks (and some other weapons) were semi disposable because they felt it was easier to build new ones than repair old ones in the field. Tanks were recovered/repaired but not to the extent the Germans/British/Americans did at a unit level (depending on the size of the unit) This may have reduced the need for technical specialists to be spread over a number of units with the accompanying repair equipment. 
The Germans and the Russians had different logistics than the US and British (except for the Germans in NA) in that they _could _load broken down tanks on rail cars and ship them to rear areas (in not the original factories ) for overhaul/repair. This may have helped overload teh rail system but I don't think the rail cars were operating at 100% capacity leaving the front.
For the US and British trying to return broken down tanks to the original factories required multiple moves including ships.

In NA there was considerable importance placed on who held the battlefield at the end of the fighting as that side got salvage their broken down/mildly damaged vehicles to return them to service for the next round of combat while the side that retreated did not get that advantage and all losses form what ever cause had to made up by resupply. 

Most tanks/vehicles have a certain amount of stretch (or capacity to be overloaded?) and a late model MK IV at 25 tons was 30% heavier than the early ones. Shermans and T-34s at 28-30 tons were just starting out and as later development showed, where capable of operating (being stretched) to 35-39 tons. Although some of the post war Sherman modifications only kept the hull and replaced almost everything else. 

Planning and actual use in combat often get complicated by what the enemy does or does not do. The Russians, due to circumstances, failed to improve the T-34 very quickly (more in the areas of vision and turret ergonomics than engines/guns/armor) which kept the T-34 from performing anywhere near it's theoretical potential. This enabled the Germans to fight it with tanks/vehicles that weren't as good as may have been possible. 
The two man turret being a major handicap.
After their experiences in Poland and later France the Germans placed great store in visibility and tried to put cupolas with multiple vision blocks on many AFVs Early stugs do not have them, later ones do. No cupola is as good as having the head out the hatch but having 6-8 vision blocks beats trying to turn a periscope around in circles trying to keep up with the tactical situation. Stugs had a driver, a gunner, a commander and a loader. The T-34 had a driver, a hull gunner/radio man? and in the turret the commander was either the gunner or the loader (there was some swapping back and forth between certain models) which meant when the gun was firing the commander was not commanding the tank, that is selecting the next target, spotting threats or telling the driver where (and how) to move. It took until 1943 to get a turret with a cupola for the commander so the tank wasn't driving around near blind if the hatches were shut. 
I would note that the British had cupolas on their early tanks and then stopped using them for several years in the interest of low silhouette (or railroad loading gauge?) and the early Shermans didn't have one either although the smaller hatch cover/s made things easier for the commander than the T-34 hatch. 

How long the Germans could _depend_ on the Allies to use tanks with crappy vision/command capability is certainly subject to question.


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## mikewint (Nov 8, 2018)

The inferiority of American tanks led to some of the worst setbacks of the war, prolonging it in Europe. US tankers ultimately prevailed, but over 60,000 armored division soldiers were killed and wounded;

According to British historian Sir Max Hastings, “no single Allied failure had more important consequences on the European battlefield than the lack of tanks with adequate punch and protection.” The Sherman, he added, was one of the Allies’ “greatest failures.”
*How could American and British industries produce a host of superb aircraft, an astonishing variety of radar equipment, the proximity fuse, the DUKW, the jeep, yet still ask their armies to join battle against the Wehrmacht equipped with a range of tanks utterly inferior in armor and killing power?*

The distinguished American historian Dr. Russell Weigley made a similar argument.
“Perhaps the most questionable element in American ground fighting power was the American tank,” he wrote. “[The Sherman] was inferior to the German Panther as well as to the heavier Tiger in always every respect save endurance, including armament and defensive armor.”
Dr. Weigley noted that the US, went all through the Second World War refusing “to develop, until too late to do much good, heavier tanks comparable to the German Tigers and Panthers, let alone the Royal Tiger or the Russian Stalin.”

After debacles like Sidi-bou-Zid, Kasserine Pass and El Guettar, General Dwight Eisenhower admitted in a private February 1943 letter to U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, that “we don’t yet know exactly how to handle the Mark VI [Tiger] tank.”

The US military was stuck in a doctrinal debate over the role of tanks: Were tanks to focus on “soft” targets in the enemy’s rear, like trucks and light armor, using hit and run tactics? Were they slow rolling pillboxes, used to support infantry assaults? Or should American tanks go looking for a fight, boldly seeking out the enemy’s heavy armor to slug it out one-on-one?

In November 1943, even after disasters in North Africa and Tunisia, Chief of Army Ground Forces, General Leslie McNair insisted that the Sherman would deliver victory.
“I see no reason to alter our previous stand…that we should defeat Germany by use of the M4 series of medium tanks,” he wrote. “There have been no factual developments overseas, so far as I know, to challenge the superiority of the M4 Sherman.”

But tank crews actually fighting in the Sherman knew better. The Battle of the Bulge exposed deficiencies in the M4 so glaringly obvious, what became known as the Sherman Tank Scandal would be splashed across front pages all over the Allied world.

“Whoever was responsible for supplying the army with tanks is guilty of supplying material inferior to its enemy counterpart for at least two years or more,” one an angry armored cavalry lieutenant told the New York Times in March 1945. “How anyone can escape punishment for neglecting such a vital weapon of war is beyond me.”
The young officer didn’t stop there:
*I am a tank platoon leader, at present recovering from wounds received during the Battle of the Bulge. Since I have spent three years in a tank platoon doing everything, and at one time or another held every position and have read everything on armor I could get my hands on during this time, I would like to get this off my chest. No statement, claim, or promise made by any part of the Army can justify thousands of dead and wounded tank men, or thousands of others who depended on the tank for support.*

To Corporal Francis Vierling of the U.S. Second Armored Division, “the Sherman’s greatest deficiency lies in its firepower, which is most conspicuous by its absence.” He continued:
*Lack of a principal gun with sufficient penetrating ability to knock out the German opponent has cost us more tanks, and skilled men to man more tanks, than any failure of our crews- not to mention the heartbreak and sense of defeat I and other men have felt when we see twenty-five or even many more of our rounds fired, and they ricochet off the enemy attackers. To be finally hit, once, and we climb from and leave a burning, blackened, and now useless pile of scrap iron. It would yet have been a tank, had it mounted a gun.*

Yet for top Allied commanders, the official position was that the M4 Sherman was the right tank at the right time. It seemed that at the highest political and military levels, the fix was in.
“We have nothing to fear from Tiger and Panther tanks,” insisted British general Bernard Montgomery, even as Allied troops in the summer of 1944 were stricken by the “Tiger Terror” in Normandy. “We have had no difficulty in dealing with German armor.”

Later, when the Ardennes Offensive led by German Panzers forced the Sherman Tank Scandal onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Ordnance, General Lewin Campbell, doubled down on the whitewash.
“We need not only have no apology for any item of American ordnance in comparison with that of the enemy,” he stated in February 1945, “but we’re leading them all the way.”

At Aberdeen Proving Ground, Colonel George Jarrett, one of the U.S. Army’s most respected ordnance experts, was often in “hot water” for his refusal to “toe the line” and lie to the civilian press about how American tanks stacked up against the enemy’s. Privately, he damned the army bureaucracy’s “refusal to realistically face tank facts…our blind refusal to face the truth of the situation,” in spite of what he called an ongoing “sales program” of propaganda.
“We are little better off than at El Alamein,” he wrote in early 1945.
While German tank technology had advanced as the war progressed, to Colonel Jarrett, the U.S. effort was “always the same story.”
“I’ve seen this day by day,” he fumed. “We never beat Jerry, but catch up to last year’s model, next year.”

*Quantity vs. quality *— Allied factories produced nearly 50,000 Shermans during World War Two and the Russians produced over 35,000 T-34s, over 23,000 T-34-85s and over 3,000 KV-1s and 4,000 IS-2s. By comparison, Germany manufactured just 6,000 Panthers, 1,300 Tigers and just 500 Tiger IIs.

Certainly, the Sherman was a decent design, simple to build in large numbers and maintain, easily transported, adaptable to multiple roles and mechanically reliable. But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armor protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three.
“We were never able to build a tank as good as the German tank,” recalled General Lucius Clay, “But we made so many of them, it really didn’t matter.”

As a German officer noted, “I was on this hill with six 88mm antitank guns…Every time they sent a tank, we knocked it out. Finally we ran out of ammunition, but the Americans didn’t run out of tanks.”

In the end QUANTITY triumphed. German kill ratios were inconsequential. At 20:1 the Germans still lose the war of production.


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## Peter Gunn (Nov 8, 2018)

Amazon product

Just a suggestion, more grounded in fact than ancedotes.

Also this link is a quick analysis of the book. Sound and Fury: A Review of Armored Thunderbolt by Steven Zaloga — Unity of Command

No, the Sherman wasn't perfect and yes indeed had flaws, comparing it to a Tiger (which it rarely saw) or a Panther is misleading, vs a Pz IV, that's a different story, not to mention tactics, spotting and who's doing the attacking.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 8, 2018)

Tanks are never going to be invulnerable to all the enemies weapons, at least not for very long. 

My opinion is that there is some element of truth of both sides of the Sherman question. It was a very good tank in some ways, however nobody else was standing still and for the Sherman to be thought sufficient in the fall of 1944, two years after it's combat debut again shows that they depending on the enemy NOT to develop better tanks or still thinking the tank destroyer doctrine actually worked. 

The use of the tank destroyer doctrine also relies (somewhat) on the enemy doing what you expect/want him to do which is hardly a realistic expectation. Speed is not armor and ripping most of the armor off a Sherman chassis doesn't give you enough speed to amount to anything anyway. The gun in the M-10 was only bit better than the one in the MK IV or Stugs or any other tracked German 75mm AT gun. 

There was technically no reason that large numbers of Sherman's could not have been built with 76mm guns and the better turret that went with it. There was no technical reason that an HE shell of similar performance to the one in 75mm gun could not have been used at a similar velocity to the 75mm gun, it required a different aiming mark in the sight and a bit more training. 
They built two different M-36 tank destroyers, one of which used a Sheman hull with the 90mm turret dropped into the turret ring. So the possibility of building a closed top turret with the 90mm gun existed. 

In Korea there were two different opinions on the M4 and the M26/46. When the North Koreans had T-34/85s the bigger tanks were preferred. Once the supply of T-34/85s was reduced to tiny numbers the M4 was prefered for it's better mobility. 

being the tank of choice when the enemy doesn't have tanks is not very high praise.


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## parsifal (Nov 8, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Tanks in general have lousy service lives, at least without constant repair. To pick on the British (mainly because I can remember a few stories) the Matilda II sometimes burned out it's steering clutches in 600 miles. It was considered a near miracle (or at least worthy of note) when some Valentines in NA made 1500 miles on one set of tracks. ANd that was with one of more links taken out because the track (all metal) had stretched beyond the capability of the track tension system to take up the slack.
> 
> The Russians had a different mind set. To them the tanks (and some other weapons) were semi disposable because they felt it was easier to build new ones than repair old ones in the field. Tanks were recovered/repaired but not to the extent the Germans/British/Americans did at a unit level (depending on the size of the unit) This may have reduced the need for technical specialists to be spread over a number of units with the accompanying repair equipment.
> The Germans and the Russians had different logistics than the US and British (except for the Germans in NA) in that they _could _load broken down tanks on rail cars and ship them to rear areas (in not the original factories ) for overhaul/repair. This may have helped overload teh rail system but I don't think the rail cars were operating at 100% capacity leaving the front.
> ...



This rather misses the point....

Tanks were a consumer item for all the combatants. Germany had numerous deep seated problems in their production apparatus that were not easily solved, but at the same time they had the greatest industrial potential (with the exception of the US), and yet failed to capitalise on that. moreover the inherent weaknesses in their industrial base related to the poor layout of their factories....small size, bad design, inadequate machinery and tooling. Weakneses that were yelling at the top of their collective lungs...."simplified design!!!!!!". Make stuff that was simple, with relatively easy production, and then you can use your antiquated factory system to its best and fullest capacity. Germany ignored all that. Instead of settling on simple easy to produce designs, they opted for the most complicated hard to produce designs. Which took an already antiquated, inefficient vehicle manufacture base and made it even worse. 

Furthermore, all nations suffered heavy attrition in their tank parks. There was no appreciable difference that I can see for the finely finished German products and the Russian models. A tank was doing well, from any nationality, if it remained in service for 6-12 months depending on nationaility. Tanks that had some reliability issues, like the tiger, tended to have high losses to attrition (as a percentage of the forcer structure) . 

There is no appreciable difference in the Kill/loss ratios of MkIVs and the Kill/loss ratios of other heavier tanks. Overall, those newer experimental types suffered heavier losses overall due to attrition. The simple math should make it bleedingly obvious......if the MkIV could kill just as many tanks as the Tiger, was 4 times as easy to build, about twice as reliable, where on earth is the justification for switching or prioritising the Tigers production. Add to that diabolical mix the german mania to build Mercedes standard AFVs when Ford standard was all that was needed, and the ridiculousness of the German build choices sheets home very forcefully. in a word, they blew it...... 

The second part of the problem is this mania to worry about tomorrow when the crisis was today. When you are up against it and have an immediate crisis, you don't go off on a tangent, designing and building the vehicles that you MIGHT need in two or three years time. You worry about the crisis at hand here and now. That is precisely what the Russians did, and it saved them. It is precisely what the Germans didn't do, and they lost the war because of it. It wasn't just in Tank production, but tanks were one of the worst areas that they performed in. In 1942-3, concentrating on making improvements to existing designs was far better than going off on a tangent to build a new range of tanks (same for aircraft), that proved to be failures just at the time they were needed to make a difference. If in 1942, the Germans had concentrated solely on the MkIV and SGIII, they would have had many more tanks with which to fight than they did. They had diverted resources for 206 Tigers (they didn't get 206 tigers) and 400 Panthers 9again they didn't get 400 Panthers). If those same resources had remained allocated to mkIV production, it is quite reasonable to extrapolate an additional 1600 tanks for Kursk alone....more than enough to defeat the Russians, turn back the allies in Sicily and prevent the Soviet counteroffensives as well. More than enough to meet the various threats that confronted them at the time of Kursk. more than enough to fight and win the attritional battle they needed to fight in 1942-3. Once the front had been stabilised and the Russians fought to .a standstill there may then have been a bit of time in which to think about improved designed, or better yet, discussing peace terms 

Arguing that the Tiger was justified on the basis of what the Russians might have in the pipeline is unsupportable. Russians, US and even the British all opted for standardised designs, churning out the same product for long production runs. Compare this to the German effort. In the case of the Tiger, there were no less than 157 major changes to the design, most of them carried out whilst on the line. moreover the gradual improvements were not done in block production.....an instruction would be received, caling for such and such a change, forcing production to a halt whilst the changes in the production lines were worked out and in many cases retrofitted. 157 detail changes averages out at a change every 6th or 7th tank, . And for what????? Im willing to bet the bank those detail changes made no measurable difference to the combat performance of the basic product. Compare that with the way the Russian or the Americans went about prioritorising their production, then compare the relative performance of each production model. A lot is made of the high attrition inflictyed on the Russians and the US forces, yet as a percentage of their force structures, neither of these armies suffered the catastrophic attrition to the same extent as the heer in '43-'44. Plain and imple it gets down to the numbers. Germany was never going to win the numbers game on a one on one basis, but then she didn't need to. An armoured force designed around the MkIV would achieve exchange rates of around 7:1 in 1943, whilst a force structure designed around a force of tigers will achieve an exchange rate of about the same....the difference is the numbers. A force structure for MkIV/Tigers at 70/20, would be replaced by an all mkIV force structure exceeding 150 vehicles . The killing ability of the 70/20 model might be 630 enemy AFVs, whilst the all MkIV structure has a potential killing ability of over 1000.....


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## GrauGeist (Nov 8, 2018)

To add to Parsifal's post, when Germany restarted their tank program in the mid-30's, the two companies that were excluded from the Bidding process were Ford Germany and Opel, both of whom had the best ability to mass produce a product.
Several companies that were awarded contracts had never built tanks before, either.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 9, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Arguing that the Tiger was justified on the basis of what the Russians might have in the pipeline is unsupportable. *Russians, US and even the British* all opted for s*tandardised designs, churning out the same product for long production runs*.



Really?
for the British we have the the whole sorry litany of the cruiser tanks, Starting with the acceptable (for the time) A-9 and very good (for the time A-13) we go on to the standardized A 13 MK III which was built to the tune of over 1700 tanks, standardized (?) three major versions, all unsuitable for combat. Helping train British tankers was its contribution. Followed by the Crusader (A-15) which went through 3 major variations. Followed by the Cavalier (A-24) 500 built, never used in service as a gun tank, and the similar but not identical Centaur?Cromwell with 950 (?)of the Liberty engined Centaurs being built. (some of which were re-engined into Cromwells but that didn't waste any manufacturing capacity did it?) and 3,066 (?) Cromwells 
4 marks of Centaurs and 8 Mks of Cromwells covering different guns but do not cover the .....ahem....6 different hull types, it was quite possible to have one MK type with several different hull types. and finally the A34 Comet.
for small production runs we can add the Avenger and the Challenger. 

going over to the "I" tanks (those breakthrough/assault/infantry tanks that nobody needed) we have the A-9 with armor so thin it was shuffled over to the Cruiser classification despite it's 15mph top speed. The A 11 Matilda, the A12 Maltida I, The Valentine ( 11 Marks) and the A22 Churchill (10 or 11 Marks not including re-works?) were pretty much that branch of _production_ tanks but with such prototypes as the Vickers Valiant, The A-33 (Cromwell with an extra 10 tons of armor, wider tracks and slower speed) and Black Prince the British can hardly escape the charge of "tinkering".

British tank production and the word 'standardized' barely belong in the same paragraph let alone sentence. 



> Compare this to the German effort. In the case of the Tiger, there were no less than *157 major changes* to the design, most of them carried out whilst on the line. moreover the gradual improvements were not done in block production.....an instruction would be received, caling for such and such a change, forcing production to a halt whilst the changes in the production lines were worked out and in many cases retrofitted. *157 detail changes* averages out at a change every 6th or 7th tank, ...



was it 157 major changes or 157 detail changes or 157 of each?

changes like Sept 1942 when they added a track cable to the side?

One of the four changes given for Oct 1942,
a shovel was added to the glacis plate. That must have taken dozens of man hours per tank. 

Or June of 1943 when they stopped fitting the smoke candle dischargers? 

Yeah, I cherry picked. 
But no such list seems to exist for allied tanks and as noted before, the Sherman was hardly the example of "standardization" some people think. A late 1944 Sherman had quite a number of detail changes from a 1942 Sherman (like the deletion of the two fixed .30 cal guns in the hull) 

2nd Sherman off the production line





M4A3E8





same tank, right?
no major changes or even detail changes? 

I will agree that the Tiger was expensive and difficult to produce. But I don't believe, based on what I have seen so far, that it was ever intended to be a general issue tank and was more of a special purpose tank, a bit like this tank.




up to 254 built? Mainly because they realized the M-26 wasn't going to be available for the invasion of Europe. 

The British at one point had 8500 of these on order in the US, T14




weight 84,000lbs. Project was finally cancelled in Dec of 1944 after existing on the fringes since early 1942, of the two prototypes one did wind up in England. 

The Tiger I was forced into role/s it was not intended for. 
The German heavy tank program however was not at all well managed and encompassed a lot more that the Henschel Tiger. That Porsche was allowed to build about 90 competing tanks (with twin V-10 engines and electric drive) that were turned into the Ferdinand self propelled gun was a colossal duplication of effort that accomplished very little. The Tiger II should have been seen as taking all the bad points of the Tiger I and amplifying them. The even larger heavy tanks were a total waste. 
And the Panther was larger/heavier than it needed to be. 

Tanks a bit like aircraft, you can't wait until there is a crisis to come up with a new model. You do have to plan ahead as things like transmissions/steering gear and suspensions take a bit more work to get right than many people think.


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## parsifal (Nov 9, 2018)

watch the video and argue with Parshall. he is just one of the best experts on this verytopic


Even small changes to the design will bring the production line to a halt whilst the installation procedures are figured outgiven the way the Henschel plant was organised. The big players made changes using the block system, and incorporated multiple lines to ensure that there was never any disruption to production. this was not done in the case of the Germans

Regarding the british, they admittedly were less well organised than the American and the Russians. Despite this, with only 60% of the German production potential, they managed to turn out about the same number of tanks as the Germans. no-one was as disorganised as the germans.

With regard to Panzer Division TOE, even if you don't want to accept the planned addition of Tigers to each and every line division, surely you accept that by 1944,the planned TOE was at least half the division equipped with the Panther....a tank that whilst better than the Tiger, still suffered the same basic issues of over engineering, excessive complexity,, rushed development and poor reliability.

Here is a link that sets out the 'Type" TOE for 1944 Panzer Division\

Panzer-Division 1944

But the Germans certainly did plan to incorporate a heavy tank component into their standard divisional TOE. The Entwicklung series, dating back to 1943, was basically a rationalisation of Guderians reconstruction plan also dating back to 1943. The final draft of this plan, set out the parameters of the Type'45 division, and this included a plan to attach a heavy tank or tank destroyer bn equipped with E-100 chassis, basically replacing the planned Tiger attachments that had never eventuated. The E-100 was basically a strengthened Panther chassis with initially a long barrelled 88mm but eventually a 128mm gun.

Whichever way you want to digest it, the introduction of new types was going to affect availability. the constant tinkering with designs would slow down deliveries from an already inefficient production system. The reliance on experimental types, not properly worked up was always going to increase losses and decrease serviceability. In its favour, the introduction of heavier chassis, with bigger guns is going to increase lethality and onfield survivability. It is worth noting that Tiger Tanks and their associated TDs managed to destroy over 10000 enemy tanks whilst losing only 2000 of their own. Impressive, but still not worth the effort.

Regarding the changes to the Sherman and T-34, I am aware that changes were made to both tanks. In the case of the Sherman, there were never less than 5 plants building them, several with more than one line and plenty of room on the floor to move "special" tanks to one side to make changes to individual types. Moreover, as I understand it, both the Russians and US would "save up" the changes they wanted to make, applying those changes in block. It would be interesting to find out how many changes were introduced, how many blocks they were assigned to and work out the average run size between stoppages. I am willing to bet that no matter how many changes were made, there would be bigger gaps in the series between those changes as compared to the tiger. The Germans did not employ blocks in their production runs....an order for a change would be handed to the line and that change had to be made immediately. It took an already inneffieicient system and made it laughable really.. Because of the inherent cramped line design and limited floor space, there was nowhere to "shunt off" chassis whilst they were altered and mass production techniques adapted to suit the new change. because of this, even small changes like the addition of a spade could bring the line to a standstill .

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## taly01 (Nov 9, 2018)

> In the case of the Tiger, there were no less than *157 major changes* to the design, most of them carried out whilst on the line...........


IMHO this means the Tiger I became a well sorted design, the Tiger I could destroy any tank and take a hit from most, Otto Carius's book on his Tiger experiences is very interesting and he praises the tank and says the later ones were better, especially with the horizontally pivoting commanders hatch that reduced height profile. The success of german tanks is mostly due these kind of practical combat refinements, something the US had to learn with the Sherman.

The Tiger II was a wunderwaffe along the wrong path, even the Panther was a very large and expensive solution rather than a clever one. To see how good a battlefield tank a PzIV was look at this for the profile difference! add to that high quality gunnery optics and a reliable crew intercom.


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## tomo pauk (Nov 9, 2018)

After 'encoutering' the Tiger in many of publications, some better reserached than the other, my humble conclusion is that Tiger's main shortcoming was that there was not enough of them.
For flawed German tanks, see Panther ( armor and gun of medium tank coupled with size and weight of heavy tank) and Tiger II.

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## Shortround6 (Nov 9, 2018)

parsifal said:


> With regard to Panzer Division TOE, even if you don't want to accept the planned addition of Tigers to each and every line division, surely you accept that by 1944,the planned TOE was at least half the division equipped with the Panther....a tank that whilst better than the Tiger, still suffered the same basic issues of over engineering, excessive complexity,, rushed development and poor reliability..



I don't accept the planned addition of Tiger Is to each and every line Panzer division because I have never read that was the intention, let alone it never happened. 
I have never denied the intention to use the Panther as a standard tank. And from what I have read the mix of Panthers and MK IVs in the TOE that you provided was an admission that they were never going to get to their dream of all Panther divisions. 

This argument gets a bit sideways in that some people are including all the German heavy tanks in one group and covering a span of years (5-6?) in German planning/intentions as to what kind of heavy tanks were needed and in what numbers. Size/weight of the tanks tended to go up with time to the ridiculous as the Germans ability to actually produce large tanks in large numbers dropped sharply. 

I try to keep my arguments to the Tiger I, while it started that branch of German tank development (after several prototypes) and the order to start design work was given in May of 1941 so the requirements/characteristics had nothing to do with combat experience against Russian tanks. It also shows part of the lead time needed to get a new tank into production. It was based off an earlier prototype that was smaller and lighter but used the same transmission design (8 forward and 4 reverse) similar suspension and a much larger V12 engine than the standard German tanks. It was planned to use a taper bore 75mm to 55mm cannon for good armour penetration (truly lousy HE) but since it depended totally on tungsten carbide ammunition the gun was canceled and the much larger 88mm was substituted to keep the armor penetration required. 

We have argued about it's role. My contention being that it was a breakthrough or assault tank and was never intended for long range, deeppenetrain operation. What it wound up being used for is another story. Often rushed from one operational area to another as a fire brigade to counter russian offensives. they racked up much higher mileage than intended with the associated break downs. I have include some of those heavily armoured Sherman variants to show that this breakthrough/assault tank idea was not limited to Germany but was considered and implemented by the other major tank powers. And in all cases they had similar problems with speed/range/mobility and breakdowns. Singling out th eTiger I for having those flaws seems a bit unfair. 

As the war went on requirements changed, the tactical situation changed and the strategic situation changed. What made sense (or was at least understandable) in 1941/42 was no longer what was needed in late 1943 and 1944. This is where the German programs tended go of off track, Since the Tiger I worked (or appeared to work) the Germans didn't seem to take a long hard look at it but went with the more is better approach. 56 ton good, 75 ton tank must be better. 

German production was also affected by those nuisance raids by the RAF and American bombers (sarcasm) in 1943/44. 



> But the Germans certainly did plan to incorporate a heavy tank component into their standard divisional TOE. The Entwicklung series, dating back to 1943, was basically a rationalisation of Guderians reconstruction plan also dating back to 1943. The final draft of this plan, set out the parameters of the Type'45 division, and this included a plan to attach a heavy tank or tank destroyer bn equipped with E-100 chassis, basically replacing the planned Tiger attachments that had never eventuated. The E-100 was basically a strengthened Panther chassis with initially a long barrelled 88mm but eventually a 128mm gun.
> 
> Whichever way you want to digest it, the introduction of new types was going to affect availability. the constant tinkering with designs would slow down deliveries from an already inefficient production system. The reliance on experimental types, not properly worked up was always going to increase losses and decrease serviceability. In its favour, the introduction of heavier chassis, with bigger guns is going to increase lethality and onfield survivability. It is worth noting that Tiger Tanks and their associated TDs managed to destroy over 10000 enemy tanks whilst losing only 2000 of their own. Impressive, but still not worth the effort.
> .



BY late 1944 and 1945 any idea of incorporating numbers of heavy tanks into a "standard' division was delusional, but so were a lot of German plans in the last year of the war.
However applying the thinking (or lack of it) in 1944 to what was going on in 1941/42 may not give a good picture. 


I have seen comparisons of the MK IV to the Sherman and T-34 in which the MK IV is criticized for going through 16 (?)different models while the Sherman and T-34 are said to go through much less. This paints a rather distorted picture as the MK IV only went through 10 gun tank models and 3 of them were before the first T-34 ever came off the production line and 5 models were before the first M4 left a production line. And the Sherman was an M3 with a new upper hull and turret, not a completely new tank and we have seen the multiplicity of models that the M4 covered. 

I am not saying that German tank production didn't have problems, it did. However a lot of the examples or explanations don't make sense.


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## mikewint (Nov 9, 2018)

The Sherman tank was a “good enough” tank. They were produced in huge numbers faster than the “superior” German tanks/AT guns could kill them. Many early Sherman ‘kills’ were due to poor (dry) ammo storage. When converted to ‘wet’ storage fires decreased by 75%, although many Sherman tank crews still kept rounds ‘dry’ on the tank floor in order to maintain a high rate of fire. Another factor seldom mentioned is the role played by poor US anti-tank doctrine as perpetuated by General Lesley McNair. In his opinion, tanks were not to be used against other tanks. Thus Sherman tank crews were issued old, out-dated armor piercing ammunition.

From 1943 onward, the US military had in its possession an extremely effective anti-tank round for the 75mm cannon called the M61 APCBC.

The APCBC could actually penetrate the Tiger tank from ALL aspects (though frontal penetration was problematic) as well as the Panther. It could penetrate nearly 100mm of enemy armor from 500 yards, and over 90mm from a thousand yards. This was enough to penetrate the rear or side armor of the Tiger from the longer distance, or at a distance of 500yds, penetrate the tiger from the front. Many critics of the M4 do note that the up-gunned tanks carrying the 76mm gun could take on a tiger, yet the armor penetration of the 76mm is only 5% better than the 75mm armed with the M61 APCBC ammunition. Sadly, due to McNair’s orders, APCBC was not issued to tankers, and instead substituted with an inferior type of ammunition (The standard APC, which had 30% less penetration characteristics.

The Russians were quite a fan of the power of the Sherman’s 75mm cannon. The difference between the way the USSR employed them and the way the US did was the fact that they actually issued the M61 APCBC to their troops.
This test was performed by the Russians firing a 75 mm M3 gun from an M4A2 Sherman with M-61 and M-72 rounds at an actual captured Tiger tank:
Side, shell type M-61, distance 400 m. Result: penetration, spalling inside in an area of 300 mm by 300 mm
Side, shell type M-72, distance 625 m. Result: penetration, minor spalling on entrance and exit.
Side: shell type M-61, distance 650. Result: Penetration. Shell knocked out a cork-like section of armour.
Turret: shell type M-61, distance 650 m. Result: dent 50 mm deep, 140 mm diameter. Penetration of the turret platform.
Turret: shell type M-61, distance 650. Result: dent 40mm deep, 120mm diameter.

While these are not fantastic results they do show that the 75mm was a reasonably effective weapon with the correct ammo. It is also important to note that it is not necessary to penetrate a tank’s armor to “knock it out’. Shermans engaged Tigers and Panthers with M89 hexachloroethane smoke and M64 white phosphorus shells. The acrid smoke could be sucked into the tanks ventilation system and WP could and did start engine fires. The concussive effects of shells hitting the tank can also ‘knock out’ the crew. A number of Stuart tanks with 37mm guns defeated a Tiger in North Africa by pounding it to death with multiple hits. Tiger 131 was "killed" by a 6-pounder (57 mm) gun jamming the turret ring, making the crew abandon the tank.

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## parsifal (Nov 9, 2018)

the fact that the E-series was planned in 1943 as part of the overhaul of the panzer forces means that substantial resources were being diverted into the program from that date (1943), not 1944-45. So in reality the Germans were acting delusional as far as tank production was concerned not from 1944, but from 1942. . The E series was part of a rationalisation plan commenced after guderian was appointed the inspector generals role in 1943. the fact that you are denying it existed, despite me posting the link to show its final form makes it hard to make much progress. Buts there if you want to look at it. 

The earlier version of the E Plan was to assign one medium and one heavy tank battalion to each division. Ultimately this ended up being the Panther as the heavy component ( at least in 1944. I should say that in practice TOEs for the panzer formations tended to be highly variable, with sometimes MkIII the main types, through to Stugs and a few with Tigers more or less permantly part of the tank park ). Ive taken more or less the opposite tack to you by including all the German heavies into the one pot, mostly because they were all tarred with the same brush.... overlapping roles and very similar problems . Saying "oh that's a Panther we shouldn't be talking about that" is a nonsense to me. Tiger and Panther were both more or less in the same class, and ended up with interchangeable applications and assignments. That's certainly recognised in the E Plan, which planned to terminate tiger production and replace it with a super heavy souped up Panther really. .

I agree that that all the nations involved in WWII engaged in uparmouring and upgunning of their tanks as the war progressed. But none to the same extent as germany, and the problem for germany is that their supporting industries were badly placed to fulfil those increases in sizes. German tank manufacture was severely affected by the poor structure of their factories and manufacturing processes. It was a bigger base than the US (by comparison) for tank manufacture in 1939, but German industry did not lay the groundwork to anywhere near the levels of efficiency that were done in the US. In the USSR the organisational processes that underpinned their wartime production began prewar, but they had a different wartime experience to the US. In 1941-2, more than 35% of their available tank manufacturing capabilities were overrun, but by ruthless adjustment to their design and manufacturing techniques, they were able to reduce the manufacturing costs and production lead times for their tanks by something like 50-80%. There were some improvements in German production as well, but nothing like what the US and USSR achieved. . Quite early the Germans realised the strategic blind alley they had driven down in 1942 and were planning a simplification process for their E series tanks. One of the models, the medium E-50, was meant to be the medium tank replacement, would have reduced man hours to build by half (compared to the standard Panther...or 4timnes less production cost to a tiger) by massive reductions in the amounts of drilling and machinng required.

Trying to say that bombing (sarcastically) affected German production, fails to take into account the much larger levels of dislocation inflicted on the USSR due to much of their industrial regions being overrun and also fails to acknowledge the risks being run to US efforts by their worldwide commitments and shipping crises. It fails to acknowledge that the US at the beginning of the war, through to about May 1941 had virtually no tank building capability. The differences between the US and Russia on the one hand, and how they concentrated on organising their AFV production, and the German on the other who paid virtually no attention to the limits and capabilities of their support industry for tank production is very striking. Passing this off as "oh Germany had a few problems but we don't need to talk about that" is another nonsense to me, because that is at the heart of the problem and the main reason why I consider the tiger to be a failure. It represented the total mismatch of production capability to the design complexities of the type and the worst of what was wrong with the German tank arm. At the end even the germans themselves were tacitly acknowledging that, with their plan to terminate all Tiger production in 1945, because the design was too expensive, and too unreliable

To give some idea of the vast disparity in vehicle weight, it is reasonable to generalise and say the germans were producing tanks in the 10-20 tonne bracket. In 1942-3 they were shifting to tanks in the 25-55tonne range. by 1945 they were By 1945 they had shifted to the 45-75 tonne range and were seriously contemplating tanks in the 200 tonne range. 

By comparison, the US in the main were building in 1941, tanks in the 12-25 tonne bracket. in 1942-3, the overwhelming majority built were Shermans in the 30-35 tonne category. In 1944-5 it remained at that weight, with a handful of 40+ tonne tanks received 

Soviet tank weights were generally in the range 30-45 tonnes. Even with the acceptance of heavier tanks like the t-34/85 and IS-2, that weight range hardly moved, perhaps even dropped a bit (because of the widespread use of the T-70 chassis).

Taking the German average weight in 1941 as the index mark, indices for each of the big three in the time frames 1941, 1942-3 and 1944-5 are: Germany: 100/280/440 For the US its 120/200/210. The SU was 250/250/250. So yes, all nations engaged in uparmouring and upgunning, but none to the same extent as the Germans (well, the Russians hardly moved in weight, but the gun size went up). And the massive increases attempted by germany was something their industry was not equipped to deal with. .


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## Shortround6 (Nov 9, 2018)

I would note in the video clip that the speaker (Parshall ?) makes the common mistake or repeats it, that the US didn't swing into action in terms of production until Dec 1941. (about 33:50 in the video) and he states earlier (32:40) that the US had no factories mass producing tanks in mid 1941. This last statement is true (somewhat). _However_ Not only did the Detroit tank arsenal produce it's first pilot model M3 medium in April of 1941 so did American locomotive(685 M3s first order) and Baldwin Locomotive (545 first order M3s) and all three companies were building actual production models in Aug of 1941. What is mid 1941? 
August 1941 also saw Pressed Steel and Pullman each receive a contract for 500 tanks M3 medium tanks from the British purchasing commission. Production started later but obviously the US was not starting at zero or even close to it in Dec of 1941.
American Car & Foundry had been producing the M3 Light tank since March of 1941. Obviously it takes time to hit peak production numbers. Other companies would join the light tank program later. 

I would also note that in his talk he is sometimes referring to armoured vehicles and not tanks specifically. In that regard contracts were given to White and Autocar for M2 half tracks in Sept of 1940 and Diamond T got a contract for M3 half tracks at the same time. Production examples began to show up in May of 1941. He talks about US production ramping down in 1944, this is somewhat true. But the halt in half track production makes up a large amount of the decline. Production by all factories stopping in mid 1944.

The Americans did do a fantastic job of mass producing all sorts of things but that production wasn't done by flipping a Switch on Dec 8th 1941.


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## mikewint (Nov 9, 2018)

Tiger tanks were extremely rare. So, the chances of a Sherman actually meeting a Tiger were very slim. Only about 1500 Tiger I tanks were made. A large part was used on the Eastern Front. Probably not more than 500 Tigers would ever be in Western Europe and most likely even fewer. In comparison, some 50.000 Shermans were made. So there’s at least 100 times as many Shermans than there are Tigers on the Western front. So the odds of seeing and/or engaging one had to be quite slim.
Then add to that the tactical considerations of the Germans and the American Sherman tanks were even less likely to engage Tigers.

The first Tigers were used in Tunesia and those were all knocked out by British forces. The British forces at that time were considered by the Germans to be more dangerous, as they were highly experienced, and thus the Tigers were used against them.

Two Tiger battalions were sent to Normandy. Both were again used against the British forces. In this case, because the northern region, where the British army was deployed, was relatively open, and thus suitable for tank warfare. The southern region, where the Americans were deployed, had the bocage landscape, (pastureland divided into small hedged fields interspersed with groves of trees) which was a natural barrier against tanks. It could be defended very efficiently with infantry armed with panzerfaust, with anti-tank guns, and by tank destroyers. Only a small part of the German tank force was used there, and no Tiger tanks were employed.

After the breakout of Normandy, the German tank forces got trapped in Falaize, and were destroyed by artillery and air bombardment. No Tigers left in the West, until the Tiger II appears in the Battle of the Bulge. And those mostly got stuck on the small roads in the valleys of the Ardennes. Very few ever had a chance to get into battle.

As a result, American Shermans would hardly ever have engaged Tiger tanks. There are only 4 confirmed engagements of the US Army with Tigers. (Of course, it is difficult to confirm everything, so there were certainly were more than four engagements… but it does give an indication of how rare they were.) And this is entirely consistent with the usage of the Tigers by the Germans. The few there were, were used against the British. The handful of Tiger IIs in the Ardennes, were used against the Americans, but they hardly saw any combat at all due to the terrain and lack of fuel.

So considering all those stories of American tankers engaging Tigers and the actual rarity of the Tigers, it is almost certainly a PzKpfw-IV that was actually engaged by the Shermans. The Tiger and PzKpfw IV look very similar from the front. It’s just like all the anecdotal tales about ‘88mm guns, almost certainly they were Pak40 75mm guns.

The British Shermans certainly did engage a few Tigers. Luckily, they had the Sherman Firefly conversion, so they also had the ability to kill Tigers quite efficiently.

Which one is the Tiger??

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## Clayton Magnet (Nov 10, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> For flawed German tanks, see Panther ( armor and gun of medium tank coupled with size and weight of heavy tank) and Tiger II.


Forgive my ignorance, can you be more specific as to the problem with the Panther? from what I have read, it evolved into perhaps the best all around tank of the war. Was it a similar case as the Tiger, as in too complex for its intended role?
As well, would a diesel engine have been an advantage for the Tiger and Panther? with easier to produce, and less volatile fuel?


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## Shortround6 (Nov 10, 2018)

parsifal said:


> . Ive taken more or less the opposite tack to you by including all the German heavies into the one pot, mostly because they were all tarred with the same brush.... overlapping roles and very similar problems . Saying "oh that's a Panther we shouldn't be talking about that" is a nonsense to me. Tiger and Panther were both more or less in the same class, and ended up with interchangeable applications and assignments.



I differentiate the Tiger I and Panther for two reasons.

One is the _intended _use. The Tiger I not being a general issue tank( replacement for the MK III & IV) and the Panther _was_ a general issue tank.
Two is the timing. after several progressively larger/heavier prototypes the contracts for the design/development of the Tiger I were let pre Barbarossa and while the Russian experience may have played some factor in the design (some tweaks?) much of the design and characteristics were already decided, for better or worse.

The Panther on the other hand was a_ direct response_ to the Experiences of Barbarossa and the T-34 and KV tanks. Decision to build was take just about 1 full year after the decision to build the Tiger I and production was planned to start 6 months after the start of production of the Tiger I (which showed up in the crappy reliability of the early Panthers which used essentially the same engine to drive a tank that weighed 77% as much. Much of the trouble was with the new "simplified" transmission.) 
By the time there were Tigers in any real numbers (more than handful in one or two experimental deployments) the tactical and strategic situation had changed. 

Now please note that the MK III doesn't get the long 50mm gun until about Dec of 1941 7 months after the order to go ahead with the Tiger and the MK IV didn't get the long 75 until March of 1942, 10 months after the Tiger go ahead. Planning and tooling had started earlier of course. However the 5cm AT gun (towed) had only been issued in the fall of 1940 and the towed 7,5cm At gun had only been issued in Nov of 1941 so there was no combat experience with the 7.5cm gun during the first half of the Tigers design/development. 
The Tank 7.5cm gun need some redesigning to fit it into the turret and the cartridge case had to be changed to a shorter, fatter one to allow manhandling inside the space of a tank/SP gun. 
Also note that the early 1943 7.5cm tank gun was the shorter L43 version but since they used the same ammo the performance was only off by 3-5mm of penetration. 

The Panther was an attempt to out T-34 the T-34 due to combat experience. The Tiger, while somewhat comparable to the KV was not developed in response to it but somewhat in parallel (staggered in timing) 



parsifal said:


> Taking the German average weight in 1941 as the index mark, indices for each of the big three in the time frames 1941, 1942-3 and 1944-5 are: Germany: 100/280/440 For the US its 120/200/210. The SU was 250/250/250. So yes, all nations engaged in uparmouring and upgunning, but none to the same extent as the Germans (well, the Russians hardly moved in weight, but the gun size went up). And the massive increases attempted by germany was something their industry was not equipped to deal with.



Were the Russians really that clever or were they constrained by existing production facilities/designs? or a bit of both? 
Unless the Russians can come up with a new engine going heavier than a KV just means a slower tank, see the progression from the up armored models and then the reversal to the KV-S, thinner armor in an attempt to restore mobility. 
A heavier tank can sometimes use different transmission (more gears) to help performance but that increases size/weight and cost. 
The simple clutch and brake steering system also becomes a bigger problem the heavier a tank gets.
The Russians _may_ also have had a requirement about ground pressure for operating in snow, poor ground. I have read that either the t-60 light tank or T-70 was not popular because it, despite being a light tank could not keep up with T-34s on cross country moves. 
There are always design choices. The Russian almost constant weight despite bigger guns was purchased with lower ammo capacity and lower rates of fire (cramped-poor ergonomics) which means you need more tanks involved in the battle to get the same target effect/firepower.

I am not saying the Germans were correct in the path that they took, especially once they go past the Panther. The Panther itself was iffy, Perhaps a 35 ton tank with a 7.5cm cannon part way between the L/48 and the L/70 would have been the way to go. 
But if you compare the Panther to the M-26/M-46, the Centurion and the Russian T-44/T-54 tank you can see the direction tank design was going.


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## Reluctant Poster (Nov 10, 2018)

I suggest everyone read the following articles about the effectiveness of the 77 mm, 90 mm and 17 pdr vs German armor.
The Chieftain's Hatch: US Guns, German Armour, Pt 1
The Chieftain's Hatch: US Guns, German Armor: Pt 2

"In July there was shock and anger over how poorly US tank guns performed against German armour. By late August, when real test data showed just how badly US guns under-performed, no one cared any more. Independent tank battalions equipped with M4s were leading US infantry divisions into battle, and armoured divisions equipped with more M4s were leading the charge across France: It seemed nothing could stop them. It was not until the Winter, with the return of positional warfare, and then the German offensive in the Ardennes, that questions were once again raised about the performance of US guns and ammunition vs. German armoured vehicles."

Apparently the US weapons did not perform as well in the real world as their testing had promised.


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## mikewint (Nov 10, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Apparently the US weapons did not perform as well in the real world as their testing had promised.


Nothing ever does! I think that if you'll re-read my post #49 your question will be answered


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## tomo pauk (Nov 10, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Forgive my ignorance, can you be more specific as to the problem with the Panther? from what I have read, it evolved into perhaps the best all around tank of the war. Was it a similar case as the Tiger, as in too complex for its intended role?
> As well, would a diesel engine have been an advantage for the Tiger and Panther? with easier to produce, and less volatile fuel?



Having diesel engine would've probably improved the mileage; main cause of tanks brewing up was ignition of the cannon's ammo, though.

As for the Panther - I've already tossed in my reasons. The cannon was firing too small a HE shell (2/3rds of Tigers or T-35-85), forgetting that not all the battlefield targets were other tanks/AFVs. Size & weight of a heavy tank, but not a protectiof of a heavy tank to cover the bulk. Big weight will mean that reliabiity can suffer, the bridging equipment need to be heavier & stronger, ditto for towing damaged tanks. The suspension was as complicated as it gets. All of this also meant that production will not amount to what was possible with 'real' medium tanks.
Granted, Panther eventually improved on details, the ride was smooth, it was able to kill other tanks/AFV as good as Tiger did it. However, Sherman Firefly and Comet were probably every bit as good, while lighter and far cheaper to make. The T-34-85 was offering a heavier HE shell vs. much better AT performance of the Panther, being lighter, smaller and much cheaper. 

At the end of a day, I rate the M-26, Tiger and Centurion as being better all-around tanks (plus the small number of KV-85 and IS-1), and Comet, Sherman Firefly and T-34-85 being more or less equal to the Panther while offeing the key advantages of medium tanks when it is about size, weight and price.


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## Reluctant Poster (Nov 11, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Nothing ever does! I think that if you'll re-read my post #49 your question will be answered


It does refute your claim that the the US army had a very effective anti tank round that could penetrate the Tiger from all aspects.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2018)

Armour penetration tests can be all over the place for a variety of reasons.

Quality of the armor plate and quality of the AP rounds vary a bit from example to example for one reason.

Definition of penetration varies between countries. Can you see light through the hole/crack in plate?
Is 1/2 or 2/3 of the shot sticking through the plate but the shot is stuck in the plate? 
Has the projectile completely penetrated the plate? 

And different countries had different percentages for proving ground tests were were multiple shot tests instead of single or two shot tests like used against captured equipment.
standards like 70% of shots fired had to meet one of the above criteria (or a higher percentage. to eliminate fluke shots. 

The US M72 projectile was uncapped. WIth it's blunt point it lost velocity faster with range. 

But it had some use depending on the target plate being homogenous or face hardened.
The British also handicapped their AT and tank guns by sticking with cheap AP shot vs APCPC shot for quite some time. 

Everything being the same (which it seldom is) penetration is dependent on the square of speed of impact. 

At normal tank fighting ranges once you get to 75mm guns and above things don't change a whole lot. US M61 that was doing 2030fps at the muzzle is still doing 1700fps at 1200yds.
but that is 20 X 20 = 40 vs 17 X 17 = 289 (dropping the zeros to make it easy. The Us 3in and 76mm guns with their 2600fps at the muzzle would be 676 and even if lost 400fps over the same distance that the 75mm lost 300fps the merit figure would be 484.

any claims that the 75mm SHerman gun would have only been 5% behind the 3in/76mm if only it had the right projectiles seems to be highly suspect. Testswould have to be done using the same (or very similar) projectiles from both guns against targets of know quality and at the same angles of impact.

The US 3in (M-10 tank destroyer) and 76mm gun ( late Shermans and M-18 tank destroyers) used the same projectiles fired at the same velocity by different guns/cartridge cases/powder charges. Exterior ballistics and target effect should have been the same.


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## mikewint (Nov 11, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> It does refute your claim that the the US army had a very effective anti tank round that could penetrate the Tiger from all aspects.


Go back two more posts to #46. Look at the Russian penetration tests on an actual Tiger. Note that the maximum range was 650m or 711yds. Now also keep in mind that the Tiger I's 8.8cm Kw.K. 36 L/56 rifled cannon had muzzle velocities of 600m/second (HE), 773m/second (AP) and 930m/second (AP/tungsten core). The effective range of these rounds was 3000 m with armour piercing and 5000 m with HE rounds. Couple that with the exceptionally fine optics of the Tiger's sights and you have a tank that could kill other tanks well beyond 1000yds.

Fortunately, the weakness of Sherman tanks in duels against German Panther and Tiger tanks didn’t actually matter much in the grand scheme because duels between large groups of tanks were rare experiences for the U.S. Army during the war. German weapons such as the Tiger tanks and 88mm antitank guns only existed in relatively small numbers. More commonly the US Army faced German PzKpfw IV tanks, 75mm antitank guns, the StuG III assault gun, and German “panzerjager” tank destroyers. These could still kill Shermans from ordinary combat ranges of 1,000 yards or less, but Sherman tanks fought those foes on more equal footing. If anything, Sherman tank crews spent the vast majority of their battles shooting at non-armored targets such as buildings or enemy troops.
The technical superiority of German tanks also did not necessarily guarantee easy victories for the Germans in tank duels. U.S. and British military studies in the later years of the war found that the single most important factor in tank duels was which side spotted the other first, engaged first and landed the first hits. Such scenarios tended to favor defenders, which is why German tanks on the attack suffered about as heavily as Sherman tanks on the attack. But such situations also favored well-trained and experienced tank crews who knew how to ambush or surprise enemy tanks. Even Panther and Tiger tanks could easily fall prey to Sherman tanks striking from the side or rear.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2018)

AS a quick and dirty guide to max point blank range (range at which, with a center of mass aiming point, the projectile will neither pass over or hit under/short) of a tank sized (vague I know) target is the muzzle velocity + 10%. Beyond that you need some sort of range finding aid, more time and perhaps just firing the first shot and seeing (with tracer) where it goes. 
This does give an advantage to the higher velocity guns even at ranges under 1000meters. it also gives advantages to fast turret traverse in non ambush situations and it gives and advantage to high rate of fire guns. If large caliber slow firing guns miss with the first shot it may have 2-3 incoming enemy shells before the big gun is ready to fire again. 

Now the large, heavy high velocity gun is going to require a large heavy turret and that may mean that turret traverse is not as fast as one would like. 

The best tank for fighting on the Russian steps might not be the best tank for fighting in western european forests and towns. 

Original German tank specifications in the 1930s called for short guns that would not overhang the body of the tank when traversed to keep from hitting the barrels on obstacles (trees/ buildings) but if you can't kill the enemy tanks when you need to then the last thing you worry about is wacking the gun barrel against a tree. 

on the other hand


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## GrauGeist (Nov 11, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Even Panther and Tiger tanks could easily fall prey to Sherman tanks striking from the side or rear.


And even an M8 Greyhound!


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## parsifal (Nov 11, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> But if you compare the Panther to the M-26/M-46, the Centurion and the Russian T-44/T-54 tank you can see the direction tank design was going.


I agree, something even better than the tiger would have been required.....eventually. But before that crisis was dealt with the germans had to stabilize their front,, and to do that they needed numbers of reliable tanks. neither the Panter or the tiger could offer that until the latter part of the war. What made it worse, especially for the tiger was that it was a design totally unsuited to available production facilities in Germany at that time. numbers equals survivability, and the tiger did not offer that 



Shortround6 said:


> Were the Russians really that clever or were they constrained by existing production facilities/designs? or a bit of both?.



Unquestionably yes. Despite its limitations, the T-34 and KV series of tanks were ruthlessly simplified and produced as a consumer item. they could them out like hotcakes and in that way vastly improve the survivability of their armoured formations. In war numbers count for everything. Even the germans knew that. they opted for the quality hi tech pathway and they lost the war because of that. they had greater industrial potential than the Soviets at the beginning of the wart. The Soviets suffered greater industrial penalties and losses during the early years but still managed to outproduce the germans by a wide margin. That was no accident. Because the Russians made great efforts to simply and streamline their production, and the germans the opposite, Russia won and Germany lost.

The war was won in the factories of the respective nations.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2018)

German tank production was less than ideal almost from the start. And some things just don't seem to fit together well. 

German MK IV production was 211 prewar and another 45 tanks for the rest of 1939? 268 in 1940, 467 in 1941 and 994 in 1942 (870 with the long 75) but 1943 sees a jump to 3822 chassis with 3023 of them being gun tanks. This is despite the start of Tiger Production in 1942 and Panther production in 1943. 

MK III production was 157 in 1939, 1054 in 1940, 2213 in 1941, 2958 in 1942 and 3379 in in 1943, This is Chassis production. 

Increase in MK III & MK IV production did not come because of a falling off in MK I & Mk II production. MK Is had ceased being made in or by 1938 (except for a few dozen odd balls) 
and MK II chassis production for SP guns stayed almost constant in 1942-43 with 848 in 1942 (302 gun tanks) and 807 in 1943 (77 gun tanks) while 38(t) production also went up. 
653 chassis in 1942 and 1008 in 1943. 

What were the German tank factories doing in 1942? Were they really expanded that much between 1942 and 1943 or had they been operating at less than full capacity in 1942?
MK IV production had increased about 4 fold from 1942 to 1943, could you really get an additional 150% production on top of that (total 5 1/2 times 1942 production) by stopping the Tiger (factory already tooled up) and canceling the Panther? (change tooling to additional MK IV tooling? 

I am not say the Tiger was cheap or easy to build but sometimes just money or man hours doesn't convert real well, especially in the short term. You need some sort of tanks to handle the T-34s and KVs of 1942. The MK III won't do. The short barreled MK IV won't do. You need as many long barreled MK IVs as you can get (and they have few deficiencies) and yu have a small production line already tooled up and building Tigers in small quantities. Try to raise tiger production or shut it down and retool for MK IVs and take the loss of several months production of no tanks from that factory (or at best no more K IVs than Tigers until they get up to speed). 


A bit too much is sometimes made of Russian simplicity (and American), not that complexity is good but sometimes the Russians increased production by leaving certain items that were in short supply out of the tank, like periscoped/vision devices and radios which reduced operating efficiency and resulted in needed more tanks to get the same combat effect but at the cost of higher crew casualties. 

All round vision cupolas have several things against them, cost (money/manhours) increased height/silhouette and often a weak point as they are often not armoured as well as the rest to the turret. on the flip side is "if you can't see it you can't hit it" if the commander and gunner cannot see the target (tank or bunker or dugout) they can't hit it or at best, it takes much longer to hit the same number of targets and the cost of the cupola becomes minimal if not a true force multiplier.


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## parsifal (Nov 11, 2018)

Changing over to the uber tank parks was a massive impact on AFV outputs.

The step up of outputs in 1943 is a function of the germans finally mobilising, not a vindication of their production choices. Using 1939 as a base index of 60, Ive seen studies that rate the 1943 mobilisation index at 190, that’s more than 3 times as great. In 1942 the index was 110 compared to the 1939 index.

A good surrogate measure for hardware (far from perfect, but its something at least) is to look at cost and man hours. In 1942 the cost of a tiger relative to a MkIV (and comparing costs of the same country for similar hardware is not quite as dangerous and inaccurate as comparing different pieces of hardware and /or different nationalities). A 1942 Tiger cost about 5.5 time that of a MkIV. It came down (a lot) as time progressed (as did the unit costs for Mk IVs), but at the critical time of 1942-3 it was soaking up bucket loads of resources and time to produce a few unreliable tanks that were no better operationally than the types they were displacing. A lot worse actually, due to the reliability problems they were suffering.

In terms of man hours, it was a little better, with the tiger soaking up approximately 3.5 time the man hours to produce.

Im not saying incidentally that the Germans did not need to update their designs. By 1945 the MkIV was starting to show its obsolescence and only remained competitive because the opposing forces had not opted to update their tank parks much either. But it’s the timing that is the problem. In 1943 the germans needed numbers, and the mkIV was more than good enough to achieve exchange rates at that time of around 7:1. They did not need a bevy of unreliable tanks that were playing havoc on their logistics.

There is nothing wrong with designing a new tank in advance, but the problem is the rushed service entry. And further the over complication and size of the design. Tigers were over engineered, far too complex and too large to be considered suitable for German industry at the time. A complete overhaul of their tank manufacturing base was urgently required, or the germans needed to amend what they were ordering into production so that the product being produced was more suited to the capabilities of the factory infrastructure available to them. No thought was given to these constraints until it was far too late. This is what the Russians did and what the germans didn’t do.

I think it very revealing that the germans themselves recognized the shortcomings of production choices. The E-series production plan was mostly about simplification of the designs to make them more suitable for mass production as consumer items. It is very telling that the 1945 version of this plan intended to phase out tiger tanks completely, and to massively simplify the Panther production. Judging by these decisions it is very apparent that the germans themselves were realising that production of the Tiger (and the overcomplicated nature of the panther) had led them down a strategic blind alley


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## mikewint (Nov 12, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> reduced operating efficiency and resulted in needed more tanks to get the same combat effect but at the cost of higher crew casualties.


As if that was ever a concern for either the Russians or Americans. There was always another tank and/or crew available. It was a simple question of Quantity versus Quality. Let the Germans kill 10:1 it really made little or no difference


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## Glider (Nov 12, 2018)

Tiger and Panthers are obviously very different from each other. As a result claims about the vulnerability of one should not be taken as being equal to the other. A Tiger had 80mm f armour on its side and rear turret and as such the standard 75mm would find it very difficult to penetrate it. A Panthers side armour was much less and it was quite possible for a 75mm to penetrate.
The idea that an M8 could do this with a 37mm gun is fantasy.

Tigers were needed on the Russian front as the ground often favoured long range combat and for that reason alone were worth building. Pz IV and Stug III with a 75mm L48 would find an IS2 an almost impossible target. Tigers were not needed against the US and UK tanks.


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## mikewint (Nov 12, 2018)

Glider said:


> M8 could do this with a 37mm gun is fantasy.


Russian anti-tank gunners with 37mm cannon learned the lesson I posted earlier. You DON'T have to penetrate a tanks armor to effectively "knock it out".
A disabled tank, unable to move, is effectively a dead tank. The 37mm gunners concentrated their fire, not on the armor, but on the more vulnerable tank treads, wheels, sprockets, and engine compartment. Break the tread and the tank is going nowhere fast


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## parsifal (Nov 12, 2018)

Glider said:


> Tigers were needed on the Russian front as the ground often favoured long range combat and for that reason alone were worth building. Pz IV and Stug III with a 75mm L48 would find an IS2 an almost impossible target. Tigers were not needed against the US and UK tanks.



There is no appreciable difference overall to the survivability of a mkIV on the eastern Front, to the survivability of a tiger or at least to support that it was vastly more vulnerable. Obviously the heavier armour of the tiger made a difference in actual combat, but the short range, slow speed and inability to use all bridges or negotiate boggy ground made them vulnerable outside the battlefield. 

In 1941, the Russians lost approx20,500 AFVs, approx2,300 of which were T-34s/KV. no Tigers and no Panthers. The Germans lost approx2,500 AFVs on the Eastern Front, resulting in a 8:1 loss ratio in the Germans’ favor. Many of the Russian losses in 1941 were operational ones, meaning that they represent tanks that broke down and had to be abandoned, or tanks captured intact by the enemy. In addition, a large proportion of the Soviet tank fleet in 1941 were obsolete models (T-26, BT-5, etc). While the Russians also had significant numbers of T-34s and KV-1s, they only made a small portion of the Russian tank fleet.

In 1942, the Russians lost approx15,000 AFVs, including approx6,600 T-34s. Meanwhile, the Germans lost approx3,500 AFVs, resulting in a 4.3:1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor. This time, most of the Russian losses were combat ones (the true fighting had begun in earnest). very few of the tanks were tigers but most of the mkIVs were now the f series I believe 

In 1943, the Russians lost approx23,500 AFVs, including a staggering approx14,700 T-34s. Meanwhile, the Germans lost approx8,700 AFVs on the Eastern Front, resulting in a 2.7:1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor. Tigers and Panthers were beginning to account for a significant proportion of the tank park, Russians were still mostly equipped with 76mm armed tanks

In 1944, the Russians lost approx23,800 AFVs, including approx13,000 T-34s. Meanwhile, the Germans lost approx9,500 AFVs on the Eastern Front, resulting in a 2.5:1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor. levelling off,, qualitatively worth noting that the majority of Soviet tanks were upgunned by this time. Very few IS series as yet. 

In 1945, it’s very hard to come up with reliable kill ratios since most German tank losses were tanks surrendered at the Armistice in May 1945. Most historians estimate a 1.2 or 2 to 1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor in 1945. Significant numbers of IS-2 coming into play

Out of all of those destroyed tanks, how many were destroyed by actual enemy tanks?
Not exactly sure. Some sources estimate that about 50% of combat losses (ie: excluding tanks breaking down or getting bogged down in mud) resulted from “gunfire”. Gunfire can mean anything from an enemy tank to an AT gun or an anti-aircraft gun firing AP shells. The main source of gunfire losses seems to have been towed AT and AA guns (approx20%), followed by self-propelled-guns (approx20%) and tanks (approx10%). Keep in mind that these figures are rough estimations and are hotly debated to this day

Germans claim that their 2000 odd tigers destroyed 10000 Russian tanks alone, but this statistic can be proved and to me does appear a bit suspect.

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## GrauGeist (Nov 12, 2018)

Glider said:


> The idea that an M8 could do this with a 37mm gun is fantasy.


And, yet it happened.

"During the Battle of St. Vith in the Battle of the Bulge, on 18 December 1944, an M8 armored car from Troop B, 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and Company A, was able to destroy a German Tiger I heavy tank from 1st SS Panzer Division. The M8 fired three 37 mm rounds through the relatively thin rear armor of the Tiger from only 25 yd. (23 m), setting it on fire.

Despite the fact that M8 Greyhound was not an adversary for German tanks, statistics and specifications do not determine the result of the battles. The M8 Greyhound was considered fast, sufficiently reliable and armed and armored well enough for reconnaissance missions. Its speed was key to success in this engagement with the panzer.

The armored car had been in a concealed position near the boundary of Troop B, 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and Company A, 38th Armored Infantry Battalion, when the Tiger approached the lines at right angles to move along a trail in front of the main line of resistance. As the tank passed the armored car, the latter slipped out of position and started up the trail behind the Tiger, accelerating in an attempt to close. At the same moment the German tank commander saw the M8, and started traversing his gun to bear on it. It was a race between the American, who was attempting to close so that the 37mm gun would be effective on the Tiger’s thin rear armor, and the German, who was desperately striving to bring the 88 to bear. Rapidly the M8 closed to 25 yards, and quickly pumped in three rounds; the lumbering Tiger stopped and shuddered; there was a muffled explosion, followed by flames which billowed out of the turret and engine ports, after which the Greyhound returned to its position. 

This action was reported to Major Donald P. Boyer, Jr., S3, 38th Armored Infantry Battalion, by Captain W. H. Anstey (commanding Company A, 38th Armored Infantry Battalion) who witnessed the engagement."

Source: 
The Battle at St. Vith, Belgium, 17-23 December 1944: An Historical Example.
U.S. Army Armor School. Merriam Press, 1998

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## Tieleader (Nov 12, 2018)

parsifal said:


> This was series of lectures by two authors on Kursk and costs of production dated 2013.
> 
> I found the most interesting bit starts around the 25th minute of the clip
> 
> ...



Excellent video. The second speaker really put a great perspective on the costs and production bases. I think that a lot of people just forget all the incredible difficulties for getting a tank from the design boards to the battlefield. Most fans I think focus on "how good was ____ compared to____" or "could ___ have changed the course of the war". The logistics chain is probably the most overlooked aspect of any weapons system, past or present.

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## Milosh (Nov 12, 2018)

The rear armour of the Tiger was 80mm (3.14") thick.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 12, 2018)

Milosh said:


> The rear armour of the Tiger was 80mm (3.14") thick.



But where was that at ?
Rear of the turret ?
Rear of the fighting compartment ?
Or rear , behind the engine ?


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## GrauGeist (Nov 12, 2018)

In another account that was a bit more detailed, the Greyhound was firing it's 37mm point-blank into the Tiger's rear engine compartment armor.


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## parsifal (Nov 13, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Excellent video. The second speaker really put a great perspective on the costs and production bases. I think that a lot of people just forget all the incredible difficulties for getting a tank from the design boards to the battlefield. Most fans I think focus on "how good was ____ compared to____" or "could ___ have changed the course of the war". The logistics chain is probably the most overlooked aspect of any weapons system, past or present.




I found it very informative. Parshall co-wrote "Shattered Sword" which is one of the best analyses of any on any subject that I know of. He is a systems analyst, so this issue is exactly what he is trained to look at.

In terms of gun power and protection the tiger was very dangerous, and its optics were probably the best in the world. Despite all that it was not the right tank for Germany because of how badly it wrecked their logistics system

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## Peter Gunn (Nov 13, 2018)

Glider said:


> *SNIP*
> 
> The idea that an M8 could do this with a 37mm gun is fantasy.
> 
> *SNIP*



I wouldn't say that, we all know that ANYTHING in warfare is possible. I read an account (wish I could remember where) of an M4 Sherman that was reversing away from a Jagdtiger and a 128 mm round hit the back of the Sherman's turret and bounced off. It hit a small bump square on that was in the casting to hold an earlier model antenna which was no longer needed, but the bulge was still in the casting for the turret. So if the back of a Sherman turret can bounce a 128 mm shell at close range ( less than 200 meters I believe but don't quote me ) a 37 mm should be able to pen a Tiger at point blank range, why not?


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## Tieleader (Nov 13, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> I wouldn't say that, we all know that ANYTHING in warfare is possible. I read an account (wish I could remember where) of an M4 Sherman that was reversing away from a Jagdtiger and a 128 mm round hit the back of the Sherman's turret and bounced off. It hit a small bump square on that was in the casting to hold an earlier model antenna which was no longer needed, but the bulge was still in the casting for the turret. So if the back of a Sherman turret can bounce a 128 mm shell at close range ( less than 200 meters I believe but don't quote me ) a 37 mm should be able to pen a Tiger at point blank range, why not?


Saw that in an episode of Greatest Tank Battles".

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## Peter Gunn (Nov 13, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Saw that in an epsiode if Greatest Tank Battles".



THAT'S IT!!! I give you bacon for your excellent memory.


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## Tieleader (Nov 13, 2018)

Actually own the DVDs. So not that not excellent...
And yes , VERY lucky people in that Sherman.


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## Glider (Nov 13, 2018)

I surrender the point that the exceptional one off situation could be applied to any combat example. After all the first Me109 shot down by the RAF was shot down (I think) by a Battle. But you take your M8 and I will take the Tiger or a T34.

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## Milosh (Nov 13, 2018)

tyrodtom said:


> But where was that at ?
> Rear of the turret ?
> Rear of the fighting compartment ?
> Or rear , behind the engine ?



http://www.amm34.com/sites/amm/asse...es/upload/ckfinder/Armor_Scheme_Tiger1(1).png


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## The Basket (Nov 13, 2018)

I read that Germans lost large numbers of tanks to fuel starvation.
Remember reading Speer was getting talked to by Hitler about tank production and Speers reply was we don't have the petrol!

The T-26 was the most numerous tank in 1941 in the USSR. So that's the base line and the Panzer I got its baptism in the Spanish civil war and was shown to poor.


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## Milosh (Nov 13, 2018)

The Panzer I was only to be training tank.


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## parsifal (Nov 13, 2018)

An interesting quirk of history
MkIV, StugIII and other ex-german AFVs in the 1967 battle for the Golan heights

Panzers in the Golan Heights

Edit:

Amazingly, according to the above link, German built Hummels were apparently deployed in the 2014-2016 Syrian Civil war by some of the rebels. if that is the case, it makes the vehicle one of the oldest military vehicles in the world to be still in active service

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## Tieleader (Nov 13, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> THAT'S IT!!! I give you bacon for your excellent memory.


Did a little digging for you. This is the bit I remember. Skip to 30:50 mark for the story.


Hope that helps.
Probably the luckiest Sherman crew in the history of US tank crews of WW2.

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## Milosh (Nov 14, 2018)

parsifal said:


> An interesting quirk of history
> MkIV, StugIII and other ex-german AFVs in the 1967 battle for the Golan heights
> 
> Panzers in the Golan Heights
> ...



Didn't the Syrians also have Panzer 4 turrets mounted on pill boxes?


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## Fighterguy (Nov 14, 2018)

I've pointed this out before, but here we go again. Wars are won through logistics. The German Tiger and Panther, along with many of their Wunderwaffe pursuits, were a significant drain on resources. Mechanized warfare requires huge amounts of spare parts and supplies. Without them, they become expensive paper weights, and lose combat effectiveness. It doesn't matter that the Tiger and Panther were better individually (on paper) versus their adversaries if they lack crucial "soft" stats.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 14, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Didn't the Syrians also have Panzer 4 turrets mounted on pill boxes?


Stalin had a considerable amount of German armor built into a southern line across Bulgaria and they remained intact for decades.
The Bulgarian Army started recovering them several years ago, when it was discovered that these panzers (either complete or just turrets) were being stripped for scrap and in a few cases, some being stolen intact to be sold to collectors.


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## parsifal (Nov 14, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Didn't the Syrians also have Panzer 4 turrets mounted on pill boxes?


According to that link I posted, the Syrians possessed a number of non-operational Mk IVs, some of which they deployed in hull down configuration as hastily dug in strong points. Whether they took the time to remove the turrets from the hull, or had spare turrets to start with is a possibility, but not fully documented. We would be speculating to say otherwise.

The article finishes off by saying that the 6 Day War the obsolescence and futility of deploying WWII era technology in a cold war environment was sheeted home in spades. I don’t fully agree with that. The IDF showed how older equipment could be used if properly upgraded.and used intelligently. There upgraded Super Shermans were able to overcome all of the Arab armour types pitted against them, including IS-3s, T-54s, T-55s and Jordanian M-48s. The difference, technology wise was that the IDF made sure their older armour was kept up to date, particularly regarding armament and mobility. Most of f their operational tanks had been upgunned to use the L7 105mm gun, in many instances re-engning and installing better transmissions as well. I am of the opinion that had it been the IDF using the MkIV and Stug III instead of the Arabs, they would have done as well with those German designs as they did with the ex-british and ex-US hardware

There were a few quirks on the Israeli side. The IDF is believed to have deployed a single Hotchkiss H-35 Tank, for what purpose I have no idea. They also had on strength, and may have used, a few M-22 Locust air transportable tanks

The stand out tank of the 6 day war has to be the Centurion, technically a piece of WWII kit. When the Six-day War broke out in 1967, the IDF had 293 Centurion in active service out of a total of 385 and even manage to grow this number by capturing 30 Jordanian Centurions (out of 44). The Battle of “The Valley of Tears” on the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War really consecrated the Israeli development of the Centurion (the so called “Sho’ts”) as one of the most deadly tanks ever, when less than 100 tanks of the IDF 7th Armoured Brigade single-handedly defeated the advance of some 500 Syrian T-55s and T-62s, knocking out some 250 before the rest fled. There were many factors contributing to this victory……including a combination of carefully planned positions on the heights with gun-down positions, the 105 mm long-range accuracy compared to the 100 mm of the soviet-built Syrian tanks (which also crucially lacked the elevation required to target the Israeli tanks on the heights when closing up), and expert long-range marksmanship due to intensive training on part of the Israeli tankers. But the new technology grafted into the old design was also critical, with this design still front line material in the IDF well into the 1990s

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## Tieleader (Nov 14, 2018)

Always thought a picture is worth a thousand words (or reichmarks!).
From "Germany's Secret Weapons Of World War Two" by Roger Ford. Not sure about where he got the figures from.

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## taly01 (Nov 14, 2018)

He seems to be using the bare cost of a Panther from a quick search, funny how wrong numbers sometimes get carried over for years. (Like B5N2 kate with 2 x 7.7mm in nose).
117,100 RM (Without weapons, optics, or radio)
176,100 RM(combat ready)

The other numbers seem about right.....
Tiger I 299,800 RM
Panther 176,100 RM
PzIV 115,962DM
StuGIII 82,500DM

So simplified math 2 Panthers + 2 PzIV = 2 Tigers

or 5 PzIV = 2 Tiger

or 7 StuGIII = 2 Tiger

Now I can see why some recommended StuG priority!


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## parsifal (Nov 14, 2018)

One of the problems about quantifying costs is the timing of the cost estimate. production costs tended to go down as time went by. A T-34 built at the end of 1942 was 51% less expensive than a t-34 built in June 1941. A T-34 at the end of the war was about one sixth the cost. A Tiger built in 1942 was on average about RM700000, whilst one built in 1944 was well below RM320K. Its not invalid to compare costs, but these figures and others like them need a good dose of caution when reading them.


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## mikewint (Nov 15, 2018)

The Soviet T-34 is the most overrated weapon of WW2.
The T-34 main gun was crudely made, inaccurate, and hard to use except at close range. 
The T-34 employed sloped armor in the front, the sides and the back of the vehicle but this choice armored “air” and seriously diminished the internal space of the T-34.

The limited space not only affected crew performance but turned the T-34 into a deathtrap. A US study from the Korean War (based on the T-34/85) concluded that due to the limited internal space a penetration by an A/T round usually led to the destruction of the tank and loss of 75% of the crew. In the Sherman the figure was only 18%.

The turret also suffered from a lack of space. It was so cramped that it affected movement.

There were fuel tanks in the engine compartment and at the sides of the hull. The presence of fuel tanks inside the fighting compartment made any penetration of the tank likely to lead to the complete loss of the vehicle. Apart from the limited internal space there were two more serious design flaws.

One was the lack of turret basket (a rotating floor that moves as the turret turns) for the loader. This meant that the person loading the shells had to follow the movement of the gun and at the same time keep an eye on the floor so he doesn’t trip on the spent casings.

The other major issue was the two-man turret which forced the commander to also act as the gunner. This drastically limited combat performance as the commander could not focus on leading the tank but instead had to engage targets.

A three-man turret was finally introduced with the T-34/85 in March ’44.

The armor of the T-34 had a high Brinell rating. This was advantageous in defeating antitank rounds of caliber equal or lower to the armor’s thickness but had the disadvantage that it could lead to spalling. Combined with manufacturing flaws in the construction of the tank this meant that the T-34’s crew was often in danger even when hit by tank rounds that did not penetrate the armor.

The Christie suspension used on the T-34 had the advantage that it allowed for high speeds on road. Its disadvantages were that it took a lot of internal space and it had poor stability in rough terrain.
The Christie suspension was a technological dead-end and the Aberdeen evaluation says: ‘The Christie's suspension was tested long time ago by the Americans, and unconditionally rejected’.

Another major problem was the gearbox. It had poor reliability and it needed excessive force to change gears, leading to driver fatigue. The study ‘Engineering analysis of the Russian T34/85 tank’ says:

'Rough steering due to the use of clutch and brake steering control, and difficulty in shifting due to the use of a spur gear clash-shift transmission (no synchronizers, no clutches) and a multi-disc dry clutch, undoubtedly made driving this tank a difficult and very fatiguing job.’

Initially the V-2 engine (500hp) could not be used to the fullest due to the 4-speed gearbox. Changing gears required excessive force on behalf of the driver. The T-34 could use the 4th gear only on a paved road, thus the max speed over cross-country was theoretically 25 km/h but in practice it was only 15km/h because changing from 2nd gear to 3rd required superhuman strength.
On later modifications there was a 5-speed gearbox which allowed for a cross country speed of 30 km/h. However it seems that even vehicles built late in the war were not guaranteed to have the new 5-speed gearbox. The tanks given to the Polish People's Army in late 1944/early 1945 and those used by the North Korean Army in 1950 had the old 4-speed setup.

The initial version carried the L-11 76mm main gun but this was quickly replaced with the F-34 76mm and the T34/85 had the ZiS S-53 85mm.
While the caliber numbers look impressive Soviet tank guns suffered from low velocity leading to poor penetration and accuracy at long ranges.
For example the initial round velocity using the standard A/T round was: 612m/s, F-34 – 655m/s, ZiS S-53 – 792m/s. The comparable German stats were: KwK 38 L/42 – 685m/s, Kwk 39 L/60 – 835m/s, Kwk 40 L/43 – 740m/s, Kwk 40 L/48 – 790m/s, and Kwk 42 – 925m/s.
The KwK 40 75mm used by the Pz IV and Stug from mid 1942 had far better penetration performance and accuracy than the F-34 and the Panther’s KwK 42 was also superior to the ZiS S-53 85mm in the same areas.

Initially only the unit commander’s tank had a radio. In the course of the war radio was used more widely but even in 1944 many tanks still lacked a radio set. The lack of radio meant that Soviet tank units operated with little coordination.

German combat reports show that T-34 tanks had serious difficulties in navigating terrain and identifying targets. The problem was that the vision devices made it hard for the driver and the gunner to see what was happening.

The T-34 ‘1941 version’ lacked the vision cupola found on German tanks. The poor quality of Soviet optics combined with the limited visibility from inside the tank affected combat performance. A German unit that used the T-34/76 model ’43 in combat noted:
*‘The gun sights in Russian tanks are far behind the German designs. The German gunners need to be thoroughly accustomed to the Russian telescopic gunsights. The ability to spot a hit through the gunsight is very limited.’ The commander’s vision is limited to five very small and narrow slits.’
‘Safe driving and sure command of both the T 43 and SU 85 can't be achieved with the hatches closed. On the first day in combat in the Jassy bridgehead, four Beute-Panzer (captured T-34s) got stuck in the trench system and couldn't get free with their own power. The same thing happened on the second day.’*

1941–1942 T-34’s were generally built by totally unskilled workers (often juveniles) employing primitive tools. For example, a T-34 sprocket would be made by pouring molten steel into a sand mold then “shaping” the sprocket by hand with a metal file (a twelve year old might have been trusted to do this task).

The T-34 is often portrayed as a simple and rugged vehicle that seldom broke down, unlike the more complex German tanks that supposedly broke down often. The concept of the T-34 as a reliable tank is another myth of WWII. The majority of T-34s, in 1941, that were lost were due to equipment malfunction. The same reliability problems continued during the period 1942-44. The evacuation and relocation of industrial facilities combined with the loss of skilled workers continued to decrease reliability.

In 1941 T-34 tanks often had to carry a spare transmission strapped on the back to counter equipment failures. In 1942 the situation worsened since many vehicles could only cover small distances before breaking down. In the summer of 1942 the following Stalin order was issued to units:
*‘Our armored forces and their units frequently suffer greater losses through mechanical breakdowns than they do in battle. For example, at Stalingrad Front in six days twelve of our tank brigades lost 326 out of their 400 tanks. Of those about 260 owed to mechanical problems. Many of the tanks were abandoned on the battlefield. Similar instances can be observed on other fronts. Since such a high incidence of mechanical defects is implausible, the Supreme Headquarters sees in it covert sabotage and wrecking by certain elements in the tank crews who try to exploit small mechanical troubles to avoid battle.’
Henceforth, every tank leaving the battlefield for alleged mechanical reasons was to be gone over by technicians, and if sabotage was suspected, the crews were to be put into tank punishment companies or "degraded to the infantry" and put into infantry punishment companies.'*

The constant complaints from the front forced the authorities to investigate the problems with T-34 production. In September 1942 a conference was held at the Ural tank factory by the Commissariat of tank industry. The conference was headed by Major General Kotin, People’s commissar of the tank industry of the USSR and chief designer of heavy tank ‘Kliment Voroshilov’. In his speech he said:
*''Now ... there are a lot of complains about the T-34. You all know the reasons for flaws in the tanks. The first reason –inadequate visibility from the tank; the second reason, and this is the weak link that always accompanies our vehicle in the Army – final drive. And third, the main issue that we have today – insufficient strength of the idler wheel's crank. These issues are the major defects of the T-34 today. Having considered these issues from engineering and technological points of view I would like to discuss another issue, the one that directly resulted solely from our production deficiencies. They are: negligence during production of combat vehicles in the factories, carelessness of assembly and quality control of vehicles. As a result during combat employment our tanks sometimes cannot reach the front lines, or after getting to the territory occupied by the enemy for conducting combat operations, sometimes they are forced to remain on enemy's territory because of some little things... We have to make sure that as a result of this conference all shortcoming will be uncovered and following this conference all corrections in the tank will be implemented in the shortest possible time...*

The situation continued to be problematic even in 1943-44.

There were constant problems with the gearbox and the engine filters. The Aberdeen evaluators noted:
*‘On the T-34 the transmission is also very poor. When it was being operated, the cogs completely fell to pieces (on all the cogwheels). A chemical analysis of the cogs on the cogwheels showed that their thermal treatment is very poor and does not in any way meet American standards for such mechanisms.’ *

The same problems were identified in a T-34/85 built in 1945. The US study ‘Engineering analysis of the Russian T34/85 tank’ noted:
*‘Wholly inadequate engine intake air cleaners could be expected to allow early engine failure due to dust intake and the resulting abrasive wear. Several hundred miles in very dusty operation would probably be accompanied by severe engine power loss.’
‘The transmission had by American standards already failed, although with extreme care it could have been used further. Teeth ends on all gears were battered as the result of clash shifting. Many pieces of gear teeth had been broken off and were in the transmission oil. The failure is due to inadequate design, since excellent steel was used through the transmission.’*

The idea that T-34s could travel hundreds of kilometers without stopping is fantasy.

Soviet tests on newly built T-34’s showed that in April 1943 only 10.1% could complete a 330km trial and in June ’43 this went down to 7.7%. The percentage stayed below 50% till October 1943 when it rose to 78%, in the next month it dropped to 57% and in the period December ’43 - February ’44 the average was 82%.
Preliminary inspection of tanks built at the Ural tank factory No 183 (largest producer of the T-34) showed that in 1942 only 7% were free of defects, in 1943 14% and in 1944 29.4%. In 1943 the main problem was damage to the gear teeth

The V-2 engine had serious reliability problems. Depending on the source in 1941 it supposedly lasted for 100 hours on average. This figure went down in 1942 since some T-34’s could not travel more then 30-35 km.
The T-34 tested at the Aberdeen center was built at the best factory using materials of superior quality but its engine stopped working after 72.5 hours. This was not due to American interference as there was a Soviet mechanic (engineer Matveev) charged with maintaining it. Still it was much better than the standard tanks since it covered a distance of 343km. According to the head of the Armored Directorate of the Red Army N.Fedorenko, the average mileage of the T-34 to overhaul during the war, did not exceed 200 kilometers.

The 5th Guards Tank army in 1943 lost as much as 31.5% of its tanks during its march to Prokhorovka. In August ’43 the 1st Tank army lost 50% of its tanks due to malfunction. As late as the second half of 1944 tank units tried to replace engines with more than 30 hours of operation before a major attack.

There is also the question of standardization. Spare parts from Nizhny Tagil could not be used on a T-34 from Gorky.

Another myth is that there were hordes of T-34’s attacking the German formations. A simple look at the Soviet tank strength at various points in the war shows that the T-34 was not the most important tank. The light tanks T-60 and T-70 and the tank-destroyer SU-76 made up the majority of AFV’s in 1941-42 and even in 1943-45 the T-34 comprised roughly half of the Soviet frontline AFV force. In summer 1941 there were only 967 T-34’s in the total strength of 22,000 tanks.

About 45,000 T-34’s were lost during WWII. Total Soviet AFV losses in 1941-45 were 96,6The PzIV was the main German tank in the period 1943-45. It weighed 25 tons and was equipped with a 75mm gun. During the war it was upgraded with more armor and a better gun.
The PzIV made up 13% of German tank strength at the start of operation Barbarossa. The model used was equipped with a low velocity 75mm gun effective against infantry but not armored targets. From mid 1942 the PzIV was equipped with the longer 75mm gun KwK 40 that could destroy the T-34 from 1,000m. The basic armor was also increased to 50mm (from 30mm) plus 30mm bolted on and in 1943 80mm standard (for the front hull).

The upgraded PzIV was superior to the T-34 in internal layout, firepower, turret basket, optics, commander’s cupola, radio in every vehicle and its frontal hull armor could withstand the T-34 rounds. A Soviet study in 1943 admitted that the Pz IV was superior to their tank, assigning it a combat value of 1.27 to the T-34’s 1.16 (with the Pz III being the base 1.0).

The T-34/85 that appeared in mid 1944 was a harder opponent due to its new gun but the PzIV still had an edge in the ‘soft’ factors mentioned above. Moreover the heavier 85mm rounds limited the number that could be carried to 56 compared to the Pz IV’s standard load out of 87. The 85 mm rounds were not stored in a safe manner since 16 of the 56 rounds were in the turret This allowed the loader to use them quickly but it had the downside that a penetration of the turret led to the explosion of the shells and loss of the tank.

The T-34 superiority reputation is/was due to both Soviet and German wartime propaganda. The Russians had every reason to build it up as the best tank of WWII. The Germans also overstated its performance in order to explain their defeats.
If the T-34 was as good as propaganda made it out to be then it should have led to great Soviet victories in 1941-42. Instead what we see in that period is the poor performance of Soviet armored formations. In 1943-45 the T-34 was becoming outdated as the Germans used updated versions of the Pz IV and Stug III equipped with the powerful Kwk 40 75mm gun and of course they introduced the Tiger and Panther.

The ‘best tank of WWII’ suffered horrific losses against those tanks and even the updated version T-34/85 could not bridge the gap. According to a Soviet report in the period summer 1943 - March 1945 the probability of the T-34’s armor being penetrated if hit was from 88-97%, thus any round that managed to hit the tank was practically certain to penetrate the armor.

The T-34 looked good on paper but in the battlefield its ‘soft’ flaws led to huge losses. Meanwhile Western tanks like the M4 Sherman and Pz IV may have lacked sloped armor or wide tracks but they were better combat systems overall.

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## parsifal (Nov 15, 2018)

And yet, at approximately 1/30th the cost of a tiger, it achieved exchange rates of about 10% against the tiger, and probably a lot less. at minimum that makes it a design at least 3x more efficient to the tiger.

Overall German tanks achieved Kill/loss ratios of about 2.5:1. Since the majority of Soviet tanks in the red army tank park were either T-34s, KVs (some modified to IS configuration) or T-70 chassis, we can extrapolate a bit and say the overall Kill loss ratio for the t-34 was about 2.5:1 at the end of the war. Given that it could by then be turned out like veritable hot cakes, that makes it the best tank of WWII.

Ive seen the mostly American cold War Era report about the shortcomings of the T-34. They all fail in reality to take into account the shelf life of a T-34. Once in combat it could usually be measured in hours. Why go to the expense and trouble of building durability into a design that was never going to last long anyway. According to Parshall, the average life span of a t-34 was less than 6 months, the average track life under 1500 KMs. These are all very concerning statistics, but in reality it is exactly how a tank for an army like the red Army needed to be designed…..an item of high disposability and with ease of production by unskilled labour the most important considerations. With an industrial base potential in 1938 about one seventh that of Germany, the Russians had no choice other than to design and produce their tanks as consumer items. It proved to be a war winning recipe. The recipe at the bottom of the pile was the german production model….producing tanks like they were hand crafted pieces of art, to be concerved and retained at all costs and costing a bomb to build

the worst is probably the tiger......


I can only repeat the statistics Ive posted before.....

"In 1943, the Russians lost approx23,500 AFVs, including a staggering approx14,700 T-34s. Meanwhile, the Germans lost approx8,700 AFVs on the Eastern Front, resulting in a 2.7:1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor. Tigers and Panthers were beginning to account for a significant proportion of the tank park, Russians were still mostly equipped with 76mm armed tanks

In 1944, the Russians lost approx23,800 AFVs, including approx13,000 T-34s. Meanwhile, the Germans lost approx9,500 AFVs on the Eastern Front, resulting in a 2.5:1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor. levelling off,, qualitatively worth noting that the majority of Soviet tanks were upgunned by this time. Very few IS series as yet. 

In 1945, it’s very hard to come up with reliable kill ratios since most German tank losses were tanks surrendered at the Armistice in May 1945. Most historians estimate a 1.2 or 2 to 1 kill ratio in the Germans’ favor in 1945. Significant numbers of IS-2 coming into play

Some sources estimate that about 50% of combat losses (ie: excluding tanks breaking down or getting bogged down in mud) resulted from “gunfire”. Gunfire can mean anything from an enemy tank to an AT gun or an anti-aircraft gun firing AP shells. The main source of gunfire losses seems to have been towed AT and AA guns (approx20%), followed by self-propelled-guns (approx20%) and tanks (approx10%). Keep in mind that these figures are rough estimations and are hotly debated to this day. If only 10% of those total losses were due to enemy tank fire, where on earth are the economies of building a superior more longer lived tank than the t-34/ I will go out there and say it plainly.....there is no justification. the german 'qualitative edge" model was tried and proven to be a failure In a war like the eastern front of WWII it was always all about the numbers.


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## parsifal (Nov 15, 2018)

Some of the hard economic statistics of Britain, Russia and Germany:

Steel (1942):
UK - 12.9 million tons
USSR - 8 million

total: 20.9 million

Germany - 31.9 million

Pig Iron (1942)
UK - 7.7 million tons
USSR - 4.8 million tons

total: 12.5 million tons

Germany - 24.9 million

Machine tool production (1940-1944)
UK: 374,000 (The Economics of WW2, page 59)
USSR: 115,400

total: 489,400

Germany: 813,400

The Soviet Union easily was the weakest of the three European powers engaged. The US dwarfed them all it has to be said

The mazing outcome of the USSR outproducing the Germans should start to sheet home along with the sheer brilliance in the production choices made for the T-34.


A good source to look at this issue in more detail is;

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e039/7d742101be41fed2589e0dff628b6af63d61.pdf


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## mikewint (Nov 15, 2018)

Yup, Michael, as I've posted several times now QUANTITY versus QUALITY. The Germans beat themselves with their own superior weapons


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## Peter Gunn (Nov 16, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Did a little digging for you. This is the bit I remember. Skip to 30:50 mark for the story.
> 
> 
> Hope that helps.
> Probably the luckiest Sherman crew in the history of US tank crews of WW2.




Appreciate the effort Tie, that made my morning, sat in my office and watched the whole thing. So to be totally glib (or corny)... many tanks...


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## Reluctant Poster (Nov 18, 2018)

The attached paper reviews the performance of the US 76 MM and does not paint a rosy picture


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## Tieleader (Dec 18, 2018)

Saw this on You Tube and liked Ralf's opinions. Skip the to 7:10 mark for the Tiger / Panthers bit or just watch the whole thing for fun!

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## parsifal (Dec 18, 2018)

Very useful video in my opinion


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## GrauGeist (Dec 19, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Tiger tanks were extremely rare. So, the chances of a Sherman actually meeting a Tiger were very slim. Only about 1500 Tiger I tanks were made. A large part was used on the Eastern Front. Probably not more than 500 Tigers would ever be in Western Europe and most likely even fewer. In comparison, some 50.000 Shermans were made. So there’s at least 100 times as many Shermans than there are Tigers on the Western front. So the odds of seeing and/or engaging one had to be quite slim.
> Then add to that the tactical considerations of the Germans and the American Sherman tanks were even less likely to engage Tigers.
> 
> The first Tigers were used in Tunesia and those were all knocked out by British forces. The British forces at that time were considered by the Germans to be more dangerous, as they were highly experienced, and thus the Tigers were used against them.
> ...


I meant to touch on this a while back, as there seems to be a little bit of confusion.

There were Tigers in France after the invasion, one such Tiger was the one belonging to the Imperial Japanese, but was commandeered by Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101, it's fate is unknown.

There was certainly a wide range of German AFVs, such as StuGs, PzKfw Mk.IVs and armored cars. For heavy German armor: Panthers, Tiger Is and Tiger IIs were involved.

A short list here:
Schwere Panzerjager Abteilung 653, 1st company/3rd Company: Jagdtiger.
Schwere Panzer Abteilung 301: Tiger I
Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506: Tiger II
Panzer Lehr Division: Panther, PzKfw Mk.IV, Jagdpanzer IV/70
2. Panzer Division: Panther, PzKfw Mk.IV, StuG III
9. Panzer Division: Panther, PzKfw Mk.IV
116. Panzer Division: Panther, PzKfw Mk.IV, Jagdpanzer IV
SS Panzer Brigade 150: StuG, Panther, American, Polish and Russian equipment.
SS Schwere Panzerabteilung 501 (formerly SS-sPzAbt 101): Tiger I, Tiger II

There's more, but this helps to put an end to the idea that there were "no Tigers in the west".

For a great read on the Ardennes and U.S. actions against the Tigers, I'd suggest this: https://history.army.mil/html/books/022/22-2-1/CMH_Pub_22-2-1.pdf

And I'll toss this pic in...it's a Tiger knocked out near Oberwampach during the Ardennes offensive.

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