A Jagdpanzer too far? (1 Viewer)

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The 1965 Jagdpanzer is essentially just a 1944 Jagdpanzer with torsion bar suspension, modern engine and different cannon. Why can't Germany update the Jagdpanzer during 1955 rather then waiting until 1965? They could build an IFV or APC variant on the same chassis as the gun armed version. The 1944 Jagdpanzer was designed for low cost mass production so I doubt it would cost more then designing and building the new Hs.30 vehicle.
 
Not exactly PC at that time to revive any WW-II Designs. War ended only 20 years before.
 
So 1950s Germany should pay more for an inferior design just to be politically correct?
The Bundeswehr wasn't even allowed to form till 1955, so i'm sure they didn't feel it'd be too smart to immediately start just dusting off old 3rd Reich designs.
 
You are off subject. You asked why didn't the Germans make a huge production run of the 1960-65 Jagdpanzer chassis and use them as APCs (MICVs) to lower the unit price. The answer is that the HS 30 design was ordered in the mid/late 50s and was being manufactured and issued about 5 years before the Jagdpanzer chassis vehicles would have shown up.

The HS 30 chassis had a rather bewildering number of variants, both prototypes ( 12 different?) and paper proposals. It was also a bit small to be really practical at some of them and even made a rather poor APC/MICV. As would any updated 1944 Jagdpanzer without major modifications which rather blows a good deal of the supposed savings.

The German army may have wanted a better vehicle than the 1944 Jagdpanzer in 1960 or 65 no matter how cheap it was. While the Hs 30 used a gasoline engine NATO was moving towards diesel (unfortunately with a side detour with multi-fuel) but it did have an automatic transmission with 8 forward speeds. this 14600kg vehicle had a speed of 58kph and a range of 270km, both well beyond the capabilities of the 1944 vehicle. The 1965 Jagdpanzer used a V-8 500hp diesel to drive it's 27500kg weight at 70kph and had a range of 400km on the road. It also had an automatic transmission. While automatic transmissions are more expensive to build and buy to begin with they really cut down on the number of vehicles sidelined with blown clutches and wind up with lower costs over 10-20 years in maintenance and with a higher percentage of vehicles available for duty at any given time.
 
Can you imagine how angry the soviets would get if the Germans started to build thousands of improved Panther tanks with diesel engines and 17lb or 20lb guns firing APDS?
 

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