Alternative German tanks & AFVs (1 Viewer)

Shortround6 said:

One book claims the 37mm gun weighed 195kg. This may be for the complete gun and not just barrel and breechblock. The short 50mm was 223kg, the log 50mm was 305kg and the short 75mm was 285kg. It is not just a question of the weight of the gun, If you are using a nearly 300kg gun instead of a 200kg gun you need better (larger/heavier) elevating and traverse mechanisms or perhaps go to power traverse (but see later) the larger turret ring and other knock-on effects.

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Short 50mm was at 400 kg for the total gun = barrel + breech block + breech (together 223 kg) + cradle + recoil system (together 177 kg). Long 50mm was at 435 kg, while the short 75mm was at 490 kg.
From here.

tomo pauk said:

Panther's ammo was wider at the rim, 122 mm vs. 111 for the Tiger. Or, the area of the case bottom was ~20% greater. So stacking 80-90 of either might've result in the Panther's ammo needing greater volume than the Tiger's ammo.


Perhaps not using diesel fueled engines on their tanks was one of bigger mistakes that Germans made? Not only that one gets the better mileage, but the external fuel tanks are an actual thing to do, and not some disaster waiting to happen.
FWIW, here is what the Japanese did back in ww2 for their tanks (can be easily translated): link. The Soviet experience about the diesel engines is well known.

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Good point about the size of the cartridge maximum diameter.

As for diesel, I think we've discussed it in several threads over the past few years. At the level of the individual tank the difference might not be hugely significant, as the smaller fuel tanks for a given range are offset by a bigger and heavier engine?

But reducing the logistics volume might be significant, although partially offset by requirement to support both petrol and diesel rather than only petrol?

But the biggest benefits would have been in the fuel production itself. Fischer Tropsch plants (suitable for diesel type fuels) are much less capital intensive than the Bergius process plants that produce high octane petrol. And even if you have access to crude oil, diesel production requires only fractional distillation and none of the petrochemical heroics required for high octane petrol.

The Germans originally chose petrol for their tanks because they thought that petrol would be easier to come by. When eventually it was reported to them that synthetic diesel production would be easier they started programs to design diesel tank engines, but nothing became of them before the end of the war.