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Expensive compared to what?
Sd.Kfz.11 cost about RM 20,000.
KM Tirpitz cost RM 181 million.
Sd.Kfz.11 artillery towing tractors did not break the German budget. All 8,500 produced cost less then a single battleship.
Small problem: The R2 had no additional armor, it just had the Mk 108 outer-wing cannon, R7 was the armored variant without gun change, R8 with MK 108 and armor. The A-8 did not have the 801 TS power-egg as this would be an A-9 then.
The attached 11/44 Focke-Wulf doc gives 248.8kg armor weight, compared to 137.8 for the initial A-8 and 165.3 for the A-8 with 801 TU power-egg.
Production may have been a bit fluid in late 44-45 so Focke-Wulf may have started building the R2 with armor upon unit request but in theory both R2 and R8 only had the MK 108 in common.spoken with several Sturm pilots the R2 and R8 were the same crate except the R8 had armored leading edges on the wings and under engine cowling and an armored nose ring. Scheuklappen were removed from JG 4 and JG 300 A/C due to icing, Sturm JG 3 kept the plexiglas protectors on till all 3 Sturm units went in for the last battles for Berlin after January 15, 1945. in all it has mentioned and I feel it was more than the additional weight of 500 lbs, enough to blast US 4-engines out of the sky as well has British heavies but fighter vs fighter they were going to lose en-masse.
Way off track but how? The USSR was is BIG. Much of the commerce and production was beyond the Urals (T-34 production was moved there when the war started).That won't make any difference if a better equipped and supplied German army crushes the Soviet Union during 1941.