German AFV Pictures.

DonL · Mar 2, 2013

Therer are a number of sources youcould have a look at, a reasonable (and small cost) is John Forzcyks Panther vs T-34 1943. He quotes that the panther cost RM129K (exclusive of turret and communications), and extrapolates that this would equate to 51000 USD. On average a panther required 55000 man hours to build.

By comparison, during its peak production year of 1944, a T-34 cost R135K or roughly 13000USD. I do not know if that cost includes everything. It required a little over 3000 man hours to build a T-34.

However these comparisons need to be treated with a ghreat deal of caution.

The concept of 'cheap' or 'expensive' has no meaning in a command economy. The reason being that the pricing mechanism is controlled by the government. If Moscow (or Berlin) wanted a weapon to cost x amount of roubles (or RM) it would cost x amount. Command decisions were made at the top and did not take into consideration free market concepts like return on investment, opportunity cost etc etc

This makes it problematic to directly compare weapon systems by looking at the official prices. In general trying to compare the costs of weapon systems built in different countries under a command economy is very hard and prone to errors. Even using other indicators such as man-hours and input of raw materials can be misleading. Just the same, it is clear that a panther tank was far more expensive, whichever way you want to cut it, than a t-34. thats reflected in therespective production runs.

Just to give an example the 'cheap' T-34 had an aluminum engine. The Germans with more industrial assets than the SU and significantly higher aluminum production reached the conclusion that they could not provide their own tanks with an aluminum engine. It was simply too costly for them. This shows the different capabilities and priorities that countries have.

A better way is to compare prices of products in the same economy. This shows that the T-34 was much cheaper than the KV-1 and IS-2 tanks.

Also production costs and man-hours went down during the war. In 1941 8.000 man hours were needed to produce one T-34, this was reduced to 3.700 in 1943. Price in rubles went from 430.000 in 1940 to 136.000 in 1944.

Finaly I have got back my sources!

Your claims are totaly wrong parsifal.
On average a panther required 2000 man hours to build, at the MAN factory.

55 hours armoured hull
38 hours turret
485 hours chassis fitting
150 hours turret fitting
85 hours final assembly.

The remaining ours were for production the individual parts.
So your claim about 55000 hours is totaly wrong and realy a myth.

Source: http://www.amazon.de/dp/3613031655/?tag=dcglabs-20
Panzer V Panther und seine Abarten; Walter J. Spielberger / Page 244

parsifal · Mar 4, 2013

Its not a myth, its just a completely different set of data. it gets down to which source is correct. Its entirely possible that both sources are correct but are referring to different time periods of the respective production runs. . I have no real idea. Obviously you have a lot of faith in your source.

At the end of the day, all we can say is that for a two year production run, the Germans managed to produce about 6500 Panthers, whilst in that same period, about 40000 T-34s were produced. There might be any number of reasons to explain that, but superior Soviet industrial indexes is not one of them. The Soviet economy was, in theory, significantly smaller than the German, using the accepted and available Industrial indexes of the day (generally steel production and other similar crude indicators). Most scholars agree that the overall Soviet economy was markedly smaller than the Germans, yet they managed to outproduce them in just about every category.

Also, these figures align to Steinbecks, but Steinbeck points out they are based on a memo emanating from MAN dated August 1944, at a time that Panther production had pretty much overcome a lot of production bottlenecks and was churning out Panthers very efficiently. You will get vastly different numbers at other times of the war, particularly at times when there were some sort of botlenecks in the supply chain (for example during the first half of 1944, after the Augsburg raids) . Thats the salient point of my post if you read it.....prices and times and materials are essentially not comparable between each country or even at different times of the production run, or for different types. Things change, systems are different, other issues, all of which make this virtually impossible to quantify and virtually impossible to compare.

tomo pauk · Mar 5, 2013

Maybe something is lost in translation: 2000 working hours != 20000 man hours?

Denniss · Mar 5, 2013

tomo pauk said:
Maybe something is lost in translation: 2000 working hours != 20000 man hours?

Yes, that's it. It's impossible for one man to assemble a Panther in 85 hours.

DonL · Mar 5, 2013

parsifal said:
Its not a myth, its just a completely different set of data. it gets down to which source is correct. Its entirely possible that both sources are correct but are referring to different time periods of the respective production runs. . I have no real idea. Obviously you have a lot of faith in your source.

At the end of the day, all we can say is that for a two year production run, the Germans managed to produce about 6500 Panthers, whilst in that same period, about 40000 T-34s were produced. There might be any number of reasons to explain that, but superior Soviet industrial indexes is not one of them. The Soviet economy was, in theory, significantly smaller than the German, using the accepted and available Industrial indexes of the day (generally steel production and other similar crude indicators). Most scholars agree that the overall Soviet economy was markedly smaller than the Germans, yet they managed to outproduce them in just about every category.

Also, these figures align to Steinbecks, but Steinbeck points out they are based on a memo emanating from MAN dated August 1944, at a time that Panther production had pretty much overcome a lot of production bottlenecks and was churning out Panthers very efficiently. You will get vastly different numbers at other times of the war, particularly at times when there were some sort of botlenecks in the supply chain (for example during the first half of 1944, after the Augsburg raids) . Thats the salient point of my post if you read it.....prices and times and materials are essentially not comparable between each country or even at different times of the production run, or for different types. Things change, systems are different, other issues, all of which make this virtually impossible to quantify and virtually impossible to compare.

Your implication was, that you get 8 T34-85 for 1 Panther.
To me this totaly overestimated, my persomal opinion is 2 T34-85 for one Panther from working hours, material and production time.
Also germany producing at that time PIV and TigerI and TigerII tanks and was massiv under bomber attack.

Also from my understanding of UDSSR economy WWII from Glantz and other Authors, there are very serious shortcomings in favour of tank production.
The UDSSR had serious shortcomings in production of tractors and general agricultural machines plus truck production, both could only be compensated through landlease. Without landlease the UDSSR would not be able to foot their troops and civil people at 1942/43/44.
Also without the landlease trucks, the Red Army would be much more immobile.

To me here are distinctions in the production in general and the output of tanks.

parsifal · Mar 6, 2013

Your implication was, that you get 8 T34-85 for 1 Panther.
To me this totaly overestimated, my persomal opinion is 2 T34-85 for one Panther from working hours, material and production time.

As I prefaced in that post of mine, there is no way of cmaking such valid comparisons. I do acknowledge and respect your point of view in this. It would be wrong of me to try and claim that there is not at least some basis to support your position. but then there is also basis to support the claim that for every 1 German MkV, the Russians could produce 8 T-34s.

Im kind of drawn back to analysing the total production runs for each of these tanks and then detreminng as a percentage of total AFV production what portion the t-34 represented of Soviet effort, and what proportion of German effort the Mk V represented

In 1943-5, the Soviets produced 68471 AFVs of all types. Of that total 41871 were T-34 derivatives. For the Germans, in 1943-5, they produced 34769 AFVs. Of these 6700 were Panthers or derivatives. T-34 as a proportion of overall tank production amounted to 61% of total effort, whilst for the Germans the Panther represented only 19.7% of total effort.

Its intersting though, almost as many T-34ws were produced in that time than the entire German AFV program

Also germany producing at that time PIV and TigerI and TigerII tanks and was massiv under bomber attack.

Point taken about the multiplicity of types, but in a sense this was part of the problem for germany. And whilst Germany was indeed being hammered by the bomber offensive and overal materials shortages, as you say, ther is absolutely no way that the Soviets had access to superior resources for domestic production. Fully 35% of their industrial capacity had been overrun, and a similar percentage of their population captured. Steel production, surely as good a crude measure as any, the Germans were producing at least three times that of the Russians. All the key economic indicators of the time showed the russians as massively outgunned by the German economy, and thats not including the potential that might have been derived from the occupied territories

Also from my understanding of UDSSR economy WWII from Glantz and other Authors, there are very serious shortcomings in favour of tank production.

Of course, something had to give, but in all the key indicators of military production the Soviets severely outperformed the Germans

The UDSSR had serious shortcomings in production of tractors and general agricultural machines plus truck production, both could only be compensated through landlease. Without landlease the UDSSR would not be able to foot their troops and civil people at 1942/43/44.

You wont get any arguument from me that Lend Lease was critical to the Soviet war effort. Its a whole different debate however. ive read some accounts that estimate the overall contribution of Lend Lease to the russian capability to be somewhere between 14 and 20%, depending on what area of the economy you want to look at at.

I dont know about agricu;ltural tractors, but in terms of military soft skinned vehicles, the Sovietrs significantly outproduced the germans. They received about 400000 vehicles from Lend Lease (from memory), but produced 220000 according to Zetterling 1943-5. The Germans in that same period produced about 149000 vehicles.

Also without the landlease trucks, the Red Army would be much more immobile.

Um yep, and your point? If the germans had managed their economy better and those of the countries it overran, it easily had the potential to blow the Soviets out of the water,m b ut failed.

To me here are distinctions in the production in general and the output of tanks

.

I dont have any problem in pointing out that the Soviets had an overall weaker economy to the Germans. But trying to argue that the Soviets lagged in opther areas of production compared to the Germans does not stand up to even the most cursory of examinations.....The Germans went for rxotic, difficult to produce designs, the Russians always considered ease of production a factor....the Germnans completely mismanged their economy despite people like Speer and Milch (they could not get over the inherent corrution and innefficiency of the Nazi system) whilst the Soviets flogged their economy for all that they could. They knew what total war meant, the Germans apparently did not, until it was way too late.

stug3 · Mar 13, 2013

Southern Russia, March 1942

stug3 · Mar 27, 2013

The burnt remains of the radio-operator of a German PzKpfw IV tank is hoisted out of his compartment, March 1942.

Troops are shown the effects of anti-tank rounds on a knocked-out German PzKpfw IV tank,

vinnye · Mar 27, 2013

Interestingly the rounds that did the damage are from the flank. Maybe they found out that even the lighter German tanks could take our smaller calibre AP shells on their frontal armour?

stug3 · Apr 14, 2013

An American soldier advances cautiously at left with a submachine gun to cover any attempt of the German tank crew from escaping their tank following a duel with U.S. and British anti-tank units in Medjez al Bab area, Tunisia, on January 12, 1943.