Tanks post-2022: what now?

[GTX]

The future 'tank' , apart from being something closer to the IAI Carmel Program (see my earlier comment on this on page 1 of this thread) will also utilise wingman style UGCVs such as the M5 Ripsaw:

RIPSAW M5

Army's first Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) providing speed, mobility and unmanned capability.

www.textronsystems.com

 

[Gary Cain]

All tanks are maintenance intensive. That's a given. The only real advantage that, say, US tanks had was we only needed the three most important tools:

A tanker's bar
A sledge hammer
A roll of 100 MPH Tape.

That'll get you back to the motor pool

A Sherman could drive 250 miles in a single stint. No German tank could accomplish that. One company of Tiger I tried to move 100km up the Italian peninsula. One out of 17 made it.

 

[Denniss]

apples vs oranges, try it with Panzer III or IV

 

[WARSPITER]

Panzer III was a well balanced mix mechanically. That's why it did so well as a Sturmgeshutz.

 

[Admiral Beez]

All tanks are maintenance intensive. That's a given. The only real advantage that, say, US tanks had was we only needed the three most important tools:

A tanker's bar
A sledge hammer
A roll of 100 MPH Tape.

That'll get you back to the motor pool

Yes, I've read that the Sherman was no more reliable than any other tank. The difference was the Americans had a massive spare parts supply chain and designed their tanks to be easily repaired in the field.

A good example is gearbox swaps, see my earlier note below.

Japanese doing things different in for before and during ww2?

The Japanese pipeline was certainly not as scalable to the degree that the Empire Air Scheme or US rotational training in terms of providing capable rookies who stood a chance in, say, their first five combats.

ww2aircraft.net

 

[Denniss]

The tank chassis with highest reliability in german service should have been the czech 38t chassis.

 

[Admiral Beez]

A Sherman could drive 250 miles in a single stint. No German tank could accomplish that. One company of Tiger I tried to move 100km up the Italian peninsula. One out of 17 made it.

I assume every German tanks positioned on the outskirts of Moscow, Stalingrad and Sevastopol had to drive there from the railhead in Germany or Poland. Even if repairs were needed enroute that's a good testament to reliability.

 

[Admiral Beez]

apples vs oranges, try it with Panzer III or IV

1940, stop Pzkw III production, move everything to Pzkw IV, with asap introduction of long barrel 75mm and up-armoured variants. That's it, no Tigers, Jadgpanzer, etc. Next, make as many 6x6 trucks, fuel and ammo carriers, half track infantry carriers and tractors as you can. Logistics wins wars..

This wins wars…

Not this…

It's ridiclous that the Germany Army did not use tanker trucks to rapidly bring fuel forward to the front.


View: https://youtu.be/BvXfnD0qhf0?t=45

 

[Shortround6]

1940, stop Pzkw III production, move everything to Pzkw IV, with asap introduction of long barrel 75mm and up-armoured variants. That's it, no Tigers, Jadgpanzer, etc. Next, make as many 6x6 trucks, fuel and ammo carriers, half track infantry carriers and tractors as you can. Logistics wins wars..

This wins wars…

View attachment 722529

Not this…

View attachment 722530

A gross oversimplification.

The Tiger tank was never supposed to be a main battle tank (A general issue tank for the bulk of the tank forces.
It was always intended to be a special role tank, much like the

Now at times intentions were overtaken by realities. For the British tank forces the reality was that the existing Cruiser tank wasn't very good and they needed all kinds of substitutes to make up for it and the Churchills were sometimes used where they shouldn't have been.
Kind of the same for the Germans, the failure to upgrade/replace the MK III/IV in timely fashion forced the Germans to use the Tigers in a manner they were never intended to. Failure of the early Panthers didn't help. Please note that British spent an awful lot of time and money designing (but fortunately not building ) tanks after the Churchill to do the same role/s as the Churchill and Tiger were designed for. That was the attack of heavily defended positions. (Fortifications).

Tanks broke down a lot, some more that others, but you need to average out a number of tanks to get a good idea of what was going on although a test on a early version that failed is probably a good indicator if the break downs are analyzed. Just saying the gear box broke isn't quite good enough. Saying the gearbox broke because the bearings were too small or the material was defective is much better. Saying the gear selector mechanism didn't allow for easy shifting or allowed two gears to be selected at the same time says other things.
Skill of drivers was also of high importance. Some tanks took more skill than others to drive and if your pool of drivers wasn't up to par you had more break downs (you also got a lot less than the 'book' performance.)

The Tiger is often trotted out to show how bad German design and thinking was. It was actually pretty good for what it was/designed for, Think American M-26 2 1/2-3 years early for instance. And the M-26 was not noted for reliability despite having dozens if not hundreds of prototypes built (they built more electric drive versions than the Germans built Elephant chassis).

 

[WARSPITER]

The Panther is an excellent example of how not to design and produce a tank. On paper it's brilliant.
Excellent gun, armour, and mobility. Everything covered.

In reality it was really good as a long range tank destroyer but in other aspects of a tanks prime use such
as infantry support / protection which required close in fighting and good HE coverage, it doesn't rate any
higher than poor.

Design faults and mechanical overkill / fragility left it wanting as an all round tank.

The Tiger A was actually well designed and had very good armour - thickness plus a good brinel hardness -
tough but at the same time flexible enough to distribute energy. Also, off road only second in mobility to a
functional Panther. Tiger was originally meant to have the kwk 42 which the Panther got but that wasn't ready
in time so it ended up with the 88 and the horseshoe turret.

 

[Gary Cain]

apples vs oranges, try it with Panzer III or IV

They couldn't do it either. The final drive on both vehicles weighs 800 pounds, and is not maintainable by the crew. It is built like a watch.

Gorgeous to look at, but an absolute pain in the ass to work on. Only doable by a highly trained maintenance crew. With a special machine shop.

Each tank has two of them.

 

[Gary Cain]

I assume every German tanks positioned on the outskirts of Moscow, Stalingrad and Sevastopol had to drive there from the railhead in Germany or Poland. Even if repairs were needed enroute that's a good testament to reliability.

Look at how few actually made it. At Briansk there were TWO Stugs. That's it.

Nothing else made it.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Look at how few actually made it. At Briansk there were TWO Stugs. That's it.

How many did they start with?

 

[Gary Cain]

How many did they start with?

A battalion, they were from an independent Stug battalion. The 263rd is what my memory is dredging up, but I could be wrong about that.

 

[GrauGeist]

It was my understanding that there were six StuG IIIs at Bryansk and two were knocked out.

 

[Gary Cain]

It was my understanding that there were six StuG IIIs at Bryansk and two were knocked out.

According to the source I read it was two. Granted, that is a forty year old memory.

However, in case after case we read of heroic German tank crews fighting against terrible odds.

Strachwitz famously destroyed 103 Russian tanks with just 4 of his own.

The point being, four is all he had. Over and over when reading German accounts of war on the eastern front you learn that their units existed on paper. Entire tank battalions would be able to field three, maybe five tanks on any particular day.

One battalion commander had ONE tank. His command tank. No gun. But he had a radio to call in artillery and air support.

 

[Shortround6]

I have no idea how many German tracked vehicles made to the end of the 1941 marches and how many of the ones than were there at end started somewhere in the middle as replacements and/or how many got major maintenance in the Field. I would be very much surprised if any of the ones still mobile in Nov/Dec of 1941 were the ones that started in June. At least not without major work.
However the same can be said for most other tanks. Matildas in parts of Africa were going through steering clutches in 600 miles. Most tanks could not make 1000 miles on a set tracks.
Valentines staggered into Tunisia with 1500 miles on some of them which amazed some people in the tank community. Some of them were running with missing bogie wheels and many of them had several (or more than several) links taken out of the tracks to try to keep them tight.
Early T-34s, despite the amazing performance of the prototype, were going through transmissions like a bowl of hot soup on Russian winter's day.
Less said about the KVs the better, poster child for performance in field not matching the proving ground, In part due to poor training of the drivers, poor design, poor implementation.

In the 1950s American M-48s were breaking down something like once every 40 miles or so?
Now there are minor breakdowns and there are major breakdowns and there are peacetime breakdowns (stop before something else breaks) and wartime breakdowns (keep going until it won't move anymore).

 

[Gary Cain]

I have no idea how many German tracked vehicles made to the end of the 1941 marches and how many of the ones than were there at end started somewhere in the middle as replacements and/or how many got major maintenance in the Field. I would be very much surprised if any of the ones still mobile in Nov/Dec of 1941 were the ones that started in June. At least not without major work.
However the same can be said for most other tanks. Matildas in parts of Africa were going through steering clutches in 600 miles. Most tanks could not make 1000 miles on a set tracks.
Valentines staggered into Tunisia with 1500 miles on some of them which amazed some people in the tank community. Some of them were running with missing bogie wheels and many of them had several (or more than several) links taken out of the tracks to try to keep them tight.
Early T-34s, despite the amazing performance of the prototype, were going through transmissions like a bowl of hot soup on Russian winter's day.
Less said about the KVs the better, poster child for performance in field not matching the proving ground, In part due to poor training of the drivers, poor design, poor implementation.

In the 1950s American M-48s were breaking down something like once every 40 miles or so?
Now there are minor breakdowns and there are major breakdowns and there are peacetime breakdowns (stop before something else breaks) and wartime breakdowns (keep going until it won't move anymore).

The 1950s American tanks were not the Shermans of WWII. The tanker force didn't like being outclassed by the German tanks so adopted a lot of the German philosophies. Lack of reliability was the trade off.

Yes, the T-34 was a transmission eater, however, it could be replaced in the field. It was designed to be maintained by tractor workers.

 

[Denniss]

T-34s/KVs trannies had problems early on but most damage came from poorly trained crew. Those were used to drive ~8 tonne vehicles (if trained at all) and not these 30-40 tonne "monsters".
The Problem of Panzer III/IV was to have two very similar sized tanks existing instead of just one. Panzer III chassis was better on- and offroad but Panzer IV was the only one who could be adapted to use a long 75mm gun. They should have made the Panzer IV chassis with the Panzer III suspension and just vary the turret armament, it would have been a far better tank than the Panzer IV.
Panzer and Stug Bns should have had their own Tank workshop assigned. Small but with sufficient special equipment

 

[Gary Cain]

T-34s/KVs trannies had problems early on but most damage came from poorly trained crew. Those were used to drive ~8 tonne vehicles (if trained at all) and not these 30-40 tonne "monsters".
The Problem of Panzer III/IV was to have two very similar sized tanks existing instead of just one. Panzer III chassis was better on- and offroad but Panzer IV was the only one who could be adapted to use a long 75mm gun. They should have made the Panzer IV chassis with the Panzer III suspension and just vary the turret armament, it would have been a far better tank than the Panzer IV.
Panzer and Stug Bns should have had their own Tank workshop assigned. Small but with sufficient special equipment

PZIII chassis couldn't support the turret of the MKIV. Turret ring is too wide.