I've seen the opposite argued, that the Tiger tanks killed far in excess of their numbers and even losses, as something like 50% of losses were due to mechanical breakdown.
At Kursk, roughly 100 tigers were committed. after 4 days or so of fighting, they had lost just three tanks to Soviet guns. but many had suffered breakdowns. there were no reserves to hold the soviet reserves, and further, after the Alied invasion of Sicily an entire SS corps was shipped out leaving the southern front gutted and vulnerable. by the end of the month this 100 strong force had suffered 100% loss rates...not temporary losses, they were permanently lust, mostly captured by the rapidly advancing Russians. The "qualities" of the tiger were a direct contributor to the defeat, though given german mismanagement of the whole affair, i doubt nothing could have saved citadel. If the Germans had invested in Stugs rather than Tigers, there would have been no offensive, so the russians would have been able to pisk and choose their timing and placement of offensive. but the germans would have had time to dig in, but more importantly would have had ample reserves to counter the soviet attacks. Instead of 100 tanks, they could have had 1000 SPGs, not concentrated in an offensive position, but spread out and mobile, more than able to deal with the 5000 or so Soviet mediums that they would have had to deal with . there is no evidence that Tigers were any more cost effectivee, actually the evidence is there that with more tanks, there would have been more kills
You dont think Carius might be just a little biased? The trouble with these analyses is that they never look at the big picture. they are the "I was there I saw hundreds of burning Soviet Tanks from the guns of our tigers". firstly, the loss claims are unverified, but Im not even going to go there, I dont need to. its what they dont see thats important. because the Soviets had such a massive numbers advantages(and based on their raw industrial power should not have), they could afford to attack and attack. When you attack, statistically, 80% of your losses in vehicles, and 60% of your losses in crews are recovered and returned to service within 30 days. So these discussions of loss rates being 7:1 in favour of the Germans need to be tempered against the fact that the vast majority of soviet losses were all more or less immediately recovered. by comparison, when you are defending, and your defences crack, as the germans repeatedly conceded because they
chose or elected not to put sufficient tanks in the field (bedazzled by the technical capabilities of their heavy tanks), nearly 100% of your breakdowns or disabled tanks become losses as well. ..something Cartius chooses never to mention. but its worse than that. Because the Soviets were given the numbers advantage, partly or substantially because the Germans did not understand the importance of numbers and wasted their industrial muscle on fripperies like the Tiger), the overall firepower of their tank formations actually suffered because of the Tiger tank.
As described above, the German actual losses in Tiger losses were not 3 tanks, they were 100 Tiger tanks. in that period, the Soviets lost about 500 tanks on the souther sector where the majority of tigers were deployed. The tigers may have accounted for 100, maybe, who knows. thats a loss rate of 1:1.
Now, as to the towed AT gun theory that leaves out the cost of the haulers, the fuel cost of hauling, their vulnerability to enemy artillery, of which the Soviets and Americans had obscene amounts of, and could be maneuvered around, especially in the East (not counting the effects of aircraft strikes on them either).
Whilst tanks are largely immune to the fire effects of artillery directly, they are definately not immune to the indirect effects, as the Kursk experience clearly shows. Soviet artillery pounding away at the softer support echelons was the main reason for the heavy German losses. if those tanks lose their support, they are lost as well. Tigers are just as vulnerable as ATGs for that reason, and an ATG dug in has a fair chance of survival. If Mansteins ideas had been adopted.....pull back 20 or 30 kilometres just prior to the offensive, which was well within the heers capabilities, but strictly rejected by hitler, the artillery effects would have been nullified, and no ground lost....the ground conceded would have been won back in the inevitable counterattacks by the hoards of stugs supporting the german Infantry as it counterattacked.
1944 statistics are very revealing as to why most of this stuff about the tiger is mostly post war bunkum
The Maus and Tiger II I certainly agree with as being major wastes, but the Tiger I was very cost effective.
In fact it wasn't, and badly so. Krivosheev states that Soviet Tank losses 41-5 ran at 96000, with German losses claimed at 32000. 10000 of that number were surrendered or captured at the end of the war, so the figures are about 96000::22000, or roughly 4.4:1.
On the Dupuy Institute Forum I found a post by Chris Lawrence (yes, THE chris Lawrence) referencing a thesis by a US Major Wilbeck. about the employment of Tiger PzAbt and it effectiveness. He takes figures from Schneider 'Tigers in Combat I II', and gives overall effectiveness as:
Kill ratio in action 1:12.16
Kill ratio total 1:5.44 (this includes Tigers destroyed out of combat)
For both east and west, but not, it appears, including the Tiger companies that were attached to some SS-PDs in 1943 (and after?).
Not quite the East front, but good enough for this discussion. That's hardly different from the ratios achieved by the average garden variety tanks also employed by the heer. Given that a tiger cost nearly or perhaps even more than twice as much as a panther, and even more compared to a mkIV, and just in steel alone weighed more than twice as much as the latter, that's hardly a cost effective use of limited german resources.
Lawrence makes this comment in the discussion "….
the Tiger's are 100% from German records. So...they are reporting German claims of kills (a pretty imprecise methodology).
…….it is very important that one counts the same thing for both sides (destroyed and damaged vs destroyed and damaged). German claims of Soviet tank kills would by their nature be counting both destroyed and damaged (and maybe a few other things), not just destroyed.
The actual price was meaningless in terms of price, given the Nazi controlled currency and ability to set prices, what mattered were material costs and man hours. The Tiger per kill was by those metrics, even with the large number of mechanical breakdowns, very effective for the cost.
I agree that cost is a very imprecise and dangerous way of measuring actual tank costs , especially against foreign tanks, but if comparing against other tanks of German manufacture, it at least gives some idea of the cost of a particular item. Exclusve of turrets communications and armamenet, a Tiger I cost on averge during the war about RM192K, compared to the cost (fully equipped of about 107 for the MkIV and about 138 for the Panther. In terms of manhours the Panther soaked up about 55000 man hours to build whilst the tiger was nudging an average of just under 100000 manhours per unit. By comparison, by 1945, the Soviets could churn out a T-34 in just over 4000 hours. If you want to compare steel weights, the comparisons are just as discouraging. A Tiger I weighed 121250lbs, the Mk V weighed 98000 lbs and the MkIV about 43000 lbs. And, on average, there was no, or little, difference in the kill/loss ratio of the Mk IV to the Kill/loss ratio of the MkVI. They simply were a waste of money and resources, plain and simple
The Panther was less so. I personally think Germany would have been better off with lots of StuGs and Pz IVs rather than Panthers, which only became remotely reliable in March 1944. The Tiger was probably worth it compared to the VK3601, but I was curious what people thought about it being lighter and more reliable with the same gun, in effect not being a slugger, but rather a sniper
Once the myths about it effectiveness are peeled away and the true value of the tiger left for examination what do we have. A piece of machinery that has its combat record vastly overblown and overstated, and not a cost effective weapon system at all, because its combat performance was about the same as every other German tank of the late war. . That should be obvious. But what the tiger could and did do, is in defensive situation soak up a large amount of resources to be brought to ground. Stalking a loan tiger could take many tanks, and many hours of precious time, as the remainder of a defending force made good an escape. Hardly worth the effort and expense of the tank, but still a worthwhile effect worth mentioning.