Knocking out a WW2 tank

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The numbers are always a bit wobbly depending on source and how they're defined, but yeah, it does look like you've got a point. Assuming Panthers weren't too disproportionately out of action for mechanical reasons they'd at least have made a very large minority of tanks encountered.


By the late war the Tiger was also pretty obsolete. A big, dangerous obsolete, but even so. Production was stopped around the middle of 1944.

It was obsolete when it came out. A tank that you have to regularly reinforce bridges for isn't much of an asset. The Germans seem to have had an overtactical mentality.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by adm

The Panther was a good tank that cost too much to build for what you got out of it.

They would have been better off putting the Panther's gun on the Panzer IV sooner, and building more of them.

There's no way the Pz.IV could've carried that gun - it was already badly over-loaded with the much smaller and less powerful guns. Nor did it have the armour to be competitive late in the war.

Germany couldn't out-build the Allies, so its only hope was to try and build better.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Actually if you do that you have just become a partisan rather than a soldier.

Nonsense. Soldiers ambush the enemy all the time.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by adm

The Panther was a good tank that cost too much to build for what you got out of it.

They would have been better off putting the Panther's gun on the Panzer IV sooner, and building more of them.

The Panzer IV was a grossly obsolete design that they were very lucky to manage to stretch to the point of making a tolerable mid-war medium tank.

I mean, there was no winning move once it turned out that blitzing the USSR into surrender wasn't going to work. But trying to carry through the rest of the war with a pre-T-34 main tank doesn't sound like a highly appealing approach.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It was obsolete when it came out. A tank that you have to regularly reinforce bridges for isn't much of an asset. The Germans seem to have had an overtactical mentality.

A tank that can actually win engagements has a lot going for it that most German tanks were finding seriously in doubt when they pitted their dubious pre-war machines against T-34s...

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It was obsolete when it came out. A tank that you have to regularly reinforce bridges for isn't much of an asset. The Germans seem to have had an overtactical mentality.

It really wasn't, and it was used for a number of years post-war by the French.

For a tank made in 1943 the Panther was pretty good. Consider that no tank is perfect, so the best you can do is get one that's 'good enough' and suits your requirements and capabilities better than the other compromises.

There were some design choices for the Panther that turned out to be poor - the interleaved wheels, for example. There were some others that were arguable, like making the frontal armour a single solid unit, making changing out the final drives very hard (but at the same time making the armour stronger).

Going with a 40+ ton weight was not one of them, given that the Germans HAD to make a better tank, because they certainly couldn't build more tanks than their enemies, and 'better' also meant 'heavier'.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Rupert

There's no way the Pz.IV could've carried that gun - it was already badly over-loaded with the much smaller and less powerful guns. Nor did it have the armour to be competitive late in the war.

Germany couldn't out-build the Allies, so its only hope was to try and build better.

Yep, and the problem is building better still required resources that didn't have, just different ones from the ones they didn't have for competing in numbers.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It was obsolete when it came out. A tank that you have to regularly reinforce bridges for isn't much of an asset. The Germans seem to have had an overtactical mentality.

Tiger is a weird one, if it was used in its intended role i.e occasional, planned break throughs with plenty of time between them to repair and relocate, it's fine.

Being forced to be an emergency response / rapid reaction tank over huge operational areas (western Russia, North Africa) not so good.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Tiger is a weird one, if it was used in its intended role i.e occasional, planned break throughs with plenty of time between them to repair and relocate, it's fine.

Being forced to be an emergency response / rapid reaction tank over huge operational areas (western Russia, North Africa) not so good.

Indeed, though it wasn't as bad as one might think - serviceability levels were actually about the same as for the Pz.IV. The problem was that it was slow for long distance moves (tactically it was fine), and it was very expensive.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Indeed, though it wasn't as bad as one might think - serviceability levels were actually about the same as for the Pz.IV. The problem was that it was slow for long distance moves (tactically it was fine), and it was very expensive.

didn't they have to devote more time & resources to keep those serviceability levels up?

Not so much an issue when you don't need it constantly and everywhere at once, but rather in it's planned breakthrough and retire roles.

Both becoming more of an issue as they went on

[Anders]

Whereas the P-1000 mostly reminds me of those 50-lb. anime swords - looks awesome, completely impractical.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

didn't they have to devote more time & resources to keep those serviceability levels up?

Probably. It was a big, heavy tank, designed in 1941, so by the late war it was far from state of the art, and tank reliability had improved a lot over that short time. However, it turned out to be more capable of long drives than was expected, which no doubt was very handy in the role it ended up being forced to take.

Of course the SotA 1945 tank didn't see service in the war, because it was over before they could enter service. For those, we need to look at the T-54/55 and the Centurion.