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Panther, T-34 or Sherman - best design of the war?


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5] Surely the manpower pool is a constraint in peace time so having lots of cheap tanks may be better in a real war but in peacetime with limited numbers you may well want a fancy tank.

Modern ATM's which fire into tank top armour do seem to indicate that good though tanks are for some things they are highly expensive and vulnerable. Personally I think the day of the manned tank is pretty much over. In the next two decades they will disappear.

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Modern ATM's which fire into tank top armour do seem to indicate that good though tanks are for some things they are highly expensive and vulnerable. Personally I think the day of the manned tank is pretty much over. In the next two decades they will disappear.

Tanks have been constantly disappearing for the last 90 years, after becoming obsolete in November 1918. If they finally do disappear, I would then also expect to see the disappearance of combat aircraft because of anti-aircraft missiles and of war ships because of anti-ship missiles.

Top attack missiles will be defeated by active protection systems akin to Arena. You will see APS on US tanks at the latest when Russia or China develop their own Javelin equivalent and start selling them to Iran, Syria et al.

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"From what we have learned from history, the best means to fight a tank is another and better tank, fullstop."

Agreed but to take that logic to its ultimate conclusion, then the King Tiger should have been a war winner and it patently wasn't. So you need a better tank, but you also need it to move fast enough strategically and tactically and you need it in sufficient numbers. So really you need a superior medium tank.

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Sorry, doesn't follow at all. The best means to fight a tank can be another better tank, without it remotely being the case that having the best tank wins. Because fighting a tank is one task, and winning a war is another one entirely.

Agreed.

In recent years we have seen brutalized refugees stop multi million dollar tanks with nothing but a broken steel pipe and sheer desperation.

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Sergei

Possibly you missed the word "manned" from my previous post as you do not cover that in your reply : )

Incidentally how do you feel about battleships?

Tanks have been constantly disappearing for the last 90 years, after becoming obsolete in November 1918.

Tanks obsolete in 1918 - I really don't think anyone suggested that in 1918 or even 1928 or 1938 etc. The impression I got is that everyone has been dead keen on building them over the last 90 years. And even now more money and research produces harder armours and active protection systems. I think we may eventually graduate to the semi-mobile Maginot Line - at roughly the same cost to.

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Sorry, doesn't follow at all. The best means to fight a tank can be another better tank, without it remotely being the case that having the best tank wins. Because fighting a tank is one task, and winning a war is another one entirely.

I think this comment gets to the heart of the question. Is the 'best' tank the one in individual combat or the one you need to win the war? Most of the time these discussions founder on this very question because one group of adherents will go for the best combat tank: King Tiger or Panther while the other group go for the best tank to win the war: T-34 and Sherman. The you get mired in endless gun size and production numbers comparisons. So to cut through the Gordian knot, I posed the question - what was the best tank for Germany to win the late war? Using that to draw out the attributes that are needed by the 'best tank to win the war".

In 1940, 1941, 1943 and 1944 the side with superior armour (French Russians Ostfront Germans and West Front Germans) lost the battle. In the first two cases the winning side won by means of tactical advantages and in the final case by economic ones such as completely dominant airpower. But in 1943/4, the Ostfront could have gone either way, the Germans had superior armour since late 1942 and by Spring 1944 had enough numbers of it in the numbers of Panthers to make a difference. This was also the nadir of the Russian tank design. The T-34 design had been 'frozen' at the T34-76 to increase production, the T-34-57 discontinued, the SU-85 just starting to arrive, the T34-85 on the draughtsman boards. Both armies, German and Russian were essentially First World War armies -98% horse drawn infantry supported by dragged artillery -so neither could win a battle and exploit it without the tank. At this stage both sides were pretty evenly matched, about 3 million men in the Ostheer, still good quality, tactics and training advantages, still retain strategic mobility and still retains some airpower and on the defensive. The Russians around 6 million men poor quality, poorer tactics and on the offensive. I would say that was a pretty even line up.

So why did the Germans not win at Kursk and lose in the post Kursk offensives, the battles in the Dnepr Bend and in the Spring of 1944? The Russian Combined Arms Armies could not have carried these offensives so far and so fast without the tank's support.

What tank attributes were critical for winning these battles?

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Sergei

Possibly you missed the word "manned" from my previous post as you do not cover that in your reply : )

Incidentally how do you feel about battleships?

No, I did notice, but I think it's irrelevant for this conversation. Unmanned AFV's won't be replacing manned AFV's in the next 20 years. Unmanned vehicle still needs men to fix it when something in it breaks, like tracks, and they have to be where the vehicle is. Remotely controlled vehicles may supplement manned vehicles, such as by having a RC vehicle driving in front of a convoy.

As for battleships, their case is no different from that of land battleships. Both types have made way for better systems, but there's still plenty of heavy metal on the waves and in the battlefields today.

Tanks obsolete in 1918 - I really don't think anyone suggested that in 1918 or even 1928 or 1938 etc. The impression I got is that everyone has been dead keen on building them over the last 90 years. And even now more money and research produces harder armours and active protection systems. I think we may eventually graduate to the semi-mobile Maginot Line - at roughly the same cost to.

Soon after the Great War the conditions of Western Front were seen as an oddity that would never repeat, and the slow and mechanically unreliable tanks would have little use in a maneuvre war such as seen in the Eastern Front - just like the maneuvre generals winced at equipping infantry with machine guns, because they would slow them down and take away the offensive spirit. There were generals who had more faith in the armour, but most seem to have believed (hoped?) that future wars would be won in the air - you only needed to bomb enemy factories into rubble and wait for their surrender. Maybe the high man cost of the World War caused the generals to look for quicker and cleaner ways to resolve wars, which explains why horse cavalry didn't disappear until WW2.

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Unmanned AFV's? Manned AFV's?

I was talking about tanks rather than any armoured fighting vehicle so your contention that AFVs will be around in 20 years I can agree with. As for the MBT as we know it now I do not agree.

Rather like the battleship the cost of protecting it in action and the capital cost will become prohibitive compared to alternatives. Admittedly if you are to use them in quelling civilians they will be more than adequate but in a full on war there will be alternatives that are more agile and cheaper.

You get to the nub with remote control, which may be someone in a light armoured vehicle 5 miles away however for the ultimate fighting machine I expect to see AI directed killing machines that will shoot anything with a temperature and/or movement.

Perhaps accompanied by a missile bearing AI vehicle for any old fashioned tanks. Of course not having to enclose a large fighting space with armour means weight. engine power, and dimensions will be smaller giving a tactical advantage over larger slower foe.

BTW Sergei. I am wondering who else has voiced the idea that tanks were an obsolete weapon system in 1918 - do you have any names to look up?

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Is the 'best' tank the one in individual combat or the one you need to win the war?

tanks or men do not really fight the battles in wars, it's the units of higher structure that do the wrestling. that higher level stuff is always far more important than some weapon system specs. in that sense the question of having the best tank to win the war is a bit pointless, as the answer is "pretty much any tank; the tank does not matter". it would make more sense to argue about various unit structures and doctrines, or specific officers. economics perhaps, but that part is fairly deterministic and leaves less room for opinion versus hard data.

while the other group go for the best tank to win the war: T-34 and Sherman.

yeah, if Soviets would have had Pz-IVs instead of T-34s, or Westerners Panthers instead of Shermans, they would have lost the war, right?

So to cut through the Gordian knot, I posed the question - what was the best tank for Germany to win the late war? Using that to draw out the attributes that are needed by the 'best tank to win the war".

the one with well trained working parent organization and reasonably protected skies.

What tank attributes were critical for winning these battles?

no tank attributes were critical for winning those battles.

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The disappearance of MBT's would be the same as disappearance of not just battleships but all capital ships because airplanes, coastal defence missiles, submarines and light missile and torpedo boats have made them all obsolete. Carriers can be replaced by bases around the world and air refueling, so there is no real need for them either. But we know that isn't true. Anyway, I think we've tortured that analogy to death by now...

Unmanned combat vehicles are not going to replace tanks or any other type of AFV's in the next 20 years. They are unreliable (all autoloaders are prone to jamming and you need someone to clear that - I think a trained chimp would be optimal but tankers are cheaper), if they break they can't fix themselves, if their sensors break or are jammed by enemy they can't unbutton or reconnoiter on foot, and most importantly, they don't exist so it will take a mountain of money and time to get them to the level where they can be relied upon, especially if you expect them to act without human interaction. Meanwhile there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a modern MBT. The point you originally made about top-attack missiles can easily be countered with active protection systems. I believe that the spiral of weapons and counter-weapons will still continue for a few rounds more...

BTW Sergei. I am wondering who else has voiced the idea that tanks were an obsolete weapon system in 1918 - do you have any names to look up?

Geoffrey Regan's Military Blunders quotes Major General Sir Louis Jackson to have commented in 1919 that tank was a freak of history, and the conditions that created it would not repeat. He also reports General James Edmonds having told Liddell Hart that the days of armour were over, and if any such monsters showed themselves in a modern battlefield they'd be destroyed immediately. Mind you, Regan is a popularizer so you should take his claims with a grain of salt, but it doesn't appear that the potential of tanks was understood by many in interwar Britain or USA (even in Germany and Soviet Union the Guderians and Tukhachevskys were a minority).

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I do not think that this view is necessarily correct.

The whole basis of both Ecology and Economics is based upon the idea that billions of individual transactions make up an Ecosystem or an Economy and that the overall trends can be seen and studied using statistics. The outcome of any individual transaction cannot be predicted but with enough of them the likelihood of an outcome can be predicted.

For instance a lioness is stalking an antelope of a piece of veldt. We cannot predict the outcome of the encounter because there are too many variables. But all over Africa this encounter takes place every day, millions of times year and we know that the average kill rate for a lioness is around 30%. That in turn means that a given population of antelopes can support a given number of lions. We cannot see the outcome of the individual encounters but we can see the effect in the broad sense. Introduce another group of lions with a higher kill rate and they will over time displace the original group because they are more efficient and that is evolution.

In the same way military history can be studied. Of course it is easier to do this for air or sea warfare as there are fewer variables to consider but it can be done in broader terms for land warfare. I seem to remember the US Army studying this area since at least the 1960s to produce computer models to predict the outcomes of engagements and to determine the optimum forces to be used. This is the basis for Operational Research started in the Second World War by among others the Royal Navy with real strategic benefits in the fight against the U-Boat.

Introduce the Panther onto the Eastern Front and it has an effect. To be sure there are other variables such as training, supply, command, weather, terrain, situation, etc. We cannot determine the outcome of an individual engagement but we can study the overall effect of lots of engagements.

To take a simple example. The average monthly loss rate in 1944 for the Panther was 12.7%, that for the PzIV 15% and that of medium US tanks around 25%. (US tanks were attacking and the Germans had other advantages.) But so long as the US Army had more than double the number of German tanks they would win in the end. But it took 25,000 man hours to produce a Sherman compared to 55,000 man hours for a Panther. So the Sherman was the more efficient tank using these criteria because you can produce 2.2 Shermans for every Panther. Likewise you can produce 1.75 PzIVs for each Panther but their loss rates are pretty close. If their kill rates are not too dissimilar then there is a real case to be made for the PzIV as the optimum tank for Germany. Germany may still lose the war because the US is a bigger economy and really can produce enough Shermans to kill all the PzIVs. But that would still make the PzIV the optimal tank for Germany to produce.

Tank attributes are not the be all and end all, there are too many other variables and the German tank fleet was not uniform being a mix of Panthers, PzIV, PzIII, Tigers and SP guns. But attributes do contribute and some of them may be decisive.

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i am a great fan of OR studies and there are some that actually do go to the level of effects made by differences between tanks. Brits made some great studies about that. one good book that includes stuff about them is "Stress of Battle".

my issue is with the fundamental logic of going into production numbers of different tanks, or units of production cost, or strategic / operational loss stats and then deriving qualitative difference between different tank designs from it.

the first reason is that production numbers and units of cost are directly related to resources and means of production available. it's not as simple as just choosing to build a really economical tank, or choosing between design A and B.

the second reason is that you can't derive things like that from strategic/operational level loss statistics. on that level other things will always be more important than the differences between tanks. just look at for example Arracourt or 1941 tank battles. the superior tanks lose real bad and it's not about numbers. if you want to do it well, do it like the Brits and analyze a good number of individual small battles and try to find patterns.

if we forget about high level statistics or production numbers, i agree that looking at tank attributes can be very interesting. i still fear that differences between tanks is not going to matter. at best it's going to be the difference between a medium tank vs heavy tank, tank vs tank destroyer, AT gun vs tank destroyer and so forth.

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On production costs and OR, the main thing to understand is that a simple metric like worker-hours will completely fail to capture the actual substitution-costs because that one input simply isn't the bottleneck or rate-determiner. You can't have more Panthers for fewer Panzer IVs by putting the Panzer IV workers in the Panther factory. You in fact have as many workers in the Panther factory as the feedstocks and line capacity can use. Similarly with a RM cost. You can't simply issue more money to the Panther factory to cover its input costs and get more Panthers in the old proportion of costs to Panthers. Too many additional inputs are needed and the exchange rates of everything involved will move if you try to force more inputs through the existing set of bottlenecks.

What the Germans actually did was use all available production lines. Even the relatively useless light chassis lines were run flat-out, and designs were modified to get some use out of them, because production line time was the actual rate determiner, and not raw inputs. The lead time to add new production lines from stratch is quite long and only justified by a long production run. To recover costs "sunk" in an old production capacity investment, you run it flat-out with all the inputs it can consume, making the most recent design you can get out of that line.

Overall German tank production is centered on the Pz III and Pz IV chassis because that is where the line investment occurred early in the war. You are locked in at that point. You can take the III production as StuGs with 80mm fronts and long 75 guns instead of turreted IIIs with short 50s. You can take the IV production as a whole mix of Jagds and Hummels and Nashorns, on top of plain turreted IVs, and you can have long 75 and uparmored versions of the latter. But you take tens of thousands of them or you simply won't get that number of tanks, of any kind.

The only production line the Germans closed was the useless prewar Panzer I. They stopped feeding full inputs to the Panzer II chassis line after midwar, but it still turned out plenty of Marder IIs and Wespes that were quite useful in the field, long after a turreted 20mm main armament tank was hopeless.

The objective constraints the entire economy faced were not material in the first place. They were managerial and organizational. By that I mean the economy never reached its physical input limits, either in the use of manpower or in the use of other resources. A few scarce alloying metals were fully exploited but substitutes existed or were found for all of them, rather than absolute bottlenecking. The entire economy continued to expand clear into mid 1944 despite mounting bombing interference, because it simply wasn't at its physical-limits frontier at any point.

Fuel became an absolutely scarce item only in the last 9 months of the war, and that intermittently. Manpower withdrawn from the home front to replace the mid-year losses of 1944 were the immediate cause of the peak in output, along with disorganization effects from unopposed bombing (especially of the transport network) after lack of fuel practically grounded the defensive fighter force. Even at that point, dealing with disorganization effects was a managerial problem more than a physical limits one.

Economic problems are inherently difficult to solve. There are huge arrays of possible substitutions, and which one is the best is not at all obvious, even with undistorted price signals, which are necessarily absent when the government simply issues orders for armament X and munition Y, and prices move in response to those demands. All the trade offs have time components and complementary good components. In practice, the men making the allocation decisions routinely fail to squeeze every possible gain out of the system. Which is equivalent to saying there are all kinds of unrealized arbitrage gains lying around unused, and naturally this also means you are operating away from absolute physical input limits in almost every category of input.

The other critical factor for German war output in particular was the very long lead times of major weapon system designs. When you put something on the drawing board it won't be in production for a year, typically. The best economies got some major systems to the production line in 6-9 months but many others encountered delays that went over that average. Then you have to plan how much thruput you will want of that item, way ahead of time, and you have to set other factories making every component and feedstock item in as close to the consumption ratios as possible.

But then one factory falls behind and another makes efficiency gains, and your production ratios don't match the consumption ones. You get more of one item than you can use making Panzer IVs and less of another item. One or another component bottlenecks the total output while inventory piles up of other components. You adjust by pushing more resources into the bottlenecks and trying to switch outputs to use what you can make. Every such rejiggling distorts the efficiency profile of the original investment decision and falsifies its forecasts etc.

These management matters are not small beer. They account for easily 2 fold differences in output from the same physical inputs at different times. Some economies managed it much better and this appears as a rapid jump to capacity that then plateaus, while a poorly managed one makes the same gain much more gradually. The better managed one thus realizes a much higher integral of total output from the same initial capacity.

Russia outproduces German 2 to 1 in tank by that mechanism alone. Their prewar industrial capacities are equal, and Russia loses a lot more of its territory and inputs to war interference than Germany does.

As for American tank output in particular, there again it simply isn't the bottleneck so the number produced becomes completely irrelevant. The US bottleneck was total shipping space to move everything to Europe and the far east, and secondarily the manpower allocation issue of planning a year or more ahead for the precise mix of specialities that would be required at the pointy end and at all the links and production tasks to get there with a force of size X and composition Y. In Europe this appears as the replacement crisis, the shell shortage of 105mm ammunition, and trained tank crews being scarcer than tanks themselves, and in tank divisions gradually being added to the order of battle as the whole logistics system builds up to be able to get them enough gas at the front etc.

US medium tank losses over the entire war are only about 4000, or maybe 7000 with all AFV types. Against a figure over 100,000 for Russia and 50,000 for Germany (all AFVs, both cases). The total field strength is only about 6000 at the end and it is under 4000 for most of the ETO campaign. Lend lease and other types raise those figures some to be sure. But it remains the case that less than half of the US tank output was ever used for anything.

The tank crews weren't there to man them. If they had been, the tank divisions wouldn't have fit on the ships available to carry them to Europe, soon enough to matter. If they had been, they would have run out of gas racing across France about halfway, instead of running out in Lorraine as they actually did. Tank numbers simply weren't the bottleneck. The US had tanks coming out of its ears, and no time or shipping or men or moved-gas to use them, soon enough to matter.

To use one more Sherman, you need a 50th of a liberty-ship * year plus a trained tank crew plus a fraction of a tanker plus an extra 200 engineers laying pipeline plus an extra transport-trip to move the engineers plus...

And you don't know what *any* of those coefficients are going to be, until you get there and see that oh, a storm is going to wipe out one of your Mulberries and Cherbourg is wrecked but over-beach supply is working better than expected and...

You can't untangle any of that with just a single coefficient like the manhours of input in tank factories divided by tanks that came out of them.

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exactly. ooh, it's satisfying to finally read this from you. :)

the only beef i have with any of the above is the part about German and Soviet prewar industrial capacities being equal. if we are talking about tank production, the capacities were quite unequal.

Soviets had the system ready already before the war. i discussed this with Stalin's Organist in here perhaps a year ago and i refuted every single Soviet tank factory he listed as new. they did lose some factories but all the new factories were basicly just old factories they transported to Urals. many of those factories were up and running in just weeks after arrival.

compare that to the Germans, who still keep investing in tank production infrastructure well after Barbarossa. it's slow business, construction of a factory takes years. it's these later factories capable of mass production that are the cause of the huge late war tank production numbers. without these there's just no way to build that many tanks and the production itself is far less economical.

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The Germans had the industrial capacity for it, they had longer lead time and warning time, they simply failed in the organizational and urgency task of using it properly. Were the Russians more ready in that sense, yes because they had the correct grand strategy from the start and the Germans had the incorrect one (long war of attrition vs. short war of gambles). But it was an unforced error of strategy and economic planning in Germany, and not a lack of industrial capacity. The later achievements show that capacity was well above where they actually were when they started the fight.

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Good stuff, JasonC

The fact that US tank production numbers were well over what they could actually get to the battlefield and use makes it even more frustrating (at least in retrospect) that the Sherman was such a crappy tank killer with self-igniting ammo storage. Puts a new spin on the quality vs. quantity thing.

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exactly. ooh, it's satisfying to the only beef i have with any of the above is the part about German and Soviet prewar industrial capacities being equal. if we are talking about tank production, the capacities were quite unequal.

Soviets had the system ready already before the war. i discussed this with Stalin's Organist in here perhaps a year ago and i refuted every single Soviet tank factory he listed as new.

not quite how I recall it - you considered factories converted from other sources as "not new factories" - I considered them as "new to tank production" - a difference we never bothered to resolve 'cos it didn't matter then (or now).

they did lose some factories but all the new factories were basicly just old factories they transported to Urals. many of those factories were up and running in just weeks after arrival.

they lost exactly 2 factories IIRC - Stalingrad and Kharkov - a list of soviet tank production by factorey & location is at http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weapons/afv_production.htm

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"that the Sherman was such a crappy tank killer"

The lead time issue hits on the production front too, and the US is simply late to the party.

At the time it is first fielded in North Africa, the Sherman is a monster tank. It has the best protection and nearly the best gun, and certainly the best combination of both, in the whole theater. But that is in the second half of 1942.

Well, you'd like to think, then they should have been continually upgrading. OK, but by then they had already made 8000 Shermans with short 75mm main armament. They've yet to see anything that requires an upgrade, any more than the Russians had seen a need to replace the T-34/76, also still a leading tank.

As a result, the entire year of 1943 is spent cranking out 75mm Shermans. One year lead time, remember? The first 76mm Shermans roll off the lines in January of 1944, and the first 105mm Shermans in February. But in the meantime, they've already built another 21000 75mm Shermans and the docks and shipping and unit assignments are full of them.

The first time the US actually loses fights to superior German armor is at Anzio in early 1944. Before then the opposition had almost entirely been in Panzer IVs. There were only a handful of Tigers in Tunisia and Sicily. They caused a few scares but had no operational significance because there simply weren't enough of them to matter. At Anzio that changes, there are enough of them to matter, along with Panthers etc. OK, so they know they need the stuff, and the stuff is actually coming out of the factories.

Stateside.

To be fair, they also produced 6000 M10s in the course of 1943. Compared to field unit strengths and to losses, that is a huge number. The entire German AFV fleet in the field, uparmored or not, is about 7500 at its peak, which is later.

The basic point remains, they made 30000 Shermans with 75mm armament before they knew they needed better, and they shipped them. What are they then going to do with them, make them plant holders? Of course not, they get used in the field because it is what was sent. The late arriving ADs in the late fall all show up tricked out with 76mm Shermans.

The lag from first contact with a superior enemy AFV is actually better for the US than it is for the Germans. In case everyone forgot, they encountered Char Bs and Matildas in France and orderd 50L60 Panzer IIIs as a result, in the summer of 1940. But an ordnance type decided that 50L42 was better, so they didn't get those in numbers out at the pointy end, until the second half of 1942. The T-34 is encountered a year later and shows they will need to do still better. But they don't switch III chassis production to all long 75mm vehicles until early 1943, over 18 months later. They don't manage to field the Panther until the summer, 2 years after they saw T-34s in action.

2 years after the US saw anything in action, they were fielding 90mm Jacksons, and 2 years after they saw Panthers at Anzio, they were building Pershings, but not yet able to ship them. They built 2200 Pershings before the war was out, handily topping German Tiger production for the whole war. But they didn't make it in time.

The US just starts late, it goes through the same upgrading hangups as everyone else, plus a moderately longer factory-to-front lag from the timing of shipping stuff.

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"So why did the Germans not win at Kursk and lose in the post Kursk offensives, the battles in the Dnepr Bend and in the Spring of 1944? The Russian Combined Arms Armies could not have carried these offensives so far and so fast without the tank's support.

What tank attributes were critical for winning these battles?"

Interesting posts and good background about tank design production cycles. But what I was looking for was to use "production" as one metric in comparing the "Efficiency" of German tank designs. Comparing within one country means that prices are relevant, production numbers too. You have to make some comparisons with the enemy numbers but this really just a reality check. Was the Panther the right tank for German to build in its war in the East? Could an improved PzIV done better? Would other designs that never made it to the drawing board have done better? Did the Germans focus on the wrong attributes for their new tank?

Attributes:

Size and weight

Good Gun

Decent Armour

Superior optics and equipment

Good tactical mobility

Good strategic mobility

Fuel efficiency

Ease of manufacture

Low inputs of strategic materials scarce for the German economy

Size is limited by the railway gauge (cf the experience of moving Tigers on railways) weight by bridges so I would argue that around 35 tonnes is the best weight. 75mm but do you need as high a velocity as the Panther gun or will the PzIV version do? Armour distribution in the Panther is pretty good as most tanks are hit from the front but surely less than 80mm sloped armour would have been sufficient? PzIV loss rates were not excessive even in 1944. Is all that extra size and weight really worth the extra 5% loss rate? Panther has good tactical mobility in Russia which the PzIV does not, neither has decent strategic mobility so perhaps a simpler more robust machine is needed? Fuel efficiency is critical in the German war effort even if there are no shortages until late 44. Whether you follow Overy or Tooze does not matter, Germany's level of mechanisation was hindered by lack of fuel availability, reliance on synthetic fuel production ad insecurity of supply. Ease and simplicity of manufacture for series production was not a German forte which was strange given the investment in large new tank factories in Austria for mass production but that was surely what was needed. If you are a follower of Tooze then the need to reduce strategic materials would seem obvious.

I think the Panther a great tank but am not convinced it was the right or most efficient tank. I think a simpler, smaller, less capable version would have suited Germany's needs better, allowed more tanks to be produced and allowed German commanders more flexibility.

Remember that the original Panther designs VK3002 (DB) VK3002 (MAN) and T-25 all had these attributes of 35 tonnes weight, 60mm sloped armour and the 75mm L48 or L70 gun.

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The Germans had the industrial capacity for it, they had longer lead time and warning time, they simply failed in the organizational and urgency task of using it properly. Were the Russians more ready in that sense, yes

cmon, Soviets have a headstart of a full decade. by the time Nazis get in power the Soviets have already begun their long term infrastructure projects for the armaments industry. by the time Nazis build their first tank the Soviets already have full strength tank fleet. nothing the Germans can do can change it.

because they had the correct grand strategy from the start and the Germans had the incorrect one (long war of attrition vs. short war of gambles).

you contradict yourself. early German armaments production is aimed for long war of attrition and that specifically eats from things like tank production. if Germans have an intitial problem, it's exactly that they plan for a too long and too large war in the beginning and that they direct way too much of their resources into armaments production. their economy is very close to collapsing because of it already before the war has even begun.

But it was an unforced error of strategy and economic planning in Germany, and not a lack of industrial capacity. The later achievements show that capacity was well above where they actually were when they started the fight.

the later achievements were results of earlier long term investments into building up the industrial capacity. it takes years.

Nazis get hold of power in 1933-34. five years and you have WW2.

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not quite how I recall it - you considered factories converted from other sources as "not new factories" - I considered them as "new to tank production" - a difference we never bothered to resolve 'cos it didn't matter then (or now).

the difference is this:

- Soviet report states it took 3 weeks to have the factory pump out tanks

- German report states it took 2 years to build the new factory

with those numbers it takes 35 times longer to build a new factory.

that's enough of a difference to spend an army or two in delaying the enemy enough so that you can transport the facilities. BTW has anyone looked at the 1941 operations from that perspective?

and besides, it's not a coincidence than a factory like the famous one in Stalingrad, after making some 300 000 tracked tractors, can almost instantly start to make T-34s instead. it's part of the Soviet long term planning made in 1930ies.

they lost exactly 2 factories IIRC - Stalingrad and Kharkov - a list of soviet tank production by factorey & location is at http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weapons/afv_production.htm

yes, though i'd recommend using those references i gave links to back then, because they go into greater depth.

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Interesting posts and good background about tank design production cycles. But what I was looking for was to use "production" as one metric in comparing the "Efficiency" of German tank designs. Comparing within one country means that prices are relevant, production numbers too.

they tell something, but not as much as they are usually made to tell.

to offer a simplified example (note that this doesn't go into the real details like component flow):

Vomag built some tens of tanks per year before 1943. it was slow and inefficient. things change starting on about 1943. now they build on the level of 1000+ tanks per year and it's obviously quite efficient. are they building 10 times more because Panzer IV design was made more efficient? if not, i note they are building mainly TD variants, it's because of that surely? those fools, why didn't they builds the TD variants from the beginning, as they are obviously 10 times chearper to build!? and why didn't they streamline the Panzer IV design two years ago, if it can be made that much more efficient? why oh why didn't Speer come to rationalize that lunatic German economy already years before, as surely this miracle can only be credited to Speer!

except, uh oh, turns out that what really happened is that after two years of construction Vomag's new mass production facilities are finally ready. efficiency of production, or production numbers, had in practice nothing to do with tank design. it had to do with means of production available to them.

it doesn't make production numbers or units of cost totally irrelevant, but to make an evaluation really worth something you'd need to go check the details of the whole production flow.

You have to make some comparisons with the enemy numbers but this really just a reality check.

don't do that. it won't work.

Ease and simplicity of manufacture for series production was not a German forte which was strange given the investment in large new tank factories in Austria for mass production but that was surely what was needed. If you are a follower of Tooze then the need to reduce strategic materials would seem obvious.

you are confused about the cause & effect here. it's the other way around.

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URD - utter nonsense.

The Russian prewar tank fleet of early 1930s models is a hindrance not a help, and gone in weeks.

The German economy is emphatically not already taut in 1939 or 1941. Not even close. Most industrial output is still going to civilian purposes. They are trying to maintain the civilian living standard and they are trying to leave the economy flexible as to output varieties wanted, instead of committing it to producing exactly this mix of items as absolute priority.

The US achieves the same rapid rise in armaments output the Russians do, in even less time, without any mythical 10 year lead time supposedly pretooling for war. The reason is economic mobilization, not some great head start. The Germans don't order it until after the fall of Stalingrad. They increase ammunition output, and gradually increase tank and aircraft production, but even in 1942 the portion of e.g. steel output going to the military is barely above pre-war levels and way below USSR or USA levels.

Germany has the same raw industrial production in 1939 as Russia does, in iron ore, steel, power, all the basic sinew metrics. On a time scale of a couple of years it can invest that productive capacity and its labor and material inputs into anything it plans for. It emphatically does not plain for a long war of attrition and maximum armaments output.

*At the end of 1942*, they are locked in to using the existing production lines, as to mix, certainly. They can't afford to cancel any output type without a reduction, not an increase, in total output achieved. But they certainly are not locked in to only having the tank production capacity they have that year, by any material constraint facing the economy, nor by anything as long term as how long the Nazis have been in power. It is a free allocation decision and a free mobilization decision. They did not fully mobilize the economy for major weapon system output in 1939 on the outbreak of the war, nor (as several in the general staff recommended at the time) prior to attacking France.

And they don't order it as soon as they know they will be attacking Russia, nor 6 months later when they actually do attack.

May 1940, December 1940, or June 1941, are all reasonable times to have panicked and planned for a long war of attrition begining immediately. But instead they made only marginal adjustments, trying to spare civilian output, economic flexibility, and long term investment projects (not in tank factories, in things that would repay themselves only over 20-40 years). The Russians make this decision in July 1941. The Americans make it in December 1941. They are actually both ahead of the Germans in that respect, organizationally.

The US, but not Russia, also have a larger total industrial capacity by about a factor of 2. It has larger needs logistically - it has to build a merchant fleet of 40 million tons, replacing 20 million tons in shipping losses as well, and a navy, to get anything to theater. But it rationally mobilizes twice the raw capacity, and therefore without any lead time to speak of as to output increase, it produces 10000 AFVs in 1942 while ramping and designing, and 40000 AFVs in 1943. From zero. The peak is roughly twice what the Russians or Germans hit, the uptake is as fast as the Russians. 18 months after war start they are at maximum tank output. 18 months after war start for them, the Germans are still 40 months away from their output peak. But oh gosh, guess what, that *is* 18 months after Stalingrad.

Mobilization timing is the key item in total output achieved. The Germans are not first on that score, they haven't been fully mobilized since 1933 or since 1938 or 1939. They are dead last. Which is bad strategy and war planning, not physical economic constraints. And no, this doesn't contradict anything I've said above, which was about the feasible trade offs in type mix within the mobilized economy. Once you mobilize, you are locked in as to basic type mix. You can make only marginal changes effecting a cherry picked fraction of output. The Germans mobilize with IIIs and IVs lines their basic types, so that is the bulk of their wartime output. Just like the Russians are locked in to producing mostly T-34s and the US is locked in to producing mostly Shermans. That lock in happens a bit later for the Germans, and that lets later designs (Tiger I and Panther) form a modestly higher portion of their (smaller) fleet.

The real problem with the Panther is not the design, which is great, nor its resource draws, nor practical maintenance issues in the field, all of which are perfectly manageable. The problem with them is that fast as they are, they can't travel backward in time. Nothing that is only produced in bulk in 1944 was going to be decisive because the war was already decided by then. First with most, runs the adage. The Germans didn't need to sacrifice Panther production to get more IVs. But they did need a lot more (improved) IVs, and long StuGs, a lot sooner than they got them. It isn't realistic to expect Panthers in 1942. But it was perfectly within Germany's economic choices to have a lot more solid quality III and IV chassis items in 1942, than they did have. The reason they didn't is they were gambling that the war (in Russia at least) would be settled by then.

If you think the war in Russia will be over one way or another by Christmas 1941, then you don't see a high priority in ramping III and IV output from the time you decide to attack until forever. You see a priority to ramp artillery ammunition, and otherwise you don't see much point in disturbing any long term projects or civilian uses at all. Diversions from those uses simply will not have time to produce anything in the first half of 1941, in time to reach the front and make any difference, if it will all be useless by January 1, 1942. The forecast endpoint of the war in time is all-determining, as to the rationality of mobilization.

The US and Russians got that forecast right, and the Germans got it hopelessly wrong.

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