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


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The question posed was "what was the most suitable tank for Germany's situation in 1944-5".

I think everyone agrees that the Panther was the best tank for tank vs tank battles.

But with Germany on the tactical and strategic defensive, that offensive tank vs tank mission was rare and on the defensive done far more efficiently and cheaper by tank destroyers such as the Jadgpanzer IV/70.

The mission for tanks was to stop Soviet penetrations by their armoured forces. For that you need a good gun (Panther -yes), good tactical mobility (Panther - yes) excellent strategic mobility (Panther - no) good fuel economy (Panther - no no no) and sufficient numbers because you may have to abandon damaged or broken down tanks (Panther - no).

Perhaps what Germany needed was a Panther 'light'. Or perhaps the answer was the PzIVJ - same characteristics of the PzIVH but simpler to built, less complex to maintain, bigger fuel tanks, able to run 300km - but lesser tactical mobility than the Panther.

As for the Russians and Americans, both had doctrines that emphesised tank vs infantry and not tank vs tank battles. They fitted the appropriate guns to fit their doctrines.The Russians built specific vehicles such as T34-57 and SU80 and SU100 as tank killers and the Americans their tank destroyers such as the M10. The British doctrine was based on tank vs tank combat and specific infantry support tanks and the Comet and Churchill met both those requirements quite nicely.

It is ironic that on the Eastern Front, it was always the side with the 'weaker' tank that seemed to win strategically. In 1941 German Pz38t and PzII and PzIII fought KV1s. The Russians lost because their tactics and training were not up to the job and the German tactic of killing tanks with AT guns and killing infantry with tanks worked very well.

In 1943 the Germans lost despite fighting Panthers, Tigers and PzIVHs against T34-76s and again in 1944 they lost fighting King Tigers...etc..etc against T34-85 and IS-2.

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Clearly lacked armour? I thought 4" 102mm was not bad compared to the Sherman and T34. Not as good as frontal on the Panther but better side armour and lighter and more reliable.

As for vertical armour - unless one insists on parking on level terrain and perpendicular to the enemy gun the armour is very rarely going to be vertical to anything. Furthermore at that stage of the war guns were defeating all armour pretty much anyway so it sufficient to kill small guns but as for armouring to defeat 88mm and 75/l71? why waste the time.

"When the Comet arrived in September 1944 the British had at last a British tank with decent armour, speed and a good gun, many regard it was the best British tank of the war and they are probably right. The Comet was extremely fast, reliable, was easy to drive and had excellent off road performance. The 77mm gun was a slightly less powerful than the 17pdr but was still capable of penetrating thick armour especially when firing APDS ammunition. Armour was decent for a 33 ton tank but clearly inferior to the mammoth German tanks of the period but better than that of tanks such as the Sherman or Cromwell."

from here

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?Itemid=56&catid=37:cruiser-tanks&id=59:comet-cruiser-tank-a34&option=com_content&view=article

Incidentally the turret traverse of 360 in 24 seconds must have been a useful tactical asset.

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-> Vark

I think it does matter whether the tank that i produce last 5 Minutes in Combat or 5 weeks. One tank crew was around 5 men included weeks of training and experience. If tanks get shot down like flies not only the production materials but also the crews are wasted.

When you look at the situation in 1944-45 the Soviet Union put all efforts into tank production while civilians were starving in thousands. It's easy to keep up logistics and refill if tanks don't get older then just one week and if all the production goes into fuel and supplies. Oftenly the tanks rolled out fresh from factory to the front, just to get destroyed. With such a lifespan, it's no wonder that there have been rarely any problems with gears and onboard equipment. If the concept of disposable tanks and disposable crews are an operational/strategic success, then that assumption is right.

However, with the Introduction of the Main Battle Tank MBT design and current tanks have an liveage of over 30 years, it shows that other values are valid.

-> Der alte Fritz

I fully believe that Panther and Tiger have been the most suitable tank for a situation that never could have been won, no matter by whom. If you're facing an superiority of so many enemies, not only in tank but also in airplane production, you can't win. For the records it still should be noted kill ratio of Tigers and Panther were 1:5+

In Soviet Union 1941 - 1942 the Luftwaffe played a major part in destroying stronger enemy tanks, same as it was in France 1940 with Somua S35, Char B1 bis or Matilda Mk.II.

British and French Tank doctrine was mainly similar - they divided tanks into 2 classes: slow Infantry Tanks and fast Cavalry/Cruiser Tanks. When spotting the German tanks in France and Northern Africa, they soon proved to be inferior by certain aspects missing that the German tanks had (Mobility, Firepower, Armoring, Radio Communication, Gunsights, etc.). The British after the war used the Centurion which was firstly designated as "heavy Cruiser Tank", then became "Universal Tank" and finally Main Battle Tank

The American Tank Killer vehicles had been rather a quick solution by the General staff for battling German tanks. In practise they proved to be underprotected and vulnerable. This comes clear when you think that they haven't been used after WW2 anymore. Rather then that, the US relied on their newly designed vehicle models Pershing -> Patton and Chaffee.

In the USSR the concept of Cruiser and Infantry Tank was known as well, respectively in BT Cruiser Tank Series (BT-2, BT-5, BT-7) as well as T-18 & T-26 Infantry Tank Series. They were dropped in favor of medium T-34, heavy KV-1, JS-2 and light T-60, T-70 tanks.

This shows, that all major nations went on the same route as Germany did with it's Panther tank, except for fitting on still more armor.

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-> Dieseltaylor

About the Comets armoring, here is the data:

A34 Cruiser Tank Comet

Turret Front: 102mm@90°

Mantlet: 102mm@90°

Turret Sides: 64mm@90°

Turret Rear: 57mm@90°

Turret Top: 20mm@0°

Superstructure Front: 76mm@90°

Hull Front: 64mm@90°

Superstructure Sides: 29mm@90°

Hull Sides: 14mm@90°

Superstructure Rear: 25mm@90°

Hull Rear: 25mm@90°

Superstructure Top: 14mm@0°

Hull Bottom: 14mm@0°

The Side Hull armor could be easily penetrated by 20mm Automatic Guns or heavy AT Rifles. Anything from 37mm up had no trouble ripping through all of the Side or rear Armor.

As for the Front armor, i agree with you on it's thickness and realiabilty - the British similar as the Germans relied on rolled homogenous armoring for many of their tanks.

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So in what way does it differ from a Panther in its vulnerabilities? Apart of course being 12 tonnes lighter and more reliable.?

"The main weakness of the Panther tank was its much thinner (40–50 mm thick) side armor. The thinner side armor was necessary to keep the tank's overall weight within reasonable bounds, but it made the Panther vulnerable to attacks from the side by most Allied and Soviet tank and anti-tank guns. German tactical doctrine for the use of the Panther thus emphasised the importance of flank protection. Five millimeter skirt armor, Schürzen, intended to provide protection for the lower side hull from Soviet anti-tank rifle fire was fitted on the hull side. Zimmerit ceramic coating against magnetic mines also became standard with the Ausf. A, and retrofitted to older versions until deleted from new Panthers from about September 1944."

BTW these are the armour figures from the link I quoted earlier, are you confusing the Comet with the Cromwell?

Lower Hull Nose 64(I.T.80) Upper Hull Nose 32(I.T.80) Hull Front 74(I.T.80) Hull Sides Upper 32(I.T.80)+14(I.T.180) Hull Sides Lower 29(I.T.80)+14(I.T.180) Hull Rear Lower 32(I.T.80) Hull Rear Upper 25(I.T.80) Hull Roof (Front) 25(I.T.80) Engine Deck 14(I.T.100) Hull Floor 14(I.T.130)

Turret Front 102(I.T.90) Turret Roof (Front) 25(I.T.80) Turret Roof (Rear) 20(I.T.80) Turret Sides 64(I.T.80) Turret Rear 57(I.T.80) Turret Floor 25(I.T.11

The T34's turret armour was 45mm, as was its side and rear armour. Sherman side armour 38mm turret 58mm. All three tanks had similar weight. The thing about "best" tank is that the latest model was always going to better than preceding ones as lessons were learned. With 1200 in action the Comet sneaks in, and given the advantages of good gun AND reliability and speed it would have to figure.

Of course if you want to change the criteria to best tank with over 1500 fighting examples in WW2 ..... : )

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The only time I have heard of T-34's driven straight from the factory into battle was Stalingrad, we are focusing on 1944-5. The reason the Russians could produce so many tanks was not because of starving their people it was because they grasped the concept of total war, the economy was put on a war footing very soon after the German invasion and long term production plans fitted their strategic aims. The Germans on the other hand created an illusion of efficiency but had a ramshackle economy totally unsuited to producing what was needed and in the end relied on slave labour. I heard that after each JU-88 was produced a ceremony happened, complete with speeches and classical music, great for the news reels, lousy for the Luftwaffe.

The mindless Russian hordes myth and the "Hitlers Teutonic Knights", propagated by the Germans, seems to be colouring your thinking. If the average German tanker could have emulated the panzer aces then the war on the eastern front would have been completely different. T-34's lasted a lot longer than five minutes (50% of the KO'd T-34's were recoverable) and I believe the average fatality/injury rate was 2 crewman for each tank KO'd. All those Panther crews who had to abandon their tanks did not magically teleport back to a depot to jump into a new shiny Panther, they often became temporarily very poor infantry men.

The Russians were all to aware of the effect of crew quality and had specially trained medical teams to deal with the unique injuries caused by tank combat, by 1944 it was the Germans who were suffering from the skills shortage, which only got worse. As for T-34's only being reliable because they lasted a week read the accounts of Katukov, etc. The simple fact is their were so few Panthers that a T-34 crew would rarely encounter them, they were far more concerned with AT guns and panzerfausts. Wargamers love them and some devote shrines to Dr Bake and Barkmann but in reality the Panther was not fit for purpose. I wonder if in CM2 we will finally have a game that truely depicts the failings of the German heavy armour, though it might have an effect on sales.

Finally, yes I will accept a tactical loss rate of 5-8 tanks per Panther from x tank brigade because y brigade is 50km behind you, messing up your rail network that you need to move your over engineered behemoths.

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"I fully believe that Panther and Tiger have been the most suitable tank for a situation that never could have been won, no matter by whom. If you're facing an superiority of so many enemies, not only in tank but also in airplane production, you can't win."

I am afraid that we will have to disagree there. I think Germany had ample opportunity to win on the Eastern Front in 1942 and in 1943 and then have a sporting chance of a negociated peace with the West. Even in 1944 they have 8 million men in the Wehrmacht facing 6 million Russians and about 1 million effective Westerners, they out product the Russians and do not yet have the fuel shortages.

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-> Der Alte Fritz

And for sure i have to disagree here. By 1942 the command of the Wehrmacht was taken totally out of hand from Generals and taken over by Hitler. His deceisive orders "Hold positions on all costs" displays a total loss of realism. Also Washington or London would never have agreed on a seperate peace, too many things were involved.

Take a look on Operation Bagration in 1944 -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration

2,33 million Soldiers on Soviet side against 800,000 on German.

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By 1942 the command of the Wehrmacht was taken totally out of hand from Generals and taken over by Hitler. His deceisive orders "Hold positions on all costs" displays a total loss of realism.

Actually, historians credit his "hold at all costs" order with saving the Wermacht in the first Russian winter. The problem was he drew the wrong conclusions from his success.

Also Washington or London would never have agreed on a seperate peace, too many things were involved.

Maybe not, but Hitler and co. believed throughout the war that a separate peace was a possibility, and planned accordingly. Heavy investment in few numbers of heavy tanks designed for offence, was at odds with a strategy of delay against a numerically-superior opponent.

Take a look on Operation Bagration in 1944 -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration

2,33 million Soldiers on Soviet side against 800,000 on German.

That's odds of about 3:1, which favor the attacker, but not overwhelmingly so. The large disparity was in numbers of AFV's, if you read the article. And that brings us back to the subject of this thread...

Also, BTW, and not yet mentioned, for defense it would have made sense to invest in larger numbers of even cheaper weapons systems than StuG's or PzIV's, like towed AT guns and their transports. I could even argue that a few hundred trucks would have helped the German cause more than a few dozen tanks.

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"Take a look on Operation Bagration in 1944 - 2,33 million Soldiers on Soviet side against 800,000 on German."

Connor - Operation Bagration (CSI):

ANNEX A Correlation of Forces (strategic) June 1944

Soviet.

Ground Forces 6,077,000

Air Forces 447,000

Airborne Forces 58,000

Navy 357,000

Total Active Armies 6,425,000

Total Reserve 514,000

Overall Total 6,939,000

Axis.

Ground Forces Eastern Front 3,130,000

Ground Forces Other Fronts 1,420,000

Allies 800,000

total 4,550,000 + 800,000

Luftwaffe 1,800,000 (800,000 on Flak duty the rest running 5,400 aircraft)

Navy 80,000

Replacement Army 2,000,000

Total 8,430,000

It was the same in 1941-1943. The German field army in the East bounces around the 2-3 million mark while the Wehrmacht has around 6,000,000 men. During Operation Barbarossa, the Army only had reserves to last them up to September, during the summer offensive in 1942, the Ostheer was actually smaller than it was in June 1941 and for the summer offensive of 1943 despite the fact that the Wehrmacht had added almost a million men since the previous year, the Ostheer was still under 3 million men. And this at a time when the Allied bombing campaign had failed to really get going and the maximum number of German divisions that the Westerners managed to tie down was 15.

Germany lost in the East because she failed to concentrate her larger armed forces against the Soviet Union for a decisive campaign and only sent what she thought she could get away with for best part of three years. In part this was a result of lack of strategic resources on Germanys part such as low fuel stocks and partly because the transport links into Russia were so poor. But a sustained effort could have doubled the Ostheer even in 1944.

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Which comes back to the not unknown problem that the more territory you take the smaller your army becomes as you occupy your winnings. Arguably Russia was too large to beat as the occupation requirements were sufficient obstacle in themselves. The fact that the German logistics were palpably unable to to provide sufficient supply is just another side of the coin.

Short of a Mongolian hordes type scenario laying waste to everything they could there was no real long-term win. Even the laying waste would have just lead to an unwinnable guerilla war.

If Russia had sued for an early peace and given up territory that would have just been a delay until the re-match. I am excluding the nuclear line of argument as that is another line of argument that leads to the same conclusion. : )

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If I was taking part in a fight versus a single example of each of the other two types, starting at 2km distance from each other on open steppe, I'd choose to sit in the Panther.

If I was in one of three substantial tank formations, each of which cost the same to produce and put through the fight, I'd take my chances in one of the T-34/85s which would over-run and bypass the relatively pathetic team of Panthers.

If I had to produce one of either the T-34/85, Panther or Sherman E8 en masse for my army, given a set budget, infinite raw materials, a guarantee of being able to competently crew and operate every tank I could produce and a substantial and competent enemy, I'd choose the T-34/85 for its HE advantage over the E8, primarily. Both come streets ahead of the Panther in terms of economy.

If I had a limited population (read capacity to crew my tanks properly) then I'd put them in Panthers in order to preserve them as well as possible.

Low fuel reserves = T-34/85.

Etc.

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When we are talking about the strategic and the tactical aspects of these tanks, still the outcome will be that on a strategic scale there would be no Victory possible.

If the point is like Germany should have produced cheaper tanks, then it's logic that their tactical superiority in Firepower and Armoring would be lost. If there are no advantages over the enemy tanks, then your only option is to produce more tanks then the enemy has. And that would have meant, that Germany would had to produce the same or higher number as USSR + USA + UK together. And that's absolutely impossible - even when you leave the fact away, that factories in USA or USSR didn't had to face a strategic bomber campain as Germanys industry did.

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Kamui, yes I agree with your analysis. Either produce high quality armour that is superior to your opponents and loose as you do not have enough tanks/resources to produce a critical mass, able to achieve a sustained operational victory. Or you try and out produce your opponents which is impossible because you are trying to out compete the two largest industrial nations in the world, whilst withstanding a day/night strategic bomber offensive.

Alternatively, one could argue that the Germans Pz IV was superior already to the majority of allied armour and instead of developing so many platforms they should have taken a leaf out of the Russian playbook.

Guess the Germans should not have fought a war on multiple fronts!!

Does anybody have data on the industrial man hours and raw materials used in creating various German weaponry? It would be interesting to see how many AT guns/TD's (especially Jagdpanthers)/AG's you could produce for one Panther/Tiger.

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The usual figure given is:

PzIV is 89,700 man hours and cost 115 962 RM

Panther is 156,000 man hours and cost 129 300 RM

Tiger is 300,000 man hours and cost 299800 RM

compared to:

Sherman at around 20-25,000 hours

T34 between 3,000 in 1945 and 17,600 in 1943 and a cost of around 140,000 roubles which is roughly equivalent to a PzIV.

For comparison a Hetzer took about 15,000 man hours to produce, a 37mm flak Flak37 4,320 and a Flak 43 1,000.

So you get 10 TD and 30 AT guns for each Panther.

Note that you only get one Shermans or T34s for each Panther in terms of cost but 6 in terms of manhours.

I have no problems with the Germans using a superior tank to fend off the enemy, it is the right way to go. But in order to gain strategic mobility that tank must have

1) high mobility

2) low maintenance burden (for instance the Tiger needed its turret removing if you wanted to work on the engine!!!! And repair crews carried a portable gantry to enable them to do this in the field!!!!)

3) Fuel economy

4) and to gain industrial advantage you need long production runs of a simple design to get the costs down so that you can build more of them.

So I would argue for a PzIVJ, which meets most of the criteria above or a Panther 'light' which being lighter and simpler would also meet the requirements but maybe not the fuel one.

Remember it would have taken the entire wartime production of the Panther just to equip each Panzer Division and SS Panzer Division with a full complement of the beasts, with none for spares. For the same effort you can equip them six times over with Shermans.

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DAF, fascinating figures, 30 PAK's per Panther, though you would have to build the prime movers as well so that figure would drop. I am curious about the costs, does this include approximations of the raw materials involved or is it based on man hours? The Cold War economic analysis of the USSR shows how hard it was comparing communist production costs with models designed for western economies, so how 'reliable' are the Russian figures?

Is the drop in costs for the T-34 because of more advanced production line techniques?

Finally, have you read Tooze's book "The wages of destruction", about the Nazi economy, I have a book token waiting for a suitable target, all the reviews, especially in financial publications have been glowing.

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No the figures are simply the amount of 'effort' required to build the thing. For Germany raw materials of all types , even steel are the limiting factor in the economy but a 43 tonne tank does take up a lot of these, so I am sure that you could get 30 guns and a truck out of the same amount.

The other point is that FUEL is the real limiting factor in the German war effort. She has COAL but ever decreasing stocks of PETROL, so can run trains but not tanks. This is important when considering the PzIV and Panther as the former uses 2.4 litres per km and the latter 3.6 litres per km. So it costs you 50% more to get the 75mm gun of the Panther into battle. (Of course the T34 uses 1.6 litres per km!)

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Of course you could use Peiper's solution, drain the Pz IV tanks and fill up the Panthers! Tooze's hypothesis is that the Nazi's scarcity of resources and failure to modernise the antiquated Germnan economy shaped their strategy, especially the invasion of Russia, which ironically precipitated their eventual collapse.

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As to the Russian economic figures, they are hard to read but it has been a popular area of academic study by Western authors who have taken account of these factors. A more reliable comparitor is the US and this demonstrates the Germans 'high costs'. But on the Russian, they may be getting better results than the Americans simply because they have huge factories (Tankograd had 60,000 workers) and very long production runs in addition to the fact that the T-34 was a very basic tank. Often quality suffered, for instance vision blocks for drivers were so yellow that they were unusable and the drivers prefered to keep the hatch open. But as time went on even these things were ironed out. Also bear in mind that Russian labour costs are minimal and the dedication of workers was very high.

I can highly recommend Tooze's book though you should be able to get a cheap version on www.abebooks.co.uk second hand. Not sure about all his trashing of Speer - the man must have had some effect. But very interesting and worth reading at least twice.

I think the main thing to draw from him on strategy is the Nazi preoccupation with fighting an eventual war with America. This meant that they never devoted their full energies to fighting the Russians and so lost. I feel that a 100% effort by German in 1941-1943 would have won them the war in the East and I do not believe that either Britain or the US had the stomach for the kind of casualties needed to wear down the German Army.

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The usual figure given is:

I have no problems with the Germans using a superior tank to fend off the enemy, it is the right way to go.

Why? It's not necessary to fight tanks with tanks, especially to "fend off the enemy"; i.e., when on defense. There were other weapons systems, and other tanks besides Panthers and Tigers, that were faster and cheaper to build, that could destroy enemy tanks just as well.

The German fixation on having the biggest, best tank on the battlefield was a costly mistake.

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

Why is that?

1.) German experiences in WW2. When the Wehrmacht spottet the french B1 Bis or the british Matilda Mk.II everything except lucky shots proved to be senseless. The only solution were the 88mm FlaK Guns transported on Halftracks or in stationary models, alternatively the Ju-87 Stuka. The same happened on the eastern front. A single soviet KV-1 halted an entire Platoon for several hours. Latewar German models achieved an kill ratio of 1:5 - 1:8 as allready mentioned.

2.) Anti Tank Guns and Tank Killer vehicles proved to be vulnerable to Machine Gun Fire, Grenades, Mortar Shells or small Infantry Arms. They quickly disappeared after WW2 again. Nowadays you have APCs carrying AT Missiles as T.O.W. or MILAN, which are meant to be fired from a great distance

3.) Assault Guns offered armored protection, but poor vision and poor mobility. Against enemy Infantry they were at loss, especially with the usage of HEAT Rockets or Hollow Charges. They disappeared after WW2 same as the arms mentioned above.

4.) Later wars showed exactly the same problems that the Germans faced on the eastern front. In the Korean war, north Korean forces rushed down almost to Pusan - regardless of how many cheap produced counter weapons the present US Forces could wield -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNUebgSYq5U&feature=related Only after reinforcements from Japan and other countries arrived, which equaled the numbers to the north Koreans, they could gain back lost territory. It's up to you, to imagine how things would look if the americans would have used Tigers or Panthers there.

5.) During cold war and with the developement of the main battle tank in 1970s, most all countries followed the idea to create an high quality tank with superior performance. The idea of cheap production models was finally put to the grave. If you need a proof for this, just take a look at Leopard 2A6, M1A2 Abrams, Challenger 2 or T-90

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