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

[Der Alte Fritz]

JasonC:

two quick points, firstly in my recent reading about the Russian wartime economy, it was stated that the USSR was essentially an agrian economy by the start of the war, with low levels of , industry, communications and peasant agriculture despite Stalins 1930s industrialisation and collectivisation programmes. Agrian societies and economies are very prone to collapse given sudden shocks to the system, far more so than 'industrialised' economies. So there was every indication that the USSR would collapse in 1941. What no-one is clear about is why it survived.

Secondly, I had assumed that the key tank decision point was in late '41 with the 'next' generation of tanks for delivery in '43 but you indicate it was earlier in '41 with delivery of the 'now' generation of tanks. That would certainly fit in with the manpower situation of Germany's Ostheer, 3 million men for Barbarossa, enough replacements to last them to September and the 1942 army is actually smaller as the replacements are still feeding through the system.

[Corvidae]

So there was every indication that the USSR would collapse in 1941. What no-one is clear about is why it survived..

Religion.

Not the religion of the churches and mosques, but the religion of Holy Mother Russia herself.

Nobody who invades Russia can win unless they demonstrate that Holy Mother Russia has asked them to do so.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

URD - utter nonsense.

lol, back to the normal broadcast

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

that's a ridiculous argument when we are discussing the existence of infrastructure for tank production.

let me make it more clear with yet another example:

after years of construction the Stalingrad tractor factory is finally ready in 1930 and it builds its first tractor. a decade later it has built 200 000 tractors. lot's of tractors yeah, but those are even worse match for a Panzer III than all those BT & T-26 tanks.

in mid 1941 the Germans invade. instead of tractors the very same factory now starts to build T-34s. for the rest of the 1941 it is responsible for building more than half of all the T-34s build in USSR, building almost 1000 tanks. in 6 months, including whatever it took to turn production from tractors to tanks.

compare to the Vomag case i gave earlier. this freaking tractor factory, built in 1930, is almost twice as effective as Vomag's brand new mass production facilities of 1943 if we look at just tank output. it didn't take two years to make the tractor factory spit out T-34s in 1941. it's not accidental or a coincidence. the Soviets planned it that way and they did it in 1920ies.

Most industrial output is still going to civilian purposes.

here's another fact you are going to love: Germans used a higher percentage of their production on military sectors than USSR.

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 reason is brute economic and industrial power. say, in 1940 US government officials watch panzers race thru France and tells Chrysler it needs some tanks. Chrysler builds a new factory in a year and can build more tanks than the goverment ever needs or wants.

The Germans don't order it until after the fall of Stalingrad.

nonsense. mobilization of the German economy happens already in 1930ies. there's no sudden rise after Stalingrad.

It emphatically does not plain for a long war of attrition and maximum armaments output.

it emphatically does. what you don't appear to connect to this subject is that still when Germans plan for the French campaign they plan for a WW1 type war. they don't see or fully understand a "blitzkrieg". the armaments production is not targetted for a short fast panzer blitz, it's targetted for a long trench fight type war.

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.

1940-1942, predating Stalingrad, sees heavy German investments into tank production. the high tank production figures of 1943-44 come exactly from these factories which by then have become operational.

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.

Stalingrad has nothing to do with it, get over it. it has to do with awakening to the nature of warfare after they see "blitzkrieg" live on TV in 1939-1940. as a result US wakes up for tank production in 1940. because of their economical & industrial muscle they can afford it. just the same Germans boost their tank production by starting construction of additional tank factories. Soviets are in practice the only exception - they saw it decades ago and already had it all in place for massive tank production.

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.

German tank production figures have nothing to do with being or not being fully or partially mobilized. they could build as many tanks in 1944 even if they had zero mobilization for war. in the big picture tank production itself doesn't eat that much resources, it's, what, some 5% of all military spending at the peak. it's building the required infrastructure that is the true bottleneck.

so, could Germans have build more tank factories before 1939? yes, they probably could have, on the expence of other things.

in hindsight it's relatively clear that especially some of the naval projects didn't really pay off (though don't say that in some forum about WW2 naval crap). but should it go into tank production, or at an attempt to do something about keeping late war air less hostile, or perhaps higher motorization of the armed forces in general or other such things? if they had built less tanks they could have built more airplanes and perhaps pushed UK out of the war after France fell. etc etc.

whatever one thinks in hindsight about what Germans should have done is irreleavant to the fact that German late war high tank production numbers are the result of long term investments into tank production made already years before Stalingrad.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

So there was every indication that the USSR would collapse in 1941.

it was extremely hard for intelligence to penetrate Stalinist USSR. the glorious strategic insight praised by JasonC estimated USSR would fall in just a few weeks. they based it on intelligence data they had collected and all sorts of production, logistical & such calculations. they all failed to see the full industrial & military power of USSR. they simply did not know what USSR was.

What no-one is clear about is why it survived.

in hindsight it is clear. there was simply no reason why it would not have survived.

the German strategy of taking Soviet key industrial concentrations failed. Soviet industry survived 1941. thus they could keep fighting. due to the huge reserves (unknown to others) the Red Army survived as well. Stalinist central controlling brain pulling the strings survived as well. no need to collapse.

[dieseltaylor]

Agrian societies and economies are very prone to collapse given sudden shocks to the system, far more so than 'industrialised' economies.

Who said that? I have no great knowledge of the subject but I would have thought that size of country has more to do with possible collapse. Secondly, that a highly integrated society with JIT etc, and imported food is far far easier to render impotent then a low tech country. Thirdly, form of government and recent history.

[dieseltaylor]

While Russian tank production increased to unbelievable levels, the German obsession for complex new super weapons, like the advanced but then immature Panther and Tiger tanks, largely reduced German tank production. General Guderian, the best German armor expert and commander, said "As interesting as these designs were, the practical result was just a reduced production of the Panzer 4, our only efficient tank then, to a very modest level.". Shortly before the battle of Kursk Guderian added, about the Panther and its crews, "They are simply not ready yet for the front". In early 1943 the Germans were about to destroy their own tank production rates by terminating Panzer 4 production in return for a production of just 25 new Tigers per month, but at a moment of reason Hitler gave control of tank production to Guderian who stopped this idea.

http://www.2worldwar2.com/kursk.htm

The Germans could have made it worse for themselves ....

[Der Alte Fritz]

it was extremely hard for intelligence to penetrate Stalinist USSR. the glorious strategic insight praised by JasonC estimated USSR would fall in just a few weeks. they based it on intelligence data they had collected and all sorts of production, logistical & such calculations. they all failed to see the full industrial & military power of USSR. they simply did not know what USSR was.

Actually this assesment is based on Soviet figures used by Russian historians and working with Western economic historians around 2001.

Who said that? I have no great knowledge of the subject but I would have thought that size of country has more to do with possible collapse. Secondly, that a highly integrated society with JIT etc, and imported food is far far easier to render impotent then a low tech country. Thirdly, form of government and recent history.

Accounting for war Soviet production, employment and the defence burden 1940-45 - Mark Harrison Cambridge 2002.

The reason agrarian societies collapse is because their economy collapses as it is unable to move goods and services around due to poor transport infrastructure. Peasants stop taking their goods to market, the towns start to starve and the population flees to the countryside, leading to a stopping of industry. Advanced agriculture societies are more able to keep the supply of food going into the urban areas and move items around to reduce the effects of shortage.

The USSR of 1941 had a large urban population, essentially peasant agriculture, poor transport infrastructure and a large country to move around goods and services. The Germans were correct in thinking that it was ripe for collapse. The fact that they were wrong was due to other factors.

[dieseltaylor]

My argument then is with Mark Harrison. His extrapolation to the USSR from what other examples I do not know seems unsupported. There cannot be many countries where both the rural and the urban population are equalish in size to the total population of the invader and the country so vast that there is no hope of occupation.

Unfortunately I do not have access to University libraries and all the decent info I can find require me to pay for it.

Possibly he is thinking of Germany in 1918, or Russia around the same time however I am not sure I would see them as a solid foundation for generalising to the USSR of 1940. Tantalisingly the quote does not go onto the factors that caused the Germans to fail. Perhaps vastness of population, form of rule, and size would be quoted : )

Do you have his reasons for Germany's failure? Alte

Incidentally MH refers to a large urban population but even know the rural population of Russia 42/184M* is pretty darn chunky and presumably was substantially more so in 1940. There is also to be considered the amount of food grown within towns and the reduced expectancy of town-dwellers for more than bare rations. In a democracy perhaps a recipe for trouble but in a totalitarian state not necessarily so - particularly if a hated enemy was binding the country together.

*The US proportion is about 20% currently.

[costard]

Who said that? I have no great knowledge of the subject but I would have thought that size of country has more to do with possible collapse. Secondly, that a highly integrated society with JIT etc, and imported food is far far easier to render impotent then a low tech country. Thirdly, form of government and recent history.

Accounting for war Soviet production, employment and the defence burden 1940-45 - Mark Harrison Cambridge 2002.

The reason agrarian societies collapse is because their economy collapses as it is unable to move goods and services around due to poor transport infrastructure. Peasants stop taking their goods to market, the towns start to starve and the population flees to the countryside, leading to a stopping of industry. Advanced agriculture societies are more able to keep the supply of food going into the urban areas and move items around to reduce the effects of shortage.

This process had already occurred following the revolution of 1917 - the famines of 1922/23 being mostly a result of the collapse of the original economy and no organised infrastructure being put in place by the state. The Chinese suffered the same thing - a loss of roughly 8% of their populace following the revolution because the follow-on effects of removing the motivation for moving farm produce to market: no profit to be made at market or in the transportation, so it didn't take place. In both cases the paradigm of the revolutionary text underwent major transformation as unforseen circumstances forced a rethink on practical matters. By the time WW2 came around, the Soviets had converted their economy back to one that was efficiently distributing food and other goods. The analysis that concludes otherwise is flat out wrong.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Actually this assesment is based on Soviet figures used by Russian historians and working with Western economic historians around 2001.

Accounting for war Soviet production, employment and the defence burden 1940-45 - Mark Harrison Cambridge 2002.

awgh. remember that guy. i read just a couple of months ago a paper written by him. or tried to read, as i couldn't make myself read it in full because it was like reading a college essay in which the writer is more eager to use as many words as possible to support some strage fixation of his than actually describe something of value.

the paper had to do with efficiency of Stalinist pre-war industrialization. it was full of nonsene about if only perestroika had arrived 50 years earlier, about the marvels of democratically elected governments, the value of people being very motivated if they are not forced to work hard and so forth.

for a historican who could name some modern papers about the subject (while still failing to actually quote them) he sure displayed impressive ability to not deal with some of the actual realities under which Soviet industrialization programs existed. he appeared to not understand at all how crucial politics (regional lobbying etc), self-serving interests (factories trying to suck up as much money from ministries & army as possible) and such were. no, it's about those poor Soviet citizens who don't have democracy. why do Germans manage to overrun so much of Soviet industry in 1941? because Soviet people are oppressed, because of inefficient Stalinist centralization, right? of course it can't be that Soviet military planners never thought Germans could reach as far as Kharkov, not to mention Stalingrad, that Soviets had unfound doctrine in which the defensive war is almost instantly thrown to enemy soil. after all, that's the type of stuff that most modern papers about the subject, wether written by westerners or Russians, deal with.

anyway, i'll try to reread it again, as i remember it had some stuff about agrarian societies.

i don't mean to sound like an arrogant ass, which i am, but i read a good number of papers about military history every month, and i really disliked that paper by Harrison. when you read lot's of papers you tend to get a feel for different types of writers. i prefer those who avoid extra words, actually quote their sources, clearly show the data they derive their conclusions from and avoid ideological or philosophical drivel.

if you could give some of his references, or offer some of his key points, it would of course be great.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Harrison's paper i was referring to earlier is "Stalinist Industrialisation and the Test of War". quotes follow:

Less ambitious plans could have resulted in a variety of alternative outcomes characterised by industrial growth less than or equal to that actually achieved, combined with fewer social and economic tensions and higher morale of the population.

Nonetheless, might not a smaller wartime industrial base have been compensated in other directions - for example, by higher civilian morale and national unity?

Perhaps, with less harsh policies, the greater degree of loyalty in 1941 would have offset a smaller industrial base?

Morale and munitions were both required to fight the invader. There was limited scope for trading them off against each other; a more loyal population would have allowed more munitions to be supplied to the front (rather than diverted to policing the rear), and NKVD troops could have spent more time fighting the Germans, less time policing labour camps and minority nations.

ok, i'm down only some of the first pages and i already want to kill myself. i mean, seriously, WTF is the dude thinking?

Here the central, obvious, yet still startling fact is that the Soviet Union fought the war's decisive battles with a capital stock no more than two-thirds the size of that already accumulated in 1940. The gap reflects capacities lost or decommissioned as a result of the loss of territory to the invader. Thus the Soviet economy was denied access to a substantial

Stalinist Industrialisation share of the results of prewar industrial accumulation, yet still managed to sustain an outstanding wartime productive effort. Soviet industry could therefore have fought its war on the basis of a slower rate of prewar military-industrial expansion, but only on condition that its losses of capacity in the initial phase of the war could somehow have been more effectively limited than was in fact the case.

orly? perhaps captain Kirk will travel thru time and change history so that your writings can have some actual value.

Why were the capacity losses of 1941-2 so severe? The heavy impact of territorial loss is attributable to two factors. One was the traditional concentration of Soviet heavy and defence industries in the southern and western regions of the European USSR; this created a deep vulnerability to invasion from the west - one which Soviet military and economic leaders were well aware of. And this was one reason for prewar policies of dispersal of strategic industries to the interior of the country. Such policies reflected in part economic considerations - a commitment to the industrialisation of relatively backward regions, a desire to reduce the interregional transportation of industrial materials and products and economise on transport costs. They were also the result of straightforward military-economic calculations - a recognition of the vulnerability to disruption of an economy with a high degree of regional specialisation, reliant upon a limited number of regional fuel-metallurgical complexes. But the other factor which helps to explain the heavy impact of territorial loss upon Soviet defence and heavy industries in 1941-2 is that, after an initial opening up of the interior regions under the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32), this policy was scarcely implemented in the prewar years; existing regional specialisations were maintained, and much unique capacity in military engineering and metallurgy was formed in zones of future German occupation.

dude, it would help the reader to form an answer to your question if you told them the Soviets didn't believe Germans would ever reach as far as Kharkov. as a consequence Soviets were most focused about industries located in immediate danger area. unlike you, they didn't know how deep the Germans would penetrate..

Why was the prewar policy of industrial dispersal not more vigorously implemented? The simple reason is, apparently, that it was too costly.

apparently, then.

This is why the forced pace of Soviet industrialisation tended to inhibit industrial dispersal. However, it does not follow that industrial dispersal would have been any easier in combination with a slower, more relaxed pace of industrial expansion.

argh, so why do you even write about it?

Therefore, only with great difficulty could more vigorous dispersal of the country's military-industrial potential to the interior regions have been reconciled with a policy of reduced capital construction and slower, more balanced and consumer-oriented industrial growth in the prewar period.

if it's meaningless why do you keep talking about it?

Nonetheless, it seems a good bet that such a prewar policy combination would have paid off in wartime. For the Soviet people paid dearly for their leaders' prewar sin of omission in the field of industrial dispersal. They paid by having to carry dispersal out under incomparably more difficult conditions, when war had already broken out and invading forces were already deep inside Soviet territory.

a good bet or not, did you read anything you just wrote earlier in your paper?

This is the story of the industrial evacuations, of which there were two - the big one of July-November 1941 and a much smaller one limited to the southern sector in June-September 1942. The big one involved up to one eighth of all Soviet industrial assets, including the bulk of the country's defence plant and many key enterprises of the metallurgical, chemical, engineering and electricity supply. Evacuation tasks were assigned top priority - equal to that of fighting the enemy. Huge resources of transport and construction were diverted to its implementation. The centre of gravity of the Soviet Union's industrial economy was shifted bodily from Europe to the Urals and western Siberia. In this way the results of territorial loss were mitigated, the Soviet defence capacity was saved and economic collapse averted.

hey, the guy just at least partially debunked his other paper which doesn't know why USSR didn't die in 1941.

anyway, it would have been nice if you had told the reader that the Soviets had been preplanning the evacuations since late 1920ies and actually had prepared some target areas in advance.

From a conservative standpoint it could be argued (and is in fact implied, more or less openly) that what was achieved in wartime could never have been imposed in time of peace - that the 'incomparably more difficult circumstances' generated greater effort, greater self-sacrifice, greater heroism on the part of the workers.

it would help if you understood how USSR worked. after all, you are apparently a historian and you are writing a paper about it. perhaps, just perhaps, it had nothing at all to do with self-sacrifice or heroism of the workers.

And generally it seems to be true that during the war Soviet enterprises worked with greater 'tautness', with a lower safety margin, concealed fewer reserves, and calculated their options with less self-regard than in peace time. Given this piece of hindsight it could be argued that postponement of industrial dispersal until the outbreak of war was rational and saved resources; had the same relocation of capacities been attempted in the late 1930s, it would have taken many years to complete with almost indefinite postponement of results.

eww. dude, you need a reality check. those guys who own the factory complexes, or lobby for their region on the higher political levels, don't care too much about that stuff. they just really don't like it when you try to take their stuff away. yeah, USSR was not supposed to be like that, but that's how it worked in reality. like you know, you a historian specialized on the subject, right?

In my view this defence of the prewar industrialisation pattern is unacceptable for two reasons. One is that the wartime evacuation of industry, while justly celebrated as an outstanding feat of heroic labour, was only a first step in repairing the damage caused by invasion; it certainly did not solve all the resulting problems, and even after its conclusion the economy of the interior regions still hung over the brink of a precipitous collapse in 1942. The economic crisis of that year was in many ways deeper than that of the first post-invasion months; the country's defence capacity had been saved, but its civilian economy had been reduced to the most dreadful shambles, and this in turn posed a deadly threat to the continuity of defence output. The evacuation contributed to this imbalance because of the demand piled upon demand for transport, electric power and material supplies from the thoroughly inadequate infrastructure of the remote regions in which the country's strategic enterprises had been relocated. If the cost of resolving this crisis were calculated, the result would surely show that deferment of industrial dispersal until war had broken out was an expensive choice, not a choice for dispersal 'on the cheap'.

surely it would. hey, while you are it, why not calculate it so that your paper has some validity and makes it worth reading it. and about this "choice", didn't you already previously conclude that there really wasn't much to choose from? like, uh, why are you STILL talking about this?

The other reason why prewar industrial concentration followed by wartime dispersal must be rejected as a rational policy combination is that this argument follows well-worn Stalinist tradition in making a virtue out of bitterest necessities. If there is an argument here, it is that the perestroika of the late 1980s is already half a century overdue. This is what would have supplied the conditions necessary for cost-effective war preparation - to have created in advance a peacetime economy in which enterprises and construction projects tended spontaneously to efficient capacity utilisation, without need for a safety margin as a defence against planning uncertainty, without concealment of reserves. Then the intended dispersal of new capacities of strategic significance to the interior regions would have been implemented within a reasonable planning horizon

exactly, free markets would have built the production complexes at Urals and Siberia almost automatically!

Could the war have been fought without more prewar industrial dispersal, still on the basis of a lower rate of prewar industrial accumulation and smaller initial military-industrial capital stock, by means of adoption of alternative policies when war had already broken out?

a nice question. so are you gonna tell us what these alternative policies would be like?

Could Soviet industries have been either defended or evacuated more effectively in 1941-2? This also seems possible, although not without question.

cool.

Had Stalin not been deceived, then things would have gone better.

OMG.

How much better, it is again impossible to say, for even when Soviet military leaders were completely familiar with Hitler's plans and the requirements of strategic defence against them, the Wehrmacht was still able to storm through Soviet defences, carry out large scale encirclements and inflict further massive losses of territory.

someone please kill me so that i don't have to read this whole paper.

Perhaps the Stalinist political system's excessive centralisation and intolerance of alternative perspectives made it especially vulnerable to German deceits.

yeah, tolerate alternative perspectives of those heroic workers! after the saturday orgy they may perhaps notice the evil & gamey German deceit.

But deception and surprise were weapons of war like any other; each side designed their weapons to exploit the adversary's weaknesses, and only hindsight was fully proof against them. After all, in December 1941, it was the turn of the democratically governed United States to fall victim to a Japanese campaign of deception and surprise, in spite of many accurate forewarnings of Japanese intentions.

oh noes.

Could a more effective industrial evacuation have saved a higher proportion of Soviet initial capacities in military and supporting industries? On this question I am more sceptical.

i value your scepticism on this question.

In summary, the achieved level of Soviet industrial development was, in a broad sense, one of the keys to Soviet victory in 1941-5.

lol, in a broad sense yes kinda one of the keys. of course nothing like the heroic oppressed workers with alternative perspectives.

It may be that, from the point of view of the needs of war in 1941-5, the case for a degree of forced-march industrialisation in the prewar years cannot be entirely discounted.

maybe not entirely, yeah.

i am sorry but i am done trying to reread this paper.

[TufenHuden]

Panther,

To me was the best tank of the war or until the Pershing

showed up.

-Panthers 75mm L/70 was a great gun-could KO

ant tank except IS2/3 at long ranges.

-Cross country-it was decent when it worked.

1st Panthers in Kursk transmission failed-once

fixed it was good-excepted the overlapping road

wheels froze in the winter-should of went with

Christie suspension-T-34/Crommwell.

Also Panther-II w/ 88mm L/71 would of been

good-if this was mass produced-we've been in trouble.

T-34

-When it 1st came out-against the lighter gunned

PZ-III/IV short 75mm's they couldn't penetrate

T-34 armor-once the PZ-IV's got better gun 75mm

L/48 then it was in trouble-until T-34/85 arrived.

There was a T-34/100 prototype-this would been

a decent Tank.

Sherman,

-Sherman 75mm was a match to PZ-IV-special-once

it faced Panthers-plus it Gas engine was it-it blew

up like a lighter or Tommy cookers they where called.

76mm reg could of been better-better powder in the AP

shells from getting much zip......

-Firefly "17-pndr"-best version or until Isrealis-made the Super

Sherman w/90mm gun.......

Pershing,

USA-Panther/Tiger-hard hitting-could of been in

ETO theater earlier"44" but red tape prevented that....

Super Pershing-USA-KT-and there was one battle a

Super Pershing K'od a KT with it's longer version

90mm-better then 88mm L/71......

[zukkov]

one thing about this crowd. don't ask a simple question and expect a simple answer. lol..

[dieseltaylor]

You do. It was the question was not strightfoward. It should have been what was the best tank weighing 36 tons fully loaded. And that is long tons not metric or short tons. During the period 1939 -1944.

[Der Alte Fritz]

To be fair the original question was answered many pages ago and the general consensus was that it was the Panther.

But from this emerged a couple of things about the Panther that I thought investigating further.

Then a new question was posed which what was the most suitable tank for Germany's late war period.

To my mind the PzIVJ has many good qualities but it lacks the cross country ability and strategic mobility of tanks such as the T-34. The Panther is pretty good but being so heavy and complex again it lacks tactical and strategic mobility, so my money now is on the original Panther prototype.

Not sure how we ended up on a discusssion of the Soviet economy but I am learning lots and having fun it breaks the boredom of downloading from cmmods, so what the hell.

[dieseltaylor]

I have enjoyed the romp through the broad range of answers. Well apart from ignoring of the Comet's claim to be the best all-round medium tank package to have more than a fleeting acquaintance with the war.

: )

[undead reindeer cavalry]

.

To my mind the PzIVJ has many good qualities but it lacks the cross country ability and strategic mobility of tanks such as the T-34. The Panther is pretty good but being so heavy and complex again it lacks tactical and strategic mobility, so my money now is on the original Panther prototype.

what kind of stuff do you have in mind exactly what comes to higher strategic mobility of T-34? i'm not really questioning the point, just interested.

simplistic operational ranges of some tanks:

T-34 early - 100 / 300 km (off road / road)

Panzer IV early - 100 / 200 km (off road / road)

T-34 M1942 - 400 km (increase created by external fuel tanks)

Panzer IV J - 300 km (increase created by internal tanks)

T-34/85 - 300 km (decrease created by added weight)

Panther - 100 / 250 km (off road / road)

IS-2 - 250 km

weights:

T-34 - 26 t

T-34 M42 - 28.5 t

T-34 M43 - 30.9 t

T-34 / 85 - 32 t

Pz IV D - 20 t

Pz IV G - 23.5 t

Pz IV H/J - 25 t

IS-2 - 46 t

Panther D - 43 t

Panther G - 45.5 t

(yeah, including IS-2 is slightly OT, but at least i dind't post less than flattering numbers for e.g. Sherman)

[Ziploc]

Hi all,

I always thought that the Panzer Mk II was the "best design" of the war...

[dieseltaylor]

Comet 250km operational range

33.53 tonnes

Sherman 193kms operational range

30.30 tonnes

[Der Alte Fritz]

It has nothing to do with range really as both sides have decent supply systems. It has to do with the ease with which units can travel around the place. Look at the well documented problems of the Russian 'mixed units' making a tactical move. The T-34s would arrive first, then the T-60s, less capable cross country and then the KV-1s which could not use the bridges, whose weight broke up the roads and slow overall speed. Any 35 ton plus tank moving in Russia requires Pioneer and bridging support which makes moving around more difficult.

Likewise. thin tracked vehicles such as the PzIII/IV are more road bound, especially in soft ground conditions.

Strategic mobility is similar, it is about moving a unit hundreds of miles which requires good tactical mobility, low maintenance requirement, high reliability and a robust vehicle. In a days march with a tank unit you would leave behind a trail of broken down, disabled and bogged vehicles along the route. How many depended on a variety of factors but some of which are related to the characteristics of the vehicle.

Take for instance 6th Panzer at Kursk. After a long rest and refit in preparation for the big day, the move forward to their jump off point. The Division starts with 105 tanks but by the start of the next day, having moved behind their own lines and not encountered the enemy they are down to 82 tanks. Those 'lost' tanks will re-appear from the workshops later but are not in the battle.

In 1940 British units expected to lose 25% of their tanks even on a short march, just from breakdowns. Likewise in 1941 Russian units lost more tanks from breakdowns than they did from enemy action. Even short tactical moves could be crippling as they lacked rear services.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

indeed. T-34 certainly has a significant reliability advantage over Panther what comes to long range marches on tracks. probably it exists at ranges somewhere between 100 and 300 km.

what comes to Panzer IV J and T-34 i don't think there's really any difference what comes to road marches on tracks.

[Ziploc]

Whilst the question of "best design" is a natural one surely the problem is finding the right scale on which to answer it? Should the answer be based on pure physical attributes of the machine? Considered alongside crew skill, experience and training? Or how the machine is intergrated and utilised within a military system? In the consideration of industrial capabilities, operational mobility and other factors you seem to have adopted a more global approach. So perhaps the question should address the design ethos and how the machines delivered were INTENDED to operate. Then the battlefield performance can be considered with respect to the intended and actual results.

Then the Panzer Mk II will come out on top!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Comet 250km operational range

33.53 tonnes

Sherman 193kms operational range

30.30 tonnes

that 193 km (120 miles) figure for Sherman originates most likely from this:

APPENDIX "G" to AFV MIDDLE EAST LIAISON LETTER NO. 8 January 1943

(e) CIRCUIT OF ACTION - SHERMAN TANKS

Petrol Engine.

Good Going 90 miles

Bad Going 56 miles

Diesel Engine.

Good Going 120 miles

Bad Going 90 miles

as seen, 193 km figure is the upper margin for diesels.

of all the over 50 000 Shermans built, only some 8000 (A2 and A6) were diesels.

what comes to the petrols, 56 miles is 90 km and 90 miles is 145 km.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Whilst the question of "best design" is a natural one surely the problem is finding the right scale on which to answer it? Should the answer be based on pure physical attributes of the machine? Considered alongside crew skill, experience and training? Or how the machine is intergrated and utilised within a military system? In the consideration of industrial capabilities, operational mobility and other factors you seem to have adopted a more global approach. So perhaps the question should address the design ethos and how the machines delivered were INTENDED to operate. Then the battlefield performance can be considered with respect to the intended and actual results.

Then the Panzer Mk II will come out on top!

if you look at battles like Arracourt in 1944, i think Panzer IIs would have done just as well.

i agree about the scale thing. the context in this thread appears to be post-Kursk battles of 1943. i guess one could evaluate Panther vs IV on at least a couple of different levels:

1) performance of panzer regiments which either had or did not have Panthers

2) performance of Panther battalions vs Panzer IV battalions

what comes to the intended use, i think it's safe to say that Panthers did not perform as intended in 1943. too many teething problems.

[luderbamsen]

Clearly, the best tank in WW2 was the M113 Gavin...

*dives for cover*