So what tanks should the Germans have skipped, and what would have been the positive results?

[civdiv]

In my opinion, the Germans lost a lot of resources and time tinkering away at stupid ‘pet projects’ in terms of tanks. Sure, a lot of this was driven by Hitler who wanted ever bigger dumb stuff, and defying him could lead to a dirt nap. And is anyone aware of any analysis as to what positive benefits (likely in terms of increased numbers of vehicles) this would have allowed? Yes, their was the E-series but it was too late and just stupid at the upper end of the series.

So off the top of my head, the vehicles they should never have considered were; Tiger I, Tiger II, Maus, Lowe, Jagtiger, Nashorn, Sturmtiger and Elephant. Plus all the design work done on a couple of others like Panzer IX and X for example, or the E-series.

I am sort of on-the-fence about the Jagdpanther and the Panther II. Should they have built the Panther II or just fixed the Panther? Should they have skipped Panther because it required too much time to build?

Now, in terms of not building (or designing) Tiger I and Tiger II, they were over engineered, over weight, and unreliable. They already had the unreliable Panther, they probably should have fixed it first. And for the Tigers they were the wrong tank by that time of the war. Germany was on the defense at the time so throwing in heavy, mechanically unreliable ‘breakthrough’ tanks was the exact wrong decision. In ‘Sledgehammers: Strengths and flaws of the Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II”, Mr Wilbeck states that around 90% of total Tiger tank losses during WWII were destroyed by their crews while retreating because of breakdowns or running out of fuel, or bogging. Another huge mistake is the Germans never provided a Tiger recovery vehicle. The Tiger battalions on the Western front frequently used captured Shermans for that.

So my two basic questions are;

- What tank designs should the Germans have skipped to save time and resources?
- What would have been the positive effects in terms of increased numbers of tanks they actually should have produced?
 

So flame away, I am thick skinned and I know Battlefront well!

Edited January 22, 2022 by civdiv

[Simcoe]

Totally agreed. They should have focused on Panzer 4's and Stugs. 

It's interesting to read about Germany's penchant for tinkering with their designs so much that every sixth tiger out of the factory was a new variant and seeing it in action.

Play any of the US campaigns and you can guess exactly what will be fielded. Playing the Germans is like a circus of different vehicle types and variants. 

[Grey_Fox]

7 minutes ago, civdiv said:

So my two basic questions are;

- What tank designs should the Germans have skipped to save time and resources?
- What would have been the positive effects in terms of increased numbers of tanks they actually should have produced?

They should have standardized their equipment and gone for a production-line style process, like the US did with their equipment.

It might not be a "positive", they might have had more equipment, but they would still have lost the war.

[Commanderski]

12 minutes ago, Grey_Fox said:

They should have standardized their equipment and gone for a production-line style process, like the US did with their equipment.

True. You could say that most of them were custom made. There was a picture of their assembly line in the World War II magazine sometime ago. Each tank had a ladder going in it indicating that each tank got individual attention and production was very slow. The Soviets and US  were strictly assembly line.

They should also have stuck with one version of their halftracks, like the Sd.Kfz. 250. They had so many variations that repairing them must have been a nightmare for the repair depots.

[Warts 'n' all]

I've always thought that they should have skipped to My Lou.

[Probus]

22 minutes ago, Grey_Fox said:

but they would still have lost the war

I agree, I don't think anything they did would have won them the war. It is interesting to speculate on what would have turned out better for them.     Not that anyone would have wanted them to win.

Having said that, should they have built sooo many PZ I & II chassis.  Seemed like they were converting the heck out of them.

[Vanir Ausf B]

24 minutes ago, civdiv said:

I am sort of on-the-fence about the Jagdpanther and the Panther II. Should they have built the Panther II or just fixed the Panther? Should they have skipped Panther because it required too much time to build?

I don't think the Panther took unusually long to build. I don't have those numbers, but it wasn't much more expensive than a Panzer IV. You can argue about slave labor and all that but I don't think time or expense was a major problem with the Panther. It could be said the Germans did "fix" the Panther by adding schurzen, which abrogated the need for thicker side armor to counter Soviet AT rifles.

24 minutes ago, civdiv said:

Now, in terms of not building (or designing) Tiger I and Tiger II, they were over engineered, over weight, and unreliable. They already had the unreliable Panther, they probably should have fixed it first. And for the Tigers they were the wrong tank by that time of the war. Germany was on the defense at the time so throwing in heavy, mechanically unreliable ‘breakthrough’ tanks was the exact wrong decision.

The Tiger I predates the Panther. It entered service late '42/early '43 when the Germans were still on the strategic offensive. And they continued to launch operational level offensives almost to the end of the war. Not that it was necessarily a great idea, but the tactical rationale behind it never really went away.

[civdiv]

8 minutes ago, Probus said:

I agree, I don't think anything they did would have won them the war. It is interesting to speculate on what would have turned out better for them.     Not that anyone would have wanted them to win.

Having said that, should they have built sooo many PZ I & II chassis.  Seemed like they were converting the heck out of them.

I think they built a number of useful variants off the Pz I and II chassis. Does anyone have an opposing argument to the claim that Luchs, Marder I and II, Wespe, Strumpanzer, Flakpanzer I, and Jagdpanzer I were useful?

[civdiv]

12 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

I don't think the Panther took unusually long to build. I don't have those numbers, but it wasn't much more expensive than a Panzer IV. You can argue about slave labor and all that but I don't think time or expense was a major problem with the Panther. It could be said the Germans did "fix" the Panther by adding schurzen, which abrogated the need for thicker side armor to counter Soviet AT rifles.

The Tiger I predates the Panther. It entered service late '42/early '43 when the Germans were still on the strategic offensive. And they continued to launch operational level offensives almost to the end of the war. Not that it was necessarily a great idea, but the tactical rationale behind it never really went away.

I have read (I can try and find the sources) that while the Panther did not cost significantly more than the MkIV it required twice the materials and significantly more man hours to build. And it was unreliable.

And I believe the biggest shortcoming of the Panther was the final drive; was that ever fixed?

[Redwolf]

1 hour ago, Simcoe said:

Totally agreed. They should have focused on Panzer 4's and Stugs. 

They were expecting the war to last longer and to potentially end up in a situation again like they were when they fought T-34s with 37mm Pz IIIs.

So they proactively upped their vehicles.

[civdiv]

55 minutes ago, Probus said:

I agree, I don't think anything they did would have won them the war. It is interesting to speculate on what would have turned out better for them.     Not that anyone would have wanted them to win.

Having said that, should they have built sooo many PZ I & II chassis.  Seemed like they were converting the heck out of them.

Hypothetically; What would have 1,000 more MECHANICALLY RELIABLE Panthers and 1,000 Pz IV Ausf Js (Or their derivatives such as Jagdpanther and Pz IV based Jagdpanzer IVs) have made? I make these figures up so feel free to argue them. But on the basis of my straw man, how does this effect WWII on the Western and Eastern Fronts? Delays the end by how much, if any? Six months?

Edited January 22, 2022 by civdiv

[Redwolf]

The real chaos was not upgrading some of the bases for tank production.

If they expected the way to last much longer it would have been worth upgrading all the factories with bigger cranes and whatnot so that they can do better than Pz IV and III chassis (for StuGs), to go to larger turret rings (for later upgradability) and the like. But in that case short-term concerns took over again.

[Vanir Ausf B]

48 minutes ago, civdiv said:

And I believe the biggest shortcoming of the Panther was the final drive; was that ever fixed?

Not really. It was a design flaw that could be mitigated to a degree but was not completely fixable without a major redesign.

Despite that, it's not clear how much practical difference it made in the field.

Status of AFVs on the entire Western Front -- total (operational) %

15 December 1944

• StuG------PzIV------PzV------PzVI
• 598-------503-------471------123
• (410)-----(391)-----(336)-----(79)
• 69%-------78%------71%------64%

30 December 1944

• StuG------PzIV------PzV------PzVI
• 676-------550-------451------116
• (335)-----(345)-----(240)----(58)
• 50%-------63%------53%-----50%

15 January 1945

• StuG------PzIV------PzV------PzVI
• 716--------594------487------110
• (340)-----(330)-----(221)-----(64)
• 47%-------56%------45%------58%

[Glubokii Boy]

How about logistics ? If they did decide to stay with the Pz IV for example and produced that in significantelly higher numbers would they have been able to support such an armoured force ? Fuel, ammo, replacement parts...

 

[Redwolf]

Another aspect is steel quality.

In late war they did not have the metals for producing the required steel in the required quantities. 

This doesn't just make armor plates more prone to failure. It also means that high power engines and high-torque transmissions will fail at a greater rate. When they decided to make the heavier tanks with the 700 hp engines they did not know that yet.

[herr_oberst]

They shoulda skipped the tanks and assault guns that didn't fit on or across most of the bridges in Europe and parts east... either width or weight wise. Sure, you can build a Maus, but where you gonna fight with it?

Doesn't help an assault if you have to build new bridges to get your material across the rivers.

[chuckdyke]

Anything they couldn't mass produce. That leaves us with only the Panther of which they could have made a heavier version like they did on the allied side with the Jumbo Sherman.  

[Glubokii Boy]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

Anything they couldn't mass produce. That leaves us with only the Panther of which they could have made a heavier version like they did on the allied side with the Jumbo Sherman.  

For the last year of the war i wounder if i would not have prefered to have a higher number of Jagd Panthers delivered compared to a new updated turreted version made in smaller numbers.

 

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Glubokii Boy said:

For the last year of the war i wounder if i would not have prefered to have a higher number of Jagd Panthers delivered compared to a new updated turreted version made in smaller numbers.

It belongs to the Panther Tank family. Same with the Stug III from the Panzer III, Stug IV from the Panzer IV. 5 good capable systems enough in my book. One type belonged to the artillery but really they always integrated well.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Let's start at the beginning:

 

[Erwin]

Have to remember that development of things like tanks starts many years before.  So, the Germans were developing what they thought they needed 3-5+ years in the future based on what they expected to happen, not what actually happened and what they actually needed.

[Bulletpoint]

The big heavy German tanks would have made a lot more sense in their intended role in the open Russian landscape than getting bogged down in Normandy and the Ardennes.

Also, some of the German tank designs were emergency solutions, for example the Hetzer and variants of the Jagdpanzer IV, where they mixed and matched whatever parts they had available. They couldn't just have turned leftover half-obsolete chassis into new Panthers for example.

[The_Capt]

I am not a WW2 tank expert by the standards of this forum but in my opinion the Germans went the "wrong way" in their armor and anti-armor development; however, they likely had no way of knowing it.

So for a nation that contributed to a revolution in military affairs (and jury is still out on how much) with respect to armored warfare, it is fair to say they lost the strategic bubble about mid-war.  The obsession with heavier and bigger tanks was 1) a large drain on shrinking resources and 2) a dead end from a strategic production point of view, and 3) limited tactical value because of point #2; in short a major strategic mistake. 

There was no way they could see it, they needed a forward thinking genius, which they may have had but he either died or, was ignored (they usually are).  A genius who could see the answer was not to build better tanks but simply take away the advantage of the tank itself from your opponent.  If Germany had invest all that effort and brainpower in ATGM development, much earlier, that may have changed things at a strategic level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4).  But in order to do that you have to completely abandon the idea of offence and build for defensive superiority, which was not going to happen.  In short the German military and political bodies were trapped in a strategic prison of their own making.

In CM, imagine taking AT 7s or the Dragons of CMCW and putting them in CMBN or RT but only for one side.  With functioning ATGMs en masse (remember that first gen ATGMs would come out only ten years after the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_guided_missile#:~:text=The Malkara missile (from an,missile in the late 1960s.) the infantry/armor relationship would fundamentally change.  Infantry units now had man-portable tank killing systems that could reach out to +1000m but off-set all the vulnerabilities of AT guns (mobility, accuracy, concealment, logistics and signature), that is a battlefield game changer particularly if you opponent lacks the same technology or an ability to defeat it.  

[Bulletpoint]

@The_Capt I think you fall into a bit of the same trap as the Germans did back then, in that they thought some kind of Wunderwaffe would win the war. The Germans didn't have 15 years to develop an ATGM, and even if they had managed to invent guided missiles in 1943, they would still have lost the war. They could never have won a defensive war against the Soviet Union with its vast resources - once they had invaded Russia, there was no going back.

[The_Capt]

26 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

@The_Capt I think you fall into a bit of the same trap as the Germans did back then, in that they thought some kind of Wunderwaffe would win the war. The Germans didn't have 15 years to develop an ATGM, and even if they had managed to invent guided missiles in 1943, they would still have lost the war. They could never have won a defensive war against the Soviet Union with its vast resources - once they had invaded Russia, there was no going back.

I said "battle-field game changer", not "win the war".  That is another conversation.

To win the war, if it was even possible, it takes more than a Wunderwaffe, it is a strategic shift they would have had to make before the war started.  A lot of "ifs" have to fall into place to make it work, which of course did not happen, but are not outside the realm of plausible fiction.  IF Germany had made a conscious decision to shift to a consolidating defensive posture once they had achieved (reasonable) objectives in a Russian invasion.  IF they had invested into defensive technologies earlier and with significantly more resources and were able to produce them in mass numbers. IF, IF, IF.

Now there is also no evidence that Wunderwaffe cannot make a strategic difference, look to Gulf War 1991 and the projected losses versus what actually happened, but they are not a single weapon but more entire strategies which produce those weapons (Air-Land Battle) that give the massive advantage.  I disagree that the Russians were some bottomless pit of resources and manpower, that is a myth that lives to this day.  They were human and determined but not an invincible monster.  ATGMs would have shifted the battlefield significantly, more significantly than the Tiger or the heavy tank series.  Would it have "won" the war?  I doubt it would have by the standards we normally apply to victory but it could have altered the terms of the outcome. 

But again, this is so much bigger than a single weapon system.  For example, enfranchising the people's Eastern Europe, many who had no love of Stalin or the Soviet system would have made a major impact on that front; arm the eastern Europeans as opposed to oppress them.  The problem again is that in order to do this, we are no longer talking about Nazi Germany and the causes of the war in the first place.

Edited January 24, 2022 by The_Capt