Relative importance of armor specs

[Michael Dorosh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC:

To tss and Michael on the Finns - really guys, this is the second time I've asked. Get a Finns thread, please. The stuff is interesting and well worth talking about, but pushing it into every thread is just distracting.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, you Uberfinns, please stop cluttering up JasonC's posts with relevant data and interesting information - you know he is the only one allowed to post at length with historical data.

(How I became a Finn, I don't know!)

[Andreas]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

(How I became a Finn, I don't know!)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

To quote Garfield the cat:

Osmosis is a wonderful thing.

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Which certainly does not mean 1918 "Mothers" are as good a M-1 Abrams, or any other such straw man.

But does it mean that both were/are without any operational effects in their day and age ?

It is a point about what mattered at the operational scale and up in WW II, and about why armor tech specs (in grog gun and armor terms) was not decisive in any operation.

However there are cases when we can pin point an instance in a specific point in time during an operation when a small groupd or even a single man/gun/vehicle with a feat of skill, balls or luck (or all of the above) turned the battle around which in turn turned the operation around. And more often than not they involve a weapon or a gun or a vehicle which had qualities that were better than the rest of the assets in the field. Be it Audie Murphy with a 50cal, Antti Rokka (I know this is the name of the character from the book but forget the name of the real man who was behind it in the RL feat depicted in the book ) with a Suomi SMG or Michale Wittman with a Tiger.

To tss and Michael on the Finns - really guys, this is the second time I've asked. Get a Finns thread, please. The stuff is interesting and well worth talking about, but pushing it into every thread is just distracting.

Why is it distracting ? Because it moves in uncharted waters ? Or do you object to the inclusion of data based on the Finnish experiences only because it cramps your style with data that contradicts your thesis ?

Apart from the US, the UK, Germany and the USSR also Finland along with other little people took part in the contest. So far all of the data presented here (well, most of it anyway) has been on the subject at hand with specific examples drawn from historical sources. These sources happen to be Finnish. They should not be any better or worse than Anglo-American sources since they can be corraborated and crossreferenced.

I am eagerly awaiting your rebuttal on my post which did not have any refrences to the Finnish apart from the being broke in the -30's bit.

[Wreck]

Jason, great post. This particular sermon I have the feeling you have preached before... it is sort of the Lord's Prayer of the WWII econ grog. But well worth repeating.

I agree with your thesis that "the scale of differences actually present between WW II armor fleets did not have any significant strategic impact". However, I think it is also clear that it is possible to have technical superiority so great as to affect the strategic level of a war -- case in point, the gulf war. So one of the interesting things here is, why do people believe there is such a large technical gap between various WWII tanks?

I think the answer to that lies in the confusion of the technical for the tactical.

Technically, if we imagine a Panther up against a Sherman at 1000m on a one-dimensional battlefield, we find that the the Panther always kills the Sherman within N shots. This *is* a technical gap so large as to place the two tanks into different categories.

People then make the mistake of translating that technical difference into tactical one. But a real 3D battlefield is not a one dimensional face-off. Even on the CM level, the Panther has weak flanks that can be penetrated from afar. It can also be penetrated from the front, using a variety of weapons, if they are close enough. So it is no longer in a different class than other tanks.

If there was a tank with armor so thick or offenses so powerful that it could not be killed by any enemy weapon fielded that could get in range... then you might have a case for technical superiority so great that it would translate into tactical or strategic superiority. But there are no such cases in WWII. Even the mighty French char Bs could be killed by stukas, demo charges, very lucky large-caliber arty hits, and 88s.

[JasonC]

Tero's long response deserves its own post.

First, he wants technical armor dominance to be a critical or decisive operational or strategic factor because tanks improved over the course of the war. Certainly sides tried to get advantages - whether just tactical ones or not - from fielding better tanks. The question is whether they succeeded, or whether they mutual efforts basically cancelled each other out at operational and higher scales. I claim they cancelled out. I.e. the effect of armor spec -dominance-, which is an advantage of one side over another at the same time and place, was too small to change the outcome of campaigns. The contrary to my claim would be, sometimes campaign outcomes turned on who had the better tanks.

At one point he said "those who wanted to protect the crews but could not step up the production of adequate AFV's switched to totally new models in an effort to fill the gap with fewer high quality AFV's manned by high quality crews." This is obviously meant to refer to the Germans in the period of developing the Tiger I and Panther. Because all others were "stepping up production". The problem with this statement is that it is mostly false.

Did the Germans have better crews? Yes. Were they unable to step up production of adequate AFVs? No, they certainly were capable of doing so, and they did so to a minor degree in the period, and they could easily have done so to a much greater degree and earlier. There was no impossibility involved. It was a political decision not to mobilize the economy until after the Stalingrad defeat, i.e. as long as an economically cheap win still seemed possible. As for the Pz III turret issue, that problem was easily solved by simply moving to a turretless AFV, the StuG III.

And the Germans made 2500 Panthers and Tigers through the end of 1943; they were not a "stop gap" compared to the conversion of the Pz III chassis to StuG, nor the upgunning of the Pz IV. More than that many 75 long AFVs had been produced by the end of 1942, (vs. less than 100 Tiger Is) and by the end of 1943 they had fielded more than 10,000 such long 75 AFVs. The Tigers and Panthers were no substitute, but a supplimental heavy force added to the top end of a distribution of vehicles still centered on the main production models, the Pz III and Pz IV chassis, supplimented by Marders on lighter chassis. In calendar 1943, the Germans were turning out 3 75mm "vanilla" AFVs for every heavy one.

I think there was a basic misunderstanding in the next part of Tero's comments. He quotes me saying "Tech specs mostly varied over narrower ranges", where the context is how large the variation from one side to the enemy side was in tech specs on the one hand, and in other operational factors on the other hand. For instance, if tech specs were in some sense 10% better for side A than for side B, while force strength was 100% better for side B than side A, then my statement holds.

The claim is that the variation from one side to the other in things like odds, logisitics, and doctrine, produced far larger effects than the difference between one side and the other in tank specs. There is no time-dependent or "diachronic" statement involved. I am not comparing 1939 tanks with 1945 tanks, but German 1940 tanks vs. British 1940 tanks, German 1943 tanks vs. Russian 1943 tanks, etc. My claim is that in each case, the armor-grog tech differences are small, over whole fleets fielded. Small enough that they are swamped by the other operational factors.

Nor is this merely a claim. It is an explanation of an observation that in no way depends on it. The observation is that who has the better tanks does not predict who wins a campaign. This requires explanation. If A has better tanks than B but B wins, then obviously B had something else going for it, that was more important in the magnitude of its effect, than the tank difference in present in that case.

As for the claim about infantry vs. cavalry tanks, in fact distinction was a matter of British doctrine, and by no means general. The Germans had no infantry support tanks in those terms. Not all light tanks were even fast. The heavy British tank types later used as infantry tanks - Matilda and Valentine - did not start out that way. It was only found in practice they weren't fast enough for independent action. The Russians had fast tanks (BT) and light tanks (T-26) that were essentially equal in ability, and in 1939 no heavy tanks. (Both the KV and T-34 were fielded after the war broke out but before Russia was invaded).

I am quite aware that the Pz II, Pz III 37 or short 50, and Pz IV short 75, were "unimpressive" vehicles technically. The Germans did not have armor grog dominance in the first half of the war, while they were winning. The Allies did. That is a large part of my own argument, and it seems to have been completely missed. I was not under any false impression that the early German tanks were superior in gun and armor terms.

Compared to a Maltida, there is no contest. The Matilda had up to twice the armor and was invunerable to the guns on the German tanks, as invunerable as the Tiger was when it first came out. Even the 50L60, not fielded until 1942, needed APCR ammo to penetrate a Matilda. Its 2 lber, while lacking HE, was superior to the 50L42 as an anti-tank weapon, to say nothing of the German 37mm, and able to easily penetrate every German tank. The Germans screamed for long 75 guns in 1940, at least as loud as US tankers in Normandy screamed for 76 Shermans. They didn't get them for more than two years.

You really have to face the paradox squarely. There is no question whatever that the Germans won the first half of the war in inferior tanks, and lost the second half of it in superior ones. (In pure gun and armor terms). It is this fundamental fact that the armor dominance view must contend with. I explain these two periods by other factors, favorable to the winning side in each of the two long periods and outweighing the importance of gun-armor grog specs. Those other factors are superior combined arms doctrine for the Germans in the first half of the war, and superior numbers and logistics for the Allies in the second half.

I notice the way "the 75mm PAK40 AT gun with its mounts and AFV applications" is put in as a sort of afterthough, after the Tigers and Panthers. But of course, this was the real weapon around which the German force was built, both towed and AFV, clear into 1944. The numbers of that type dwarf the heavier ones. By the end of 1943 there were over 25,000 75mm long guns towed or AFV fielded to date, vs. only 2500 Tigers and Panthers. That is part of the reason better tanks did not prove more decisive in 1943. This was of course the precise period when only T-34/76s faced the better German types (the T-34/85s, IS, and ISUs were not out yet). But those better German types were only ~1/5 the German AFVs and less than 1/10 the fielded AT weapons, counting PAK. The Russian had only ~1/6 KVs and T-34s in 1941, and those didn't prove decisive either.

Then he says the schrecks and fausts made the difference "once the T-34 became too numerous". I certainly agree that effective AT weapons changed the role of infantry and made it more robust on the battlefield. But PAK were still the primary AT defense of infantry formations. There is also the issue of when T-34s became "too numerous". Perhaps they had become too numerous by the Stalingrad campaign, because the front started moving west then. Which was just when the Germans were fielding 75 longs to deal with them. Perhaps you might say they were really too numerous after Kursk - but that is when the Panthers and Tigers and quite a few 75 longs were around to deal with them. Fausts weren't out yet either. Maybe you meant they became too numerous in 1944.

The truth of the matter is they were too numerous in the whole second half of the war, but it wasn't for lack of decent weapons on the German side. It was because those weapons were being KOed in the field. The Germans fielded 34,000 AT weapons, towed or AFV, in 1944. The Russians only added 14,000 T-34s that year. Once the second front opened up they had more worries than they could handle, certainly. But my point is they did have PAK to fill in where AFVs were not available. Again, it is a point about fleets. 5000 of the 1944 AT weapons were heavy tanks (Panther and up), but half of them were towed PAK, and the rest were vanilla AFVs or marginally uparmored TDs.

As for the statement that today it is AFV specs that "determines the outcome of any conventional war", and "if you can beat the opponent's AFVs the day is yours". I find that extremely dubious. Certainly the US won the Gulf war and had the best tanks, but the win was massively overdetermined, and Brads scored just as well as M-1s through use of night vision and long range ATGMs. If that counts as "tech superiority" fine; some of us would call it sensor technology rather than gun and armor specs. But also, did Iraq win the day in its war with Iran? They certainly beat their tanks, and they got a draw, but that is the most you could say. Did the US win the Vietnam war? Perhaps you wouldn't consider it "conventional". I'd still put my money on the side with logistical and doctrinal dominance, and in the category of tech I'll take better sensors over better armor any day.

Then there is a strange reaction to a baldly factual statement of mine. I said "narrow or wide they did not decide campaigns". I stand by this; you will not find a single exception. The largest effect of an armor spec edge in the whole war was probably delaying the Normandy breakout for about 1 month, via defensive successes by German armor in the British sector. Even there it is open to debate how much of the cause was armor specs, and how much was doctrine. Because the US broke out against actually larger tech spec differences (since the US lacked Fireflies). The only other cases where the guys with the better tanks even won, were the Russian Stalingrad counterattack, which was a clearly overdetermined case mainly caused by numbers, operational factors and no retreat decisions; and El Alamein, where the decision was achieved by numbers and attrition. The stack of cases where the guys with the better tanks lost are as long as your arm.

What was the reply? "Again, they did decide them but not overtly".

It is the stealth decisive factor! Ah yes. The guys with the better tanks are only cleverly faking their loss of most of the campaigns.

"Overconfidence or doubt in your own equipment brought on many a defeat. Also belief that the enemy assets were better or invincible erod force morale contributing to the events that follow."

In other words, if you can't perforate them with armor piercing, baffle them with horsefeathers. The basic problem is still apparently not grasped. It is not that the guys with the better tanks are winning campaign after campaign, and I am disputing how important the better tanks were to the wins. No. The guys with the better tanks are losing campaign after campaign, and I am noting that this means whatever effect groggier tanks had, sure wasn't bigger than the other things agin 'em, like superior combined arms doctrine, or superior numbers and logistics.

But because of the earlier German armor discussion, it may be this comment was meant to be about that. As if to say, sure, the early war German tanks were crap in grog gun-armor terms, but everybody was real scared of them because they didn't know that until, say, three posts ago or something. Um, no. The Germans conquered Europe in Pz IIIs because they used their Pz IIIs well, in combined arms maneuver warfare, etc. After that, the Allies had learned how to use combined arms enough to balance the doctrinal edge, more or less, and had superior numbers. So the Germans lost Europe again in Panthers and Tigers (as well as lots and lots of 75 longs, as mentioned above), because there weren't enough of them.

Then you finally get down to cases and allege that the fighting in North Africa was a case where tank specs weren't swamped by other factors. What are you thinking? The Brits even had Matildas in the early part, and lost to Pz IIIs with 50L42. Oh sure, the Brits also have some Crusaders - and the Germans had Italian allies in M13/40s. The German tanks weren't as good in pure gun-armor terms until they fielded Pz III longs in 1942, and not anything like the whole force worth. By then they faced Grants and Valentines.

They still made it to El Alamein, and picked up all of 30 Pz IV F2s by then. So then they had better tanks, right? Wrong, the Brits had 250 Shermans by then. In the battle, the Brits lost 500 tanks to the Germans 450, but that left the Germans with practically none, and the Brits with over 400 runners. Typical attrition leading to the victory of the more numerous side. The Germans won for so long in North Africa because of excellent operational leadership and a better combined arms doctrine. Eventually those were swamped by their logistical weakness and the numerical weakness that went with it. Tank specs had precious little to do with it coming or going. Tactical and doctrinal superiority the Germans certainly had. Armor grog tech-spec superiority they did not have.

Your second example is Kharkov. You don't specify which battle. You do say "both sides launching offensive operations simultaneously". That fits early 42, when the Russians launched there summer offensive just before the German one went off. The Germans had nothing better than Pz III with 50L60 guns, while the Russians had T-34s. Did "tech-spec differences determine the outcome"? Not at all; if they had, the Russians would have won. What actually happened is their armor stuck its head into a noose. The Germans put infantry and a PAK front in front of them, and launched their planned offensive on the sides of the bulge heading east. The German armor broke through the Russian infantry and headed into the rear, and the Russian armor that didn't high-tail it died in the resulting pocket.

But maybe you meant the fighting in early 1943, Manstein's famous "backhand" that stabilized the front. A clearer case of winning by operational handling against an otherwise superior enemy would be hard to find. The Germans won by fighting the Russians in sequence and bypassing anything not on the immediate trajectory of their spearheads, which used combined arms. The Russians were overextended and in many cases the tanks were operating alone or with limited infantry support only. By the end of the fighting, many of the Russian tanks were abandoned for lack of fuel. The German tank force was a mix of new long 75 AFVs and older 50L60 and 75L24 models. The Russians had T-34s with some light tanks. No sign of decisive armor specs there either.

Next you try to make the case that the Germans couldn't switch to mass production and say it was due to the T-34. First off, the notion of a "strain on the German war economy" to design a new vehicle, that is laughable. The economy wasn't even breaking a sweat in 41-42, and the economic cost of developing a new vehicle is tiny compared to mass production costs. The main difficulty in design work is the time it takes, not the cost.

And the delays in upgunning the Pz III and Pz IV were neither economic nor design constraints, they were just bureaucratic decisions and stuff ups. The troops had called for a better gun in the summer of 1940. They didn't have to see the T-34 for that much, they had already seen the Matilda. The quartermaster turned them down because the leg infantry already had a bunch of 37mm anti-tank guns and the QM wanted to keep the ammo compatible. The Hitler insisted they be upgunned to the 50L60. The army used the 50L42 instead, because doctrine was that tanks weren't meant to duel with other tanks and the 50L42 would require fewer changes to the turret, and still have the same size HE shell. Exactly the same kind of resistence the US later encountered to upgunning the Sherman 75s - the Germans just encountered it sooner. Then, even when it was clear the design limit had been reached in the 50L60, they kept making turreted Pz IIIs with 75L24 in the last models, into 1943, rather than switch all production to StuG. They made 900 75-long StuG in 1942, so they certainly could have switch production by then, even with all the previous screw ups.

Like the decision not to mobilize the economy, the decision not to go to standard 75 long was not the result of any hard constraint facing the German war economy. Both were results of "victory disease", the arrogance of complacency produced by winning. There was no lack of 75mms to go around. Many went onto Marders, and there were 2 as towed PAK for every one on an AFV.

Next we have a reprise of the first point in this post, where you rightly say "even the US Army was working to get better and better AFV's up front". Of course. The point is that the differences from nation to nation in the success of those efforts did not make any serious difference. If the US had fought the war in Stuarts, unless the Germans had obliged and fought it in Pz IIIs with nothing better than 50L42, they wouldn't have gone very far. But some Sherman 76, some tank destroyers, many Sherman 75s, and some light armor, were enough. Uniform Sherman 76s with easy-eight suspensions and tungsten ammo would have been better, obviously. Better tanks are better than worse ones. The issue is how much you get for the degree of better the whole fleet mixes actually achieved. And the answer is, precious little, including not a single whole campaign with its outcome reversed by such effects.

To see this, try to think through what the war would look like if tech spec dominance were literally true, and the tech developments went as they historically did.

- when the Germans invade France, they had Pz III-37mm vs. Matildas and Char-Bs. They make no progress until 1941, when they can finally field 50L60s with APCR. They don't actually win until they have Pz IVs with 75 long, in 1942. The prediction - 2 years of stalemate. The reality - overrun in two months.

- when the Germans invade Russia, they have Pz III-50mm vs. T-34s and KVs. They make no progress until mid 1942. They don't actually start winning until mid 1943, when Tigers and Panthers take to the field in numbers. They almost romp down until the spring of 1944, when the T-34/85 comes out and slows them somewhat. In the rest of 1944, IS and ISU come out and the front finally begins to move west for the first time. Prediction - 1 1/2 years of failure, then 1 1/2 years of success, then stabilizing and reversing. Reality - 1 1/2 years of success, then 1/2 a year of near stalemate, the rest an accelerating defeat.

- when the Allies invade Normandy, they have Sherman 75mm vs. Panthers. They make no progress until late fall, when 76mm reach the front in quantity. The Brits do significantly better because they have Fireflies and Churchills. But they don't make it across France until 1946, when Pershings finally arrive. Oh, and in the meantime a counterattack lead by Tiger IIs threw them into the see. Prediction - 3-4 months going nowhere, then a crawl for two years, finally movement, if not long since driven back. Reality - 2 months of crawl, then breakout, a few months of crawl, one month of counteroffensive, then accelerating collapse.

Now, the war didn't look anything like that. The reason is obvious. In the early period, German doctrine and operational handling more than outweighed any weakness of their tanks. In the later period, Allied numbers more than outweighed any weakness of their tanks.

My point about combined arms seems to have been misunderstood. I said (and you quoted it) "infantry or artillery parity can neutralize a moderate armor edge, by breaking up combined arms". The point here is if the infantry or artillery odds are only 1:1, or are negative, it will not matter very much if an attacker has a moderate edge in armor quality. Because his better tanks do not just face tanks. The enemy artillery strips his infantry off of the tanks. Then they can't advance, even if little and inferior armor remains opposite them. Because a buttoned tank without infantry support, in enemy territory, is a great target and not much of a threat. For the attacking tanks to succeed, they have to not only defeat the enemy tanks, they have to fight a way through the defended zone for their other supporting arms. Which means the defending infantry must be neutralized by friendly arty or by infantry assault, or both in combination.

This was part of explaining why the operational results from just better tanks were quite limited in practice. In Sicily, one US infantry battalion was overrun by Tiger tanks. Did this lead to breakthrough and defeat of the larger force, thus a big outcome on the operational scale? No. 105mm HEAT from regimental cannon companies, plus bazookas, blocked the Tigers from going on alone, and an entire corps worth of artillery pounded their supporting infantry and prevented further advance by them. Meanwhile US armor attacked in other sectors, threatening to drive far enough forward elsewhere to leave the Tigers stranded. Back the Tigers came, having managed to delay the US advance by 1 day and KO 1 battalion, but unable to accomplish anything further. Why? Because the infantry and artillery odds were not favorable. So there was nothing to back up the initial success. By breaking up combined arms, a force deficient in armor was fully able to neutralize the tech-spec edge the Tigers certainly had.

Your comment was "there were very few ME situations with comparably sized forces". Um, duh. The point is, if the enemy has more infantry and artillery than those -weaker- portions of your combined-arms "tripod" can handle, then being technically stronger in the third, armor leg won't amount to a hill of beans. Peiper wasn't in an even ME. He had Tiger IIs and flocks of Panthers. But he also had only 2 battalions of infantry and 1 of artillery, and he was facing two divisions worth of infantry and a corps worth of artillery. His tanks were excellent, but the road net was limited, the bridges blown, roadblocks mined, and some of that vastly superior infantry was across the road he had come along, so no additional infantry, nor any fuel, could get to him.

Enemies do not have to lead to your strongest suit. They can concentrate on knocking out the weakest leg of your combined arms mix. As for the case where the heavy tanks are defending, the simple expedient for attackers is to attack where the heavy tanks aren't. The Germans never had enough armor to have panzer divisions - let alone only their Panthers or Tigers - along their entire frontage. Elsewhere they'd have a few StuG and such, but not tech-spec armor edge.

Then you make the strange suggestion that whether tactical factors dominate depends wholly on the time-frame. If by that you mean that tactical factors can matter for 1 day, sure. If by it you mean tech spec can determine the outcome of a month long campaign, then no, it never did. You also seem to think logistics is some discrete quantity, when in fact it is a continually flow. It is measured in things like tons per day. If one side is receiving 3 times as many tons per day, then you can bet that the longer you measure, the more the other side will crumble. Because a large portion of the excess will be e.g. unanswered artillery shells, producing a drizzle of excess casualties, sapping the strength of the logistically inferior side.

A month or two of attrition and you will see one side standing - not doubt bloody, but standing - and the other side ground to powder, with units reduced to KGs 1/9th their original size (divisions have become battalions, etc). It is not a question of "enough". It is a question of who can throw more at the enemy. And over a time scale of weeks or months, the only limit on how much you can throw is how much you can bring to the front. All the front line forces amount to hoses to throw stuff through. The stuff being thrown is measured by logistics, in tons. That is the effect I (and others) mean when we talk about a logistical superiority.

On Russians copying German tank war moves, they certainly did so. You are correct that the Russians had an initial lead, with KVs before Tigers and T-34s before Panthers. But that was not the whole armor design war. The Russians introduced SUs because they saw the use the Germans made of StuGs. They fielded a 20mm light tank (the T-60) because the Germans used the Pz II for scouting in 1941. They pulled those for 45mm T-70s when the Germans pulled their light tanks. They switched all light tank chassis to SU-76 when the Germans switched the Pz III to StuG and all lighter chassis to Marders. The T-34 was upgunned to 85mm after they saw how much better the Tiger I's gun was than their own 76. Their late war heavies were somewhat independent, but followed the German practice of a TD variety on every chassis. The net effect of these moves was to keep them fairly close to any significant innovation the Germans made. Though the Germans did have an edge by late 1943, it was never wide enough to outweigh superior Russian production.

"What constitues uparmouring in your opinion?"

Adding enough extra armor to defeat the typical heavy AT weapons in the fielded enemy force. So the Tiger I and Panther were uparmored, minor Sherman varients (besides the Jumbo) were not. As for "Why did they make the Jumbo?", they made all of 254 of them, which is close enough to not making them that is might as well be. They certainly never tried to put them into mass production. They used them as point tanks for columns and especially to nose out hidden PAK. Jumbos were not used in Korea, while easy-eight 76mm Shermans were. Upgunning as I mentioned, and better mobility, made sense. As for M-26s, there were even fewer of those than of the Jumbos. Out of a fleet of tens of thousands of AFVs, around 10,000 of them upgunned varieties, these heavily armored curios were insignificant. As for upgunning, you don't hear so good; I already said that made sense, and it would have been marginally useful to have done it sooner.

As for why the Allies would have been at war with Germany even if Russia fell, obviously because they already were and nobody was going to make peace with them. As for the 2/3rds of the world figure, Germany and Russia each had approximately 1/6th of world industrial production. The UK had another 1/6 and the US 2/5, the last 1/10 was scattered elsewhere. In area or population, as the maritime powers had the trade of the whole world outside Europe and the far east to draw upon, the figure is about the same. 2/3ds of the world is the operative phrase, and parens would belong around those words if you were parsing it.

Then you recur to the to me rather silly idea that the Germans won early because of spin. I think they just used tanks better via the combined arms doctrine they had invented. You know, just a little thing like a revolutionary doctrine, which was the something the others were rightly afraid of before they learned how to counter it. But which had nothing whatever to do with gun and armor dueling tank specs.

As for the Pz III turret ring, of course the entire issue was to lose the darn turret and go with the StuG. Which they already knew worked well in 1941. But they were still making Pz IIINs with 75L24 in 1943. Why? Because they were complacent with victory disease, that's why. When they realized they actually needed all available chassis and more, ASAP, with 75 long or better, they figured it out rapidly enough. That they hadn't made such changes in 1941, as soon as possible after the French campaign, was the same sort of inertia that kept the US from having all 76 easy eights by mid 44.

[PiggDogg]

Jason C,

Thanks for the treatise.

I am amazed. :eek: When do you sleep? :confused: Do you type at 180 words per minute? :confused:

Also, to all the others on this thread, thanks. The education value is immense.

Cheers, Richard

[Tero]

Unlike Jason I have limited time and my typing is not as good as his.

I post my reply as a series to keep the discussion going on.

Certainly sides tried to get advantages - whether just tactical ones or not - from fielding better tanks. The question is whether they succeeded, or whether they mutual efforts basically cancelled each other out at operational and higher scales. I claim they cancelled out.

At first this does make sense. But when you think about it was not as simple as that. It would seem that it was the tank grog tech-spec cancelled each other out. You maintain for one that the tactics and doctrines were withing acceptable range to be regarded equal at higher levels. Were their combined arms doctrine up to speed with the Germans ? I've just started Military Training in the British Army, 1940-1944 and it says the British tactics and doctrine were inferior to the German tactics and doctrine. Since the Germans supposedly held the British in higher regard than the Amis it can be assumed the US tactics and doctrine were equally bad. So it would indicate that in the large scale it was down to weight of fire and logistics.

The basic strategic/operational axiom is the attacker needs a 3-1 superiority for the attack to succeed. Arguably early on the Germans (with a fleet mix which was generally inferior) managed to overpower their adversaries with overall odds which were worse than that (even negative odds) by getting local superiority which threw the adversary into a disarray. This was true until the USSR was not knocked out of the war as they had expected.

How many times did later Allied attack on the Germans succeed with less than 3-1 force ratio ?

The quantum leap in AFV's with the T-34 and KV-1. With failure to KO the USSR out of the war and the arrival of these the Germans had to for the first time re-evaluate their AFV fleet and its operational usefulness in earnest AND what to do to the situation to rectify it. They faced several problems:

1) Their (war) economy was not up to speed with total strategic war in two fronts. It could not sustain prolonged large scale operations. Yet they did not go to total war footing in economy until 1943.

2) Normal wear and tear was attriting their AFV's and other vehicles (IIRC the peace time monthly attrition of lorries was around 3000 units). Current production could barely keep up with this in the case of the AFV. They had to resort to using captured vehicles. This meant they could not build up new formations and keep the number of AFV's in a formation at the pre-war level (even with the captured vehicles thrown in). Ergo later formations had fewer AFV's. The lorries they had to take from whereever they could find them.

2A) Their AFV fleet was comprised of so many models from so many different sources that it burdened their logistics unreasonably.

3) Their infantry AT could barely keep up with the enemy AFV development. The 37mm PAK had already proven to be too weak. The 50mm PAK was on the way to become the backbone of the AT arm but but it was still born when pitted against the T-34 and KV-1. Relative parity was restored with the introduction of the 75L43/48 but not until the arrival of the Pzfaust and Pzschreck did the infantry reclaim the battlefield. But then the Germans no longer had the upper hand in other battlefield assets like artillery.

4) I think it is safe to say the 88mm FLAK saved Germans from early defeat. They were able to maintain confidence in their superior tactics even with a AFV fleet mix which was less than ideal (or even suitable) because they could rely on the 88 to come to the rescue if and when the feces hit the ventilation.

I.e. the effect of armor spec -dominance-, which is an advantage of one side over another at the same time and place, was too small to change the outcome of campaigns.

You field the terms operation and campaign in a way which seems random. Everytime your operation-reasoning gets nailed you switch to campaign and back to local battles. And it also seems that your reasoning is flexible when it comes to limitations like timeframes. You seem adamant to disregard the fact that the operations and campaings were designed with the tank grog tech-spec in mind.

At the campaign/operation level it is the 3+ - 1 superiority in favour of the attacker that counts. How many times were the Germans able to get decisive victories against a Allied force in similar logistical state with a local 1-1 or even 1-2 force ratio ? How many times were the Allies able to get decisive victories against a German force in similar logistical state with a local 1-1 or even 1-2 force ratio ? If there times when either side had to stack them higher than 3-1 to be able to obtain a victory what were the reasons for it ?

The contrary to my claim would be, sometimes campaign outcomes turned on who had the better tanks.

It would be. In a perfect thesis - anti-thesis - synthesis world.

This is obviously meant to refer to the Germans in the period of developing the Tiger I and Panther. Because all others were "stepping up production".

Just to prevent any über-panic-paranoia buttons being pushed.

No, they certainly were capable of doing so, and they did so to a minor degree in the period,

At the same time when they were increasing production of adequate vehicles they were diminishing the number of vehicles in field units. Why ?

and they could easily have done so to a much greater degree and earlier.

They could have, yes. But that was however a strategic decision brought on by non-military considerations. And it is a what-if anyway.

There was no impossibility involved.

Yes there was.

As for the Pz III turret issue, that problem was easily solved by simply moving to a turretless AFV, the StuG III.

How much did that increase the pool of available vehicles ?

The Tigers and Panthers were no substitute, but a supplimental heavy force

A point of order: the Panther was a medium tank inteded to replace the PzKw-IV.

added to the top end of a distribution of vehicles still centered on the main production models, the Pz III and Pz IV chassis, supplimented by Marders on lighter chassis.

While they may have been added on the top there was constant flow out from the bottom. The level did not rise, the mixture thickened.

In calendar 1943, the Germans were turning out 3 75mm "vanilla" AFVs for every heavy one.

This is beside the point. How much better were all these compared to the opponents production in tech-spec terms and how many did the opponents have to expend to knock one out ?

I think there was a basic misunderstanding

No. The lack of tech-spec variations between different nations was because the basic doctrine was the same all around (outside Germany and the USSR). Most designs were some way or another copies of each other. There was a quantum leap with the introduction of the T-34. The Germans followed that leap but failed because their industrial capacity was not up to speed in meeting the demand. The Western Allies stuck to the pre-war design concepts and they dropped behind in the development. They went for superior numbers instead.

For instance, if tech specs were in some sense 10% better for side A than for side B, while force strength was 100% better for side B than side A, then my statement holds.

In fact it does not hold. You altered the example and slipped out of the timeframe again to make the conditions of the example fit your claim.

My original example reads: If force A has adequate logistical support from day 1 to day 30 to sustain its operations while force B is cronically low on supplies during that same period. Force A has marginally inferior tech spec, force B has tech spec superiority. Lo and behold force B trashes force A in an operation that last from day 1 to day 30. On day 33 force B has to retreat because of worsening overall situation.

OK, I forgot to include the force ratios but that does not matter.

My claim is that in each case, the armor-grog tech differences are small, over whole fleets fielded. Small enough that they are swamped by the other operational factors.

This does not apply in the case of the initial contact with the T-34. This is the focal point where the plot thickens. The initial deployment of the T-34 was faulty but nevertheless it sent the Germans scurrying back to come up with new weapons, not new tactics, to overcome this menace in the future. They were still catching up when the Red Army entered Berlin in 1945.

The observation is that who has the better tanks does not predict who wins a campaign. This requires explanation. If A has better tanks than B but B wins, then obviously B had something else going for it, that was more important in the magnitude of its effect, than the tank difference in present in that case.

Now you are misunderstanding. In the example (read North Africa) Force A (the Allies) had inferior tanks while Force B (the Germans) were at the mercy of failing logistics. In addition to that they had by far inferior numbers of AFV's (and they included the Italian vehicles which did not exactly bring the quality average up). The Germans were able to beat back and hold back the Allies in numerous occasions, even post-El Alamein.

As for the claim about infantry vs. cavalry tanks, in fact distinction was a matter of British doctrine, and by no means general.

The actual terminology is irrelevant.

The Germans had no infantry support tanks in those terms.

The Stug series was built initially to support infantry in assault (Sturmgeschüts = assault gun).

Not all light tanks were even fast.

That is irrelevant.

The Russians had fast tanks (BT) and light tanks (T-26) that were essentially equal in ability,

But different in deployment and employment. The BT was a cavarly tank, the T-26 an infantry support tank.

and in 1939 no heavy tanks.

Wrong. Ever heard of T-28, T-35, T-100, SMK ?

That is a large part of my own argument, and it seems to have been completely missed. I was not under any false impression that the early German tanks were superior in gun and armor terms.

That is not the issue. The seeming lack of qualitative separation was due to similarities in design filosophy and tactics and doctrine concerning their use. The Germans departed from that but they used vehicles built to match the design filosophy out of necessity.

Its 2 lber, while lacking HE, was superior to the 50L42 as an anti-tank weapon,

AFAIK it did have HE but it was not made available to the troops or something to that effect. Was it really superior to the 50L42 ? In what respects ?

The Germans screamed for long 75 guns in 1940, at least as loud as US tankers in Normandy screamed for 76 Shermans. They didn't get them for more than two years.

I think they screamed for the 50mm gun in 1940. In 1941 they screamed for the 75mm gun. The Germans got their wish. The reason the US tankers did not get the 76 Sherman was because of the TD doctrine.

Those other factors are superior combined arms doctrine for the Germans in the first half of the war, and superior numbers and logistics for the Allies in the second half.

So what you are saying is then when the Allies did not have local superior numbers the superior tech-spec stepped into the picture and the Germans were able to sweap the floor with the Allied forces ? At local (operational) level the logictics did not play as big a part when talking about combat. Each unit had a basic load of supplies that carried it through a period of time.

That is part of the reason better tanks did not prove more decisive in 1943.

Now we can get into the debate wether the PzKw-IV (or Stug) armed with 75L43/48 was superior to the T-34 or not.

This was of course the precise period when only T-34/76s faced the better German types (the T-34/85s, IS, and ISUs were not out yet). But those better German types were only ~1/5 the German AFVs and less than 1/10 the fielded AT weapons, counting PAK. The Russian had only ~1/6 KVs and T-34s in 1941, and those didn't prove decisive either.

The differences in small unit tactics and doctrine and the disparity in the number of available vehicles do not play a part in the equation ?

But PAK were still the primary AT defense of infantry formations.

Yes. But it was not man-portable. At 1000 kg's it was not exactly ideal for fast movement in volatile situations.

Perhaps you might say they were really too numerous after Kursk - but that is when the Panthers and Tigers and quite a few 75 longs were around to deal with them. Fausts weren't out yet either. Maybe you meant they became too numerous in 1944.

I trust you know when the Pzfaust was first issued to the field units:

From http://www.adeq.simplenet.com/pzfaust1.htm

Development of the so-called Faustpatrone ("Fist-Cartridge") started in the summer of 1942 at the german company HASAG with the development of the smaller forerunner-prototype called "Gretchen" ("little Gretel") by a team headed by Dr. Langweiler in Leipzig. The basic concepts of a recoilless cannon and a rocket were combined into a weapon for the first time.

Deliveries on the first order of 50,000 began in August 1943 with 6,800 pieces. Production ran until August 1944, then it was switched over to successor, the Panzerfaust 60. The first large quantity of this weapon made available to the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, was the delivery of 8700 pieces in September 1943.

The truth of the matter is they were too numerous in the whole second half of the war, but it wasn't for lack of decent weapons on the German side.

There was a lack of decent, potent infantry portable weapon on the German side.

It was because those weapons were being KOed in the field.

That is undounbtedly true. But there was a gap between close range (infantry) and intermediate range AT (PAK) capability that needed filling. It was easy to bypass heavy AT assest and attack the helpless infantry.

The Germans fielded 34,000 AT weapons, towed or AFV, in 1944. The Russians only added 14,000 T-34s that year.

How many other makes did they have and how many of these were fielded ?

Once the second front opened up they had more worries than they could handle, certainly.

No argument there.

I'd still put my money on the side with logistical and doctrinal dominance, and in the category of tech I'll take better sensors over better armor any day.

It takes more than IR, FLIR or any sensor you care to mention to kill anything. Without an asset that is capable of killing better armour your better sensors are useless. I'll drive over you in my superior tank while you are wathcing with your superior optics.

I stand by this; you will not find a single exception.

Are you so sure ? Your thesis has a lot going for it and if the scale is big enough it holds. But you keep evading strict limits and smaller scales and you refuse to allow non-Anglo-American sources and examples as evidence. The Soviet summer assult of 1944 against the Finns is an example when superior numbers of "better" quality armour (T-34/85, IS-2, ISU-152 etc), superior numbers of just about any asset you care to mention using state of the art tactics and doctrine were beaten back with the help of a handfull of "inferior" vehicles (Stug-IIIG), stand off infantry AT assets and different but arguable equal tactics and doctrine. The timeframe was months (June-August). The fact that Finland signed an armistice in September is irrelevant because our leaders had been looking for a way out since mid-1943.

Even there it is open to debate how much of the cause was armor specs, and how much was doctrine.

I'd love to see the loss figures for British armour.

The only other cases where the guys with the better tanks even won, were the Russian Stalingrad counterattack, which was a clearly overdetermined case mainly caused by numbers, operational factors and no retreat decisions; and El Alamein, where the decision was achieved by numbers and attrition.

In Stalingrad there was no armour to oppose the counterattack at the point where they attacked. In El Alamein I hesitate to say the British armour was better.

The stack of cases where the guys with the better tanks lost are as long as your arm.

But did they lose because the opposing armour was technically not-so-inferior or because they lost in the logistics and other aspects ?

In other words, if you can't perforate them with armor piercing, baffle them with horsefeathers.

No. Others picked up the punch line better already.

The guys with the better tanks are losing campaign after campaign, and I am noting that this means whatever effect groggier tanks had, sure wasn't bigger than the other things agin 'em, like superior combined arms doctrine, or superior numbers and logistics.

You can not outrun a Pinto with a Porche if the Pinto has more petrol than the Porche.

[JasonC]

"You maintain for one that the tactics and doctrines were within acceptable range to be regarded equal"

Hardly, since I ascribe the German victories of the first half of the war entirely to doctrine and the manner in which the forces were employed. What I said about the late war is that the Allies caught up -enough-in this category that numbers became decisive instead.

As for the idea that US armor doctrine was inferior to British, that was true in Tunisia, but beyond that point is a rather silly claim. Integration of the various arms was considerably tigher in the US armor formations, and there is no US counterpart to a fiasco like Goodwood.

"The basic strategic/operational axiom is the attacker needs a 3-1 superiority"

Simply false as a matter of history. At the strategic level, much smaller differences can still be decisive since they can create larger local odds at particular points. In fact the 3:1 attackers maxim is a tactical, not an operational, let alone a strategic, point. The Russians took the initiative in 1942 with approximate parity in overall forces. They continued their offensives with only 3:2 to 2:1 odds down to the end of 1943. The Brits took the initiative in North Africa with approximately 2:1 odds. The initial force odds in Normandy, when the German forces arrived that is, were also about 2:1. The counterattacks against the Bulge were initiated with around 3:2 odds, though they rose higher as the Germans took losses and also switched some mobile divisions to the east. When odds begin near parity, a higher rate of reinforcement combined with attrition can often prove decisive, without anything like 3:1 overall odds. Not to mention the early war German offensives without anything like such odds.

"The quantum leap in AFV's with the T-34 and KV-1."

There isn't one "leap" and it was hardly the only tech increase. Matildas were already superior to Pz IIIs. Panthers and Tigers were at least as superior to T-34/76 are the T-34/76 was to the early Pz IIIs. And Pz IVs and StuGs were fully equal to, in fact somewhat superior to, T-34/76, by the time of the 1943 models (StuG G model, Pz IV G and H models, each with up to 80mm of armor).

"With failure to KO the USSR out of the war"

Which was not due to T-34s or KVs, because in fact the Germans romped in the first 18 months, despite them. And especially so in the first 6 months, when they had the least capable tanks to put opposite them. Why? Because the initial Russian armor doctrine was a bad as it ever got, and because 4/5ths of all Russian pre-war tanks started the war in need of minor repairs, and because up to 1/3rd of the available T-34s and KVs were lost in the first few months before they were even in running order, or to early gear and clutch breakdowns, etc. Strategic surprise followed by operational encirclements plus better doctrine meant tech specs didn't make any difference.

"the Germans had to for the first time re-evaluate their AFV fleet"

False, the tankers re-evaluated their AFVs after encountering Matildas a year earlier in France. And Hitler called for the 50L60 in the Pz III because of it. But the bureaucracy balked, and delayed the upgrades, and reduced them when they did occur to 50L42.

"economy was not up to speed... could not sustain prolonged large scale operations"

Horsepucky, they simply did not even try. What they eventually managed to do when they finally did mobilize, down to 1944, despite greater materials shortages and heavy bombing, shows just how much slack there was in the economy in 1941. The reason they didn't go to full war economy sooner is simple - they had victory disease, aka the arrogance bred by success, and did not think they had to. They were wrong.

"wear and tear was attriting their AFVs...production could barely keep up...they could not build up new formations...later formations had fewer AFV's"

German AFV losses in 1941 were very small. They did not become large until 1943. The fleet size expanded between the invasion of Russia and Kursk, while remaining roughly stable thereafter. The loss rate rose in line with production increases after that. The statement "production could hardly keep up" is thus innaccurate on its face, for the early war period. But in addition, the level of AFV output achieved in 1944 was nearly 5 times as high as the level of 1941. The idea that they were at capacity at the earlier date is therefore ridiculous.

And they did field numerous additional mobile formations. The number of mobile divisions in the field increased over the whole war, from 10 at the outset and 21 at the time of Barbarossa, to 40 at the time of Kursk and 47 by the time of Normandy. The slowing of the ascent in formation number from late 1943 on was due to increases in the AFV loss rate as they began losing the war, not to production.

Yes, later war formations had fewer AFVs apiece, due to doctrinal changes about the proper combined arms mix of armor to infantry, which was around 1 armor to 2-3 infantry battalions, but had started the war at the reverse, 2-3 to 1 tank-heavy ratio - in all countries. The Germans were fastest about getting away from too armor-heavy formations, switching to nearer 1:1 after Poland. But they did not reach the final 1:2 - 1:3 range until 1943. Very late, the armor per formation was also low from losses, and the stop-gap practice of leaving burnt out KGs in the line essentially until gone. They were not "forced" to make such changes, and would still have made them if they had twice as many tanks. The just would have had twice as many armor formations with the newer, more nearly correct armor:infantry mix.

"AFV fleet was comprised of many models"

The only production line the Germans ever abandoned was the Pz I (and even that they still used for a while to make goliath demolition vehicles). The mix was if anything more complicated at the end of the war than at the begining. But 2/3rds of all vehicles were based on the Pz III and Pz IV chassis, so the idea that it was all bewildering confusion is a bit strained to begin with. Almost all of the rest were just two other types - Czech 38t chassis throughout the war, and late in the war Panther chassis as well.

"infantry AT could barely keep up with the enemy AFV development"

It was consistently ahead of the tanks. The better PAK were fielded in numbers before each major upgunning of the main AFV force. 2/3rds of the improved AT weapons of 1942 and 1943 (meaning, those able to kill T-34s from the front) were towed PAK rather than AFV. It was not until 1944 that the widespread use of TDs finally brought AFV production up to the level of towed PAK production. Towed 50mm long were out in quantity before Pz III longs, and 75mm PAK were out in quantity before Pz IV long or StuG long. The same pattern existed until the end of the war at the high end, with more than twice as many dedicated 88 long PAK as AFVs mounting that weapon. And these figures do not count duel purpose guns like 88 Flak, or in the early war, HEAT firing howitzer, which make the lead of the towed gun systems even larger. Nor did the AT firepower of the infantry depend on late war fausts. Most of the kills of enemy AFV were still scored by the dedicated AT guns or DP guns like 88 Flak, not be hand-helds with tiny maximum ranges. The PAK 40 was a far bigger deal, but is often ignored because it was a vanilla weapon, rather than any radical new development.

And this is yet another example of the sort of realistic phenomena overlooked by the armor grog tech dominance view. Tanks are not the only item on the battlefield, and the other arms are not defenseless before them. Those other arms are at least as large a portion of the overall combat power equation as the tanks themselves, and they typically differ by far less. Incidentally, remember that in 1941 5 out of every 6 Russian AFVs were light tanks with 45mm guns and 15-25mm of armor, which could be holed by every AT weapon in the German arsenal. 40% of Russian 1942 production were as light, with either 20mm or 45mm guns. 50mm guns, towed or on tanks, were the #1 Russian tank killers in the German force mix by numbers knock out, down to the Stalingrad counterattacks.

"the 88mm FLAK saved Germans from early defeat"

They were in no danger whatever of early defeat because tank specs didn't decide the campaigns. The 88s certainly helped, but they also knocked out both Matildas and T-34s with 105mm HEAT. (The US did the same in Korea). And capable enemy heavy tanks were modest portions of enemy fleets, most of which could be KOed by vanilla German tanks. Allied armor doctrine, both east and west, was also so abysmal at the start of the war that local successes by heavy armor had no operational effect. Matildas broke through around Sedan, but did not stop the fall of France. T-34s crashed into Kleist's armor group early in the 1941 campaign, but did not stop the breakthroughs to Minsk and beyond. Armies are large combined arms entities and "self-sealing" in the face of merely tactical set backs. Opponents without full combined arms coordination weren't going to get anywhere just by having a modest portion of well armored beasties. And they didn't.

As for my use of the term "campaign", I have already specified what I mean. A fight on a given front (not all, like strategic things), involving units on the scale of armies (not just a day's battle by a division), over periods of time measured in months (not days, but not the whole war either). If you don't have a clear mental picture of the division of the war into a set of such linked campaigns, then I recommend some general histories or the official staff studies of the war. The meaning is obvious to anyone who has. Normandy is a campaign, the Bulge is a campaign, North Africa before Torch is a campaign, and Tunisia is another one after it, the fall of France is a campaign, the 1941 attack down to Kiev is a campaign, Tyhoon and the battle for Moscow is a campaign, the summer offensive to Stalingrad is a campaign, etc. I am honestly puzzled by your claim there is any confusion on this point, because I did not detect any, going either way.

"At the same time when they were increasing production of adequate vehicles they were diminishing the number of vehicles in field units. Why ?"

Doctrine, as previously explained. From Barbarossa to Kursk the number of mobile formations doubles, and the number of tanks in the fleet increases, and by Kursk half the fleet have long 75 guns and another 1/6th are heavier types. Only 1/3 have the old 1942 or 1941 pattern weapons, 50L60 or mixed 50L42 and 75L24. And the towed PAK were upgunning ahead of the AFVs, as already mentioned. The reason not to have 2 armor regiments and 1 infantry regiment is because that isn't enough infantry for combined arms; nothing else.

Then you make two strangely contradictory comments about the decision not to mobilize the economy sooner. I had just said they could easily have increased production more and earlier. You say "they could have yes", and then immediately claim that "yes there was" some impossibility involved in not doing so. If they could have, then it wasn't impossible. That is what "could" and "impossible" mean. You say "it was a strategic decision", and of course it was - a ruinously boneheaded one brought on by the arrogance of victory disease. Why you pretend there was still some impossibility involved, is utterly beyond me. Frankly on that particular subject your comments struck me as incoherent babbling. It is only the single must important mistake of the entire war, generally well know and often discussed, so your apparently inability to think clearly about it is rather surprising.

Next you ask how going to the StuG III would increase the pool of available vehicles. This is called forgetting your own argument. I said they should have mobilized the economy, and you alleged they couldn't because they didn't have a reasonable vehicle to focus on. But of course they did. Long 75mm StuG III and Pz IV, which are what they later did focus on. The increase in production comes from the decision to mobilize the economy, and direct it toward ramping production of the available vehicles. You objected to it based on supposed problems with the Pz III turret, but the solution to those problems was obvious - remove the offending turret - and grasped immediately as soon as they became deadly serious about increasing production, after the Stalingrad defeat. Alkett actually switched all Pz III production to StuG in 1942, even before then, so there was obviously no technical impossibility involved.

"Panther was a medium tank"

In German doctrine, yes, in the sense that it was meant to form part of the Panzer regiments of all Panzer divisions, rather than being used in independent battalions assigned at the corps level. But only in that sense. The Panther weighs 45 tons, twice the weight of a Pz IV, and the same weight as a KV-1, an IS-2, or a Pershing, and heavier than a Churchill or Sherman Jumbo. It was a heavy tank by any other name, uparmored and upgunned as much or more as any of the above. Those are the heaviest tanks of WW II for all the other combatants. If the Panther is a medium tank, then there weren't any heavies in the war besides Tigers. Of course it is a heavy tank for its war, and the "medium" designation simply reflected the determination of the Germans to field heavy tanks in their armor divisions. The Panther also outweighed, by large amounts, 5 out of 6 German AFVs produced. If being a full standard deviation above the mean isn't "heavy", then the term doesn't mean very much.

Next, to my point that the basis of the 1943 fleet were 75mm AFVs, you allege that this is "beside the point". Beside what point, exactly? My point is that the Germans were fielded a mostly long 75mm force based on Pz III and Pz IV chassis, and while by 1943 these were actually superior to the T-34/76s they faced, they were roughly comparable in ability. It is therefore not particularly surprising that the definite edge in gun and armor terms the Germans had by mid 1943, was not sufficient to stop the Russians from winning the decisive battles of the war then and immediately afterward. Because the difference in the average, vanilla portion of the fleets was not extreme.

The significantly better new German types, Panthers and Tigers, were only 1/4 of the new production reaching the front and only 1/12 of the fielded AT weapons that year (since 3/4 AFVs were 75mm, and only 1/3 AT weapons were on AFVs to begin with, rather than towed PAK). It is no more surprising that this modest portion of the fleet was not decisive in 1943, than that the 1/6th of the Russian AFVs of 1941 that were KVs or T-34s proved less than decisive in 1941.

Next you want to blame the German loss on the technical advantage of the T-34, and the alleged failure of the Germans to deal with it, despite outdesigning it (you pretend it was only catching it), was because their industrial capacity was inadequate. Well, first industrial capacity is definitely the wrong term because they obviously weren't at capacity until 1944, because they delayed mobilization too long.

But second, the Germans did match and exceed the capabilities of the T-34/76 in 1943. The StuG-G KOs the T-34 at a longer range than the T-34 KOs it, and the same is true for the improved Pz IVs (though their turret remained penetrable to about the same distance). They are comparable vehicles, but the T-34/76 has no superiority over either, and the edge goes the other way. And the Germans fielded thousands of these, along with the vastly superior Panther and Tiger I, in 1943. Along with large numbers of PAK capable of destroying T-34s at range. The Germans fully caught the Russians in gun armor terms, and passed them at the top end of the fleet mix, by the time of Kursk. Some older vehicles were still in the fleet, but by late 43 the German fleet mix was definitely superior to the Russian one. Your bald statement that "the Germans were still catching up when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945" is simply balderdash. They were well ahead by the fall of 1943, in gun-armor terms.

But their numbers weren't. And it wasn't because they hadn't been able to make any of the new, better weapons. They made and fielded lots of them, and even more in 1944. But they also lost them in the field in very large numbers. Because of little things, like the Russians smashing Army Group South to driftwood. The Germans lost the critical battles of the war in the precise period in which they had caught and passed the Russians in tank specs, and had fielded large numbers of the new weapons. The Russians did not yet have any T-34/85s, nor IS heavies.

"In the example (read North Africa) Force A (the Allies) had inferior tanks while Force B (the Germans) were at the mercy of failing logistics."

How many times do I have to repeat this? The Germans did not have superior tanks in North Africa. They did not have superior tanks in the whole first half of the war, against anybody but the Poles or Yugoslavs or something. Superior tanks have nothing to do with their successes in the first half of the war (hint - doctrine). They have little to do with their failures in the second half of the war (hint - numbers). But whether you accept those or not, accept the blatant fact that their early war tanks simply were not superior in gun and armor terms. Sometimes you seem to have acknowledged this, and then you turn around and make a statement like the above. They may have been more comfortable; they may have had more radios; they definitely were used better. But they were not technically better tanks in gun and armor duel terms.

Speaking about armor at the outbreak of the war, you had mentioned infantry support tanks, and I noted the Germans didn't have any then. You commented that StuGs were meant to support infantry, but that does not help. StuGs did not exist at the outbreak of the war; production began in 1940.

As for pre-war Russian heavy tanks, of course I have heard of them but they still don't qualify. There were 61 of the T-35 sillies, and all of 13 of the uparmored "M" model T-28s. There were a reasonable 227 model E T-28s produced, but many of them didn't come back from Finland. The archaic early 30s versions had no more armor and a worse gun than a Pz IV 75L24, and hardly qualify as "heavy tanks". These numbers compare to 12,000 T-26s and 7,700 BT series. In other words, ~2% of the fleet had 76mm infantry guns and 40mm of armor. The real Russian heavy tanks are the KV series, and in 1941 the T-34 qualifies as a heavy as well. But both went into production after the start of the war but before Barbarossa, as I already said.

Next, as I reiterate that the early war German tanks were worse not better, you say in response "seeming lack of qualitative separation was due to similarities in design philosophy and tactics and doctrine concerning their use". Earth to tero - there isn't any "lack of qualitative seperation" between a Matilda and a 37mm Pz III. The Matilda is just plain better in every gun-armor respect, by miles. The Germans and the Allies aren't equal in gun armor terms because of non-existent similarities in doctrine. And the German tanks aren't better in gun-armor terms, either. In the early war, the Allied tanks are. All the Germans have going for them, in fact, is superior doctrine, emphasizing combined arms and operational maneuver - not infantry support all along the line in penny packets, -nor- independent cavalry action by pure tanks.

Next you ask if the 2 lber was superior to the 50L42 and in what respects. It is superior to it in gun and armor duel specs. It penetrates more armor plate at every range, by 10-15%. It will penetrate any front surface of the original (not uparmored) Pz III out to 1000 yards. While the 50L42 can't penetrate any portion of the far thicker hulled Matilda - front, side, rear, point-blank, PzGr 40 special AP ammo, you name it. It might luck into a gun hit or get an M-kill on the tracks, that is about it. In pure tank dueling terms, the difference between a Matilda and an early Pz III is greater, in favor of the Matilda, than the difference between a Tiger I and a vanilla Sherman 75mm. To kill a Matilda you either need a 50L60 with APCR ammo from very close range (only out in 1942), a 75 long, an 88, or towed artillery caliber HEAT.

You note the year long delays in German upgunning, and then comment "the Germans got their wish The reason the US tankers did not get the 76 Sherman..." Earth to tero again. They did. In less than a year. The US fielded 8000 Sherman 76s and provided 3000 more in lend-lease. On top of the 9200 TDs with 76mm or 90mm. The total number of German tanks capable of stopping a short 75 round from the front, sent against the west, was less than 3000. Including the ones sent against the Brits. I can hear it now "but some tankers still had the old guns". And a year after the long 75 was fielded - which was already 2 years after the Matildas had shown up at Sedan, making 3 years all told - 1/3rd of the German tankers rode into Kursk with 50L60, 75L24, or 50L42 guns.

"what you are saying is then when the Allies did not have local superior numbers the superior tech-spec stepped into the picture and the Germans were able to sweep the floor"

Nope, still incapable of hearing a rational argument to save your life, it seems. The Germans were the ones with the inferior tanks in the first half of the war. It was not tank tech specs that stepped into the picture, it was doctrine. Superior doctrine, not tech specs, was decisive in the first half of the war, when the Germans were winning. Tech specs were against them, but that didn't matter.

And in the second half of the war, it was numbers. The allies has larger neutralized the doctrine difference by learning combined arms warfare from the German practices of the first half of the war. The German achieved tech spec dominance in the meantime, specifically by Kursk and just after it. At that point, tech spec differences were in favor of the Germans, and doctrine was mostly neutral. But numbers swamped tech specs just as much in the second half, as doctrine had swamped them in the first half.

Thus the tech dominance fallacy can be clearly seen. The Germans conquered Europe in Panzer IIIs in every gun-armor sense inferior to the AFVs they faced. They lost it again in long 75mm AFVs, Panthers, and Tigers, in every gun-armor sense superior to the AFVs they faced. The side with the worse tanks won in both halves of the war. Having better tanks did not save the early war Allies from the effects of better German doctrine. And having better tanks did not save the late war Germans from the effects of superior Allied numbers.

"logictics did not play as big a part when talking about combat. Each unit had a basic load of supplies that carried it through a period of time."

This is a complete misunderstanding of the importance of logistics in warfare, and especially of their dominant role in attrition strategy warfare. Attrition strategy warfare focuses on applying combat power to the enemy relentlessly in quantities he cannot withstand. It regards the "thruput" of supply tonnage as "water pressure", and all up front weapons as merely so many pressure nozzles to direct that pressure toward the enemy. The enemy force is then firehosed off its feet and washed away, by pumping far more water onto him than he pumps onto you. Of course it is not literally water, it is a deluge of high explosive, but the metaphor is not at all misleading. A side that can fire 20,000 artillery rounds per day at an enemy that can only reply with 2,000, is going to win. It is just a matter of time, of how long it takes the excess tonnage being blasted at the enemy to wear down his formations, reduce divisions to battalion KGs, and make it impossible for the remnants to hold the line.

This sort of analysis, which is fundamental to artillery branch thinking, rests on the fact that the limit on shells fired over any long period of time (a week or more) is not set by the number of firing tubes, nor by the number of specific target opportunities available at a given moment. There will always be some reasonable targets identified over the course of a week or more. When you have days, the level of artillery any army is equipped with (in raw tubes) is more than sufficient to throw all the shells you can afford to throw. Therefore, the only long run limit on the artillery firepower applied to the enemy is how many shells you can lay hands on. And the only limit on that - with a war economy is running full tilt to support an attrition strategy - is how many of them you can move to the theater of operations.

That is logistics. It is not a matter of keeping the men in toiletries, with "a unit of supply". It is the view that merchant ships and railroad trains and fleets of trucks are so many launchers firing ton after ton toward the enemy, to obliterate his forces with HE on an industrial scale. And it most certainly can and does win wars.

"Now we can get into the debate wether the PzKw-IV (or Stug) armed with 75L43/48 was superior to the T-34 or not."

I don't see that there is much to debate. They are comparable vehicles, with the edge to the German ones, once they are uparmored to 80mm (by 1943 therefore). The Russians themselves say they only holed the 80mm front plates at around 500 meters, although they could penetrate the thinner 50mm armor of the Pz IV turret out to a longer range, if they happened to hit it. The 75L48 can KO the T-34 out to 1 km. Rexford says more for detailed reasons, but such minutae are not necessary to answer our question. In gun and armor terms, they are roughly equal vehicles with the edge to the German types. The T-34/85 could KO either at longer range, and in pure gun and armor terms is probably superior. But the T-34/76 was not.

"doctrine and the disparity in the number of available vehicles do not play a part in the equation?"

Boy you are being dense here. What the heck do you think I am arguing, anyway? I am arguing that doctrine was decisive in the first half of the war, not tank specs, and that numbers were decisive in the second half of the war, not tank specs. Then I discuss the tech specs available to the Germans in 1943 to show they were ahead in that respect, and you give me this rhetorical whopper. Of course doctrine and numbers matter, that is the whole bleeding point. They matter far more than the minutae of technical AFV specs. Who is arguing this, the man from uncle? Your favorite Martian? No, JasonC, the guy you are debating at ridiculous length, as though you disagree with this proposition.

The faustpatrone is not the panzerfaust, any more than the rifle grenade is. Why you think an AT weapon has to be man portable to be effective is one of those eternal mysteries. The fact remains, as you agreed to with a "yes, but", that towed PAK are the principle AT weapons of infantry formations, and they killed vastly more enemy AFVs than all infantry weapons combined. And the infantry weapons only became a significant portion of the overall weapon mix in about the last year of the war, when fausts were fielded in impressive numbers. By then it was of course too late for that to matter very much; they helped infantry maintain its physical integrity on the battlefield.

But the PAK still remained the main infantry-formation tank killer, for the obvious reason, their vastly superior range. The proper comparison to PAK, anyway, are not fausts but tanks. They were twice as numerous as tanks down until 1944, and heavier in the mix of guns, with newer more capable guns fielded in quantity faster as towed pieces than as AFVs. The statement that "is was easy to bypass heavy AT assests and attack the helpless infantry", is a screamer. It is much easier to bypass weapons with a range of 100-150 yards than to bypass weapons that will kill with accuracy at 1500 yards. All you have to do is site the latter with overlaping fields of fire. Which was the principle means of defending all infantry positions from tanks.

When I noted the Germans fielded 34K AT weapons in 1944, and the Russians only 14K T-34s, you asked about other Russian AFV makes. The T-34s were half of that year's production, 28K all told, with another 1/4 SU-76 SP guns on light tank chassis. The remaining 1/4 were about evenly split between IS, ISU, and SUs. The Germans were adding AT weapons faster than the Russians were adding AFVs. It was already too late, of course, and they had a second front to worry about in the second half of the year. But it does show what German industry was capable of, had it been mobilized earlier.

On modern stuff, you said "Without an asset that is capable of killing better armour your better sensors are useless". But such assets are by now a dime a dozen, or more literally about 50K a pop compared to millions for a MBT. If my sensors tell me where you are before yours do the same about me, I'll (1) hide for now and (2) drop a 120mm terminal IR homing HEAT mortar round onto your top armor, from 5km away, and from behind a hill. I only need to fire to within the right 200 meter circle, and the round will do the rest. The warhead will burn through 4 feet of rolled homogeneous steel. Got a chobham-armor roof 12 inches thick handy? How's your rear engine top deck fixed for armor?

You ask if I am so sure about no campaign's outcome swung by armor grogginess. I've considered the whole war, and I think I know its history pretty darn well. I am thinking of scores of campaigns that fit the pattern. And not satisfied with that, I have invited counterargument here, and received some fine suggestions, which are as close as anybody has come to examples of armor groghood helping. The British sector in Normandy is the strongest case I've seen, and it amounted to delaying a breakout made inevitable by odds and logistics attrition (explained above at length) by about one month.

"The Soviet summer assult of 1944 against the Finns is an example when superior numbers of "better" quality armour (T-34/85, IS-2, ISU-152 etc), superior numbers of just about any asset you care to mention... using state of the art tactics and doctrine (sic) were beaten back with the help of a handfull of "inferior" vehicles (Stug-IIIG)"

You still don't seem to get it. I am arguing that the guys with the better armor often, or even usually, -lose-. This case fits that pattern to a tee. I am not arguing only armor specs matter, somebody else is, who others are likely to suspect means you. Otherwise, you'd just accept the argument and drop the subject, I'd think. But you seem to have no idea of the position of the man you are arguing against, making me wonder why you are bothering to argue the point (besides a native love of doing so that we obviously share - LOL).

I am arguing armor grogginess is an almost singularly poor predictor of who will win, and that numbers and doctrine are far more important. I'd call your example numbers and groggier tanks proving no match for superior doctrine and crew quality. The idea that the doctrine of Russian attacks in Finland were "state of the art" is, incidentally, laughable. But surely you would not put that case down to victory through superior gun and armor specs for the winning side's vehicles. You call it better quality armor, but perhaps the quotation marks are meant to be some way of weaseling out of the conclusion. Uberfinns will not save you. Uberfinns did not win because they had King Tigers against 75mm Shermans. They didn't have King Tigers. And they faced IS-2s.

"I'd love to see the loss figures for British armour."

Well, German claims for all AFVs KOed in Normandy, US as well as Brit, are 3750. Their own records show they lost 2200 by the end of Falaise.

"In Stalingrad there was no armour to oppose the counterattack"

Not entirely accurate, but close enough. There was an Axis minor panzer division and one German panzer division. They had Pz38(t) with 37mm. They were overrun in a couple of days . But the result was overdetermined, and the Russians would have won just as big if they had all been in 45mm BTs or T-70s rather than T-34s.

"In El Alamein I hesitate to say the British armour was better"

That would seem to be because you hesitate to ever acknowledge that anything German was worse than anything Allied. Hundreds of Shermans and Valentines, with the rest mixed between Grants, Stuarts, and Crusaders, 900 all told, are far superior to only 30 Pz IVF, only 220 other German tanks mixed between Pz IIs, Pz IIIs with mixed 50L42 and 50L60, and Pz IVs with 75L24, plus 250 Italian tanks, of which only a portion were even as good as the M13/40.

"did they lose because the opposing armour was technically not-so-inferior or because they lost in the logistics and other aspects?"

Or? The answer to that question is not on either side of the "or", it is "yes". The side with the better tanks usually lost because their tank fleet was usually only marginally better -and- the odds (including logistics) were high against them, or they faced enemies with superior doctrine, using better operational maneuvers, etc. That is the whole bloody argument, and has been for about 10,000 words by now. Tank spec differences weren't all that wide and didn't make much of a difference, compared to the other factors like numbers, doctrine, etc.

You show some sign of getting it along with a furious resistence to getting it with your closing line "You can not outrun a Pinto with a Porche if the Pinto has more petrol than the Porche". It isn't a race. It is a -war-. And the factors that decided it were things like combined arms doctrine and the numbers produced by war economies in full swing, -not- the angle of armor plates and the metallurgy of each batch of AP rounds. No, that doesn't mean the Germans were so uber they would have won if only Goering had provided them a little more gas. It means the things innovative generals and strategic economic planners do win wars, while the stuff done by rival armor engineers mostly cancels out, and what doesn't cancel out can't compare to the magnitude of the forces the others are manipulating.

In that war, armor tech simply was not decisive. Love it, hate it, spin it, dodge it - whatever you do, there it is.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Tero]

That's a first: this will be a two post reply. Jason, eat your heart out !

>What I said about the late war is that the Allies caught up -enough-in this category that numbers became decisive instead.

Did they catch up enough or did they compensate with greater numbers ? The further I read the book on British training the more surprised I am.

>As for the idea that US armor doctrine was inferior to British, that was true in Tunisia, but beyond that point is a rather silly claim.

Not inferior. Different but equally bad. And the TD doctrine did prevail until the end of the war.

>Integration of the various arms was considerably tigher in the US armor formations, and there is no US counterpart to a fiasco like Goodwood.

Apart from Kasserine Pass, no. But when did the US armour go against German armour the way (in the scale) the British did, apart from Kasserine Pass ?

>In fact the 3:1 attackers maxim is a tactical, not an operational, let alone a strategic, point.

Really ? And it had no effect on the operational or strategic level planning whatsoever ?

>The Russians took the initiative in 1942 with approximate parity in overall forces. They continued their offensives with only 3:2 to 2:1 odds down to the end of 1943.

Local or global (strategic) odds ?

>The Brits took the initiative in North Africa with approximately 2:1 odds.

Against the Italians ?

I must point out that this is a clear example of superior, smaller force with armour tech-spec superiority winning the campaign against a larger force with inferior armour.

>The initial force odds in Normandy, when the German forces arrived that is, were also about 2:1.

Again, local or global odds ? Are you counting in all German forces (including Luftwaffe) west of Paris ?

The bulk of the German reserves were NOT in Normandy. And they did not arrive in a landslide directly at the front lines.

>There isn't one "leap"..... False, the tankers re-evaluated their AFVs after encountering Matildas a year earlier in France.

Yes. But how many new, better tech-spec designs (excluding upgunning of older models) were ordered built because of the Matilda ?

>Horsepucky, they simply did not even try.

Poppycock. They did not think they had to try. The fact that Hitler started the war earlier than he promised his generals is not relevant in this context.

>What they eventually managed to do when they finally did mobilize, down to 1944, despite greater materials shortages and heavy bombing, shows just how much slack there was in the economy in 1941.

Yes. But by 1944 they had also lost the edge in trained/experienced men.

And the fact that the economy in 1941 was not in total war footing does not mean the industrial capacity was not working at 100% capacity.

>They were wrong.

Hind sight is 20/20 only after the fact.

>German AFV losses in 1941 were very small.

What about the number of write-off because of non-combat losses ? It does not mean there is no attrition if there is minimal combat actions going on.

>The statement "production could hardly keep up" is thus innaccurate on its face, for the early war period.

Why then did they have to increase production capacity later on, if they could build up a reserve pool of vehicles with the production capacity they had available to them already but which they failed to utilize ?

>The idea that they were at capacity at the earlier date is therefore ridiculous.

100 % production capacity in 1939 did not equal 100 % production capacity in 1944. They were at capacity at the earlier date because that was the capacity at that date. Any increase in capacity by taking up any slack not being used effectively did not affect the production retroactively.

>And they did field numerous additional mobile formations. The number of mobile divisions in the field increased over the whole war, from 10 at the outset and 21 at the time of Barbarossa, to 40 at the time of Kursk and 47 by the time of Normandy.

What was the number of AFV's in a formation in 1939 and what was it again in 1944 in the opponent formations ? How did it compare to the respective German formations ?

>The slowing of the ascent in formation number from late 1943 on was due to increases in the AFV loss rate as they began losing the war, not to production.

Actually the effect of decreasing the number of vehicles in the formations did not show up in the overall attrition figures until late 1943. Before that some of the attrition could be "written off" with the new organizational charts. The formations did not get replacements during the transition period because the new organization did not need the same number of vehicles than it had required earlier.

>Yes, later war formations had fewer AFVs apiece, due to doctrinal changes about the proper combined arms mix of armor to infantry,

I thought you said their doctrine was as good at it got and it was the allies who gained them by changing tactics and doctrine and their force organization.

It was a conjuring trick. The doctrinal changes were due to the fact that there was not enough vehicles to go around. It is an amazing coincidence the organizational and doctrinal changes coincided with the arrival of the übertanks and the Pzfaust and Pzschreck. Right ?

>Very late, the armor per formation was also low from losses, and the stop-gap practice of leaving burnt out KGs in the line essentially until gone.

What was that 3:2 force ratio calculated on ? Did it take into account the German frontline units being depleated ?

>They were not "forced" to make such changes, and would still have made them if they had twice as many tanks. The just would have had twice as many armor formations with the newer, more nearly correct armor:infantry mix.

Why then the separate armoured and Pzgrenadier formations ? If they were all the same doctrinally ?

>(and even that they still used for a while to make goliath demolition vehicles).

That is news to me. What is your source ? The only PzKw-I demolition vehicle I know of was an engineer vehicle. The Goliath was a remotly controlled demolition vehicle but to my knowledge it was not based on the PzKw-I chassis.

>It was consistently ahead of the tanks.

By infantry AT I meant infantry AT, not AT artillery. Between PzB-38 ATR and the Pzfaust/Pzschreck there were the Molotov, the satchel charge and other devices such as the Panzerwurfmine and the Hohlhaftladung, all of which worked reasonably well but all of which were dangerous to the user.

The AT artillery was in par with the armour, at least after the arrival of the PAK40. But the infantry AT was behind, or more precisely the infantry AT weaponry was not up speed with the doctrinal requirements it was expected to fulfill, from 1939 until 1942-43 when the stand off recoilles weapons were introduced.

>The better PAK were fielded in numbers before each major upgunning of the main AFV force.

Each ? How many were there ?

>which make the lead of the towed gun systems even larger.

Yes. How, if at all, was this accomodated in the tactics and doctrine ? How much did that affect the tech-spec development of the vehicles ?

>Nor did the AT firepower of the infantry depend on late war fausts.

Yes it did. One of the reasons the Red Army started using tankodesantniki was because of the close range infantry AT assets got good enough to pose a real danger to the armour.

>Most of the kills of enemy AFV were still scored by the dedicated AT guns or DP guns like 88 Flak, not be hand-helds with tiny maximum ranges.

This is perhaps true. Nevertheless AT guns could not move easily in volatile situations. If a position lost its AT gun screen it was basically up **** creeck before the fausts and schrecks were made available.

>The PAK 40 was a far bigger deal, but is often ignored because it was a vanilla weapon, rather than any radical new development.

This is true. It has been ignored also because the German doctrine has been presented as having almost solely relied on armour.

But even if this was true there are extenuating circumstances. The initial Finnish rout in the summer of 1944 was contributed, among other things, to the lack of potent enough close range, man portable stand off AT assets. Along with the customary Molotovs and satchel charges the PAK38 and PAK40 were in the Finnish army inventory. Especially the PAK40 was an excellent tank killer but because of their inherent lack of battlefield mobility the PAK's were not ideally suited to volatile (defensive) operations. Nor could they help out the infantry in all tactical situations due to being moved around from one position to another or what not. When the Pzfausts and Pzschrecks became available the Finnish infantry rallied.

>Tanks are not the only item on the battlefield, and the other arms are not defenseless before them.

Basically true. However many of the more spectacular routs that took place included also the forces who themselves were relying on the shock effect of the tank. The psychological effect brought on by propaganda worked both ways. One of the reasons the defence of Singapore was undermined was the fact the British troops thought the rattle the Japanese bicycles made came from tanks.

>Those other arms are at least as large a portion of the overall combat power equation as the tanks themselves, and they typically differ by far less.

So if tactics and doctrine were at comparable level and every asset in the battlefield cancels each itself out why the quite clearly unreasonable narratives and demands (presented at all levels below Army/Front level) for assets capable of withstanding the opponent ordnance and defeating the opponents assets when they already had adequate numbers and were in most cases in a fair enough logistical situation ? They were all unfounded gripes based on meaningless tactical considerations ?

>40% of Russian 1942 production were as light, with either 20mm or 45mm guns.

Yet the Germans felt the urgend need to build smaller numbers of new übertanks instead of more plain vanilla types. Why ?

>50mm guns, towed or on tanks, were the #1 Russian tank killers in the German force mix by numbers knock out, down to the Stalingrad counterattacks.

Care to reveal your source ?

>They were in no danger whatever of early defeat because tank specs didn't decide the campaigns.

What if the Anglo-French counterattack in 1940 had been succesfull ? Why the constant and consistent references to the employment of 88 FLAK in France, North Africa, Russia to help out the armour ?

>The 88s certainly helped, but they also knocked out both Matildas and T-34s with 105mm HEAT.

So why the reverence of the 88, not the 105, by the users and the opponets alike ?

>And capable enemy heavy tanks were modest portions of enemy fleets, most of which could be KOed by vanilla German tanks.

Yet it was this modest portion that made the Germans sweat and call up the 88 to the rescue. And in the case of the T-34 and KV-1 start drawing up plans for new vehicle models.

>Allied armor doctrine, both east and west, was also so abysmal at the start of the war that local successes by heavy armor had no operational effect.

Yes. But was that due to poor tactics or inconsequential tech-spec's of the tanks ? In the West the encounters with the heavies were relatively few because they were usually encountered in complete formations. Each early encounter in the East with the T-34 and KV-1 deployed singly all around the battlefield has been described as being traumatic in each case.

>Matildas broke through around Sedan, but did not stop the fall of France. T-34s crashed into Kleist's armor group early in the 1941 campaign, but did not stop the breakthroughs to Minsk and beyond.

True. But what was the immediate responce and remedy to these tactical situations ? What were the respective tech-spec consequences of these actions ?

>Armies are large combined arms entities and "self-sealing" in the face of merely tactical set backs.

Yes. And no. If your statement was true we would still be using clubs, spears and possibly bows and arrows as there would be no need to revise the tech-spec, only the logistics and tactics and doctrine to ensure superior numbers at the strategic level.

It is the mere minor tactical set backs that send the armies to their corners. They come out again with (or without as the case may be) modified tactics and assets with approriate tech-spec changed made. If the self sealing layer is too thin the holes start to leak seriously unless something is done to the sealant.

>Opponents without full combined arms coordination weren't going to get anywhere just by having a modest portion of well armored beasties. And they didn't.

I think it has been established "well armoured" does not translate into "superior AFV" directly.

Or has this been an armour thickness thing to you all along ?

An other thing: how do you define victory ? Is it an absolute term with only one possible outcome with one side losing totally while the other side wins totally.

The Germans were able to halt the Allied advance in Tunisia, mainland Italy, German western border for a long period of time, yet following your definition and timelimit caveats they lost the campaigns and thus any and all tech-spec stuff is to be ignored.

With all the failings and "benefits" you list above present in the Finnish army the Red Army assault failed to reach its objectives and Finland was not occupied as a consequence. But we lost the campaign because we had to sing an unfavourable armictice.

>As for my use of the term "campaign", I have already specified what I mean. A fight on a given front (not all, like strategic things), involving units on the scale of armies (not just a day's battle by a division), over periods of time measured in months (not days, but not the whole war either).

Your definition of the terms are flexible enough for your thesis to bend around any corners and resilient enough for you thesis to go over any bumps.

>If you don't have a clear mental picture of the division of the war into a set of such linked campaigns, then I recommend some general histories or the official staff studies of the war.

My mental picture of the of the division of the war into a set of such linked campaigns has not been formulated by the Anglo-American histories alone. From a non-Anglo-American point of view the causalities, connections and divisions look a bit different. For one in Anglo-American general histories the political aspects have been for all intents and purposes severed from the military actions. For example there is no link in them between Winter War and the Norwegian campaign.

>the Bulge is a campaign, North Africa before Torch is a campaign, ...I am honestly puzzled by your claim there is any confusion on this point, because I did not detect any, going either way.

North Africa before Torch was definitely not a single campaign that can not be disected into distinctive and separate "campaigns" or operations (unless of course you only allow post-El Alamein events to be included). Some of the ones you mentioned and many of you did not mention (the ones you left out on purpose ?) are not clear cut and definable only by timeframe and name given. They include distinctively different phases inside them that form "sub-campaigns" or operations.

>....and the number of tanks in the fleet increases, .....

You make it sound like they were deployed like the RN Home Fleet, ready to sail anywhere at any given form at ease.

>The reason not to have 2 armor regiments and 1 infantry regiment is because that isn't enough infantry for combined arms; nothing else.

Are you sure you are not miswriting this ? Not enough INFANTRY ???

I have read it was the other way around: It was 1 armour regiment and 2 infantry regiments because there was not enough armour. They could not form proper armoured formations so they had to form Panzergrenadier formations instead, except they lacked the necessary motor transport and HT's to become fully effective.

>I had just said they could easily have increased production more and earlier.

Yes. But because of political considerations they did not do that.

>You say "they could have yes", and then immediately claim that "yes there was" some impossibility involved in not doing so.

Domestic politics, consumer confidence, call it what you will. The impossibility was in the fact that they could not step up production with current resources without going to total war footing (increas the number of shifts buy starting to employ women in the factories more etc).

>That is what "could" and "impossible" mean.

That also implies a what-if situation which is not at the core of this furball.

>Why you pretend there was still some impossibility involved, is utterly beyond me.

Thy could not just wish one production line doing one shift to start putting out the production of two lines. Their production was at maximum and only drastic changes would have made and did make more capacity available.

>It is only the single must important mistake of the entire war, generally well know and often discussed, so your apparently inability to think clearly about it is rather surprising.

Perhaps you should reread your own statements which I was responding to. I see nothing wrong in your basic stament. Then you you go ballistic with a what-if that is clearly contradicting the statement you made. Yes, they could have increased production dramatically early on. They made the necessary adjustments in 1943. No, it was impossible for them to do it with current resources as of 1941 without the changes they were not willing to make in 1941.

>Long 75mm StuG III and Pz IV, which are what they later did focus on.

1941 ~1,700 PzKw-III 50mm gun tanks, 540 StugIII's. In -42 ~2,500 50mm gun tanks, ~850 Stugs. 1943 ~250 50mm gun tanks, ~3,300 Stugs. Some of the production of Stugs was remanufactures.

>so there was obviously no technical impossibility involved.

No technical impossibility in tech-spec, technical impossibility in increasing actual production

>But only in that sense. The Panther weighs 45 tons, twice the weight of a Pz IV, and the same weight as a KV-1, an IS-2, or a Pershing, and heavier than a Churchill or Sherman Jumbo.

There are no light and heavy MG's, only heavy and damned heavy MG's. Should all MG's be classed by weight and not by the deployment, thus making all of them heavy MG's unless they weigh less than 5kg with ammo ?

>It was a heavy tank by any other name, uparmored and upgunned as much or more as any of the above.

Only it is what the Germans called it what should count. What the Soviets called their tanks weighing the same is irrelevant.

>If the Panther is a medium tank, then there weren't any heavies in the war besides Tigers.

You are caught in the trap I have seen before. It stands to reason to call it a heavy tank because it was heavy for a medium tank. But the Germans deployed it the same way they deployed lighter medium tanks.

>while by 1943 these were actually superior to the T-34/76s they faced, they were roughly comparable in ability.

Only they were more able, by virtue a plethora of factors starting with the 75L48 gun, to deal with the Soviet übermodels than the T-34/76 was in dealing with the German übermodels.

>Because the difference in the average, vanilla portion of the fleets was not extreme.

In tech-spec, agreed. Here is when the superior numbers step in even at tactical level.

>It is no more surprising that this modest portion of the fleet was not decisive in 1943, than that the 1/6th of the Russian AFVs of 1941 that were KVs or T-34s proved less than decisive in 1941.

Only the in 1943 the Soviets had enough replacement vehicles in the pipeline to sustain and disregard the losses they were sustaining. In 1941 the Germans faced a totally different scenario in AFV quality at hand and numbers available.

>Well, first industrial capacity is definitely the wrong term because they obviously weren't at capacity until 1944,

They were at capacity early on. Otherwise they would have been able to increase production dramatically without making any changes.

> because they delayed mobilization too long.

True.

>But second, the Germans did match and exceed the capabilities of the T-34/76 in 1943.

To a certain degree already in 1942. But they could not match or exceed the production.

>Your bald statement that "the Germans were still catching up when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945" is simply balderdash.

The Soviets had already moved on from the simple sloped armour to ballistic armour (sauce pan turrets etc) when the Germans were still toying with the original T-34 armour configuration.

>They were well ahead by the fall of 1943, in gun-armor terms.

Gun, yes. Armour, no. Their design effort went on unfocused. They were still reacting to the first generation of superior Soviet designs when the Soviets were already designing and fielding a new generation of vehicles. The 75L48 equipped vehicles were adequate because the gun was powerfull enough to deal with all comers. Their main fleet gun carriers just could not take the punishment metered out in the battlefield.

>Because of little things, like the Russians smashing Army Group South to driftwood.

The number of AFV's lost in that debacle was not critical. The number of men lost was critical.

>How many times do I have to repeat this?

As many times as you need until you reveal what makes a tank superior compared to another in your opinion.

>The Germans did not have superior tanks in North Africa.

I know their fleet mix in North Africa was pittyful. They perfected the art of using tanks to lure the British armour into AT gun traps. Bu the fact still remains the 50mm armed PzKw-III's and later the PzKw-IVF2's were superior to the British Cruisers and Crusaders, even the Lees and Shermans.

>But whether you accept those or not, accept the blatant fact that their early war tanks simply were not superior in gun and armor terms.

That is a sweeping generalization that seems to be plaqueing your entire thesis. When did early end and late start ? When did the early tanks turn into late tanks ? The PzKw-III was an early tank but it went from 37mm main gun to the 50L42 (already in 1940 ~50% of the PzKw-III production were 50L42 being around 460 vehicles) and on to 50L60 main gun in a matter of 2 years. The PzKw-IV was an early tank which went from the 75L24 to the 75L43 and 75L48 guns in a matter of 3 years (not until 1942 ~90% of the production were 75L43 being around 870 vehicles).

I agree their fleet mix was not not at all ideally suited to their tactics and doctrine, nor was their fleet superior overall. But.... it seems you like to think ALL of their vehicles were not superior compared to the Allied vehicles. Which brings about (again) the question about what you think determines what makes an AFV superior.

>Sometimes you seem to have acknowledged this, and then you turn around and make a statement like the above.

Not all of the German AFV's were superior in any respect. Some of them were superior even despite their nondescript tech-spec's (hint: crew layout, communicatios etc).

>But they were not technically better tanks in gun and armor duel terms.

Are you sure ? That depends what they are compared against: TK, FT-17/18, Mk-IV light, 7TP, R-35, H-38, H-39, S-35, A9, A10, A13, T-26, BT-5/7, T-28. All of these were by and large inferior or comparable to the German fleet even without counting in tactics and doctrine. Then there were those who gave them major headaches: Matilda, Char-1B, T-34, KV-1. Of these only the T-34 and KV-1 did make the Germans start designing new models. The heavy tank development had been going on since 1937 and it culminated in the Tiger series but the Panther was a crash project started in November 1941.

>StuGs did not exist at the outbreak of the war; production began in 1940.

Yes. But The concept was layed down in 1935 by von Manstein who <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"proposed that Sturmartillerie units were to be formed and used for direct support of infantry divisions. They were to be equipped with assault guns mounted on tracked chassis. Used to accompany the infantry into the attack, the assault gun's main aim was to knock out pill-boxes, machine gun nests, anti-tank guns and other obstacles.

On June 15 1936, the order was given to Daimler-Benz AG to develop and produce an armored infantry support vehicle mounting 75mm gun. The gun was to have a limited traverse of minimum 25 degrees in order to provide direct support up to 6 kilometers. The gun was to be mounted in a superstructure that provided full protection for the crew. The height of this vehicle was not to exceed the height of an average man. Daimler-Benz AG being already involved in the development and production of Panzerkampfwagen III tank decided to use its chassis and components for this new vehicle. The experimental "0" series of five prototypes was produced in 1937 by Alkett. Prototypes were pre-production Panzerkampfwagen III Ausf B tanks mounted with mild-steel superstructures housing short-barreled 75mm StuK (Sturmkanone) gun designed and produced by Krupp. Vehicles were extensively tested at Kummersdorf, Doberitz and other testing / training facilities. Prototypes remained in use as training vehicles as late as 1942. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This raises the question why it was not deployed earlier. Could it have something to do with the fact that only ~300 PzKw-III's had been built by the end of 1939 ?

>As for pre-war Russian heavy tanks, of course I have heard of them but they still don't qualify.

Why ? Just because they were land-battleships does not mean they were not in the inventory.

>There were a reasonable 227 model E T-28s produced, but many of them didn't come back from Finland.

Actually the E-model uparmouring was done as a result of experiences during Winter War.

>The archaic early 30s versions had no more armor and a worse gun than a Pz IV 75L24,

http://history.vif2.ru/t28.html

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>German Pz-III and Pz-IV had an equal armor protection but were much more maneuverable, but the T-28 was better armed than any German tank in 1941 and could hit any German tank from long distances. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I take that referers to the model armed with the L-10 gun.

>and hardly qualify as "heavy tanks".

The T-28 was actually classified as a medium. My mistake.

>These numbers compare to 12,000 T-26s and 7,700 BT series. In other words, ~2% of the fleet had 76mm infantry guns and 40mm of armor.

So ? 2% from 20 000 is a hell of a lot more than 2% of 100.

>and in 1941 the T-34 qualifies as a heavy as well.

Except it was a medium.

>But both went into production after the start of the war but before Barbarossa, as I already said.

This is getting convoluted.

>Earth to tero - there isn't any "lack of qualitative seperation" between a Matilda and a 37mm Pz III.

The Matilda is just plain better in every gun-armor respect, by miles. The Germans and the Allies aren't equal in gun armor terms because of non-existent similarities in doctrine.

Earth to Jason: we are talking about the lack of qualitative separation in design concepts here. The norm for armour thickness and layout was the roughly the same in each respective vehicle class. The tank gun norm of the era was 37mm for gun tanks. For support tanks it was 75mm. Check them out if you do not believe me.

Crew layouts were the same, the notable exceptions were the indiginous German models with a 5 man crew/3 man turret and the French models with 1 man turrets. Most of the rest had either 3 or 4 man crews with 2 man turrets.

Your pairing is a valid one. But why do you choose to pick the extreme ends ? And you have pair off vehicles from different classes to boot. The Matilda was designed to support infantry in assault, the PzKw-III was designed to tackle with enemy armour. Why not pair off the PzKw-38t and 7TP, R-35 or A9 ?

You yourself have pointed out that at the time percentagewise the Matilda and the PzKw-III did not represent the median vehicles in the fleet mixes and thus they played no part in the equation. But that applies of course only when that argument supports your POV.

>And the German tanks aren't better in gun-armor terms, either. In the early war, the Allied tanks are.

No, it is not as simple as that. Most of the pre-war tanks were built around the same specs: 37mm class gun and armour which could defeat the 37mm class round. Or 75mm class gun and armour to defeat the 75mm class round. Tank for tank the German armour were not especially excellent. But they did not suck big time either when compared to similar vehicles in other armies. The Allies had more tanks and the Germans could match the lower edge types. But they had nothing in their inventory to match the better Allied tanks (Char-1B and Matilda, possibly also the Somua).

>All the Germans have going for them, in fact, is superior doctrine, emphasizing combined a

[Tero]

>All the Germans have going for them, in fact, is superior doctrine, emphasizing combined arms and operational maneuver - not infantry support all along the line in penny packets, -nor- independent cavalry action by pure tanks.

Agreed.

>It is superior to it in gun and armor duel specs. It penetrates more armor plate at every range, by 10-15%. It will penetrate any front surface of the original (not uparmored) Pz III out to 1000 yards. While the 50L42 can't penetrate any portion of the far thicker hulled Matilda - front, side, rear, point-blank, PzGr 40 special AP ammo, you name it.

Again, why pick the Matilda ? All non-CS tanks in the British inventory were armed with the 2prd but not all tanks in the inventory were Matildas.

>the difference between a Matilda and an early Pz III is greater, in favor of the Matilda, than the difference between a Tiger I and a vanilla Sherman 75mm.

Yes. But how many Matildas were there deployed in BEF or 8th Army compared to A9 or A10's ? And how many PzKw-III's were there in the German inventory in France or North Africa ?

>Earth to tero again. They did. In less than a year.

Earth to Jason: you start counting the German up-gunning from 1939-40. The Sherman saw action the first time in 1942 while the 76mm gun was installed in 1944. I count two years for the Sherman up-gunning. And the Shermans did not get the tunsten ammo through the regular channels because of the prevailing TD doctrine.

>The US fielded 8000 Sherman 76s and provided 3000 more in lend-lease.

Out of a production run of how many vehicles ?

>On top of the 9200 TDs with 76mm or 90mm.

What is that supposed to prove ?

>The total number of German tanks capable of stopping a short 75 round from the front, sent against the west, was less than 3000. Including the ones sent against the Brits.

The number of Allied armour capable of stopping the 75L48 round was how many ? Including the ones sent encountered in the East.

>I can hear it now "but some tankers still had the old guns".

The Finnish army was still employing guns from the 19th century.

>And a year after the long 75 was fielded - which was already 2 years after the Matildas had shown up at Sedan, making 3 years all told - 1/3rd of the German tankers rode into Kursk with 50L60, 75L24, or 50L42 guns.

That seems to cover the PzKw-III which could not take the 75L43/48 in the turret. So ? Could the Sherman take a 50L42 or 50L60 round in the nose without any fears of being penetrated ?

>Nope, still incapable of hearing a rational argument to save your life, it seems.

Still incapable of bearing the thought that you might be wrong, it seems.

>The Germans were the ones with the inferior tanks in the first half of the war.

Myopia setting in ? Please name all the Allied models with numbers in service. Please name all the German models with numbers available. Please point out the Allied models that were clearly superior to the German models.

>It was not tank tech specs that stepped into the picture, it was doctrine. Superior doctrine, not tech specs, was decisive in the first half of the war, when the Germans were winning. Tech specs were against them, but that didn't matter.

So you keep saying. But how many times did the tanks clash in the west and how many times were the Germans up **** creek ? I can think of Sedan. Any other large scale engagements that were won due to doctrine alone ? Can you make these sweeping conclusion based on one engagement only ?

>And in the second half of the war, it was numbers.

Yes.

>doctrine was mostly neutral.

If that was true then it should follow that when two forces of equal numbers with equal weight of fire collide the outcome could go either way. Can you name any such engagement when an Allied force came on top in this kind of scenario ?

>Thus the tech dominance fallacy can be clearly seen. The Germans conquered Europe in Panzer IIIs in every gun-armor sense inferior to the AFVs they faced. ..... The side with the worse tanks won in both halves of the war.

These sweeping generalizations do not hold water.

>Having better tanks did not save the early war Allies from the effects of better German doctrine. And having better tanks did not save the late war Germans from the effects of superior Allied numbers.

At the startegic level this is true.

>"logictics did not play as big a part when talking about combat. Each unit had a basic load of supplies that carried it through a period of time."

This is a complete misunderstanding of the importance of logistics in warfare, and especially of their dominant role in attrition strategy warfare.

In tactical level combat a unit is able to sustain itself for a period of time without resupply. When talking about the strategic level you are correct, the logistics matter a great deal. When talking about the tactical level the role of logistics is not that pronounced.

>A side that can fire 20,000 artillery rounds per day at an enemy that can only reply with 2,000, is going to win. It is just a matter of time, of how long it takes the excess tonnage being blasted at the enemy to wear down his formations, reduce divisions to battalion KGs, and make it impossible for the remnants to hold the line.

Yes. The big question determined at the tactical level is timeframe. This was clearly demonstrated in Winter War. At the tactical level those 20 000 artillery shells were shot randomly while the 2 000 rounds were fired with precision. In the end the Finns had to yield but not totally and unconditionally.

>And it most certainly can and does win wars.

I am not contesting this.

>I don't see that there is much to debate. They are comparable vehicles, with the edge to the German ones, .... In gun and armor terms, they are roughly equal vehicles with the edge to the German types. The T-34/85 could KO either at longer range, and in pure gun and armor terms is probably superior. But the T-34/76 was not.

But were the German models superior ? A matter of sematics but you seem so big on using it I would rather you used the term consistently.

>Boy you are being dense here.

No, just pushing your buttons by asking questions in a futile effort to make you see POV's other than your own.

>Of course doctrine and numbers matter, that is the whole bleeding point. They matter far more than the minutae of technical AFV specs.

First you refuse any and all arguments pertaining tactical level that undermine your strategic level point (the fact that armour tech-spec had a fundamental effect on the tactics, doctrine and strategic level planning) and then you take tactical level aspects (doctrine and numbers while you choose to leave out the tech-spec inherently embedded in the doctrine) and use them to support your strategic level argument.

>No, JasonC, the guy you are debating at ridiculous length,

Infuriating, isn't it. Somebody has the audacity to match the lenght of your posts.

>as though you disagree with this proposition.

I do not disagree with it in its entirety.

>The faustpatrone is not the panzerfaust

Check your sources !

http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/8172/panzerfaust2.htm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Other designations of this weapon were Faustpatrone 1 or Panzerfaust 30 klein; however, it was common to refer to this weapon simply as the Faustpatrone.

Initially designated Faustpatrone gross or Faustpatrone 2, this larger weapon quickly adopted the suggestive name Panzerfaust ("Tank-Fist") and the weapons with the larger warheads were henceforth commonly referred to under that name. The first direct successor model to the Fautpatrone klein was the Panzerfaust 30 m, developed to iron out the problems encountered during early trials with the

Faustpatrone klein, providing for sights - fixed at 30m (100 ft. ) range - and a change in the warhead's shape. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

>Why you think an AT weapon has to be man portable to be effective is one of those eternal mysteries.

For it to be a true infantry AT weapon it has to be man portable.

>The fact remains, as you agreed to with a "yes, but", that towed PAK are the principle AT weapons of infantry formations,

A point of order: the PAK's organic to the infantry formations at what level ?

>And the infantry weapons only became a significant portion of the overall weapon mix in about the last year of the war, when fausts were fielded in impressive numbers.

Depends what you call impressive.

>By then it was of course too late for that to matter very much;

In the strategic level, yes

>they helped infantry maintain its physical integrity on the battlefield.

In the tactical level, yes.

>But the PAK still remained the main infantry-formation tank killer, for the obvious reason, their vastly superior range.

The PAK could also get killed at those ranges.

>The proper comparison to PAK, anyway, are not fausts but tanks.

Looking from the POV of infantry this is not the case.

>It is much easier to bypass weapons with a range of 100-150 yards than to bypass weapons that will kill with accuracy at 1500 yards.

If this happens you have chosen poor defensive positions. Or the terrain does not favour defence against an armoured force and you need to find another location.

You are also disregarding such factors as artillery safety zones, blind angles of the AFV's etc. With PAK's these did not apply.

>All you have to do is site the latter with overlaping fields of fire. Which was the principle means of defending all infantry positions from tanks.

Not all defensive positions could be turned into a PAK front.

>If my sensors tell me where you are before yours do the same about me, I'll (1) hide for now and (2) drop a 120mm terminal IR homing HEAT mortar round onto your top armor, from 5km away, and from behind a hill.

Where did you get that ? You said you only had your sensors.

>You still don't seem to get it. I am arguing that the guys with the better armor often, or even usually, -lose-. This case fits that pattern to a tee.

What you have failed to do is define "win" and "lose".

>But you seem to have no idea of the position of the man you are arguing against, making me wonder why you are bothering to argue the point

I am just arguing that while valid in the macro level your thesis is not allencompassing and universally valid at all levels.

>(besides a native love of doing so that we obviously share - LOL).

I have not yet met a person who is not über-something or another.

>I am arguing armor grogginess is an almost singularly poor predictor of who will win, and that numbers and doctrine are far more important.

That is totally dependant on the level of engagement. At the strategic level your argument is true. At the tactical level it does not work.

It seems you work from the top down while I work from the bottom up.

>I'd call your example numbers and groggier tanks proving no match for superior doctrine and crew quality. The idea that the doctrine of Russian attacks in Finland were "state of the art" is, incidentally, laughable.

Do not discount the 1944 Red Army tactics and doctrine.

>But surely you would not put that case down to victory through superior gun and armor specs for the winning side's vehicles.

First off we'd need to define the term win and lose. And at what level it was acheived in the campaign.

>You call it better quality armor, but perhaps the quotation marks are meant to be some way of weaseling out of the conclusion.

No. It is still unclear what you accept as criteria when determining the superiority of an AFV.

>Uberfinns will not save you. Uberfinns did not win because they had King Tigers against 75mm Shermans. They didn't have King Tigers. And they faced IS-2s.

Did we win ? What did we lose ?

>"I'd love to see the loss figures for British armour."

Well, German claims for all AFVs KOed in Normandy, US as well as Brit, are 3750. Their own records show they lost 2200 by the end of Falaise.

For the whole war by the theater and campaign.

>That would seem to be because you hesitate to ever acknowledge that anything German was worse than anything Allied.

No. I hesitate to ever acknowledge that everything Allied was better than anything German.

>The side with the better tanks usually lost because their tank fleet was usually only marginally better -and- the odds (including logistics) were high against them, or they faced enemies with superior doctrine, using better operational maneuvers, etc.

And there were never engagements that did not match the criteria you set down ?

[RMC]

My brain hurts. I am getting tunnel vision. I see spots. This thread just plain hurts.

Really, you guys need to start putting these encyclicals up as PDFs or something for download in zip files or somefink...

[JasonC]

"when did the US armour go against German armour"

1. Cobra. Specifically, 2nd AD fought its way through elements of 10 different divisions in the first 5 days of the breakout, half of them mobile divisions, and including the entirely fresh 116th Panzer. Blew their doors off like they were standing still.

2. East of Nancy, when Patton's lead AD was hit by 2 fresh panzer brigades with new Panthers, as well as a depleted panzer division and 2 panzergrenadiers divisions. They beat them in a matter of days.

3. Celles, at the western tip of the Bulge, where 2 AD cut up 2nd Panzer, and sent the 116th back pell-mell after loss of most of its vehicles.

4. Southeast of Bastogne from Christmas to the end of January, where Patton's ADs collided head on with the last attacks of the SS, in some of the toughest fighting of the whole war in the west. Stopped them, took the initiative, and set the line moving eastward again. This one was expensive, but they did it.

5. On a smaller scale at Remagen, after the bridgehead formed and the Germans threw everything they had at it for a week or two, including Jagdtigers, without success.

Just the most obvious and largest-scale cases. The lack of anything like "Goodwood" on the US side after Kasserine reflected real improvements in US armor doctrine made by 1943, reflected in the switch from the 1942 to the 1943 pattern armor division layout. Combined arms integration was distinctly tighter, and that is what worked.

In addition, there are other cases of combined arms successes against the German armor, including proper doctrine use of TDs -rather than clashes of armored divisions against each other. Mortain is the most obvious example, and the Alsace counterattacks (Nordwind and the others in that series) are another. Other combined arms examples are the defeat of Panzer Lehr's counterattack in Normandy (infantry and TDs), defeat of the armor counterattack at Salerno (all arms), holding Bastogne (all arms), Elsenborn ridge (everything but armor), and destroying Peiper in the Bulge (all arms).

I'm still going through the responses to look for other points that merit comment.

[JasonC]

On North Africa, when I said the Brits took the initiative with 2:1 odds I was referring to El Alamein. But the 1940 case vs. the Eye-Ties is also instruction. I've gone over it before on this board, but not in this thread.

The victory was due to extreme operational incompetence on the Italian side. They stayed in fortress positions along the coast, deeply layered behind one another, and thus allowed the Brits to attack each group in sequence at around 1:1 odds, and after the Brits had already turned the desert flank and thus made escape or coordination with other parts of the force impossible.

The overall manpower odds were about 5:1 in favor of the Italians, but each actual battle in the first half of the campaign was fought at equal or better odds. By the end of three rounds of this, the odds were down to 2:1 and the Italians were in full scale retreat.

When they were caught on the road south of Bengazi, trying to escape to Tripoli, however, the odds were again heavily in their favor. The "stopper" the Brits got across the road behind them was only a single understrength armor brigade. It was outnumbered about 3:1 in tanks and significantly more in manpower terms, but the Italians had been out of supply and without proper command for some time.

But the British tanks were not technically superior on this decisive occasion. They did not have any Matildas there, just early model Cruiser tanks (predecessors of the Crusader). And the Eye-Ties had a significant portion of their force M13/40s, the best tank in their arsenal and equal or superior to the Cruiser in pure gun-armor terms. In crew quality and morale, the Brits were light years ahead, and that is what decided the battle for them. They lost only a handful of tanks and KOed scores, after which the Italians surrendered in thousands.

The Brits would have done the same thing to the Italians in the 1940 campaign if they had been driving Italian tanks. As long as the Italian commander made the same operational mistakes, and the men's morale was as low, and their tank crew quality as abysmal as it actually was.

The Italian general commanding on this occasion certainly takes the prize as the worst commander of the entire war, which was the subject of the old thread where it came up. From a basically even technological position and with five to one numerical odds in his favor, he lost 250,000 men - practically his entire command - in a matter of months. He did so through poor operational "moves" and undermined by horribly troop quality (which was also largely his fault, since he could have trained them).

[JasonC]

On Normandy odds, they were 2:1 in the theater. The US and UK each put ashore a force roughly the size of the force the Germans sent to the theater. Most of the German force arrived by the end of June. Both sides built up over time; the Allies took time to uload men, had difficulty finding room for them to deploy in the small beachhead, and could only supply limited numbers over the beaches before ports were repaired. All told, 10 panzer and 24 infantry divisions fought in Normandy for the Germans. The US, about half the Allied force throughout this part of the campaign, had 6 AD and 17 ID in the line by mid August, but only half that by the end of June. At the time of Cobra (end of July), the Germans had 750,000 men vs. 800,000 Americans and 600,000 UK troops in theater.

The initial tank odds were also in the same ratio (about 2500 for each of the Germans, US, and UK), but rose through attrition as the Allies replaced most (but not all) of their higher tank losses, while the German tank fleet halved in runners every 3 weeks. Which fits exactly the pattern I explained, of an odds advantage well under 3:1 still proving sufficient, when accompanied by a higher replacement rate and coupled to attrition effects. 2:1 initially, losses running only 3:2 or 2:1, and replacement rates of 1/2 of all losses vs. practically none, move the armor odds ratio in favor of the side with the higher replacement rate. And do so more rapidly, the higher the absolute loss rate is pushed.

Thus by the time of Cobra, the Germans were down to 650 runners in theater, while the US had at least 1500 AFVs in their armor divisions alone, mostly untouched from the fighting so far. The US ADs had only been lightly engaged up to that point, mostly lending teams to the infantry for local attacks or to meet German counterattacks. The infantry divisions and their independent armor and TD formations had done most of the fighting. The 1500 mostly fresh AFVs in the US ADs then hit well under half of the remaining German AFV fleet, and broke out. The Germans sent half of their remaining armor to Mortain to try to cut off the breakout, and failed miserably. The US matched their numbers with a few TD battalions and 1 AD assigned to hit a flank of the counterattack. The remaining US ADs were free to march in every direction, taking Brittany and forming the southern wall of the Falaise pocket, while also pushing to the Seine.

But that was the effect of an odds ratio brought about by attrition, by subtraction from the initial German "1" in the "2 to 1" starting ratio. It was a classic case of attrition logic leading to eventual success, from a starting odds ratio below 3:1. Attrition logic is one of the principle ways of exploiting a modest overall odds edge, and rendering it decisive.

As for my statement about the Russians seizing the initiative with only 3:2 odds, that referred to the overall odds on the east front at the time of the Stalingrad counterattacks. The Russians achieved 5:1 local odds and upwards against the axis minors holding the flanks of the Stalingrad position, by leaving other areas with only parity in numbers and concentrating their entire theater-wide numbers edge against narrow areas of the German front. Which is a classic case of using operational scale maneuver to turn an initial odds ratio less than 3:1 into something locally decisive.

The forces allocated to the attack then had fights in sequence against (1) the flanking forces, (2) the relief attempt, (3) the pocketed forces, the rest of the German forces in the south. Together those groups were within a small factor of the forces the Russians had available, certainly under 2:1. But they KOed the first at high odds before having to face the second, and were able to screen the pocket with limited forces while stopping the second, because there was no coordinated breakout attempt from inside. Then they threatened to overwhelm the fourth grouping and thus forced a withdrawl of the relief force, after which they were able to concentrate superior force against the pocketed forces, which ran through their available supplies rapidly, as well.

Overall they KOed up to half of the force against them, never having to fight more than about half of it at once, and often able to concentrate on just a quarter of it. 2:1 overall odds can give tactical superiority easily, if it resolves into 1 fight that is .75 to .75, and another that is 1.25 to .25. Then the 5:1 "point of superiority" is moved around vigorously. That is the sort of effect operational maneuver aims for. Operational maneuver of this sort is the other principle method of exploiting a modest overall odds edge, and rendering it decisive.

[JasonC]

You seem to deny that Germany not mobilizing the economy was not a matter of mere choice. But it was; anyone who knows the economic facts will tell you the same thing. Less than 40% of German steel production went to military uses as late as 1942. They never had even 3 million women in the workforce. The size of the workforce actually fell after the outbreak of the war, because of men drafted into the army. The work week expanded slightly to make up for this, but less than 5%, staying below 50 hours a week as late as 1942. German war plants were running only 10-12 hours a day, long after other powers had gone to round the clock production by two or three seperate shifts of workers. Modest contributions from occupied powers, most of whose production only supported their own economies and occupation forces, and modest increases in manufacturing productivity, allowed production of armaments to increase somewhat in 1942 anyway, but nothing like the rate of increase later achieved. Under Fritz Todt, still in charge of German economic planning until early 1942, the main focus of German economic planning was still achieving the pre-war four year plan targets. Production of consumer goods did not fall at all until 1942; the uptick in armaments production for the war was entirely financed by reducing long term construction expenditures, and other forms of investment did not fall until 1943.

They simply were not willing to strain the civilian economy and thus call for greater self-sacrifice from the civilian population, until it became obvious after Stalingrad that such sacrifices were inevitable. As long as any prospect of a "cheap win" presented itself, they avoided calling on the economy to produce to its full potential, or to focus on short term output rather than long run investment. The reasons for this were political and domestic, and had nothing to do with any economic impossibility. Which Speer proved with the changes that dramatically increased German production, modestly even in 1942, but much more strongly from the Stalingrad defeat down to mid 1944. Despite Allied bombing, greater materials shortages, and the logistical strain of a losing war. As for the idea that industry was working at 100% of capacity in 1941, it is ridiculous. Out of a domestic production of 30 million tons, only 8 million tons of steel went to war work that year. Half the potential work force was idle, and war plants ran only 10-12 hours per day. If that is "100% output", then five is equal to one.

Nor is this any miracle of hindsight. Every other major power fully mobilized its economy for war within one year of entry. That is because every other major power correctly believed that the war would be decided by weight of armaments production, thus through attrition processes, just as WW I was. The Germans gambled they would win cheaply without utilizing their industrial potential to support such a "material struggle", because reckless gambling was their whole grand strategy from start to finish. They quickly developed "victory disease", the blindness of pride, and arrogantly assumed they would e.g. defeat Soviet Russia without breaking a sweat. Attacking Russia without mobilizing the economy was incredibly dumb. The Germans knew six months before the invasion that they would attack, but did nothing to mobilize the economy. In fact, they -reduced- orders for tanks, shells, and army equipment in August of 1941, after the initial success of the invasion. German mishandling of their own war economy was the single largest unforced error of the entire war, by miles.

As for 1941 AFV losses, they were small from all causes, not just from combat. The German AFV fleet was expanding, though slowly, despite the still low rate of AFV production, because losses were still so low in 1941. Losses in the first winter in front of Moscow were significant, but the fleet resumed its slow growth down to the time of Stalingrad. The Germans had 3000 AFVs in the fleet when Barbarossa was launched, and 7000 by the time of Kursk. Thereafter the fleet size remained constant even as production soared, because losses soared right along with production. The peak size of the German fleet was about the same size as the trough size of the Russian fleet. Russian losses in 1941 were so high the Russian fleet fell 2/3rds, even with replacement production. But in 1942, with production increasing from economic mobilization, and from relocated plants getting back into production, the fleet size rebounded. Losses were kept reasonable in 1942, despite the retreats of summer and the attrition fighting in Stalingrad. And by Stalingrad the fleet was about back up to its prewar size, with a heavier vehicle mix (more T-34s, fewer 45mm light tanks). There it mostly stayed, with production and losses both high, though in 1944 and 45 the fleet size moved upward modestly. By missing the opportunity to build as large a fleet of AFVs as the Russian had, in 1941 and 1942, the Germans were left with only 1/3rd as many AFVs in the field at any given moment in time for most of the rest of the war, even after their production rose.

As for the changes in AFVs per formation, the Germans started with a tank heavy mix like the other powers, with 4 tank battalion per armor division to only 2 battalions of infantry, plus one of recce that was mostly motorcycle infantry, with an establishment strength of 300 tanks. But even in Poland they also used light divisions with only 1 tank battalion each, or 75 tanks - these were transformed cavalry divisions. Between Poland and France, the original lights were changed to Panzer divisions, and the number of tank battalions per division varied from 2 to 4 for different formations, while the infantry was increased to 4 battalions in most cases. The number of tanks in each varied from 150 to 340. It is also important to keep in mind that more than half of these tanks were Pz Is and Pz IIs - no armor division had more than 160 mediums (at those were 37mm Czech tanks) in the Franch 1940 campaign. The Brits at that point were using armor brigades with an establishment strength around 175 tanks, with 2 of them in their only armor division and another brigade an independent formation. The French scattered their numerous tanks into formations of all sizes from brigade downward.

After the French campaign, the 4 battalion armor division pattern was considered obsolete, as it did not possess enough infantry for true combined arms. At the same time, the Panzer Is dropped out of the tank mix and Pz IIs, instead of being the primary type as they were before, were relegated to minority status. 37mm and short 50mm tanks became standard, and 2 armor battalions likewise became standard. The infantry establishment was increased to 4 battalions, plus the recce. Thus the armor to infantry ratio of 1939 had essentially reversed.

This change was made in time for the Balkans campaign for most units, and in time for Barbarossa by all. There were only slightly more tanks available for Barbarossa as for France, (3300 vs. 2500), but the number of armor formations had doubled. That is because each was now on the 2 battalion standard. At the same time the mix had been upgraded, so the number of medium tanks had actually increased slightly, for the average AD. It was the Panzer Is and most of the Panzer IIs that were gone, in effect, while the infantry component had doubled. This produced a workable combined arms mix that was successful in practice (without needing cooperation with outside units, etc) and was therefore retained.

The TOE of a German armor division remained around 200 AFV thereafter, rising somewhat as armored SP TDs replaced towed guns in the divisional AT battalion (first with the Marder, later with StuG and then Jagdpanzer). The SS panzer division, which grew out of an original Pz Gdr division type with only 1 armor battalion, kept 6 infantry battalions instead of 4, and eventually received slightly more AFVs than a standard panzer division. But with more infantry too, their armor to infantry ratio was below that of the Panzer divisions. As late as Normandy, German Panzer divisions in practice still had up to 225 AFVs at TOE, counting the TDs. Then in late 1944, after a failed experiment (never given up entirely) with independent Panzer brigades about the size of half of Panzer division, the Panzer division structure was retained but formation sizes were reduced by using fewer vehicles per platoon and the like. So in the Bulge, a Panzer division had more like 150 AFVs.

The increase in armor formations in the field between Barbarossa and Kursk thus reflects a real increase in the total AFV fleet, not any sub-dividing of available armor. The reduction in TOEs had occurred before Barbarossa, and allowed the 20 mobile divisions achieved by then. The AFV per formation at TOE was increasing at midwar because of the addition of TDs, but this was largely balanced by a tendency for formations to continue fighting down to lower portions of TOE. By Kursk the overall fleet size is about at the plateau level maintained until the second half of 1944, and the number of formations is more or less stable, rising only slightly down to that date. After the mid 1944 collapse, the fleet size and AFVs per formation fall, from use of panzer brigades instead of divisions, divisions in the line longer at burnt out levels, and reductions in platoon size. From the Bulge to the end of the war the number of formations is constant and the smaller TOEs are in place, with the fleet size falling with combat losses.

Basically, the subdivision story happens between France and Russia, and is certainly not a result of losses in Russia in 1941 or 1942. It was a doctrinal improvement related to upping the portion of infantry in each panzer division, and to phasing out the previously dominant role of light tanks over mediums. And it is distinct from the late war TOE reductions, which only occur in the last 6-9 months, and reflect a collapsing overall fleet size. Between France and Kursk is the only time the German AFV fleet is actually increasing in size, with most of the increasing happening after Barbarossa. (2600 France, 3300 Barbarossa, around 7000 by the time of Kursk). To pretend there are high German tank losses between Barbarossa and Kursk, in the face of these well known facts, is just plain wrong.

As for your confusion over what I termed "each major upgunning", and the fact that towed PAK lead the tank force in each, you asked "each? How many were there?" Do you ever discover a new fact for yourself, I wonder? The Germans phased out the 37mm ATG and tanks with 20mm and 37mm guns, moving to a long 50mm standard, between mid 1941 and mid 1942. Then they upgunned again to long 75mm, from mid 1942 to mid 1943, phasing out 50mm weapons and short 75L24s. Late, they also fielded numbers of 88s, though never enough to replace the 75 long, towed or on AFVs. In each case there were far more of the new guns in towed form than in AFV form, and typically the towed guns arrived in quantity 3-6 months before better AFVs did, and sometimes longer than that before the final, armored TD designs that used the new guns (e.g. Marders for months before Pz III production all switches to StuGs). Typically there were twice as many PAK as AFVs with the new weapons a year or more after their introduction.

You ask how superiority of towed guns was accomodated in doctrine, and the answer is (1) focus on combined arms and (2) the particular tactic of the gun front or PAK front. Which was exactly the so called "failed TD idea" in its early war form, and the doctrine the US intentionally copied with its TD doctrine. Which did not in practice fail, as a means of dealing with armor attacks via combined arms defenses, either for the Germans first or for the Americans later, whenever they actually did face armored counterattacks.

Your fixation on the infantry AT weapons and insistence that PAK don't count as such, and your inability to understand comments like "the AT firepower of late war infantry did not depend on fausts", seems to me based on a semantic illusion. By infantry I mean infantry formations of the German army, infantry divisions, that branch of service. I do not mean men with K98s. Infantry formations do not consist merely of infantry. And infantry formations depended on PAK, not fausts, to defend their terrain against enemy tank attacks. PAK scored the vast majority of enemy AFV kills, far more than fausts did, especially before the final 9 months of the war, when the German force was largely intact, thus had PAK to use, and fausts were not yet being fielded in enourmous numbers.

Fausts created a useful tactical effect by allowing infantry to defend its immediate area, and by requiring combined arms from attackers. But they did not kill nearly as many tanks as PAK did, despite outnumbered produced PAK by an order of magnitude or more. The reason is obvious - they simply do not have the range, and they just force enemy armor to stand off, rather than killing any that comes into LOS as PAK can. And an infantry force position that lost its PAK screen was very much "up a creek" even with fausts and schrecks, because the attackers just pull up to 250-500 yards and shoot the heck out of them. I can give you any number of AARs where this is just what happened. For infantry to live in the presence of enemy armor it needs either (1) terrain impassible to vehicles, (2) intact PAK, or (3) supporting AFVs. Whether they have fausts or not.

As for the point we agreed on, the importance of PAK and the PAK 40 in particular, you said "this is true" and give as a reason it has been ignored "German doctrine has been presented as having almost solely relied on armour". Which begs the question, presented by whom? Certainly not by me, as at least half my whole point in this thread and its predecessor, has been that other arms, among other things, matter far more than tank specs. German doctrine did not rely exclusively on armor, and would not have been superior if it had. In fact, the mid war errors of doctrine of the Brits, US, and Russians, through 1942 or so, were largely based on drawing the wrong lessons from the early war, and avoiding combined arms, relying on massed armor instead.

They confused combined arms with the French and 1941 Russian mistakes of tying the tanks to the infantry. The superiority the Germans enjoyed in the early war had nothing to do with tech spec superiority in armor, nor anything to do with massed armor employed seperately, relying on it exclusively, etc. It had everything to do with combined arms, which for some unfathomable reason people find a more difficult concept that technological dominance fairy tales about magical devices deciding everything. Or they confuse even combined arms with just throwing some of everything at the enemy and hoping some of it works, which will actually get 1-2 of your arms defeated, break coordination, and lead to failure.

Combined arms works for the reasons anyone can see in CM - it allows the right weapon to be used for the right job, employing the proper tactic to exploit the weakness of each successive position in front of the combined arms unit, while protecting the vunerabilities of each. Infantry does not have to charge through barrages and machinegun fire, tanks do not have to scout enemy territory buttoned and hunted, or charge rows of hidden enemy guns, and guns do not have to sit under indirect artillery fire unable to reply. Nor does infantry have to exchange even losses with enemy infantry - tanks or artillery can take out their support weapons and suppress them first. Nor do tanks have to exchange off against enemy tanks evenly; their own infantry can scout for them while they remain unseen, and enemy tanks can be drawn past hidden guns and AT ambushes. Nor does artillery have to waste firepower on innaccurate counterbattery - it can shoot a hole through the enemy infantry and let tanks overrun his guns or their supplies.

The force multiplication produced by proper combined arms instead of mindless mashing was the basis of early war German tactical superiority. Which they made the most of by harnessing it to generally good operational moves, as well. Infantry formations are capable of their own combined arms effects when fighting on the defensive, even against enemy armor. They use towed guns in place of AFVs, and concealment, the spade, and sandbags in place of armor plate. Indirect artillery, infantry heavy weapons, PAK and heavy FLAK, and straight infantry all have different roles in such an infantry force mix. The bulk of the German army consisted in such infantry formations. On the defensive in the second half of the war, they also did most of the fighting, and most of the dying. Plenty of enemy tanks were directed at them, so how they fought them was at least as important as rival tank specs. And they fought them largely with PAK and FLAK, out to 1500 yards, not with infantry AT weapons with effective ranges of 150 yards.

As for the idea that the Brits at Singapore surrendered because of bicycle noises, it is laughable. They surrendered because they were running out of drinking water and half the force was already down with disease. The very size of the garrison exhausted the available stores faster. They didn't know that the Japanese were in almost as bad a shape.

As for "why the demand for armor that defeats all enemy guns and guns that defeat all enemy armor?", of course men in combat would rather have magic bullets than face nearly even chances of killing or being killed. Men would also like to be immortal, and for there to be world peace, and for money to grow on trees. Magic bullets don't exist, and when people had the nearest fascimiles the war actually saw, they didn't win because of them. The British didn't at Arras, the Russians didn't at Kiev, the Germans didn't in Normandy. Obviously uniform easy eights with tungsten would have been preferable to plain M4s, and if they could have been provided easily, they should have been. But they won without them, because their absence was not as critical and some would have us believe. And because the Western allies eventually fielded 5-10 upgunned AFVs for every uparmored German AFV they faced.

As for your incomprehension of the Russians building 40% light tanks with 20mm or 45mm in 1942, you seem to think the Germans were only building ubertanks in response. Not remotely. 13% of the German production of that year were 20mm Pz IIs, 37mm Czech tanks, or 50L42 Pz IIIs. 41% were 50L60 or 75L24. Less than half had 75mm long or better, and 20% were Marders rather than fully armored AFVs. Only 27% were 75 long with full armor, while the Russians were turning out 55% T-34s and 5% KV-1s.

As for why the Germans didn't focus on building greater numbers of 75 long AFV, I've already covered that exhaustively above - because they did not bother to mobilize their economy. As for their building uber-tanks instead, they did so because they were gambling on the importance of uber tech specs. The whole point is that gamble was a failure because tech specs were not as important as they thought they were. The Russian decision to mass produce T-34s proved more successful than the German decision to ignore quantity so as not to strain their civilian economy, and instead go for magic technological bullets in the form of the Tiger and Panther. Which succeeded as designs, and were superior alright. It is just that superior tanks did not matter as much as the Germans expected them to, and failure to mobilize the economy mattered a heck of a lot more than they thought. "Hindsight", you will say. Bonehead "play", I reply, because the other powers got it right instead of wrong.

On 50mm guns killing more Russian tanks than other types down to Stalingrad, you can find an analysis of it on the Russian Battlefield site. It is based on analysis of holes in recovered dead tanks. Nor is there anything in the least surprising about it, because the bulk of the German armor and towed PAK force were 50mm guns over that period (the 75L24 Pz IV was a minority tank until the long 75 was adapted to it), and the bulk of the dead Russian tanks were 45mm lights that even a 50L42 could KO at range. (18,000 pre war T-26 and BT tanks, plus T-60 and T-70 production in 41 and 42 - total over 25,000 tanks). Some of the Russian tanks were T-34s (though much of the later 1942 production was horded in reserve for the Stalingrad attacks), but 50L60 can kill those at close enough range, from flanks, etc, and there wasn't a lot of competition from larger guns hunting them before late 1942. The long 75s were only out for the last few months of that period, after all, and not many towed 88s were with army units.

As for why the 88s are mentioned more often than the 105s, the reason is probably unit sexiness. There was nothing revolutionary about a 105mm firing HEAT. But the German panzer commanders make reference enough to their role, insisting on towed guns fully motorized and right up with the tanks on all occasions. And it was mostly field artillery that stopped the Matildas at Arras, because they were a lot more of them than there were of 88s. 88s are more accurate because of higher muzzle velocity, of course, but the 105s were more readily available at more spots along the front. They made up in numbers and presence whatever they lacked in specific lethality. If you haven't heard of the role of the field artillery before, that is a limitation of your own reading, nothing else. The main point, of course, is that the tanks carried light guns in the early war not because only light guns existed, but because of the limitations of AFV designs. The heavy guns were already there, though not as optimized for AT warfare as late war PAK 40s or PAK 43s. A big enough duel use cannon could deal with such tanks as had been fielded in the early war, something the Russians also found true even of midwar German tanks with their 152mm howitzers, aka "animal killers".

As for what made the Germans sweat in 1941, nothing much did. They romped. Russian losses in the first six months equalled the entire size of their pre-war force, in AFVs and in manpower. They just fielded a new army as big as the one they lost in the same period of time (in manpower terms - in AFVs, the fleet shrank 2/3rds). The Germans did freeze, rather than sweat, a little later on, from "general winter". And felt keenly the wants induced by the arrogant folly of decisions like reducing army weapons production in August of 1941 because victory had supposedly already arrived.

They did react to T-34s and KVs, not only with the magic technological bullet quest with the Tiger and Panther (which, in case this most basic point has still not been grasped, didn't produce magical operational results even though they did achieve technical superiority, otherwise known as "the point of this thread"), but more soberly by upgunning to long 50mm and then 75mm guns.

What they didn't do was mobilize their economy, and the Russians did. Which is why in late 1942 the Germans had 75mm long PAK and AFVs, but the Russians had way more T-34s by then than the Germans could handle, even with the better guns. And the Russians still had way more T-34s than the Germans could handle at Kursk, even with Tigers and Panthers and Elephants. And the Russians still had way more T-34s than the Russians could handle at the end of 1943, after the Germans had fielded two thousand Tigers and Panthers and ten thousand 75mm AFVs.

Early economic mobilization was the gift that kept on giving, and technical magic bullets were not. I still wonder why this is so hard to see and admit. After all, the Germans attacked the Russians and planned the attack six months before launching it. The Russians had to evacuate half of their industrial capacity from areas the Germans occupied, creating an enourmous disruption of their production. That the Russians still got the drop on the Germans on economic mobilization is one of those "fact stranger than fiction" cases. It is hard to imagine a more decisive, more completely boneheaded, or more completely unforced, error. Why did it happen anyway? Victory disease. Arrogance. Pride is not only a sin, it is a weakness. It is like putting out your own eyes. Like half your brain tied behind your back "to make it fair". Calling this a necessary political consideration is euphemism taking to an extreme. Yes, it was politically necessary to listen to the boneheaded decisions of the idiot corporal running the show, if that is what you mean. It was in no other way "necessary" to be so stupid.

As for your idea that the T-34s were more consequential than the Matildas because the Matildas were employed all at once, it is bizarrely backward but also false. It was obviously much harder to stop a whole formation of either with inadequate AT weapons, than to deal with 3 or 10 of the critters, which might be easily accomplished even with technically inferior weapons - by massed fire, flanking them, or bringing up a handful of duel use heavy cannon. But in addition, the T-34s were tried massed, early in 1941. Kleist's armor group had several hundred of the critters run into its flanks during a breakthrough attempt. He had to pull back as a result. But lack of combined arms and tenative, uncertain handling stemming from that kept the results of only tactical interest, and the German spearheads elsewhere were soon so deep in the rear the Russians had to pull back. They abandoned large numbers of tanks due to breakdowns in the process.

What were the immediate responses in the two cases? The Matildas ran past the 37mm ATs and were engaged by a couple of 88s and more like a division's worth of field artillery. Buttoned and alone and losing tanks to this fire, with their few accompanying 3" howitzer tanks soon KOed or out of HE, they had to withdraw. They had no means of suppressing a large formation of guns with coordinated artillery fire, no infantry to scout ahead for such guns, and no HE in the majority of 2 lber tanks, to KO them in direct fire dueling. As I said before, lack of combined arms doomed the attack to merely tactical interest, without operational consequences.

In the case of Kleist, more of the attackers were KOed by tanks (shooting at flanks close, or massed fire at range), but they also forced the Germans to withdraw. Lack of coordination between spearheads north and south, and lack of accompanying other arms, prevented any pocket, and allowed the Germans to pull back, with armor losses certainly, but largely intact. Then the Germans built up a gun line and stood on the defensive locally, while other spearheads pushed deeper into the Russian rear in other areas. The Russians withdrew voluntarily after that. Again tactical success, again no operational consequences to speak of. Kleist was delayed a couple of days, that was it.

No, it is not the merely minor tactical set backs that "send the armies to their corners". Overloading a narrow sector with 500 tanks against a single division of defending infantry forces results in breakthrough with Pz IIs or with Panthers, with 75mm Shermans or with T-34/85s. The question then becomes what happens next, and that depends on the defender's doctrine and on the combined arms and local odds in infantry and artillery the attackers have. If the defenders aren't in depth, they will be penetrated regardless of the other factors. If they have a proper defense, then the attackers will succeed if they have superior odds in the other arms too, and coordinate them; otherwise their armor will flounder without lasting success and with considerable losses. So far, tactics. It is successful breakthroughs send armies to their corners. And month-long material battles of attrition, or superior operational maneuver, produce the local odds that create successful breakthrough opportunities.

And the armor grog differences present in WW II did not stop such processes from working. The closest - and temporary - case otherwise is the Brit front in Normandy, where one month of delay might be attributed to armor grog effects. The rest of the time, if the attackers had the requirements above they succeeded, and if they did not they failed. No matter how good their tanks were, or the enemy's tanks were - within the limits of fielded tank forces actually seen in the war. Tank specs were not decisive. Combined arms doctrine, numbers, logistics, operational maneuver - were.

And no, holding out for 2-3 months before collapsing disasterously, with a loss of 250,000 men, does not count as a success, in Tunisia or Normandy. The Germans did not win the campaign in Tunisia, they lost 250,000 axis soldiers and their entire position in North Africa. The Germans did not win the campaign in Normandy, they lost most of OB West and all of France. The enemy is not going to run out of 2-3 month periods to apply attrition processes or superior logistics to your forces. You will run out of entire armies and entire provinces first. If that is all tech specs get you, then they aren't worth very much.

As for your pretending that when I recommended general histories and staff studies I meant exclusively Allied ones, I meant nothing of the kind. You will find the natural division of the decisive battles of the war quite similar on both sides, for the obvious reason - the reality. As for the idea that western histories don't link Norway and Finland 1940, it is simply false. Churchill's history certainly links them, for obvious reasons - the force sent to Narvik was supposed to reach the Finns. As for your silliness about the use of the term "fleet", that is simply how one talks of a mixed collection of vehicles.

Yes, 2 armor regiments to 1 infantry regiment is not enough infantry for combined arms. The proper ratio has nothing whatever to do with being scarce in either in absolute terms, and your pet notion to the contrary is simply false, up to the last 6-9 months of the war. German panzer divisions went into Poland with 4 tank battalions and only 2 infantry battalions, and that was obviously not enough infantry for combined arms, as they rapidly found. They found they had to cooperate with organizationally seperate infantry formations in order to get good tactical ratios.

It was obviously better to include the forces meant to cooperate with one another in the same formation under the same commander. Since the proper ratio for combined arms was around 1 armor battalion per 2 infantry battalions, and a division of 4 armor and 8 infantry battalions would have been decidedly unwieldy for a single divisional commander, the division TOE was switched from 4 armor and 2 infantry to 2 armor and 4 infantry. There was no shortage of armor involved; the number of Panzer divisions was doubled.

As for Panzergrenadier divisions, they weren't formed until mid war. Light divisions, based on switched cavalry divisions, had been used in Poland, with only 1 armor battalion. They were found to be too light on tanks, and were remade into panzer divisions in time for France. There were occasional divisions still left in this middle ground role, as they upgraded each to Panzer divisions. In addition, the need for infantry formations to keep up with panzer spearheads operationally, led to the creation of motorized infantry divisions, which were the linear ancestors of the later Panzergrenadier divisions. (The term "Pz Gdr" didn't even exist yet).

These were equipped like line infantry divisions but fully motorized; they had no tanks. The Pz Gdr formations of mid war were created by adding one tank or StuG battalion to one of these motorized infantry divisions. They were often then expected to act like an armor division, though they lacked enough tanks to do so. The SS panzer divisions went through the same process, but kept adding tanks until they had more than a panzer division - that is why their panzergrenadier regiments still had 3 infantry battalions apiece, rather than the 2 each standard in the panzer forces.

The majority of mobile divisions at all times were panzer divisions (or SS formations equivalent to them), for the obvious reason that it was a waste to concentrate truck mobility without also increasing fighting power (otherwise the unit can reach several enemies in sequence but not defeat each), and also a waste to distribute armor too thinly to act as a true combined arms force. In the later war, this weaknesses of the intermediary types were somewhat reduced, because the addition of armored TD battalions to mobile divisions meant 2 battalion level AFV units per division, thus an armor-infantry ratio closer to the right level for combined arms.

As for the idea that the 45 ton Panther wasn't a heavy tank because "it is only what the Germans called it that counts", it is an argument akin to much of the rest of yours, which seem to reduce to only German decisions count, and were always correct. The Panther was a heavy tank for 1945, let alone for the whole war, and all the Germans meant by not calling it one is they didn't use them in independent corps level battalions. Nobody thinks the IS-2 wasn't a heavy tank, and it is the same size beastie. As for why the few pre-1939 Russian tanks aren't significant, it is because there weren't enough of them to matter and in many cases they weren't appreciably more capable than a Pz IV with 75L24, which nobody considers a heavy tank. The long 76 and uparmored versions are numbered with 2 digits.

You ask when early war ended and late war starts. The answer is Stalingrad. The early war is the period of strategic German initiative, the late war is the period of strategic Allied initiative. The dividing line also coincides with when the Russian tank fleet ceased to be mostly light tanks and became mostly T-34s, and when the Germans fielded 75 long vehicles, then Tigers, then Panthers. The period from Stalingrad to Kursk can be considered the transition between the two periods. El Alamein to Tunisia also coincides with this transition period. After it, the western Allies had their late war armor doctrines and were fielding 75mm tanks; before it they were still using mixes down to 2 lber, and tank-heavy armor doctrine.

By the time of Kursk (Russian offensive portion especially) and Sicily one is recognizably in the late war period, with more advanced tanks, developed Allied doctrine, Allied strategic initiative, etc all firmly in place. The Pz III is an early war tank, the StuG with long 75 its late war descendent. The switch from Pz IIIs to Pz IVs with 75 long as the main German AFV also coincides. This is an obviously natural breakpoint for armor specs as well as operational issues, because the guns and vehicles fielded at the transition point remain in use throughout the rest of the war. Whereas back at the 1942 German summer offensive or the Gazala battles, one is recognizably still in the early war, with the main types fielded ones that became obsolete soon, etc.

As for your doubts that the German fleet was inferior in the early war, when the Germans conquered France only about 2/5 of their tanks had guns 37mm and up - Czech (40%), Pz III, or Pz IV, 1000 all told. Most of the fleet were Pz IIs with 20mm guns, and hundreds of them were Pz Is with MG main armament. These were far inferior to French Renaults and Hotchkiss (the most common French types, 37mm armed) in gun-armor terms, to say nothing of the Matildas and Char-Bs at the top end. The French had 3300 tanks with 37mm or 47mm guns, plus 400 Char-Bs with 75mm plus 37mm. As for why to focus on the Matilda, because a large force of them actually had a shot to close the breakthrough gap at Sedan and prevent the fall of France, had tech specs mattered so much. But they failed to do so.

The Allies had better tanks throughout the range, in gun and armor terms, but it did not win them the campaign. The Germans won the early war despite the tech-spec armor grog inferiority of their tanks, because the successful operational use of armor had - and has - more to do with combined arms techniques and operational maneuver than it ever had to do with armor grog specs. The idea that tank dueling superiority is the be-all, end-all of successful armor or successful operations, is simply false, which after all is the point.

The belief otherwise is a product of contemporary wargamer and modeler interest, tactical myopia stemming from easier to understand modeling of small scale actions than large ones, the mistaken thesis that the whole military revolution in WW II was entirely a matter of technology rather than doctrine (popular among some British historians who misunderstood the doctrinal changes, in particular), the German wartime hunt for a technological magic bullet (which failed to reverse the tide), general ignorance or glamor spin, and muddy thinking about the facts some grogs are familiar with. You will not find this attitude in the memoires of the German commanders who actually got the doctrine to work in practice. Nor will you find evidence of it as decisive in the operational histories, as I think I have by now made apparent.

As for your lack of clarity (still) in what constitutes gun and armor superiority of one AFV over another, it is simple enough. It is an armor grog question about tank dueling. Which kills the other how far away? If A kills B to 2 km any angle, and B can't kill A at all, any range or angle, then A is obviously superior to B in tech spec terms. When only sides are vunerable, the superiority is still there but is less. When both can kill each other from the front but need hits on vunerable points, turret only, or using special ammo, the one with the easier conditions to fufill is better. When both can kill each other from the front at medium ranges, but one can do so at somewhat better ranges than the reverse, then the one with the slightly better lethal range is marginally better, but tactically each is roughly equal to the other.

These meanings are obvious to everyone I should think, and are commonly discussed by armor grogs and believers in the importance of tech specs on this board, among other places. Tactically, such factors often matter at the CM scale - small numbers, near even odds, etc. The whole point of the entire argument has been that CM players, who are inclined to extrapolate from what they see at that scale to imagined war wide effects, are seeing an illusion. Because up at the operational, let alone the strategic level, such tactical effects of the minor grog-spec differences between one tank and another, had little effect on the outcome of the war.

Partially because the differences between whole fleet mixes were not as extreme as some think (an illusion created by "averaging up", aka comparing the top of distribution A to the middle of . Partly because other factors not detectable at the CM level in artificially even fights were more important - doctrine, operational handling, overall numbers, logistical superiority, etc. And because the effects of tactical differences for one arm out of all are damped by adaptation and effects of other arms, the higher you go up the organizational charts and the longer you look in time. I've explained it all at great length, but since you still at this late date don't seem to have a clear idea even of the subject under discussion, I thought I'd recapitulate it. I can hardly say "briefly".

And now the prosecution rests its case. I feel little remains to be gained in propounding the whole argument to you. With your comment "I hesitate to admit anything Allied was better than anything German", I think there is little point in continuing as though a rational argument were in progress. In history, prejudice is dishonesty, said Lord Acton.

[Wreck]

Great thesis, Jason.

It did leave me wondering a few things, pretty much unrelated to the argument, but still, questions which I have not run across the answers to elsewhere.

Regarding the issue of total economic mobilization wrt armor: I agree that the Germans got it wrong. And I agree that the Allies got it right; however, I am wondering if they got it right for the "right" reason. Which is, following your analysis, that "quantity has a quality all its own". In other words, was there a planner (or set thereof) within each of the respective Allied nations, who consciously weighed the choices of "lots of what we can make now" vs "less of what we can make later"?

It seems to me that at least in the case of the Soviets, that the decision hardly merits the label. The "choice" to channel all resources into production of T-34 was more like a necessity. And for that matter, at the time the decision (such as it was) would have been called for (in '41), the T-34 was armor-grog superior anyway.

In the case of the Americans and British, though, I know much less. The decision to go with the M4 must have been made in '42 or perhaps '41. But in 41, certainly, and even '42 (before meeting Tigers at Kasserine), the M4 was superior to or equal to any German tank. How was the decision made?

Is it possible that the Allies were playing, in essense, the same "game" as the Germans? That being: wait until you have the superior armor-grog design, and only *then* go into all-out production?