Tank vs. Tank PROGRAM?

April 5, 2001

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
I'm not familiar with the terrain in China, but if it is anything like Korea...

It's not. Korea is extremely rugged. By comparison, the parts of China where most of the fighting went on were flat or rolling hills. Good to fair as tank country. Tanks would have been useful. Tank warfare was just one of those things that the Japanese never got around to figuring out...like not dividing their fleets before going into battle.

Michael

April 5, 2001

Originally posted by PlankWithANailIn:
I was of the understanding that the T34 was built on top of an American designed chassis that was turned down by the American army due to it have complicated suspension or something.....Other Russian tanks designs were copied from the tanks of other nations, so perhaps what were looking at here is that the Russians knew a good tank when they saw one but didn't have the engineering ability at the beginning of the war to design their own tanks from scratch.

Your use of the word "copied" here is much too free. They did indeed purchase a couple examples of Christy-designed tanks and incorporated the principles of the suspension. The rest of the T-34 tank, i.e. about 95% of it, was entirely original.

I think one or two of their many pre-war designs were loosely based on some British Vickers designs.

But other than that, their tank designs were wholly original. Nothing in their KV series, and the IS series of tanks that grew out of them, that I know of was derived from a foreign design. None of their light tanks owed anything to foreign designs. There may be much to criticize in Soviet design and production, but a lack of originality is certainly not on the list.

Michael

[This message has been edited by Michael emrys (edited 04-04-2001).]

April 5, 2001

Agree with you on KV/IS series, but BT series was pretty much a direct copy of Christies M1931, with certain evolutionary changes as you went up the years. The T-34 is a greater evolutionary change yet, but is still very much based on Christies design, sloped front glacis with the big drivers hatch, forward mounted turret, etc.

T-37 and 38 series light tanks similarly based on a Vickers Carden-Loyd design, T-26 a direct copy of Vickers 6 ton tank, T-35 heavy based on Vickers independent.

CombinedArms · April 5, 2001

I'm glad several of you have enjoyed this post.

I've stayed out of it for a while to see what would turn up. Now might be a good time to draw a few conclusions and pose another question or two.

1. There seems to be a general consensus that the T-34 program was the best tank program of the war. Pretty much a no-brainer, it would seem.

2. No one has disagreed (or, on the other hand, agreed) with my suggestion that the Sherman was the second most successful tank program of the war. Does silence mean assent? If so, it seems to me a rather interesting conclusion, and a significant vindication for the much maligned Sherman. Did the winning sides win partly because of their successful tank programs, which in each case prioritized standardization and high volume? Or do we think the programs were successful BECAUSE these sides won?

3. I proposed the PzIV and Panther as #3&4. Both were very good tanks for their times, though the PzIV got long in the tooth. Again, no argument. Does that mean agreement? (BTW, I could see ranking the Panther ahead of PzIV--it's not a clear call). I didn't go on to #5, but that might be the PzIII for its impact early in the war. It's hard to rank the Tiger or KT very high because of limited production and mobility/reliability issues.

5. Obviously, the British had trouble coming up with a really successful tank program. General agreement there, it seems. My theory is that the problem was mainly doctrinal--they had this doctrine of light cruiser tanks and heavy (but undergunned) infantry support tanks that seemed logical to them early in the war but didn't work out too well on the battlefield. And they had trouble getting beyond it as the war developed. On the otherhand, if we listed the British Sherman Firefly as a separate program, it would have to rank pretty high--it was a better tank, and delivered sooner, than the Sherm76. Was it the most cost-effective tank the western Allies produced?

6. Could the Italians have produced a decent tank? It might have made a difference early in the war (and at that point, the bar for tank building was a lot lower.) Should/could they have licensed German tank designs and built them instead? Notably, there was no German/Italian lend-lease. The Germans never had enough equipment to share. So they kept having their flank turned by attacks through the positions of weaker allies (cf. Stalingrad, El Alamein). And the paratroop landings on D-Day survived in part because the local German infantry--some of them captured Russians in German uniform-- had only a few light and easily killed captured French tanks to support them--elite German armor units were well equiped, but they didn't have enough tanks to spread them around in numbers to support infantry units, and that really made them vulnerable.

7. Obviously, no adequate Japanese tank. Given their greater need for tanks and planes, and limited manufacturing capacity, perhaps what they really needed was to license and manufacture thousands of panzerfausts? Hitler proposed this to a Japanese diploma over dinner, according to Allied decripts, but nothing came of it.

8. It's worth noting that of the 6 major combatants who had their own tank programs (US, UK, USSR, Japan, Germany, Italy--I don't count France because they were knocked out so early), only 3 managed to produce really successful tank programs: US, USSR, Germany. This suggests to me just how rapid tank development was in WWII, and how iffy a proposition it was: a couple of bad decisions in 1940, '41 or '42 could leave you behind for the whole war.

9. Overall, the Allies benefited from greater cooperation and sharing of equipment and ideas. Arguably there could have been more sharing than there was between the Allies (e.g., what if the US had licensed and mass-produced the 17-pounder gun and installed it in many Sherms? What if the US or UK had adapted elements of the T-34 to their tanks), but it far exceeded what the Axis was doing. The USSR didn't really need US tanks, but it's lucky the US could produce enough Shermans for itself and England (as well as Poles, French & Canadians.)

10. The idea of a randomized "rarity" factor for quick battles sounds like an intriguing idea. It wouldn't rule out King Tigers completely, for example, but would prevent a player from buying Ubertanks exclusively for every battle. Is this somthing that should be requested for CM2? Could it even be patched into CMB0 or become an optional alternative to Fionn's rules of 75/76? Anyone want to try to work out those mechanics?

CombinedArms · April 5, 2001