German Armour development during WWII

[Stalins Organ]

Thanks for the info Jason - but perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough.

You couldn't use the 90mm AA piece as AT, because it did not have the targeting equipment erquired!

Sure you could take the tube out and put it in a TD - a gun is a gun after all - but you have to equip it with appropriate sights.

so simply taking all the 90's from where-ever & giving them to the infantry would have had no effect, because they couldn't shoot at tanks properly in the first place!

[ 05-01-2001: Message edited by: Mike the bike ]

[JasonC]

"The Marder wasn't a planned vehicle anyway, there was no production, just conversion."

Not true. Of 2600 marder made, only a few hundred were conversions from existing vehicles. Most of them were made instead of tanks on the same chassis. In particular, the Pz II and Pz38 production lines turned out new marder IIs and IIIs respectively, instead of Pz IIs and Pz38s, production of which was halted when the switch to Marders was made.

"we still don't have sufficient detail...what would happen if the opponents has heavy tanks and you don't"

Not true. The Russians had essentially no heavies at Kursk, facing 90 Elephant, ~100 Tiger I, and 200 Panther in T-34/76s. They won rather decisively. It is also among the most studied passages in the entire war. The Allies had no heavies in Normandy, facing 125 Tiger and 650 Panther. They won rather decisively. Again one of the most studied passages of the war. The Germans had about as many heavies in the Bulge, with the Tigers the King variety this time. Again the Allies won rather decisively, without any heavies of their own. Again one of the most studied passages of the war.

The heavies certainly proved useful on each of those occasions, but never decisive. They were operationally defeated by superior numbers of vanilla medium tanks. The processes were attrition, stripping other supporting arms from the heavies, fights in multiple directions, isolation and fuel problems, breakdowns. The ascendency heavier tanks did possess on a tactical scale, and especially one on one, simply did not extend to the operational scale, in a large enough battle and against even moderately superior overall odds.

Incidentally, I agree with the previous poster that the Germans would have been better off concentrating on the StuG and the Pz IV, but for a different reason. They should have gone to war mobilization sooner. And the additional "taughtness" that would have created in the economy, would have precluded large, new, additional engineering projects and new weapon systems, with no raw material streams planned for their use in their proportions, etc.

The timing is easy to see in hindsight but harder in practice. The first occasion it should have been possible is the begining of 1941, when the decision was made to attack Russia. Perhaps it could only be planned then, and not implimented until the summer and the actual invasion - otherwise surprise might have been lost.

Now, the problem is at that time they had a few short 75 StuG, many 50mm Pz III and those short 50s, and short 75 Pz IVs. And these tanks had only 30mm armor. They were not yet the types sufficient to mass produce, and would have required the same upgrading as later. It is an open question how easy that might have been, if the economic mobilization had already been ordered. I think they probably could still have done it, though. The managed the switch to long 75s and heavier armor with the lines still in operation, after all.

The actual economic mobilization was not ordered until 18 months after the invasion. It rapidly produced a 2-2.5 increase in AFV production rates in the first year, and despite heavy bombing an increase to ~6.5 times the initial level a year and a half after that.

If you shift those production increases one

year to the left, earlier, and plateau the last (1944) level, then you get a lot more tanks overall. And you get them sooner, where they make more of a difference. In return, the types would probably not have included more than limited runs of Tigers and Panthers - perhaps akin to the later war runs of Tiger IIs and Jadgpanthers, from after mobilization.

The overall result would have been ~7000 fewer heavier tanks, most of them in 1944 and some in 1943. In return, there would have been more like 25000 additional StuGs and Pz IVs (the 7K heavies not built, plus the difference between 1 year at pre-mobilization output, and 1 year at the 1944 rate).

In 1942 there would have been several thousand, ~5000, more StuGs and Pz IVs, perhaps enough to hold Stalingrad flanks, perhaps not. In 1943 there would have been a very large number, ~20000, StuGs and Pz IVs, of varieties equal to T-34s in effectiveness. The production rate of these types would have matched the T-34. The fleet sizes would have been much closer to even, or outright even, instead of a large factor favor the Russians. The Germans would have been out ~2000 heavies in return. The likely result would have been a stabilized front in 1943, with most of the Ukraine still in German hands.

The adage includes "first-est". The true trade off that was involved in the heavy tank program, was time. They were developed during the delay between full-scale war with Russia and economic mobilization. By delaying, the Germans had more development time, and produced two excellent tanks. But these were not decisive operationally. First-est could have been.

Of course, the Germans avoided early mobilization for entirely different reasons, not *in order* to have development time for heavier tanks. The latter was a byproduct. They did it to reduce strain on the population for political reasons, out of excessive optimism driven by irrational or politically inspired contempt for the Russians, to avoid centralizing effective power in the hands of someone like Speer, etc.

But it was the real trade-off. Mobilizing earlier and making more, but less capable AFVs would have increased their chances in the overall war. Mobilizing later gave them later, higher tech designs, but also a crushing disparity in numbers. And to cope with the latter, they had to use every available chassis type, rendering the impact of better heavies marginal, since they were a small portion of the force.

One man's opinions. I've had my say on this stuff, though, so I will let others go over their own ideas. I think it was a useful discussion.

[JasonC]

"it did not have the targeting equipment erquired!"

Sights are easily supplied; it is a trivial issue. They were being made for Jacksons, so obviously they could have been made for the AA guns.

[Stalins Organ]

Sights were not "easily supplied" - they have to be designed and made for an already crowded gun carriage.

They are "easily" made for the M36's because the gun is removed from teh carriage and placed into a different mount that already has provision for them.