Poor German Armor quality in 1944-45?

[treadhead2004]

Recently, I've been reading the work of Robert Livingston and Lorrin Bird as well as the information of Valeriy Potapov's web site "http://www.battlefield.ru/". These people talk of declining German armor quality towards the end of World War 2 due to chemical shortage and a more difficult armor production method called quenching. The Bovington tank museum in England also contains a rather large 260 page BIOS called "GERMAN TANK ARMOR" that may chronical these problems although I haven't acquired any of its pages. There is also evidence acquired from US testing at Isigny as well as British and Russian testing that show glacis armor on the Panther and Tiger cracked due to poor quality.

I have yet to see this mentioned or accounted for in a game however. Is there justification for not using data such as this or is it still under investigation? Does anyone know if CM uses this data in accounting for armor values on late war German armor?

Has anyone found anything to the contrary of this data as all I've seen is evidence to support the claim of poor late war German armor quality.

[scharfschutze]

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=47207&messageid=1078050784

[MikeyD]

One indication of declining quality is the late PzIV and Panther having to do without a power turret traverse. Even their paint jobs seem to go down hill, resorting to using the red primer basecoat as one of the camou colors and leaving the vehicle interiors red primer instead of white. I do seem to recall something about late war German armor being more brittle due to a shortage-mandated change in steel composition, though I can't recall the specifics.

[Pzman]

This is modeled in CM in some form or another. The Panther VG and VG Late for example have frequent flaws in the upper hull. (85% Armor quality) I'm not sure about other tanks, but I think many if not all late war German tanks suffer from poorer armor in late 1944-1945. The above stats are found in the unit stats in CM.

[stikkypixie]

Originally posted by treadhead2004:

Recently, I've been reading the work of Robert Livingston and Lorrin Bird as well as the information of Valeriy Potapov's web site "http://www.battlefield.ru/". These people talk of declining German armor quality towards the end of World War 2 due to chemical shortage and a more difficult armor production method called quenching. The Bovington tank museum in England also contains a rather large 260 page BIOS called "GERMAN TANK ARMOR" that may chronical these problems although I haven't acquired any of its pages. There is also evidence acquired from US testing at Isigny as well as British and Russian testing that show glacis armor on the Panther and Tiger cracked due to poor quality.

I have yet to see this mentioned or accounted for in a game however. Is there justification for not using data such as this or is it still under investigation? Does anyone know if CM uses this data in accounting for armor values on late war German armor?

Has anyone found anything to the contrary of this data as all I've seen is evidence to support the claim of poor late war German armor quality.

I don't know what data CM uses, but the poorer quality of the armour of german late war tanks is implemented. Just buy a Panzer V late, select it and push enter (the info screen). You should see something being mentioned about armour quality (read the text).

[treadhead2004]

Thank you for the link scharfschutze. There is a lot of interesting information in there about metellurgy as well as the original topic of Russian propaganda related to the TigerII test and its armor deficiencies. The other information related to armor production and the elements utilized seems to explain a good reason for poor quality late in the war under more stressful conditions. I had considered the propaganda option myself and find it very plausible.

Here is the problem with taking the propaganda (Russian, US, or Britain) option at a whole value though. While there is information pointing to these armor flaws, there still seems to be nothing published pointing to something, for example, German Lot Testing, that proves there were no armor production problems. Instead of finding this published data, much of what is shown to indicate flaws is explained away as either propaganda, or the result of inaccurate testing.

While these are believable theories, they still remain theoretical with the bulk of the visual and written proof pointing to an industry incapable of producing good armor quality at the level it had early in the war.

If this is true, I'm happy to know CM has it modeled in the game and is keeping with their high level of accuracy to the best of their knowledge.

[ March 11, 2004, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: treadhead2004 ]

[rexford]

The BIOS report indicates that alloy shortages in Germany lead to an alternative timed quench system. Alloys allow one to get away with small mistakes without compromising the quality of the armor, but the timed quench system was supposed to make up for alloys with precisely timed dunk and dry procedures.

A plate would be dunked for so many seconds, then pulled out for so many seconds, then the whole thing again. A few seconds too long or too short and something may go wrong.

BIOS indicates that with timed quench the Germans were able to retain the penetration resistance of their plates with reduced alloys, and in most cases the impact toughness would be good.

According to BIOS:

German testing of 80mm plates took place with uncapped 50mm rounds, which may have shattered. Anyway, an 80mm plate would be taken out and fired upon with 50mm uncapped Pzgr 39, and if it failed (allowed for a crack to go completely through the plate) another plate was tested. If that plate passed the lot passed the first stage.

Then a plate was hit with 75mm rounds that completely penetrated and the hole had to be free of signs of brittleness.

Could bad plates pass such a testing process?

At Isigny, two of three Panther glacis cracked after a few hits.

British and American firing tests against other captured Panthers show signs of weld failures (alloys in welds were reduced during early 1944), and glacis plate cracking. Interestingly enough, the lower front hull nose plate on the Panther almost never cracks after all sorts of hits.

Our theory is that the size of the Panther glacis plates made it extremely sensitive to small errors in the timed quench process, which could occur due to bombing, inexperienced workers, etc. And the Panther front nose armor was smaller and less susceptible to boo-boo's.

It should be noted that some JagdPanther glacis plates were measured at 220 Brinell Hardness, which may have been an attempt to reduce cracking tendencies through reduced hardness. There aren't many firing tests against the Jagdpanther glacis so one cannot really say much about the cracking tendency.

During British firing tests a glancing hit on the Panther turret side that rebounded away caused a large square area to crack.

Now, American metallurgical tests of Panther and Tiger armor show very low Charpy V-Notch impact test results. According to post-WW II American armor acceptance curves many Panther and Tiger armor plates would have been rejected. But Tiger armor was not really mass-produced, and probably had more alloys than the mass production Panther glacis armor, and combat in Russia showed that Tigers could take all sorts of punishment from Russian tanks and guns without having the armor break up.

So I would guess that Tigers tended to have good quality armor, and the British say that an occasional Tiger plate was bad but most was good stuff. And the Panther glacis tended to be brittle on a certain percentage of tanks which increased as the alloy situation got worse.

[rexford]

I would add that American tests show that U.S. 90mm APCBC and British 17 pdr APCBC would not penetrate a Panther glacis that was not cracked, even at extremely short range.

So the penetration resistance of the plate was good against 90mm and 76.2mm hits, but if it cracked a follow up hit near or on the crack could result in a penetration.

And the tremendous impact from a 122mm or 152mm hit on a brittle glacis plate could result in a complete penetration of previously uncracked Panther glacis armor.

[rexford]

American armor started out very poor, the chemical compositions could result in a crystalline brittle structure at design hardnesses. The quality control and quench procedures were also not conducive to good quality plate.

Starting October 1943, American armor makers HAD to apply improved quality control procedures and greatly improved quench processes, which is why Shermans with 47 degree glacis armor are much better than the Shermans with 56 degree glacis plates.

In addition, the 56 degree Shermans often used multi-piece glacis armor with lots of weld lines that provided weak areas for hits, and the pieces often included cast armor which would be quite inferior to rolled when 50.8mm castings were hit by German 75mm APCBC.

American armor got better as the war progressed, German armor may have had an increased probability of being less than optimum.