Tank losses

[mav1]

I have found figures from Col Gen Krivosheyev on tank losses on the eastern front.

German losses 48,000

Soviet losses 96,500

So do you think their accurate?

[Sergei]

That is quoted by Glantz too. Probably accurate, since Red Army sources give good information on own losses. And for German side you only have to know how many tanks Germans had on the Eastern Front, all were lost.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[MikeyD]

Over on the CMAK side there's a thread discussing U.S. tank losses vs Panthers in Europe. Some of the posts seem MUCH more upbeat than I'd expect, considering anecdotes I've read about tank fighting on the Western Front. I guess a Pentagon statistician's 'positive trend' might still be a 'bloody mess' to the guys in the turrets.

I wonder how the Eastern Front statiscs above defines a 'loss'. Theoretically a tank could be knocked out and rebuilt four times over. Considering the vast numbers of crappy Russian light tanks I can imagine a fair proportion of the Soviet losses aren't necessarily 'combat' related. More likely blown transmissions, cracked engine blocks, etc. A dead tank is a dead tank.

[Sergei]

The statistic includes the 20 thousand tank force that Soviets lost in 1941. This is made even more significant by the fact that all this happened within six months. Losses in 1943 and 1944 were greater, but that happened over the whole year. By then the industries were also more than replacing the losses.

It might be of interest to put up the losses per year (and percentage of tank force for that period):

1941 20,500 (72.7%)

1942 15,100 (42.3%)

1943 23,500 (49.1%)

1944 23,700 (40.1%)

1945 13,700 (28%)

Total 96,500 (73.3%)

[Zalgiris 1410]

Just taking a look at Sergei's figures above, especially for 43. While I'm no expert at counting tanks or anything, however I think that I can say that the majority ie; well in excess of 20 000, were lost from the beginning of the battle of Kursk onwards. Again like for 41 that is a figure above 20 000 tanks in SIX Months!; but for 43 the overwhelming majority of these are of tanks with 4 man crews, unlike for 41!

I've read elsewhere in regards to this period (mid-late 43) as being the real crunch in the armoured war on the Eastern Front. The German Panzerwaffe was overstrained and riden down mechanically, resaulting in greater and increasingly greater percentages of AFVs having to spend time in the workshops. They were overtaxing the fleet of 'runners' grappling with the overwhelming numbers of Russian AFVs constantly thrown against the Ostheer. They were replacing their losses with better quality Panzers over the period, but there were fewer of them and more importantly they were spending less time as 'runners' in the field.

The Russians were producing plenty of tanks to maintain their numerical advantage, but they were running out of 'trained' crews to man them to such an extent that they were increasing their inventory of unmanned AFVs 'in the park' as it were, so to speak rather than their real OoB armoured fighting force.

PS I do believe that the overall figures of total losses relates to both tanks and Assault Guns/TDs.