The Tiger..Pointless to produce??

[MikeyD]

First saw action August 1942. To compare apples to apples you've got to compare tiger I to it's contemporaries. When did the Sherman first see action? Tiger looks like high-tech in comparison!

[KG_SSpoom]

Look what you started Thor

[YankeeDog]

Some interesting points brought up on this thread. Without repeating what's already been said too much, the Panther and the Tiger clearly have very different design concepts and to a certain extent you're comparing apples to oranges.

A few additional thoughts to add to the mix:

1. IMHO, the biggest weakness of the Tiger was the very high cost of production and maintainence. I'm not talking about breaking down here, but just simple wear and tear and things like fuel efficiency. This is not an aspect of Tank design that really plays a role in CM (other than in rarity and scenario design).

For example, one of my books somewhere mentions the fact that Tigers would wear out a set of tracks in one day of road travel. This made operational logistics more complicated for Tiger battalions - they had to be moved by rail if there was any distance involved. While rail transport is more efficient for any tank design (more fuel efficient, less wear and tear on the vehicle), Shermans, T-34s and even other German designs like PzIVs and Panthers could more easily travel long distances on their own power than the Tiger could.

Especially when you consider how short the Germans were of Natural resources from mid-war on, I think the fuel/spare parts hog Tiger was a considerable liability. IMHO, Germany simply could not have afforded to produce the Tiger as their main tank design. Even if they had managed to get enough Tigers out of the factories to give all the Panzer divisions the vehicles they needed (something Germany never succeeded in doing with lighter, cheaper designs anyway), The cost (in resources and man-hours) of keeping all of those Tigers in the field would have been difficult for the already strained German war machine to shoulder.

Cheers,

YD

[Andreas]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

First saw action August 1942. To compare apples to apples you've got to compare tiger I to it's contemporaries. When did the Sherman first see action? Tiger looks like high-tech in comparison!

A fairer comparison (looking at weight etc.) would probably be the KV1 - I also know which tank I would rather be in...

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Warmaker:

Good Lord, those are some crazy casualty figures!

As for standardization between the panzer designs, this site talks briefly about the E-series of panzers.

Technical Virtue: Prototypes and Adv. Designs of the Wehrmacht 1939-45: E-Series Panzers

Excerpt from Tank development commission on 23 January 1945.

“7. Developmental Vehicles

Oberst Holzhaur reports that the E-10 and the E-25 with rear mounted electric transmission should be continued if possible. The E-10 has already been stricken from development and supplanted by the 38D(Hetzer)……..

Herr von Heydekampf is of the opinion that the E-25 could fill the a void in the future in the weight class between the 38D and the Panther.”

No mention is made of the E-50/75 nor of the discontinued E-100 that was cancelled on Hitler’s orders in 1944. The above seems to indicate that the E-50 and E-75 designs had been quietly dropped in favour of the Panther ausf F, i.e. the latter receiving the HL 234 Motor (fuel injected) with 900hp in august 1945 in list compiled in 20 feb 1945. Or the eventual (date unknown) deployment of the Panther ausf F with a 8,8cm KwK 43 (Again no mention being made of the E-50/75 concepts/designs).

[KwK43 L/71]

I have a Tiger fetish and even I would have to say that in a cost benifit's analysis the Panther beats the Tiger everytime. However it was never the intention of the German High Command to make the Tiger common. It was expected that the Pz's and Panthers would do the brunt of the fighting while the Tigers were used to smash through tough defenses and get the assaults going.

Does anyone know what the hell we (the US) was thinking when we designed the Sherman? Did we have any concept of the threat posed by German tanks? I just find it strange that the US which always seemed to place more emphasis on men then material would take such a Russian view of it's tanks. Expecting to have to use 5 Shermans to engage one Panther and expecting to lose 3 to 4 of the Shermans in the process.

[LightningWar]

Does anyone know what the hell we (the US) was thinking when we designed the Sherman? Did we have any concept of the threat posed by German tanks? I just find it strange that the US which always seemed to place more emphasis on men then material would take such a Russian view of it's tanks. Expecting to have to use 5 Shermans to engage one Panther and expecting to lose 3 to 4 of the Shermans in the process.

Didnt the Sherman come out in like 1940-41?

They probably designed it to go up against a PZIV or T-34. But then they never did any upgrading to the design until the Germans started lighting them up by the dozens. I think the M-26 was probably the Tiger counter the Americans needed. But it showed up late and had mechanical issues.

Not even sure how much they pushed Tank design after the war. Didnt they still use the Sherman in Korea? And it performed rather well against the T-34s I believe.

[KwK43 L/71]

Even if it was designed in 40 or 41 they still should have seen the trend for larger more powerful guns and thicker armor. I question the intelligence of anyone who designs a combat vehicle to be mearly adequate verus contemporary opponents.

The Patton and the Sherman both saw action in Korea which makes me wonder even more, the tank wasn't good enough in WW2, what the hell were we doing still using it in Korea, it should have been replaced.

Maybe I'm being overcritical and my main point was the bizzareness of America's attitude towards her tankers in WW2. It just never ceases to amaze me how utterly craptacular our tanks were when we were capable of producing much better.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by KwK43 L/71:

Even if it was designed in 40 or 41 they still should have seen the trend for larger more powerful guns and thicker armor. I question the intelligence of anyone who designs a combat vehicle to be mearly adequate verus contemporary opponents.

The Patton and the Sherman both saw action in Korea which makes me wonder even more, the tank wasn't good enough in WW2, what the hell were we doing still using it in Korea, it should have been replaced.

Up graded Shermans did fine vs the upgraded T-34-85s in Korea.

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=000610

[Lumbergh]

Originally posted by KwK43 L/71:

Even if it was designed in 40 or 41 they still should have seen the trend for larger more powerful guns and thicker armor. I question the intelligence of anyone who designs a combat vehicle to be mearly adequate verus contemporary opponents.

The Patton and the Sherman both saw action in Korea which makes me wonder even more, the tank wasn't good enough in WW2, what the hell were we doing still using it in Korea, it should have been replaced.

Maybe I'm being overcritical and my main point was the bizzareness of America's attitude towards her tankers in WW2. It just never ceases to amaze me how utterly craptacular our tanks were when we were capable of producing much better.

No more Sherman-bashing!!

I would have thought that 2+ years of CMBO would have taught everyone that even ignoring the obvious operational and strategic advantages of the Sherman, tactically it was a pretty good design (for its time)!

Heck, they even do pretty well in CMBB.

[Determinant]

Originally posted by Lumbergh:

No more Sherman-bashing!!

I would have thought that 2+ years of CMBO would have taught everyone that even ignoring the obvious operational and strategic advantages of the Sherman, tactically it was a pretty good design (for its time)!

Heck, they even do pretty well in CMBB.

Amen to that! Weren't the IDF still using upgraded Shermans (105mm) in 1967? If longevity is any measure of design success then it's hats off to the Sherman; Centurion; T34; and T55.

Build shermans and T34s in their thousands and you'll win a world war; build big cats in their hundreds and you'll hang at Nuremburg...

[PJungnitsch]

Originally posted by Determinant:

There is no evidence I've seen that the Sherman was cheap or easy to build, the Germans actually produced more tanks compared to the size of their economy than the US did, as well as producing far more formidable ones.

What saved the Shermans (and the T-34's) was that the overall Allied economies and resources were much larger than the Axis, and this could make up for poor design decisions such as not upgunning the Sherman with the 90mm to give it a fighting chance against Panther and Tiger at reasonable combat ranges.

The Sherman was never meant to be the final chapter in US armour in WWII anyway, but its successors got derailed by departmental infighting, and its own development was stalled by various screw-ups and misconceptions.

[Makes The Jelly Judder]

I think most of the Shermans problems were caused by lack of experience. The USA simply were not fighting at the time of its initial design. Whats worse to my mind is the crap Brit tanks. I mean come on, the Brits knew that the German 75mm AT gun was common, so why the hell didn't they give the Cromwell the right amount of amour?

Look at the Germans, they upgraded most of their tanks so that they would have some protection against the most common deadly AT gun of the time. 80mm of armour seems to have been just the right amount to give the StuG an PzIV a fighting chance (especially at range).

Were the allies just pulling tank designs outa their arses? or was there actualy some "Design" process followed?

[Lumbergh]

I'd rather be in a Firefly than any other tank in the whole war, since

a) I'd be on the Western Front and thus not on the Eastern Front.

I'd be Commonwealth instead of German, so I'd be a lot less likely to ever run into enemy armor.

c) If I did run into armor (or I guess it would be armour), I'd have a really fantastic gun to kill it with.

d) Comfy seatcushions

e) French girls rock! Belorussian girls, erm, I've never met a Belorussian girl but maybe they rock too.

[Egbert]

Originally posted by Makes The Jelly Judder:

I think most of the Shermans problems were caused by lack of experience. The USA simply were not fighting at the time of its initial design. Whats worse to my mind is the crap Brit tanks. I mean come on, the Brits knew that the German 75mm AT gun was common, so why the hell didn't they give the Cromwell the right amount of amour?

Look at the Germans, they upgraded most of their tanks so that they would have some protection against the most common deadly AT gun of the time. 80mm of armour seems to have been just the right amount to give the StuG an PzIV a fighting chance (especially at range).

Were the allies just pulling tank designs outa their arses? or was there actualy some "Design" process followed?

Different strategic needs provide for different solutions.

U.S. had to ship their tanks further to get to the battlefield as well as ammo, parts and fuel. the biggest threat to western advances was in getting fuel to the tanks. (See Red Ball Express.)

Germans has less manufacturing capacity than U.S. and less raw resources. Thus less actual numbers of tanks, the bit about more tanks per is a red herring. The U.S. fielded more tanks in less time. My numbers ar not available right now but somebody can look 'em up.

U.S. and British doctrine was to control the air and thus tanks were for fighting alongside infantry (how many panzers were destroyed or thwarted trying to reach the beach at Normandy). German doctrine had Tanks for fighting against tanks. Kursk did not and would not occur on the western front.

Therefore German armor was superior in fighting tanks, if they could get to the western battlefield. They forgot, infantry is queen of the battlefield, not tanks. I think they learned the wrong lesson from Kasserine Pass and France '40.

[PJungnitsch]

Originally posted by Makes The Jelly Judder:I think most of the Shermans problems were caused by lack of experience. The USA simply were not fighting at the time of its initial design. Whats worse to my mind is the crap Brit tanks.

Agree in a way, although at the time of the Shermans introduction, it was a great tank, fully as good as the PZIV it was designed to compete with, especially considering the engine limitations forced on the designers. Unfortunately US tank development stayed still while German development was spurred on by the demands of the Eastern front.

A big problem was with the 'tanks don't fight tanks' idea, it simply took time for this theoretical concept to be proven wrong by experience in NW Europe.

British tank design, now that is a whole other story.

[Tigrii]

The Sherman wasn't meant to duel German tanks, it was designed as a breakthrough/infantry support tank. The tanks were supposed to be left to the specialized TDs, like the M10 and hellcat, with 76s. Later, they upgunned the Sherman to give it a decent gun when they realized that sometimes Shermans had to take on cats. Also, you could ship 2 Shermans in the same space as 1 cat, as well as the sherman being more mechanicaly reliable and faster, with a faster turret and better MGs. They got really nasty with 105s and Flamethrowers!

[K_Tiger]

There so many reasons to produce a Tank like the "Tiger".

1. Saved resources in Manpower, even Hitler was aware about this and ordered, due to the high losses of mens, all future tanks to have four man crews, but Guderian and other involved persons, did change his mind.

Nobody knows, how many men would be died, if insteed a tiger, two Pz.

IV had been built.

2 Not to mention the positive Moral effect for own troops and the negative for the ennemy.

3. Propaganda influence for the hole country "Wunderwaffe" ect.

If there where no pre war decission "there is no need for a heavy tank" or/and the decission 40/41 no research into weapons who couldn deployed in one year...dont need to mention no full war economic. How bad had looked the rest of the world, from the technology sight?

So sit down, relax and dont start again to compare "Shermans vs. "Panther" or why cant the great US.off.A build better Tanks than such punny, small countrys like the germs. It reminded me on flamewars between Ford and BMW, Mercedes drivers.... )

[K_Tiger]

Tiigri...

im not so sure about the effects of the faster turret from a sherman! Normaly, you dont need to turn the turret more than 90°. If the sherm hase a overall advantage from 4-6 sec. wen turning the turret in 360° there is only 1-1.25 sec advantage at 90°...so not so mutch, if you ask me.

I reed a lot...but never about accounts from german tankers who sayed "damn, we hade no chance because of the fast sherman turrets"...

And sorry to BTS...but the cross-country zipping out of the hip shooting gyro-übershermans are still a joke and such threads are the results...

*mean the CMBO Sherms*

Anyone can borrow me a shovel, for a deep dug in??

[ December 22, 2002, 06:27 PM: Message edited by: K_Tiger ]

[Lumbergh]

Originally posted by K_Tiger:

There so many reasons to produce a Tank like the "Tiger".

1. Saved resources in Manpower, even Hitler was aware about this and ordered, due to the high losses of mens, all future tanks to have four man crews, but Guderian and other involved persons, did change his mind.

Nobody knows, how many men would be died, if insteed a tiger, two Pz.

IV had been built.

2 Not to mention the positive Moral effect for own troops and the negative for the ennemy.

3. Propaganda influence for the hole country "Wunderwaffe" ect.

If there where no pre war decission "there is no need for a heavy tank" or/and the decission 40/41 no research into weapons who couldn deployed in one year...dont need to mention no full war economic. How bad had looked the rest of the world, from the technology sight?

So sit down, relax and dont start again to compare "Shermans vs. "Panther" or why cant the great US.off.A build better Tanks than such punny, small countrys like the germs. It reminded me on flamewars between Ford and BMW, Mercedes drivers.... )

Yeah, and as we like to say in the US:

"Scoreboard, biatch!"

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Lumbergh:

I'd be Commonwealth instead of German, so I'd be a lot less likely to ever run into enemy armor.

c) If I did run into armor (or I guess it would be armour), I'd have a really fantastic gun to kill it with.

The Commonwealth faced the Panzer Divs for most of Aug to July. To avoid Panzers in Normandy you'd be better off as a US Tanker.

C) Being able to kill the enemy is a bit different to being able to survive the encounter, you know Good Wood, Epsom, operations that had a lot of burning Ronson's at the end of them.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Lumbergh:

[Yeah, and as we like to say in the US:

"Scoreboard, biatch!"[/QB]

Dupuy research in comparing actual German losses versus USA losses during the Bulge and Italy have the Germans man for man inflicting more losses than the USA troops even when losing the battle.

[Lumbergh]

Mmm, excellent points. Still, the Firefly remains my favorite eggshell tank.

Ok, fine, I'd rather be a supply sargeant. Or a B-29 pilot. Ain't nobody touching me in one of those!

Also, does anyone have casualty rates available for US/Commonwealth tankers? Or German? It would be interesting to see if we really were worse off...

Edited since I saw your second post. Well, that's exactly when you would say "Scoreboard"--when you're playing hoops and someone does some fancy crossover hoo-doo and scores on you. But your team is still winning by 10 points.

Man-for-man the Germans had BETTER be doing more damage, since they had 400,000 troops facing 2+ million. And they were on the defensive in favorable terrain much of the time. But at the end of the day, everyone in Germany speaks English now, not the other way around.

[ December 22, 2002, 09:10 PM: Message edited by: Lumbergh ]

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Lumbergh:

[QB

Man-for-man the Germans had BETTER be doing more damage, since they had 400,000 troops facing 2+ million. And they were on the defensive in favorable terrain much of the time. But at the end of the day, everyone in Germany speaks English now, not the other way around. [/QB]

The idea that fighting on the defensive was the biggest contributor to the Germans “success” is a bit of a red herring argument since the Germans inflicted even more favourable kill ratios when they were on the attack, whether successful (41, 42, Russia) or in failed attacks such as the Ardennes and in Italy as Dupuy shows.

Defensive the stronger? Well there was this little publicised 4-year campaign that took place on Russian soil.

1941

German Losses 831,050

Russian Losses 4,473820

Ratio Soviet: German 5.38

1942

German 1,080,950

Russian 7,369,278

Ratio 6.82

1943

German 1,601,445

Russian 7,857,503

Ratio 4.91

1944

German 1,947,106

Russian 6,878,600

Ratio 3.53

Notice how its only in the latter two years when the Soviets are on the offensive do the casualties ratios start tilting back to the Soviets. If defensive fighting is the stronger, then the entire war in Russia is the biggest outlier the world has ever seen.

Bastogne, 21-26 December 44 German attacks incur a 277-casualty count per day. US average daily casualties despite being on the defensive are 341.

I don’t understand how having less men, firepower and airpower is conducive to the Germans inflicting greater casualties during Normandy.

The bocage due to short line of sight also forced the Germans to break their own defensive doctrine by putting more men on the front line and thereby spreading their fire support thin. The German Infantry officers and NCO did not like the firepower constricting nature of the bocage.

Bit of a throw away but since you're so fond of them. The French did not feel the need to learn after WWI, after all they "won". The WWI Commonwealth use of Set piece (Fire and manoeuvre) attacks and the German variant the stromtroop tactics where just fancy ways of getting you killed. The innovations had not really swung the war to a greater degree than the French tactics so why innovate? Hell the French were on the winning side even though there was that little incident of an army wide mutiny, the equivilent of fighting with one hand tied behind and still came out on type.

[ December 22, 2002, 10:05 PM: Message edited by: Bastables ]

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Tigrii:

Also, you could ship 2 Shermans in the same space as 1 cat, as well as the sherman being more mechanicaly reliable and faster, with a faster turret and better MGs. They got really nasty with 105s and Flamethrowers!

Panthers were faster cross country due to better suspension.]

As K'tiger alludes to the Sherman turret was not much faster than the Panther,

Sherman 15 sec 360 deg

Panther ausf D 60 sec 360 deg

Panther ausf A/G 15/17 sec 360 deg respectively

Plus it's more survivable and has a much better AP gun and greater accuracy.

Lack of Sherman level reliability did not stop the Germans marching through France/Austria/ Soviet Union nor the Soviet Union doing the same with their unreliable vehs.

Edited due to the fact that I for got that the new turret was not mounted until the ausf a

[ December 24, 2002, 06:06 AM: Message edited by: Bastables ]