More On German Armor Quality

[rexford]

The following summary was e-mailed to me by Nathan Okun:

"The Naval Technical Mission In Europe (NavTecMisEu) made several reports of Krupp armor and projectiles, including both Navy and Army

materièl. In 1944, Krupp changed their specs for tank armor (naval armor was not longer being made) and made lower-alloy armor with reduced tolerances--Krupp never succeeded in making such armor resist as well as U.S. and British lower-alloy tank armors successfully developed during WWII."

An attempt is being made to obtain the abovementioned report.

Interesting coincidence that armor specs and tolerances are reported to change during 1944, the same year the Russians note a change in

Panther glacis resistance to 122mm sharp nose AP.

The British BIOS report, which analyzed the German armor industry during the war, came to the conclusion that German armor quality was maintained even when alloys were in short supply and quenching processes had to be radically changed, resulting in greater sensitivity to slight errors in time of quench.

[Jeff Duquette]

I am not sure why you have decided to drag this thread from the Tankers Group to CMBO?

My personal opinion on the matter is it would be hard to imagine German armor quality not degrading during the war. However, -- for me at least - the use of firing trials to support an armor quality degradation argument needs to be tempered with a knowledge of what sort of condition target panzers were in prior to commencing with test firing.

German Panthers in Normandy would have -- in general -- seen a fair bit of combat related abuse during the campaign. By the time of the Isigny tests most of the Panzer Divisions from which the Isigny test Panthers might have been drawn would have been present in Normandy for two to three months of hard campaigning. Two to three months of relatively intense tank combat. I suppose it is even conceivable that some panzer division's vehicles may even have seen combat in Russia prior to being transported to France. As I know you are aware tanks are often knocked out during combat, and subsequently recovered and repaired. Penetration holes are plugged, welded, ground down and repainted and the vehicles are pushed back into combat. By most accounts the German Army was particularly adapt at recovering and getting their KO'd tanks back into combat.

On the other hand there is no recorded assessment of the pre-test condition of the three target Panthers within the Aug 30 Isigny report. There is therefore no way of knowing what condition the target Panthers armor was in. Had the test Panthers frontal armor been impacted or even penetrated one or even multiple times during previous combat? Had any of the vehicles brewed-up during combat? A popular motivation for abandoning Panzers to the Allies was a brew-up.

It has been said that the ordnance folks\tank experts proctoring the Isigny tests would have known better than to have used brewed-up vehicles. Yet the Robba Road Tiger-I was subjected to some fairly serious abuse by "tank experts" prior to being subjected to firing trials. Based upon the recorded evidence, it is purely speculation to imply that the three Isigny Panthers were in pristine condition at the time of the firing trials. Considering what has been recorded for posterity within the Isigny Documentation, it is also pure speculation to imply that all 1944+ Panther Armor was at some arbitrary 85% quality factor.

Why exactly 85%? Why not 75% or 95%? If indeed armor quality was degrading why a constant quality variation? Why not a range…75% to 100%? If you haven't parted with BIOS you should be aware that there was in fact more than one manufacturer producing armor plate for AFV's. Is it possible that quality of plate between differing manufacturers varied? Consult BIOS for the answer.