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Panzer V against any US tank


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Geepers, 375 posts and counting. I'm surprised Steve hasn't locked us up and told us to start fresh. We have strayed rather far from the relative merits of Panther design. :) But on the topic of grand strategy, U.S. could've used its resources more constructively than going through the expensive process of reducing Brest as a 'show of resolve'. But what use would they have made of those redirected assets? They still had the west wall to their east and astondingly awful general Montgomery to their north. I don't know which impeded them more.

Oh now you started it. I was keeping my mouth shut regarding Monty in the general interest to be more open minded after my discussion with JonS and to not side track this anymore than it already has been. Now that has all been thrown to the wind. So at 1000 meters, would Monty's tough bulletproof teflon coating mean he could take on a Panther or not. LOL

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You nailed my meaning well. I don't assume perfect operations, but I think it could have been done better and with even more aggression. This would of course run against Western idea of saving men's lives. Someone like Zhukov (or even worse example of skilled insensitive brute, Konev) would have tried it without batting an eye.

Why are you picking on Konev? It's true by the casualty counts Zhukov wasn't quite the butcher that the historians have made him out to be, but Konev was a pretty skilled commander. The Lvov-Sandomirz campaign is pretty much a classic armored operation: deception, operational maneuver groups, river crossings on the fly, etc. etc.

And to keep to topic, I bet there aren't many people in the world who were more responsible for removing Panther tanks from the German inventory, than Konev. 1st Ukrainian Front overran a lot of territory and, as noted above, when the Wehrmacht retreated it left expensive panzers along the route.

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Agree, MikeyD, I think it was the mention of Montgomery! Whatever his relative merits as a commander he has an amazing ability to divert threads! In all those 375 posts I cannot remember if anyone mentioned this qoute form Bayerlin

"While the PzKpfw IV could still be used to advantage, the PzKpfw V [Panther] proved ill adapted to the terrain. The Sherman because of its maneuverability and height was good ... [the Panther was] poorly suited for hedgerow terrain because of its width. Long gun barrel and width of tank reduce maneuverability in village and forest fighting. It is very front-heavy and therefore quickly wears out the front final drives, made of low-grade steel. High silhouette. Very sensitive power-train requiring well-trained drivers. Weak side armor; tank top vulnerable to fighter-bombers. Fuel lines of porous material that allow gasoline fumes to escape into the tank interior causing a grave fire hazard. Absence of vision slits makes defense against close attack impossible."

It's from Wiki but suggests that the bulk of the Panther counted against it, when fighting in the maze confines of the Normandy bocage. Is any of this evidenced in CMBN? Also the Panther seems to have required skilled drivers to master the gear dependant turning circle and operation of the turret traverse at a time when the crews were inexperienced. The M4 seems to have been an forgiving beast to new crews (Russians commented on how easy it was to operate for new crews) the Panther needed highly skilled operators at a time when there were few. Forget using fog as an excuse, imagine how many green Panther drivers selected the wrong gear, in combat, and slewed the tank to expose a flank when they'd wanted to execute a minor course correction?

As I intimated in my previous post the Panther seems to have been designed primarily for one theatre, and by copied I meant the sloping armour, powerful gun and wide tracks of the T-34, which no German tank had had previously, so more accurately 'copied'. The problem for the Panther was that it arrived at just the wrong time, it's debut marking the start of an unrelenting offensive by its primary opponents. Here again, its over complicated design and bulk counted against it, the revisionist historians may like to pretend that there is a difference between being KO'd by enemy action and abandoned due to mechanical breakdown; that 'in repairs' does not mean destroyed, although the time frame, for that status, between 2-14 days of repair meant these machines were often destroyed or abandoned, as the Russians inconveniently smashed German defensive lines before they could be repaired/recovered.

Creating sandbox battles and declaring a winner is pointless, if it had any reflection in reality you could say the Elephant was the best tank, better gun, better armour, ****e powerpack, transmission and seviceability but hey, it can kill a T-34 at 3 klicks.

Panther, right tank at the wrong time is beaten by the Sherman so, so tank at the right time, beaten note, winning some pointless bestest tank prize, beaten, which is all that counts in war, to beat your opponent.

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Is any of this evidenced in CMBN?

The Panther is by far the best German tank in CMBN. The Tiger is good for dramatic contrast, but for serious battles you need the Panther. The PZKw IV is clearly obsolete in CMBN.

However, the Panther loses most of its advantages over the US tanks and TDs in even moderately rough terrain. It still will be relatively dangerous picking things off from good positions, but in moving through more cut up terrain and villages, it becomes just another target (like any tank) -- no worse, but not much better either.

This at least seems historical, if not very exciting. For excitement I prefer the Sherman or the Tiger or the M10 or even the STGIII.

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Is the barrel of a traversing tank gun blocked by obstructions, natural or man made, in CMBN? Why is the Panther better than the Tiger, whose side protection would be more of an advantage in the terrain, is it a weight issue?

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Is the barrel of a traversing tank gun blocked by obstructions, natural or man made, in CMBN? Why is the Panther better than the Tiger, whose side protection would be more of an advantage in the terrain, is it a weight issue?

It's more of a context Issue. Since the US didn't run into any Tigers in Normandy, they are more of a (almost literal?) hors d'oeuvre than a serious German tank in this particular game. Other than that, a Tiger might well be better than the Panther in bocage.

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Is the barrel of a traversing tank gun blocked by obstructions, natural or man made, in CMBN? Why is the Panther better than the Tiger, whose side protection would be more of an advantage in the terrain, is it a weight issue?

and if not how will we create a scenario to duplicate the scene in Kelly's Heroes?!!

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Um, nothing of any importance got out of France. It took a month and a half of attrition fighting to set it up - most that can be said - but the end result was as total a defeat as any ever inflicted. The US in particular outscored the Germans as soon as the fall of Cherbourg, and took only 3 additional weeks for the subsequent attrition fighting southward to breakout. The Germans were clobbered in the west. In the east they could at least boast inflicting outsized losses on the Russians, though still losing operationally from midwar on, but in the west they were simply trounced at every turn. You don't need to like this for it to be true.

Citing leaders that got away doesn't change that judgment, given their subsequent combat performance, the utterly delusional German strategic direction by this stage of the war, the complete absence of operational multipliers or expert handling of any kind, and the crazy inefficiencies of German military doctrine under the conditions they then faced. Brand new green infantry continued to fight with determination and tactical skill, best that can be said. Also, the Germans barely used their cadres for the westwall stand, wasting most of the new armor on fresh green formations instead of rebuilding existing division shells, and the armor formations notably underperformed the Heer infantry. A few vet formations transfered from other fronts (e.g. panzergrenadiers from Italy) fought well, most that can be said. By the time of the Bulge the old division numbers had been rebuilt, yes - and look how well that turned out. Another idiot's death-ride.

As for the statement that envelopment (not the right term BTW, when encirclement or pocketing is meant; the term "envelopment" merely requires going around one flank of an enemy) automatically means total destruction of the encircled force, tell it to the 101st Airborne.

As for the repeated nonsense about 3rd Armored's supposedly unbearable armor losses, um, first they were the highest of any US armor formation, even adjusted for total combat faced; the nearest other AD had losses 70% as high adjusted for overall combat. Second the division claimed 1475 enemy AFVs in the same period, not counting abandons or air or light armor; claims aren't kills but there is basically no evidence it didn't give as good as it got even in the narrow category of AFV kills. Third it took 76720 prisoners, 7.5 times their own total casualties and 5 times the personnel strength of the entire division, including every cook. Fourth the chances of a US tanker becoming a battle casualty were one fourth those of an infantryman. The losses within the US armor branch of service simply were not high by any objective standard drawn from WW II, any army, front, branch, or time period.

No, that wasn't because its equipment was superior - outside of artillery, it wasn't. It is because armies aren't equipment and wars are not even armies. Armies are large organizations mobilizing the resources of entire states, and wars are what is done with those armies. And factors on that level dominate military outcomes.

But anyone still under the delusion that German operational handling or performance was superior to allied in WW II, is misled by the first half of the war when the latter (a different set of allies) was singularly inept, and not by its second half. When, in case nobody noticed, most of the minds that ran the first half had already been sacked by the idiotic leadership, and the remaining best ones flitted in an out of office in often quite secondary roles, practically hamstrung.

German operational handling had its last master performance in southern Russian in early 1943, and even that was only recovering from being outplayed operationally over the previous six months. And for the whole remainder of the war, that operational direction, as well as the overall strategic direction, was god-awful. On every front. It is no exaggeration to say a reasonably intelligent boy of 12 could have done better. Fact.

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Good grief! All that fuss and sweat about how the allies had a "relatively slow rate of advance in the autumn of 1944", allowed too many to escape, never managed an encirclement etc. and the only thing you think they could have done that would have made any difference was charge harder at Falaise! Well, call me unimpressed.

I thought you might at least have something to back up your original statement. I had hoped you might have offered some learned insight. But no it comes down to the allies should have closed the Falaise pocket more completely.

Sheesh.

Sheesh indeed.

See posts above from me and Michael Emrys.

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Why are you picking on Konev? It's true by the casualty counts Zhukov wasn't quite the butcher that the historians have made him out to be, but Konev was a pretty skilled commander. The Lvov-Sandomirz campaign is pretty much a classic armored operation: deception, operational maneuver groups, river crossings on the fly, etc. etc.

And to keep to topic, I bet there aren't many people in the world who were more responsible for removing Panther tanks from the German inventory, than Konev. 1st Ukrainian Front overran a lot of territory and, as noted above, when the Wehrmacht retreated it left expensive panzers along the route.

I said skilled.

I don't pick on Konev based on that, just on his ability to throw men into battle disregarding their lives. This exceeded even ability of Zhukov or Rokossovski to do it.

He said it so himself.

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Got it from Max Hasting's book "Armageddon"

Hasting's has a total hardon for the Whermacht. Anything he writes about to do with WWII has to be read with that firmly in mind.

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going back to an older post:

A lot of Allied tankers did not want to continue fighting in their Shermans (m4s) never heard that from any Panther crews (names like "Tommycooker" The British took to calling it the "Ronson", the cigarette lighter which had the slogan "Lights up the first time, every time!"

I don't know if you'd say Sherman got a bum rap on this, but Panther and PzIV were as likely to light-up as soon as penetrated, too. That was one of the initial German ctiticisms of Panther after its early combat actions. And nothing was really done to mitigate the problem. Panther did have the small advantage of being more-or-less impenetrable from the front, though. Fewer actual penetrations equalled fewer fiery deaths. I suppose the tanks most likely to take multiple penetrations without catching fire would be Churchill. Enclosed ammo lockers and all that internal volume that made striking a stowed round less likely. Oh, M10 TD was diesel powered, which may have made instant ingition less likely too.

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MengJiao:

The PZKw IV is clearly obsolete in CMBN.

Vark as already covered this, but I wanted to reiterate that German tank commanders in Normandy were saying that the Pz.IV was a better choice in that environment.

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When we think of smart German operational direction in WW II, we think not of anything in the late war west, but of (1) Poland, (2) France, (3) Barbarossa, (4) 1942 summer early (then it goes off the rails), and (5) recovery in AG South in the early winter of 1943. To a lesser extent, maybe the 1943 defensive fighting in the south, as at least dealing with a collapsing situation with some professionalism. Maybe also a couple of defensive successes, in Italy (mostly terrain, Allied own-goals, and a secondary theater, but solid) and the stand at the westwall (mostly Allied logistic limits, and includes several misplays by the Germans, but still stalls them out).

Now what I'd like people to notice is the alignment between that list and the following strictly limited military resumes -

Bock

AG North Poland

AG B (North) France

AG Center Barbarossa

fired for failing to take Moscow

AG South summer 1942 (through July)

fired for opposing southwest turn to Rostov

Rundstadt

AG South Poland

AG A France (main force), after supporting Manstein plan

AG South Barbarossa

fired over withdrawal from Rostov

March 1942 sent to France, essentially benched

correct about operational approach in west, not given authority to implement

fired for saying "make peace, you idiots" after D-Day succeeded

reinstated, led West Wall stand

opposed Bulge attempt, ignored

fired for urging peace again in March 45

Manstein

AG South chief of staff Poland

planned France, then put in charge of one infantry corps (infighting)

One panzer corps AG North Barbarossa, then 11th Army Crimea

AG South after Stalingrad

correct about breakout, ignored; retrieves situation

fired March 1944 for correctly advocating flexible defense.

Halder

planned Poland

planned Barbarossa (with Paulus as staff)

fired in September 1942 for (1) correctly estimating Russian strength,

(2) correctly opposing diversion of 11th Army forces from AG South after Crimea,

(3) correctly opposing overextension into the Caucasus

Guderian

built panzer arm from nothing

panzer corps in Poland

decisive panzer corps in France

most important panzer army in Barbarossa

fired over a small tactical withdrawal (and blame-games with Kluge)

on the bench until April 43, then Inspector w/out operational command

right about Kursk but ignored

reinstated July 44 but largely political tasks

dismissed again March 45 for realism over pocketed troops in east

When you have a handful of chess masters and you throw them all out like used tissue, why is anyone surprised that the rest of the operational direction of the war looks decidedly crappy?

While allied weaknesses also mattered for early war German successes, the operational skill shown in German direction of the "big chess" of the whole war is readily explained by noticing that they let Kasporov play the opening, then shoved him aside to let your uncle Guido play like a fish for the rest of the game.

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I've had Panthers knocked out at all sorts of ranges but I'd say most of the time it's to M10's although the Sherman with 76mm will light them up every now and then. If possible I do try to avoid taking them on frontally and at long range but a Panther in a denial position in commanding terrain is a tough egg to crack. Better hope you have smoke. :)

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I think we have to agree to disagree, since IMHO those escaped troops were effectively used to rebuild decently effective combat units.

You mean the ones that were destroyed after another failed offensive that winter and were pushed aside in the following resumption of the advance?

The sad news from the Allied perspective is that a lot of the escapees were from the leadership cadre. They were able to reform their old units or to raise new ones. Without those leaders, the German army would have been in an even worse bind for the rest of the war.

Rebuilding an Army around a leadership cadre who ran away? Good plan that one. No wonder they melted with the snow.

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Really? So examination of the high total losses of M3 and M4 in 1943 after burning out indicate similar levels of brew up to PIV and Panther's? That the experience of losing so many M4's and M3's as total losses after burning out resulting in a push to AP shells with bursters for the American tank arm. Or the very real fact that the Royal Navy never used solid shot as the after armor effects were considered negligible. Every other Major WWII tank force chose AP shells with burster charges (German/ Soviet) because of the greater after armor effect and that partial penetrations would be more lethal than a solid shot penetration. As Jentz, Jarret, and Gordon Rottman state the AP shell had greater after armor effect resulting in greater chance of total destruction of AFV

The M3s and early M4s lacked armoured bins for ammunition, which explains the high burnup rate. On top of that the British had a poor ammunition resupply setup for units in combat zones (used trucks) which meant if the area was hot the ammo did not show up. This meant many units carried extra ammunition within the tanks, which also made things bad.

Case in point- the interior of the Grant tank:

poorammosetup.jpg

Notice the exposed ammunition.

Poor ammunition protection was the root cause of Allied burn ups in the desert, not some mythical catastrophic explosion from a 10 gram burster charge.

That'd be No.2 ORS, Report No.17, Analysis of German Tank Casualties in France, 6 June to 31 August 1944, unless I miss my mark.

That's the one dealing with the examination of Panzers in the Mortain area right? The ones on the road stretch contacted by US 2nd armoured division that used AP shells with burster charges?

If I remember it correctly it showed how about half of losses were due to crew's abandoning their veh and/or destroying them to prevent capture.

So 50% lost to their own crews after successful allied envelopment vurses circa 50% of British Sherman being total losses after penetrating hits.

Nope, that'd be No.2 ORS, Report No.3 Investigation of an Air Attack on a German Column near La Baleine, or Report No.4 Air Attacks on Enemy Tanks and Motor Transport in the Mortain Area, August 1944

Thanks JonS, yes No.2 ORS, Report No.17, Analysis of German Tank Casualties in France, 6 June to 31 August 1944 was the report I was refering to. German burnup rates are put at 80% for the Tiger, 63% for the Panther, and 80% for the Mark IV. Now the Tiger and Mark IV sample is pretty small (only like 4 tigers and less than 10 Mark IVs examined), however the Panther size was pretty large, above 60 vehicles which constituted some 10% of all Panthers committed to the battle. A 63% burn up rate is comparable to dry storage Sherman burn up rates which range from 60-80%. Though the Mark IV sample is pretty small, the burn up rate is also consistent with the Sherman. This report was focused on the British sector where unfuzed rounds were exclusively used, yet we see similar burnout rates compared to British tanks being hit with fuzed rounds.

I don't know if you'd say Sherman got a bum rap on this, but Panther and PzIV were as likely to light-up as soon as penetrated, too. That was one of the initial German ctiticisms of Panther after its early combat actions. And nothing was really done to mitigate the problem. Panther did have the small advantage of being more-or-less impenetrable from the front, though. Fewer actual penetrations equalled fewer fiery deaths. I suppose the tanks most likely to take multiple penetrations without catching fire would be Churchill. Enclosed ammo lockers and all that internal volume that made striking a stowed round less likely. Oh, M10 TD was diesel powered, which may have made instant ingition less likely too.

Mikey seems to feel the same as well.

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I don't think having the Panthers ammo storage helped her burnout rate, given a considerable number of rounds were stored in side bins or between the driver and radio operator, in the forward hull. The former position was vulnerable because most allied guns could only hope to KO a Panther with a side shot, the later because a shell deflected by the bottom of the mantlet would have a good chance of hitting there.

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Rebuilding an Army around a leadership cadre who ran away? Good plan that one. No wonder they melted with the snow.

Not that those unit cadres escaping from Falaise pocket formed fighting units who destroyed and annihilated one of the elite divisions on Allied side, no sir.

Could not happen.

I hope you understand that 1st AB Division was never able to return to fighting.

"The battle of Arnhem exacted a heavy toll on the 1st Airborne Division from which it would never recover. Three quarters of the unit were missing when it returned to England, including two of the three brigade commanders, eight of the nine battalion commanders and 26 of the 30 infantry company commanders."

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They were good enough to frustrate Market-Garden. But then, it wasn't snowing yet, eh?

Michael

Yah think? General Gavin is what frustrated Market Garden.

XXX Corps advanced 87 km in 3 days, where they were held up by the uncaptured bridge at Nijmegen, rather than a Bridge to Far it was more like One Bridge Short.

A long and tenuous line of supply, "1 tank wide", could not be severed by the Germans and it took armour to destroy the lightly armed paratroopers in Arnhem / Oosterbeek, even then not. Trapped against the Rhine, out of ammo and with no real means to defend against armour, 20% of the British 1 Para Div were able to withdraw across the almost impassable obstacle.

If 10% of the German heavy armoured divisions escaping Falaise with none of their heavy equipment is a huge cock up what is this then?

Despite the perceived failure of the operation the German showing on the defence during Market Garden was pretty poor.

Not that those unit cadres escaping from Falaise pocket formed fighting units who destroyed and annihilated one of the elite divisions on Allied side, no sir.

Armour Plate v Dennison Smocks , 75mm HV Guns v Gammon Bombs and PIATs and as stated above 20% of them got away and they lost most of Holland.

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