Could the Russians have built a Tiger?

Could the Russians have built a tank as good as a Tiger or a Panther?

Was their steel as good quality as German steel and were their industrial processes as good as the Germans? I know that they had more manufacturing capacity, that is moot.

Could they have equaled German tech?

 

This could cause a small debate!

Define "as good as a Tiger"

Simply giving the KV1 a better gun would have achieved this, IMO.
The IS2 is (arguably) 'as good as a Tiger'
The IS3 is unquestionably better, but rather late.

 

Some say their steel was even better than the German, cause they could cope with slimmer armour then the Germies with the same effect. The trick is, I guess, that the russians figured out sloped armour way faster than the Germies did.

 

The Russians - by the time the Tiger appeared - lacked the optics, and they still had to use guns 'one step up' to get the same peentration ability. Later in the war, they could have manufactureda copy of the Tiger, but it wouldn't have made sense compared to the other Russian tank models.

As for sloped armour, the Russians didn't 'discover' these before the Germans, the Germans simply didn't use it to as large a degree (presumably because it would have made their tanks larger - besides, it wouldn't have saved any steel, the plates could have been thinner, but would need to be larger, resulting in the exact same mass).

The Russian armour quality was very unstable, ranging from good-quality steel to soft iron plates.

Christian

 

The Russians had the resources but from what I have read they needed to improve their steel making.

I know that the Russians made excellent optics when it came to AAA but didn't seem to quite catch up when applying it to armour.

 

And they would have had to actually make enough radios to install in their tanks...

 

I think it might be difficult to make stable good steel in makeshift factories rebuilt after evacuation of what could be evacuated. Sometimes they had to work without roof over their heads. Just imagine.....

But they managed some good constructions. IS2, IS3, T34/85. This is not products of primitive thinking. The conditions for production of very high quality details was not there. The qualified workers were scarce. Then, you are forced to make it crude and idiot-proof. That is not Tiger.
So - I´d say: they probably could have designed a fancy tank but they could not produce it and the conditions required other solutions.

 

Soviet specialists did tests to armor of German tanks. Reports on Panther, Tiger, King Tiger are either paraphrased or published in Russian periodicals like Tankomaster(Tank Skill) and M-Hobby magazines, as well publications on Armor, which are second to none for primary sources on Soviet effort in ww2.

Here is a quote from the report on Testing King Tiger's Armor in 1944 on Soviet Testing Grounds:
"Armor quality of <<TIGER B>>, compared to quality of armor of <<Tiger N>>, <<Panther>> and SP <<Ferdinand>> of first modifications, sharply declined. <<Tiger B>>'s armor developed cracks and fragmetations after initial individual hits. A series of hits (3-4 shells) armor develops large fragmentations and breakages." Tank Skill 6/1999

Guderian addressed this issue too late in the war in one of published reports - from what I recall now, similar findings.

David

 

My answer is simple: Why should they build Panther, if Panther was a copy of T-34? And why should they build "something like" Tiger if they had KV-21's and later IS-2's???

 

Building a tank is neither simple or quick.

Even shortcutting by copying someone elses design does not make it easy.

Both the Tiger and Panther were asked for in 39/40 if not earlier yet took a considerable time to go from Hitlers Directive number X to here are the keys to your new panzer Herr Hitler.

Frankly I am also not convinced of this Panther is a copy of the T-34 stuff, the designs and request for the new medium tank to replace the Mark IV go way back before the Germans encounted the T-34.

Also their are the factories and tooling machines to account for. Virtually all the Tigers were made at a specially designed factory which was set up as the test models were made.

So yes, the Russians could have copied a single Tiger as the technology was not beyond them, but it was not economical or prudent to try and produce 100 a month to send to the front lines as it would have meant a diversion of too much resources for what would have been a delayed result.

FNG

 

The Panther isn't a copy of the T-34. The VK 30.01 (D) was a copy of the T-34, but was rejected in favour of the Panther.

Christian

 

The main idea of building Panther was to gain a tank comparable with T-34. Just look at the turret profile: the only one in German tank equipmet in the first half of the war. Well, maybe it's not a complete copy, but T-34 was definitiveli its inspiration.

 

they did , it was the IS series

 

Another way of looking at rolled armor is to think of it as either soft or hard, depending on the production process used during manufacture at the foundry. US WWII armor was of the softer type, about 250 Brinnel Hardness (BHN), while most other nations preferred initially to make their tanks from harder steel. Drill bits for steel at this time were typically made from case-hardened high carbon steel, and they could cut through armor up to around 375 BHN. In comparison, the Russians used tank armor that was significantly tougher during the later half of the war, around 400-450 BHN, although BHN figures for the 1941 and 1942 manufactured KV tanks were much lower, about 250 BHN, which was about the same as the US at that same time.

German armor started the war very hard and then gradually lost its hardness as thickness and production quantities increased. German factories initially manufactured face-hardened armor for their early tanks, with a drill-resisting hardness that required very special drilling processes. They then stopped using face hardening and began to rely on a homogenous armor hardness of around 250-300 BHN, again, similar to US tank armor at that time. Late-war German armor deteriorated even further as armor thickness increased. British and US engineers measured the thick front plate of a Jagdpanther and it measured out to be around 200 BHN, and captured Hetzers in 1945 showed similar armor hardness. Other sources indicate that the Russians also measured the Ferdinand/Elefant armor in the low 200's after they captured a few in 1943.

I dunno, this could be all baloney


http://www.chars-francais.net/kithobbyist/m4fac1.htm


But it is an intersting read anyway

 

The German armour was generally quite hard, including the later stages of the war, because of the high contents of carbon. This made the armour more brittle, though. That is the main problem with armour, and everything in general - the harder it is, the more brittle it is too. The British armour for armoured cars was extremely hard, but was also so brittle that it would sometimes break spontaniously in the racks, because the weight was distributed wrong prior to being installed.

The Russian armoure quality was of a very varying quality, as post-war US trials showed, some armour plates being soft ron, and not steel at all and others being extremly hard (on the same vehicles). The weldings were also very crude (which can be seen on surviving vehicles).

Christian