German tanks too over designed

Lots of articles say the German tanks were too sophisticated and took more time and money than they should have. I think the over lapping road wheels were too complex. Could have saved on the reduced number of stations and it made road repairs much harder for inner wheels. The Germans loved the 38t easier and cheaper and faster to build. The number of variants is amazing from 20 mm armament to heavy anti tank guns and large caliber howitzers. I saw pics of the hetzer stretched for the 75 L70 and drawings to stretch it out more adding two more wheel stations looks insane.

 

They were unreliable, and very difficult to service. When 30% of your tanks are broken down, it doesn't really matter how good your gun and armor are.

 

@OpanaPointer recently posted this shot of what appears to be a 38t chassis lengthened by increasing the spacing between wheels and a carrying a long 88.




"Waffentrager 8.8cm PaK 43 L / 71 on tests in Kubinka 1946."

 

Well, if the Soviets made 120,000 T-34´s during the 1941-45 war I would say the Germans were in big trouble although the Red Army losses were big. The Germans did not make 120,000 Tigers, Panthers and Pz IV´s.

 

Yes my panther book says how the first production tanks broke down after a few hundred kilometers of operation. That they kept making changes and improvements but even after they got it down to several thousand km it still had a high break down rate.

Yeah saw that too in my encyclopedia of German tanks, like the one with the turret sides the rhinemetall Borsig can't find a picture of the back, found front and side but was it closed or open at the rear. Maybe blueprints database will have something
Didn't find anything on the database but finally found some multi view drawings online that answer my questions kewl

 

I also recall that in Kursk, where the Panthers were used for the first time, several engines caught fire. Don´t know if they found out why but later on I think the tanks were much more reliable except that as they did not get the minerals for the armour, a single shot could make the frontal armour break.

 

I just read about how the Germans took over a mine in some country because the mineral was needed for the production of armor. The British found out about it and sent mosquito bombers to destroy the mine the mission was a success with only one plane lost.

 

I saw a lecture on Youtube by author Rick Atkinson in which he said that we got 10 hours of use out of our Sherman tanks for every one hour of service, but the German panther tanks was the reverse...one hour of use for every ten hours of service!

 

Panther, Tiger and Co. were indeed overcomplicated: The reasons for this are too complex and numerous to reproduce in one post
One must take into account in the whole conception that it was completely impossible for the III Reich to counter the Soviet tank masses with comparable numbers for a variety of reasons.
Therefore, they tried to counter the quantitative advantage of the Red Armyand to mitigate the tremendous attrition with superior quality (This was probably due in part to ideological rather than rational reasons)
There is no doubt that high-quality design, subtleties of design, and high-quality components of the German tanks had to contribute to a relatively slow production rate.
Yet these features were intended to allow the German tank crew to gain an advantage at the tactical level of combat. It was In this context, the conservation of the scarce human resources of experienced crews was also high on the list of requirements, since here the losses could hardly be compensated:
For this, an increased maintenance effort was accepted.

In principle, the concept was well thought out, but it was watered down by excessive demands, over-administration, a lack of coordination and favoritism.
In addition, the development time was extremely short, especially under wartime conditions. The parallel development of Panther and Tiger also cost valuable time and resources in this context.
After the hasty initial deployment of these new vehicles, most of the teething problems were eventually ironed out and both vehicles proved to be quite serviceable. However, some faults could not be eliminated due to the short development time and the enormous demand for new vehicles. In the case of the Panther it was especially the too weakly designed final drive, which then cost at least as many tanks as direct enemy action. Declining quality of crews, production quality, material and sabotage of slave workers were further cumulative effects that increased the already high failure rate.

The high volume of armored vehicles on Czech TNHP chassis (Hetzer) was originally due to the fact that Czech factories were least affected by USAAF bombing. The fact that the concept of many, small and relatively simple armored vehicles turned out to be a better solution than the gigantomania of the Königstiger or even the Maus was actually more of a coincidence: The Nazi principle "Bigger is better" was not based on rational considerations.

As was often said: The Nazis wanted a thousand-year Reich and could not think five minutes ahead....

 

The Germans were crazy with their numerous projects. Quite a lot of wasting of resources. Even three A-bomb projects.

 

..better designed...if I'm not mistaken, US manufacturing [ etc ] output was much, much greater than Germany's and Japan combined ...so, ''per capita'', I'd say they [ the Germans ] did a fantastic job ---in many areas

 

The others concentrated in numbers of say "medium or better" vehicles. Germany did excellent tanks and planes but too little too late.

"German military technology during World War II increased in terms of sophistication, but also cost, mechanical unreliability, and time to manufacture. Nazi Germany put effort into developing weapons; particularly aircraft, rockets, submarines and tanks during the war."

German military technology during World War II - Wikipedia

 

The Knaben molybdenum mine. 10 Mosquitos bombed the target, but did not destroy it, the mine operated at reduced capacity for a few months before reaching full capacity in August, 1943. It was bombed again by some 120 American heavy bombers in November, 1943.

 

It's a great bon mot with no data to support it.

Overall the issue usually is overstated and ill-defined. What exactly is "too over designed" anyway? The early German designs certainly weren't; the Kleintraktor, Krupp-Traktor, and Neubaufahrzeug were hardly leading edge technology, Part of the German problem is that the early tanks were designed and built mostly by heavy industrial firms used to station manufacturing methods rather than for mass production and much of the German tank plant built or converted by the Germans was the same. Only Nobelungenwerk and a few of the great "tank halls" were designed and built with mass production in mind...and only the Panther was really designed for mass production assembly.

Yes, elements of the German designs were perhaps over-engineered; the twin torsion bar suspension of the Panther is am obvious example. Field maintenance of its interleaved suspension was also a nightmare, but suspension and track maintenance is that at the best of times. However, the main problem in that design was the decision to make the final drives suitable for mass production using simplified tooling and materials, and coupling it with a highly advanced and temperamental hi-powered engine. OTOH, the vaunted allied designs were unable to match the Germans - it was 1948 before American tank engine technology caught up. The result was that the "simpler' American design, the T26E3 and its cousins, were horribly under-powered and unreliable.

One issue where the Germans slipped far behind was in the production of spare parts and the provision of heavy maintenance units specifically intended for tank repair. Typically, 1st and 2d echelon repair was done by the crew and battalion/regiment workshop company, but 3d echelon maintenance was typically an army-level asset, while 4th and 5th echelon repair was most frequently accomplished by evacuation to Germany for a factory rebuild (the same was the practice with aircraft). The Allies and especially the Americans were perforce required to deploy depot-level 4th and 5th echelon maintenance capability to the front. For example, on 6 June 1944, the American armored units in the ETOUSA were supported by 19 purpose-designed Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Companies (Tank) to support effectively 42 tank battalions, so nearly one for two. At Kursk, the German HG-S had a single depot-level battalion-size tank maintenance and repair unit to support nine Panzer divisions with nominally about 20 tank battalions under command, so fewer than one for six. Worse, the German staffs were under-equipped with the vehicles necessary to transport its heavy tank designs to and from maintenance. The consequence was that the heaviest loss of Panthers at Kursk was not from the battle, but its aftermath, when 40-odd Panthers waiting repair were lost when they were forced to evacuate Kharkov.

 

I think you are right about a ideology. I think the Germans who has a world reputation for superior engineering couldn't concieve of simplicity. Like they had a number of t34s to study and instead of embracing the simplicity of the tank they built a much more complex machine that too much more time to produce. And yes the Germans had a lot of factors against them. Even if they had the manufacturing capacity they didn't have the resources to support it. I think it is amazing how much steel the Soviets went through where did they get most of the steel from, the Ural mountains, Manchuria

 

That's a rot read an article recently saying the mosquitos did destroy it bombing the mouth of the mine and sealed it. Maybe the Brits didn't want to admit failure but it did mention the large bombing raid. Just hate misinformation. BTW did you get to check out blue steel Takao attacking and transforms all open deck space to vertical launchers and fired like two or three hundred missiles, LoL gets crazy alien weapons technology

 

Yeah my book mentioned the need for recovery vechicles and the use of the tiger I and panther. Also the elephant but surprised if it was effective at all like the elephant had a high break down rate and towing a heavy vechicles would surely put a strain on the power train

 

This was the responsibility of Dipl.-Ing. Kniepkamp (WaPrw 6), who used his connections to push his "baby" through.
It had been found that for a smoother ride and for a more stable weapons platform off-road, an independent suspension was better. Also, wheels with a larger diameter have less wear and less rolling resistance. In addition, the ground pressure was quite low, which was a significant factor for tactical maneuverability on the Eastern Front:
And indeed, the undercarriage (in addition to the gun) was also rated "excellent" by the front-line units.For this, they also accepted the significantly increased maintenance requirements

 

Wow, thanks for the detailed response. One can learn a lot on this forum!