GERMANY COPIES THE T-34

Hilter wanted German industry to copy the Russian T-34 tank when it was first encountered on the Eastern Front. What if Hitler was not convinced to change his mind (Kniepkamp and Oberst Fichtner's whisper campaign) and Germany actually did copy the T-34 instead of creating the Panther tank. What if Germany copied the bore and caliber of the T-34's main gun, V12 diesel engine and transmission? For further thought, what if Germany rearmed a copied T-34 with their 75mm L70 and later the 88mm L100?

Your comments please.

BEARPAW

Panther

 

The V 12 engine had a aluminum block and was considered too material expensive to be copied.Plus the turret lay out was not up to their standards of ergonomics.

 

And not only did the Germans not have the bulk aluminum to spare for the engine block, as a diesel it not only produced more torque than German transmissions were able to handle (they had trouble with the gasoline engine torque), the entire fuel supply system would have to be altered for the Germans to use diesel in their vehicle park. They weren't set up to handle two basic fuels, both gasoline and diesel for the land forces. The KM needed almost ALL the diesel they could produce. And as "john1761" mentions the ergonomics of the early T-34 stunk. There was NO turret basket on the early models, and the guys had to fold up a little seat and shuffle around on the floor as the turret rotated!

That was changed in the later models, but the hatch access was still terrible if you were trying to escape a T-34 in trouble. No intercoms? No radios? The Germans may have changed those things, but then it wouldn't be as cheap to produce would it.

 

Copying the T 34 completely would have been a problem for the Germans. They didn't have the capacity to cast the turret in anything approaching mass production. If you hadn't noticed, no WW 2 German tank made use of any large castings whatsoever. Instead, the Germans used rolled plate welded and formed almost entirely.
The best they could do in this regard is take the T34 as a starting point and work forward from there like Damiler Benz did.

 

T.A. Gardner... you are right about no German tanks employing cast turrets. A welded up turret would have had to be employed.

brndt1 your right about the turret basket. The Germans would have had to change that up and... add radios.

 

Adding a basket means changing the ammunition storage arrangements. 98% of a T 34's ammunition is stored on the floor of the tank. A basket makes this inaccessable. I also think the Germans would not accept the two man turret for its inefficency. Nor would I suspect they would go for the assistant driver / hull machinegunner having nothing but a bullet hose.
The storage of fuel in the crew compartment would also likely be found unacceptable. Lack of a commander's cupola (42 versions) would have been unacceptable.

Again, it comes back to the Germans having to make so many modifictions that it is better they just design their own tank using the T 34 as a starting point.

 

The T-34's influence on the Panther is clear enough, the Tiger was in production before the Germans first met a T-34 (outside Moscow in Winter 1941) and that is why there is no sloped armor as on the T-34 as the Germans had not thought to make their tanks like that. Its appearance alarmed Guderian, he commented that the short 75 mm gun of the German Mark IV, their heaviest tank gun in 1941, could not penetrate the armor on a T-34 except from the rear.

It was Guderian who first urged that Germany should simply copy the T-34 which they did, sort of, when the panther came out in 1943. The panther was complex and unreliable, they had many technical problems such as broken off road wheels (fixed by doubling the number of bolts). Tank for tank the panther was far superior to one t-34 or even two, the problem was numbers. The Germans built 4,000 panthers and 1,100 tigers, and 450 king tigers - but the Russians built 80,000 T-34's (and thousands of heavy tanks like the JS-1).
the Germans did not try to outdo Russian production figures as they knew they did not have the industrial capacity, they tried to build fewer but better tanks with well trained crews. Hitler told Guderian at one point during the war in Russia, "If i had known they had as many tanks as they did, i would have thought twice about starting this war."