M4 Sherman gun

To be fair - not quite; don't forget the T7 the T20, the T25...and a number of other "medium" projects. Unfortunately the invaluable Tanks! site seems to have died so I can't paste up the full list of Medium projects.

 

"The British chose to go for quantity over quality"
Is there an argument that the Germans' reliance on quality in tanks was their downfall- would 4 Panzer 4's be better than 1 Tiger?

 

More like the Germans habit of overbuilding their tanks. They kept stressing their engines and transmissions to the point where they simply weren't reliable.

Then you add to that the refusal of German leaders to accept that they needed to focus on effective defensive measures before reestablishing their offensive capability.

Hitlers focus on jet bombers rather than jet interceptors.
Tigers King, Tigers, Panthers rather than Pz4H, Jags, and Stugs.
Pocket battleships rather than subs.

Would all this have saved Germany. Probably not but it might have delayed the end by years.

By 44 Hitler was ordering the movement of the extremely valuable tiger divisions personally. Consider how D-Day would have changed with 2 divisions of pz4 and 2 of stugs that were allowed to respond quickly.
Allied air would have slowed and stopped some but with an armored presence that might buy enough time to hold the pocket shut for weeks.

It depends on terrain and task required of it.

The Eastern front with so many wide plains makes a tiger defensively worth 4 Pz4's.
The Western front with most engagements under 500m 4 Pz4's are superior with the same ability to ambush along with the numbers to prevent flanking.

 

Most engagements are under 500 meters? I very much doubt so. The average engagement range for the US in ETO was about 800 meters according US Operational Research, and that conclusion was supported by British OR in Normandy. According to the later body of research, a significant minority of tank duels occurred at ranges under 500 meters, but the preponderance of armor combat was at much longer ranges than that.

With regard to the Tiger tank, I think the logic for a heavy tank for nations that didn't have maritime lines of communications is sound. I don't know about the logic behind the Panther tank, though--for a medium tank it was too much armor and weight to the detriment of range and affordability.

 

Sorry about that I should have fact checked before posting.



As to the heavy tank making sense. Well really it depends on a lot of conditions. Many of which I'm forgetting.

1 You need a good design. The Tiger had excellent firepower and armour but poor engine reliability. The simple amount of time to build and maintain it was a huge detriment.

2 You need the infrastructure both in your country and the country your attacking to hold it's weight. Bridges, roads and what not.

3 You need air parity to prevent one bomb from turning your expensive tank into scrap metal.


So if you can built it in sufficient numbers fast enough. Have good enough roads so it's movement isn't restricted. Maintain it in the field and not have constant mechanical failures. Then by all means build them by the bushel.

 

After 1942 the Germans could not afford the long training it took to create a highly proficient tanker, as they could never win a numbers race went for vehicle quality to partly compensate, The result was mixed, the insufficiently trained panzer brigades generally proved ineffective but a veteran crews equipped with "big cats" could often outfight many times their numbers.

 

I'd add that the interleaved roadwheels were a maintenance disaster. In order to replace an inner road wheel, nine other wheels had to be removed. That must have been fun in the snow in Russia. Just poor engineering

.

 

Good points. There's certainly give an take on both sides of the Heavy vs Medium issue. Otherwise we wouldn't be debating half a century afterwards.

You can add that for a heavy all the expensive gear periscopes/radios only needs to be built once rather than several times for the 2-3 mediums.

 

Not sure I follow that MrP...Is the implication that medium tanks are damaged more frequently because they are less heavily armoured?

 

No Poppy, if I understand him, build 1,500 heavies and you need the requisite equipment for 1500 tanks. If you go for numbers and build 4500 mediums you need the requisite equipment for 4,500 units, or three times the periscopes, radios, what have you.

 

Correct. The interior save the gun and engine should cost approximately the same for both the heavy and medium tanks.

 

I'm not sure you can lay that on Hitler. It was pretty much a consequence of WWI and since the keel for Graf Spee for example was layed in 32 and Hitler didn't become Chancellor until 33 ....

 

I thought blaming Hitler was always the right answer.

Your right and I certainly can't blame Germany for fighting the last war when so many of the Allies were doing the same.

 

According to Jentz, the oils in the Tiger E's suspension had to be changed completely at regular intervals. The compiler of the report wrote something along the lines of 'when this was done the tank ran fine', but admitted in the following paragraph that when the Tiger was the point vehicle in an armor column in constant contact with the enemy, this was rarely done. No kidding! One tank officer reported wistfully that maybe Panzertruppen should be as well trained in maintanence like Luftwaffe's ground crew. Eh.

For me, I think the Tiger tank was loved by German crews and commanders because they really did need a heavy tank for assaulting dense denfenses and counterattack against enemy tanks. But the execution could have used a lot more economy of effort. Probably.

Btw, no worries Pacifist.

 

Tiger Fibel also points out that the biggest threat to the Tiger is the driver/. The chapter in Jentz about the Heavy tank battalion at Anzio is a saga of negligence. One tank destroyed by a dropped cigarette, and when they swing into action againts the Americans the leader takes them over an embankment and embeds the barrels in the ground on the other side! .

The war with the soviet union and the operations in the open country of the Ukraine and southern Russia put the Germans in a position where they had to develop bigger and heaver armed and armoured tanks. Tank battles took place at long ranges and iot was a big tactical advantage to be able to kill te enemy at 1000m neyind the range that the enemy posed a danger. (Tiger Fibel has lots of charts to comfort the Tiger crew) . Had the campaign in North Africa extended after May 1943 there would have been a demand for expediting British and American heavy tanks.

Once the Germans faced the T34 KV and JS they had no choice. In 1942/43 Tigers were the only solution. But for a nation which prided itself on reliable technology, the Tiger was less robust or reliable than its soviet counterparts. . This is a long way from Shermans - expect that there is a book by a Soivet tank commander who commanded an Emcha battalion, and pikced to lead the advanced guard which seievzed Vienna.

 

"You can add that for a heavy all the expensive gear periscopes/radios only needs to be built once rather than several times for the 2-3 mediums."

Well, it took 300,000 man hours/250,000 RM to build a Tiger.
Panzer 4- 103,500 RM ( no man hours listed)

All things considered, wouldn't 2.5 Panzer 4's be logistically better than 1 Tiger? Travel/maintenance/crew etc.

http://www.alanhamby.com/history.shtml

 

Well, no actually. In terms of Travel/maintenance/crew etc. the Pz 4 only wins in terms of maintenance and availability of bridges.

Logistically speaking 1 tiger vs 2.5 Pz 4's
The Tiger requires
Crew 5
4.32 liters/km

A single Pz 4 requires then multiply that by 2.5.
crew 5
2.35 liters/km

The advantage of more mediums vs 1 heavy was one of redundancy, reliability, and the ability to have more tanks per mile of front.

 

I know this thread is old, but this is a subject I find fascinating, and it is generally misunderstood.

The M2 and M3 75mm Tank Gun did not evolve "from a French Field gun", the famous "French 75". It evolved from the 75mm ammunition the field gun used. The 75mm Tank Gun actually evolved from the 75mm T6 Antiaircraft Gun, which was the last of a series of AA guns Ordnance developed in the 1930s in a misguided attempt to create a "medium" antiaircraft gun with ammunition common to the 75mm Field Gun.

Nor was the 76mm evolved from a "naval gun". It was developed from the 3" M3 Antiaircraft Gun, which in turn was the final development of the M1918 AA Gun, which was developed from an Army Coast Artillery gun, the M1903. The M3 AA Gun was used as the basis of the M7 3" Tank Gun, used in the M10 GMC, but was too bulky and heavy for the Medium Tank M4, so was reworked as the 76mm M1-series Tank Gun.

 

America's strategic aims were also different. They had to worry about long range warfare and getting overseas first of all, so for ground warfare far away makes sense to have vehicles easy to transport in en masse. Now the forward thinking US in my opinion led the way in the air and the sea. In terms of quality of aircraft and quantity they didn't have to choose one over the other. The P48 was like a flying tank, fast as any piston-engine fighter if not faster, tough as nails, and armed to the teeth. The P51 is obvious, and on the Navy side the Hellcat and Corsair were top machines in speed, toughness, and firepower. The long-range heavy bombers: B17, B24, and B29 were forward thinking and most effective in range, durability, and load. No one could touch our navy either with all the air craft carriers of the Essex class and tough battle ships, and the amounts of everything we had.

 

As USMCP alluded to, it just doesn't work like that, Pops.
More detailed hectoring on this point on this thread.
There is no easy base exchange by price/man hours/vehicle.