German Tank Development

Hi, I have seen a number of books and programs about German Armour, and a question that comes up time and time again is quote about the Different types of AFV the German Army made in WW2, The question over why the Germans over extended them selfs producing high quality AVFs like the Tiger I & II and Jadgtigers and Panthers, could the old Mk IV had done a good job on its own when it was up graded to take the long 75mm, or maybe just developed the Panther and be done with the other monsters, would it be a good idea to simplife things and produce a coulple of: A = Keep the MK IV in full production and B = put the rest of the factories producing Panthers, or did the other vehicles have a great impact on the war ?. Just a standard Panzer Division with two Battalions of one of MK IVs and one of Panthers seems a good force to me, and keep the MK IIIs as a base for Stugs ect. just a thought.
Regards Yan.

 

I believe the plan was to equip Panzer divisions with one battalion each of Pzkw IV's and Panther's. Germany was beset by many problems, some of their own making, some of circumstance, some the results of enemy action. Germany never planned for a long war, but rather a series of short campaign's, each won in a single summer. Germany in 1939-40 felt that a mix of Pzkw III's and 38t's would be all they needed, only to find by 1941 that these could no longer suffice. Germany needed to re-equip all panzerwaffe with new heavier afv's, while in the middle of combat. Germany faced the choice of trying to produce as many units as possible while building effective weapons. Marder's and Stug's were cheaper than true tanks and did not require the retooling of factory's. Hitler also had a fondness for very heavy AFV's such as the Tiger variants, and Ferdinand's. I have also read that Speer wished for a lighter Panther of about 35 tons as opposed to one of 45-48 tons, but was overruled.

Personally I see the move to ever heavier tanks/assault guns as opposed to medium tanks took away the mobility and flexability of the Panzer divisions and thru away any initative still in Germany's hands.

 

Germany didn't get serious about tank production until it was too late. In January 1943 production of the Pzkv IV, the most numerous type by far, was just 38 vehicles. The demands on German industry were simply beyond its capacity to accomplish. Each major arm of the Wehrmacht demanded more production of its weapons, and each could make a convincing case: More u-boats are needed to starve Britain out of the war. More fighters are needed to clear the enemy bombers from the skies of the Reich. More tanks are needed to defeat the Red Army. Each faction could claim that their weapon was vital to the survival of the Third Reich, but German industry was unable to fully equip each. Besides the shortage of raw materials, particularly chromium, tungsten, and molybdenum, there was a fatal shortage of manpower. Hitler had some quaint ideas about the role of women in a modern society at war. He wanted them to stay home making babies rather than reinforce the factory floor. Hitler tried to ease the shortfall with conscript labor from the conquered territories, but this proved unsatisfactory as slaves generally don't outproduce patriots. It wasn't until Joseph Goebbel's "Total War" speech given on the heels of the Stalingrad disaster, that things began to change, but far too late. Under the direction of Albert Speer German industry was put on a true war footing. Weapons output was trebled by the mid-1944, yet the comparative effort was feeble: 8,800 PzKw IVs, 6,000 Pzkw Vs, 1,347 Mk I Tigers, 492 Mk II Tigers, spread over 4,000 miles of fighting front versus 55,000 M4 Sherman tanks and 67,000 T-34 tanks.

There was impetus behind the notion in some higher circles to shut down all production of tanks other than the new Pzkw V. This idea was vigorous resisted by Erich von Manstein, commander of Army Group South, then then major user of AFV in the Wehrmacht, who realized that the shortfall in output caused by standardization on such a complex piece of hardware as the Panther would loose the war for Germany in short order. What Army Group South needed was a large number of good tanks, not a small number excellent tanks.

Between the Fall of France and the opening of Barbarossa the number of armored divisions in the German Army expanded from seven to twenty-one. This was done primarily by redistributing the available tanks and increasing the proportion of the infantry component. The typical panzer division of June 1941 had a single tank regiment of about 200 machines, down from about 400 tanks as was typical in 1940. The reduction in tank strength was partly offset by increased deployment of assault guns, however the dominate assault gun vehicle in 1941 was the StuG III equipped with the same low velocity 75mm gun carried on the first generation Panzer IV "stubs." Thus the German armored force became a body of highly skilled and highly motivated fighting men struggling against a numerically superior enemy in virtually a disarmed state.

Of all the AFV developed and produced by the Germans in WWII only the Panzer IV was in service and in production from the outset until the final surrender. During that time it proved to be a useful tank, and with the 75mm KwK 40 L/48 gun it was able to defeat the vast majority of its opposition in one-on-one combat. True, it wasn't as capable as the Panther on the Tiger, but tactically three or four Panzer IVs were superior to one Tiger. If all the materials, man-hours, factory floor space, and fuel expended on the development and production of the Panther and the Tiger had been devoted to the mass production of Panzer IVs (particularly the simplified J model) then Germany could have built at least 40,000 Panzer IVs over the course of the war. The panzer divisons which rolled into Russia could have been full-strength juggernaughts rather than half-strength shells, which might have made all the difference on that front. Also the German army would have faced the Allied tanks on a two or three to one basis, rather than the ten or twelve to one ratio that actually prevailed. Given the outstanding combat records of the Panzertruppen fighting at the severe numerical disadvantage they actually faced, imagine what the outcome could have been if the odds were evened a bit.

In short Germany suffered from far too much "tank development" and not nearly enough tank production.

 

According to a book I have the output of the Pz IV in 1943 was 3013 vehicles, that Pz IV had the 7.5cm L/43 or 48 gun, Could you please tell me where you get your info from

 

8,800 is the estimated TOTAL production of Panzer IVs from 1936 to 1945.
The Kwk 39 (43 caliber) was introduced in the F2 model. Before that the PzKw carried a short-barreled 75mm infantry support gun. The 48 caliber 75 was introduced with the H model Panzer IV.

3,013 was likely to be the total cumulative production by the end of 1943.

Source: McCarthy, Peter; Mike Syryon (2002). Panzerkieg: The Rise and Fall of Hitler's Tank Divisions.

 

I'm not picking a fight but I make it 8544 by the book by Peter chamberlain and Hilary Doyle, Tech info by Thomas L. Jentz. So we go along with our info

 

So you're going to quibble about 256 tanks over the course of nine years, or 2.37 tanks per month?

 

Not at all but it does make for good conversation which this whats it's all about

 

38(t) 6500
Pz I 2441
Pz II 2777
Pz III 6394 + 11300
Pz IV 8905 + 3532
Panther 6003 + 752
Tiger 1835 + 176

Wespe/Hummel /Hornise 2231.

Chassis total 52,846

To this must be added the 4000+ French tanks captured and used to some extent with 2nd line units and as SP Chassis.

 

Germany had no real automotive industry to speak of, certainly not of the kind the Allies found so convenient for conversion to Armour production, along with many other difficulties in materials etc. It's obviously more complex than just that (BIG old subject), but that has quite a lot to do with why they had to aim for unusual engineering quality and diversity over more useful quantity & simplification. They did have sound reasons for following something of a hopeful uber-waffen approach, doomed though it was, thankfully. Simplification would have likely helped, and they tried, but there was also that little Corporal that led them to consider, and he caused some damned peculiar procurement/development issues in his time.

Have you read through this thread, Yan?
http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-other/20263-german-favour-mark-iv-main-battle-tank.html
Quite a bit on the main thrust of your subject there.

~A

 

m. kenny -

Where did you get those PzKw IV and PzKw V production figures. I seen some variance from source to source, but your figures are twice the size of the largest estimate I'v read. Source please..

Also your estimate of the French tanks taken into service by the German army exceeds the entire armored strength of the Allies in may 1940. Are we to assume your figure includes obsolete models not deployed by the French army in 1940, or did Renault and SOMUA continue to produce Char B1 and S35 tanks for the Germans after the fall of the Third Republic?

 

WW2 Tanks and Fighting Vehicles : " By 1945 over 8,000 lV's had been delivered and many more were built for specialist purposes.". Prolly hard to get an exact #.

 

The numbers may include Stug IV, Jadgpanzer IV, Nashorn, ostwind etc. Also badly damaged, recovered units found their way back to the factory to be repaired and were often counted as new builds.

 

Perhaps, but m. kenny lists assault guns, self-propelled artillery, tank hunters etc. as separate items. Also he lists more than 16,000 Panzer IV as turreted AFV. Clearly he means tho total number of PzKw IV as such was 16,707. I think he'll have to back up that claim with copious sources.

 

Lokking at wiki, which is admittedly not the ideal source, his numbers do seem way off. Total Pz IV (all types) 13,300. Panther (all types) 6,557. Turreted tanks all types (pz I, II, 35/38t, III, IV, V, VI ) is about 25.700, but this number likely includes rebuilds/upgrades of damaged units returned to the factory.

 

I am doing a table from the production figures in the new Panzer Tracts title 23, Panzer Production 1933-1945 and in my haste cut and pasted the wrong figures from Wordpad. I mistakenly used the production line numbers and because chassis were moved between factories the same hull appears more than once. I have altered the original post with the correct numbers.


38(t) 6500 all types
Pz I 2441 "
Pz II 2777 "
Pz III 6394 + 11300 SP
Pz IV 8905 + 3532 SP
Panther 6003 + 752 SP
Tiger 1835 + 176 SP

Wespe/Hummel /Hornise 2231.

Chassis total 52,846

35(t) not included.

French tanks in 1940, I went from memory. Here are the numbers from 'Captured French Tanks Under The German Flag' by Regenberg & Scheiberet (Schiffer) The total in French service is given as 3500 + and the numbers taken into use by the Germans is given as :

500 FT 17
800 R 35
600 H35/39
50 FCM 36
160 B1
300 S35
Total 2410

 

There are some French AFVs I remember seeing pics of in German coulous like the Chenillette Lorraine missing from the listing so it may explain part of the differing figures, but they shound not amount to more than few hundreds mostly "marginal" types.
Is there any way way to filter out the "rebuilt" chassis from those figures, for example the PzII Ausf D that were rebuilt as Flammpanzers in 1941 and then rebuilt again with captured soviet 76.2 cm guns for the 1942 campaigns (LaS 762 or Marder II) would be counted 3 times !!!

 

The problem is that every source is giving different figures
1) Jentz:
on 1 september 1939 :
Pz I :1445 (production already stopped)
PzII:1223(2 cm gun)(production stopped in december,and renewed in march 1941,till july 1942)
Pz 35 (t) (3.7 cm gun):202 (production already stopped)
Pz 38 (t)(3.7 cm gun):78 (produced till june 1942)
PzIII (3.7 cm gun):98 (produced till october 1940)
Pz III (5 + 7.5 cm gun) roduction started in july 1940
Pz IV(7.5 cm):211
Pzbef:215 (production stoped in february 1940,renewed in november 1940)
2) Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg(Tome V)
Pz I :1305
Pz II:991
PzIII:151
Pz IV :143
Pz35 (t):125
Pz38(t) :122
Whatever,
1) one can not cla

 

Interrupted
1)one can not claim that Germany was producing to much types of tanks at the same time
2) No country was restricting its production to one or two types
3)there was an evolution to heavier tanks,because the opponent was producing heavier anti-tank weapons
4) StuG were very useful in 1940,because the tanks were in fact cavalry,and could be committed against soft objects,but were useless against hard objects.For that purpose was needed heavy,motorised and armoured artillery :the StuG

 

Good link Von, I didnt know that this question had been posted before, it seems to have caused a bit of flurry, do you think that the Pz Mk IV could have been effective against the Soviet Is tanks, I know it was on par with the Sherman, Cromwell and T-34/76 (I dont know about the T-34/85 though) I dont have the stats on how effectve the 75mm L/48 was against the Churchill.
Regards Yan.