Tiger

KBO, how many tanks were knocked out by aircrafts, then?

During the entire course of the war, the number of Tigers (both) which are known to have been destroyed by Allied aircrafts was 30. An additional five were destroyed by Axis aircrafts. Out of these, 15 were destroyed by fighter-bombers and 15 through air bombardment.

Out of the rather large amount of Tigers destroyed (551 lost on the western front, Italy and Africa, whereof 192 are known to be directly related to Allied combat), I don't see how that's a lot.

 

It brings down the scale actually, and i said tanks not Tigers..... and dont forget how many germans that just left their tanks...

 

This thread has become inane and pointless. End it now. :kill:

 

That came out of nowhere.

 

Well, he has a point. First people try to establish how useless it is to determine kill ratios, and then they go on trying to do it regardless.

In any case, with 3100 Allied tanks lost there's still a fat chance that the Tigers around there got their 5:1 ratio at least.

By the way, M.Kenny, where did you get those total losses figures?

 

The figures I gave came from the link I posted earlier.

This is some of the posts:

Overall cause of loss for tanks varies according to time period and the reports cited. Thus, according to WO 291/1186 in the ETO it was:

Mines 22.1%
AT guns 22.7%
Tanks 14.5%
SP Guns 24.4%
Bazooka 14.2%
Other 2.1%

This may be compared to a sample of 506 US First Army tanks lost (destroyed and damaged) between 6 June and 30 November 1944.

Mines 18.2%
AT/Tank guns 46.2%
Artillery 7.3%
Mortars 1.8%
Bazooka 13.6%
Other 12.9%

Now as far as American tank losses in Normandy go we have the following data from various reports:

In terms of the cause of loss, in June of 32 tanks examined, 18 were to ‘AT guns’ (56.25%), 9 to PF/PS (28.13%), 1 to mines (3.13%), and 1 to ‘artillery’ (3.13%). Unfortunately we do not know if the AT guns were just that or if they were mounted on armored vehicles of some type. However, we do know that 6 of those 18 were lost on D-Day, so cannot have been lost to anything other than the emplaced guns of the beach defenses.

In July, of 73 examined, 41.1% were lost to AT guns, 32.88% to PF/PS, 16.44% to mines, 4.11% to mines and 4.11% to unknown causes.

In August, of 130 examined, 55.38% were lost to AT guns, 18.46 to unknown causes, 13.08% to mines, 6.15% to artillery, 5.38% to PF/PS, and 1.54% to mortars.

Overall, losses to ‘AT guns’ appear to have been somewhere around 50% in Normandy (the monthly average is 50.91%) and were not far off the ‘norm’ of 46.2%.

From 6 June to 1 July (26 days), First Army wrote off 187 M4-75mm and 44 M5.
From 2 to 29 July (28 days), First Army wrote off 208 M4-75mm, 12 M4-76mm, 4 M4-105mm, and 67 M5.
From 30 July to 2 September (35 days), First Army wrote off 237 M4-75mm, 38 M4-76mm, 6 M4-105mm, and 69 M5.
From 3 to 28 September (26 days), First Army wrote off 123 M4-75mm, 33 M4-76mm, 10 M4-105mm, and 34 M5.
From 1 August to 2 September (33 days), Third Army wrote off 221 M4-75mm and 94 M5.
From 3 to 30 September (28 days), Third Army wrote off 48 M4-75mm, 61 M4-76mm, 2 M4-105mm, and 37 M5.
From 9 September to 5 October (27 days), Ninth Army wrote off 2 M4-75mm.

Thus roughly:
‘June’ 231
‘July’ 291
‘August’ 665
‘September’ 350
Total = 1,537

From the above we could presume that roughly 780 were due to tank and AT guns. Using the WO figures, then perhaps 223 were to 'tank guns.'

For the British cause of loss in Normandy we have but a single document that appears relevant. That is O.R.S. 2 Report No. 12, Analysis of 75mm Sherman Tank Casualties Suffered Between 6th June and 10th June 1944. That document reports that of 45 Sherman tanks examined a total of 40 or 89% were lost to ‘AP shot,’ 4 or 9% to mines and 1 or 2% to unidentified causes.

British losses are given as:

June – 146
July – 231
August – 834
September - ?
Total = 1,211 (est. 1,568)

German losses were:

June – 1 Pz-IV(k), 124 Pz-IV(l), 80 Pz-V, 19 Pz-VI (L56) = 224
July – 149 Pz-IV(l), 125 Pz-V, 14 Pz-VI (L56) = 288
August – 49 Pz-IV(l), 41 Pz-V, 15 Pz-VI (L56) = 105
September – 12 Pz-IV(k), 581 Pz-IV, 540 Pz-V, 72 Pz-VI (L56), 23 Pz-VI (L70) = 1,228
Total = 1,845

The following information comes from Niklas Zetterling's book Normandy 1944. In the appendix he has a cumulative listing of the Allied armor sent ashore at Normandy. Here is the data:

6 June:British=1045 US=433
7 June:British=1326 US=526
8 June:British=1669 US=526
9 June:British=1669 US=916
11 June:British=1669 US=952
12 June:British=1669 US=969
13 June:British=2004 US=1005
15 June:British=2256 US=1005
16 June:British=2256 US=1098
22 June:British=2323 US=1098
23 June:British=2323 US=1524
28 June:British=2414 US=1541
29 June:British=2414 US=1617
30 June:British=2666 US=1746
1 July:British=2666 US=1835
2 July:British=2666 US=1871
3 July:British=2906 US=1871
4 July:British=2906 US=1907
5 July:British=2906 US=1924
10 July:British=2906 US=1958
11 July:British=2906 US=2222
12 July:British=2906 US=2258
13 July:British=2906 US=2557
15 July:British=2906 US=2610
17 July:British=2906 US=2663
18 July:British=3146 US=2739
19 July:British=3386 US=2774
20 July:British=3386 US=2808
21 July:British=3386 US=2884
22 July:British=3386 US=3072
23 July:British=3386 US=3108
25 July:British=3386 US=3371
26 July:British=3729 US=3371
30 July:British=4072 US=3371
31 July:British=4072 US=3407
1 August:British=4072 US=3670
6 August:British=4192 US=3746
7 August:British=4192 US=3763
8 August:British=4192 US=3835
9 August:British=4192 US=3852
10 August:British=4432 US=3852
11 August:British=4432 US=4115
12 August:British=4541 US=4115
24 August:British=4541 US=4267
25 August:British=4541 US=4343
31 August:British=4541 US=4415

This gives you a total of 8956 armored vehicles going ashore between 6 June and 31 August 1944. These figures include all types of tanks as well as tank destroyers.

Here is the committed cumulative German armored vehicles committed in Normandy from the same book. This includes tanks, assault guns and jagdpanzers.

6 June=122
7 June=220
8 June=405
10 June=504
11 June=535
12 June=580
13 June=653
17 June=663
18 June=859
21 June=872
27 June=880
29 June=1124
1 July=1329
3 July=1374
6 July=1594
10 July=1647
19 July=1662
20 July=1707
21 July=1729
23 July=1746
24 July=1859
25 July=1869
26 July=1945
27 July=1959
31 July=2004
3 August=2035
4 August=2222
5 August=2232
10 August=2245
12 August=2248

 

Great post M.kenny! Just three small mistakes.

Losses on D-Day could perfectly have been due to AT fire that was not from coastal gun emplacements, since all German divisions had their own AT gun company and 21st Panzer division was active on D-day itself.

Ninth Army couldn't have recorded anything on September 9th through 14h because it was raised under 12th US Army Group on September 15th.

And I hate to get into such numbery detail, but the King Tiger's gun was L/71.

 

Actually it was L/71,2

KBO

 

totally agree!!

this is becoming a farce!

 

Yes it is hard to accept facts that overturn fable!

 

You can sit and debate from now until the universe implodes about statistics and who did what too whom for how many cookies.

I don't care to believe them because I read once that Tigers had a 1000 to 1 kill ratio on the eastern front and just about every number in between.

You can also debate what a kill is, in my opinion the only kill worth mentioning is a kill that removes the target from action on a permanent basis, I.E. the parts of the tank are scattered all over the landscape.

I have read that 2/3 of the tanks the Russians lost were back in action in within 3 weeks at any given time. There were tanks that were built that never fired a shot in anger and there were tanks that were holed more than once only to go into battle again the next day.

A lot of the statistics are skewed, by the egos of the people who reported them, by misinterpretations, misperceptions and in some cases down right lies.

What is the point? The Tiger was a good tank. If it lost its infantry cover it was just a big target for opposing infantry. The T-34 was IMO the best tank ever produced because of the unhyped qualities that made it so.

Stats are faulty, fickle things. To argue about them is assanine. Just a waste of time for the sake of egos.