US Sherman tanks v.s. German Tiger tanks

1. They wouldnt sent 1000 tanks just to take out one Tiger.
2. If you didnt notice they gave thousands away to their allies including Russia.
3. Rarely any real tank vs tank battles as germ,an infantry were just as deadly vs tanks.

 

Well summarized, canambridge. Am I the only one who is getting tired of the Tiger?

 

I am not I love the Tiger. You know what strikes me going back to those discovery chanel shows. It said the Sherman was the winner but all the Tankers were asked wether they would rather be in a Sherman or Tiger. They all said the Tiger.

 

Point .3 is debatable. While pure tank vs tank combat was rare, I would not attribute the fact to a point such as "german infantry are as good as their tanks". Good at what?

 

If only the Centurion had been in service in WW2. Oh, or maybe the T28. Or the M60...

 

i am aware of that, i was just simply pointing out the manhours needed to produce them.

As it happens a sherman averaged over 5,000km per failure. Tiger's rarely went more than 300km. And parts on the tiger were fare more complicated eg the tracks.

I dont know it in any great detail so i could easily be wrong, but it is likely that 6 shermans would be easier to maintain than one tiger.

Allied munition production was not a problem as it is cheap and easy to produce.

The only problem i see is manpower and training.

 

not true.

WO 185/118, DDG/FV(D) Armour plate experiments

has the 17 pounder with ap penetrating the lower hull of the tiger at 1,600 yards.

incidentaly 6 pounder ap also penetrate the tigers front plate at ranges up to 700 yards.

 

yes exactly.

according to someone on this forum i belive tank losses for the allies were something like 25% to tanks and 40% to atg's 25% to infantry(panzerfaust/shreck etc) and 10% to mines etc..

while most of the losses were not tanks 1 in 4 inst exactly rare. But of course this is all drawn from memory so i could be completely wrong!

 

What would be your source for that statistic? Please post the large-scale documentation for these averages, gathered over all fronts, over a long period of time, and for many units.

There are statistics and pseudo-statistics. Discussion on WWII forums are unfortunately largely dominated by the latter.

 

You also have to consider with failures in german tanks the fact that late in the war the fuel and oil used in the tanks wasnt as good as the allies. in fact i read that the Germans had to use gasoline produced from coal.

 

its from the russian battlefield site, click lend lease then choose russian as the site's language. and translate it with babel fish.

its actualy 5km track life. engine life is at least 4km.
This is taken from david fletchers cromwell tank book.
Tests in the us in 43 found both diesel and petrol models to be able to go this far without failure.

information on the tiger can be found at jentz tigers in combat qouted on this webpage http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tiger1.htm.

only 2 tigers made it to 340km out of 15.

So tigers needed weekly servicing atleast.

as far as compiling all that data requested, no i wont. nobody else does including you .

So im not going to be the only one .

of course if you have any data that contradicts mine, feel free to post it.

We are all here to learn things after all.

 

Those aren't large-scale statistics.

I would be interested in knowing when the Russians had a chance to drive a Medium Tank M4 for 5,000 km. Besides this, the Russian instructions for movement with armoured units required many technical breaks for a day's travel.

Regarding the Tiger II, a statistic based on one unit, at one time, which only covers about 3 % of the total number of vehicles isn't reliable on a large scale. We don't know how the unit travelled.

As for compiling the data, you are making a statement, and therefore you have to back it up. If you don't, your statement is null and void. Requesting me to post contradicting sources to sources which doesn't exist is a logical fallacy, as well as nonsense.

Besides, statistics does exist for the fate of just about every Tiger and Tiger II, and the Germans also made reports a few times covering the status of every German armoured vehicle in the entire army.

 

Why was the coal-derived oil of worse quality, and what exact negative characteristics did it have? The method is being used today to make gasoline in South Africa, for example.

The quality and viscosity of engine and transmission oil is a more important factor. It would be interesting to find out exactly how the situation was, actually!

 

I beleive it was of extremely low octane.

 

Found this:

Source... Wikipedia, of course.

 

There was a problem with the hydrocarbons of synthetic oil, if I recall correctly. The high-octane fuel used by the Americans had hydrocarbons that branched out and were much more efficient. Synthetic oil produced by the Germans did not branch out and therefore was of lesser quality. I am no good at chemistry though, so please feel free to correct me.

 

Neither am I, so I shall remain silent! High-octane fuel would be more important for aircraft than for tanks, though. Take for example the King Tigers engine - 24 liters, 700 hp --- roughly 30 hp per liter. Most modern cars have over twice that, and run fine on approxamitely 90 octane gas. My motorcycle has 160 hp per liter, and runs without problem on 95 octane.

For high performance aircraft operating in altitudes with less oxygen, it is important to get more octane, methinks.

 

ok 1 the russians used them lend lease! forgot that did you?

2, it was the tiger not tiger 2.
And i belive that this information was fairly typical of all tiger tanks
"Throughout the war, the Tiger's greatest weakness was poor mechanical reliablility. If preventive maintenance was not performed regularly, the transmission would soon fail due to the great weight of the machine. The result was a great number of Tiger's abandoned and destroyed by their crews due to mechanical breakdown. Recovery was a constant problem because of the Tiger's weight, with only the absolute largest recovery vehicles being able to tow a stricken vehicle. It often took several of these to do the job and, even though it was forbidden by regulations, the Tigers themselves were often forced to tow their comrades out of trouble. The overlapping roadwheels also caused problems, sometimes becoming clogged with frozen mud and debris. This could cause the tank to throw a track or simply be frozen in place. The sheer size of the tank was another weakness. Many bridges could not support it's weight and any routes it took had to be scouted out to ensure the roads were wide enough. Special rail cars had to be used to transport it. Special transport tracks which were narrower had to be fitted for rail travel, a job which was not relished by the crews."

from http://www.alanhamby.com/history.html

i have backed up my statements and im requesting you to counter them if you think i am wrong. It is not nonsense or illogical.

Your point about not knowing the fate of every tiger is nonsense, the same can be said about every weapon,vehicle and hell person of all armies of all times. By your logic we should not post anything about anything should we?

 

No, I didn't forget, but when did they drive 5,000 km. with them? The distance from Moscow to Berlin is only about 1,600 km.

That only decrease the quality of the population used in the statistic, and thus further increases the necessity of better statistics.

Furthermore, you haven't backed up your statement. The website you quote mentions no sources for its information, and is furthermore not statistical but pseudo-statistical (the population isn't mentioned, neither is the data source).

The notion that Tigers had to use transport tracks fortransportation is directly wrong. In a report from 506.s.Pz.Abt. given to Albert Speer who further used it in a report about the units in the west in the autum of 1944, it is mentioned that Tigers could be transported on rail from Russia to Kassel (a fairly long journey) with combat tracks on, and that they recommend that this practice is continued with their newly aquired Tiger IIs.

In addition, I would like to refer you to the books 'Trail of the Tigers', by Ron Klages, which has been made from Wolfgang Schneider's Tigers in Combat books, which in turn are derrived from the original German reports. This book names the source of destruction (or otherwise loss) for the Tigers and Tiger IIs, in great detail. Unfortunately, no such work exists on other vehicles, and thus there is no ground for comparison (and thus there can be said nothing statistical about the Tigers in relation to other vehicles unless like sources are presented for the losses for other vehicles).

Furthermore, I'll refer you to the book Panzer Truppen 2 by Jentz, which has some interesting lists over the status of the Panzers at different times.

 

If preventative maintenance was not performed regularly, any tank, from any era, would break down.

For example, as Christian noted,