Panzers vs. Tanks, Which Side had Better Armour?

Which side fielded better Tanks, the Axis or the Allies? Overall I would say the Germans fielded the better vehicles in terms of firepower and armour, but ultimately they should have focused the expensive prduction of heavy tanks towards the Panzerkampfwagen IV rather than the "Tiger" and "Bengal Tiger" which were notoriously expensive to build and replace. Ultimately the Allies win handsdown in the industrial optimisation of their tanks

As a subnote which Allied nation fielded the best armour out of the major contenders (Britain, France, America or any other tank building nation that I missed). For this one I would say it is the Soviet Union that takes first prize because of their combination of powerful tanks that could match the Germans, with rapid production capacity.

 

Didn't know Königstiger translated into Bengal Tiger.
Or if I did I'd forgotten.

 

In a war of attrition, what matters is not only the quality of the armour (thickness of armour, cross country speed, operative range, ammunition storage, crew comfort, speed of traverse, stability, reliability, elevation and depression of main gun, secondary armament, other items improving battlefield performance, such as radio, and night scope), but the availability of raw materials, the cost, as well as the ease and speed of manufacture, furthermore, the support infrastructure (how easy was it to repair, maintain, and keep in field), and a ready access to replacements (after all, you need to man the things), and the number and size of the crew needed to not only man it, but keep it in the field.

If by "better" tanks you mean greatest survivability in a specific battlefield scenario, then you need to specify the scenario.

Remember that quality of the crew plays a large part; a selection of greenies in a King Tiger is going to be useless: training and knowing the limitations and strengths of your vehicle is vital to the performance of your armour.

The Nazis were far too enarmoured of their own overly engineered, costly and complex designs. It took them too long to simplify their production lines. But early in the war, why would they? As long as the propaganda and general belief was they were winning the war, there is very little incentive to improve.

 

I don't think PzKw IV was that good of a tank by 44. The upgraded Allied mediums such as M4(76), M4 Firefly and T-34/85 were superior to it. Overall, German armor was superior at killing opposing armor, but German armored arm as a whole was substantially weaker than its adversaries.

 

To specify I didn't really mean speaking in reference to variables such as the crews of a tank or relative quality of parts used etc. I meant simply a combination of both of combat effectivness and production optimisation. Also you must consider that by war's end, the Allies had the luxury of developing better armaments and such, however the Germans didn't due to the ever decreasing industrial base they had.

Personally I think that if the Germans had spent less time building the complex and often malfuntioning designs, specifically the "Tiger" and focused it on the production of other Medium tanks that could still match allied armour and be produced faster they would have been more able to combat the ever inceasing disparity between numbers of armour being fielded. Over the course of the war the Germans built about 1350 Tiger tanks, with that classic ratio of 5 to 1 in a fight against Sherman tanks and with anywhere from 44,000 to 52,000 Shermans being built the Tiger could not match those numbers. However the Germans produced 9,000 to 14,000 Panzer IVs (9,000, I have found, is the most reliable number) and over ten thousand StuG IV self-propelled guns which could engage enemy armour. If the manufactories that produced the Tiger and other ineffecient designs were geared towards Panzer IVs, StuG IVs and even Panthers. (6,000 units or so produced) Say what you will about the Panzer IV, it was still the workhorse of the German armoured forces and performed admirably against the allied troops.

Oh, also it can be based on the mythos surrounding either sides' tank units, not just things like combat performance.

 

Until late 43/44 the Sherman was superior to the Panzer IV. At least the British thought so, in North Africa. The kill ratios seem to bear that out. The two tanks had similar armor thickness and a similar gun. The Sherman was far more reliable and had a faster gun traverse which gave it the edge. Reliability translates to mobility - tanks have to get to the battle, and the Sherman left fewer broken tanks behind on the road to the battle.

When the Germans upgraded the gun, that advantage disappeared because the German high velocity 75 could penetrate the armor of a Sherman at ranges where the Sherman gun was ineffective. As the British Firefly came online, followed by the US 76mm, that German advantage began to disappear again.

It's often pointed out that the Sherman was more liable to "brew up" because of the ammo stowage in the early versions. That reputation kind of colors most of the uninformed debate on the subject. It's true that the Sherman was less survivable for the crew, but early and again late in the war (when the guns were matched) the Sherman was arguably the better combat tank - in my opinion, whatever that is worth...

 

I've always found this suggestion that a certain amount more Mediums could be produced if one sacrificed the heavies somewhat mythic.

One Tiger cancelled may theoretically free up the base steel required to make 2 Mk.IVs, but it does not magically create the material required for Two guns, Twice the tyres, Two optical sets, Two Radios, etc. etc. Rubber, Tungsten, you name it, the Reich was likely having problems getting it.
Nor does it create much more industrial capacity, machines, trained factory workers, power, or fuel, lubricants, crew & other... 'expendables'... to create more vehicle capacity.

Germany's supply situation was parlous, her industrial base was never the most modern or productive, and allied attack was only exasperating weaknesses & increasing bottlenecks (despite some remarkable figures in the face of extreme circumstances), and her manpower resources were being 'bled white' by the war.
In many ways she had little choice but to push for the heavies & hope that technology could overcome the greater issues of cold hard logistics.
There is also the fact that the Mk.IV was pushed so hard by her final Ausf's, that the sheer weight of gun and armour was beginning to give quite severe problems to drive-train & running gear. Perhaps tolerable given the real-world rather short lifespan of these machines in the period, but a definite pointer that the old dear was beginning to get somewhat long in the tooth.

Couple of other threads in a similar vein:
German favour Mark IV as main battle tank?
PZ4+Panther turret=victory tank
Produce the Panther or stick with more Panzer IV/Tigers?

It doesn't, but then you knew that.

 

Here is an interesting post-war article written by a US Army tank battalion commander. My take-away from reading the article is that tanks fight as part of a unit and discussions about tank versus tank should include the organizational system that employed and operated the tanks, not just the tanks themselves.

http://854534263155010103.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/4/1/25411694/article_by_us_army_tank_battalion_commander_-_tank_versus_tank_1946.pdf

Regards,
Marc

 

The problem that Germany's industrialists faced was that they were forced to deal with Hitler's insane that led to their desiging bigger and heavier tanks from the tiger to the Maus to the Ratte which was just ridiculous. When I say that they would have been better off building medium tanks I say that not solely because it would have freed up the resources to construct at least several thousand more medium tanks, but also because it would have been more in keeping with blitzkrieg. On another note given the nature of the topic rather than just toting allied armour in the closing months of the war it is more approriate to speak about literal counterparts. not comparing tanks models that were desgined and fielded years apart. The Tiger was not that great of a tank all things considered and the production of such heavy vehicles forced the Germans to fight a defensive war. I freely admit that by the time the Allies landed in France the Germans had no other choice, but even so most historians agree (at least most that I have seen) that a major blunder of the Germans was to continue building bigger and heavier armoured vehicles.


One last thing, before this topic boils down into a debate about the conditions of the time, lets realign the question and say if you were having to command any given tank what would it be and think of it like that not just in terms of the actual conditions of the war. if you were in a plane of existence where you ruled a nation, which tank/s would you outfit your forces with.. Also I thought it translated that to "king tiger", but I found out recently that it was more intended to translate to 'Bengal tiger' as strange as that may be given the obvious correlation its has to German geography, but that is just what i saw.


Here are some categories to think about:

Light tanks:
Medium Tanks:
Heavy Tanks:

 

America had her "Maus" traps as well, but fortunately they were kept in the cabinet.

 

Maus, Ratte, P1500, whatever are an irrelevance.
Cutting heavies really does not automatically equate to thousands more tanks, SPGs, Sturmartillerie etc.. I can comfortably assert that for the reasons stated above. If it did, Speer etc. might well have forced that plan through, but they were not ignorant men, even when Adolf might have pushed.
Evidence of a new 'lighter' approach does exist in other paper Panzers, but it was too little too late, and still essentially Pie in the sky with the real-world factors staring them in the face. German industry did not have a hope of even coming close to the power in that field that the allies could apply - they had their best foot forward on design in many areas, but a shaky production base &, importantly, the need for war materiel other than tanks etc. etc. placing further crippling pressure on everything.


Those bottlenecks in production were not small factors; eg. the damage to ball-bearing production caused huge problems - a vehicle is not simply a pile of metal transformed into mobile force, it's an amalgam of a thousand smaller parts, each with it's own need for complex processes & materials. One of the charms of the subject for me is that sheer complexity, from a pushbike to a bullet to a Tiger, nothing is created in a vacuum.

"Most Historians" is a bit of a sweeping statement; many of the authors I can think of who have truly examined Panzer production come to quite another conclusion. Something being oft-stated doesn't necessarily make it true.

I also find it intriguing that you mention 'Blitzkrieg' twice.
Interesting term 'Blitzkrieg', and one that's being picked at quite a bit by some rather decent studies. Was it ever German doctrine, and was it ever really applied as such in a way that might conceivably feed into design choices? I'm far from certain on that point, but lean towards it being another oft-cited term that might indeed be somewhat mythical.

So, back to 'which tank?' I'd like to crew.
None of 'em. Horrible business.


(On the Bengal Tiger thing - I had a shufti back in Jentz to refresh the memory, and I have to concede I'd forgotten that. Though as the man himself says, it was an unclear and unofficial naming anyway - stick a space in it, throw in a few intelligence agencies & the German technical taste for Portmanteau words, and the picture is hardly any clearer, So I'll stick with 'King', or if we're going to do it properly: 'Tiger b'. )

 

A fourth category might ought to be included, that of a SPATG or Self Propelled Anti Tank Gun.

Whether they are Marder's, Stugs, JagdPanzers, Motor Gun Carriages (US TD's) and Soviet ISU's they made up a huge portion of AFV production and all too frequently pressed into the classic role of tank.

 

The late PzKw IV models did have good firepower and optics, but the chasis was maxed out. Having just 50 mm of mantlet armor is a very significant weakness. And engine power left much to be desired. I don't know enough about Tiger production to comment. But a battle tank like the Panther was a good investment for the German army, even with its flaws.

 

If I was a leader of a nation in a vacuum; I'd be ticked off, because I'm not being privy to enough information, making anything merely a guess.

The price of producing and maintaining a unit, compared to GDP.
The percentage amount of scarce metals and other much needed materials used, and how easily / quickly those materials and spare parts can be replaced, and how easy they are store.
Ease of assembly, and maintenance, both in peace time, and on the battlefield.
Combat performance.

The qualities and quantities of any potential aggressor against my imaginary country.

A nation such as Finland? No tanks, just anti tank forces, perhaps a few tank destroyers.
A nation as the USSR? T-34/85
Germany? A mix of Panther variants (Jagdpanther, Panther, + a hypothetical Ostwind/Kugelblitz variant)
Western Allies? Sherman Firefly.

 

The "one size fits all" approach simply won't work effectively except for small nations with limited number of fronts or terrain operated on, fighting basically a defensive war. For nations with multiple fronts, over a variety of conditions and climates, alternating with both offensive and defensive operations necessitate a more flexible and comprehensive plan.

Further peacetime considerations, once you are in a fight for your very existence, has to be set aside to ensure that enough useful weapons reach the battle quickly enough to make a difference, regardless of any long term cost. If you lose, it matters not if you got the absolute best bargain possible. Hence, each nation, while attempting to build economically, would naturally build a different ratio or variety of AFV based upon what they could and what they needed.

Taking Germany as a example I could see them build Light, Medium, Heavy Tanks and a SP/SPATG to meet their needs. the question is the ratio and the type. The problem for historical Germany was the simultaneous production of types essentially designed to due the same job. Naturally some overlap cannot be avoided simply to keep enough production flowing to the front, but producing Pz 38t's and Pz III's at the same time made no sense. Nor does producing Stug IV's, Nashorn's and JagdPz 38t's (Marder Aufs.M's).

If I were the hypothetical Reichsminister for Armaments, I would in 1939 though the end of the summer 1941 kept the Pz II in very limited production, Pz III in the historical rates except for having the Pz 38t production line shut down after the initial Czech Government order (about 150 units) was completed and then retooled for either Pz III or IV (if I were exceptionally wise the Pz IV, but more realistically the PZ III) and the Stug III at their historical level.

After the shock of the T-34 I would phase out Pz III Tank production in favor of Pz IV and Stug III's, while upgrading as I went. Keep the Pz II's in limited production for scouting duties. Begin development of what would become the Tiger and Panther, though I would go for the lighter Panther type (less frontal armor) Speer favored, to ensure they entered service (in a reliable form) as soon as possible. I could support the Marder I (At Guns mounted on French Chassis) and Marder III's on the limited number of surviving Pz 38t Chassis, but I surely would never build new Marder's or the Hetzer for that matter.

As the Tiger came on line I would produce it in historic numbers, but not the King Tiger, JagdTiger and SturmTiger. If the Panther is reliable, slowly phase out Pz IV for Stug IV's but not SturmPz Iv's, Nashorn's, JagdPz IV's and certainly no JagdPanthers. Phase out the Stug III for either Stug IV or Panther depending on what seems more vital.

I would keep this production for as long as I could.

Then write my best seller!

 

It kind of did.
Converting one factory making one type to produce another is a massive undertaking, even though designs may overlap with production elsewhere.
The technology of tank-building involved dedicated tooling & jigs, not easily transferable.

The Skoda works & associated Czech production was a rare prize for Adolf and his chaps - a complete industry with an established sub-component base - pretty much fully up and running.
They could plan to change production, and make incremental shifts, but the actuality of a complete change to German designs would involve significant delays at a time when the priority was pumping out machines to satisfy a building attrition rate and designs on the East. Despite the complications down the line of mixed spares & POL demands, it still made sense given the German industrial weaknesses & supply issues to just keep things running.
And as technology marched on, a Czech chassis with a decent German gun was a reasonably sensible expedient choice for the SPATGs, rather than risk the afore-mentioned delays, or worse; sacrifice precious 'home' production lines, which could be turning out the more modern models of tank.

StuGs are a somewhat different issue, but It's rather interesting how much less industrial effort & money is required when you leave out the complexities of a turret. (Though... despite their occasional stop-gap use in the Panzerwaffe, they were always seen as primarily devices for serving a rather different arm.)

PzJgr 38t & Jagdpanther are interesting ones to discard. Both rather successful designs which gave quite a bit back in terms of relatively little shift in industrial effort (the complex bits to produce stay the same, & use the same tooling of the parent model, and then not too much effort is required to add a fairly slabbish superstructure). I'd see them both as entirely sensible uses of established production lines.

 

Before this boils down into something completely different than what I had envisoned (that is to say, an argument on the conditions of the time rather than the tanks) I will once again refocus this into a hypothetical scenario. If you were the leader of a nation which tanks would you elect for the three categories of armour, heavy, medium and light, in the context of WW2. This will not be an argument based on the context of the wartime conditions of either side, because clearly there are too many variables to account for to make it feasible.

 

Thanks for the moderating, mate. Really appreciate that...
(I don't really, that's sarcasm .)
Start a conversation about tank choices, expect comment on detail etc.
It's called discussion, debate, enquiry, application of knowledge. It waxes and wanes, it's what grown-ups do.
If you want an asinine 'I like this tank' chat without any real world context whatever, or people locked out from more free form replies, you may be in the wrong place.

The conditions are the tanks.
Nothing was created in a vacuum.
'Which side had better armour' has to descend into detail - it is inevitable for such a massively complex question.

 

This maybe often pointed out but in the analysis I've seen there is little difference between the Sherman and the German tanks given a penetrating hit. In fact at least two of the German tanks were worse but I'm not sure if there was a statistically significant difference and this was pre wet stowage I beleive.

Again one must be careful here. From the analysis I've seen most tank crew casualties occured while the crew were outside the tank. Furthermore if you look at medium tanks they vary more by nationality than by tank type (with the Soviets having by far the highest crew loss per tank loss numbers). The heavies would be less likely to be pentrated on the other hand they would be more likely to brake down. I haven't seen a serious study on this to indicate if there is a difference and what it really was in terms of crew survivability.

 

Another issue is could Germany train more crews if they produced more tanks? Add to that more tanks means more maintenance crews, more fuel required, more vehicles to move that fuel, more workers to produce the fuel etc etc it is far more complex than swapping 1200 Tigers for say 2500 Panthers or MKIV's. I read somewhere the German Army had more Vets looking after horses than Panzer drivers. It might not stack up exactly but an Infantry Division had 3-5000 horses and that was the German Army's problem. Sorry a bit off topic but some of it relevant.