Tigers - were they worth it?

Well said Matt.

 

Right on the money. The german attack on russia in 1941 is even more than a successful blitz- it was the most successful campaign in the history of warfare! If one considers the time taken, casualties and damage caused to the enemy, etc... there's really no comparison.
The russian campaign makes great material for study- going from a success like barbarossa to a battle like Kursk to the complete destruction of the german army.
Talk about extremes!

 

OK guys - humour me. This is an old thread languishing ( undeservedly ) in the 'old' forum posts. There's some good info and discussion here, so I've *bumped* it up because I like reading it !

 

thought pattern : I note some im-materials from me in this thread, can some of the nonsense be censored out that is OT ?

Otto/Peppy ?

 

Yes they were. My Father & both my Uncles (and everyone else they knew), all knew the word "Tiger". Even if it didn't pan out to be unstoppable/best ever, it instilled fear. Every bit as much as the T-34 did. By nothing more than its name being said.
You can't buy "PR" like that.
Survivability as well. Apart from KV's/IS II's and other Tigers (Panthers from the front), Matildas, (few, random, others).... how many incidents of other models are there where shells bounced off more than once?

 

Hmmm, a toughie. I'm not quite so sure the Tiger's gun and frontal armor offsets the maintenance stops/crews, weak drive train, bridge weight limits,lack of recovery vehicles that could tow a dis-abled Tiger. Not to mention the other things already discussed.Time to
produce,expense, gas mileage.
They were "almost" as vunerable in the sides and rear-end as any other tank. The Panther,with as good a gun and less weight would've been a better choice. IMO.

 

Ditto.

 

A litre of petrol, a glass bottle, a length of material and a naked flame (molotov cocktail) thrown onto the unprotected back effectively knocked out the 50 tonne beasts, Soviets did that when they threw them from upper levels down onto them. Tigers as impressive as they were they were a waist of resources. Also in the end their kill rate would have to be impressive to have any effect.

 

Im going to go a NO

Panthers all the way!!!

 

The Panther entered service almost one year after the Tiger, so I don't see how the Germans could have chosen the Panther over the Tiger in fall 42 or spring 43 for example.

When the Panther finaly entered production, it might have been a good move to divert the ressources and time devoted to Tiger production to Panther production. The Tiger was very expensive to build, and had a very poor armor slope design, which was countered by sheer armor thickness adding to the general overweight of the Tiger.

The Panther was also a very expensive tank, and a gas guzzler, but was amazingly fast and agile for such a heavy tank (indeed its weight would have more placed it into the heavy tank class from an allied point of view).

Given the fact that what made these tanks often more effective than their allied counterparts, were mostly individual crew training and communication between tanks, and also optics, I think that the Panther could have replaced the Tiger when it entered production.

Now, from summer 1943 on, Germans would maybe have twice the numbers of Panthers than they had Tigers produced for the same price, but these additional Panthers would have required additional crews and fuel.

 

We are getting soooooooo repetitive. I propose we change subject and start discussing say the Thirty Years War, as this German fuel argument is so done and overdone.

In any case I can already foresee some smart alec starting to argue that fodder for the horses was getting harder and harder to find, and also that the Germans Reiter armour quality was decreasing over time in quality as compared to the Swedish...

 

Landsknechts, the blackwater of the 16th & 17th centuries?
What if the defenestration of Prague had never happened?
What if the window had been higher?

 

I'll take a long handled pitchfork to your short broadsword anyday ...........nah

As Deutschland is on the defensive in 44-45 in most cases I would say yes to the Tiger as a nice defensive set-up......can we mention Königstiger ?

 

I look at this whole issue a bit differently.

First, there is the tactical and operational issue to deal with. Tactically, a tank is a point target. That is, it is a single thing not a dispersed group of things to deal with. While an infantry platoon has something on the order of 30 to 50 "targets" in it a tank platoon has at most five.
Once those five targets are located dealing with them is just a matter of time. Survivability as WW 2 tanks goes is not good no matter how much armor you put on them. A determined opponet will stop the vehicles by one method or another.

At the operational level the key characteristic is now reliability. How many tanks can your unit put in the line and keep there. It is no longer per se an issue of firepower, mobility, and protection but one of supply, maintenance, and stamina of the crews.

In this sort of view the Tiger has a limited purpose on the battlefield. It is too much tank for widespread operational use. It is not sufficently reliable to make it so. The Panther is much the same way.

From an orgainzational point of view the Tiger should have been limited to a company per panzer division at first. The use of seperate battalions only made sense from a logistics standpoint. Generally, a handful of Tigers at a critical point might have made the difference for a panzer division. A handful operating from a seperate battalion doesn't.

Of course, from a design and manufacturing standpoint the Germans tended to over engineer and under design their tanks. That is, they tended to push the engineering envelope in design but then did not build in the reliability and ease of maintenance that was necessary for an operational vehicle. They tended to have overstressed, delicate engines, complex and hard to maintain suspensions, badly overstressed transmissions, and in general just a lot of neat engineering stuff that didn't work well in practical terms.
There was no thought, or at least it seems that way, given to availability of materials for construction nor to things like the fuel supply. Given the German fuel situation economy and ability to run on multi-fuels should have been a big issue but apparently it wasn't looked at at all. Reducing manufacturing costs, materials, and labor should also have been right up at the top of the list from day one of the war for the Germans. Again, they appear not to have had particular concerns here.

With respect to the Tiger, the design doesn't appear to concern itself with these things particularly. Having to form the main part of the turret as a huge rolled single plate was insane. This doubtless really bottlenecked production as there simply could never be many plate rolls and hot process machines to do this procedure. Using cut welded plate made more sense. Reducing machining and cutting times would have been smart too.
Basically, there was just too much fancy engineering going on with no one paying attention to the production problems that might occur.

The Tiger might, like I said, be worth it where a company per panzer division was made available. Backing up an inproved Pz III or IV that was the main fighting tank it would have been acceptable. Beyond that, it like the Panther was simply too much tank.

 

Or the window frame smaller ?

 

I think the Tiger was definitely worth it in it's defensive role, there is no question of its abilities. The problem is that it ended up being a liability in ways do to considerations of industrial production.

I think that it was Germanies best bet from "43 onward but it was in many instances squandered in offensive actions such as at Kursk.

 

It was not envisioned as a defensive vehicle though.
Aggressive battlefield dominance was the original aim, something that it got so close to, but also so far, largely due to it's mechanical problems.

It's interesting that the designers of tigger were so surprised, somewhat embarrassed and even appalled, at the great prominence given to it in propagandic terms. They seem to have seen it as something of an only just acceptable stop-gap until they could really get it right.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Tigers could make a few LOCAL successes, but on the whole, the couldn't stop the Allied and Russian war machines.
Quantity has a Quality all of it's own, remember!

 

In the Russian steppe where you can see for miles tanks like Tigers and Ferdinands were in their element. The Soviet tanks could not touch them but the 88´s could score one by one. I think one of the biggest scores for "one" battle alone in the ostfront would be the kills for Ferdinands in the aftermath of Zitadelle in the orel and Belgorod. I might be wrong but I recall the scores were huge.( still not stopping the Soviet Juggernaut...)

 

I think they were pretty