You lead a team of engineers during the WWII, describe....

You lead a team of engineers during the WWII, describe your project for the best possible tank, from every point of view:
armour
gun
dimensions
engine
cost of production
maintainability
...

 

What period of WWII?
What terrain is expected?
What weather conditions (prevailing)?
What opposition expected?
What targets are expected?
What speed is required by the staff (bearing in mind it will presumably operate with other vehicles)?
What road range (as above and the more internal fuel it carries the larger the vehicle will be)?
What production facilities and capabilities do we have? And is the tank liable to be sub-contracted in any way? What capabilities do the sub-contractors have?
What's the budget?What maintenance is expected at field level? Or at depot level?
What weapons are availbale now/ likely to available during the projected lifetime of the vehicle?
Likewise with engines, transmissions?
What is the required production rate/ final cost?
Do we have casting facilities, rolling mills, what's the capability of our machine tools for making turret rings (i.e. how good is our machine tool industry)?
What limits are to be placed on the design due to: raod transport, rail transport, naval transport, air transport?
Expected duties - medium tank, main battle (universal) tank, what?
What's the 95th percentile of our population's height (assuming we want to accept most applicants/ draftees as tank crew)?
And about a million other questions....

 

1.85 is more appropriate for the 95th percentile

 

A good start on ideas is available here:
http://www.fun-online.sk/forum/viewforum.php?f=10
But at a first go I'd say Panther variant, with different suspension and a turret capable of accepting 88 L/71 sometime in the future...

 

Hi stratofortress, welcome to the forum.

I wonder: why did you ask for "the best possible tank" built by "a team of engineers" when you were really looking for the best possible tank the Germans (quite a specific entity) could build in 1943?

As an answer to your question, I'd probably go for a downsized Panther. This tank has good thick armour, a very decent AT gun and good mobility characteristics, but it's too large and heavy.

 

I'd go more for an upgraded T-34, with strengthened suspension allowing heavier armour and a bigger gun...

Cheaper and easier to produce than a Panther. Maybe do a little work on the interior ergonomics though...

 

Well yeah, I'm pro- T-34 myself but Stratofortess's reply said it was to fight the USSR and Allies, using German facilities as a baseline...
You could get into slight trouble in Nazi Germany for suggesting they maunfacture copies of Russian equipment
A T-34-100 (late T-44 modification carried the 100mm) built earlier would do the trick.

 

I would do what Roel said, but would replace the Panthers original gun (75 mm L/70) for the 88 mm L/56.

 

I'm not sure if that is practical. Downsizing the Panther would mean reducing the space available for ammunition storage by default. Switching over to a gun with considerably larger rounds might reduce ammunition capacity below what could be considered acceptable.

 

The rounds weren't considerably larger - they were pretty much the same size (see the comparison in the pic below between the 75x640R for the Panther's gun and the 88x571R for the L/56 of the Tiger 1 - the 88x822R of the Tiger II's L/71 gun was a different matter...)

I agree with Panzerman and I've argued the same in the past: the 75mm L/70 was better at punching holes in tanks than the 88mm L/56, but the latter was still pretty good at that and fired a useful HE shell as well.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

AFAIK Panther II was proposed to be upgraded to 88 L/71 (with schmallturm!!) if it had ever gone into service.
It's not number of rounds carried so much as the combination of sighting system, general weapon accuracy and number of rounds - the overall system kill probability - it's a trade-off.
IIRC 3rd round hit was regarded as the norm in WWII (if anyone has definite figures I'd appreciate them, that figure goes back to the days when I started wargaming and has stuck ever since), so, for example, 40 rounds would give 13 hits (rounded). If you have improved optics/ aiming and drop to, say, 30 rounds for a "guaranteed" 2nd shot hit you get 15 with the system. And a larger round generally means more actual chance of a kill.
75% of the ammo and 15% more kills...

 

This may be true from a designer's point of view, but as a crewman I imagine you would simply want as many rounds as possible. This is why for example StuGIII crews habitually paved the crew compartment floor with extra rounds. Also, the 88mm L/56 doesn't offer any addiotional killing power compared to the 75mm L/70 except against soft targets.

Anyway, since Tony pretty much has me cornered on this, I think it would indeed be wiser to swap for the 88mm L/56 due to its more effective HE shell with only a marginal loss in AT capability.

 

Roel, you are missing my point. The 88 round is not for additional anti-tank power, but rather for delivering a more potent HE blast whilst still being a formidable AT weapon, for a marginal increase in round size.

 

That is what I said, re-read my post. It's in the last sentence.

 

Ahh... do "soft targets" encompass stuff like bunkers and brick houses? If they do, excuse me

 

That is not the last sentence of my post. I got the impression that you missed a bit there...

The things you mention are indeed soft targets by the way.

 

...the best tank you can get at this time.



a Hs 129

Regards,
Che.

 

That would be one of the worst mistakes you could make. Agreed the gun was good, but it was very difficult and expensive to make. You needed 5,600 kilos of raw material to make this 1,350 kilo gun. As far as the superior HE capability is concerned, that was of secondary importace for the German side since the Allies made vastly more tanks than Germany.

 

I wasn't suggesting that the original gun would be used - just that the Panther's gun should be developed in 88mm L/56 calibre. Since the ammo was the same overall size, the gun would have been the same size and weight.

I don't follow your logic. However many or few tanks an army had, they still had to engage a wide range of targets, of which tanks seem to have represented a small proportion - so the ability to fire a good HE shell was an advantage.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum