M 5 Sherman tank. What would you have done?

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doggtag 7/7/2009 9:13:26 AM

German tanks were in 1937. (Panzer I and II) approx. 2 or 3 generations behind then-existing French and Russian tanks, while 6 years later, Panther outclassed every then-existing tank by very long margin. But both Panthers and Tigers were complex tanks-every single was so complex that it could easily end up as museum exponate right after production. There is comparation: for same amount of work it was possible to build 4 Panzer IV's, 3 Panthers or 2 Tigers. However, Panzer IV could be built with much less complex machines so real situation would be 6 Panzer IV, or 3 Panthers or 2 Tigers.

And US TD doctrine meant they had something with which they can catch up with and destroy German tank. Sherman, even variant with 76.2 mm cannon, was highly immobile when compared to Panther or Panzer IV. But i think Germans made mistake-they should built Panzer IV's instead of all these Panthers and Tigers. 15 000+ additional Panzer IV's would be more effective than 1400 slow, short-ranged Tigers plus 5000 breakdown-prone Panthers.

15,000 Panzer IIIs and IVs, even if we throw in numerous variants with anything from AA to SP artillery and TDs, would be a bad idea.

Those several hundreds of Tigers and Panthers that were derelict and broken down?

They weren't consuming any fuel, or ammunition, or personnel (other than maintenance, if any).

Now try providing enough fuel, ammunition, and crews to these proverbial 15,000 AFVs and see where it gets you.

As the War progressed, Germany just could not have sustained that many more vehicles, let alone the additional 60,000+ personnel and the provisions (rations, clothing, etc) required for them.

(And as more and more military-aged German males were being killed, who was going to operate these vehicles?

A volkstrum made up of old men and Hitler Youth?)

Fuel was just too critical.

And as the War continued and more Allied bombings took their toll on production and supply facilities, all those AFVs would've depleted ammunition and spares & repair parts stocks even faster.

Mathematically it may seem more ideal to produce more numbers of more dependable vehicles than took less material and manpower/manhours to build, but the end logistics of fuel, ammo, and the number of personnel required to operate them,

all those compute against the argument for 15,000, or even 10,000, of every other PzIII/IV-based AFVs that could've been built instead.

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JFKY Dogtag 7/7/2009 9:45:59 AM

Yours are all good points, BUT...as Germany was being hammered by huge armoured forces I think it's fair to say that Germany ABSOLUTELY NEEDED a larger tank force. And the Force wouldn't have required EXTRA men, it would have allowed men, in infantry to have become tankers. So it's not 300-plus Infantry divisions AND more panzers...but rather 250 infantry divisions and more panzers...

Further, an increase in the tank force would have allowed the existing forces to have remained at a stronger level....rather than divisions with 20-50 tanks, you might have had divisions with 100-plus tanks....

All-in-all, your objections, though ultimately valid, are also flawed....Germany needed more panzers...she still would have lost (Thank God) but the victory would have been even more expensive....

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Leech 7/7/2009 10:09:06 AM

I have found data in military history magazine in which is estimation that more Panzer IV's instead of Panthers and Tigers would be able to delay main tank crash until winter 1943./1944. Strategically, nothing important would happen, expect that Soviet advance would be slower.

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Leech 7/7/2009 10:16:35 AM

However, I still don't think Panthers were complete mistake. Mistake was decision about putting them into production before they were ready for that. Let's just say battle for Kursk. 500 more Panzer IV's would have more effect than 200 half-operative Panthers. MAN was designer of Panther, and they should make Panthers operative after Kursk battle, while Henschel and Daimler-Benz would produce Panzer IV model G or H, with adequate long 75 mm cannon.

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Leech 7/7/2009 10:18:50 AM

P.S. Estimated loss in Pz.IV production during 1943. beacouse of decision to produce still-unreliable Panthers is between 1000-2000 tanks. That was mistake.

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doggtag 7/8/2009 7:56:36 AM

All-in-all, your objections, though ultimately valid, are also flawed....Germany needed more panzers...she still would have lost (Thank God) but the victory would have been even more expensive....

So you found the crews by stripping infantry battalions.
That'll only cover part of it.

You still need the fuel and ammunition for those AFVs.

Plus, you now have a larger logistics trail necessary to support those vehicles.

Spare parts have to get through, so those additional logistics convoys and the infrastructure needed to move them needs to be secured.

And again, without the industrial base to produce enough ammunition to keep up with an advancing army on numerous fronts with several thousand more AFVs, you're going to be rationing ammunition at the front lines.

Let's see: with the best models of Panzer III and IV that Germany produced (and their most successful subvariants), that means that the Allies needn't have bothered so much with getting guns like the 17pdr and its APDS ammo, or the 90mm in Pershings, into Europe as soon (more German AFVs would've fallen victim to the lower-powered Allied guns like the 6pdr and more of the 75 & 76mm guns found in greater numbers than the 17-pdr.

Like the longer 75mm gun on the Panzer IVs (L48?), what if the British and US realized they could've just as easily gotten by with a 40-some caliber 75-76mm gun (more easily adapted to Shermans and British cruiser tanks) to defeat Panzer III's and IV's rather than needing the 50+ caliber higher-powered 17-pdr,

with high-strength steel shot being more than sufficient and tungsten AP types not being so necessary?

Remind us again what it takes to defeat the frontal 80mm of a late-model Panzer IV...?

No Tigers means the 17-pdr may have had a lower priority, and investment in the 90mm gun of the Pershing wouldn't have been required, so that money and those resources could've kept Allied 75mm and 76mm gun and ammuntion production higher.

On the Russian front, those Panzers may have looked formidable amassing in larger numbers over a greater area

(spreading them out over a larger area = bad for the German logistics elements to keep up), but advantage to the Russians would be that those tanks and AFVs are more susceptible to the 76mm gun on the original T34, even the high velocity guns like the 57mm would've been quite effective.

So if we remove German heavies like the Tiger and Elefant from the Russian front, the Russians wouldn't have needed to divert other assets away to destroy those heavies, and could've focused then more on better-matched tank battles between T34s and Korvals, unless, at some point, a Super Korval is built, offering immunity to the high velocity 57mm and 76mm Allied guns.

A larger number of less-protected German AFVs wasn't going to win it for Germany:

as I mentioned but was obviously overlooked, those more vehicles were going to consume Germany's limited fuel sources and ammunition production a lot faster.

So what if you can piece together tank crews from infantry battalions.

Armor needs infantry support, and this would only mean more infantry divisions would need to be reallocated to support them.

It's still going to be a logistics nightmare for Germany, even if they did have the initial industrial base to build them and could find the manpower to crew them.

But for how much longer would they have lasted, going thru fuel and ammo at a faster rate?

(Nothing more than a case of delaying the inevitable.)

It wasn't just the stupidity in the tanks department (resources wasted on heavies) that cost Germany the War.

On the same page, without the threat of those German heavies (thicker armor, bigger guns),

the Allies (British, Americans, and Russians) wouldn't necessarily have committed resources into their own heavy tank programs and more powerful tank guns, either, thusly they would've also had more resources to sink into building larger numbers of more reliable medium tanks that consumed less overall resources.

The higher numbers games for all sides just means you burn thru fuel and ammunition faster,

and by the second half of the War, it was becoming obvious that only the US could continue supplying the volume needed, and that's even with having a huge amount of steel, manpower, fuel, and ammunition being invested in the PTO.

Germany just did not have the resource base to keep up, no matter how much territory they were trying to seize, and larger mass-production of more reliable AFVs only would've eaten up those limited resources at a faster rate.

They only way this move would've saved them,

would've been to have built so many tens of thousands of AFVs prior to the first blitzkriegs that they could've seized enough resources, and managed to indefinitely secure them, faster than any of the Allied nations could've responded, reaching as far into Scandanavia, Russia, and the Mediterranean territories to acquire it.

But there again, they faster your forward elements reach out to cover and seize more territory, the more your logistics elements struggle to keep up with them.

Even the mighty US found that out in Desert Storm and OIF: you can't blitz in so far ahead of your support that you bog down and could potentially become ineffective because you now have to wait for all your fuel, food, ammo, repair parts, and other supplies to catch up with you.

And in covering more area, you also have to guarantee security for your logistics over a much larger area, thus relegating more of your infantry and armor to security rather than blitz assaults and offensives.

Be a very interesing study: just what would've been the breaking point for Germany,as in how many vehicles for what amount of time could they actually have sustained in an offensive thrust in several directions at once, before they absolutely had to cease advancing and then switch to defensive to secure it all,

when compared to how would the Allies have reacted and countered any differently than they had?

Too many variables at work there.

More AFVs just wasn't going to win it for Germany.

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JFKY Never said it was going to... 7/8/2009 8:39:29 AM

"Win the war for Germany." I said Germany needed more armour and that an extra 5,000-15,000 Mk IV's would have been very nice. Possibly enough to win Stalingrad or Kursk...in which case Germany keeps access to Caucasus oil, certainly it drags the war on longer.

That's all I said. This isn't some Nazi/Wehrmacht Fanboi talking here, not some devotee of Luftwaffe 46, just an interested amateur pointing out that Germany needed more tanks, and could have had them, and that they would have done Germany some good. They would have allowed more Panzer units and kept the Panzer units at a fuller level of strength. All this is good for Germany, not so much for Jews, Gypsies, Slav's, Soviets, Britons, and Americans.

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Leech 7/8/2009 10:52:49 AM

Only problem is fact that Allied bombers were destroying German tank industry. Only good thing regarding Tiger production (good for Germans) was the fact that Tigers were produced using heavy machinery. That slowed down Tiger production, but given the fact that Allied 250 kg bombs were not able to destroy machines, production would continue few hours after attack in no-roof factories. However, fact that Tigers were too complex and too slow machines still remains.

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Leech 7/8/2009 11:04:39 AM

There was another recipe-build as many Panthers and Panzer IV's as possible (10 Panthers, 20-40 Panzer IV's, and 1 Tiger). Panzers I-III and Panzers IV models up to model G would stay for fighting partisans, as they were completely unusable on fronts. However, that "recipe" could work only after model A went into production.)

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Nasty German Idiot 7/8/2009 11:14:02 AM

Allied Bombing did not hurt German Tank Production to a great extend when simple speaking about the output of massive amounts of tanks. (that goes for Weapons Production after all ! Allied bombing hurting German Weapon production to a huge extend is largely a myth !)

The fuel supply (and Allied Airpower !) was what broke the back of the German Armored Divisions when speaking about Armored Warfare from Winter 1943 on. After the loss of the Romanian Oilfields in late 1944 there was practically only the syntetical oil left that was produced in the Leuna Raffineries on the Coast. These were indeed seriously hurt by Allied Bombings. The Tank Factories were underground and not a single one ever stopped or even slowed production until spring 1945. I guess the Tiger combat statistics would after all also have been much much better if the Wehrmacht would have been supplied with enough fuel. There were after all a similar number of Tigers blown up by German Crews because of fuel lack than were destroyed by the enemy - ironically especially in 1944 / 45 when they appeared in bigger numbers and would have made a real impact.

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Leech 7/8/2009 1:04:16 PM

Panther was relatively balanced tank, and, when all is accounted, maybe best choice for German Panzer divisions. I was speculating about Panzer IV's beacouse Soviets simply broke Germans with mass of tanks; however, it's true that Germans had serious problems with resources, and smaller number of high-quality tanks was only option left. I chose Panthers beacouse it's true that Germans had no resources to built enough Panzer IV's; and, while Tiger production was less hurt by bombings than production of other tanks, production was going really too slow (average 25 tanks per month in 1943?, maximum of 102 tanks in April 1944.), and Tigers themselves were too slow and with too limited range to be useful in catching Russan tanks, except when they simply ran into some T-34 company etc. However, Panther was perfect tank (after his mechanical prblems were solved) for attack, but not so good for defence, however, tactics could compensate for that. They were simply rushed in production before they were ready-one more example how Hitler messed things up when he pretended to be general.

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JFKY NGI 7/8/2009 1:18:34 PM

The Tiger was NEVER going to have a "real" impact...it wasn't a particularly good tank. As I said, it was it's tactical position, mostly lurking on the Defense that made it's reputation. Had the Allied had it in 1944/45 or the Germans had it in 1940/42 it wouldn't have near the "reputation" it has. It was slow, expensive, unreliable, hard to repair....the last time it, or it's King Tiger Brother, were on the offensive they rapidly fell to the rear of the column and contributed nothing to the break thru attempt by Peiper's Kampfgruppe.

I once read a great line about German tanks, supposedly from a Panzer Fuhrer..."My tanks were built by watchmakers." Some fine precision engineering, too bad it was expensive to produce and repair.

Off-Topic, but I'd vote for the T-34 over the Pzkw V as the more influential and more important tank....it was produced in VAST numbers and it won its war. The Panther was very good, but never produced in enough numbers to make a difference....in fact I'd give the nod to, in this order of preference to:

1) T-34 (In service earlier. Probably more lethal and a little better armoured than the M-4)

2) M-4 Sherman (Served in every theatre, served to equip the US, the British, the Soviet, French and Dutch Armies. Reliable, mobile, dependable, maintainable, repairable, and adequately lethal. Also won its war(s))

3) Pzkw IV (In production from 1939-45, basis for innumerable variants. Lethal to the end, if somewhat dated)

4) Panther

At one level you are right about strategic bombing. HOWEVER, if it weren't for Strategic Bombing even MORE Panzers would have been produced. So there was an attrition effect, on the shop floor, as it were. And the Strategic Bombing Campaign(s) tied up 600,000 German troops and several thousand Luftwaffe A/c...that translates into about 24 German divisions and support, probably another 2 Panzer and 1 Panzergrenadier Division, plus 21 Infantry divisions, supported by 1,000 Bf-109's, ME-110's, and a number of bombers. Imagine that force at Kursk, or Stalingrad in December, or Mortain 1944 or in the Ardennes in 1944. They would have made a difference. So, bombing had a very big impact on the German War Effort...just not in the way the Douhet, Trenchard, Harris, Eaker, and LeMay foresaw or liked.

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Leech 7/9/2009 5:25:50 AM

Germans tried to make Panzer IV's less complex, but that was too late. There is comparation: each German tank had one radio station, command tanks two. In KV Soviet companies in best case one out of 5 tanks had single radio device. All German tanks had two systems for turning turret-one hydraulic, main, and one with wheel for hand-turning. Soviet T-34's had only hand-turning system. And, about fuel-only German sources were from Romania or syntethic fuel. Soviets had oil fields near Caucasus and in Siberia. Soviets were in advantage, plus Germany had to fight on two fronts, and Allied bombings were destroying communications, and even more slowing production of additional tanks. No steel-no tanks. No oil-tank is dead in tracks and unusable.

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Herald12345 Reply to various. 7/15/2009 3:26:40 AM

German tank production needed rationalization. Nobody (at least not me) says that the Panther shouldn't be produced. What I said was that the increased numbers of PZKW IV Korvals would be a good idea as the standard tank. It was fairly simple to make gby German standards and by 1944 was well understood. Its armor protection was uograded eno0igh so that the 75mm/38 had to be replaced as a tank gun as was the Russian F-32 and L-11 cannons as well . Even this wouldn't be enough as soon as the Panthers show up. D5Ts and ZiS-S-53s (85 mm/50). become necessary.

How much oil does a tank division consume? Well a Sherman or Pershing ate 10 liters a kilometer. Assuming the same for a Panther or a Korval, a panzer division of 300 tanklike vehicles should use about 3000 liters per kilometer or about 30,000 litters for a hard day's movement. (100 kilometers). Multiply that by 40 such divisions which should be about the logistics limit of Germany. That is 1,2000,000 liters of oil per day. Double that consumption for other motorized transport and round up to 2,500,000 liters per day for the Wehrmacht. The rest of the Wehrmacht has to march on beans, potatoes, and oats. You can't motorize 260 infantry divisions.

We look at about 16000-25000 barrels of oil per day for the armored maneuver forces. Maybe triple that for heavy combat? 75,000 barrels....... 65,000 tonnes per day of heavy combat. or 2.4 million tonnes per year or TWICE what the Germans could produce per year total! Ploesti was only able to produce about 25,000 tonnes per day. That should tell you something. A rational war planner stocks up at least a million tonne reserve and heads for Baiku immediately and hang the Moscow front!

Source.

Herald

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Herald12345 Aw the joys of the decimal point! 7/15/2009 4:24:53 AM

See the math error?

German tank production needed rationalization. Nobody (at least not me) says that the Panther shouldn't be produced. What I said was that the increased numbers of PZKW IV Korvals would be a good idea as the standard tank. It was fairly simple to make by German standards and by 1944 was well understood. Its armor protection was upgraded enoigh so that the 75mm/38 had to be replaced as a tank gun as was the Russian F-32 and L-11 cannons as well . Even this wouldn't be enough as soon as the Panthers show up. D5Ts and ZiS-S-53s (85 mm/50). become necessary.

How much oil does a tank division consume? Well a Sherman or Pershing ate 10 liters a kilometer. Assuming the same for a Panther or a Korval, a panzer division of 300 tanklike vehicles should use about 3000 liters per kilometer or about 30,000 litters (should be 300,000 liters) for a hard day's movement. (100 kilometers). Multiply that by 40 such divisions which should be about the logistics limit of Germany. That is 1,2000,000 (12,000,000 is the correct total) liters of oil per day. Double that consumption for other motorized transport and round up to 2,500,000 (25,000,000) liters per day for the Wehrmacht. The rest of the Wehrmacht has to march on beans, potatoes, and oats. You can't motorize 260 infantry divisions.

We look at about 16000-25000 (156,000) barrels of oil per day for the armored maneuver forces. Maybe triple that for heavy combat? 75,000 barrels....... 65,000 (156,000 x 3 =460,000) tonnes per day of heavy combat. or 17.1 million tonnes per year or two times what the Germans could produce per year total! Ploesti was only able to produce about 25,000 tonnes per day (9,125,000 tonnes per year) . That should tell you something. A rational war planner stocks up at least 5 million tonne reserve and heads for Baiku immediately and hang the Moscow front!

Source.

Herald

Shrug. I screwed up the math. At least I checked it!

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