Posted on 03/09/2015 12:38:33 PM PDT by C19fan
The Germans are a polarizing people, and so are their products. Sort of like when journalists review a BMW — people either love ‘em or hate ‘em. This is because Germany’s engineering prowess is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it enables Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche, etc., to lead the pack when it comes to performance. On the other hand, the Germans are notorious for letting their reach exceed their grasp. They rush new and innovative products to market without giving them a proper shake-down first.
Not only does this odd duality explain Germany’s mixed record in building fine automobiles, it also sheds light on designs going as far back as World War II. Case in point: the Panzerkampfwagen Tiger battle tanks the Fatherland built to counter Allied armor. They were either deadly killers, clunky death traps, or both, depending on who you ask.
(Excerpt) Read more at autos.yahoo.com ...
I will agree with you. They had some of the elements coming together, like early T-34 tanks, and emerging strategy, like Zhukov defeating the Japanese at Nomonhan. However, the Soviet Army was much too weakened by Stalin’s purges.
Stalin was surely thinking about the dictator to the west, but any action would have been years away.
Another problem was the German’s couldn’t think outside the box ... it was like “if this is so, then that must be so”
panther was rushed to production without the design being fully validated. Subsequently, they had a serious problem in the field with final drives failing at very low hour use.....40-60 hours in some cases.
this problem seriously detracted from the panther’s performance.
that said, it is still my favorite armored vehicle, and it stood up admirably to the T-34 and the M4, against overwhelming numerical superiority.
“When it comes to Volkswagen cars, I hear more former owners claiming what an over engineered piece of crap they were.”
I have a good friend who’s a professional mechanic and he swears BMWs are “throwaway” cars because no one makes replacement engines and the old engines can’t be rebuilt because the walls between cylinders are too thin to allow the cylinders to be re-bored.
He also says that if you disturb an actuator like a brake pedal on a VW when the battery is disconnected, that when you reconnect the battery the CPU gets terminally confused and the only way to deal with the issue is to tow the car to a VW dealership have have them reflash the CPU to factory state.
When Germany & Russia invaded Poland with little effort, Stalin thought he could similarly annex Finland. The Finns had experienced Communism in the 20s and knew that they didn’t want that. 1.5M of the Soviet army did not come back from the Finland adventure and the Finns only lost because they ran out of ammunition. With this fiasco, Hitler figured the Soviet Union was a pushover.
“If Hitler had put Albert Speer in charge of armaments production from the start, and had left him alone to do his job, the allies would have have faced a much more uphill struggle to destroy the Third Reich.”
Hitler couldn’t let anyone do their job without meddling. Goering desperately wanted a four engine bomber, but Hitler wouldn’t allow him the resources. Goering also wanted to mass-produce fighters with jet engines, but Hitler wanted the jet engines used on bombers instead. The list of such meddling by Hitler just goes on and on.
I ran Import Auto Service in Milwaukee, Indianapolis and another location for many years...my record time to change a V.W. engine was 17 minutes....
Agreed, oil was their problem. hence the allied raids on ploesti, etc.
Army Group Sud was heading to the Caucausus from the north, and rommel was heading to the oil fields of the middle east.
...except that Army group Sud was split in 1942, and a significant portion of it headed to that little town on the volga.
another example of the decisions of one man bringing down an empire. hubris indeed.
Outside the box thinking by the Germans:
Zeppelins
Blitzkrieg
ME-262 jet
V1 and V2 rockets
Enigma coding machines
MG-42
That’s just off the top of my head.
We gave the soviets over 400,000 trucks and jeeps. The trucks were absolutely vital - without them there's no fuel, food or ammo for their T-34s. The soviets also liked to tow artillery with the trucks and turn them into mobile artillery batteries.
Thank Hitler. He destroyed initiative in the German army.
The Germans attacked Russia because of their Winter War with Finland that was a complete disaster. While they eventually prevailed by sheer numbers, they showed a total weakness that the Germans couldn’t help but notice.
Most notably, the Panther's drive train had a double spur gear system that created severe stresses that the available metal alloys could not fully accommodate. The result was that the Panther was prone to beak downs and often had to be abandoned. Frequent design changes also complicated maintenance and left many desperately needed tanks stranded in depot for lack of parts and maintenance crew.
More fundamentally, Germany's economic and political system never fully mobilized its industrial potential and organize its production effort in a rational manner. Instead, massive corruption, endemic favoritism, and a cult of wonder weapons led to too many weapons with rushed designs that never made it beyond prototypes and small production runs.
Worse, potentially decisive weapons like the Me 262 jet fighter and the Panther tank were forced into a losing competition for design and production resources with visionary but militarily ineffective weapons like the V-2. When accounts refer to "shortages of alloys" as affecting the Me-262 and the Panther, they are effectively referring to the V-2's vast and privileged claim on such metals.
In contrast, the US did a far better job of matching military needs to industrial resources and to carrying out a strategy that coordinated its output of material with its war fighting. On being shown US weapons production figures and the projected increases, Hitler angrily rejected them as propaganda and declared that if believed them to be true the war was lost. And so it was.
They actually had planned to attach Russia sooner but had to wait and help the inept Italians with their invasion of Greece. This wasted a precious few months.
“The air-cooled “boxer” engine used essentially the same design (with myriad tweaks and improvements but no total design overhauls) from 1923 until the early 90s.”
Got an ‘84 with over 150 thou on it. It’s hardly been touched.
At the start of Barbarossa the Germans were unaware of the Soviets’ T-34 and KV tanks each of which could destroy their best tanks. The KV’s armor was impenetrable with German 5 cm guns except for close range side and rear shots.
The Tiger I began as a breakthrough assault tank project in 1937 whereas the Panther and up-gunned Pz IVG were responses to the T34 and KVs.
The biggest mistake IMO was shelving development of the 7.5 cm Pak 40 from ‘39 - ‘41.
I believe it! Once you got the tin ware out of the way, four bolts and the engine would drop right down. Those were great little cars t
Description of a “typical” tank battle from an old U.S. 3rd Army tank commander: “hide from them for three days, they’d break down, the crews would torch them and walk home.”
Elsewhere, someone posted that when the Tigers (or I imagine ant tank) was caught on a paved road, the P-47s flew low and behind and bounced their 50 cals off the pavement into the thin 1" plating underneath and took them out that way. Seems like an Urban Legend, but you never know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.