Posted on 04/17/2017 4:30:35 AM PDT by C19fan
German tanks during World War II were often outmatched by superior Red Army designs beginning with the T-34. Armor, reliability and firepower were all—at various times—serious shortcomings. To counteract the Soviet beasts, Germany rushed ahead with tank destroyers—armored vehicles designed to inflict long-range firepower from concealed positions—but these also had a mixed record. The introduction of the Ferdinand during the 1943 Battle of Kursk turned into a disaster as the vehicles broke down from mechanical failures.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
The best medium tank of WW2 had to be the Panther Mk. 5.
“That and the fact that basically the crew was blind inside the tank. The Russians, who never lacked for reckless courage could sneak of on the thing and plant magnetic mines on it.”
The Russians were reckless crazy stupid brave.
But then their choices were possibly be killed charging the enemy or DEFINITELY be killed by the political units behind them.
What’s a poor peasant to do?
I read once that the Russian version of airborne troops was planes flying at treetop level while soldiers jumped out without parachutes.
True or not, IDK.
I read that the German artillery had the highest amount of duds in WWII, and that was attributed to their slave laborers doing their bit.
Every German tank had a gasoline engine. Soviet tanks starting with BT-7s had diesel engines, much better suited to winter conditions. T-34s were not crew friendly given the 2 man turret on the 76 and no turret basket on any of them. They were much more reliable than the German tanks and had at least twice the range of any German tank, no small thing on the eastern front.
The Pz V Panther’s Achilles heel didn’t have anything to do with the enemy. It’s lousy transmission was it’s down fall.
And the overlapping road wheels. To get to one you had to remove two. If you want to see what kind of punishment a Panther could take and keep it’s crew alive google “Tank Duel At The Colonge Cathedral March 1945’’. A Panther takes three hits from a M-26 Pershing’s 90mm gun and the crew can be seen bailing out.
The Mark VI Tiger tank was an expensive and labor intensive machine to produce. A single Tiger took 300,000 man hours to build. It was prone to engine break downs , swallowed fuel at a phenomenal rate and had a top speed of 38 mph. But in terms of relativity it was the M1 Abrams of it’s day. It had four inches of armor plate all around and six inches of armor plate on it’s main gun mantlet. It’s 8.8cm FlaK36 L/56 main gun had a muzzle velocity of 800 fps and could knock out any Allied tank on the battlefield at a mile distant. Although in reality Allied tankers in Western Europe actually only encountered a Tiger in one out of ten times the Tigers reputation made every American or British tanker think every German tank they saw was a Tiger.
And excellent main guns made by RhineMetal Borsig. They’re still in business. They make the main gun for the Abrams.
They had parachutes but they were not on a static line. They had to crawl out onto the wing of the transport plane and jump.
All of the armies underestimated the ability for an airplane to knock out a tank. The air corps just created tank busters. Hurricanes with 40mm cannons, The Il-2, Stuka with 37mm cannons. The upper parts of the tank were weaker. Later, rockets were employed. By the end of the war, German tanks were afraid of moving in the daylight.
By the end of the day on June 6th., 1944 the Germans realized that anything that moved in daylight was dead meat.
German tanks were diesel.
We rebuild a King-Tiger in Full (Switzerland) in the Moment. The Link: http://www.koenigstiger.ch/2016—2017-winterersaison.html
P.S. German tanks are by far the best you can or you could get.
bumpmark
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.