The Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Was Germany’s ‘Over-Engineered’ Tank

If Hitler would have let his army do what it knew how to do I doubt if we would be having this conversation. Just like Johnson and the Vietnam war - micromanaging from half-way round the globe and twelve hours difference in time. Dad was on his way to a target and all the rules changed in flight. Infuriating.

Yes, but having the hardware is not enough ... using it to advantage is the key ...

“...But its actually true that WWII was the war between Germany and Russia...”

National Socialism versus International Socialism... with us helping the International Socialists.

One wonders how different the world would have been had we not gotten involved and just let them destroy each other.

But after Pearl Harbor, it was impossible to not be involved. Germany declared war on us right after the Japs hit us at Pearl Harbor, so we had no choice...

Good lord... that thing looks like the Paris Gun on treads. And that was a monster Railway gun from WWI.

They used pretty hefty railway artillery to pound Sevastopol in the Crimea.

Mine used to be an RT but is getting turned into an S. I would like to get one of the more modern models and do some serious touring some day.

Miscellaneous Comments:
1) The German tanks were also over-engineered in that they employed the “Swiss watch” approach of (too-) close tolerances; the T-34, sloppily put together by comparison, kept running under the ruthless rule of General Winter and Captain Mud, while the Teutonic terrors broke down.
2) The U.S. doomed itself by its outmoded philosophy: Like the pre-war pursuits of the Air Corps, tanks were viewed not as independent weapons but as infantry support; thus, pursuits (fighters) were designed for low-altitude performance (and therefore eschewed two-stage superchargers, which crippled them in dogfights with Bf109s or A6M2s above 15,000 feet), and tanks were designed for quantity (mediocre mediums) over quality (high-powered heavies). Patton, who brooked no opposition, was instrumental in promoting this mistaken approach.
3) A further result of this policy was that tank cannons were required to have the same barrel life as a field gun (as though any tank in a shooting war lived long enough to fire thousands of rounds!). This mandated a very low muzzle velocity (2200-2600fps) to minimize wear, which in turn mandated our guns - regardless of caliber - lacking effective penetration at any distance. (Even the 90mm of the Pershing, in 1945, was still below German standards, although there were two experimental Super Pershings with massive 90mm’s boasting a muzzle velocity (if memory serves) about 3850fps that spectacularly outgunned any tank then current.)
4) The U.S. had a heavy tank, the M-6 with a 75mm gun (I think), under development before it entered the war. It was discontinued when it was realized that it was too wide to get on board the merchant ships that would take it to the European Theater: no way to get it to the fight, no point in making it work.
5) In yet another between-war, backward-thinking policy decision, the U.S. army did not develop the advanced, superior Christie suspension (at least, not until well into the war: I think the Pershing was the first American tank with a Christie): yeah, the design used by other combatants, e.g., the Russians, so effectively.
6) The Tiger was severely underpowered: top speed about 12mph. As I recall, German armor all used Diesels: high on torque, low on power. U.S. armor used Otto (gasoline) engines. The Panther was much better all around: faster, more maneuvarable, and its 75mm was almost as effective as the dreaded dual-purpose 88mm.
7) The Sherman was more effective with its 76.2mm, but even more effective with the British (I think) 6-pounder, known as Fireflies. A squadron of 75mm and/or 76.2mm Shermans would lure a Panther or a Tiger in, and then the Firefly in their midst would take out the German tank.
8) The Sherman was actually a pretty good design (in 1942, at El Alamein), but it became rapidly obsolescent in the technological war that paralleled the physical war, hampered by the aforementioned Army ban on high-velocity guns, and by its use of air-cooled radial aircraft engines, which gave it a dangerously high profile, allowing the enemy to see it over a rise.
9) Shermans were popular with the Russians (via Lend-lease): They had padded seats, heated cabins, and (I think) automatic transmissions: They were better than T-34’s at everything except actually fighting the enemy!
10) U.S. tanks had two big advantages (besides sheer numbers): First, they had powered, stabilized turrets that allowed them to train gun on target faster than many of their opponents, which often had manual turrets; second, they usually mounted one .50” Browning machine gun on the turret. The U.S. .50” was as feared in its own way by the Germans as the German 88mm was feared by the Americans. (The superiority of the Fifty was one reason why U.S. jets were slow to switch to cannons as armament: a WWII fighter like the P-47, with its 8 .50s, was a formidable ground attack weapon, whether against armor vehicles or warships.)

I found this in my dad’s old book on THE ACORN DIVISION when they were under fire.

“An enemy tank pulled up to within about 200 yards of
the house and began firing. The remaining bazooka ammunition
was fired at the tank without success. The
tank pulled up to within 20 yards of the house and
began firing a total of 18 rounds through the roof and
walls. Private Horton insisted upon running upstairs
between radio calls and he kept trying to fire bulIets
from his M-l down the bore of the tank’s 88 to prematurely
set off a high explosive round. On one such
trip the tank fired first and Private Horton was wounded
in both legs. Some of the men rushed upstairs and,
rescuing him, carried him to the celIaI’ where first aid.”

QUESTION: Has anyone ever heard of setting off a round in the gun by firing down the bore?
w

wow. that was the best read in years. Thanks.

You mean like this one “Geheime Staatspolizei” which was reduced to GESTAPO?

What a mouthfull!

ASL. There are no other wargames.

If you aren't married, have no kids, no and about 400 hours to burn for one scenario ;)

I don’t qualify on any of those fronts, but the tournaments in which I played had time limits :)

I think the Swedes had a vehicle called the S-Tank up through 70s; looked similar to some of the German turretless tank destroyers.

I had a model of one of those when I was a kid. One interesting thing is it had a semi-auto main gun, which along with the machine gun could be fired by the driver. So though it had a three man crew, it could be driven and fired by one person.

1) True. In the book “Tanks Are Mighty Fine Things,” put out by Chrysler in 1946, a comment was made that German tank factories had more precision tools on the assembly line than they did in the tool room.

2) Patton did not hold this view. He wanted tanks to act like cavalry had in the horse era- creating breakthroughs, dashing into the enemy's read lines, and generally creating havoc.

3) The HVAP round of the 76mm gun was able to penetrate 7.0 in at 3,300 ft, with a muzzle velocity of 3,400 ft/s. Some later versions of the Sherman had this larger, more powerful gun. The 7.5 cm KwK 42 L/70 gun of the Panther tank had a muzzle velocity of 3,035 ft/s.

4)The M-6 tank was an obsolescent design from the start.

5)No American tank in WWI used the Christie suspension. Torsion bar suspension was introduced in US tanks with the M24 Chaffee (necessitating instructors to go out among American units to make sure no one mistook M24s for a new German tank), then the Pershing at the end of the war in Europe.

6) German tanks used Maybach gasoline engines, not diesel. The US supplied diesel Shermans to the Russians and the Marine Corps in the Pacific theater

7) True. The Firefly mounted the 17 pounder (76.2 mm) gun.

8) It's true that the Sherman was not updated as it should have been as the war progressed. The Soviets liked one aspect of the high profile, however. It allowed the gun to fire while the hull was in defilade where other tanks had to expose the entire vehicle.

9) The Russians liked more than just the creature comforts. In fact, a Red Army tank commander said the M4 was LESS likely to explode upon being hit than the T-34.

10) Another big advantage was the ability to cross smaller European bridges which the Tiger could not dare attempt.

I have the book on my wish list. The late historian John Keegan, in Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America, described his astonishment in finding the US strategic bombing strategy for WW II laid out in student class assignments from the late 1920s at the Army Air War College archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

At a time when open cockpits were still common, the young officers who later became WW II Air Force generals laid out the design and performance parameters for the heavy bombers needed to subdue Japan, the islands on which they should be based, and the Japanese cities and industries to target.

As it was, the bomber assigned that task -- the B-29 -- was beset with production problems and taxed the abilities of Air Force crews. Yet the US Army Air Corps (as it was called at the time) not only mastered the aircraft but radically changed their bombing tactics when the initial approach of high altitude bombing proved ineffective.

In contrast, the Axis never produced a reliable four engine heavy bomber. Germany and Japan both lapsed into unreality in too long assuming in their war plans that they would not need such an aircraft. Then, when the need became apparent, they found designs lacking and the production capacity inadequate or otherwise committed.

Against our worst fears, democracies in general and America in particular have proved able to fight and win against dictatorships -- with superior war production a large part of the equation.

In this thread no mention of the main Wehrmacht tank the Panzer Mark IV.

So would I.

Neat pic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103#mediaviewer/File:Stridsvagn_103_Revinge_2013-1.jpg

and a Video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZm7sLzDwGY

How about when you carve up another country together?

Precisely. Although Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR proved to be absolutely disastrous, the Axis armies could have actually succeeded had three great errors had not been made:

1) Failure to capture Moscow in the summer when it was doable. Hitler decided instead to divert his armies to the South and encircle Kiev. Which could have waited IMHO.

2) Failure to provide winter clothing, equipment and gear to endure the ferocious Russian winter. Hitler was a great student of Frederick the Great. But if he wanted to invade Russia, he should have studied Napoleon instead and learned from his mistakes.

3) Failure to treat well the native populations who initially treated the German armies as liberators after decades of brutal oppression under the Soviet Communists. Dumb move. It created huge legions of partisan armies operating behind German lines cutting off their transportation and supply routes among other things.