The Tiger tank was a monster on the battlefield and instilled terror in all who faced it in battle. Our tanks were little more than peashooters in comparison.
The Tiger tank had a frontal armor of 100mm. An Allied tank firing point blank at Tiger would have it shells bounce right off of it. A Tiger, on the other hand, with its powerful 88mm cannon, could take out an Allied tank a mile away.
The Tiger did have its problems. It was so big and so complex, it was impossible to mass produce. It was also a notorious gas hog at a time when Germany was running dangerously low on fuel. The Germans also developed the Panther tank which also in general, far superior to anything the Allies had on the battlefield. Like the Tiger, it was very complex and difficult to mass produce, although it was faster and more agile than the bulky Tiger.
Hitler always favored size and massiveness over everything and micromanaged weapons production in the Third Reich. Despite their impressive technological achievements, the Germans could never recoup from Hitler’s two biggest blunders:
1) Invading the USSR
2) Declaring war on the US.
He could never begin to compete with the industrial output.
Not much fun in Stalingrad, no.
Amen. We would credit Rosie the Riveter with winning the war. [and the factories and know-how Roosevelt did not export with fair trade]. We could mass produce.
Actually, the opening of the Soviet archives makes it unclear whether the invasion of the USSR was a mistake. Not doing it a month or two earlier, not providing winter supplies to the troops, splitting forces between the drive on Moscow and the drive on the Caucus oil fields, not falling back to regroup at Stalingrad, those were mistakes.
We now know that Stalin planned to abrogate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by launching an attack along the Carpathian Mountains with specially trained mountain divisions, thereby cutting off the Reich from its only source of non-Soviet oil, but Hitler struck first. Had Hitler not invaded the USSR, the war would have been over very quickly, with Stalin dictating the terms, rather than Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt jointly.
You are correct. Had he waited until 1946, Roosevelt would have been dead and he would have been the 1st wth a ballistic nuclear missile. The war in Europe would have been over b4 it ever began. New York, London, Paris, and Moscow would have been a nuclear wasteland.
Not with 76mm hypershot, or even better, the British 17-pounder main gun, refitted to some Shermans for D-Day and later festivities. As a 19-year-old tank gunner in Germany in the mid-1960s, I had the opportunity to chat with both former American WWII tank crewmen who dropped by their/our old outfit to see how things were going with the old bunch, at that time the oldest and most decorated independent tank battalion in the US Army. And too, I got to meet a good many former German tank crewdawgs, who happily shared wit us their thoughts on the best tactics for killing Soviet tanks attacking in wholesale numbers, with considerable concerns about very effective massed artillery support. They did not care for the American hypershot antitank rounds one bit. hypershot/HVAP
It would indeed have been better from the German point of view had the Tiger and Panther been produced with Diesel engines, with less likelihood of fuel fires, better range and speed among the probable gains. But the U-boat service had priority for Diesel fuel, and after the Romanian oil refinery output was curtailed by the Ploiești bombing raids of the US Eighth Air Force's Operation Tidal Wave, it was gasoline engines or nothing.