Not a single panzer in the list? I guess the Krauts really built good tanks.
> Not a single panzer in the list? I guess the Krauts really built good tanks <
Well, if a German tank is needed for the list, I’d nominate the very impractical Maus (“Mouse”). It was an enormous, underpowered tank, so heavy it wouldn’t have been able to cross most bridges. And it had no secondary armament to keep enemy infantry at bay.
The Maus is a great example of how the Germans wasted time, money, and resources chasing dreams. Meanwhile, the Soviets were building thousands and thousands of T-34s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus
Lots of Germans burned to death in Pz3’s and Pz4’s.
When they weren't broken down. And had gas.
Not really. The Germans also had some horrible flaws.
The Panzer IV’s later models were fitted with a large side plate. If you look at the plate it does not only protect the wheels but it’s higher and protect the hull too. This is because the side armor was really weak. The Russians started to use anti-tank rifles (!) to shoot though the side armor of the Panzer IV so they needed to upgrade the armor with the plates.
The Panzer VI Tiger was tons too heavy because the Germans wanted to side armor to be 82 mm. The industry could not produce long enough armor plates so the Tiger I was designed too width compared to the length of the tank so ground pressure was really high. So because of the armor plates they designed the hull like a box and this increased the weight tons. This would make it hard to cross bridges and they got stuck in the mud a lot.
The road wheels were overlapping (this is also on the Panther) and this is a nightmare for replacing parts or maintenance. If you need to replace a road wheel in the back row, you need to dissemble other wheels too. Also they would collect mud and ice that would freeze up and in the morning the tanks could no longer drive until all was cleared, which was a nightmare too because of the overlap.
Then the turret traverse of the Tiger was really slow. Originally the Tiger I would have a 75mm gun fitted. But Hitler wanted the 88mm in the Tiger so they make the turret bigger and heavier also making the turret ring bigger so it travers too slow.
Also because of it’s width, the Tigers could not be transported on trains without removing the tracks and putting transport tracks on it.
The Tiger II was created longer but the weight went from 57 to 69 tons but the engine and drivetrain remained the same so you can imagine what kinda strain these would endure. It also gazzeled gas like crazy and when a Tiger II broke down, you needed it to be towed by a combination of 3 large half tracks and since 50% of them would break down all the time, this was a huge problem. So sometimes they would tow a Tiger with another Tiger wrecking the other Tiger too. So this was forbidden but in the field it would be needed to be done that way else lose the stranded tank.
The Tigers were all engineered in a way that would not be able to use in mass-production which was pretty stupid to do in the middle of a war. But it also means you need a large magazine of spare parts for just one of you tanks that was not even produced in large numbers and high skilled engineers. If you could repair a tractor, you could repair a Sherman.
Tigers are also complicated to drive because of the steering wheel and semi-auto transmission.
The Tiger V Panther was rushed from the design table to the battle of Kursk in 1 year. They would break down almost all the time and the drivetrain problem was really never resolved. So same with the Tiger, after 100 hours of operations you needed to do some big replacements.
The Ferdinant was a Porsche made Tiger hull with a huge gun on it without a turret. But the Germans did not supply it with machine guns so they were vurnerable to infantry. The Germans resolved it with the construction of a curved barrel for the STG-44. These barrels would wear out really fast so yeah, that was quite stupid.
As for all German tanks, they are all petrol fueled and were prone to overheating because they relied a lot on air-cooling. Tigers had 2 different engines, the HL 230 and HL 210. They 230 was cast iron, the 210 aluminium and had less problems with overheating but had less HP. So either overheat more or have less power.
They also needed good, skilled drivers because of the drive trains else taking too much punishment and breaking down.