Based on the Tiger II hull. Tankers much preferred the Tiger II and found it much more useful.
Germans didn't have nearly enough tanks and wasted too many hulls of good vehicles on assault guns.
I am assuming that Carius wrote "Montagehalterungen" (but am unable to find "Tiger im Schlamm" in order to verify my supposition).
Regards,
German armor is consistently overrated. The Soviets had superior, and simpler concepts. American and British quality was superior. What made German panzers so lethal for so long was superior doctrine and superior personnel.
Based on the Tiger II hull. Tankers much preferred the Tiger II and found it much more useful.
Germans didn't have nearly enough tanks and wasted too many hulls of good vehicles on assault guns.
Somewhat akin to the old Soviet Azeri 2S3 or newer MSTA-S.
The Serman and Panzers started out with 75 mm cannons. The Germans fired a high-velocity shell because their barrels were longer.
Slower rounds from the Sherman bounced off the Panzers.
I believe the designers for the Sherman made the barrel shorter because the tank had to be shipped overseas and they didn’t want the barrel to stick out beyond the front of the vehicle. This made the gun useless and many Allied tankers died for the sake of convenience.
The “bigger is better” for German tanks was only useful on the eastern front where you had open fields to hit the enemy before they could return fire and you had room to navigate. When they tried using the larger tanks on the western front, they no longer had the advantage over the smaller more nimble allied tanks as they could no longer pick them off before they themselves were also in range of fire as well as not being able to maneuver away from the overwhelming numbers of lighter tanks that still had enough fire power to cripple or destroy them.
The Panther tank was almost the perfect tank for Germany, if they had only utilized a transmission design similar to the bolted on v-gear transmission like the Sherman tank. Panther’s could damage their straight gear transmission at higher speeds which required factory repair rather than field repair - keeping it off the battlefield.
The Germans ran out of time to mass produce their ultimate weapons. Hitler acting like a general also led to their uselessness. Tanks at Dunkirk and Normandy would have changed the war.
All you hear about Shermans is that they were death traps that could not withstand attacks from German Tigers, as if there were 50,000 Tigers out there behind every tree. The truth is that the Germans could only build a small number of these large, cumbersome tanks and assault guns because of their size and complexity, and when those tanks did make it to the battlefield, they had limited range, mechanical problems, and tracks that wore out too fast. Often, German tank crews were forced to abandon their monsters because they broke down. If Patton hard been equipped with Tigers and Panthers for his breakout after Operation Cobra, he would have had difficulty in even reaching Argentan, much less the German Westwall. Only a tank as reliable and mobile as the Sherman could overrun France so quickly. The only thing that stopped them was that they outran their supplies. It was also easier to escape a Sherman when it was hit, and ammunition storage improved, so the death trap reputation was somewhat exaggerated too. Besides, their were never 50,000 Tigers or any other German tank on the Western Front. There were more Mark IV’s and Stugs than Tigers and Panthers out there. In the Bocage, though, every heavily camouflaged tank that could get off the first shot became a Tiger.
Modern warfare no longer means the bigger the better. The bigger and slower something is, the easier to hit. You can always make a bomb or torpedo powerful enough to take out any target.
Every Tanker’s dream.....
You come around the corner at a good clip and just ahead of you is the enemy chow line and they have their backs to you and can’t hear you because a helicopter is starting.
“It was just like chopping corn.”
German tanks just looked cooler so in terms of post war impact they made more appealing plastic models for us kids to build. How effective they were on the battlefield was irrelevant to us.