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To: ExNewsExSpook
The Panthers and Tigers were labor intensive to build and repair. Besides being way more heavily armored than the Sherman their superiority over the Sherman was their main guns, the 75mm high velocity in the Panther and the dreaded 88mm in the Tiger. In the latter the 88mm was probably one of the finest artillery /anti-tank/anti-aircraft weapons ever produced. It's range when used against tanks was over a mile. Not content with just one variant the Germans produced the King Tiger, a heavier tank with an 88mm high velocity gun with a range of almost two miles and a real monster, the "Jagdtiger'' which mounted a 128mm main gun and was so heavy it's designers didn't bother trying to design a motor to turn the turret deciding instead to simply make a kind of armored box around the gun. In addition to this the Germans had at least a dozen different types of tracked tank destroyers of all kinds. God Almighty the Krauts didn't fool around when it came to making arms.
36 posted on 06/06/2015 10:42:59 PM PDT by jmacusa (`)
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To: jmacusa

Yet, they couldn’t protect their most vital factories.


38 posted on 06/06/2015 10:50:03 PM PDT by RedHeeler
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To: jmacusa

Thanks for the kind words about my father..he recently had to move into a nursing home because of mobility issues, but his mind remains very sharp; it’s a blessing to have a parent enjoy the long, full life that he has enjoyed.

You are spot-on in your observations about the Germans; they have always produced some of the finest armored vehicles in the world, a trend that continued through the Leopard II MBT. But the German Army of World War II was not prepared for a war of attrition and logistics. The combat value of a Panther or even a Tiger was greatly reduced when a mechanical breakdown or moderate combat damage could take them out of the fight for good.

By comparison, some of the most heavily-damaged Shermans were repaired and sent back to the front. My Dad told me one of the first jobs in restoring a damaged M4 was cleaning up the crew compartment and giving it a new coat of paint. The bodies of dead or wounded crew members were usually gone by the time my father (and other retriever crews) arrived on the scene, but there was often a lot of dried blood and other body parts left inside. So, the crew compartment had to be hosed out and given a fresh coat of white paint, which also covered the smell from Shermans that had burned.


43 posted on 06/07/2015 11:22:51 AM PDT by ExNewsExSpook
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