PhroX
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 2,738
I specifically didn't mention tanks for a reason . The T-34 was probably the best tank of the war. The Panzers tended to be too heavy. The French tanks were very good as well, but get no credit; it was the tactics used by the French that doomed them in 1940, not any technological infreriority.
I'm pretty sure Italian tanks really could be defeated by spearmen. They were that bad.
French tanks were indeed in many ways very good, but at the same time they had some serious issues (which, interestingly enough, were shared with the T-34 prior to the /85 upgrade), and basically boil down to the actual useablity of the vehicle. They (and the T-34) had all the features that looked good on paper - well armed, well armoured etc. - but they were not easy for the crews to use effectively under operational conditions. The biggest flaw was the turrets, which in many of the French tanks were crewed by a single person, who thus had to single handedly manage loading, aiming and acting as tank commander, something that is nigh-impossible under the strain of battlefield conditions. Really, these three jobs should all be done by a seperate crewman. (the T-34 had two men in the turret, reducing the load but still causing significant issues in battle). Things like the lack of individual radios added to these flaws. German vehicles, while maybe less effective on paper, tended to be much more well designed from the crew's point of view, thus allowing them to be used to their full potential and making them very good machines in actual combat (at least up to the PzIV, everything after that was a waste of time, money and metal), which was probably just as significant as the training and doctrines that are oft quoted as the sources of the sucess of their armoured divisions early in the war.
I completely agree on the Italians though