WW2 Tanks et al

timerover51

timerover51

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Snarkhunter said:
timerover51 said:
Snarkhunter said:
The latest project I've tackled has been to try to figure out how many PzIII/IV the Germans could have had online in '41 had they not produced StuGs & gotten really serious about ramping up production, then figuring out a better ToE for the panzer divisions instead of splitting them in two, changing the GMT Barbarossa wargames to use 2 kampfgruppen instead of the pz/inf regiments, & seeing how much more/less effective the assault would have gone over the whole front. Entertaining, but I've gone as far as I can go without really detailed production stats which I can't seem to find online. Some, but not all.

kk
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I have all of the books that you mentioned, and worked with Bruce Gudmondson during the First Gulf War in 1991, when I was working for the Marine Corps as a consultant on various combat-related projects. Despite my disability, the Marines nearly put me back on active duty with them.

I have the data you need on production in my library. Let me see if I can did it out for you and let you have it. However, remember that the Pzkw III had about reached the end of its useful life given the limitations on upgunning, and I might have to look at ball bearing production too for the turret runners. Given the simpler hull with the fixed gun mounting, you could produce more assault guns with a given amount of materials and time than straight tanks. Something is jogging around in my memory that the trade off is 3 assault guns for 2 tanks, but I cannot remember where I read that. It might be in Guderian's Panzer Leader.
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Gudmondson's take on things is certainly interesting; I'm not quite sure how much of it (overall) I believe, especially his predictions of the future, but things do seem to be moving more or less in the direction he thought.

I had discovered an old book when I was at IU that had extremely complete production stats, including production of raw materials & even things like locomotives, etc. It had to have been compiled shortly after WWII. It was in German but at the time I could read German pretty well. I know I photocopied a lot of pages out of it; unaccountably they are missing all these years later. Just knowing the names of reference works would be a great help; I can always snoop the Library of Congress (assuming some rascal hasn't stolen what I want!) if I get motivated enough. Any info you can provide, I would appreciate.

The mark III still had one trick up its sleeve, the L60/50. Both mark III and IV had been designed from the get-go to allow for up-gunning & this seems to have been accomplished with little difficulty; e.g., the decision to upgun the IV came in August 41 & the first prototypes rolled out in March 42, IIRC. One of my assumptions is that the Germans could have reflected on the French tanks they encountered in 40 & made the same decision a year earlier, allowing for a couple of battalions worth of L42/75 armed IVs to arrive for Barbarossa. Hardly significant, but some extra punch for a couple of divisions that summer. The mark IIIs would still have a problem w/ T34s, even with the long gun, but they'd have a chance at close range & certainly from the side or rear. But considering how the Germans rolled through Russia in 41, they probably could have used cardboard cutouts & gone just as far

And I see that this has wandered pretty far afield from CivIII! Perhaps we should continue via private mail.

kk
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The 50mm/L60 gun would have improved the Mark III verses the Russians to some extent, especially at close range with the tungsten-carbide cored arrowhead ammunition. The problem the Mark III would have had is surviving long enough to get within effective range. While the Mark IV had enough of a weight margin to allow both for upgunning and up-armoring, the Mark III did not. It could be up-gunned, but armor increases were pretty limited. The 50mm/L60 gun had penetration comparable to that of the US 75mm M3 gun on the Sherman, and the Russian 76mm gun on the T-34, but armor was not comparable.

One of the biggest reasons for the failure of Barbarossa was in the breakdown of the German logistic system, which no amount of tinkering with Panzer division TO&E would change. The Germans simply could not support logistically the campaign in Russia. You might want to track down a copy of the DA Pam put out by the Army covering the planning and operations of Barbarossa. I will edit this with the exact cite once I locate my copy.
 
A tank expert once commented Germany might have done better simply to upgrade the Pzkw IV (which they probably could produce in sufficient numbers) instead of going for 'bigger and better' (which they could not).

timerover51 said:
One of the biggest reasons for the failure of Barbarossa was in the breakdown of the German logistic system, which no amount of tinkering with Panzer division TO&E would change. The Germans simply could not support logistically the campaign in Russia.
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I'm not buying that without proper reference. A major flaw of 'Barbarossa' was advancing in 3 different directions - which was a logistical impossiblity, as neither Leningrad, Moscow or the Caucasus were conquered. German High Command completely misjudged Soviet Russian reserves as well as resilience (an evaluation based mainly on the costly Russo-Finnish winter War of 1939, not on actual intel).
 
JEELEN said:
A tank expert once commented Germany might have done better simply to upgrade the Pzkw IV (which they probably could produce in sufficient numbers) instead of going for 'bigger and better' (which they could not).



I'm not buying that without proper reference. A major flaw of 'Barbarossa' was advancing in 3 different directions - which was a logistical impossiblity, as neither Leningrad, Moscow or the Caucasus were conquered. German High Command completely misjudged Soviet Russian reserves as well as resilience (an evaluation based mainly on the costly Russo-Finnish winter War of 1939, not on actual intel).
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To the first: or at least concentrated production on 1 good tank, the Panther, and not wasted resources on the Tiger and King Tiger.

To Barbarossa: A multi-pronged attack was more or less inevitable - they could hardly have advanced on a single front and ignored their flanks ... that would have invited being cut off. The real problem was that Hitler and the OKW couldn't agree on priorities. Diverting forces from the Moscow attack to the Kaukasus, only to send them back later, was rank stupidity. Pick a goal and stick to it, don't dither around...
The obvious military necessity was to pick one Schwerpunkt of attack and concentrate on it, while using the other fronts to fix Russian forces.
I'm sure the OKW knew better, but Hitler, the corporal from WWI, who thought of himself as the Gröfaz (größter Feldherr aller Zeiten = greatest war-leader of all time), had his way.
 
JEELEN said:
A tank expert once commented Germany might have done better simply to upgrade the Pzkw IV (which they probably could produce in sufficient numbers) instead of going for 'bigger and better' (which they could not).



I'm not buying that without proper reference. A major flaw of 'Barbarossa' was advancing in 3 different directions - which was a logistical impossiblity, as neither Leningrad, Moscow or the Caucasus were conquered. German High Command completely misjudged Soviet Russian reserves as well as resilience (an evaluation based mainly on the costly Russo-Finnish winter War of 1939, not on actual intel).
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Well, it took them quite a while to produce mark IV's in quantity & about the time they did, it started to become marginal at best. This led to the situation Guderian mentions in his memoirs when they wanted to move to mark V's/VI's & cut everything else--he pointed out that that would mean a monthly production of 25 (unreliable) vehicles, instead of the only effective thing they had in quantity. He got that reversed, and the mark IV continued to be produced. It was a case of "it's the only thing we can get to the front, good enough or not."

I don't buy the logistical impossibility argument; you would have the same problem whether you advanced in 1 direction or 10: your rail conversion would only go a certain number of klicks per day no matter what. And the further you go, the worse for you. But thrusting in 3 separate directions was an operational, as opposed to logistic, problem.

Oops--gotta run. Have to get back to this thread later. . . .

kk
 
Not really: despite Allied bombings German war production went on right until the official end of the war. It was more of a matter of scale and organization. (Nazi rule was by definition chaotic, with various state and party organizations working against, rather than with eachother, a situation aggravated by Hitler's paranoia vs. potential rivals to his position.)
 
I believe their production capacity of heavy tanks never even approached 1/10th of that of USSR.
 
Hitler himself commented once (during the '41 campaign, I believe) that if they'd had proper intelligence on Soviet tank capability the invasion might never have taken place. Riasanovsky concluded, in his A History of Russia, that the Axis came very close to defeating the USSR in 1941, but never again after. (German military outstripped Soviet numbers at one point during that fateful first campaign year. Anyway, as said, the Axis completely underestimated both Russian reserves and resilience: during that same opening campaign year the USSR moved some 1,900 factories east, well out of reach of Axis range, while still being able to mount the winter offensives of '41 which removed any direct threat to Moscow.)
 
Snarkhunter said:
Well, it took them quite a while to produce mark IV's in quantity & about the time they did, it started to become marginal at best.

The PZIV Hs, Gs, and Js were much better tanks than the T-34 and Shermans, their most numerous adversaries.The KWK 40/43 was an awesome gun.

Not to mention the fact that the chasis was also used for:

1. The Brummar (self propelled artillery)
2. Jagdpanzer IV (tank destroyer)
3. Sturgeschutz IV (assault gun)

As well as several other variants.

While not the best or most influential tank of the war as Lenin said: ''Quantity is the best kind of quality''. And the Panzer IV was easily the highest produced german tank of the war.
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I once read somewhere that tank production during World War II really reflected the stereotypes of the three major combatants in the European theatre:

American tanks were made with efficiency,
German tanks were made with precision,
and Russian tanks were made with quantity.

I don't know what they would have said about the Italians, but I don't want to get infracted for trolling. :lol: ;)
 
ME said:
Because the German economy during the war was a complete and utter joke.
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JEELEN said:
Not really: despite Allied bombings German war production went on right until the official end of the war. It was more of a matter of scale and organization. (Nazi rule was by definition chaotic, with various state and party organizations working against, rather than with eachother, a situation aggravated by Hitler's paranoia vs. potential rivals to his position.)
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..... and the only way German war production continued to rise until almost the end of the war was becasue the economy was a joke. Speer did amazing things but the German economy was still inefficient.


padma said:
IIRC, German tank production didn't even peak until the summer of 1944.
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Also the bombing was hilarious as well until they started targeting choke points in the production line such as ball bearings and the bombing of the synthetic fuel plants which both happened in late 1944.
 
amadeus said:
I once read somewhere that tank production during World War II really reflected the stereotypes of the three major combatants in the European theatre:

American tanks were made with efficiency,
German tanks were made with precision,
and Russian tanks were made with quantity.

I don't know what they would have said about the Italians, but I don't want to get infracted for trolling. :lol: ;)
Click to expand...

...and with quantity comes experience that brings efficiency and precision... (as HOI III is rumored to simulate...)
 
Ancient Grudge said:
..... and the only way German war production continued to rise until almost the end of the war was becasue the economy was a joke. Speer did amazing things but the German economy was still inefficient.
Click to expand...

The main reason the German war economy continued to rise was because it got off to such a slow start. While the allies had no qualms about using women in their factories Hitler wouldn't allow it, saying women should have been at home, having children. He also kept factories producing unessential luxuries for the German people well into the war for morale reasons. Britain and especially Russia didn't bother about this.

In his biography Speer details how hard it was to inforce his will on the more local levels and how Hitler's old party cronies- now Gauleiters were almost untouchable.

German production was dwarved by the USA and USSR, true. But both of those countries had industries that were untouched by bombing and almost unlimited access to natural resouces. All the equiptment the Soviets recieved from the US and Britain meant they didn't have to produce them themselves- trucks, jeeps, radios etc and therefore they could divert more production to tanks.

For nigh on 6 years Germany fought a world war against the 3 biggest powers on earth. For that time she kept an army of over 10 million men in the feild equipped, she produced tens of thousands of aircraft, tanks and other vehicles all of the highest quality. Not to mention locomotives, submarines etc etc etc.

To describe Germany's economy as a 'complete and utter joke' is about as innacurate and illinformed as descibing Dday as 'the turning point of the war'.
 
Very to the point. Even a war economy (Goebbels' total war) didn't become effective until after 1943 (again partly because of the chaotic way the Nazi state was organized and Hitler's fear of a threat to his personal leadership).
 
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