Biggest Disaster in WW1 & WW2

The worst disaster was...

  • Samsonov at Tannenberg

    Votes: 4 4.4%
  • Moltke ordering the entrenchment of the En

    Votes: 1 1.1%
  • Falkenhayn's offensive at Verdun

    Votes: 2 2.2%
  • Haig's offensive on the Somme

    Votes: 5 5.6%
  • The Maginot Line

    Votes: 9 10.0%
  • Dunkirk

    Votes: 4 4.4%
  • June 1941 in Russia

    Votes: 9 10.0%
  • Japan getting the US in WW2 (Pearl Harbor)

    Votes: 13 14.4%
  • Hitler's No retreat order at Moscow

    Votes: 2 2.2%
  • Hitler's No retreat order at Stalingrad

    Votes: 26 28.9%
  • The Atlantic wall

    Votes: 1 1.1%
  • Kasserine Pass

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Midway

    Votes: 3 3.3%
  • Salerno Beach

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Atlantic wall

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Operation Market Garden

    Votes: 2 2.2%
  • Hitler's Ardennes offensive

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Germany failing to blow Remagen Bridge

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Berlin

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 9 10.0%

  • Total voters
    90
A panther is quite a big tank, and it wouldn't be too hard to hit one on the Russian steppes. If you had a whole company of them, I suppose it would be difficult to miss.
 
They didnt drive about in neat tightly packed formations. If their was a whole company then it would still be a matter of aiming at an individual tank.
 
Then all of the tanks in the company would focus on that one. Unless of course the tanks were travelling in say, a line, not expecting enemy tanks, or they were supporting one another.
 
Ah, I seem to have misunderstood you. I thought you meant a company of Panthers, not IS-2's.
 
Well either way its still a matter of aiming at an individual tank because they didnt drive about in tight formations.
 
The IS2 wasn't exactly tiny either though ;)
 
Originally posted by nonconformist
Yeah, but a massive Panther can't be too hard to hit.

Massive Panther? The tank was about 7 metres long, shorter than both the Tiger and King Tiger. If it was moving you'd have to account for the couple of seconds delay in the projectile reaching it over 5km and also aim a bit higher to account for the drop of.
I've heard of the 88s taking out vehicles at a distance of over 2km but I still think you'd have to be good to take out a moving panther at 5km.
 
It's a statistic. Firstly, it might be calculations made using the armour thickness, muzzle velocity, type of ammo, glacis angle etc. It might also have been an IS2 firing at a captured tank. Or a column of Panthers head on. AFAIK A lot of tank fights took over the distance of a couple of kilometers, so 5 km can't have been impossible. Especially with the speed the gun would have fired.
 
As far as I know only the Tiger/Tiger II had the capability to kill consitantly at a 1-2km range.

Some Soviet tank guns had the power to shoot that far and indeed much farther, but not with the accuracy to kill something the size of a tank at those ranges. This was an exclusively German advantage.

IS2s were used for artillery in many battles, most notebly Berlin, because of their range. They would incline the tanks on earthworks and fire away. But once again this was to shell cities, not hit individual tanks.
 
The SPGs you must have been talking about are the ISU series, and that is an easy mistake to mae, they both are named after Stalin. The ISU series had open topped compartments, so was not to be used in close combat with infantry.
 
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