Sherman vs the Panzer IV

[CaptLuke]

Ever heard of T-34M?

 

Yes, all 5 hulls and 0 production vehicles.

 

Plus, while it was called the T-34M it was developed as a separate program as the A43 project while the T-34 was developed in a series from the A20 to A34. The T34M had a different suspension, different turret and different engine, i.e. it arguably had less in common with the T34 than the M48 had with the M46.

 

Also I haven't been able to find a reference on crew size for the T34M, was it four or five? Supposedly the Hexagonal turret for the T34/76 was based on the same turret used on the T34M which still only held 2 compared to the PzIII's 3. I'm ready to be wrong on this one if anyone does know the crew size.

Edited July 21, 2010 by CaptLuke

[L.V.]

I used to think the Germans standardized used 80mm armor on several types of their tanks due to both tactical and manufacturing reasons. However, the side hull armor of the Pz. VI E was actually 82mm thick whereas the Pz. IV and Pz. V front plate armor were 85mm thick so the ease of production might not have been what the Germans had in mind.

 

Armor plates for the Tiger I had a thickness tolerance of -0% to +5% and I suppose that tolerances for other tank armor plates were similar. It would be very impractical to produce plates with a zero tolerance because it would be much more expensive and the gain minimal. Some Tigers may have had 80 mm side hull plates and others 84 mm ones, but they are still within the tolerance. I think that the fairly common belief that all Tiger I tanks had exactly 82 mm side hull armor and 102 mm nose and driver's front plates, stems from the fact that Tiger I Fgst. Nr. 250570 that was examined by the British was found to have plates with the aforementioned thicknesses.

Summa summarum: If you really want to nit pick about armor thickness, you'll have to know the specified thickness and acceptance tolerances.

[bojan]

Versicle homogeneous steel plate with 80mm of thickness was theoretically "immune" to Soviet 76 and US 75 at 500 meters and over--but I am sure a hit at 700m would be unpleasant.

80mm plate and Tiger's side 82mm armor were immune to 76mm F-34/ZiS-3/ZiS-5 firing BR-350A APBC @ 200m. F-22 firing same ammo could barely penetrate it. It got better with introduction of BR-350B APBC and BR-350P subcaliber in spring 1943.

 

I'd love to see the "Yugo gun versus Panzers" thread but it seems to be unavailable currently; I can see some of your material by google search, but they're on "best 60s MBT" thread and I cannot find data on US 75mm APC-HE rounds. If the data is in hand, please share!

There is no data for 75mm M3 gun (none in service) but there is for 76mm ZiS-3 (same balistics as T-34's F-34), 76mm M1, 85mm ZiS-S-53 and 75mm PaK40:

http://208.84.116.223/forums/index.php?showtopic=18562

[bojan]

Certainly T-34 owes one hell of a lot more to Pz-III and bits from various other designs and the perceived doctrinal need for a universal tank, than anything to do with what was, at the time an infantry support tank

 

You are confusing it with T-50. Here is a LKZ's version of T-50 which was basically Soviet version of Pz-III:

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/t-50/t50_lkz_1.jpg

Kotin aparantly did not know about Pz-III while designing T-34.

 

 

...Also I haven't been able to find a reference on crew size for the T34M, was it four or five?

5. Turret was 3-men, basicaly bigger version of the T-50's turret (which was also 3 man and heavily influenced by Pz-III - note TC sitting behind gun.

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/t-34m/t-34m_3.jpg

 

Supposedly the Hexagonal turret for the T34/76 was based on the same turret used on the T34M which still only held 2 compared to the PzIII's 3. I'm ready to be wrong on this one if anyone does know the crew size.

 

Yes, it was based on as it was easier to produce, but it was not identical. All bells and whistles (3-speed electric rotation, TC cupolla etc) were ditched and crew was reduced to two in order to further simplify production.

 

Other then that a lot techniques that simplified production were picked from T-34M - just for example original T-34's glacis and lower front hull were SAME plate that was bent @ ~90deg to form front hull - clear leftover from BT series, but while it was quite posible with 13/20mm plate it was PITA with 45mm higher hardness plate. T-34M introduced two different plates joined by beam which got introduced to later T-34's (since mid-1941). Turret shape was taken from T-34M as it was simplier to produce, way later T-34's side armor was welded was also picked from T-34M (since late 1941) etc.

[Jonathan Chin]

They went from Cementation to Flame Hardening to no hardening. Considering that the Krupp Steel Works and the other steel works in the Ruhr Valley switched from Cementation to flame hardening in early 1943, it is possible that the Soviets were mistaking the changed hardening technology for no hardening.

 

Does flame hardening change the depth of the hardened layer?

[CaptLuke]

No I was thinking of T-34M more than anything. A-34 gets finished in 1940, Russians have apparently already evaluated a captured Pz-III from Poland and buy two more and eval them against A-34 and then the next universal tank iteration in early 1941 calls for torsion bars, better armor, multi-man turret with better ergonomics, etc. I wasn't trying to point out a direct design lineage from Pz-III to T-34 but merely to show that "besting" Pz-IV had nothing to do with the design of allied medium tanks and that if any German vehicle inspired tank design in pre/early war Russia it was the Pz-III

 

PzIII may have influenced a couple lines of development, like the T50 and T34M, but production mediums went from the T34 to the very un-PzIII like T44 and then T54. Also don't forget the KV1, with small road wheels on torsion bars, was in production from '39 on and had a three man turret as well, so inspiration can come from more than one source.

 

Finally I don't think the Soviets were up armoring designs because of the PzIII; I think the PzIII was up armoring because of the Soviets. See Guderian's comment about Soviet visitors in 1941 refusing to believe that the PzIV was Germany's heaviest tank; a comment Guderian found odd until the Germans ran into the T34.

[Jonathan Chin]

I thought that cementation hardening often required further induction/flame hardening after but that you generally got better hardness and depth control if you added the extra carbon.

 

The Soviets note the hardened layer was very thin on captured German tanks.

[Mk 1]

Reaching back in the sequence here a bit to grab what I consider to be the key concepts ...

 

All in all the Sherman BETTER be better. It is an about 5 years newer design.

I might suggest there are more perspectives on this issue than just the matter of time.

 

All in all the Panzer 4 BETTER be better. It was designed by a country that had all the traditions of, and viewed itself as, a world-class land power. The Sherman, on the other hand, was designed by a country that viewed a standing army as undesirable, which at the time of the tank's design had an army smaller than Finland, and was more closely comparable to Portugal. At the time that the Sherman design was begun, the US had built less than 5% as many tanks as Italy, and the US Army operated fewer tanks than Romania. How much superior to the Pz 4 were the tanks designed in those nations?

 

If you look at the US Navy in the 1935 - 1940 period, you will see a world-class military. This national emphasis is represented in the modern and powerful ship designs that were filling up the shipyards. As to the US Army ... well, the self-invisioned leadership is not so clear. Given that the US in 1938 supported an army that was less than 10% as large as Germany's, I am not surprised to find that the German army had more advanced weapons coming into service in that timeframe.

 

The US designers also had a look at P 3 and 4 characteristics when designing the Sherman, so I heard.

Indeed. The Sherman was designed to be better than the German Pz 3 and Pz 4 tanks of 1940. And it was. In 1942.

 

It was not designed to be better than any vision of anticipated improvements in German tanks by 1943.

 

But then neither the Pz 3 nor Pz 4 were designed to be better than expected future tanks. They just happened to be designed with sufficient room to accept upgrades when confronted by hard combat experience.

 

Which, by the way, was also true of the Sherman.

 

It is just that the Panzers went through their "Oh dear, we better up-gun those things" revelations earlier -- the Pz 3 in 1940, and the Pz 4 in 1941. So in 1942 the Pz 3 was a substantially more capable tank than it was in 1940, and in 1943 the Pz 4 was a substantially more capable tank than it was in 1941. The Sherman came into combat in late 1942, and was (correctly) seen as better than the Pz 3 and Pz 4. The US Army didn't go through its "we better up-gun" revelation until mid-1944, by which time the upgunned version was already in production, although it took some time to ramp-up to the levels needed to fill out the unit requirements in what was, by that time, a VERY large US Army.

 

I don´t accept the “ease of production” song and dance either without someone doing a whole lot of research, methodical counting of welds and components. Without a book or thesis by some student of mechanical engineering, count me sceptical.

Well, we might ask for specifics of numbers of welds or techniques used. Or we might look at the bigger issues. How many different manufacturing techniques could be used to assemble Pz 4s? How many different engines were fitted into Pz 4s?

 

The Sherman was not just a single tank that was somehow "easier" to produce. It was an entire tank program, with redundancies and back-ups to ensure an enormous production capacity could be built up from next to nothing in the shortest possible time.

 

How much research does it take to determine how many Pz 4s were built with cast hulls? Or how many were built with alternatives to the Maybach engine?

 

Gee, not much research needed. The answer is: effectively none.

 

Yet having multiple hull production techniques, and alternative engines, were critical to the Sherman production ramp.

 

If you want to know what would have happened to production numbers if the designs had been reversed -- if the US produced Pz 4s -- we might reach a quick approximation by looking at how many Shermans were produced with ONLY welded hulls and radial engines. That would be only the M4 models. Gee, not many more M4s were built than Pz 4s!

 

We could even take the lesser of the M4A1 (cast hulls with radial engines) and the M4A3 (welded hull but V8 engine) to approximate what would have been done with out the very deliberate efforts of the US tank board to proliferate Sherman production to facilities of differing capabilities, and to ensure no shortage of power plants.

 

So we might come up with 2x more Shermans with welded hulls and radial engines, than Pz 4s. 2x, rather than the 5x that were actually built. I think it is pretty clear that even if it cost the same to build a given version of the Sherman, the Sherman program was far more highly developed for production flow than the Pz 4.

 

That can also be a design decision. If you have more factories able to produce smaller patches of armor plate, it might makes more sense to do more welding, compared to using larger plates. But in general I think that the older design (IV) was also optimized for older production capabilities in Germany.

I would agree that it was a decision, but not just a design decision.

 

Let us try looking at it from an expanded perspective:

Seahawk suggests: If you have factories able to produce smaller patches of armor plate, it might make more sense to do more welding ….

 

Mark 1 observes: How many tank-building factories did the US have when the Sherman was designed? Answer: ONE. How many factories built Shermans? Answer: about half a dozen major producers, and a few more minor producers.

 

The US designed a tank that could be built in many factories. The US then designed factories to build many tanks. The Germans created tanks to fit into their limited factory capabilities. It is not hard to understand why the US built more tanks.

 

I still believe that the easier production of the Sherman was not only a result of the design but also of the industrial capacity of the US.

Germanies industrial base was not on the same level, especially not if you consider that the IV was an older design.

The German industrial base was not on the same level – this is true. Total industrial capacity of the US was greater than that of Germany.

 

But industrial demand was also greater. Germany didn’t produce dozens of aircraft carriers and battleships, hundreds of cruisers and destroyers, and thousands of auxiliary ships during the same timeframe. Nor thousands of four-engined bombers. Nor hundreds of thousands of trucks. All of those efforts competed with tanks for production capacity. How is it that Germany could not out-produce the US on even one major category of war production ... one that was so key to German military success in the early war years?

 

We are not speaking of some 3rd world economy here. Germany was the heavy-industry giant of Europe. The only land-power that could compete with Germany in industrial might, France, was by late 1940 producing for the German war machine as well. Other major arms producing nations of Europe – Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy were all also available to support the German war effort.

 

Yet not only could the Germans (and the resources they could have rationalized) not out-produce the Americans, they couldn’t even out-produce the Soviets. The Soviet Union was an agricultural economy just emerging from feudalism when the pre-WW2 re-armament cycle began. Even after squandering a 150 year industrial head-start, from late 1941 through late 1943 the Germany war effort still benefited from a larger industrial base, and also a larger population base, than the Soviet Union.

 

Yet both the US and the Soviet Union out-produced Germany in tanks. By substantial margins, too – by multiples, rather than percentages. Why?

 

Too many folks just assume that Germany was bound to be out-produced in the tank race. I don’t think that is at all true. Germany was out-produced because the US, and the Soviets, made a series of very deliberate decisions that the Germans did not make.

 

And tanks like the Sherman (and the T-34) were necessary components of those decisions. That is the point that so many seem to miss. You can’t ramp-up from 100 tanks produced over 5 years, to 50,000 tanks produced in three years, if you are not willing to select one design and GO WITH IT! Stumble around with new designs all you want. But if you’re top priority isn’t driving production of what you have, as if your nation’s life depends on it, you’ll wind up with 5,000 tanks to face off against your opponent’s 50,000.

 

The reason the Sherman was such a war-winning design has little to do with its performance on a given battlefield on a given day. Give a German panzer unit a company of Shermans, and there is little reason to expect them to do any better than they would in Pz 4s. Maybe they'd be a bit more mobile on the battlefield. Maybe they'd have a slightly higher availability on a given day. Marginal stuff. Crew quality would far out-weigh any difference in equipment.

 

Give the German nation the kind of industrial decision-making that created the Sherman, and they would have been a far more dangerous opponent.

 

-Mark 1

[APF]

IIRC PzKW III and IV were limited production vehicles up to 38(?). And, as another of those blunders, were never percieved to be needed in huge quantities, as cars. So they were designed by (and ordered from) companies which specialized on small batches of *manifactured* (as in opposed to industrial mass production) vehicles: Krupp etc. Just like trains.

Another point v.Sengal & Etterlin (SP?) mentioned was that there were concerns about secrecy if Ford and Opel, the companies with the then-biggest experience in mass-production, would've been included in the tank design program due to their connections with America.

 

Nevermind, I'd rather live without the swastika.

 

Greetings

[seahawk]

There are many reasons why Germany could not produce more tanks than the US.

 

1. raw materials were limited - by 1944 many steel works in the Ruhr valley were desperate for raw materials

2. apart from the Navy, the needs for quality steel and metal from other users was equally high

3. when the industry went on a real war footing, the allied bombing campaign was in full swing

4. mobilisation of the industries happened too late.

 

and finally a different industrail base. The US enjoyed the advantage that they had many industries that could be switched to military production rather quickly. In that regard Germany had no chance to compete. Especialyl if it comes to how quickly new factories could be built. The US was without equal in the regard.

 

The Soviets only did out produce Germany after 1943. When the airwar was starting to seriously hurt Germany while Russian factories were msotly save from attack.

 

Working in Essen I have seen the old war diaries of Krupp steel works and many of the coal mines. There were air raids that caused stoppages in production but also raids on the transportation network had a huge impact. By 1944 they used horse carts to get a basic supply of coal to the steel works in Essen, so that the at least they could keep the smelting machines hot, evne when a damaged rail network meant they would not get any iron ore in the next few days.

[irregularmedic]

Reaching back in the sequence here a bit to grab what I consider to be the key concepts ...

 

 

I might suggest there are more perspectives on this issue than just the matter of time.

 

All in all the Panzer 4 BETTER be better. It was designed by a country that had all the traditions of, and viewed itself as, a world-class land power. The Sherman, on the other hand, was designed by a country that viewed a standing army as undesirable, which at the time of the tank's design had an army smaller than Finland, and was more closely comparable to Portugal. At the time that the Sherman design was begun, the US had built less than 5% as many tanks as Italy, and the US Army operated fewer tanks than Romania. How much superior to the Pz 4 were the tanks designed in those nations?

 

If you look at the US Navy in the 1935 - 1940 period, you will see a world-class military. This national emphasis is represented in the modern and powerful ship designs that were filling up the shipyards. As to the US Army ... well, the self-invisioned leadership is not so clear. Given that the US in 1938 supported an army that was less than 10% as large as Germany's, I am not surprised to find that the German army had more advanced weapons coming into service in that timeframe.

 

 

Indeed. The Sherman was designed to be better than the German Pz 3 and Pz 4 tanks of 1940. And it was. In 1942.

 

It was not designed to be better than any vision of anticipated improvements in German tanks by 1943.

 

But then neither the Pz 3 nor Pz 4 were designed to be better than expected future tanks. They just happened to be designed with sufficient room to accept upgrades when confronted by hard combat experience.

 

Which, by the way, was also true of the Sherman.

 

It is just that the Panzers went through their "Oh dear, we better up-gun those things" revelations earlier -- the Pz 3 in 1940, and the Pz 4 in 1941. So in 1942 the Pz 3 was a substantially more capable tank than it was in 1940, and in 1943 the Pz 4 was a substantially more capable tank than it was in 1941. The Sherman came into combat in late 1942, and was (correctly) seen as better than the Pz 3 and Pz 4. The US Army didn't go through its "we better up-gun" revelation until mid-1944, by which time the upgunned version was already in production, although it took some time to ramp-up to the levels needed to fill out the unit requirements in what was, by that time, a VERY large US Army.

 

 

Well, we might ask for specifics of numbers of welds or techniques used. Or we might look at the bigger issues. How many different manufacturing techniques could be used to assemble Pz 4s? How many different engines were fitted into Pz 4s?

 

The Sherman was not just a single tank that was somehow "easier" to produce. It was an entire tank program, with redundancies and back-ups to ensure an enormous production capacity could be built up from next to nothing in the shortest possible time.

 

How much research does it take to determine how many Pz 4s were built with cast hulls? Or how many were built with alternatives to the Maybach engine?

 

Gee, not much research needed. The answer is: effectively none.

 

Yet having multiple hull production techniques, and alternative engines, were critical to the Sherman production ramp.

 

If you want to know what would have happened to production numbers if the designs had been reversed -- if the US produced Pz 4s -- we might reach a quick approximation by looking at how many Shermans were produced with ONLY welded hulls and radial engines. That would be only the M4 models. Gee, not many more M4s were built than Pz 4s!

 

We could even take the lesser of the M4A1 (cast hulls with radial engines) and the M4A3 (welded hull but V8 engine) to approximate what would have been done with out the very deliberate efforts of the US tank board to proliferate Sherman production to facilities of differing capabilities, and to ensure no shortage of power plants.

 

So we might come up with 2x more Shermans with welded hulls and radial engines, than Pz 4s. 2x, rather than the 5x that were actually built. I think it is pretty clear that even if it cost the same to build a given version of the Sherman, the Sherman program was far more highly developed for production flow than the Pz 4.

 

 

I would agree that it was a decision, but not just a design decision.

 

Let us try looking at it from an expanded perspective:

Seahawk suggests: If you have factories able to produce smaller patches of armor plate, it might make more sense to do more welding ….

 

Mark 1 observes: How many tank-building factories did the US have when the Sherman was designed? Answer: ONE. How many factories built Shermans? Answer: about half a dozen major producers, and a few more minor producers.

 

The US designed a tank that could be built in many factories. The US then designed factories to build many tanks. The Germans created tanks to fit into their limited factory capabilities. It is not hard to understand why the US built more tanks.

 

 

The German industrial base was not on the same level – this is true. Total industrial capacity of the US was greater than that of Germany.

 

But industrial demand was also greater. Germany didn’t produce dozens of aircraft carriers and battleships, hundreds of cruisers and destroyers, and thousands of auxiliary ships during the same timeframe. Nor thousands of four-engined bombers. Nor hundreds of thousands of trucks. All of those efforts competed with tanks for production capacity. How is it that Germany could not out-produce the US on even one major category of war production ... one that was so key to German military success in the early war years?

 

We are not speaking of some 3rd world economy here. Germany was the heavy-industry giant of Europe. The only land-power that could compete with Germany in industrial might, France, was by late 1940 producing for the German war machine as well. Other major arms producing nations of Europe – Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy were all also available to support the German war effort.

 

Yet not only could the Germans (and the resources they could have rationalized) not out-produce the Americans, they couldn’t even out-produce the Soviets. The Soviet Union was an agricultural economy just emerging from feudalism when the pre-WW2 re-armament cycle began. Even after squandering a 150 year industrial head-start, from late 1941 through late 1943 the Germany war effort still benefited from a larger industrial base, and also a larger population base, than the Soviet Union.

 

Yet both the US and the Soviet Union out-produced Germany in tanks. By substantial margins, too – by multiples, rather than percentages. Why?

 

Too many folks just assume that Germany was bound to be out-produced in the tank race. I don’t think that is at all true. Germany was out-produced because the US, and the Soviets, made a series of very deliberate decisions that the Germans did not make.

 

And tanks like the Sherman (and the T-34) were necessary components of those decisions. That is the point that so many seem to miss. You can’t ramp-up from 100 tanks produced over 5 years, to 50,000 tanks produced in three years, if you are not willing to select one design and GO WITH IT! Stumble around with new designs all you want. But if you’re top priority isn’t driving production of what you have, as if your nation’s life depends on it, you’ll wind up with 5,000 tanks to face off against your opponent’s 50,000.

 

The reason the Sherman was such a war-winning design has little to do with its performance on a given battlefield on a given day. Give a German panzer unit a company of Shermans, and there is little reason to expect them to do any better than they would in Pz 4s. Maybe they'd be a bit more mobile on the battlefield. Maybe they'd have a slightly higher availability on a given day. Marginal stuff. Crew quality would far out-weigh any difference in equipment.

 

Give the German nation the kind of industrial decision-making that created the Sherman, and they would have been a far more dangerous opponent.

 

-Mark 1

 

Excellent post (as always) but I have a question regarding:

 

Even after squandering a 150 year industrial head-start, from late 1941 through late 1943 the Germany war effort still benefited from a larger industrial base, and also a larger population base, than the Soviet Union.

 

Are you including occupied Europe as Germany's potential population base for manufacturing? Although technically correct, it seems like a bit of an apples and oranges comparison.

[Martin M]

This doesn't make much sense either with the lightest model, Ausf. A, requiring the most fuel for 100 km.

 

Still, one must account for the M4 being substantially heavier than the Pzkw IV when talking about fuel requirements. Such as, because the M4 weighs more than the Pzkw IV it requires more fuel for a given range.

 

 

 

I suppose the weaker engine has to run at a higher RPM to acheive desired road speed.

 

 

And of course, there should be a different result for each Ausf. that has a different weight or different tracks etc, but mayby the difference wasn´t all that great, so no one bothered changing the data.

 

Then again they could all be wrong, but we have to trust some info.

[Guest JamesG123]

 

I don't think Pz III capabilities themselves were cause for uparmoring but think about Guderian's comment in a different way. The Soviets come across Pz III and based on the performance of the tank conclude that is the German fast tank. Based on that sort of positive impression you can well imagine what they might have though it's "under-wraps bigger brother" looked like. I don't know if it's true and I've never seen published detailed reasons as to why they improved the armor but the rational makes sense.

 

They were right because the heavy Pz VI Tiger was on the drawing boards if not in development at that time. Now, whether they had spies that leaked that info or it was a case of assuming "we're doing it, so they must be too"? Who knows (besides the KGB archives).

Edited July 21, 2010 by JamesG123

[bojan]

PzIII may have influenced a couple lines of development, like the T50 and T34M, but production mediums went from the T34 to the very un-PzIII like T44 and then T54.

You are drawing conclusions w/o having read original Soviet sources...

T-54 was basically refined T-44 with new turret.

T-44 draws clear line of developement from T-43, which was for all purposes T-34M with larger road wheels and easier to produce turret.

Also note that T-44 ditched sloped side armor, something that was recomanded to be done with T-34 after testing of Pz-III, but was retained due the insistance that more ammo and fuel could be stuffed in tank that way.

 

Also don't forget the KV1, with small road wheels on torsion bars, was in production from '39 on and had a three man turret as well, so inspiration can come from more than one source.

KV's turret, while 3-man was TC/loader, gunner, radio operator/turret mechanic.

Which is ironic as T-28 had decent 3-man turret with TC, gunner and radio/operator/loader 6 years earlier when Pz-III/IV were just paper projects...

KV only got torsion bars after LKZ was introduced with Pz-III.

 

Finally I don't think the Soviets were up armoring designs because of the PzIII

No, they moved from small arms fire proof armor on T-26/BT series to shell proof armor* on T-34/KV as:

1. Expirience of Spanish Civil War

2. Desire to be one step ahead of competition led to increase of that armor from 25 hifhly sloped @ prototypes to 45mm highly sloped at production T-34s and 50-60mm lightly sloped at prototype to 75+mm lightly sloped for KV.

Meanwhile germans did just a first step, moving to small caliber shell proof armor and just marginally better guns** and suffered in 1941.

 

*T-34 armor requirements - proof to 37/45mm ATGs @ 100mm at 60 deg frontal and 76mm @ 700m @45deg frontal.

KV armor requirements - proof to 76mm @ 300m all around.

 

; I think the PzIII was up armoring because of the Soviets.

 

Nope, Germans knew jack shit about Soviet tanks except from SCW. They tought that best Soviet tank was ~30mm armor and 45mm or 76mm short gun.

See Guderian's comment about Soviet visitors in 1941 refusing to believe that the PzIV was Germany's heaviest tank; a comment Guderian found odd until the Germans ran into the T34.

 

That i due te fact that Soviets were led to beleave (either by German propaganda or own spyes wrong reports) that german's tanks have 70-80mm frontal armor and heavies have 100mm frontal, 80mm side armor (Which described Tiger almost 2 years before it appeared). Hence 57mm ATG developement as well as all KV prototypes with 85mm/107mm high velocity guns.

Edited July 21, 2010 by bojan

[bojan]

They were right because the heavy Pz VI Tiger was on the drawing boards if not in development at that time.

 

Yes, but Soviets were thinking about 100mm frontal 80mm side armor German heavy tank when Tiger's grandfather swere 50mm all around armor...

 

Now, whether they had spies that leaked that info or it was a case of assuming "we're doing it, so they must be too"?

 

I think it is 2nd with some influence of overblown 1st.

They saw Pz-III, saw it (correctly) as excelent automotive design, easily capable of being upgraded and concluded that it would be "ideal tank" that could be used for developement of both light, medium and heavy tanks. And assumed Germans did that already. Soviets saw automotive performances as indicator of quality of one nation tank building as that was area where they were strugling the most - conclusion was that anyone can hang heavy armor or stuff a big gun in tank but it takes really good tank building to make it run w/o loads of problems.

 

Even in late 1941/early 1942 when British tanks started ariving by LL Soviets half-refused to beleave that was best British had - after all British made excelent Vicker 6 ton just 10 years earlier, how could it happen that they just managed to uparmor design w/o any increase in speed or armament or reliability?

Edited July 21, 2010 by bojan

[Yama]

All in all the Panzer 4 BETTER be better. It was designed by a country that had all the traditions of, and viewed itself as, a world-class land power. The Sherman, on the other hand, was designed by a country that viewed a standing army as undesirable, which at the time of the tank's design had an army smaller than Finland, and was more closely comparable to Portugal. At the time that the Sherman design was begun, the US had built less than 5% as many tanks as Italy, and the US Army operated fewer tanks than Romania. How much superior to the Pz 4 were the tanks designed in those nations?

 

Pinnacle of the Finnish AFV design...

 

[Marek Tucan]

Wazzat? The BT with 4.5" howitzer?

[L.V.]

Wazzat? The BT with 4.5" howitzer?

 

yes, i.e. BT-42

[CaptLuke]

They were right because the heavy Pz VI Tiger was on the drawing boards if not in development at that time. Now, whether they had spies that leaked that info or it was a case of assuming "we're doing it, so they must be too"? Who knows (besides the KGB archives).

 

Not exactly. The much lighter VK3001 and VK3006 tanks were in development (32 and 40 tons respectively). The VK3001 wasn't particularly well armored but prototypes existed in '41 while the VK3006 did have 100mm armor but I believe did not have any prototypes done till '42. Both projects were scrapped but were used as the basis for the Tiger design which, according to Achtung Panzer, was not even kicked off until after a meeting in May of '41.

 

In any case I think the comparison is that the Soviets had had the 45 ton KV-1 in production since '39-'40; much different than a drawing board or prototype effort.

[CaptLuke]

You are drawing conclusions w/o having read original Soviet sources...

T-54 was basically refined T-44 with new turret.

T-44 draws clear line of developement from T-43, which was for all purposes T-34M with larger road wheels and easier to produce turret.

Also note that T-44 ditched sloped side armor, something that was recomanded to be done with T-34 after testing of Pz-III, but was retained due the insistance that more ammo and fuel could be stuffed in tank that way.

 

Thanks for the clarification; good info.

 

No, they moved from small arms fire proof armor on T-26/BT series to shell proof armor* on T-34/KV as:

1. Expirience of Spanish Civil War

2. Desire to be one step ahead of competition . . .

 

Agree completely. My point was that Soviet up-armoring was not driven by seeing PzIII.

 

Nope, Germans knew jack shit about Soviet tanks except from SCW. They tought that best Soviet tank was ~30mm armor and 45mm or 76mm short gun.

 

Agree. When I said the PzIII was up armored because of the Soviets I should have clarified it to say it was up gunned and up armored after the Germans met the T34/KV1.

 

That i due te fact that Soviets were led to beleave (either by German propaganda or own spyes wrong reports) that german's tanks have 70-80mm frontal armor and heavies have 100mm frontal, 80mm side armor (Which described Tiger almost 2 years before it appeared). Hence 57mm ATG developement as well as all KV prototypes with 85mm/107mm high velocity guns.

 

Don't know. Might have been spy reports on the VK3601, which 100mm Front / 80mm side describes pretty closely. Still,if they believed that why did they stick with the 76mm main gun on T34/KV1 for so long?

[Martin M]

MK 1

 

 

Good reasoning and presentation .

 

It is, however, something different than what was being said.

You attribute the successful US feat of producing a sufficient number of useful tanks for the land forces to achieve victory to the distinct decision to do so, and NOT to the simplicity or complexity of the item produced .

 

You have not said, is that it was possible to produce 50000 ( + if necessary) Shermans because the individual unit was easier to produce than a (for example) Panzer 4 . That is what everyone here is constantly saying and what I am not convinced of.

 

I do not think a Sherman was distinctly different from a Panzer 4 or a Panther in terms of unit effort or unit cost.

(With two different hull constructions, and various different engines a Sherman could even be regarded more complex than a Panzer 4, where vehicles of a Ausf. = time period, were all alike. )

 

What I think you are saying and have the information on is that the high Sherman production rate could only be achieved by using two different hull constructions, and various different engines , SIMULTANEOUSLY, because of bottleneck-type situations for key components.

The design took that into account.

[bojan]

...Don't know. Might have been spy reports on the VK3601, which 100mm Front / 80mm side describes pretty closely. Still,if they believed that why did they stick with the 76mm main gun on T34/KV1 for so long?

 

But they did not plan to stick on 76mm L/42 for long - plan for KV was 76mm F-27 L/55 gun, later 85mm F-30 L/52 (KV-220) or 107mm ZiS-6 L/52 (KV-3).

T-34M was also planned with 76mm F-27 gun (mounting was compatible with F-34 mounting) or 85mm F-30...

Even T-50 was planned to be up-gunned to 57mm gun (L/60 derivate of ZiS-2/4).

Then Germans attacked, there was no German super tanks and F-34 was found to be enough. When they finally started encountering heavy tanks (Tiger) old projects were not available (some 200 107mm ZiS-6 guns produced were scrapped in early 1942!).

 

KV-1 with F-27 gun:

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/kv-1/kv1_f27_1.jpg

 

KV-220 (real thing):

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/kv-220/kv220_1.gif

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/kv-220/kv220_2.jpg

 

KV-3 (wooden model), hull and guns were actually made:

http://www.aviarmor.net/TWW2/Photo/USSR/kv-3/kv-3_model.jpg

Edited July 21, 2010 by bojan

[Colin Williams]

I just cannot find any literature about Pz. IV being a problem for Allied tankers. Though one can attribute this to Tiger phobia, there are cases of Panzers positively identified as Mark IVs and 75mm guns did not have any undue trouble against these targets.

 

As someone else said already, with cherry picking one can make Sherman and T-34 inferior to the Pz. IV, but matching generation with generation, the Mark IV was clearly an inferior tank. The Western Allies failed to up-gun enough of their Shermans for Normandy and so the 75mm M4s had to slug it out with Pz. IV's high velocity gun. Even so, both tanks could kill each other at regular combat ranges.

 

 

I think it goes a little beyond finding literature about the PzIV being a problem. Again, as you point out, one has to take comments in the context of Allied tankers' reactions to the Panther and Tiger, but my impression from a number of books that quote veterans is that the PzIV was relatively easy to defeat. In many of these cases "defeat" seems to mean "hit and see crew abandon" and "hit and see leave the battle" in addition to "hit and clearly knock-out". My impression that PzIVs were likely to suffer some internal component damage from non-penetrating 75mm hits and that the PzIV crews, much as Sherman, Cromwell and Churchill crews, were well aware of their tank's vulnerability.

[Guest aevans]

One of the big problems with German manufacturing practice was that they didn't have factories as much as they had what we would call in the US engineering works. They simply didn't have a production mentality, in the sense of turning out a lot of the same thing. They could build a series of products to a design, but each unit was a unique entity that was built, not a product that was assembled.

[Guest aevans]

Maybe in the tank world but the aircraft industry they certainly had something I'd call factories.

 

Built and run by non-traditional firms. Junkers initially started out in the 1890s as a boiler works.