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Slavvy posted:I'm not referring to a movie tank. I'm meaning the historically restored examples like the panther in the video. Wouldn't it make sense to fix some of the components that break due to lovely design/metallurgy? Like if you were restoring a P51 and you changed the valve seats to hardened steel so it doesn't need lead fuel anymore, made piston rings out of modern metal and put modern engine oil in it, and so on and so forth. Or is that somehow taboo? It would be ludicrously expensive to redesign all that stuff and then re-make it in small amounts.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:14
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This is the kind of thing the mega rich need to dump cash on. Super yacht? Skyscraper? Nope, a squadron of P-38s and some IS-2s, please.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:37
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Arrath posted:This is the kind of thing the mega rich need to dump cash on. Super yacht? Skyscraper? Nope, a squadron of P-38s and some IS-2s, please. Paul Allen actually does do this at the Flying Heritage Collection. Probably one of my favorite things when I'm visiting family in Seattle is to see a B-25 cruising around.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:47
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I don't know about IS-2s, but you can score a T-55 pretty easily. Maybe even a T-34-85 if you're willing to put in some restoration effort. If you're lazy you can just pick apart Littlefield's collection and get a Stuart for $100k.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:51
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Like I said waaay earlier in the thread, if I was mega rich I would have vintage tanks custom built from scratch based strictly on the original designs and part specifications.
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Aug 8, 2014 03:03
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American Civil War recommendation: seconding James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and also Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg: The Last Invasion Cold War recommendation: Michael Dobbs' One Minute to Midnight, covering the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically EDIT: I'm actually also looking for something about the Overland Campaign specifically. I find the parallels to World War I's trench warfare fascinating. MA-Horus posted:Well we'll find out for sure how good they are at building props for the new Brad Pitt movie "Fury". Looks like he's an Easy-Eight (M4A2E8 Sherman) commander, and the trailer definitely has what looks like a Tiger in it. And it looks pretty decent, maybe the turret is a little far forward. The trailer that I saw kept shifting between a Sherman with a muzzle brake and one without and it threw me off. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 04:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:American Civil War recommendation: seconding James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and also Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg: The Last Invasion I'm a third for Battle Cry, it's a great overview of the war, and the first third is how hosed up prebellum America was, and how the war was definitely about slavery, which is always good. There's not much detail on the battles though, if that's your thing; he mostly sticks to what the outcome of each fight was, and what effects that had, which is the correct approach I think.
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Aug 8, 2014 05:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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gradenko_2000 posted:American Civil War recommendation: seconding James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and also Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg: The Last Invasion All 3 of these books are on audible for anyone else who drives too much.
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Aug 8, 2014 05:36
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Do we still have the blueprints? Could a movie director simply build a disarmed Tiger tank if he really wanted accuracy? There's a group of Russians that built one, as accurate as they could to every detail (also buried on youtube) but the cost was frakkin' huge and would kill anyone that would want to build the same as just a movie prop. Bovington also has an old style WWI tank built for a movie, they show it off because the outside looks true to the original while underneath it's pretty much scratch built modern. Slavvy posted:Watching that I can see why the general staff would've been very impressed with the interleaved wheels/suspension layout, when it's being run around the pleasant countryside. As far as these guys rebuilding these tanks and the questionable reliability of panthers/tigers, is it acceptable for them to make replacement parts with modernised materials, machining techniques, metallurgy and so on? It seems like the failures in reliability would be a combination of the brutal conditions on the eastern front, a lack of critical materials due to shortages, and just plain old lovely design because it was the 40's and complicated internal combustion engines and gearboxes and such were still in their infancy. Surely it would be pretty straightforward to build stronger gearbox components, a modern cooling system and so on in the name of practicality? Depends on what your desires are. If you personally had one it'd kind of be up to you. Bovington having the only running original Tiger anywhere, they strive to keep it as close to original as they can because, as already said, it's kind of a rare treasure and the jewel of their collection. They even kept the original battle damage intact. There's also a video direct from Bovington on the tube called "Driving a Tiger" that shows the operation of starting and running it on a quick run from the museum display area to the machine shop and back. The video is not long enough though...and honestly I don't think it ever would be. Despite all their shortcomings, I loves me a Tiger SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 07:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:EDIT: I'm actually also looking for something about the Overland Campaign specifically. I find the parallels to World War I's trench warfare fascinating. Gordon Rhea put out 4 volumes on the Overland Campaign about 15-20 years ago, and I don't think anybody's matched them yet. They're very detailed, so if you're looking for an overview, Mark Grimsley wrote a single volume treatment of the campaign in 2002, which is about 250 pages. All of these go through Cold Harbor. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1456065.The_Battle_of_the_Wilderness_May_5_6_1864?from_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...rom_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/920103.To_the_North_Anna_River?from_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/716550.Cold_Harbor?from_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2182801.And_Keep_Moving_On?from_search=true For the real trench stuff, you'd have to get to the Petersburg operations. Edwin Bearss and Bryce Suderow wrote a couple volumes that are based on drafts Bearss wrote for the National Park Service a million years ago, but those are the only decent overviews I know of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11388915-the-petersburg-campaign-volume-1?from_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14519524-the-petersburg-campaign-volume-2?from_search=true Earl Hess wrote 3 books on fortifications in the Eastern Theater that give kind of a different spin on several campaigns since he's more focused on earthworks in particular. The first book covers through Mine Run, the second is the Overland Campaign, and the third is Petersburg. These are the most in depth books on trench warfare in the Civil War that I know of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20251667-the-earl-j-hess-fortifications-trilogy?from_search=true dublish fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 08:16
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Slavvy posted:I'm not referring to a movie tank. I'm meaning the historically restored examples like the panther in the video. Wouldn't it make sense to fix some of the components that break due to lovely design/metallurgy? Like if you were restoring a P51 and you changed the valve seats to hardened steel so it doesn't need lead fuel anymore, made piston rings out of modern metal and put modern engine oil in it, and so on and so forth. Or is that somehow taboo? Your example doesn't make sense because leaded avgas is still widely used.
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Aug 8, 2014 12:16
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I do wonder how much more powerful German tanks would be if they had modern engines under their hoods(?)uPen posted:All 3 of these books are on audible for anyone else who drives too much. You caught me! Most of my reading list is actually an audio-book-listening list. I stopped my subscription this month because of Kindle Unlimited and because I was developing a bad backlog at 1 audiobook per month, but I already kinda miss it.
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Aug 8, 2014 12:25
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Like I said waaay earlier in the thread, if I was mega rich I would have vintage tanks custom built from scratch based strictly on the original designs and part specifications. I'd have a fleet of triremes.
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Aug 8, 2014 12:54
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If I was rich I'd hire a group of Landsknecht, authentically dressed and equipped, to accompany me wherever I go. 
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Aug 8, 2014 13:18
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Nenonen posted:If I was rich I'd hire a group of Landsknecht, authentically dressed and equipped, to accompany me wherever I go. Praetorian Guard, the kind that don't want to kill me.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:I do wonder how much more powerful German tanks would be if they had modern engines under their hoods(?) There'd be less engine breakdowns, yeah, but everything else would still break, maybe even moreso with that much more power put to them. I imagine a high powered modern engine would shred some of those transmissions in the heavier tanks. Ultimately and fortunately Germany went the wrong way with the tank tier. They went for big and technical while other countries kept them medium and simple. You can have the biggest baddest tank on the block, but if your opponent can stick 100 smaller ones up against it with decent crews, your odds drop.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:41
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Isn't the main cause of failure on the Panther (?) the transmission, instead of the engine?
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Aug 8, 2014 14:44
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Fangz posted:Isn't the main cause of failure on the Panther (?) the transmission, instead of the engine? Yes, the final drives would likely fail first, but the engine was also very unreliable.
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Aug 8, 2014 15:11
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SocketWrench posted:There'd be less engine breakdowns, yeah, but everything else would still break, maybe even moreso with that much more power put to them. I imagine a high powered modern engine would shred some of those transmissions in the heavier tanks. Part of the problem here was that the Germans according to a friend of mine had hit the limits as to how much further they could up-gun and up-armor the Panzer IV's and generally needed a new main battle tank. So they had to develop something that could fit the long barreled 75 or the 88. And well, if you're being massively outnumbered anyways why not try to go for the quality advantage?
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Aug 8, 2014 17:05
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Ensign Expendable posted:Yes, the final drives would likely fail first, but the engine was also very unreliable. It didn't help that even though the Germans were able to keep up tank production throughout the Allied strategic bombing campaign, it took a heavy toll on their ability to maintain their vehicles-while 80% of Maybach engines for the Panther were produced as spares in 1943, for example, by late '44 this number was reduced to a mere 15%, greatly impacting their ability to maintain or repair their vehicles.
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Aug 8, 2014 17:06
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Raenir Salazar posted:Part of the problem here was that the Germans according to a friend of mine had hit the limits as to how much further they could up-gun and up-armor the Panzer IV's and generally needed a new main battle tank. So they had to develop something that could fit the long barreled 75 or the 88. Except they didn't even have any significant quality advantage. The big cats were mostly a waste. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 17:22
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Taerkar posted:Except they didn't even have a quality advantage. The big cats were mostly a waste. I think the allies were quite lucky that hitler was such a loving moron with so much power. "Mein fuhrer, if we attack the Kursk salient now we can achieve victory! "NEIN NOT UNTIL ZE ELEFANTS ARE READY" *elefants proceed to break all over the place, almost all lost to mechanical failure*
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Aug 8, 2014 17:38
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Taerkar posted:Except they didn't even have any significant quality advantage. The big cats were mostly a waste. The King Tiger sure, but something like the Panther was needed and I think the Tiger itself generally performed well.
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Aug 8, 2014 17:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:Part of the problem here was that the Germans according to a friend of mine had hit the limits as to how much further they could up-gun and up-armor the Panzer IV's and generally needed a new main battle tank. So they had to develop something that could fit the long barreled 75 or the 88. The central problem with that line of thinking is that while a new tank may have been needed, it didn't need to carry the long 75 or an 88mm gun, or to be as big or heavily armored as it was. Generally, most tanks don't do that much tank-on-tank fighting, and most tank losses were instead taken from entrenched infantry with Anti-Tank guns. While possessing heavy armor and a big gun can be an advantage, even in a tank-on-tank fight the greatest advantage one can have is merely getting the drop on the other guy, or at the very least having more tanks on your side of the fight than the other guys have on theirs. One of the greatest strengths of the T-34 and the Sherman wasn't just their ease of production, but rather their rock-solid reliability and ease of repair. Because of its sheer weight and many artifacts of its earlier, lighter design, the lifespan of the Panther's engine and transmission were infamously short, and actually trying to fix them took a huge amount of time and required specialist equipment, if a spare could even be found. A Sherman or T-34 that got knocked out or broken down, by contrast, were easily repaired and could be sent back into battle almost immediately after being recovered, which often meant that a Panther could very well knock out the same Sherman or T-34 multiple times over numerous engagements, but if the Panther broke down it could very well be captured by the advancing Americans or Soviets before it could be repaired-a fairly common occurrence later in the war, as spares grew even harder to find and the American/Soviet advance ramped up. It's also worth mentioning that while the tactical maneuverability of the Panther and Tiger were both rightly regarded as excellent, their strategic maneuverability was awful. Both the Sherman and the T-34 could be expected to drive and fight across huge areas of terrain with only minor maintenance and enough gas-in fact, the Sherman was specifically designed to do so, as it was recognized by US commanders that any spares would have to be shipped all the way across the Atlantic, and may very well be in short supply. The Panther, meanwhile, could only drive ~140km on average before the transmission broke down, and as such the Germans often had to resort to using precious rail lines to send their tanks to the frontline to prevent them from breaking down. In the face of a determined assault on two fronts, this is precisely the sort of situation the Germans would have wanted to avoid, but fortunately they kept making these types of mistakes throughout the war. With this in mind, it's easy to see how the Germans may very well have hastened their collapse by building such huge "invulnerable" monsters, as opposed to focusing on mass-producing simpler and more reliable AFVs. While they could have never matched American or Soviet production numbers, they didn't really need to-had the Germans been able to straight-up build their own version of the Sherman or T-34 and variants, those tanks still would have matched up well against their opposing numbers, and may have very well done something to help ease their utterly hosed logistics train. Instead, they opted to build a large number of specialized tanks, many of them with production figures only numbering in the dozens (Hi Jagdtiger!), which both helped to cripple their overall production numbers from having to rework various assembly lines and retrain workers and in the process greatly complicated their logistics train. Of course it's fortunate for us that they did, as otherwise the war may very well have been that much longer and that much bloodier. Edit: Generally, it's already agreed that the late-model Panzer IV, T-34-85, and M4 Sherman (76) were generally equivalent in armor protection and firepower. Even with the appearance of later-war heavies like the IS-2 and the M26 Pershing, the Germans simply didn't need a tank as heavily armed and armored as the Panther, let alone something as ridiculous as the KT or JT. In that regard, they were a waste when other tanks could have been built in greater numbers to accomplish the same task. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 17:58
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Any figures on how reliable/maintainable the Panzer IV or even the Panzer III was? Could those have been a "stand-in" for the Sherman/T-34 if the Germans had chosen to stick with them instead, or would a hypothetical copy of the Sherman/T-34 still have been better?
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Aug 8, 2014 18:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:Any figures on how reliable/maintainable the Panzer IV or even the Panzer III was? Could those have been a "stand-in" for the Sherman/T-34 if the Germans had chosen to stick with them instead, or would a hypothetical copy of the Sherman/T-34 still have been better? I don't have any solid figures, but everything I've ever read on the issue says that the Pz IV was pretty reliable and easy to maintain. As far as its combat performance goes, it matched up right alongside the contemporary iterations of the sherman and T34 - armor was good enough, mobility was good enough, gun was good enough, etc. In a fight between any of those vehicles it had way more to do with positioning, first shot etc. At the end of the day, though, it's just a numbers game. There were just over 8k Panzer IVs built with about 3/4ths of those being the mid to late war variants. Compare that to 34k T34s if you only count the T34/76. That's completely hand-waving away the 34/85 as a different vehicle, which it really isn't. Count the 34/85 and you more than double those figures, although some of the production is post-war and shouldn't really be included. Same deal with the Sherman - something like 50k of those, all models, although that also includes a trickle of post-war production. The production numbers for AFVs on the various sides are just staggering when you look at them side by side and it's amazing that the Germans held out as well as they did.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:21
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Both the Sherman and the T-34 could be expected to drive and fight across huge areas of terrain with only minor maintenance and enough gas-in fact This is overselling the T-34, as like most Soviet built vehicles they were notorious for their likelihood to break down on longer transits. Quoting a whole section from Wikipedia: quote:In terms of mobility, the T-34's wide track and good suspension gave it unparalleled cross-country performance. Early in the tank's life, however, this advantage was greatly reduced by the numerous teething troubles the design displayed: a long road trip could be a lethal exercise for a T-34 tank at the start of the war. When in June 1941, the 8th Mechanised Corps of D.I. Ryabyshev marched towards Dubno, the corps lost half of its vehicles. A.V. Bodnar, who was in combat in 1941-42, recalled: It still carried its job once it got there, but Soviet tank units fitted with L&L Shermans were noted to be markedly more likely to get from point A to point B with most of their vehicles still running. Maybe it was because Stalin's crash industrialization program didn't result in high production standards to begin with, or maybe because the extraordinary difficulties that Soviet war industry had (relocations, material and skilled worker shortages, massive production requirements etc.) hampered quality control efforts, or maybe the powers that be simply didn't care of such aspects as long as they could deliver the required batch in time.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:23
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Nenonen posted:This is overselling the T-34, as like most Soviet built vehicles they were notorious for their likelihood to break down on longer transits. Quoting a whole section from Wikipedia: The quoted sections only cover the very earliest '41 model T-34s, though, and aren't really comparable to '44/45 models. I mean yeah, even later models weren't as good as the Sherman in that regard, but that itself is because the Sherman was explicitly designed to be as reliable as possible. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 18:27
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The quoted sections only cover the very earliest '41 model T-34s, though, and aren't really comparable to '44/45 models. I mean yeah, even later models weren't as good as the Sherman in that regard, but that itself is because the Sherman was explicitly designed to be as reliable as possible. 1941 was a combat supply nightmare for the Soviets as well. Even the most reliable tank will break if you can't keep them supplied with gas, oil and lubricants. While the German staff officers had years of experience moving tanks into battle and keeping them supplied, supported and repaired, the Soviets had an under-educated, recently purged and inexperienced officer corps which was not up to the task of coordinating the resupply and repair of thousands of tanks moving into battle. They learned, but that first year was bad. It wasn't the T-34's fault it broke down - it was the fault of the officers who couldn't keep them supplied.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:55
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MA-Horus posted:I think the allies were quite lucky that hitler was such a loving moron with so much power. "Should we perhaps put a machine gun in it, mein Fuhrer?" "NEIN MASSIVE 88 MM GUN WILL DEFEAT THE PUNY UNTERMENSCHEN" *everything is immediately firebombed by infantry* Edit: the Wikipedia T-34 reliability copy/paste discusses almost exclusively the mod. 1940 (lol, 100 hours of engine life) and the mod. 1941 based on Aberdeen trials where the testers managed to forget to put oil in the air filter and somehow destroy components considered most reliable parts of the tanks. Also I don't get the "inhuman harshness" part, the effort required to operate a Sherman and a T-34 is comparable, if not identical. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 18:59
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The quoted sections only cover the very earliest '41 model T-34s, though, and aren't really comparable to '44/45 models. I mean yeah, even later models weren't as good as the Sherman in that regard, but that itself is because the Sherman was explicitly designed to be as reliable as possible. Do the 44/45 models even matter for this discussion, though? By that point in the war the Germans are completely hosed. You could magic every American and Soviet tank out of existence and replace it with some early-war infantry support vehicle and still end up with the same broad results: Germany loses the war. More importantly, if it isn't the underlying designs which were the problem but the quality of the construction (which is what the Aberdeen report concludes) then the issues that you see in 1941 are still going to be present in the mid-war years when most of the really decisive fighting was taking place. Soviet industrial production just gets rough during the most stressful years of the war. Looking at the comparable example of small arms production, there is a strong pattern of the general fit, finish, and over-all quality of mid-war produced Soviet weapons being mediocre at best while those made before '41 and after '44 being generally decent to good.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:04
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Ensign Expendable posted:"Should we perhaps put a machine gun in it, mein Fuhrer?" You'd think they would have learned from how easy it was to firebomb Russian tanks for similar reasons.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:04
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I think we can just accept that quantity at quality's expense is often considered an acceptable tradeoff in military procurement. When it starts damaging strategic effectiveness (e.g. not chroming certain parts of assault rifle receivers in Vietnam, thus leaving whole units with gummed-up rifles) it gets fixed. You almost certainly had the build quality measured against the output volume (re: the T-34 series) with the end result being a uniquely Slavic shrug. If you make four times as many tanks as the other guy, you can afford to lose half of them on the road and half of what's left to enemy action before being evenly numbered.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:16
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If we're doing the 'compare medium tanks in WW2' thing again then I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sherman is that it's an entirely wartime design. The PzIV and the T34 were both designed pre-war and while upgraded and up-gunned remained largely the same tank. In comparison other German and Soviet tanks designed during the war have tremendous problems all over the place. The US army went from having virtually nothing worth the name to having something that at a minimum was a par with the medium tanks of the time during the war. Yeah having the Pershing a year earlier would have been really helpful but that's a different argument.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:25
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Raenir Salazar posted:Part of the problem here was that the Germans according to a friend of mine had hit the limits as to how much further they could up-gun and up-armor the Panzer IV's and generally needed a new main battle tank. So they had to develop something that could fit the long barreled 75 or the 88. Yeah, but they didn't stop at one, they kept going, so you got a number of tank destroyers from outdated tanks that could do the job along with a bunch of over engineered tanks fith faulty issues. Germany's main problem was they couldn't just settle with one and improve it, they had to make all kinds of crap and had to over complicate it to the point servicing it ranged from complete bitch to impossible. As much as I hate the Shermans, they are the best example of finding a system and improving it rather than branching through multiple systems to never get anything that worked just right. Besides, P4's were pretty decent, they continued to be successful right up to the end. Hitler just had that penis problem and his engineers had an issue with making things simple Alchenar posted:If we're doing the 'compare medium tanks in WW2' thing again then I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sherman is that it's an entirely wartime design. Not totally, the chassis already existed, the Sherman was just an M3 with a new top. the M3 was just an M2 with a different hull design. The US found a base system that worked because it had to be rushed and built off it till we get to the Pershing. gradenko_2000 posted:Any figures on how reliable/maintainable the Panzer IV or even the Panzer III was? Could those have been a "stand-in" for the Sherman/T-34 if the Germans had chosen to stick with them instead, or would a hypothetical copy of the Sherman/T-34 still have been better? I dunno how reliable, but I've seen video of a repair/modification depot where they could put the P4s back into the field relatively quick even if they had to have a track or wheel replaced. The P4 was as close to the Sherman as the Germans got, they almost had it, then Hitler said "what if we gently caress all this and build some hilariously boner flashing tanks instead" Nenonen posted:It still carried its job once it got there, but Soviet tank units fitted with L&L Shermans were noted to be markedly more likely to get from point A to point B with most of their vehicles still running. Maybe it was because Stalin's crash industrialization program didn't result in high production standards to begin with, or maybe because the extraordinary difficulties that Soviet war industry had (relocations, material and skilled worker shortages, massive production requirements etc.) hampered quality control efforts, or maybe the powers that be simply didn't care of such aspects as long as they could deliver the required batch in time. Ever seen a war time Mosin? Yeah, the Russians skipped and skimped on what they considered doable. I'm pretty sure it was the haste to get this stuff out the door and into the war that resulted in whatever could be done to pump more out faster v To some extent the earlier M2 light tank had many of the suspension components already in use which it took from the M1 Combat Car. The M1 CC was designed in the early '30's, the M2 light was designed in '35, the M2 medium in '39 just prior to the outbreak of war. Then the M3 was designed in a rush to send to the Brits so it was basically the same thing with a few improvements. SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 19:36
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Alchenar posted:If we're doing the 'compare medium tanks in WW2' thing again then I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sherman is that it's an entirely wartime design. The PzIV and the T34 were both designed pre-war and while upgraded and up-gunned remained largely the same tank. In comparison other German and Soviet tanks designed during the war have tremendous problems all over the place. Eh, it's kind of hard to argue that the M4 is a wartime design. Huge chunks of it were developed in the 30s as parts of other projects. The way US vehicle design was done in the 30s was basically just a string of low-production concept vehicles that were extremely iterative and dragged entire sections of designs along to the next one. The design of the suspension and transmission in particular - which were huge factors in the M4's success - were both dragged forward from at least the M2 series vehicles. I'm sure someone who knows the details of that will be along to say specifically how far back those components go, but already you're talking about work done in the mid and late 30s there.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:40
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SocketWrench posted:Yeah, but they didn't stop at one, they kept going, so you got a number of tank destroyers from outdated tanks that could do the job along with a bunch of over engineered tanks fith faulty issues. Germany's main problem was they couldn't just settle with one and improve it, they had to make all kinds of crap and had to over complicate it to the point servicing it ranged from complete bitch to impossible. In all fairness, a lot of that crazy proliferation of designs didn't come about because they were actively building new designs, but because they obsessively utilized every piece of captured and obsolete equipment they could lay hands on. A lot of those tank destroyers, for example, were built up off of foreign vehicle chassis that were captured, surrendered, or otherwise acquired. The entire Marder line of TDs is a great example of this. You also have examples where they had foreign factories tooled up for producing obsolete vehicles but didn't want to invest the time and resources into re-tooling them. From a wartime production standpoint this actually makes a lot of sense. Thus you get designs based around foreign chassis and only produced at that one factory - see the development and production of the Hetzer by Skoda after it became clear that the 38(t) was a hopelessly outdated design. Trying to coordinate and standardize military production for wartime is a huge headache in and of itself, and it just gets exponentially worse when you are trying to maximize your available resources by pulling in captured or occupied foreign assets. Speer was a giant rear end in a top hat but goddamn you have to sympathize just a little bit with the crazy job he was handed. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 19:53
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Yeah the Sherman was HEAVILY based on the M3 Lee/Grant platform, which itself was based on the M2 Medium tank of 1939, which was based on the M2 light tank of 1935. The Sherman was essentially the lee with the dumb sponson gun taken off and that piddly rear end 37mm in babby turret replaced with a proper turret with a 75.
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Aug 8, 2014 20:02
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Of course, I know. I meant that to be separate from the rest, meaning they could do the job fine on their own without a need for designing tanks to do the same job, but I guess it didn't come out that way. Reusing outdated tanks from their own army and captured equipment from others was about as good a deal as they could do. They made a lot of things that did a good job that took less time, effort, money, and material.
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Aug 8, 2014 20:05
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| # ? May 26, 2024 14:53 |
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In some regards the Grant was the Sherman as built by people who didn't have access to a working turret that could fit a 75mm. They wanted to build Shermans but they didn't have everything done so they built the Grant.
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Aug 8, 2014 20:08
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