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FastestGunAlive posted:The scope of the pacific campaign, even if it was seconded by Europe first, was pretty vast. Look at the distances involved, just seeing a map doesn’t do the logistical challenge justice. Some pretty savage battles that certainly don’t merit being described as “putzing”. I feel your thoughts on how the allies should have handled Europe and Africa come off as very... videogamey. Or at the very least a simplistic overview of manpower numbers. War is incredibly complex Not to mention Lend Lease. The US was feeding and arming something like 60 divisions worth of Red Army troops and sent almost as much supplies to the Soviets as were sent to support US forces in Europe. Explosives (from shell filler to gunpowder) from the US was something like 50% of Soviet production. Something like ~2,000 locomotives and ~12,000 railway cars that accounted for 80% of new rail equipment in the USSR during the war. Stalin posted:Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war. Georgy Zhukov posted:Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war, we didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with. IMO in general I would say the pop-propaganda narrative has swung away from the old "America won WW2" stereotype towards a new version where "Russia was the ONLY country to fight in WW2! Only Russia suffered!", especially after 2014, when it became necessary to whip up nationalist sentiment and distract from the fact that now you've got Russia playing kingmaker for a lot of the resurgent neo-fascist groups, white supremacists, Trump, etc.
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Dec 13, 2018 08:52
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mila kunis posted:He was probably pretty upset about the soviets taking eastern poland. Wasn't there some kind of weird fever dream plan cooked up to attack both the soviets and the germans through scandinavia at some point that was scrapped? The French and British were considering aiding Finland by shipping troops and equipment though Narvik in Norway. This was deeply unsettling to both the Germans and Soviets, perhaps the Germans more than anyone else as they did not want an Allied military presence in Scandinavia that could threaten their dominance in the Baltic and the shipments of iron ore and tungsten from Sweden which at this time were pretty important to for preparing its forces for the attack on France. It also didn't happen because the war in Finland ended before anything became of it. The Allies were also seriously considering bombing Soviet oil installations in the Caucasus as they were supplying Germany and negating the effect of the blockade against Germany. I think they were more upset about the Soviets supplying the Germans with essential resources to sustain their war effort in despite of the Allied blockade than occupying Finland, though that also was not received lightly but did not result in war (probably calculated so by Stalin when they invaded after the Germans to allow the British and French to back down from having to fight him as well). C.M. Kruger posted:IMO in general I would say the pop-propaganda narrative has swung away from the old "America won WW2" stereotype towards a new version where "Russia was the ONLY country to fight in WW2! Only Russia suffered!" It seems quite common, you were taught a certain way in school or something that lacked nuance and probably left out or negated certain aspects of the full story, therefore when you first find out that the actual story was different from what you were originally taught you embrace another narrative that actually is just as lacking in nuance as the one you were originally taught. Allied tanks and armored vehicles also were quite important. First the British Lend-Lease tanks that arrived in 1941 got there at a pretty crucial time when ALOT of euqipment had been lost in the initial attacks and Soviet industry was disrupted by the invasions as well and was in the process of relocating their production equipment in many cases. Thus these British vehicles served as a pretty important stopgap measure which helped the Soviets be able to keep fighting while they were relocating their industry and retoolign their armies and industrial infrastructure, also at some crucial fronts like Moscow British tanks made up something like ~25% of all medium and heavy tanks, which is quite significant. US vehicles when they arrived, though officially the Soviets did not care much for them (memoirs by crews seems to indicate that they actually really liked the US tanks though) and they were not nearly as numerous as Soviet produced vehicles, ended up being quite useful as training vehicles because of their reliability, ease of maintenance and long service life (all of which Soviet tanks lacked as the war got going because they reckoned that they could save time and money producing vehicles with inferior materials and components that negatively impacted reliability and service life because with the nature of fighting at the eastern front a tank was going to end up destroyed pretty quickly in any case). Randarkman fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 10:33
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I'm not sure if the Afrika Korps' and Italian forces' loss numbers usually include stuff that went to the bottom of the Med on the crossing, which was quite a chunk of the total iirc, so Africa went even worse for the Axis than it looks if you just tally up the battlefield losses.
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Dec 13, 2018 10:52
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Acebuckeye13 posted:It really can't be stated enough that the position the US was in across the Atlantic and Pacific was both a blessing and a curse—unlike everyone else, their factories and cities were never bombed, but distance added an extra logistical dimension that greatly influenced everything the US did throughout the war. For the USSR or Germany, getting a tank to the front was as simple as throwing on a train and sending it in the right direction—but for the US, that tank had to be railed to a port, loaded onto a ship, sailed across the Atlantic, offloaded in England, loaded onto another ship, driven onto a beach, and then driven to the front. Part of the reason why the T26 heavy tank was delayed, in fact, was because that for every T26 that could be shipped across the Atlantic, the Army could instead have two Shermans—and up until pretty late in the game, two decent but proven tanks were seen as being much more valuable than one good but unproven and unreliable design. There's also that the heavy tank prototypes like the T26 were much heavier than the Sherman, and this was an important factor both because of the weight tolerance of bridges the US Army engineers laid, and when it came to what was safe to load unto a Liberty Ship (the mass production of which was also a tremendous achievement). Also everything actually seems to point to the Sherman being a pretty damned good tank. Especially from a strategic point of view. The 75mm version ran up to trouble against the newer German vehicles, who could effectively engage these at much greater ranges due to their superior guns, but the 76mm version could do pretty well for itself, even against Panthers and Tigers, and it was cheaper and quicker to make than those, much more mechanically reliable and easy to maintain and repair, and because the Americans did not constantly tinker with their designs much mid-production they did not disrupt their production and together with a philosophy which emphasized standard interchangeable components (resulting in a flood of pretty easily available replacement parts) it was easy to both replace and repair a broken or damaged tank. The ergonomics of American medium tanks was also pretty excellent which made them very good to operate in, allowing crews to be much more effective than in German, British and Soviet vehicles. It also allowed far more American tank crews to survive their tank being knocked out than was the case for others, specially Soviets and Germans. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 11:02
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feedmegin posted:I mean, you get Stalin being paranoid about that, but as something with a basis in fact? I doubt it. Look at thr Dieppe raid for what happens if you go off half cocked. Why do you think this?
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Dec 13, 2018 12:11
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Also all the infrastructure was built by Italians.
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Dec 13, 2018 12:14
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It doesn't exactly help with Stalin's paranoia that folks like Truman were saying stuff like Truman 1941 posted:If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
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Dec 13, 2018 12:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Also all the infrastructure was built by Italians.
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Dec 13, 2018 12:49
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Reading about Napoleon's campaign against Russia, it's kinda interesting how some people believed that Napoleon would eventually march through Russia and into India to wreck that place as the next step after the Continental System in trying to strangle Britain. Like, there were German fever-dreams of driving from North Africa into the Middle East into India, and there it is again a century earlier.
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Dec 13, 2018 12:52
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The importance of India to the British Empires perception of the world and the threats therein almost cannot be understated.
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Dec 13, 2018 13:15
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HEY GUNS posted:*rude gesture* *bridge falls down*
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Dec 13, 2018 13:43
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:*bridge falls down*
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Dec 13, 2018 13:48
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C.M. Kruger posted:
This is the scary thing, that historical revisionists are doing all sorts of poo poo like this. No, America did not win WW2. Not on it's own. No Russia would not have won WW2 on its own either, especially if it ended up in a two front war. WW2 was won because the US could supply all of the allied forces with enough war materials to fill in the gaps the other allies were unable due to their own issues, be it invasion, poor raw materials or what not. I hate that revisionists on all sides are slowing pecking apart history as it was to either sanitize it or make it into something it wasn't to support their own agendas.
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Dec 13, 2018 13:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:Reading about Napoleon's campaign against Russia, it's kinda interesting how some people believed that Napoleon would eventually march through Russia and into India to wreck that place as the next step after the Continental System in trying to strangle Britain. Like, there were German fever-dreams of driving from North Africa into the Middle East into India, and there it is again a century earlier. I mean, Russia itself was butting right up against Afghanistan later in the century, Great Game and all that. Its more what happens a year or two later if 1812 succeeds and Russia is a French ally again. Still pretty far fetched, think of the logistics, but I could see the concern.
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Dec 13, 2018 13:58
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Polyakov posted:The importance of India to the British Empires perception of the world and the threats therein almost cannot be understated. It's where the British got all their edible food from.
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Dec 13, 2018 13:59
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Randarkman posted:Because the Americans did not constantly tinker with their designs much mid-production they did not disrupt their production and together with a philosophy which emphasized standard interchangeable components (resulting in a flood of pretty easily available replacement parts) it was easy to both replace and repair a broken or damaged tank. The first part isn't true, not at all. American factories and developers were the fountain of tinkering. But tinkering without disruption of production lines. THe M-4 medium tank is the perfect example of this. Designed in 1940. Originally with welded hull and a radial gasoline engine and a 75mm main gun. In a mere two years they unleashed the M4A4 (And made 7499 of the fuckers). They fixed the welded armor problem, they fixed the exploding ammo issue (for the most part), the A57 engine became the standard, which was a LOT easier to service than the R975 radial (but not as easy as the Ford GAA V8). Mind you most of the A4's were Lend-Lease tanks... But it just goes to show that American armored forces knew what they were doing and constantly updated the M4 as needed In 5 years there were no less than 7 primary versions of the M4, with almost 20 sub variants. Those numbers don't even include the huge number of Sherman based vehicles like the Motor Gun Carriages (Tank Destroyers, like the M10, the M36) and others...
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Dec 13, 2018 14:06
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The US tinkering part was aided by the Teeny tiny difference in scope that US could have had the same amount of production lines doing ONLY modifications and test variants than the entire german tank industry and even then the remaining tank output wouldve been way higher than german tank output. Also on the Lend-Lease: Soviets never built an armored halftrack for their infantry during ww2, since american supply was seemed adequate enough that they could omit spending resources on designing a soviet one. Their first real domestic APC was btr-152 at 1950. Valtonen fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 14:18
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EvilMerlin posted:The first part isn't true, not at all. American factories and developers were the fountain of tinkering. But tinkering without disruption of production lines. I guess I arrived at the conclusion of "not tinkering" based mainly on the experience of German tank design and production, which seems to have had a disruptive effect on overall produciton efficiency. Also not to mention that the Germans were really operating in an older workshop organization rather than assembly line mass production. They also went through a dizzying array of models for their hulls (I think Panzer IV reached something like model J or something at the end, and similar with Panzer III, it seems Panther and the Tigers weren't labelled as much in the same way, but I'm pretty sure they also went through alot of modification, often on the factory floor it seems), as well as producing several different types of hulls at once instead- But I'm still pretty sure about that part with the spare parts. As many instruments and components to be put in a vehicle were assembled at separate facilities that were specialized to produce those parts, and with the Sherman for instance being designed to use standardized components rather than each vehicle being built and fitted individually like seems to have been the case with German tanks, really ensured that you could pretty much always get a spare part for your vehicle, and this was helped even more by the basic Sherman hull being used for so many different roles.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:20
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feedmegin posted:I mean, Russia itself was butting right up against Afghanistan later in the century, Great Game and all that. Its more what happens a year or two later if 1812 succeeds and Russia is a French ally again. Yeah the logistics of it are bewildering - the big takeaway I'm getting from the Russian campaign is that the system of forage and transportation and supply wagons and stuff that worked well enough west of Poland just completely broke down in the underdeveloped wilderness and utter vastness of Russia. Even if Russia was (made to be) a friendly power, it seems incomprehensible that Napoleon would be able to feed, clothe, and arm an army with another couple hundred miles and maybe two more mountain ranges tacked-on to a logistical tail that's powered by feet and hooves. But then I guess that's the kind of faith that Napoleon inspired in people.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:22
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Valtonen posted:The US tinkering part was aided by the Teeny tiny difference in scope that US could have had the same amount of production lines doing ONLY modifications and test variants than the entire german tank industry and even then the remaining tank output wouldve been way higher than german tank output. Yep. That too. In the time it took Germany to make 5000 Panther tanks (of which only 4000 or so were serviceable and usable), the US produced 10883 76mm M4s of various variants, 4680 M4 Howitzer tanks, 2324 M36 Tank Killers, or about 22 THOUSAND Medium tanks... The M4's alone were produced at 6 different arsenals...
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Dec 13, 2018 14:25
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C.M. Kruger posted:Not to mention Lend Lease. The US was feeding and arming something like 60 divisions worth of Red Army troops and sent almost as much supplies to the Soviets as were sent to support US forces in Europe. Explosives (from shell filler to gunpowder) from the US was something like 50% of Soviet production. Something like ~2,000 locomotives and ~12,000 railway cars that accounted for 80% of new rail equipment in the USSR during the war. Earlier this year I learned about the route that the US used to fly lend-lease planes to Russia and it boggles my mind just how complex an undertaking it was; flying planes from Alaska to Siberia. And that was a relatively small part of the effort. Sometimes things like that will stick out to me; I saw a picture of some smaller ships offloading vehicles and cargo onto Iwo Jima after D-Day and it struck me how that was something that required coordination and planning of hundreds of people yet was just a drop in the bucket compared to actual amphibious landings.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:25
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Randarkman posted:I guess I arrived at the conclusion of "not tinkering" based mainly on the experience of German tank design and production, which seems to have had a disruptive effect on overall produciton efficiency. Also not to mention that the Germans were really operating in an older workshop organization rather than assembly line mass production. They also went through a dizzying array of models for their hulls (I think Panzer IV reached something like model J or something at the end, and similar with Panzer III, it seems Panther and the Tigers weren't labelled as much in the same way, but I'm pretty sure they also went through alot of modification, often on the factory floor it seems), as well as producing several different types of hulls at once instead- Keep in mind the Panzer IV was not much different than the M4. It too grew, armoured up, gun changed etc, all to fit the needs of the tank in the war. Compare the Ausf.A with its rather tiny 15mm of front hull armor to that on the Ausf H & J with 80mm. Or the gun moving from a rather puny KwK 37 which had some issues with most Allied armors, to the KwK 40 There were 9 primary variants of the IV (the F2 was renamed the G), from the Ausf.A to the Ausf.J as you said. By 1942 the whole idea of a specialty shop was gone in Germany. You can see this in the numbers of tanks built. In 1944 when the poo poo was really hitting the fan for the Germans they still produced more IV's than any other year (3125 of them). Germany figured out that having only Krupp manufacture the IV wasn't such a hot idea and started building in Nibelungenwerke (however you spell it) in Austria and Vomag. With the outbreak of total war the German tank industry got quickly out of the habit of non-mass production and made sure the Maybach HL120 was a drop in for any tank that needed one. Not much custom fitting as they just couldn't afford to do so due to time and war demand constraints.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:32
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FastestGunAlive posted:I saw a picture of some smaller ships offloading vehicles and cargo onto Iwo Jima after D-Day and it struck me how that was something that required coordination and planning of hundreds of people yet was just a drop in the bucket compared to actual amphibious landings. I read a story about the Guadalcanal campaign that there was this one occasion where the cargo was not packed with the expectation of combat, but rather as regular-rear end cargo where you think about ease-of-offloading and maximization of space, and the Marines were really pissed at having to sort through tons and tons of miscellany before they could get to the guns and ammo that they needed at the moment.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:35
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One If the reasons PZ 4 seemed to have dizzying number If variants is simply the time frame. PZ4 was started as a design at 1936, time when a 37mm gun was seen totally adequate as a tank main gun, short 75mm was The poo poo for shooting HE rounds in direct support, and 30mm on vertical frontal armor was acceptable. It was produced until 1944, when direct HE support on Soviet side would include a 122mm gun on t34 chassis, and anti-tank guns would start from long-barreled 75mms and vertical frontal armor would be measured around 110-130 since sloped armor was a thing. To adapt on this the poor thing had to be upscaled from ~16 tons of weigh at first models to somewhere around 24 tons on the last, while trying to maintain the already mediocre mobility. So year... Sherman on the other hand started development at 1940 when the arms race that was about to start was already visible. By 1942 when first shermans saw combat KV-1 and T34 had already appeared and loudly announced the obsoletion of all 1930s tanks that couldnt handle a massive upscaling on armor mobility and firepower. Sherman was not burdened from the get-go by being designed on an entirely different tech level, so to speak.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:41
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zoux posted:Also, does c3 stand for Command and Control Center or something less obvious? Command, control, and communication. Take out the general, the platoon officer, or the radioman at either end, the enemy can't get anything done. EvilMerlin posted:More or less, if you are in a major city. You are gonna get nuked. The East Coast from Maine down to North Carolina is gonna be gone. Like totally wiped off of the face of the planet. As is most of the California coast. Florida doesn't do well either. zoux posted:everyone does a little genocide now and then Nominating this for next thread subtitle. Polyakov posted:The importance of India to the British Empires perception of the world and the threats therein almost cannot be understated. Every SMLE MkIII* I've seen in the US was made or upgraded to * spec in Ishapore, so yeah, India was pretty important if only as an arsenal away from the fighting in Europe. (The ones made in India have straight vertical bunny ears around the front sight, the English/Australian/other ones have curved sight guards. Also the Ishapore SMLE i used to have was stamped "G.R." despite being made in 1949, well after India threw off the British colonial yoke in 1947. I traded it in for a 1916 Enfield-made one that was upgraded to * in India, presumably sent over as surplus when they started making No. 4s -- it has the slot for the magazine cutoff, but the newer stock that mostly covers the slot, the mag cutoff being deleted in the * upgrade. I can go on about WWI British service weapons for ages -- I also have a Webley Mk VI dated 1915, and the bayonet for the rifle made in March 1917.) (Did British officers still routinely carry swords in 1915? If so, I need to get one to go with the revolver.) Edit: Tekopo posted:Are you really making jokes about a recent tragedy? Might be reading too much into this. You should've been here on 9/12/01. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 14:49
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Tekopo posted:Are you really making jokes about a recent tragedy? Might be reading too much into this. Welcome to SA. I see your account is relatively new, being only a decade old, so I understand that you might not be familiar with our penchant for irreverent, dark, or just dumb humor.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:51
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Valtonen posted:One If the reasons PZ 4 seemed to have dizzying number If variants is simply the time frame. PZ4 was started as a design at 1936, time when a 37mm gun was seen totally adequate as a tank main gun, short 75mm was The poo poo for shooting HE rounds in direct support, and 30mm on vertical frontal armor was acceptable. It was produced until 1944, when direct HE support on Soviet side would include a 122mm gun on t34 chassis, and anti-tank guns would start from long-barreled 75mms and vertical frontal armor would be measured around 110-130 since sloped armor was a thing. To adapt on this the poor thing had to be upscaled from ~16 tons of weigh at first models to somewhere around 24 tons on the last, while trying to maintain the already mediocre mobility. So year... The IV didn't go into active service until 1939 though. And before 1940 there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of them (around 260). The IV really didn't come into full production until 1943 and by then it had been uparmored (about double all around), up engined (from 245 HP to 300 HP), and by the F2, up gunned to the KwK 40. The Panzer IV was produced until 1945 with around 440 of them built (all J models). One thing I really never understood about the whole OMG T-34 thing was it didn't see service until 1940 and then everyone was like "OMG SLOPED FRONTAL ARMOR!". The Sherman entered service in the same year, and it also had sloped frontal armor, but due to the M4's design its frontal armor was actually superior to that of the T-34 all the way through the war
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Dec 13, 2018 14:57
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Command, control, and communication. Take out the general, the platoon officer, or the radioman at either end, the enemy can't get anything done. See all those black dots and purple triangles in teh North East... Yeah that's where I live. Sub bases, sub repair depots. F-15 squadrons, A-10 squardons, PAVE PAWS, major CCC centers, major A2A refueling bases... we gots it all!
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Dec 13, 2018 14:59
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EvilMerlin posted:One thing I really never understood about the whole OMG T-34 thing was it didn't see service until 1940 and then everyone was like "OMG SLOPED FRONTAL ARMOR!". The Sherman entered service in the same year, and it also had sloped frontal armor, but due to the M4's design its frontal armor was actually superior to that of the T-34 all the way through the war Were people really going "OMG SLOPED FRONTAL ARMOR!" though? Or is that more a boiled down version of the reaction to the T-34 (and KV-1) we've cooked up afterwards? I'd be curious to read 1941 appraisals of Soviet tanks from Germans, if anyone's got them handy to see what's mentioned. In some ways it even looks like they kind of went a bit too far with the T-34, in sloping not only the front, but the sides and rear as well, ended up taking up a lot of internal space. That idea, like the Christie suspension was actually mostly abandoned for later Soviet tanks.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:06
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From what I’ve read in memoirs and collections of interviews etc the slopes armor thing gets played up a bit too much. It was more that the 34 had what we would recognize as a true medium rank armor/gun combo that was a bitch to deal with of you were in what the Germans were fielding in the spring of 41. Going up against a T34 or god help you KV in a PzIII or short barreled PzIV wasn’t fun. Basically think the reaction of dudes in Easy 8s running into German heavy armor.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:Welcome to SA. I see your account is relatively new, being only a decade old, so I understand that you might not be familiar with our penchant for irreverent, dark, or just dumb humor. EDIT: Also it's not like the culture of SA hasn't changed since 2001. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 15:12
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Randarkman posted:I guess I arrived at the conclusion of "not tinkering" based mainly on the experience of German tank design and production, which seems to have had a disruptive effect on overall produciton efficiency. Also not to mention that the Germans were really operating in an older workshop organization rather than assembly line mass production. They also went through a dizzying array of models for their hulls (I think Panzer IV reached something like model J or something at the end, and similar with Panzer III, it seems Panther and the Tigers weren't labelled as much in the same way, but I'm pretty sure they also went through alot of modification, often on the factory floor it seems), as well as producing several different types of hulls at once instead- The tinkering with the Shermans and their derivatives also benefited from the standardization and some of the design features of the M4. Changing the suspension on many tanks would be a highly complicated thing if not completely impossible, but while the M4's suspension was reaching the end of its usefulness, the change from VVSS to HVSS was almost just a matter of swapping out externally affixed components. Tweaks and changes were kept within specification to ensure that part commonality still existed for as long as possible and incidentally even allowed for units in combat to make unofficial changes to their vehicles with spares/donor wrecks. Cyrano4747 posted:From what I’ve read in memoirs and collections of interviews etc the slopes armor thing gets played up a bit too much. It was more that the 34 had what we would recognize as a true medium rank armor/gun combo that was a bitch to deal with of you were in what the Germans were fielding in the spring of 41. Going up against a T34 or god help you KV in a PzIII or short barreled PzIV wasn’t fun. Well they certainly did stand out from the T-28s, T-26s, and BT-7s that were getting slapped around with ease, though oftentimes it was a case of a handful of surprisingly competent tankers in a few T-34s or (more commonly) KV-1s that were a big headache for a number of hours. quote:Basically think the reaction of dudes in Easy 8s running into German heavy armor. "Why are we suddenly in Eastern Europe?" 
Taerkar fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 15:12
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Cyrano4747 posted:From what I’ve read in memoirs and collections of interviews etc the slopes armor thing gets played up a bit too much. It was more that the 34 had what we would recognize as a true medium rank armor/gun combo that was a bitch to deal with of you were in what the Germans were fielding in the spring of 41. Going up against a T34 or god help you KV in a PzIII or short barreled PzIV wasn’t fun. Yeah, I'm thinking it's really more this that's the case than an epiphany about sloped armor which really doesn't seem to have been the case. As for Easy 8s... weren't they equipped with the 76, that should be enough to deal with Tiger Is and Panthers shouldn't it? Maybe you'd have to be close to deal with the front armor of the Panther.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:15
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Randarkman posted:Were people really going "OMG SLOPED FRONTAL ARMOR!" though? Or is that more a boiled down version of the reaction to the T-34 (and KV-1) we've cooked up afterwards? I'd be curious to read 1941 appraisals of Soviet tanks from Germans, if anyone's got them handy to see what's mentioned. In some ways it even looks like they kind of went a bit too far with the T-34, in sloping not only the front, but the sides and rear as well, ended up taking up a lot of internal space. That idea, like the Christie suspension was actually mostly abandoned for later Soviet tanks. All I see all the time is something like: "The 76.2mm gun on the T-34 had a real hitting power to it by the armament standards of the day, and its radical new sloping armor gave it unusual protection. Its superior diesel engine and Christie suspension system provided superb cross-country performance as well." "The finest tank of the war" "Rendered German fleets of armor obsolete" The Russians lost SEVEN tanks for every one German tank lost. In 1941! 20,500 total tanks and armored vehicles in 1941. Of these 2300 were T-34's, 900 KV tanks. The total numbers worked out to be 6 to 1 to the German armor in 1942, and that didn't get good for the Russians until 1945 and it was still 1.2 to 1.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:17
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The Sherman (and just about every other piece of equipment) also benefited from the crazy amount of industry the US had. Changes would be approved and then rolled out in one factory while another kept making the old poo poo. You have long stretches, for example, where both cast hull and welded hull Shermans were being made. Same story on other stuff - you see feature rollout in the M1 carbine in a similarly haphazard manner depending on who is nearing the end of a production run.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:19
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Randarkman posted:Yeah, I'm thinking it's really more this that's the case than an epiphany about sloped armor which really doesn't seem to have been the case. Not all Easy 8's (M4A3E2), called the Jumbo, had the 76mm gun. The Easy 8's had better armor, wider tracks, and HVSS.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:19
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EvilMerlin posted:All I see all the time is something like: Those 41 numbers are a bit iffy if were taking t34s for a bunch of reasons. First off the 34 was no where near the dominant tank in service. You have a ton of BT tanks etc in there that German armor could deal with just fine. You also have issues with the chaos of the early months. Armor formations being destroyed due to dumb unsupported counterattacks and the like. There are also famously issues with how the Germans and Soviets counted armor kills. They don’t add up in any way that allows a good comparison. Generally the soviets would write off a vehicle for record keeping purposes even if it was later repaired and returned to service, while the Germans counted things as destroyed only when they were truly beyond salvage. There’s an old thread joke about the panther burning 20 miles behind Soviet lines not being a write off because tomorrow’s counterattack might retake it. It’s a joke, but it has a kernel of truth.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:24
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I also don't think that "the Russians lost lots of tanks", or even "the Russians lost lots of T-34s, specifically" is a negation of a statement about how much better the gun or the armor on the tank was, since the Soviets had a few tactical and operational issues to work out in 1941 that probably contributed more to tank losses than technical specifications.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:30
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Didn’t the Russians lose thousands of tanks in 41 because they were parked in fields with no supplies at all? Barbarossa is a pretty terrible time to do technical analysis of tank design.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:31
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 15:00 |
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The Germans also got really proactive about training infantry to deal with tanks and developing good man portable AT weapons. It’s not a coincidence that development of the Panzerfaust began in early 42. Even before that they got pretty decent at assaulting with mines through necessity.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:33
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