Reopening this thread…
I think it should be said that most historians now believe that relatively few panzers were destroyed from the air in Normandy in the West and reject the notion that air-power was all that (directly) effective against tanks. The Heer and SS used all their means to try to avoid Allied air superiority whenever possible by using the extensive cover and concealment of the bocage, moving at night on the roads when possible, and revealing positions only when the Allied ground troops were “danger-close” to friendly fire when possible. That’s not to say that air-power wasn’t indirectly a bane to the panzers as it severally restricted their strategic mobility and tactical movements and certainly hindered the critical support columns of Opel and Mercedes trucks…
Many Thanks to you nick. 
I’m interested in the different means/ways the various vehicles came to be employed, not least because the design parameters while different, also reflect the needs of the nation at the time.
That said, I’m not at all sure I’d wish to be in a Sherman or T34/85 going up against a Tiger or Koenigstiger.
Were I offered the choice between Tiger and IS-2 or IS-3, I’d probably opt for the IS-3, even though it carries less ammunition for the main gun.
Offered the choice between Koenigstiger and a Russian tank of whichever type, I’d absolutely take the Koenigstiger.
Yes, the vehicles were designed for what amount to different purposes, but their respective effectiveness in combat is nonetheless worthy of examination.
Kind and Respectful Regards Nick, Uyraell.
I agree with you Nick.
Nonetheless, the average German tank crew would have been --highly-- aware of the availability of Allied airpower.
In that situation, the threat is almost as effective as the actual attack, and at times more so.
That the Americans and British in the bocage were able to call on air-power to accomplish what their tanks could not surely had an influence on their combat effectiveness, and the final outcome of events.
Contrast that situation with the average German Panzer crew, who not only knew that they did not have air-power available, but couldn’t even be certain when the next load of fuel or ammunition was available for the tank they were fighting from.
That’s a little off-topic, I admit, but I regard it as among the many relevant factors, when assessing the combat effectiveness of a tank.
Returning to matters on the Ostfront: I’d think the Germans were facing an even worse situation there, which again must affect the assessment of the combat effectiveness of the Panzers in which the Germans were going to battle.
Which means that I do assign those factors a certain “weight” when making any such assessment.
Kind and Respectful Regards Nick, Uyraell.
Artillery.
Actually the RA used tjeir numerical artillery superiority against all sort of Panzer Kittens.BTW artillery work just fine in ambush too.
Not to mention some quantity of self-propelles antitank monsters like ISU-152 or Is-2 that RA had to neitralise the Panzers.
As to slow-moving Tiger in a city environment: I’m not aware over-all of very many cases where any tank of any combatant army was moving at high speed in built-up areas, be that in combat or otherwise.
Standard procedure for almost any Tank in a city area is proceed slowly and carefully, because attack from ambush is only ever meters away at the best of times, and a very good look-out must be maintained with great vigilance if the tank is to survive passing through a frontline city/village.
In such a situation, the Tiger or Koenigstiger is at no more of a disadvantage than a Sherman, T34 or Cromwell or Comet.
Speed simply is not relevant.
Speed is not right characteristic for my case , mate.
I meant manoeuvreability.If there will be the ambush the Tiger has the more chances to be hit from a close distance then medium but speedy tank. The bigger and slower target - the easy to hit.What is sense if Tiger might to hit enemy tank in a distance 2 km if itself might face the enemy’s 76 mm gun in 200 metrest at side. Or get the bunch of grenades( or even Molotov’s coctail) in its motor’s compartmen. Will you feel safe , getting out of tank and putting out the fire of Petrol-use Maibach?
You might feel good , hunting the enemies tanks in plain, having 1+ km distance in reserve . But how about to meet the enemy tanks right after the nearest hill.Hardly one will be very happy to meen the enemy that can move faster the he can turn the Tigger’s turret.
It’s like Ferdinands - they were deadly effective against tanks, but were almost totaly destroyed by infantry for short time.
Hope you will be lucky enough your transmission would has been broken after the first killometres of way to front-line.When you will just sit and wait when front-line comes to you?:)
If GErmans had at least 2 additional years and repaired all the childrens-lacks of Koenigstiger- it might come up to the best Tank in history.
On manoeuverability, we might be in for a discussion, mate.
The Tiger 1 was in reality no less manoeuverable than a Sherman, and actually possessed less ground-pressure , better weight distribution.
I agree it somewhat lacked in speed, which is more to do with the HL230 Maybach powering a very geared-down transmission.
Fire-risk of a petrol motor? No more so than any other Tank powered by a gasoline motor.
That said, I’d not like to have to be the guy who had to put such a fire out in my tank, and I’d not greatly care which army I was serving in, faced with such a task.
The Tiger1 did have one huge disadvantage, but it was not in manoeuverability.
The big disadvantage of the Tiger1 was that it took 720 turns of the handwheel to turn the turret 360 degrees.
In short, the turret itself turned much slower than the turrets of enemy vehicles.
Say, 22 seconds for 90 degrees, where a Sherman or T34 could traverse that same 90 degrees in about 16 seconds.
Often, in preference to turning the Tiger turret, the entire vehicle was re-aligned onto the new target, and only the last couple of degrees traversed by turret for fine-alignment for the shot.
A Tiger 1 crew may have been in a damn fine tank, but the poor guys had to work damned hard to fight from it successfully.
And yes, I had overlooked RKKA artilllery, though I should not have.
Again though, they had artillery in vast numbers.
The SU vehicles, in which class one may as well include the ISU-152 and the IS-2 for the sake of this discussion, were themselves very fine vehicles for the tasks they had. And it was RKKA High Command policy that they had a dual role, either primary as Artillery and secondary as Anti-Tank, or primary as Anti-Tank and secondary as Artillery, depending on which model of SU one wishes to discuss.
The entire series had dual capability.
Close range combat in any Tank is a thing to be (rightly, imho) feared. And I’d regard 200 meters in Tank versus Tank to be “kissing distance” … way the hell too close for comfort, very very bad for the nerves.
That said, I’d like to be secure in the knowledge that the armour around me would keep me alive, given good fortune and good teamwork between myself and my crewmates.
Which is pretty much where the Koenigstiger and IS-3 come into the discussion, the armour of both was of a very fine defensive profile, which itself was an improvement over the profile of the T34/85.
Again, while I’m no fan of raw speed in a tank, I do have to admit than in a battle on an open plain, such as Kursk, the T34 may well have the advantage over the Tiger, once the T34 gets close enough to use it’s gun, or manoeuvers around the Tiger to get a flank shot in.
That factor itself had a big influence on the thickness of the armour in the Koenigstiger: it had to have better side armour precisely because of incoming flank-shots as had happened at Kursk and Prokhorovka.
Which brings me back to the topic of combat effectiveness.
I’d still take the Tiger 1 as preference to crew in: it was, in my humble opinion, a vehicle that had better survivability than many of its’ contemporaries, and while the T34/85 was a very fine vehicle, I simply do not see the T34/85 as having the same survivability. That also means I rate the Tiger 1 as being more effective in combat.
Kind and Respectful Regards Chevan mate, Uyraell.
The AK 7400 D through G series of transmissions had effectively solved most of the early issues of the Koenigstiger.
However, you’re right my friend, the Koenigstiger would have matured into an exceptionally fine vehicle, and a very formidable one.
I’m not certain it would have needed an additional 2 years, to get the childish problems of the vehicle solved though.
Had the war gone on to, say November of 1946, the Koenigstiger would very likely have had its’ major problems solved a year earlier, November 1945.
And not that I have any wish to seem nasty, but I had the impression the T34/85 transmission and the KV-1 and IS-1 and IS-2 transmissions also had “childhood problems” which took a few months to solve.
I’m not certain between them all, Koenigstiger included, which vehicles’ problems would have taken the longest to solve/produce a workable solution.
With the AK 7400 series transmissions, the issue was one of production.
Germany could not produce enough of them fast enough, and could not fit those produced to enough vehicles in the available time.
Kind and Respectful Regards Chevan mate, Uyraell.
I read some article over the Internet about Tiger Tanks. They said that every Tiger I pilots suffer on every front the Tiger 1 Tank had been deployed. Every battle the Tiger were in, the hobby of the German Repair Crew of Towing it and bringing it back to Germany. For my opinion then, the T-34/85 deserves more, it’s fast, has a powerful gun and it’s easy to repair or manufacture.
The initial combat deployment of any World War Two Tank always brought to light the problems that vehicle had, and which thereafter needed solving as rapidly as possible.
Not only the Russians, not only the Germans, but everyone else had various issues at various times in the initial combat deployments of various tanks.
Sixty-five years on, we tend to forget that the engineers and designers of WW2 did not have the computer modelling available to them that the same professions these days take for granted.
Every single calculation was the result of some-one using a slide-rule, which tool is pretty much absent from the modern world, and fast disappearing from human memory.
Nor did operational testing always reveal the faults a vehicle may have had. In those times, it was pretty-much a hit and miss affair, wherein an inaccurate result could frequently be taken as reliable data and employed, only to later be proven inaccurate once the vehicle itself had been in combat a few weeks.
This is one of the reasons it took so long for the engineers of any nation to declare a vehicle fit for service in combat: data from testing the vehicle was always regarded as inaccurate, and by deliberate engineering policy treated with suspicion until repeatedly proven correct, and even then was often only “provisionally accepted”.
“Provisionally accepted” often became the standard regarded as sufficient to justify deployment of a new vehicle type to a combat zone, because it was recognised that the operational testing (as opposed to domestic testing in the home nation) was the only reliable source of data about any vehicle and its’ corresponding combat effectiveness.
All of this testing and obtaining of data took vast amounts of time, that today is obtained in a few minutes of number-crunching by a mainframe computer.
All of which goes a very long way to explaining why any given vehicle took so very long to be deployed to a combat zone.
Simply put, the engineers and designers had to convince themselves on the data they had in front of themselves.
Which meant their respective nations had to wait for new vehicles, often when same were desperately needed, and men were indeed dieing while waiting in the battle zone for new equipment.
It is a small example: but consider the case of the M3 Stuart tank.
That vehicle was known to be marginal at the very best for use in combat in Europe.
Yet: it was shipped and deployed in Europe.
Why?
Because: the data on it was known to be accurate, and the vehicle was at minimum a reasonably useful stop-gap untill a better vehicle (which finally emerged as the M24 Chaffee, one of the most successful light tanks of all time) could be designed, developed, tested, and deployed.
I have no doubt at all that the Russians were extremely fortunate to have begun production of the T34/76 series when they did, because the T34/85 series it led to was desperately needed on the battle-front.
But consider: had there been a delay of as little as 6 months in the design and production of the T34/76 then the T34/85 would not have been deployed in combat until late 1944 at the earliest, because it would have taken that long to design build and test it.
The clear parallel here is the case of the British Comet tank:
The British spent so long testing the thing that it was so late in arriving on the battlefield that it was effectively obsolete the moment it was deployed. Yet: that vehicle was built on known data, from the Cromwell vehicle.
Meanwhile, British soldiers died daily, fighting in vehicles their own high command knew were unfit for the task.
What “Saved” the British tank crews was, ironically, the Sherman M4. In much the same ways as the T34/85 and the IS-2 “Saved” the Russians. The vehicles were there in just enough numbers, in just enough time to be useful in battle, even though each vehicle had faults which were not corrected until many years after the last gun in WW2 had long fallen silent.
Kind and Respectful Regards, Uyraell.
Comrade commisar, are you asking what tank had the most effect to the outcome of the war, or what tank would I choose to get in to fight in that war? If it’s the latter, then I would be hard pressed to choose. But if it is the former, then, the T34 series, or M4 Sherman series. Both had decent capability and reliability, and both were made in huge numbers. I’m not sure about T34 numbers, but the M4 Sherman and it’s variants were numbered to about 55,000. 55,000! That would have an “effect” on a battlefield today!
My first question is - Effective at what?
Breaking through enemy lines? Thats the traditional role of tanks.
Defeating enemy tanks? Well that a Tank Destroyers role.
Yes the Panther G was an improvement but they never really got over the transmission problems and even in 1944/45 they still had a habit of catching fire, it did become alot rarer though.
However the main drawback in late-war production of Panthers is the low grade steel used that produce spalling from non-pentrative hits. A serious worry for crews.
Regarding Tiger I manoeuverability, it was not as mobile as a Sherman. Tiger I drivers knew the Tiger had one distinct issue. When turning on its tracks to perform a very tight, or none moving turn, the Tiger I had a tendency to slip its tracks. This was noted by both Otto Carius and Balthasar Woll.
A tank at the end of the day is not effective. It can be fit for its purpose, best designed, most reliable, but its effectiveness stems from its crew.
Consider the actions of Hermann Bix who in 1941 reguarly duelled with KV-1s in his 38t. Was the 38t a more ‘effective’ tank than the KV-1? Unlikely. On paper its a dead 38t everytime. But with an effective crew, the tank could, and did, tank on the Russian heavies. Bix’s prefferred method was to shoot holes in the KV-1s gun barrel. He accounted for two in this manner in one engagement, one of which then tried to ram him, but Bix avoided and the KV-1 crashed into a third, immobilising that.
So the crew are the effective element. You can take the best tank in the world, but give it a poor crew and it is useless. This can be seen with Panzer Brigade 106 who were throughly routed by the Yanks.
Either T34 or M4 Sherman.
The big tanks like Stalins, Tigers, and KVs had their uses but they were special purpose tanks for either defense or breakthroughs.
So I’d look at the T34 or M4s first. Both were very good.
Deaf
I don’t know how effective T-34 was in reality.
(1) Lack of radios meant that T34s just drove around without any idea what what happening around them. Germans could take couple of coffee breaks and then take them out.
(2) Commander had to serve as a gunner, which was highly inefficient arrangement: some have calculated that it took three T-34s to destroy a tank weaker than T-34 because of this setup.
(3) Poor optics made the gun semi-useless
(4) Tracks broke down a lot
(5) Turret hatches jammed all the time
(6) During the last two years of the war German armament (75mm, 88mm) could effortlessly take down a T-34.
Do you have any sources to back up your claims?
1 - Lack of radios? Well in 1941 only the command tanks had radios. Actually in 1942 tank radio production increased by two and a half times, supposedly to allow every tank to get a radio. Although tank production outstripped radio production, by the summer of 1943, 80% of T-34/76s had radios fitted. The T-34/85 had a radio as standard.
2 - German use of the T-34 doesnt point to this being a great hinderance. I would like to see your sources for this as you contradict your point 3. You say the two-man turret was responsible for taking more shots to hit a target, but you also state its the optics? Both of these are at odds with German anecdotal eveidence that mentions the accuracy of the Soviet gun. Once again I would put it down to poorly trained crews than any serious defect in the tanks design. It certainly didnt hinder its use during 42-43. This is of course a moot point as the T-34/85 had a three-man turret crew in a larger cast turret. I would view German willingness to use the tank as a indicator of its superior design, especially in 1941. First examples of T-34/76 were in service with 1st, 8th and 11th Panzer Division during the summer of 1941. Some peoples beloved Waffen-SS made heavy use of the T-34… 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” and 3rd SS Panzer Division “Totenkopf” pressed significant number into service. T-34/76 tanks used by “Das Reich” are of particular interest. When in March of 1943, SS Panzer Corps recaptured Kharkov, some 50 various models of T-34/76 tank were captured. All of those were being repaired in a local tractor factory that was overrun and designated as SS Panzerwerkstatte. 25 of them entered service with newly created 3rd SS Panzer Battalion of 2nd SS Panzer Regiment of 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”. So despite your stated ‘weaknesses’ the Germans made extensive use of the tank.
3 - Please… Read some primary sources - “Time and time again our tanks our tanks have been split right open by frontal hits. Commanders cupolas have been blown clean off on both MkIII & MKIV, proving the armour is inadequate and the great accuracy and penetration power of the T-34s 76.2mm gun” - Officer from Pz. Abt. 4.
4 - Actually the tracks worked very well, if you have primary sources commenting on an inherent weakness I would be interested to see it. There were other problems with the intial production runs that fought in 1941. Transmission, gear and clutch failures amount for most problems. General-Major Morgunov, in an assessment in late-41 on the tank commented - “The lack of recovery vehicles and spare parts, combined with production defects and inept use by poorly trained crews and lack of anti-armour ammunition… all contributed to the great losses in armour”. It should be noted that most of these problems, though the lack of recovery vehicles dogged the Russians till the wars end, were resolved successfully by 1942. It is also postualted that only 30% of T-34 losses were to combat, the rest were to more mundane issues.
5 - Please give some sources for this. Are you seriously telling me that all four different patterns of T-34 turret hatch ‘jammed all the time’. Post-war analysis of the tank points to poor steering controls, hard to drive and ride in, lack of turret basket and issues with air filters. They all mention the tanks superior cross-country ability and its crude, but effective design, with some features and materials being superior to American designs (see Chrylser’s 1951 assessment of a captured North Korean T-34/85).
6 - And? The T-34/85 could take out most German tanks during the same period, as could the JS-II, and both were more widespread than any German tank with an 88mm or a long 75mm. That arguement is spurious at best, and could be applied to the Sherman too. Yet both the Sherman and the T-34 saw extensive post-war use. Well what about in 1941? The German dispondency when meeting the T-34 is never understated. You like to try and fixate on the problems of the tank but forget its major advantages and the extensive use the Germans made of the T-34. In 1941 the T-34 was the most significant tank on the battlefield.
Lets just end with comments from those who fought the tank, they perhaps offer the best indication of the tanks ability…
“Very worrying” - Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, Commander of Second Panzer Army.
“We had nothing comparable” - Major-General F.W. Mellenthin, Chief of Staff of XLVIII Panzer Corps.
“The finest tank in the world” - Field-Marshal Ewald von Kleist, First Panzer Army.
“This tank adversely affected the morale of the German infantry” - General G. Blumentritt.
Do you have any sources to back up your claims?
http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/MythBusters2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34#Defects
Are you seriously telling me that all four different patterns of T-34 turret hatch ‘jammed all the time’.
No, but several Russian veterans talk about it, several books mention it, and even the superficial wikipedia mentions it, so the turret hatch design could have not been 100% happy happy joy joy design
I’m not saying T-34 was the worst tank of the war, but IMO it wasn’t the most efficient (which is the title of this thread). Sure T-34 caused some awe when it first appeared, because some of its design ideas were new, but even in 1941 and 1942 the kill ratio was horrible.
In “Tank Action” by George Forty, it is mentioned (page 175) that in 1941 more T-34s were lost due the low build quality than fighting Germans
In later years, when some of the design flaws were fixed, T-34 had lost its momentum since Germans had also improved their tank designs.
In the end the Soviet Union produced such a large number of tanks, that it actually managed to overcome their appalling kill ratio on the field.
My question to you is this: If the T-34 was such a great tank, why did it have such a low kill ratio against the old German tanks, which suffered from the weather and the supply problems?
PS: I also dislike the over-engineered and inefficient German tank designs.
Easy.
As I answered above - Crew quality. Not too mention once you get past 1943, the Germans are fighting defensively so will always accrue a higher kill ratio.
No tank is effective without an effective crew. You can have an effective design, which the T-34 is, but with a poor crew any tank is ineffective. So are you arguing against the tank design or the crew capabilities in 1941-42?
I already pointed out the loss rates of breakdown to combat losses in my post 70%-30% but this relates directly to the initial production runs and is no surprise. Take a look at Panther loss rates at Kursk. No tank starts perfect. All have a shakedown over production runs.
Im not sure how you say the T-34/85 lost ‘momentum’… It didnt need any. Its effective and simple design allowed it to be mass produced, far outstripping German production. Thus it was effective.
I personally dont see any tank as being ‘effective’ for the war. Many were ‘effective’ at certain roles at certain specific points during the war, no tank was effective for the entire war, and could not be.
For example the British Matilda II was highly effective in the early years of the Desert War, until German intervention brought the ‘88’ over and ended the reign of the ‘Queen of the Battlefield’. Was the design ineffective? No, what had happened was that the design became obselete.
This link ain’t gonna settle any of the arguments in this thread, but it shows something about what the tankies thought and went through. http://donmooreswartales.com/2010/05/19/he-fought-the-desert-fox/
I like the reasoning in the linked ‘mythbuster’ site.
A T34 takes 30 hits and fights on…
This just proves the Russian tank’s inferiority because it did not destroy the AT gun(s)
Elsewhere:
Tiger tank take 50+ plus hits and fights on.
This proves how wonderful the Tiger is because it can absord punishment.
I think you see my point?
LOL! Aint biased historical writing great.