KickStarter Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks

[Burning Bridges]

There is a German WW2 film on youtube about disabling the KV-1, I just can't find it now. Basically there was only improvisation. They relied on any KV-1 be completely separated and the infantry already obliterated. If they had they been overrun b functioning infantry/tanks divisions with KV1s there would have been no counterweapon.

Or in other words, a superior tank that was falling behind a retreating army. If the Germans had built the Maus, it would have been the same.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Numbers were always the issue, for example, German main anti tank cannon during Barbarossa was towed 50mm gun that couldn't even scratch Russian tanks unless on very short distance.

It was good enough against T-24's, T-28's and BT-7's that were much more common Soviet tanks during early parts of Barbarossa than KV-1s.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The Brits didnt really produce a good tank until the Centurion and the first ones arrived to combat units only after the war ended.

Matilda II, Churchill and Cromwell all performed against their contemporaries. Churchill and Cromwell would serve in Korea.

Germany was losing the war anyway. It's hard to say if they would have lost slower if they had more mediums and more 4x30mm instead of almost useless 70ton monsters without gas.

Of course the mediums would have used less gas, so in a way building the biggest tanks in the world when you are running out of gas could have been sort of dumb.

Germany didn't have fuel, full stop.

 

[markec]

The T-34 however is a different story and that was arguably the best tank in the world in 1941. Once it had removed its shortcomings it was a formidably weapon. The Germans captured 50 new T-34s and equipped them with radios and a observation tower. Once they were upgraded they were arguably the best the Germans had, and they should have started mass producing them. Of course Germans are way too slow and instead they made their own T-34, the Panther which took years.

After Germans upgraded PzIV with 75mm main cannon it actually became a superior tank to T-34 in many ways. While T-34 still have a superior armor its firepower was lacking compared to PzIV and had trouble penetrating PzIV frontal armor at longer distance. When Russians upgraded T-34 with better armor and main gun the Germans already put in service Panther which was all around arguably the best tank of WW2.

There is a German WW2 film on youtube about disabling the KV-1, I just can't find it now. Basically there was only improvisation. They relied on any KV-1 be completely separated and the infantry already obliterated. If they had they been overrun b functioning infantry/tanks divisions with KV1s there would have been no counterweapon.

Or in other words, a superior tank that was falling behind a retreating army. If the Germans had built the Maus, it would have been the same.

Germans had 88s that were effective against all tanks even up until end of the war. Problem was that they were a defensive weapon not suitable for rapid offensives.

It was good enough against T-24's, T-28's and BT-7's that were much more common Soviet tanks during early parts of Barbarossa than KV-1s.

Well yes, but KV-1a and T-34s were the main problem for Germans since most of their AT weapons could only scratch their frontal armor.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Germans had 88s that were effective against all tanks even up until end of the war. Problem was that they were a defensive weapon not suitable for rapid offensives.

We were obviously talking about 1941. During Barbarossa the Germans only had the 5cm Anklopfgerät and often were clueless what to do about the lone tank that they could not knock out.

Don't think that a KV-1 lasted very long against one of the later tank or AT guns.

 

[markec]

Germans had 88s that were effective against all tanks even up until end of the war. Problem was that they were a defensive weapon not suitable for rapid offensives.

We were obviously talking about 1941. During Barbarossa the Germans only had the 5cm Anklopfgerät and often were clueless what to do about the lone tank that they could not knock out.

Don't think that a KV-1 lasted very long against one of the later tank or AT guns.

88s were used from the beginning of the war. They were employed as a AA guns but Germans started to use them as AT already in France as their main anti tank weapons were proved inadequate vs both Matilda and Char B1.

They were excellent AT weapons but they had their own issues, it took a long time to set up, they had a large profile and a large crew was needed to man it.

They were a strong defensive weapon but a poor offensive one. Which was a issue during Barbarossa since it would take time for 88s to be towed to the front line and put in action, during that time Russian heavy tanks would already deal considerable damage or just delay their formations.

 

[Burning Bridges]

They did not have 88mm AT during Barbarossa. Read a few books.

Asking why they did not bring an 88 is like asking someone who is freezing to death in Iceland why he did not look for the next geyser.

The 88 Flak required a 7-8 man crew. The only reason why the Germans successfully used an AA gun against tanks was because it was 2-3 times lighter than eg the British one.

 

[markec]

They did not have 88mm AT during Barbarossa. Read a few books.

Asking why they did not bring an 88 is like asking someone who is freezing to death in Iceland why he did not look for the next geyser.

The 88 Flak required a 7-8 man crew. The only reason why the Germans successfully used an AA gun against tanks was because it was 2-3 times lighter than eg the British one.

Maybe you misunderstood something I said. I'm not talking about a dedicated 88 AT variant but 88 flak which was used both in AA and AT functions.

If you didn't misunderstood what I said I would really like to see which book says that 88s were not used in Barbarossa since they were used at every front from the start of the war.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The 38cm guns on the Bismarck could also penetrate Russian tanks, none the less they were not available to armored spearheads during 1941.

Of course they used AA. I already wrote on the last page that Germans even used 2cm on tanks until the crew abandoned the vehicle, to which you wrote you didn't believe it.

Kershaw's War without Garlands is a good starter. You sound like someone who know a little of everything but thinks it amounts to much.

 

[markec]

The 38cm guns on the Bismarck could also penetrate Russian tanks, none the less they were not available to armored spearheads during 1941.

Of course they used AA. I already wrote on the last page that Germans even used 2cm on tanks until the crew abandoned the vehicle, to which you wrote you didn't believe it.

Kershaw's War without Garlands is a good starter. You sound like someone who know a little of everything but thinks it amounts to much.

You are twisting both my and your own statements in order to argue against something I never said.

You said that 88s were not used during Barbarossa and now you changed that to imply that they were not available for armoured spearhead. Which is two completely different things and I had issue with the first statement which is incorrect.

I didn't say I didn't believe that they used 2cm to disable T-34s but that it probably didn't happen very often, but you are free to prove to me otherwise.

I don't claim to be anything close to an expert and I will gladly admit when I'm wrong.

You on the other hand seem as a person who can't admit is wrong and will double down on its argument despite every evidence to contrary.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Sorry. I'm tired of replying to this rubbish.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Sorry. I'm tired of replying to this rubbish.

It's a pointless argument anyway. It's videogamey bollocks that allows these debates to flourish.

Most tanks would never go up against each-other and were purely platforms for lobbing HE. And if you were hit and managed to survive then any tanker with half a brain would bail out immediately.

Anyone who says they're bouncing hundreds of shells is either pinned down and desperately shitting himself in the hull, or is a lying soviet used for propaganda purposes because the rest of the army has experiencing a loss-to-kill ratio of trololo proportions and needs a perceived win.

 

[Haba]

And a tank doesn't need to be penetrated to be disabled.

Tankers did certainly stay in the fight after receiving shots, but it depends a great deal on what was shooting at you. And whether you could escape without being killed by infantry.

But pyrrhic victories have always had a certain appeal. Best not examine those heroics too closely, lest you smell the shit and piss.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

The process of tank procurement changed a little bit since WW2, but we underestimate the amount of bureaucracy and politics that was involved even then.

It seems many mistakes were made on the planning level, not by designers. Italian tanks were deathtraps, Japanese tanks were a joke, French tanks outdated, Soviet tanks had weird omissions and German tanks were way too expensive. The Americans looked like they got some things right by building small, agile tanks but it only worked because they didn't rely on tanks as much. Otherwise it could have lost them the war.

I cant say I know a great deal about tanks, but had to think of the competition between the Bf-109 and the He-100. Many thought the Heinkel was the better plane (it became the foundation of the highly succcesful Yakovlev and Kawasaki families) and that Messerschmitts had a too bad reputation (Messerschmitt planes often had bent in the air because they were so flimsily made). But they went with Messerschmitt because they required less man hours, looked cooler and Heinkel was not as politically astute.

Americans may have chosen smaller and lighter tanks in part because they all had to be shipped overseas before they could even be used.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

So who do you think made the best tanks in WW2?

The German lost the war for lack of tanks and the Soviets almost lost it even though they had 10,000s of tanks, so both may not have been the best. Germans should have produced something like the T-34 in greater numbers and the Soviets should have copied from the Germans which they did and were quite good but only at the end of the war.

The American tanks strike me as very adequate for the task and if you consider that they won the war in the West against Stugs and Panthers which should have outclassed them, there must be something reasonable about their design.

people always say this, but I don't think Germany had a choice...imagine they produced 5 times as many tanks, or even 2-3X as many...each tank takes 5 trained soldiers and a huge number of support behind them (armament, mechanics, trucks etc..), not to mention each tank takes resources to be built and runs on oil and uses steel and rubber etc...Germany was short on man power, oil, everything, so I always sort of disagree with the idea that they could have just built a bunch of long barreled Panzer IV's as a realistic option-- I think they were backed into a position of trying to kill 30 or 50 to 1 because they lacked enough resources, not just because they had some mental peculiarity to over engineer (which they might have as well)..

I don't think the idea of Germany building a huge number of extra tanks and supporting them was a realistic option, and instead they picked the option they were forced into based on their manpower constraints and resource availability, even if this was a poor and futile option.... its likely all their options were bad options once they went to war against the US/USSR/Britain at same time..

They could have maybe settled on something like the Panzer IV and eased up on all the various designs and modifications which could have simplified factory production and field repair perhaps, which is maybe more to what your point was..I think they likely felt pressured to constantly out perform the opposition due to their constraints, and partly its in their nature.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Fuel and logistics were the issue but manpower certainly not. If only 1% of the Whermacht had been trained as tank crews it would have meant an extra 10,000 tank crews.

Early German tanks were lights and mediums anyways. It's obvious they could not simply spam tank divisions, but the relative success could have mislead them to design even better tanks with even higher kill/loss ratios, and theoretically less resource usage overall.

This was a mistake, because from 1942 onwards the Russians spammed relatively good armor in huge numbers and the armored reserves the Germans had were used up quickly. Large formations of cheap tanks could have made all the difference, but they did not have enough fuel already so it was not an option. Or in other words, Germany did not lose the war because of their tanks, quite the contrary. They needed a completely different system that could manufacture and support twice as many tanks but they couldn't even support the ones they had.

On the West Front it was even the contrary. More tanks would have just been more targets for the Allied ground attack planes. What Germany needed in the West was a strong air force, not super tanks.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Fuel and logistics were the issue but manpower certainly not. If only 1% of the Whermacht had been trained as tank crews it would have meant an extra 10,000 tank crews.

Early German tanks were lights and mediums anyways. It's obvious they could not simply spam tank divisions, but the relative success could have mislead them to design even better tanks with even higher kill/loss ratios, and theoretically less resource usage overall.

This was a mistake, because from 1942 onwards the Russians spammed relatively good armor in huge numbers and the armored reserves the Germans had were used up quickly. Large formations of cheap tanks could have made all the difference, but they did not have enough fuel already so it was not an option. Or in other words, Germany did not lose the war because of their tanks, quite the contrary. They needed a completely different system that could manufacture and support twice as many tanks but they couldn't even support the ones they had.

On the West Front it was even the contrary. More tanks would have just been more targets for the Allied ground attack planes. What Germany needed in the West was a strong air force, not super tanks.

I don't really think there was a winning solution for Germany against all of US/USSR + Britain... maybe if they quickly forced some sort of peace with Britain before America entered the war, possibly by using submarines or maybe by a more aggressive stance at Dunkirk followed by a better targeted Airwair (not going after major cities but sticking with going after airbases and British fighters) followed up with submarine warfare and quick invasion of Britain forcing them to sue for peace before US could get involved..... but I am not sure there was ever a way for Germany to actually take over the world or something.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Maybe there was one, but it was not only about Germany.

The Soviet Union had some massive challenges to solve and they solved them. They lost large part of their territory, manpower and morale early on and still managed to outproduce Germany by 5:1.

German war economy on comparison was way too complacent. Even Great Britain outdid Germany in that regard, for example food rationing was introduced in the UK in 1940, Germany had none until 1944. There is also information that work hours etc was leisurely, resulting in production numbers only soaring in 1944 (Speers armament miracle) when they had already lost the war. That means they waited much too long, owing to the spectacular successes in the first year.

Germans had a miraculous first year of the war, and thought it would go on like this until the end. Consequently they jerked off over their weapons and only made sure they had the coolest tanks. But cool was not what it was about. They build 20,000 tanks or so during the entire war, hard to fathom how you want to win a world war with such numbers. I have no figures at hand but it would seem the Soviet union produced up to 10 times as many tanks.

But of course scale modelers owe a lot to that, they will forever be the favorites because they looked so cool. The Panther was almost a 1950s design, for an army with secure supply chain, limited force size and long operational period etc it would have been a dream. For total war in the East it was probably pure shyte. The clutch was supposed to hold 10 years, in reality half were knocked out during the first 72 hours.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

The numbers for Soviets I have seen were circa 87 500 tanks (this does not include tank destroyers and SPGs, which would account for additional circa 22 300 vehicles).

And if you were hit and managed to survive then any tanker with half a brain would bail out immediately.

This is generally correct, I have seen a British study that was done after the Normandy landings - basically a group of officers was moving behind the front, documenting every knocked out British tank and even interviewing surviving crews if they could find them. They concluded that vast majority of the crew causalities occurred outside of the vehicles, ie. the tankers were getting shot by small arms after they bailed out (deaths inside the tank were relatively rare and primarily in cases of the ammo explosions or rapidly spreading fire that usually killed the whole crew almost immediately). It was also concluded that the crews tended to bail out at the first sign of trouble (this was usually a penetrating hit regardless of actual damage that was done, though there were also documented cases of crews abandoning their tanks upon receiving reports that there were German AT guns ahead), on the flip side in many cases it was possible (often for the same crew) to reoccupy the tank once the air was clear and keep going.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Some sources say 100,000 plus 20,000 lend lease tanks. In any case 5:1 produced is a good estimate, but on top of that you must subtract the tanks that Germany had in the West and in Africa.

But there was nothing wrong with the weapons that were designed by Soviet engineers. They had to factor in that they were terribly mishandled and could not influence the organizational chaos and dumbfuckery (lack of radios and such). But as a design the T-34 was better than the PzIII and PzIV because it could run so fast through terrain. The early German tanks were also good because they were light medium tanks that did the job with minimal resources. But the T-34 suspension was a class of its own, it was a really impressive design that had everything, and would have been the best tank overall if t hadnt been so sloppily made and handled.

There were also ca 50 PzKw T-34 that were captured and refitted with German equipment. This resulted in arguably one of the best tanks in the war and the Germans were quite impressed with them. They would have probably manufactured them too if they had had the time to ramp up production. The only problem was recognition, hard to say if it would have been a good idea to create a new massive problem of misidentification.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

You guys should check https://store.steampowered.com/app/1674170/Sprocket/

 

[Nirvash]

ww2 coffintanks-34 are the most boring crap ever, i want to make modern to super sci-fi hi-tech, i want to build a BANEBLAAAAAAADE.

 

[Endemic]

ww2 coffintanks-34 are the most boring crap ever, i want to make modern to super sci-fi hi-tech, i want to build a BANEBLAAAAAAADE.

Modern tanks are in the game, just not the demo.