For Brooks... The Superior Leopard 2

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: "CKOMOPOX"


Yes, that's what Hitler thought.

"How could ve lose? My vonderful Tigers, my Panthers, all gone! Vat
happened?"


Well...transmission problems aside, The Tiger was superior.

The tank teuton was referring to was the King Tiger which was a piece of
junk
over all. The armour was good and the main gun was excellent. They were
difficult to steer, the engines were unreliable and under powered and the
beasts simply weighed too much. I put them in the category of flops along
with
Ferdinand.

There just
wasn't enough of them.
German tanks had a gun sighting system far superior to anything the T-34
had. They also had radios.

The main flaw with both Panther and Tiger 1 was they were built like fine
watches. When they worked right in proper numbers they were almost
unstoppable,
Unfortunately the broke down too often and too many times had to be left
behind
because the Germans never got the hang of tank recovery.


The real problem was that they were too damm complicated
and couldnt be delivered in the numbers needed

Germany managed to build around 4800 Panthers, 9000 Mk IV's,
6000 Mk III's, 1300 Tigers and 500 King Tigers

The USA built 48,000 Shermans, the USSR built 40,000 T-34
and 2,200 JS-2, the UK built 28,000 tanks including Churchill's
Cromwell's ,Matilda II's and Valentines

Being outnumbered 10-1 is not good.

Keith

"Keith" == Keith Willshaw writes:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

The main flaw with both Panther and Tiger 1 was they were built
like fine watches. When they worked right in proper numbers they
were almost unstoppable, Unfortunately the broke down too often
and too many times had to be left behind because the Germans
never got the hang of tank recovery.

Keith The real problem was that they were too damm complicated
Keith and couldnt be delivered in the numbers needed

Keith Germany managed to build around 4800 Panthers, 9000 Mk
Keith IV's, 6000 Mk III's, 1300 Tigers and 500 King Tigers

Keith The USA built 48,000 Shermans, the USSR built 40,000 T-34
Keith and 2,200 JS-2, the UK built 28,000 tanks including
Keith Churchill's Cromwell's ,Matilda II's and Valentines

For defensive battles, the Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger were better,
as well as Sturmgeschutz III and IV. The Germans built a great
many of those too, although I don't have the figures handy (my
head leaks). I wonder if these suffered from the same problems, or
whether they were simplified and more reliable...

--
G Hassenpflug * IJN & JMSDF equipment/history fan

"Gernot Hassenpflug" wrote in message
...
"Keith" == Keith Willshaw
writes:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

The main flaw with both Panther and Tiger 1 was they were built
like fine watches. When they worked right in proper numbers they
were almost unstoppable, Unfortunately the broke down too often
and too many times had to be left behind because the Germans
never got the hang of tank recovery.

Keith The real problem was that they were too damm complicated
Keith and couldnt be delivered in the numbers needed

Keith Germany managed to build around 4800 Panthers, 9000 Mk
Keith IV's, 6000 Mk III's, 1300 Tigers and 500 King Tigers

Keith The USA built 48,000 Shermans, the USSR built 40,000 T-34
Keith and 2,200 JS-2, the UK built 28,000 tanks including
Keith Churchill's Cromwell's ,Matilda II's and Valentines

For defensive battles, the Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger were better,
as well as Sturmgeschutz III and IV. The Germans built a great
many of those too, although I don't have the figures handy (my
head leaks). I wonder if these suffered from the same problems, or
whether they were simplified and more reliable...


The Sturmgeschutz III was based on the same chassis as the PkW III
and used its production facilities after the tamk went out of production.
Around 8000 of the Aus G models were built

They were simpler and cheaper than the Panthers and Togers. In
fact you could buy 4 for the price of 1 King Tiger.

Keith

(B2431) wrote in message ...
From: "CKOMOPOX"


Yes, that's what Hitler thought.

"How could ve lose? My vonderful Tigers, my Panthers, all gone! Vat
happened?"


Well...transmission problems aside, The Tiger was superior.

The tank teuton was referring to was the King Tiger which was a piece of junk
over all. The armour was good and the main gun was excellent. They were
difficult to steer, the engines were unreliable and under powered and the
beasts simply weighed too much. I put them in the category of flops along with
Ferdinand.


Hitler had tankers who could hit first time and at long range and work
team minded. He needed adequate gun, good reliability, re-claimable
without a tug-boat, easy to make, lots of them. The 'too many Ivans'
problem in the east had to be fixed by using strengths against etc.

He needed something better than the IIIs and the IVs, it had to be
standard, easy to churn out, reliable, and arrive in time. It was
almost as easy to make a U-Boat as to fashion one big complex lump of
German precision engineeering on tracks. A simplified panther with
jpanzer derivatives possibly.

He needed to also Ford-T a Hetzer type vehicle. The Hetzer was almost
there but not quite, armour is irrelevent, if one can hit first and
the Germans could usually do that. The thick armour only came into
play because of the 'too many Ivans' equation, which would diminish if
there was more shooting back.