- Jul 15, 2014
- 28,714
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I read a GREAT cost/benefit comparison between the Sherman, Panther, and T-34 a few years ago and wish i could find an online version of it. It laid out the design considerations given life expectancy on the battlefield, compared everything, and laid out costs, especially in man hours for production and maintenance in the field, and wasn't meant to choose "best" (too subjective), but rather just so one could see the MASSIVE disparities. Essentially, every single German tank was a unique, one off, hand made tank, let alone the over engineering.Had a 10-1 kill ratio, but too complicated to maintain in a deteriorating war effort.
If you've never crewed on a tracked vehicle before, while it looks cool and is phenomenal for reducing ground pressure, you have no earthly idea what a nightmare the suspension/road wheel array is like to deal with on those German tanks... on ours, if you have to change in inward road wheel, you only have to remove ONE road wheel to get to it... on the Tiger, you had to remove EIGHT to get to it. That's death. In 1944 and 1945, the number of mechanically disabled (not destroyed by fire) German tanks that were just abandoned is staggering.
Something you'll appreciate... on the Panther, the final drives had to be serviced every..... 150 kilometers. That means that due to the intricacies, the final drives had to be serviced BEFORE it ran out of a tank of gas! This hamstrung the Germans more than you think... it's means they couldn't conduct road marches at all... everything had to go by rail for long moves. Worse? There were special tracks for the Tigers (and Ferdinand/Elephant) JUST for rail loading as the regular tracks extended too far out (super wide for decreased ground pressure) from the rail cars... before rail loading, they had to break track, put on the special narrow tracks, load/travel/unload, then break track again and put regular tracks back on... think of all that time and expense and it also means that you could never roll of the train straight into battle. Cool looking tanks, but actually pieces of shyte...
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