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Post by CountVonNumenor on Apr 17, 2018 14:58:21 GMT
Personally, the Germans made my favourite tanks of WW2. Since I was little, I was impressed by the nice (as I consider it) design of the Tiger and Panther, and I was very happy when I found out that in my national Military Museum is located a Panzer IV used by the Romanian army during the war. Eventually, when I've seen it, I was impressed by its details and how well it survived after 75 years.
But there are also peolple who say that these were only just overrated, and in fact were preety weak. What do you think about the German tanks as vehicles, design or at least personal prefference?
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Post by Tito on Apr 17, 2018 19:01:26 GMT
Well the Tiger and Panther were modern tanks, hard to mantain and repair, especially at the faraway repairment locations on the Eastern front, and not only fixing was the issue but many didn't know what to do lol.
What is interesting to me is that people say the Sherman was bad as it was beaten by German tanks, yes they were nothing to Tigers which they only encounter. The Tigers outclass them and the Shermans are light-medium tanks. Not sure which one it was. The begginer tanks, used in the '39 and '40s action were not the best, the Commanders were the ones whom made the tanks shine. And then in Yugoslavia, many tanks were destroyed. The Germans did have good tanks and focused on them a lot they possesed the largest tank arsenal, or strongest if not biggest in numbers. The Larger and More Modern tanks were more successful in the west because of the weaker tanks they encountered and supoly was simpler, but still not the best. Many were beaten off by UK troops using German Equiptment like Artillery or even the Panzerachreks whom were unpractical. They did have one thing going for them for some time and it was range
That is what I got all for now as I am on phone.
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Post by Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb on Apr 17, 2018 21:20:32 GMT
Basically, Germany was hurt by these tanks. Their successes early in the war (eith blitzkrieg) were mostly due to their numerical advantage in battle, NOT the higher quality of their armor. In fact, at the very beggining of the war France was the one who had the best tanks, NOT Germany. France's tanks were ineffective because they were too few to resist the massive German tank armies.
The same thing happened to Germany later in the war. Hitler decided he needed better instead of more tanks to win the war. So their tanks were impossible to blitzkrieg through the Soviet Union, because USSR had literally never ending waves of T-34s. The wastern front was of a similar case. The allies relied on quantity to overwhelm their enemies (and it worked).
The reason Germany could not make a large army of Panzer IVs and Panthrers, was ofc their cost. Such heavy tanks were too expensive to produce and maintain, making mass production impossible.
Despite this, Hitler had plans for even more massive and ridiculous tank designs. For example, the design of Landkreuzer P. 1000 "Ratte" was insane: With weight of 1000 tons and dimensions of 35X14X11 it was almost 10 times larger than the already massive Panzer VIII "Maus". Its secondary cannons were the same as Tiger VIs primary. The design was cancelled though, because it was very expensive and extremely vulnerable to bombing (despite its 8 AA guns) and generally not worth it overall.
PS: Sorry if there are any spelling errors, this was written on my phone.
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Post by The Light Bringer on Apr 17, 2018 22:07:20 GMT
Personally, the Germans made my favourite tanks of WW2. Since I was little, I was impressed by the nice (as I consider it) design of the Tiger and Panther, and I was very happy when I found out that in my national Military Museum is located a Panzer IV used by the Romanian army during the war. Eventually, when I've seen it, I was impressed by its details and how well it survived after 75 years. But there are also peolple who say that these were only just overrated, and in fact were preety weak. What do you think about the German tanks as vehicles, design or at least personal prefference? Look at it this way, any tanks that actually could compete directly in 1v1 started to appear in late 50ties and were built either from German tanks or by German engineers, basically almost every big achievement during/after ww2 was made by German engineers/scientists, technically stealth fighters are still made on the same design as gean prototype, rockets use the same aerodynamic design as V2, tanks are designed after german tanks, nuclear power plants still works on German concepts, I could count on, but I won't... ok not every German engineer/scientists was German, in fact quite a lot of them came from Baltics or other occupied contries at that time... German war machine made engineering progress more in 4 years, than it had for last century |
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Post by The Light Bringer on Apr 17, 2018 22:12:26 GMT
Basically, Germany was hurt by these tanks. Their successes early in the war (eith blitzkrieg) were mostly due to their numerical advantage in battle, NOT the higher quality of their armor. In fact, at the very beggining of the war France was the one who had the best tanks, NOT Germany. France's tanks were ineffective because they were too few to resist the massive German tank armies. The same thing happened to Germany later in the war. Hitler decided he needed better instead of more tanks to win the war. So their tanks were impossible to blitzkrieg through the Soviet Union, because USSR had literally never ending waves of T-34s. The wastern front was of a similar case. The allies relied on quantity to overwhelm their enemies (and it worked). The reason Germany could not make a large army of Panzer IVs and Panthrers, was ofc their cost. Such heavy tanks were too expensive to produce and maintain, making mass production impossible. Despite this, Hitler had plans for even more massive and ridiculous tank designs. For example, the design of Landkreuzer P. 1000 "Ratte" was insane: With weight of 1000 tons and dimensions of 35X14X11 it was almost 10 times larger than the already massive Panzer VIII "Maus". Its secondary cannons were the same as Tiger VIs primary. The design was cancelled though, because it was very expensive and extremely vulnerable to bombing (despite its 8 AA guns) and generally not worth it overall. PS: Sorry if there are any spelling errors, this was written on my phone. Speaking about ratte, it was stopped because of Normandy, they actually used the main gun defend against ships... |
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Post by Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb on Apr 18, 2018 4:13:26 GMT
Basically, Germany was hurt by these tanks. Their successes early in the war (eith blitzkrieg) were mostly due to their numerical advantage in battle, NOT the higher quality of their armor. In fact, at the very beggining of the war France was the one who had the best tanks, NOT Germany. France's tanks were ineffective because they were too few to resist the massive German tank armies. The same thing happened to Germany later in the war. Hitler decided he needed better instead of more tanks to win the war. So their tanks were impossible to blitzkrieg through the Soviet Union, because USSR had literally never ending waves of T-34s. The wastern front was of a similar case. The allies relied on quantity to overwhelm their enemies (and it worked). The reason Germany could not make a large army of Panzer IVs and Panthrers, was ofc their cost. Such heavy tanks were too expensive to produce and maintain, making mass production impossible. Despite this, Hitler had plans for even more massive and ridiculous tank designs. For example, the design of Landkreuzer P. 1000 "Ratte" was insane: With weight of 1000 tons and dimensions of 35X14X11 it was almost 10 times larger than the already massive Panzer VIII "Maus". Its secondary cannons were the same as Tiger VIs primary. The design was cancelled though, because it was very expensive and extremely vulnerable to bombing (despite its 8 AA guns) and generally not worth it overall. PS: Sorry if there are any spelling errors, this was written on my phone. Speaking about ratte, it was stopped because of Normandy, they actually used the main gun defend against ships... No, it was stopped in 1943 as inconvenient. That with the gun makes sense though. |
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Post by The Light Bringer on Apr 18, 2018 6:26:00 GMT
Speaking about ratte, it was stopped because of Normandy, they actually used the main gun defend against ships... No, it was stopped in 1943 as inconvenient. That with the gun makes sense though. It was inconvenient as they had no time to finish it and trying to do so was a waste of resources... |
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Post by Tito on Apr 18, 2018 11:43:48 GMT
Number of tanks doesn't neceseeraly mean strength. One Nation can have few Modern Tanks and some can have many Bob Tanks. The Bob Tank ammount is useless as they cannot harm the enemy tanks.
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Post by The Light Bringer on Apr 18, 2018 12:24:59 GMT
Number of tanks doesn't neceseeraly mean strength. One Nation can have few Modern Tanks and some can have many Bob Tanks. The Bob Tank ammount is useless as they cannot harm the enemy tanks. The thing is lifespan of tank during cold war was calculated being 15minutes on average, these days I can safely say, that it wouldn't be even half of that as we have advanced more, what I'm trying to say is during ww2 tanks lifespan was multiple hours as sometimes enemy had no means of destroying them for example tiger and mouse, tbh even soviet tanks had difficulty fighting with them as they were better, if we talk about western front well even UK and US combined couldn't throw anything really good against them as they simply were behind by 10 years, but the numbers which US threw in were overwhelming for Germany as there were multiple key mistakes... |
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Post by CountVonNumenor on Apr 19, 2018 16:36:33 GMT
I would like to know which is you favourite WW2 german tank and why.
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Post by Marshal Ney on Apr 19, 2018 22:15:45 GMT
My favourite one is the Landkreuzer p.1000 ratte (project) because of its enormous size. Lenght 35 m, width 14 m, height 11 m, crew 20-40 men. It was to be armed with naval artillery
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Post by Aleksandr Vasilevsky on Apr 20, 2018 6:01:22 GMT
My favourite one is the Landkreuzer p.1000 ratte (project) because of its enormous size. Lenght 35 m, width 14 m, height 11 m, crew 20-40 men. It was to be armed with naval artillery Mobility is a "slight" issue for the P.1000. The size and that weight of this proposed war machine can create a lot of issues, as no railroad could hold it (roads would be destroyed by this thing too). Also, the size made it very vulnerable to aerial and artillery bombardment. However, the amount of firepower this thing has is truly incredible! The naval artillery (as mentioned before) combined with anti-aircraft and autocannons would make it a formidable enemy. And not to mention, with in the P.1000 was several rooms (storage, lavatory, infirmary, etc) and even had a vehicle bay for motorcycles to scout the enemy.
My favorite tank was the Sturmtiger. Despite not changing the favor of the war situation, it had somewhat decent results. What was most interesting to me about it was it's main armament. The cannon was able to fire a 380 mm rocket type shell. One of the combat reports I read about this was it took out a group of stationary tanks (along with its crew) in a single shell. The purpose of this tank was to take out fortifications and defenses in urban areas. |
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Post by CountVonNumenor on Apr 20, 2018 13:40:57 GMT
From what I know, they actually started building the Landkreuzer Ratte, but stopped working after completing its turret, which was sent to the Atlantic Wall, if I remember right. Even the germans realised that such a huge tank would have been a waiste of time and resources, especially given the situation of Germany during the war.
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Post by Tito on Apr 20, 2018 17:10:32 GMT
Well I have not a set tank liking. I am a fan of them but have never had a specific one to be my favourite. I'd say some iconic tanks of the German Army that are stuck in my mind or the British Crusader Tanks at that time, which were not the best but stuck in my mind. The current time favourite is Challanger II Tank.
But there is what I can tell and it is that I like the Stalin Tank. At Kursk they actes as Land Forts and can be replenished, Kursk resulted in more tanks in numbers being destroyed, they have been replenished, the Germans couldn't cope with the losses. And they were used post war and probably are being used by some poorer nations
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Post by CountVonNumenor on Apr 20, 2018 20:39:56 GMT
Tito, indeed, Romania for example had over 1000 T-34/85s and 66 SU-100 tank destroyers. Now there are still 100 T-34s operational in the national reserve and 20 SU-100, alongside the more modern TR-85M1 and TR-77 main battle tanks.
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