OT: German vs Allied Tech in WW2

[Panther Al]

Let me hit some high points that was brought up by Raketenjagdpanzer.


For starters, yes, it was a rant, and no need for cursing... but I get where you are coming from so no worries.

I've never bought into the whole, "Another 6 months (Or Year, or whatever) they would have pulled it off" mentality. There was far too many reasons why that was a pipe dream.

But there is a few errors there.

Lets start with the Mauser 98. For starters, its not a WW1 era rifle. Its actually older than that. But thats minor - the point here is that even though its a old design, being old isn't something that makes it obsolete or useless: In fact, the Mauser 98K is still on active service as a top notch sniper rifle by various countries in its original form - and its action has been copied by about 75% of every other high end sniper system on the planet. Not exactly garbage that. Yes, I would agree the M1 was a better battle rifle - being a semiauto is a huge advantage over bolt action designs. But the M1 isn't used anymore - even for sniping unlike the 98k. And lets not forget the MG42 - still in frontline use today, and still the better of anything anyone else uses - and I've used the MG3 and the M240 in combat, and I'll take a 3 any day of the week.

Secondly, you are spot on for the Heavy tanks. By and large - and I will except the original Tiger I from this - heavy tank designs such as the Tiger 2, Jagdtiger, and the Ferdinand/Elefant was a colossal waste of time and resources that had no business being pushed beyond proof of concept stage. It was a waste of effort, manpower, and resources that has no excuse. However, Maybach doesn't make trannies: just the engines. Transmissions was made by ZF. Who, by the by, is the go to source in europe to this day for transmissions. In fact, those of us that have a BMW for example, have a ZF transmission. Now, the problem that German tanks had isn't because of one thing or another: the root of it is that no Panzer ever was actually built at its designed weight. Take the Pz4. It was designed to be a 22 ton tank. Its transmission, engine, and final drives (And it was the Final Drives that was the killer of german tanks) was geared for a 22 ton tank. Not the 30+ ton tank it wound up being. Same goes for the Tiger, it was designed to be a 45 ton tank, and was a good bit more than that. The Panther, for all its bashers, was almost an exception to the rule. It was meant to be a 40 ton tank, and unlike every other tank they built, they kept it from creeping up to much - it pegged out at 45 tons. Still enough that you had to keep an eye on the final drives, but much better. Also, as far as german tanks go, it was actually the only on that was overpowered. Yes. Overpowered. In order to cut costs, instead of going with a modified engine that was used on the IV, they decided to take the one out of the Tiger. This gave the panther a power to weight ratio that is the equal of the Challenger 1. War time production constraints did cause issues in the reliability of the engines, but thats no fault of the design.

And the Sherman - while a great tank from a reliability and production standpoint - wasn't the equal of a later model IV (G and onwards). More like a late III (L or M). The PzIII was almost un-german in its reliability. For some weird reason, the design was just solid all around. Half the mechanical issues the IV had, could be trusted to work when needed, and had the same armour package as the IV. Its downfall was that it was too small to take larger gun than the 5cm. And don't let that 5cm fool you: it was a better AT weapon than the 75mm in the Sherman. The only advantage the Sherman had over the III was it had a better HE round. But armour was equivalent, as was reliability of the the Early Shermans that was fielded at the same time as the III was. The IV's long 75 was *much* better than the 75 used on the Sherman. All comes down to barrel length and the velocity it allows. The German 75 was a long barrelled, high velocity gun, while the Sherman was a low velocity stubby gun designed to deliver HE rounds to take out MG nests: it was not meant to engage tanks except in an emergency.

You are right about the nuke program, and on the Jet front: the key difference is that the Germans actually tried to field large numbers of Jets where the US still thought it was a dumb idea.

The T34 was the great tank of the war. It was so good, the US actually imported a few in 41 and gave serious though to using it instead of the Sherman. Very Very serious thought. The transmission is what killed the deal though: the ones they sent us was the first flight T34 that made a german Tiger II look like a finely built swiss watch in the reliability department. Once they fixed those issues in 42, it was a whole new tank. And it was the T34 and not the Sherman that convinced the Germans to dump the III and go for the IV (and later the panther). The Panther was the better tank: It was actually equal in reliability to the T34 (Still those transmission issues on the case of the T34) when properly maintained, its armour was vastly better, and had a much better gun. And that includes the DT-5 85mm the later T34's had: Russians have always, to the day, had issues with propellent in large calibre guns that have forced them to built bigger to get equal performance.

Now the rest of the post, I couldn't agree more by and large: Yes, it could be said that we was doing the German thing, and look how that worked out for them, but that ignores the fact that unlike the germans the NATO armies would be properly supported to a degree that the Wehrmacht never was. And like it or not, the M1 was designed to be the ultimate tank - Creighton Abrams himself, when the program was started (Before it was known as a M1, and just after the debacle that was the MBT70) said, "I want a Tiger 2 - just one that works." And they did so: The designers spared no expense in making sure that every facet of the design was maxed out: Protection, Speed, Firepower. Usually you got to give a little in one category to get a little in the other, but they added the forth ingredient: Cash. Toss enough money at any engineering problem, you'll find a way to get around it. Pity he didn't live long enough to see it bear fruit. I could just see him taking the first one out for a spin with 'Thunderbolt 9' painted on the side.

Air-Land Battle is a good source, and like you, I recommend any who hasn't read it, to do so. Its a great way to get a feeling for how the US was planning on fighting WW3. But also, dig deeper than what is found on the internet to see what the Soviets was planning: A lot of what you see there is based on supposition and jingo-ism. The Soviets knew they was facing an uphill battle post 84 - a lot of generals said that once the Reagan build up got solidly underway (I've heard dates of 88-90), there was no longer any real hope of winning without NBC warfare - and they planned accordingly. Falling back on NBC doesn't mean they was throwing in the towel: they was just coming up with a plan that would probably work. Post GW the Soviets really knew they was done for. I think that played a huge role in the end of the Soviet menace. Pre-88, they was still confident of a win - just wouldn't be easy. And they had reason to be reasonably confident. I am nbot going to say they was right, or wrong, but they had solid plans in place to counter the effects of the AirLand Battle, and recall, there wouldn't be much Air in the FEBA - There the Soviets was justly and fairly confident that they had the upper hand thanks to the efforts put into forward air defence.


I have no idea how WW3 in the 80's would have wound up: My gut feeling is the further from 1980 and the closer to 1990 the less likely the Soviets would have pulled it off without going nuclear. Using hindsight, everyone pretty much all the professionals agree it would have been us breaking out the portable buckets of sunshine (Thats 80's air force speak for Nukes) if they kicked off between 75-83 - the western armies, especially and most importantly the US - was a hollow threat.