Cause of German Tank Success

[Manfred2]

I have been inside a couple of T-34/85s, and I am glad I never had to fight in one. The Driver's position is miserable, and the magority of them had no intercom. This meant that the commander had to kick the driver in the shoulders to communicate with him!

The Turret floor does not rotate with the rest of the turret, and the lack of a radio was not compensated for with plentiful vision slits.

In 1941, one saving grace for the Panzers was that they could fire 2-4 aimed shots in the time T-34 crews were able to fire just one.

Best tank of the war? Give me a Pershing, every single time.
No Pershings? A Jagd Panther!

 

[merocaine]

I have'ent had time to read the rest of the thread and i'm sure people have said this before, German success in the early part of the war counted on the proper use of air power coupled with highly moblie armoured spearheads.

Once the LW had destroyed the enemy airforce, they were used to pin the enemy in position and paralyses enemy movement to the front. This coupled with armoured forces which has the firepower and mobility to achive rapid break throughs was an irristible combination, but it did relay on flexible, aggressive and imaginative leadership from the front.

It is worth noting that the western allies never managed to achive the same results even though they possessed an overwhelming material advantage in tanks and airpower. It was only on the eve of German collapse that the western allies managed to achive rapid advances.

The Soviets were able to achive this, but only with a wastage of men and equipment that would have been unthinkable in the west.

IMO, the thing that sets the Germans apart out of all the armies on WW2, is the quality of there middle level commanders, they were defined by there energy and imagination.
Thats not to say that the british, french, american, russians ect, did'ent produce imaginative commanders, they did, but for the most part they were never put into the critical battle fronts, steady reliable men were.

So IMO the cause of German tank success was good commanders leading from the front.

 

[crobato]

In sum, they had this, everyone of them as radical as the tank spearhead.

1. Combined arms doctrine (with the Luftwaffe).
2. Mechanized infantry and artillery support (half tracks and self propelled vehicles.)
3. Radios on their tanks


Now lets jump past decades ahead. What makes the Leopard such a good tank? It merited #1 in a Discovery Channel program of the Top 10 best tanks of all time. Is it the distillation of all German tank experiences of the past, now pressed and forged with modern technologies?

 

[KGB]

The Soviets were able to achive this, but only with a wastage of men and equipment that would have been unthinkable in the west.

To be fair, they were building an army from almost scratch while fending off the mighty Wehrmacht.

The russians had oil, steel, and men; but they didn't have much time, or radios for that matter. The Germans had a radio for each tank, the russians one for every platoon. That would make coordinating attacks, changing plans, warning each other pretty difficult. With that kind of difficulty in communications it made sense for the Russian commanders to rely on orchestrated and rather rigid mission planning.

 

[Waylander]

They build an army from the scratch?
As long as I know the Sovjet Union started the war with more than 3 million soldiers.
That's not what I would call nothing.

BTW, one shouldn't give a Admin: Language! about what Discovery channel has to say about military hardware...

Edit: This language was not targeted at any member here but at the quality of Discovery Channel Docus.
Anyway I'm sorry for using inappropriate language.

 

[swerve]

To be fair, they were building an army from almost scratch while fending off the mighty Wehrmacht.

The russians had oil, steel, and men; but they didn't have much time, or radios for that matter. The Germans had a radio for each tank, the russians one for every platoon. That would make coordinating attacks, changing plans, warning each other pretty difficult. With that kind of difficulty in communications it made sense for the Russian commanders to rely on orchestrated and rather rigid mission planning.

From scratch? The USSR had 5-6 tanks for every one the Germans had at the start of the war. Just counting those Soviet tanks which were superior to the best German tanks, they had superior numbers. One radio per platoon was fine in the circumstances, as they could use tank platoons the way the Germans used individual tanks - and just follow the commanders tank, the one with the radio. The orchestrated & rigid mission planning was due to doctrine, not shortage of radios.

The USSR also began the war with overwhelming superiority in artillery & aircraft. It had to do a lot of rebuilding, because that huge army lost so many men & so much equipment - but it never completely lost its material advantage. The sheer weight of equipment stunned the Germans in 1941.

 

[KGB]

Of those 3 million men, and massive amounts of equipment the Red Army had at the start of the war, much of those had to be written off. I understand that they also had a shortage of officers and nco's thanks to stalin. How would you train so many men with so little time? Who would do the training?

I'm not saying that the Soviets couldn't have done better. Some say that Stalin caused more Russian deaths than Hitler. What I'm saying is that the political atmosphere and human resources available to the Red army very much shaped the way it fought.

I'm wondering if the concept of Deep Battle itself is rooted in Russian assumptions of qualitative and quantitative superiority.

 

[dave1233]

Everybody always says that the tiger was the best tank of the second world war but they forget that towards the end the allies were building tanks that far surpassed things like the Sherman and the t-34. Like the comet tank built by the British and the Joseph Stalin tank built by the Russians.

 

[Manfred2]

"Deep Battle" was formulated by Tukhachevsky by 1936 in response to what he observed at German military exercises. It turned out to be the right counter-measure against blitzkrieg, but he was purged in 1937, and so there was some hesitation by other officers to put his ideas into practice.

Dave; I may have a Tiger for my avatar, but even I put it at third for my favorite tank of the war... or at least third place for the one I would have wanted to be inside!

I am not a fan of the JS-1. It did have a huge gun and good mobility, but it carried few rounds for that cannon and had an even more restricted range than the Tiger. INHO, they sacrificed too much to build a "heavy" tank that wieghed no more than a Panther, including armor.

 

[crobato]

I wasn't that impressed with the Comet, but if the war went on, the Panther F (with the remodeled turret with the 88mm gun), and King Tigers may find themselves with a good match against the Centurion. British tank doctrine, however, is another matter entirely.