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Author Topic: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!  (Read 16862 times)

Il Palazzo

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Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« on: August 09, 2015, 02:36:27 pm »

Ze german tanks are under attack in the following discussion lifted from the sad thread.
Brandish your nerd cred and defend the gorillion-folded pzkpwf VI, V and IV (also known as the Tiger, the Panther, and the No-name workhorse) against the onslaught of innumerable hordes of... mostly just Lord Shonus (for now!).

I've no great interest in the subject, nor an expertise, but would love to see more said about it. So knock yourself out.

Spoiler: discussion starter (click to show/hide)

Also, in and about that discussion, ChairmanPoo linked to this hour-long talk about the reasons for the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Soviets. It is very interesting, although I didn't see how it was relevant to the topic at hand (there's just a brief mention of technology in the Q&A).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinPbUZUHDE
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Il Palazzo

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2015, 02:44:17 pm »

@Lord Shonus, your link to the .pdf article clearly suggests superiority of German armour.
Look at the tables of penetration to failure ratios and 'hits to knock out a tank'. These are not terribly flattering for the Sherman tanks.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2015, 03:34:30 pm »

@Lord Shonus, your link to the .pdf article clearly suggests superiority of German armour.
Look at the tables of penetration to failure ratios and 'hits to knock out a tank'. These are not terribly flattering for the Sherman tanks.

If you read the entire thing, it's explained that the analysis is based on vehicles recovered from the battlefield after the Germans left, and that it only consists of equipment damaged beyond the possibility of salvage.

More importantly, apart from the wholly inadequate 75mm on the Sherman, every tank gun in service penetrated German armor with great reliability - even the 6-pounder that the British started the war with had a 69% success rate. On page 13 of the PDF there is a table of hit locations on Panthers compared to penetration which is extremely important for this discussion - 33 out of 42 of the hits examined were in the sides of the hull or turret. Meanwhile, despite doing all of the attacking and thus being much less able to control where the enemy are going to be firing from, the Shermans took a roughly equal percentage between hull and sides. This clearly means that most of the vehicles destroyed were outflanked (requiring, at the time, the Allied tanks to run through a perfect killing ground) without being able to retreat successfully - proof positive that the lack of mobility was a fatal Achilles Heel.

Further, note that all German vehicles burned at roughly the same rate as the M4 (which should be a stake in the heart of the "Tommycooker" myth forever) , and that it was standard practice at the time (page 5) to return vehicles that had caught on fire but were repairable to service - resulting in the armor on said vehicles to be far softer and less resistant to penetration than normal.

Finally, note that there were 45 M4 Shermans in the destroyed survey, lost between 6/6/44 and 10/7/44 (a one month period) which represents the total losses, while the survey of German armor over the two month period shows 110 German tanks knocked out. Even dividing that in half to represent it being twice as long a period, you get 55 per month, the majority to tank fire. Assuming that those 110 were the entirety of the German casualties and all other vehicles got off without a scratch, the "Wunderwaffen" managed, under tactical conditions that make a firing range look difficult, managed to kill a full 90% of their own losses (the rule of thumb is 2 defenders should be able to kill 3 attackers of equal capability under normal conditions) while still giving up every single position. In actuality, of course, the Germans salvaged anything that they could, and those 110 tanks probably represented the 25%-50% that they weren't able to - meaning actual losses were more likely to be 220-440. Truly an impressive accomplishment.
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mainiac

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2015, 03:42:39 pm »

Armor comparisons and hits to knock out tanks are rubbish that dont matter.  The 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions in Europe were the American armored divisions that faced the most German tanks.  They faced them mostly with Sherman M4A1/3 with 75mm guns, aka your basic Sherman not changed a huge amount from the original design.  Not fireflies.  Not Easy-Eights.  Just normal Shermans.  Do you know how many Shermans the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions lost to Tiger tanks?  ZERO.  Not one.  Nada.  Not too surprising of course because they only faced 3 Tiger tanks in all of Europe.  Cuz the Tiger was a piece of crap that broke down before the battlefield.  But the armor looked great sitting in a museum! Or how about the Panther?  They dealt about 3 casualties for each 2 casualties that Panthers did.

The myth of the WunderPanzer mostly traces back to these three facts:
Fact 1: Sacrificing T-34s saves lives Soviet lives.  Suppose you are a Soviet General.  You have 200 tanks at your disposal and are going to fight Germans with 200 tanks.  How many of your tanks will you use?  200.  Suppose the Germans have 1 tank.  How many are you going to use?  200.  The soviets use every tank they have because they'd be idiots not to.  And that means that German indirect and AT guns blow up a lot of tanks and a lot of tanks hit landmines even if no German tanks are present.  And the Soviets have a lot more tanks then the Germans.  This means that in all battles everywhere, Soviets are taking a lot more losses then Germans because they are losing more tanks to things like AT guns and landmines then Germans have present!

The Soviets had a horrible time of it because the Germans had more materials at the start and consistantly could throw twice as many artillery shells at the Soviets as the Soviets could throw back.  On top of that, German artillery could be used effectively for the first two years because they had air superiority which meant they knew what to shoot at.  That killed a lot of Soviets.  Artillery killed more soldiers then all other causes combined.  They had no desire getting even more soldiers killed by not using tanks when they had them.

Fact 2: German statistics under count losses by a lot, Soviet statistics over count them.  (Compared to Americans who do everything perfectly ;))  Although it's true that the Soviets took the worst losses of the war by far, the numbers you have probably seen are complete and utter shit.  For instance a soviet AAR will record a soldier as wounded in action even if he was wounded by non combat causes and rejoined his unit half an hour later after getting treated.  A German record wont count a tank as lost until it is completely written off.  A tank could catch on fire, have the whole crew die, be put on a train, taken back to Germany and it still is counted as part of it's division!  The Soviets however might "lose" a tank three or four times in the same month in a few extreme cases.  So while Soviet tank losses were worst for a variety of reasons, they are no where as bad as you have probably heard.

Fact 3: The Soviets had a lot of obsolete equipment at the start of the war.  These pre-war stocks were mostly destroyed but were counted as battle losses.  Compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34
^^ Yeah, the Panzer III does look like a wunderwaffen compared to that.

Put these three facts together and you get battle where the Soviets lose 1000s of tanks and the Germans lose hundreds.  While attacking!  In the snow!  Uphill both ways!  It makes people think that German tanks were great.  They weren't.  They were mostly shit.  The Panzer IV eventually was a good tank and the StugIII was a fantastic AFV but the early Panzer III and Panzer IV were sub-par, the Panther was the worst tank of the war and the Tiger sucked compared to the IS tanks.

Further, note that all German vehicles burned at roughly the same rate as the M4 (which should be a stake in the heart of the "Tommycooker" myth forever) , and that it was standard practice at the time (page 5) to return vehicles that had caught on fire but were repairable to service - resulting in the armor on said vehicles to be far softer and less resistant to penetration than normal.

Also: The Sherman had the fastest evacuation time of all WWII tanks.  The Sherman had 5 hatches for 5 crewmembers.  Hence why Americans actually had a much higher crew survival rank then the Germans or Soviets where you need to wait for the guy in front of you to move before you can get out the hatch.
Also Also: Almost all lost tanks burned for all sides because once a tank is immobalized you keep shooting at it!  It's an easy target!  You shoot it until the ammo catches on fire and the tank burns so your enemies can't recover it.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 03:49:10 pm by mainiac »
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2015, 03:50:14 pm »


The myth of the WunderPanzer mostly traces back to these three facts:


You missed one - the Germans lied. A lot. The famous examples are claims of 1 Tiger destroying 15+ Shermans on a day when none of Allied Powers (all of which used the Sherman) had a single one within a hundred miles of where the fictitious battle supposedly took place. It was part of the constant attempts of the "elite" SS units trying to establish dominance over the Whermacht, and it was fairly common for these stories to be broadcast as official propaganda (after all, the German in the streets isn't going to have a clue what actually happened, and it's important to keep up morale), but the German command never took most of these things seriously - it's why I tend to take any report that doesn't cross-reference both side's loss records or are explicitly based on wrecks with grain of salt the size of Mount Everest.


Edit: I'm quite aware that most tanks burned - I'm referencing a certain myth that just won't die (largely propagated by Belton Cooper's Death Traps and the History Channel show based on it) that the Sherman was so flammable that it was commonly referred to as a "Tommycooker" or a "Ronson" (in refrence to the Ronson company that made very expensive (and thus probably would not be an immediately familiar name to most dogfaces) table lighters and used "lights on the first strike" as an advertising slogan (after the war, so the odds of it being an inspiration for a nickname are ...slim). There was a variant of the Sherman nicknamed the Ronson (by the rich British guy who designed the variant) - it carried a flamethrower.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 03:54:54 pm by Lord Shonus »
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mainiac

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2015, 03:56:29 pm »

The first AAR on the link actually has a great example of the different loss statistics that I was talking about.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2015/08/ogledow-combat-diary.html

Regiment losses:
IS-122 tanks burned: 3
IS-122 tanks knocked out: 7. Of those 3 were repaired at the regiment and 4 sent to a repair base.

A soviet tank regiment is not a huge formation.  Anything that can be fixed with regimental resources isn't serious damage.  But 3 of them could be fixed by the regiment.  And the other 4 could be repaired at a local repair station.  According to German losses counting, this is somewhere between three and seven losses.  According to Soviet counting, it's ten.

Further note that according to Soviet losses if those tanks got repaired at a factory, that would be 4 more tanks in the factory production totals.  So take Soviet production numbers with a grain of salt as well.
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Cryxis, Prince of Doom

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2015, 04:02:21 pm »

Ptw
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2015, 04:26:17 pm »

You missed one - the Germans lied. A lot. The famous examples are claims of 1 Tiger destroying 15+ Shermans on a day when none of Allied Powers (all of which used the Sherman) had a single one within a hundred miles of where the fictitious battle supposedly took place. It was part of the constant attempts of the "elite" SS units trying to establish dominance over the Whermacht, and it was fairly common for these stories to be broadcast as official propaganda (after all, the German in the streets isn't going to have a clue what actually happened, and it's important to keep up morale), but the German command never took most of these things seriously - it's why I tend to take any report that doesn't cross-reference both side's loss records or are explicitly based on wrecks with grain of salt the size of Mount Everest.

But vat about mein SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann? If you vant to dizrespekt ze glory of mein Vaterland, you are goink to neet solit evidenz!

...

Seriously though, it would be very interesting to read some well-substantiated debunking of Nazi war myths because most internet sources are just repeating all the crap we've learned from Discovery Channel.
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Cryxis, Prince of Doom

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2015, 04:31:38 pm »

Not sure it got brought up yet but what about the reports of German tanks (A tiger variant I believe) that were able to take tremendous amounts of damage and still operate. The account I am referencing is one where the tank took several hits to it's armor and the tracks on one side being nearly destroyed but the crew was fine and the tank was able to be repaired and put back onto the battle field soon after (I think that's what it was at least, been awhile since I've been into WW2 tanks :p )
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Strife26

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #10 on: August 09, 2015, 04:37:43 pm »

That wouldn't be a Tiger, I'd guess. They were super finicky things at best and never rolled out in real numbers.

Maybe one of the assault guns (the Stum3 was the *best* vehicle of the war)  but that's somewhat iffy too.


Any tank can still fight on if it's in a good place when it gets mobility killed, but the Soviet KV2 was especially claimed to be over armored, from my recollection
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Cryxis, Prince of Doom

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2015, 04:39:32 pm »

It was a German tank, heavily armored, and it's gun was (reportedly) able to take out Sherman's in one or two shots
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mainiac

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #12 on: August 09, 2015, 04:44:02 pm »

Not sure it got brought up yet but what about the reports of German tanks (A tiger variant I believe) that were able to take tremendous amounts of damage and still operate. The account I am referencing is one where the tank took several hits to it's armor and the tracks on one side being nearly destroyed but the crew was fine and the tank was able to be repaired and put back onto the battle field soon after (I think that's what it was at least, been awhile since I've been into WW2 tanks :p )

Yeah, that's what you get when you combine comfirmation bias with random events.  Here's a guy who got shot 7 times. http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/01/13/kaysville-man-who-survived-7-bullets-credits-god-police-and-2-armed-citizens
Does that mean humans can survive bullets?
http://albumwar2.com/panther-destroyed-by-russian-light-tank-t-70/
Here's two panthers that got ambushed by a single T-70 light tank.  The Russians controlled the field afterwards so it's actually a credible account, unlike Witman.

Armor is great to have a lot but once you have a fairly basic amount it's just improving your chances, not making you invulnerable.  Panther tanks were still somewhat vulnerable to man carried anti-tank rifles!  This is why soon after their first campaign in North Africa, American and British troops started phasing out their 76mm AT guns and putting more emphasis on their 75mm guns for their HE ability.  At the end of the day it's a lot easier to make a gun to penetrate armor then make armor to resist a gun.

It was a German tank, heavily armored, and it's gun was (reportedly) able to take out Sherman's in one or two shots

Any tank could take out any tank in one or two shots.

Maybe one of the assault guns (the Stum3 was the *best* vehicle of the war)  but that's somewhat iffy too.

StugIII was good for what it was but it lacked visibility and was vulnerable from the sides.  Sherman was the best tank of the war.  Good gun, decent armor, best crew survivability, best mobility and most crucial by far, fastest target acquisition.  That last matters more then the other factors put together.
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Cryxis, Prince of Doom

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #13 on: August 09, 2015, 04:53:13 pm »

Adding to that last part (as I am fairly uneducated in this conversation).

The tank was said to be able to dispatch a Sherman with one or two shots but be able to take several shots from a Sherman and still keep on moving like nothing happened. At this point I'm guessing this was more propaganda than truth
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mainiac

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Re: Defend ze glory of ze German Wunderwaffen!
« Reply #14 on: August 09, 2015, 05:02:58 pm »

Like a deflecting blow off the front plate?  Sure, having an an absurdly over armored front plate was good for that.  But it's mostly post-war embellishment.  Most hits to tanks were on the side (more side then front) and there weren't exactly a huge number of cases of Tigers and Shermans duking it out.
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