Was the T-34 significantly superior?

[CaptHawkeye]

As I recall their wasn't a single tank of the war that could resist a well placed impact from the Panzerfaust even on the frontal armour. HEAT ammunition existed as a concept during the war, but no one really seemed to respect it. Then again, nobody produced ammunition during the war that worked as advertised. Even American AP shot had a tendency to shatter on impact with Armour and the Americans had some of the best industrial practices in the world. HEAT probably seemed really cool on paper, but the factories probably didn't want to waste time perfecting some new fangled super shell technology when they needed to rush as much ammunition out their doors as quickly as possible.

Armchair Generals like to bitch that the Allies never had enough Sherman Fireflys or Jumbos. These people fail to realize Allied tank crews were way more concerned about ATGs and infantry running around with Panzerfausts/Shrecks than the random Tiger encounter. In that sense, the Sherman with low velocity 76mm is the best tank the Allies could have on them.

[Sea Skimmer]

As I recall their wasn't a single tank of the war that could resist a well placed impact from the Panzerfaust even on the frontal armour.

That’s true only of the latter model with a larger warhead. Some heavy tanks could resist the initial versions on the frontal armor.

HEAT ammunition existed as a concept during the war, but no one really seemed to respect it.

Not really, its just making it all work took a lot of time and effort, much of which was not finished until decades after the war. Even today we are still coming up with major improvements to shaped charge designs all the time.

HEAT sucks in rifled guns, weapons like Panzerfaust had very limited ranges, and recoilless weapons required considerable development time on top of time needed to perfect the ammo.

It took a long time to solve the problem of firing HEAT out of tank guns, with three main solutions adapted, go to a smoothbore gun and use fins (very hard to make the fins accurate enough), place the HEAT charge on ball bearings inside of the shell (not complicated at all...) or lastly it was eventually determined that you could make the hollow charge non circular to compensate for the spin. All of this took vast amounts of firing trials (its all trial and error) to perfect. The last solution was not adapted at all until after the war.

The Germans fielded HEAT for all there major anti tank guns, but the penetration was pretty pathetic. About 80mm defeated at 30 degrees for an 88mm HEAT shell for example, which could only be useful at a range of several kilometers when you couldn’t hit a target anyway. At any closer distance the kinetic shot was better. It was only when tanks got much heavier armor postwar, AND HEAT improved dramatically in performance that it became viable ammo for heavy guns.

Had work started on shaped changes in 1930 instead of 1939 things might have been different, but such is history. Its worth considering though that even in 1940 no German tank had more then 30mm of armor thickness, and a mere anti tank rifle was thus still fairly effective. So no one had much reason to go after shaped charges even earlier.

[CaptHawkeye]

Yeah, the Soviets enjoyed a lot of success with the PTRD and PTRS against German armour. It could even penetrate the Panther's side armour at close range. I looked at some charts and while the Russians pretty much had no choice BUT to use Anti Tank rifles (owing to a lack of rocket weapons of their own) the PTRD still has some pretty impressive results for a weapon such as itself. (Something like 35mm of penetration at 100m) The Boys was hard pressed to achieve similar results. (11mm at 100m.) The PTRD was so successful it was the main reason the Germans put those characteristic side skirts on the Panzer IV and StuG.

[aieeegrunt]

The big crying shame was that we didn't invade France in 1943 -- at that point, the Germans had not yet fully developed PaK 40 spam, and you would have faced a majority of 50mm guns, both on tanks and attached to the infantry. By 1944, the 50mm had been pretty much superceeded in all frontline roles basically.

I think that invading France around June 1943 was suicide. The allies only had the capacity to deploy ~20 divisions (see: ) while the Germans had around 50 divisions, granted German divisions were smaller, but they needed numerical superiority to fight over prepared defenders with excellent tactical skills. The Luftwaffe wasn't defeated yet, so total air superiority like they in 1944 was out of question.

.

The situation is a little more complicated than that. The German divisions in France in 1943 were either burned out hollow shells recuperating from the Russian Front, or training formations, or paper formations. If the Allies had used the resources they spent on Italy and Sicily against southern France instead they easily could have carved out a very defensible lodgement. Then Overlord can land much closer to the Rhine than historical, and there is a possibility of the war ending much earlier.

[Marcus Aurelius]

.

1 The most numerous infantry AT weapon variants (Faustpatrone and Panzerfaust 30) had an effective range of 30 meters only and even the most long ranged one, the Panzerschreck, had an effective range of only 200 meters.

Effective range of 100 meters on Mr Panzerschreck because the rocket was not the most stable thing in the world. Also left off the Panzerfaust 30's bigger brothers the almost as common Panzerfaust 60 and it's rare late war brother the Panzerfaust 100.

I left those out because they were available in much smaller numbers than the original Faustpatrone (a.k.a. Panzerfaust 30 klein) and the Panzerfaust 30. Admittedly the Panzerfaust 60 was available in somewhat significant numbers towards the end of the war, but still the shorter ranged variants were the more common ones. The 100 meter model was introduced so late that it reached only troops that were close to the factories, because by that point the German transportation system was breaking down.

The effective range of the Panzerschreck varies between sources. Officially it was 150 meters and not 200 meters, so thank you for making me check that. Some sources say only 100 meters. There were also different rocket-projectiles for the weapon; the late ones burnt out in the tube so that the shield to protect the user was no longer necessary and probably it increased accuracy as well. There was likely also a good deal of variation between rockets produced at different times in different factories, which could also explain the differences in quoted effective range.

However it should be noted because of the design of the rocket's war-heads that a Panzerfaust/Panzershreck hit was nearly always deadly and nearly always a one shot kill compared to the lighter American Bazooka's and Piats and of how the Germans employed their rocket AT weapons, particularly the Panzerfaust. As a one-shot disposable anti-tank tube they were handed out in job lots to pretty much anyone who might run into a tank and any old idiot could use them including the allies. From my own family history every dispatch rider tried to have one or two on hand and the US two man bazooka teams tried to carry one along for use against heavier German armors like the Tiger which a bazooka would have issues with.

Sea Skimmer already commented on this, but only the Panzerfausts with the larger warhead were capable of defeating almost any tank from any aspect. The Panzerschreck and the Faustpatrone had smaller warheads, which could penetrate the side armor of most if not all Allied tanks, but not the frontal armor of heavy tanks or assault guns, or assault tanks such as the Sherman "Jumbo".

As for the bazooka, the 2.36" bazooka was becoming obsolescent by 1944. It wasn't useless, but it was effective only against the side and rear armor of Panzer IV H/J and Panther and practically useless against the Tigers. There also seems to have been fusing problems which often prevented it from reaching the theoretical 100 mm penetration. A very common problem with early HEAT warheads, by the way, and I have to say that the Panzerfausts were remarkably well designed for such cheap weapons as they seemed to be quite reliable.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Sorry about the double post; I realized too late that I wanted to comment on CaptHawkeye's posts as well.

Yeah, the Soviets enjoyed a lot of success with the PTRD and PTRS against German armour. It could even penetrate the Panther's side armour at close range. I looked at some charts and while the Russians pretty much had no choice BUT to use Anti Tank rifles (owing to a lack of rocket weapons of their own) the PTRD still has some pretty impressive results for a weapon such as itself. (Something like 35mm of penetration at 100m) The Boys was hard pressed to achieve similar results. (11mm at 100m.) The PTRD was so successful it was the main reason the Germans put those characteristic side skirts on the Panzer IV and StuG.

I doubt the PTRD ever actually penetrated the side armor of Panther, although it theoretically could do it at "muzzle touch" range. Mostly the Soviet gunners targeted the weaker side hull armor and road wheels of Panzer IV and StuG III, which as you wrote was the reason for the introduction of the side skirts. With heavy tanks the soldiers were instructed to target other potentially weak spots like vision devices. Your penetration number for the Boys also seems much too low even for 30 degrees angle. Here's a bunch of different sources grouped together and most give much higher numbers:

http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/AT_RIFLES2.htm#14PSTKIV37

The angles are from parallel to armor plate of course, not from perpendicular like in most Anglo-Saxon sources. The somewhat higher numbers do not change the fact that the Boys was not a very effective even in 1940, however.

Armchair Generals like to bitch that the Allies never had enough Sherman Fireflys or Jumbos. These people fail to realize Allied tank crews were way more concerned about ATGs and infantry running around with Panzerfausts/Shrecks than the random Tiger encounter. In that sense, the Sherman with low velocity 76mm is the best tank the Allies could have on them.

A small correction: the Jumbo was specifically designed to deal with the common 75 mm L/48 AT guns and the infantry AT weapons. It was not a tank killer like the Sherman Firefly, but an infantry support tank. It had the standard 75 mm M3 medium velocity gun out of the factory, although some did receive a turret from a damaged 76 mm Sherman as a field modification. There was no 76 mm low velocity gun in US tanks; the 76 mm gun was a high velocity one. The closest thing to such a gun was the 75 mm howitzer mounted on the M8 HMC, which was an M5 light tank with a 75 mm howitzer in an open-topped turret. It was occasionally used for direct fire support as well. The Sherman version of the same concept were the M4(105) and M4A3(105), which as one might guess, sported a 105 mm howitzer. Although sometimes dubbed as
"assault guns", it appears that they were mostly used as self-propelled artillery pieces that fired indirectly.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, the Soviets enjoyed a lot of success with the PTRD and PTRS against German armour. It could even penetrate the Panther's side armour at close range. I looked at some charts and while the Russians pretty much had no choice BUT to use Anti Tank rifles (owing to a lack of rocket weapons of their own) the PTRD still has some pretty impressive results for a weapon such as itself. (Something like 35mm of penetration at 100m) The Boys was hard pressed to achieve similar results. (11mm at 100m.) The PTRD was so successful it was the main reason the Germans put those characteristic side skirts on the Panzer IV and StuG.

You could actually disable any tank in the world ever with that rifle, by shooting the drive sprocket until it cracked. Even tanks with side skirts usually don’t cover the drive sprocket, because the crew needed to be able to get at it regularly for maintenance and cleaning out debris which would otherwise lead to thrown tracks. Luckily for tank crews accuracy of WW2 AT rifles was pretty bad, they were not like modern .50cal rifle which can routinely be used for sniping humans at long ranges. Like most armored things, tanks protection is only effective so long as the enemy is restricted to more or less ‘random’ hit placement. If he can get close enough to precisely choose his shots you are pretty fucked.

The Russians didn't have rocket launchers or recoilless rifles in WW2, but they did have shaped charge rifle grenades which could be quite effective against the flank armor of tanks. But effective range was usually not more then about 30 yards.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The Russians didn't have rocket launchers or recoilless rifles in WW2, but they did have shaped charge rifle grenades which could be quite effective against the flank armor of tanks. But effective range was usually not more then about 30 yards.

Are you certain about that? I remember reading that rifle grenades were not very commonly used by the Soviets and I don't remember ever reading about a shaped charge one in WW2. In any case the most common Soviet infantry AT weapons besides the AT rifles were the RPG-43 and RPG-6 shaped charge hand grenades. Being hand grenades they required quite a bit of luck and skill to use effectively, but the Soviets still considered them effective, the RPG-6 in particular. There was also the RPG-40, which was simply a large blast hand grenade effective against light tanks only.

[Iosef Cross]

All in all I would not say that the article is complete bullshit, but the conclusions are clearly wrong and based on myopic analysis of the facts.

Thanks for the helpful analysis Marcus. I don't know much about tanks and when I read that, I became convinced of the author's viewpoint. Now I know a little better.

[Iosef Cross]

The big crying shame was that we didn't invade France in 1943 -- at that point, the Germans had not yet fully developed PaK 40 spam, and you would have faced a majority of 50mm guns, both on tanks and attached to the infantry. By 1944, the 50mm had been pretty much superceeded in all frontline roles basically.

I think that invading France around June 1943 was suicide. The allies only had the capacity to deploy ~20 divisions (see: ) while the Germans had around 50 divisions, granted German divisions were smaller, but they needed numerical superiority to fight over prepared defenders with excellent tactical skills. The Luftwaffe wasn't defeated yet, so total air superiority like they in 1944 was out of question.

.

The situation is a little more complicated than that. The German divisions in France in 1943 were either burned out hollow shells recuperating from the Russian Front, or training formations, or paper formations. If the Allies had used the resources they spent on Italy and Sicily against southern France instead they easily could have carved out a very defensible lodgement. Then Overlord can land much closer to the Rhine than historical, and there is a possibility of the war ending much earlier.

The problem is that the allies didn't have the fraction of the men needed for a full frontal assault in mid 1943, numbers that they had 1 year later. While German defenses became stronger, with more men and better trained and equipped ones, the allied offensive capacity grew at faster rates. Also, in 1943 they still didn't have air superiority and the luftwaffe could be a problem. And, when they invaded Italy, the Germans had to put 25 divisions there. If they attacked western europe in 1943, without the Italian front these extra 25 divisions would greatly increase the German numbers (from 50 to 75 divisions, more than they had at D day). The most probable outcome of invading Europe in 1943, with the 20 or so divisions that the allies had, would be the destruction of a few dozen allied divisions.

About the winning the war sooner: Considering the scale of the conflict in the eastern front, invading Europe in 1943 or 44 wouldn't make much difference in the war's timetable, since in the end, it wouldn't affect greatly the combat in the eastern front, with really determined when the war ended. In fact, in 1943 when the allies landed on Italy, the 25 divisions that the Germans used there represented a drain in their replacements for the Eastern front, with means that it really made the war shorter, by giving the strategic initiative to the Soviets. While if the allies landed in France at the same time, with their 20 or so divisions, the Germans would probably destroy these forces, this would upset the allied invasion plans, releasing the troops stationed in western Europe to fight in the eastern front, since the threat of allied invasion would become small to the next months. So, the decision to land on Italy in 1943 was probably better than the decision to land on France.

[Samuel]

If the allies advance normally, the war ends sooner, but if the Germans plug the line with troops meant for the eastern front, the Russians advance faster and the war ends sooner. Remember that not only does the campaign kill the enemy, but it reduces the amount of resources the Germans can draw upon- once you have France they can't loot it anymore and you can.

[Surlethe]

If the allies advance normally, the war ends sooner, but if the Germans plug the line with troops meant for the eastern front, the Russians advance faster and the war ends sooner. Remember that not only does the campaign kill the enemy, but it reduces the amount of resources the Germans can draw upon- once you have France they can't loot it anymore and you can.

I recall reading in Eisenhower's report on the western front (delivered IIRC the names correctly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Allied Expeditionary Force) that in the later stages of the campaign the Germans let the western front collapse and moved all their troops to the east: they desperately wanted to surrender to the western allies to limit the total extent of the Soviet advance.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I recall reading in Eisenhower's report on the western front (delivered IIRC the names correctly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Allied Expeditionary Force) that in the later stages of the campaign the Germans let the western front collapse and moved all their troops to the east: they desperately wanted to surrender to the western allies to limit the total extent of the Soviet advance.

There was some moves to that effect, but only in March 1945, and they were never accepted officially by Hitler. Of course Hitler's grip of the Wehrmacht by that stage was already rapidly weakening and the individual Army and Corps commanders made decisions more and more independently. After the Battle of Berlin was clearly lost at around 24th of April some German formations did the exact opposite and tried to disengage the Soviets in order to move to the West and surrender to the Western Allies.

[Stuart]

There was some moves to that effect, but only in March 1945, and they were never accepted officially by Hitler. Of course Hitler's grip of the Wehrmacht by that stage was already rapidly weakening and the individual Army and Corps commanders made decisions more and more independently. After the Battle of Berlin was clearly lost at around 24th of April some German formations did the exact opposite and tried to disengage the Soviets in order to move to the West and surrender to the Western Allies.

They'd been doing that for some months, certainly after the Ardennes Offensive had collapsed. Once it was obvious it was indeed all over, German units that were in a position to do so tried to engineer things so they could surrender to the US and Britain rather than the Russians. By April 1945, the move westwards was getting to look more like a flood.

[Marcus Aurelius]

They'd been doing that for some months, certainly after the Ardennes Offensive had collapsed. Once it was obvious it was indeed all over, German units that were in a position to do so tried to engineer things so they could surrender to the US and Britain rather than the Russians. By April 1945, the move westwards was getting to look more like a flood.

I don't think we can talk about a 'flood' before mid-April. After all in early March German forces were still conducting a major counter-offensive in Hungary, and even later on 22th of April Wenck's 12th Army did not refuse orders to attack eastwards in an attempt to relieve Berlin. The 9th Army's westward movement was also initiated as an attempt to link up with the 12th Army and bolster the defenses of Berlin and only later turned into a breakout to the American lines.

[Stuart]

I don't think we can talk about a 'flood' before mid-April. After all in early March German forces were still conducting a major counter-offensive in Hungary, and even later on 22th of April Wenck's 12th Army did not refuse orders to attack eastwards in an attempt to relieve Berlin. The 9th Army's westward movement was also initiated as an attempt to link up with the 12th Army and bolster the defenses of Berlin and only later turned into a breakout to the American lines.

Around Berlin, that is certainly true however in Northern Germany in particular, what amounted to refugees from units being chewed up by the Russians were heading west as fast as they could go with the explicit purpose of being taken prisoner by the Americans or British. For example, what was left of units around Memel tried to get through to Schleswig Holstein and the British. What it really shows is that by early-middle 1945, the German Army was falling apart at the seams