Pre Barbarossa direction for German Tanks?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Well, the need for the 8.8 cm FlaK became a lot less urgent once the Germans had the 7.5 cm PaK 40 in numbers. Pretty much anything except the IS-2, Churchill VII, Sherman Jumbo and the ISU-122/152 could be killed with the 75 mm AT gun fairly easily. Well, the SU-100 and the M26 were resistant as well, but those arrived late and in small enough numbers initially that it hardly mattered.

Pzg40 for the Pak 40 always in rare supply could deal with all of those tanks sans the IS2 and Churchill VII from the front. As for the Su-100 I've never read any accounts of 1000 meter engagements the Pak having issues. Maybe at 2000 which could happen but the Su-100 which was itself just a remake of the Su-85 was just at it's core a T-34 with better frontal armor. But not KV or IS level.

The SU-100 had 75 mm (30 mm more than the original SU-85, however there was also a SU-85M with the same armor as the SU-100) at 50 degrees on the glacis, which was pretty serious armor even in 1945. Panther had 80 mm at 55 degrees, which is of course more but not that much. Admittedly the SU-100 had only the same 75 mm at the mantlet and there the PaK 40 could penetrate even with the standard Pzgr. 39. Getting mantlet hits was not simple, however, even with the German optics considering the low profile of the SU-100. The SU-100 also had only the traditional 45 mm vertical or nearly vertical at sides, so there the PaK 40 could easily penetrate.

[Big Orange]

Then there were Sturmgeschutz III & IV self-propelled guns, they were based on the fairly solid Panzer III & IV chasis, with up to 80mm straight armour protection by the end of the war and had effective anti-armour capabilities when fitted with the 7.5cm L/43 cannon onwards. They were supposedly better as defensive vehicles. The Panzer 38(t) (Skoda LT-38) was decent for the task of invading France, a smaller battlezone than the Soviet Union with generally slower enemy tanks, but it became obsolete by early 1942 and the chasis converted into the high profile Marder III.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Then there were Sturmgeschutz III & IV self-propelled guns, they were based on the fairly solid Panzer III & IV chasis, with up to 80mm straight armour protection by the end of the war and had effective anti-armour capabilities when fitted with the 7.5cm L/43 cannon onwards. They were supposedly better as defensive vehicles. The Panzer 38(t) (Skoda LT-38) was decent for the task of invading France, a smaller battlezone than the Soviet Union with generally slower enemy tanks, but it became obsolete by early 1942 and the chasis converted into the high profile Marder III.

Yes, the StuG III and StuG IV were good defensive vehicles, but could be use offensively as well, especially if the terrain was open enough that ambushes and flanking counterattacks could not be initiated at close surprise ranges. They were less good at more confined terrain types such as the Normandy bocage, where the lack of a rotating turret was a more serious handicap.

The StuG III was the highest produced German AFV of the whole war, which tells you something. You could almost say that the StuG III rather than the Pz IV was the backbone of German armored forces during the second half of the war, although the latter of course was more common in actual Panzer divisions, even if some StuG III and StuG IV vehicles were used in Panzer formations to make up for the shortage of "real" tanks.

The Pz 38(t) chassis was another favorite of the Germans. They continued to design new vehicles on top of it almost to the end of the war. There was even a plan to modify it so that it could take more weight that was called Pz 38(d) (part of the E series designs). The aim of the plan was to continue production with minimal retooling of the factories, all the while making the chassis strong enough for vehicles up to 25 tonnes. Plans included lightly armored tank destroyers similar to the Marder series but with the 88 mm L/71 gun (some reached prototype stage unlike most other E series vehicles) and more heavily armored tank destroyers with the 75 mm L/48 or L/70 guns, which were similar to the Jagdpanzer 38(t) "Hetzer", but had the the revised Pz 38(d) chassis.

[xt828]

I was under the impression that the Pzkpfw 38(d) was the alternative to the E-25 or E-10, and was selected in preference to them.

[Slacker]

Agreed. Even the Polish 7TP was a decent tank-reports were that the 37mm it mounted was more than powerful enough to deal with anything in the German inventory up to the PIV.

The 7TP was a development of the Vickers 6-ton tank just like the T-26. The 7TP had a bit more armor and better build quality (i.e. it was more reliable), the T-26 had a better gun (Excluding the M1931, which was a direct copy of the original 6-ton tank and had machine gun only armament. It was only used in Winter War anyways.) A big factor why the 7TP did so well was that in 1939 the Pz I and Pz II still made a very large percentage of the German tank forces, whereas in 1941 there were many more Pz III and of course Pz 38(t) tanks, the importance of which for the early German victories is often forgotten.

Absolutely-I touched on that in a paper I did in college, examining how absolutely vital the Czech war spoils were for the Nazis going into Poland and France.

The point I was trying to make about the 7TP was more that it was plenty "Good Enough" to fight in the early part of the war, the problem was there just wasn't enough of them. Hell, the Poles even adopted German tank doctrine to the best of their ability, and had formed two mechanized armored/infantry brigades...the problem was the Germans had something like 25 or 30.

[xt828]

Did the Poles adopt German doctrine or did they develop something analagous independently? If the former, what was the method of transmission? Were there Polish military missions in Germany in the interwar period?

[Slacker]

From what I read, after 1935, they realized the Germans were probably going to be a bigger threat than the Soviets. At that point, Liddell-Hart's theories in armored warfare had started to make the rounds, and they noticed the Germans taking notice of them. I'm not sure on the exact method of transmission-there were some military missions going back and forth, but from what I can tell they weren't major. There also seems to have been some French influence in terms of the unit's architecture and formation.

The result was, they managed to field two motorized brigades before the start of the war-first the 10 Motorized Cavalry Brigade, the 'Black Brigade', and then the Warsaw Armored-Motorized Brigade, which was still getting on its feet when the war started. They were built around two battalions of motorized infantry, with a battalion of tanks and some arty and support elements. They also had two stand alone tank battalions, which were deployed to support infantry divisions, but they used some older equipment.

The 10th fought in the south of Poland, and managed to escape to Hungary after the Soviets invaded. They formed the core of the First Armored Division (Polish) in Britain, which participated in the post-Normandy operations, had a pretty big part in liberating Belgium, the Netherlands, and capturing the Kriegsmarine base at Williamshaven.

The Polish Army now has a 10th Mechanized Brigade, which I would imagine carries on the traditions of the unit.

[xt828]

I always wondered what the major influences on interwar Polish armoured doctrine were, because for most countries it was heavily based on their last war. The Germans wanted to avoid another drawn-out trench war, while the French expected one, and the British built tanks for trench warfare and tanks to engage tanks, likening the latter to warships. For the Soviets and the Poles, though, the last major war was the Polish-Soviet conflict, which was a lot more freewheeling and fluid, and for the Poles characterised by staunch defense. There does seem to be a fair emphasis on mobility in defense in Polish doctrine, but there also seems to have been a definite French influence early on and later a British one, and what I've seen of Polish designs which were on the drawing board there seem to be parallels with contemporary Soviet design. It's an interesting picture.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Polish units always looked like a pretty straightforward horse goes mechanized cavalry evolution to me, which is what an awful lot of militaries did. Even the Germans couldn’t escape doing this despite having a sound doctrine of forming completely new armored units, and thus wasted a whole bunch of resources forming the various ‘light’ divisions which ended up being functionally useless exactly as Guderian predicted. Also don't just assume everyone had to get a doctrine from just one or two well publicized sources, everyone in the world was talking about armor and mechanized concepts and a great deal of parallel evolution took place.

[Big Orange]

In the mid to late Western conflict where the US Military dislodged the Axis armour divisions partially with massed indirect artillery fire, I hazard a guess that the M12 Gun Motor Carriage spearheaded this strategy? A mass of 155mm M1/M1A1 Howitzer cannons flinging 42.5kg HE shells potentially as far as 23, 000 meters wouldn't done the dug in Germans and Italians any good (with tank turret roofs having thin armour).

And while M4 Sherman in US Army service was widely decried for its relatively puny AT capabilities when up against the more showy Panthers and Tigers, people seem to forget about the Tank Destroyer variants and the M36 Gun Motor Carriage (that had a 90mm cannon, which must've been similar to the Tiger's infamous 88mm cannon).

Recently I've purchased Tank Men (Robert Kershaw) which seems like a good introduction as any to an overview of WWII tank development and combat.

[Mr Bean]

And while M4 Sherman in US Army service was widely decried for its relatively puny AT capabilities when up against the more showy Panthers and Tigers, people seem to forget about the Tank Destroyer variants and the M36 Gun Motor Carriage (that had a 90mm cannon, which must've been similar to the Tiger's infamous 88mm cannon).

First off the Shermans 75mm gun had issues penetrating the front armor of Stug's and Panzer IV's let alone Tiger's and Panthers. Except at short ranges under 500 meters the Sherman 75mm could not penetrate their front armor. It's often noted the British 6pdr (57mm) gun out penetrated the Sherman 75mm due to the 75mm's comparatively low velocity of only 619 m/s compared to 6pdrs 890 and most German 75mm's 750 meter or higher muzzle velocity.

Because the speed of the 75mm was so slow it was not only less accurate it had drop problems and lost penetration power rapidly with distance. The reason 76mm Shermans were so much more successful is the 76mm that the Hellcat and M10 also carried had a muzzle velocity of 880 m/s and with HVAP giving them penetration power to defeat Panthers and Tigers frontally at 1000 meters.

As or the M36 it was rare, used late in the war and not that useful. Of useful tank destroyers there were the M10s which were useful because there was nothing else that could fight Tigers and Panthers in mid 1942 to early 1944. And the Hellcat who's speed and low slung nature made it a true tank destroyer in the sense it could hide, kill a tank then escape at very high speed and set up elsewhere. The M36 was a re-hash of the M10 and by the time it was being used HVAP was available in larger numbers for the tank destroyers thus making the 90mm unneeded. But then HVAP using 76mm Shermans were already demonstrating that tank destroyers themselves were not as useful as normal tanks.

[Sea Skimmer]

76mm HVAP did not provide anything like the tank killing power of the 90mm which had its own HVAP. It could kill a Tiger the Army reckoned at 1,300 yards under combat conditions, but that isn't all that great. Tungsten simply gave more erratic performance then steel shot did and development of the 3in anti tank gun and its ammunition was a protracted and flawed process. Basically work actually stopped for a while, and then it was restarted and rushed into production with flaws. The flaws in the ammo took a while correct, and even longer to flush out the bad ammo by firing it in combat.

The US should have had 90mm vehicles rolling off the line by late 1943 but Army Ground Forces and the Ordnance Corps were not run by the brightest people and spent a long time prior to this fighting each other over weather or not the army should have self propelled artillery at all. This is why you see so many towed artillery pieces in the US military in WW2 despite the utter hoards of tanks and tank destroyers. Army Ground Forces wouldn't even let SP weapons be produced until late 1942.

The entire US Tank Destroyer Doctrine and all of its early designs, really everything until the M36 was all based on propaganda myths of how Blitzkrieg even worked. The people actually thought it was just a big 400+ strong swarm of tanks that came at you, and that highly agile anti tank vehicles deployed in mass would be the only possible counter. When the reality of combined arms sank in, the tank destroyers were a joke as they did not even have coaxial machine guns. This had some slight truth in 1940, but Germany changed the organization of the Panzer division shortly after.

Luckily the whole US Army was motorized, something only matched by the British and only then in the European Units, and that alone made it almost impossible for the Germans to beat us in large scale operations. They simply could not advance the bulk of the Nazi wonder beast and its horse drawn awesomeness fast enough to prevent us from retreating, no matter how potent a Tiger or Panther might be it ran out of gas fast.

[Mr Bean]

When the reality of combined arms sank in, the tank destroyers were a joke as they did not even have coaxial machine guns. This had some slight truth in 1940, but Germany changed the organization of the Panzer division shortly after.

Did come with not, not did not mount. M10 drivers were notorious stealing m34/42's, Browning m1919 and M2's and mounting them on improvised mounts on the gun. I have account I've heard from a M10 driver in Itay that any non-factory fresh m10 went around with some kind of home made coaxials.

They should have been there from the start but the troops found ways around their limitations.

[CaptHawkeye]

Wow, what other cases of designers making catastrophically poor decisions can people think of because of rumors and myths?

Anyone else remember Battleship ram bows?

[Sea Skimmer]

Wow, what other cases of designers making catastrophically poor decisions can people think of because of rumors and myths?

Anyone else remember Battleship ram bows?

Ram bows came out of actual combat in the US Civil War and then the great and glorious Battle of Lissa; which was seen as justifying the concept on the open sea as opposed to merely confined coastal waters as in the USCW. They should have died out much sooner... but a pretty strong era did exist in which even the heaviest guns simply couldn't beat the heaviest armor except through sustained battering to crack it apart. Ramming sank two Italian ironclads at Lissa, while at the same time even the unarmored wooden Austrian ship of the line Kaiser was able to not only survive but remain under power after close range action against the heaviest guns the Italians had.

During the same period it was also common for ironclads and battleships to actually transport steam powered launches armed with spar torpedoes as a solution to this issue, intending to release them from davits the ramming melee. This concept actually survived into the era of locomotive torpedoes with slightly larger launches (and even dedicated motherships in the RN) before machine guns made a joke out of it... and then Japan brought it back in a different form when it deployed fast surface ships as midget submarine launchers in WW2. Bad ideas can be highly sustainable.

Did come with not, not did not mount. M10 drivers were notorious stealing m34/42's, Browning m1919 and M2's and mounting them on improvised mounts on the gun. I have account I've heard from a M10 driver in Itay that any non-factory fresh m10 went around with some kind of home made coaxials.

They should have been there from the start but the troops found ways around their limitations.

I've seen them with added on machine guns, but never one which could be reloaded from under cover which is a major advantage of the coax. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t possible though. People also improvised lids for the turret for two years before the first factory kits appeared for that, but this meant the lids were often cut from steel which was not armor plate and prone to spalling.

[thejester]

Wow, what other cases of designers making catastrophically poor decisions can people think of because of rumors and myths?

Not sure you can call it a myth, it just was a misreading. Panzer divisions were very armour heavy before the reorganisation for Barbarossa, IIRC, and as a result the image of a mass of tanks barrelling down wasn't that much of a misrepresentation. Of course by the time the US Army got onto the continent in '44 the situation had changed dramatically and the days of the massed panzer offensive was over. That said, at the Bulge TD battalions (IIRC) basically got the tactical roll they had been designed for and performed well. It's just that by 1944 that role was a rarity.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes a 1940 Panzer division had two tank regiments and one panzer grenadier regiment, which only had one company mounted in half tracks. The total tank strength was close to 400 vehicles strong. But in late 1940-41 the Germans stripped out the Panzer Is and most Panzer IIs while converting the divisions to have a single tank regiment. At the same time the number of Panzer divisions was doubled and Panzer III and IV strength basically stayed the same. Word of this did reach the US Army, it was ignored. The US formed its own armored divisions with the same arrangement and refused to change it for a long time. Mind the US Army was also operating off propaganda claims for a while that the Germans had invaded France with somewhere between 30-45 mechanized divisions, when in reality it was about 15. This propaganda sought to hide the fact that the British and French had lost the battle with more tanks then the Germans; though around 1944 the truth became public.

Still, nothing about dedicated turreted open roof tank destroyers ever made any sense. The US thought it had to have an agility advantage, and totally missed the fact that nobody advanced tanks at top speed because that was obvious suicide. The Tank Destroyer Command though expected exactly that to happen. In reality even on the attack German tanks would often advance so slowly that commanders reported having trouble seeing if they were moving at all, until artillery fire was directed at them to poke them into action. Because the tank destroyers demanded agility they didn't get armor, and they resisted any call for a weapon heavier then 3in. Meanwhile they also fought to see that all 3in guns went on tank destroyers and that the Sherman remain armed with a 75mm, because it was not supposed to fight tanks. That was eating into the tank destroyer command turf!

The tank destroyers basically worked in North Africa and in 1944, but even with the vast numbers they had they didn’t even come close to what the command though was required, and they accomplished nothing which required a dedicated service arm. They never once fought as a brigade as intended and ended up parceled out to divisions who used them as tanks. Indeed the latter precluded the former. I mean really, this decision to make them a service arm is the same as if in the modern day we decided that rocket launchers kick so much bad-ass that we need to make them a completely different branch with its own badges and chain of command then the field artillery with 105mm and 155mm howitzers. You could come up with reasons to do it... but its stupid and leads to arbitrary riviarily.

Almost anything the tank destroyers ever did could have been accomplished by simply assigning regular anti tank battalions to US infantry and armored divisions as the Germans and most other people did. Instead a US division had to operate not knowing if it would have this capability or not since it wasn’t organic. That’s one of the reasons why the Buldge didn’t go so well, specific weapons details aside, the natural anti tank strength of US infantry divisions was simply low.

[Mr Bean]

You did not even get into the mention of the M10 that ended up being used as artillery. In fact this was supposedly the most popular use of M10 in 1943 in Italy during the advance on the various defensive lines was as makeshift artillery, rolling up to blind fire over ridges at enemy positions or as out and out guns with one M10 acting as a range finder tossing a shell and walking it in, then using crude markers to lay the other m10's on fire (The same person to told me about how they made thier own coxial's in Itay mention carving range markers on the upper sections of the head plate of their m10 so they could figure out roughly how far the shell went when the gun was at 30" VS 45" and moving into position to execute firing missions.

According to him when they got counter battered they were normally pretty safe because the Germans assume the m10's were field guns and thus further back or when working in concert with standard artillery were safe because the counter-battery would always target the 105's not his little 3inch shells by contrast .

[Sea Skimmer]

They used everything as artillery in Italy… and the US Army had some less then impressive leadership when it came how to handle big guns. I was reading something not that long ago on how 5th Army failed to request anything heavier then 155mm until well into the campaign, and then treated the few heavy pieces it got as nothing but a replacement for bulk 155mm bombardment. It ended up becoming a matter of initiative in the artillery battalions themselves to put the first 240mm howitzers to proper use.

The 3in gun on the M10 was pretty useful for artillery really, because it had a range of 14,000 yards while the divisional 105mm howitzers only reached 11,000 yards. The US Army adapted a British 4.5in gun for the divisional long range role that reached 21,000 yards; but it was never common. Only about 600 of the US version were ever made. The ammo was seen as too crappy and troublesome, and the US Army had plenty of heavy trucks to haul 155mm weapons. Germany was also nice enough to slowly phase out its own 105mm long range gun, only to field ever more 170mm weapons. Very annoying since the only US weapon that could match it was the very rare 8in M1 gun. That's how we got the crappy 175mm postwar after Russia cloned the 170mm role with its own 180mm S-23.

[Sea Skimmer]

Took me a bit to remember the name and find this, but for anyone interested on the history of the US Army Tank Destroyer Command I highly recommend this book:
Seek, Strike, and Destroy: U.S. Army Tank Destroyer Doctrine in World War II, Dr. Christopher R. Gabel.
http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/gabel2.pdf

Its 94 pages and talks not just about the tank destroyers but the evolution of US anti tank tactics and divisional organization in general.

[aieeegrunt]

76mm HVAP did not provide anything like the tank killing power of the 90mm which had its own HVAP. It could kill a Tiger the Army reckoned at 1,300 yards under combat conditions, but that isn't all that great. Tungsten simply gave more erratic performance then steel shot did and development of the 3in anti tank gun and its ammunition was a protracted and flawed process. Basically work actually stopped for a while, and then it was restarted and rushed into production with flaws. The flaws in the ammo took a while correct, and even longer to flush out the bad ammo by firing it in combat.

The US should have had 90mm vehicles rolling off the line by late 1943 but Army Ground Forces and the Ordnance Corps were not run by the brightest people and spent a long time prior to this fighting each other over weather or not the army should have self propelled artillery at all. This is why you see so many towed artillery pieces in the US military in WW2 despite the utter hoards of tanks and tank destroyers. Army Ground Forces wouldn't even let SP weapons be produced until late 1942.

The entire US Tank Destroyer Doctrine and all of its early designs, really everything until the M36 was all based on propaganda myths of how Blitzkrieg even worked. The people actually thought it was just a big 400+ strong swarm of tanks that came at you, and that highly agile anti tank vehicles deployed in mass would be the only possible counter. When the reality of combined arms sank in, the tank destroyers were a joke as they did not even have coaxial machine guns. This had some slight truth in 1940, but Germany changed the organization of the Panzer division shortly after.

Luckily the whole US Army was motorized, something only matched by the British and only then in the European Units, and that alone made it almost impossible for the Germans to beat us in large scale operations. They simply could not advance the bulk of the Nazi wonder beast and its horse drawn awesomeness fast enough to prevent us from retreating, no matter how potent a Tiger or Panther might be it ran out of gas fast.

Along with it's other excellent qualities the Sherman was also much easier to ship across the Atlantic than a 90mm gun tank would be. Churning out Sherman's meant that the majority of small unit combats for the Americans would be American Infantry + Sherman support verses German Infantry. Very rarely some German Super Armor might make an appearance, and once or twice a year there would be a suicidal German Panzer rush like Mortain or the Ardennes.

I agree that the design of the US tank destroyers was kind of dumb, but just about every army suffered some design stupidity before getting it's own practical hands on experience.

[CaptHawkeye]

Well, the biggest killer of tanks during the war wasn't even other tanks. It was AP shot fired from Anti Tank guns. In this regard low velocity guns firing varieties of HE shells ended up being more necessary for a tank to defend itself with. Hell as it was the Allies ended the war with majority M4A3 Sherman tanks with 75mm gun. Firefly's were few and far between and the axis armour to challenge them with even fewer.

Though the 75mm gun on the Sherman was still too small for the job and it took waaaaay longer than it should have to get the 105mm gun equipped.

[MKSheppard]

Hell as it was the Allies ended the war with majority M4A3 Sherman tanks with 75mm gun.

Actually...in January 1945 the US 12th Army Group requested that no more 75mm tanks be sent to the ETO and in February 1945 simply stopped returning damaged 75mm tanks to service from repair depots. By April 1945 some six hundred 75mm shermans were sitting around idle in rear depots.

By May 1945, the 76mm Sherman made up 52.3% of the US 12th Army Group's total tank strength.

Same thing also happened in US 6th Army Group, which in May 1945 had 51.5% of total tanks on strength as 76mm.

As a slight aside:

In February 1945, the dormant 17 pounder program in the US Army got a kickstart, with pilots for the M4A3 (17-pdr) completed on 15 March 1945. This conversion differed in many ways from the British conversion. An order for 160 was placed with completion set for 30 April 1945.

By 7 April 1945, the US Army decided not to proceed past the first 80 conversions, since the war was clearly ending. They were to be divided up between the 1st and 9th Armies at 40 tanks each.

The conversions were completed on 7 May 1945 and the last converted tank left Southampton England for the front on 10 May 1945.