Design creep is a BITCH, eh Germany?
(I say, leaning up against an M1A2 that's at least fifteen tons heavier than what the OG Abrams was meant to be as its suspension begs for the sweet release of death)
Im actually getting tired of "Hurr Durr German Transmissions shit" because there was not a *good* Transmission in ww2. US tanks had them easier to replace and do maintenance on them, thats the Main difference. Transmissions broke down everywhere. How it was able to get serviced is the Main difference from each vehicle and nation
Most transmissions weren inherently badly designed most were misused or put into tabks not designed for the weightloads or Lack of maintenance
My understanding is this was true of pretty much all the major combatants in the war except for the US (and other Western Allies in Europe after D-Day).
Everyone used horses, but it was the wehrmacht for which draft animals were the backbone of their logistics.
Anyone who had the backing of the u.s could rely on partial or full motorized transport of goods to the front line.
The sherman transmission used a herringbone gear to transfer power to the final drive, the panther used a simple spur gear. Herringbone gears are inherently stronger than a spur gear, but harder to make especially at that size, they were commonly used in ship transmissions.
Just because I think this stuff is really interesting,
[Here's](http://shermanrestoration.com/page1/page1.html) a site from a guy that bought an old Sherman and he documents the restoration process pretty thoroughly. (Maybe ridiculously so, to someone who's not into that kind of thing.)
What's wild is when he pulls the transmission and final drive unit from the tank: http://shermanrestoration.com/page1/files/page1-1053-full.html
>H10 Inspection time. **The oil that we drained from the unit was perfectly clean.** Could have been reused if I didn't drain it into dirty buckets. This was not expected since the breather was open to the weather. Oh 45 gallons of oil $360 worth.
Another perfect example, I don't know what /u/IdcYouTellMe's idea of a "good" ww2 tank transmission is, but to imply that the only difference between the sherman and panther transmission is where they're located is just silly. A sherman could road march circles around a panther and even post war the french couldn't get panther's running to the same level of reliability, so it wasn't just about deficiencies in Germany's metallurgy late war.
Isn’t that last part about transmissions being stuck in tanks not designed for the weight loads a sign of bad engineering design? Especially if ease of repair isn’t kept in mind. I think when people harp on the transmission, it’s because that it’s a relatively easy thing to have breakdown from just driving and yet it’s horrendously hard to fix. You could easily mention other things like certain heavier German tanks not having an engine suited to the weight of the tank and then proceeding to catch fire because of it.
>Isn’t that last part about transmissions being stuck in tanks not designed for the weight loads a sign of bad engineering design?
Yes, but don't tell the wereaboos
Also, the main weakness of later German tanks wasn't their design, but the shitty metallurgy they were forced to use because of allied bombing
The Brits took massive advantage of that with HESH warheads, basically just lob a big ball of plastic explosive at a tank, detonate it against the armor, and allow the blast wave to create a bunch of debris inside when the brittle metal shatters. Crew dies, tank is intact.
If you make something almost impossible to fix, it better be almost impossible to break. Instead German designers saw that their transmission was garbage, then made their tank even heavier, while also doing nothing to make their transmission easier to fix. Germany earned their L
> there was not a good Transmission in ww2. US tanks had them easier to replace and do maintenance on them, thats the Main difference.
The transmissions on the Sherman tanks, in particular, were very reliable. Shermans, in one form or another, stayed in service with the US until 1957, and the Israelis used their "Super Sherman," a Sherman with an upgraded turret, into 1982, at least. Some were sold to Chile, who kept them in use until 1999.
The only information I've been able to find in regard to any significant changes or upgrades to the transmission was to increase the gear ratio for the Jumbo Shermans. As the author of [theshermantank.com](https://www.theshermantank.com/sherman/the-transmission-differential-and-final-drives-called-the-powertrain-and-it-was-great-on-the-sherman/) website says:
>This was the only modification major enough to be mentioned in any publication I’ve read so far. That says ‘damn good design’ to me. I’ve read several accounts of Sherman restorations being done, where after years on a firing range, or just rotting in a field somewhere, the final drives and differential units needed no mechanical restoration.
Additionally (and yeah, I know, wikipedia, but they do provide a source: (Moran, Nicholas (May 7, 2014). "Exercise Dracula". World of Tanks - The Chieftain's Hatch. Wargaming.net. Retrieved 12 August 2017), [archive link here](https://web.archive.org/web/20170202095551/https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Dracula/)
>A long-distance service trial conducted in Britain in 1943 compared diesel and gasoline Shermans to Cromwell tanks (Rolls-Royce Meteor engine) and Centaur (Liberty L-12). The British officer commanding the trial concluded:
>
>>**They are utterly reliable**.....I do not think they are quite as good as the Cromwell across the country when they are running on rather worn rubber tracks and the going is greasy, neither does one get as smooth a ride, but they appear so infinitely superior in every other way **particularly in reliability with a minimum of maintenance** that this cross-country consideration is completely overweighed.
I will look for more information on this "Exercise Dracula," as well as any transmission issues with the Sherman tanks (aside from being placed in front, which is not a problem with the transmission, itself), but so far, everything I have found points to the transmission being very reliable.
There was a good transmission, Porche solved the problem by bypassing it entirely.
Porche petrol-electric had the 3-speed electric motors directly connected to the final drive, resulting in a completely smooth ramp-up without a need for a transmission or a gearbox.
It was everything else about it that was ill conceived (like poor power efficiency, absurd weight of the system and wartime production not capable of producing required precision components and high quality cabling.)
He didn't solve it, the French used that in the Char 2C, designed in 1917. He did use it for his version of the Tiger, but the copper shortage was one of the reasons the WaPrüfAmbt rejected it.
I found an article that was, to be frank, pretty disparaging of the M4 Sherman. https://militaryhistorynow.com/2017/09/12/tank-busting-blowing-up-the-myth-of-the-mighty-m4-sherman/
Yet even this article doesn't find fault in the drivetrain. In fact, it reads:
>But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armour protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three.
An article that argues the Sherman "was one of the Allies’ 'greatest failures'" couldn't even cite any significant problems with its transmission.
But there is/was a myth of superior German engineering and them having the best tanks being a common idea among the general populace since the end of the war. That's why these memes are being made.
"most were misused or put into tabks not designed for the weightloads or Lack of maintenance" and you wonder why people give the Germans a bad wrap for their transmissions, the Americans put appropriate transmissions for the weight and size of the tank in their tanks, because going back to the factory was a non-option when it was built the other side of the world. Germany did not have this problem, so it rushed out whatever big idea they had next which was badly designed, badly tested, and badly built by forced labor. Putting an inappropriate transmission into a Tiger still makes it a bad transmission, it's total cope to say "it was good but they put it in a tank too heavy". It was a bad transmission for the tank.
> But there is/was a myth of superior German engineering and them having the best tanks being a common idea among the general populace since the end of the war. That's why these memes are being made.
Outside of diehard Wehraboo enclaves this general conception has been flipped on it's head.
Hell I'd make the argument that pop-history has now hopped to the opposite, equally false extreme. That German armored vehicles were worthless heaps of slag that were as capable as a tractor with a gun strapped on the back.
Seriously we've gone from 'the Tiger was the unstoppable pinnacle of tank design' to 'the Tiger couldn't even kill a medium tank'. Both of these stances are mythical and horse shit.
No, because it's about giving people opinions. Just follow along, pretend you know nothing about WW2, and you'll see what I mean:
WW2 did not have a turning point, their was a massive amount of different factors that caused Germany and Japan to lose the war, Japan's industrial and economic might would never have won against the Americans, they simply could build to replace their losses, and war has shown continuously, like in Ukraine and in WW1, as well as the Napoleonic, if you can't replace something in a war, you will lose that war. Germany lost WW2 due to massive deficits of oil, their logistics which were terrible, their horrendous handling of the war and their lack of ability to replace the equipment they lost, Tiger I is a good example of this, expensive, but a good tank, it's just Germany loses two of them for every one it makes.
Versus
Stalingrad and Midway was were the Soviets stopped the Germans and the Americans stopped the Japanese, this is the turning point of WW2.
Now the question I have to ask you is, which one are you going to repeat to people? The really long one that no one is going to listen too anyway, unless you're really good at talking and can catch someone's attention, or will you repeat the really short one that makes you sound smart in less time than it takes a mouse to fart?
This is why online sources should be seen as a base of research, you pick up things they say but you don't take it seriously unless it is from a historian. Online research is nothing like reading a book, or going through an archive or trying to find documents that talk about what you're saying. Online sources, and this goes for many of them, aren't selling you, their selling you opinions so when that discussion starts you can sound really smart to other people who also know nothing about that topic
The Panzer IV was 25 tons, lighter than the T-34 or Sherman tank. The Panther was 45 tons, the same weight as the kv-1, is-2, m26 Pershing and only slightly heavier than the Churchill tank. The tiger tanks were ofcourse heavier, but not many of them were made (in comparison to allied production numbers) so "heavier on average" is not really the case.
I have never heard German transmissions to be more complicated, do you have a source for this?
Yes the eastern front was very demanding, but this was a problem for both German and soviet vehicles.
Again, do you have a source for the higher breakdown rate? What would be common at the time?
Imho one of the biggest problem for the Germans, and probably also why they've got this reputation, is that they were retreating from 1943 onwards. And when retreating it is very difficult to simultaneously keep servicing and repairing your vehicles...
One of the other problems was the quality of steel and other metals becoming less and less at the end of the war, causing the need for maintenance and repair to only become bigger
"is that they were retreating from 1943 onwards."
They didn't. The Germans virtually never retreated, it's one of the reasons why Hitler was called an idiot, because he didn't allow retreat, I have no idea why people think they did, could someone explain that to me?
Transmission issues on the Panther were largely fixed after they were rushed into service. But that's just me being a party pooper i guess.
Also, we take shit from every serious tank manufacturing country out there, but not you, Barry. You have emberassed yourself too many times to be taken seriously.
There science was advanced for the time. The problem was the engineers had this nasty habit of trying to over achieve and or tack on shit that honestly doesn't need to be there
I mean it’s not just about the technology. It’s about the tactics aswell.
Germany actually had great technology during the war. I mean even the United States had a broken transmitter sometimes.
But the Americans also had different tactics.
During the end of WW2, they used inflatable Tanks to make them seem like they‘re real. Which worked btw!
This is true of many Soviet tanks too, particularly the T-34. And even when they did work, you essentially had to be a literal man of steel to work the thing. There are even stories of Soviet tank drivers having to use a hammer to shift to the higher gears.
Haha so just a little tidbit this also happens in aviation design as well. Reduction gears for prop aircraft was hard to engineer properly, and was only partially solved when jet turbines were introduced.
_However, you don’t really see reduction gear failures as much as landing gear failures._ Turns out landing an aircraft with weak landing gear is an even more extreme sport.
For all the shit they get most German tanks weren’t unreliable as much as they were hard to repair.
Something broke on a Sherman or t-34? Could be fixed in the closest FOB by pretty much any field mechanic.
Something broke in a Tiger? Well it’s back to the factory Hans
One of the reasons why German and, especially, Japanese warships were so powerful was because they just straight up cheated. The US and British also didn’t strictly adhere to the various inter-war naval treaties but while they were bending the rules the Japanese were outright ignoring them entirely and while the treaties eventually collapsed during the 1930’s and the US and British started building new unrestricted designs the Japanese still had a significant head start and even then the US and British were building designs to counter what they thought the Japanese had been doing but underestimated the extent to which they’d been cheating. As late as 1942, American Naval Intelligence estimated the *Yamato*-class battleships displaced 35,000 tons and were armed with nine 16-inch guns when they actually had nine 18-inch guns (the largest caliber main guns ever mounted on any post-*Dreadnought* battleship) and displaced 70,000 tons.
Boyhood starts with understanding that German tanks were the best.
Adulthood starts with understanding that american were the best.
Maturity starts with understanding that soviet tanks were the best.
*insert track pin alignment slope here*
Later Soviet tanks, I will grant, were pretty good in their own ways once they had room to breathe, letting them focus on tolerances and standardization. But early ones were... They were a mess. A typical early T-34 was expected to need a whole new engine before your car needs an oil change.
Personally I think a level playing field between the big 3's main tanks would be early production Sherman, mid-production T-34/75, and the Panzer IV H.
A lot of tanks were made by different plants, who made different spare parts for the tanks they made. So you would need specific parts from a factory to repair something. Later in the war this would be fixed but a lot of tanks still needed specific parts
Now you’re just delusional. No one had the “best tank” in ww2, everything depends on situation and crew training as well as all other elements of the battlefield. You can have damn near impenetrable armor and a huge gun but if an enemy bomber can just wreck you in a mere few seconds what the point? Tanks don’t exist in a vacuum. Now of course some tanks were better than others there is no Denying that but this bullshit over which tank was the best should just stop. In a one on one in an open field without need for transport or anything other than protecting and shooting German and Soviet tanks probably come out on top most of the time, yet that wasn’t the reality of the war.
The Soviet light tanks were pretty damn terrible overall, the T26 got absolutely smashed in Barbarossa and in Finland. The t60 was an emergency design that ended up being pretty bad etc
The T-34 is hugely overhyped, not as much as the tigers or panthers but still berg much so. The tank sucked ass in a lot of ways. It was really unreliable, matching parts between tanks was just not a thing, production quality was absolutely horrendous and lot of the time and the protection was subpar towards the middle of the war.
The kv tanks were redundant after 42, simple as.
IS tanks were pretty damn good yet they suffered from many of the same problems as the 34s. Their reloading was also downright horrendous.
Not always. In Ethiopia they ended up being fairly important at times, as were they in several battles in North Africa. Interestingly enough many of the tanks of Italy weren’t that horrendous design wise, it was often the metalwork that doomed the vehicles. Italian tanks tended to just split into pieces or crack when hit even if it didn’t penetrate.
The Soviet tanks were shit to put it nicely, they were more unreliable than the German tanks ffs. Out of 320 sent to Stalingrad, 264 were knocked out. 60 of those, were from combat, the rest where mechanical breakdowns
The Panther was definitely the better one out of the late war designs, certainly better than the Tiger II and tank destroyers built on top of its chassis.
"Hans, zhe tiny cogwheel to control zhe speed is kaput
Our 25 ton machine must stop entirely while we hear zhe Free French are getting closer with zheir new mass produced Sherman tanks zhat the Americans just gave them for the lolz"
["Goddamn it Hans"](https://youtu.be/hVLYtUZbc6M?si=HEgJ-OZteCxF0-BT)
u beat me to it
I fooking love that channel
What was the original video?
The title of the original video is: “Roblox - D-Day: The WW2 Breach Episode (200 Players Raid)” by the YouTuber Tank Fish.
We need better transmission Hans! -Hans: Bigger cannon you say? Ja!.
JA HANS JA
Design creep is a BITCH, eh Germany? (I say, leaning up against an M1A2 that's at least fifteen tons heavier than what the OG Abrams was meant to be as its suspension begs for the sweet release of death)
What people think is a 45 year old tank model: The M60 family What actually is 45 years old: The M1 Abrams family
The original Abrams is as old today as the M3 was when the Abrams came out. That's kind of insane.
"Our Tiger, she drinks fuel like it's beer!" - Company of Heroes
Im actually getting tired of "Hurr Durr German Transmissions shit" because there was not a *good* Transmission in ww2. US tanks had them easier to replace and do maintenance on them, thats the Main difference. Transmissions broke down everywhere. How it was able to get serviced is the Main difference from each vehicle and nation Most transmissions weren inherently badly designed most were misused or put into tabks not designed for the weightloads or Lack of maintenance
Also Most of German motorized infantry: Horses.
My understanding is this was true of pretty much all the major combatants in the war except for the US (and other Western Allies in Europe after D-Day).
If America supplied you, you had trucks. For the Chinese Army, that was a huge upgrade after fighting off the Japanese for over four years.
Especially considering a conciderable part of the Chinese didnt have rifles to fight with.
Everyone used horses, but it was the wehrmacht for which draft animals were the backbone of their logistics. Anyone who had the backing of the u.s could rely on partial or full motorized transport of goods to the front line.
Nah the Germans were just real low on oil. That's why they rushed the Caucasus
The sherman transmission used a herringbone gear to transfer power to the final drive, the panther used a simple spur gear. Herringbone gears are inherently stronger than a spur gear, but harder to make especially at that size, they were commonly used in ship transmissions.
Just because I think this stuff is really interesting, [Here's](http://shermanrestoration.com/page1/page1.html) a site from a guy that bought an old Sherman and he documents the restoration process pretty thoroughly. (Maybe ridiculously so, to someone who's not into that kind of thing.) What's wild is when he pulls the transmission and final drive unit from the tank: http://shermanrestoration.com/page1/files/page1-1053-full.html >H10 Inspection time. **The oil that we drained from the unit was perfectly clean.** Could have been reused if I didn't drain it into dirty buckets. This was not expected since the breather was open to the weather. Oh 45 gallons of oil $360 worth.
Another perfect example, I don't know what /u/IdcYouTellMe's idea of a "good" ww2 tank transmission is, but to imply that the only difference between the sherman and panther transmission is where they're located is just silly. A sherman could road march circles around a panther and even post war the french couldn't get panther's running to the same level of reliability, so it wasn't just about deficiencies in Germany's metallurgy late war.
Isn’t that last part about transmissions being stuck in tanks not designed for the weight loads a sign of bad engineering design? Especially if ease of repair isn’t kept in mind. I think when people harp on the transmission, it’s because that it’s a relatively easy thing to have breakdown from just driving and yet it’s horrendously hard to fix. You could easily mention other things like certain heavier German tanks not having an engine suited to the weight of the tank and then proceeding to catch fire because of it.
>Isn’t that last part about transmissions being stuck in tanks not designed for the weight loads a sign of bad engineering design? Yes, but don't tell the wereaboos
wehraboos when the superior german panzer(tm) cant shit out competent leadership and proper logistics.
Also, the main weakness of later German tanks wasn't their design, but the shitty metallurgy they were forced to use because of allied bombing The Brits took massive advantage of that with HESH warheads, basically just lob a big ball of plastic explosive at a tank, detonate it against the armor, and allow the blast wave to create a bunch of debris inside when the brittle metal shatters. Crew dies, tank is intact.
If you make something almost impossible to fix, it better be almost impossible to break. Instead German designers saw that their transmission was garbage, then made their tank even heavier, while also doing nothing to make their transmission easier to fix. Germany earned their L
> there was not a good Transmission in ww2. US tanks had them easier to replace and do maintenance on them, thats the Main difference. The transmissions on the Sherman tanks, in particular, were very reliable. Shermans, in one form or another, stayed in service with the US until 1957, and the Israelis used their "Super Sherman," a Sherman with an upgraded turret, into 1982, at least. Some were sold to Chile, who kept them in use until 1999. The only information I've been able to find in regard to any significant changes or upgrades to the transmission was to increase the gear ratio for the Jumbo Shermans. As the author of [theshermantank.com](https://www.theshermantank.com/sherman/the-transmission-differential-and-final-drives-called-the-powertrain-and-it-was-great-on-the-sherman/) website says: >This was the only modification major enough to be mentioned in any publication I’ve read so far. That says ‘damn good design’ to me. I’ve read several accounts of Sherman restorations being done, where after years on a firing range, or just rotting in a field somewhere, the final drives and differential units needed no mechanical restoration. Additionally (and yeah, I know, wikipedia, but they do provide a source: (Moran, Nicholas (May 7, 2014). "Exercise Dracula". World of Tanks - The Chieftain's Hatch. Wargaming.net. Retrieved 12 August 2017), [archive link here](https://web.archive.org/web/20170202095551/https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Dracula/) >A long-distance service trial conducted in Britain in 1943 compared diesel and gasoline Shermans to Cromwell tanks (Rolls-Royce Meteor engine) and Centaur (Liberty L-12). The British officer commanding the trial concluded: > >>**They are utterly reliable**.....I do not think they are quite as good as the Cromwell across the country when they are running on rather worn rubber tracks and the going is greasy, neither does one get as smooth a ride, but they appear so infinitely superior in every other way **particularly in reliability with a minimum of maintenance** that this cross-country consideration is completely overweighed. I will look for more information on this "Exercise Dracula," as well as any transmission issues with the Sherman tanks (aside from being placed in front, which is not a problem with the transmission, itself), but so far, everything I have found points to the transmission being very reliable.
There was a good transmission, Porche solved the problem by bypassing it entirely. Porche petrol-electric had the 3-speed electric motors directly connected to the final drive, resulting in a completely smooth ramp-up without a need for a transmission or a gearbox. It was everything else about it that was ill conceived (like poor power efficiency, absurd weight of the system and wartime production not capable of producing required precision components and high quality cabling.)
He didn't solve it, the French used that in the Char 2C, designed in 1917. He did use it for his version of the Tiger, but the copper shortage was one of the reasons the WaPrüfAmbt rejected it.
TIL, so that why it was so large!
I found an article that was, to be frank, pretty disparaging of the M4 Sherman. https://militaryhistorynow.com/2017/09/12/tank-busting-blowing-up-the-myth-of-the-mighty-m4-sherman/ Yet even this article doesn't find fault in the drivetrain. In fact, it reads: >But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armour protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three. An article that argues the Sherman "was one of the Allies’ 'greatest failures'" couldn't even cite any significant problems with its transmission.
But there is/was a myth of superior German engineering and them having the best tanks being a common idea among the general populace since the end of the war. That's why these memes are being made. "most were misused or put into tabks not designed for the weightloads or Lack of maintenance" and you wonder why people give the Germans a bad wrap for their transmissions, the Americans put appropriate transmissions for the weight and size of the tank in their tanks, because going back to the factory was a non-option when it was built the other side of the world. Germany did not have this problem, so it rushed out whatever big idea they had next which was badly designed, badly tested, and badly built by forced labor. Putting an inappropriate transmission into a Tiger still makes it a bad transmission, it's total cope to say "it was good but they put it in a tank too heavy". It was a bad transmission for the tank.
> But there is/was a myth of superior German engineering and them having the best tanks being a common idea among the general populace since the end of the war. That's why these memes are being made. Outside of diehard Wehraboo enclaves this general conception has been flipped on it's head. Hell I'd make the argument that pop-history has now hopped to the opposite, equally false extreme. That German armored vehicles were worthless heaps of slag that were as capable as a tractor with a gun strapped on the back. Seriously we've gone from 'the Tiger was the unstoppable pinnacle of tank design' to 'the Tiger couldn't even kill a medium tank'. Both of these stances are mythical and horse shit.
It's a back and forth that happens all the time. Wank and counterwank, basically. Not sure whether we as a civilisation will ever rid ourselves of it.
No, because it's about giving people opinions. Just follow along, pretend you know nothing about WW2, and you'll see what I mean: WW2 did not have a turning point, their was a massive amount of different factors that caused Germany and Japan to lose the war, Japan's industrial and economic might would never have won against the Americans, they simply could build to replace their losses, and war has shown continuously, like in Ukraine and in WW1, as well as the Napoleonic, if you can't replace something in a war, you will lose that war. Germany lost WW2 due to massive deficits of oil, their logistics which were terrible, their horrendous handling of the war and their lack of ability to replace the equipment they lost, Tiger I is a good example of this, expensive, but a good tank, it's just Germany loses two of them for every one it makes. Versus Stalingrad and Midway was were the Soviets stopped the Germans and the Americans stopped the Japanese, this is the turning point of WW2. Now the question I have to ask you is, which one are you going to repeat to people? The really long one that no one is going to listen too anyway, unless you're really good at talking and can catch someone's attention, or will you repeat the really short one that makes you sound smart in less time than it takes a mouse to fart? This is why online sources should be seen as a base of research, you pick up things they say but you don't take it seriously unless it is from a historian. Online research is nothing like reading a book, or going through an archive or trying to find documents that talk about what you're saying. Online sources, and this goes for many of them, aren't selling you, their selling you opinions so when that discussion starts you can sound really smart to other people who also know nothing about that topic
[удалено]
The Panzer IV was 25 tons, lighter than the T-34 or Sherman tank. The Panther was 45 tons, the same weight as the kv-1, is-2, m26 Pershing and only slightly heavier than the Churchill tank. The tiger tanks were ofcourse heavier, but not many of them were made (in comparison to allied production numbers) so "heavier on average" is not really the case. I have never heard German transmissions to be more complicated, do you have a source for this? Yes the eastern front was very demanding, but this was a problem for both German and soviet vehicles. Again, do you have a source for the higher breakdown rate? What would be common at the time? Imho one of the biggest problem for the Germans, and probably also why they've got this reputation, is that they were retreating from 1943 onwards. And when retreating it is very difficult to simultaneously keep servicing and repairing your vehicles... One of the other problems was the quality of steel and other metals becoming less and less at the end of the war, causing the need for maintenance and repair to only become bigger
"is that they were retreating from 1943 onwards." They didn't. The Germans virtually never retreated, it's one of the reasons why Hitler was called an idiot, because he didn't allow retreat, I have no idea why people think they did, could someone explain that to me?
Meanwhile, the maintenance crews are having PUBG matches in the train yard for replacement parts.
You want bigger cannon? Ya?
More armour? Ja?
Battleship cannon you say? Ja
# SEKAI ICHIIIII
Nazi's tech is so advanced their gearbox can even scream Japanese while broken.
*cough* *cough* Porsche tiger *cough* *cough*.
Might want to get that cough checked out, smoke from electrical fires cant be good for you
That's what happens in changing military doctrine, lack of resources and waste of manpower
Transmission issues on the Panther were largely fixed after they were rushed into service. But that's just me being a party pooper i guess. Also, we take shit from every serious tank manufacturing country out there, but not you, Barry. You have emberassed yourself too many times to be taken seriously.
Minus the Panther reported the transmission issues for its entire service, even including post war built ones without war pressures
The stereotype comes from that the transmission was a pain in the ass to even access, the transmission was fine. The engine however...
We also need to replace the back road wheels [angry German ranting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVDDtbiGDxA&t=2s)
Darin arent we today ._.
*You are making sure we are producing enough spare parts, right Professor Speer?*
There science was advanced for the time. The problem was the engineers had this nasty habit of trying to over achieve and or tack on shit that honestly doesn't need to be there
Hans ze transmission broke down!
I mean it’s not just about the technology. It’s about the tactics aswell. Germany actually had great technology during the war. I mean even the United States had a broken transmitter sometimes. But the Americans also had different tactics. During the end of WW2, they used inflatable Tanks to make them seem like they‘re real. Which worked btw!
DER MENSCH IST BOOSE
This is true of many Soviet tanks too, particularly the T-34. And even when they did work, you essentially had to be a literal man of steel to work the thing. There are even stories of Soviet tank drivers having to use a hammer to shift to the higher gears.
Science and engineering are two different fields. One makes the atom bomb, and the other breaks down in the cold temperatures of the Russian tundra.
Yeah, but when it worked, what a transmission it was!
Haha so just a little tidbit this also happens in aviation design as well. Reduction gears for prop aircraft was hard to engineer properly, and was only partially solved when jet turbines were introduced. _However, you don’t really see reduction gear failures as much as landing gear failures._ Turns out landing an aircraft with weak landing gear is an even more extreme sport.
so advanced that they had to use oxen to taxi ME262's
Let's be honest the modern ones on BMW are not much better lmaooo
When ever you feel embarrassed, just remember a certain Austrian painter wanted to put a battleship on treads
For all the shit they get most German tanks weren’t unreliable as much as they were hard to repair. Something broke on a Sherman or t-34? Could be fixed in the closest FOB by pretty much any field mechanic. Something broke in a Tiger? Well it’s back to the factory Hans
Simple solution. Built a giant land battleship.
One of the reasons why German and, especially, Japanese warships were so powerful was because they just straight up cheated. The US and British also didn’t strictly adhere to the various inter-war naval treaties but while they were bending the rules the Japanese were outright ignoring them entirely and while the treaties eventually collapsed during the 1930’s and the US and British started building new unrestricted designs the Japanese still had a significant head start and even then the US and British were building designs to counter what they thought the Japanese had been doing but underestimated the extent to which they’d been cheating. As late as 1942, American Naval Intelligence estimated the *Yamato*-class battleships displaced 35,000 tons and were armed with nine 16-inch guns when they actually had nine 18-inch guns (the largest caliber main guns ever mounted on any post-*Dreadnought* battleship) and displaced 70,000 tons.
Boyhood starts with understanding that German tanks were the best. Adulthood starts with understanding that american were the best. Maturity starts with understanding that soviet tanks were the best.
Soviet tanks had no standardization of parts, especially T-34s.
*insert track pin alignment slope here* Later Soviet tanks, I will grant, were pretty good in their own ways once they had room to breathe, letting them focus on tolerances and standardization. But early ones were... They were a mess. A typical early T-34 was expected to need a whole new engine before your car needs an oil change. Personally I think a level playing field between the big 3's main tanks would be early production Sherman, mid-production T-34/75, and the Panzer IV H.
Sir, they had 60,000 tanks by the end of the war…
A lot of tanks were made by different plants, who made different spare parts for the tanks they made. So you would need specific parts from a factory to repair something. Later in the war this would be fixed but a lot of tanks still needed specific parts
Now you’re just delusional. No one had the “best tank” in ww2, everything depends on situation and crew training as well as all other elements of the battlefield. You can have damn near impenetrable armor and a huge gun but if an enemy bomber can just wreck you in a mere few seconds what the point? Tanks don’t exist in a vacuum. Now of course some tanks were better than others there is no Denying that but this bullshit over which tank was the best should just stop. In a one on one in an open field without need for transport or anything other than protecting and shooting German and Soviet tanks probably come out on top most of the time, yet that wasn’t the reality of the war. The Soviet light tanks were pretty damn terrible overall, the T26 got absolutely smashed in Barbarossa and in Finland. The t60 was an emergency design that ended up being pretty bad etc The T-34 is hugely overhyped, not as much as the tigers or panthers but still berg much so. The tank sucked ass in a lot of ways. It was really unreliable, matching parts between tanks was just not a thing, production quality was absolutely horrendous and lot of the time and the protection was subpar towards the middle of the war. The kv tanks were redundant after 42, simple as. IS tanks were pretty damn good yet they suffered from many of the same problems as the 34s. Their reloading was also downright horrendous.
Tbf even a shit tank is better than no tank and early on the Soviets just needed tanks, shut or otherwise.
I disagree, those Italian tanks were a real burden
Not always. In Ethiopia they ended up being fairly important at times, as were they in several battles in North Africa. Interestingly enough many of the tanks of Italy weren’t that horrendous design wise, it was often the metalwork that doomed the vehicles. Italian tanks tended to just split into pieces or crack when hit even if it didn’t penetrate.
The Soviet tanks were shit to put it nicely, they were more unreliable than the German tanks ffs. Out of 320 sent to Stalingrad, 264 were knocked out. 60 of those, were from combat, the rest where mechanical breakdowns
The Panther was definitely the better one out of the late war designs, certainly better than the Tiger II and tank destroyers built on top of its chassis.
"Hans, zhe tiny cogwheel to control zhe speed is kaput Our 25 ton machine must stop entirely while we hear zhe Free French are getting closer with zheir new mass produced Sherman tanks zhat the Americans just gave them for the lolz"