Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

I think someone posted this before.

You can find some amazing photos of a HL230 overhaul in a shop in Europe. 

http://www.armytech.com/panther_maybach_hl230_overhaul/#PhotoSwipe1611282212417

2 hours ago, heretic88 said:

 

Just people who write... AND spend their time studying original archives, documents, reports and the actual surviving vehicles. This is the difference between amateurs (like it or not, all of us are amateurs on forums such as this) and experts... Of course they may make mistakes, but overall, their knowledge about their subjects is FAR above mine, yours, and anybody else on this forum combined. 

What's really pathetic, is they had examples of good books on Armor, the Books by Hunnicutt, but still produced basically, propaganda, picture books for scale modelers and people who like poorly designed Nazi weapons. 

10 hours ago, delete013 said:

Actually I don't. If there is smth that German officers indeed did lie quite reliably is war crimes. Or better, tried to hide them. They were ashamed of them.

They were ashamed they got caught, or that they lost. These were not good honorable people. They fought a dreadful war of Genocide against the Soviet Union(and we all know about the 6 million Jews and another 4 to 5 millions other civilians in Europe they murdered), and they all knew what was going on in the camps. It's really sad to see someone white knighting about their honor.  You really think these people are going to be honest about the things they did? No, they wanted fools like you to think they were just honorable men forced to fight for a Maniac. That's bullshit, the good Germans died in the camps after resisting, you know there were resistors right? 

On 2/26/2021 at 12:56 AM, delete013 said:

Who had better mobility, panther or pershing?

What had better mobility Panther or Pershing over a month of steady use.  

Probably the Pershing in both cases, because American Vehicles don't break in catastrophic ways that take a long time to fix.

You can swap a whole M26 power pack in a few hours. That's a day at least on a Panther, since the hull roof and a bunch of road wheels have to come off to pull the Panthers Final Drives and Tranny. The engine wasn't super easy either. 

Pershing was 12.8 psi versus Panther G 12.65. Close enough to be negligible.  Pershing was running 450 HP for 46 tons. The Panther had between 500 and 600, (no one lists what the governed rating was) for 44 tons. It only made its 700 HP rating when it could be spun to 3000RPM, but it was governed to 2500 RPM. Call it 550, giving the Panther the edge on paper, but I just read through Panther Wank, the quest for Combat supremacy by Jentz, and the whole book is a listing off all the shit that was wrong with these tanks and how they kind of a fixed them, but never really did.  They Never fixed the HL230 of blowing head gaskets and throwing rods. Though, the horrible cooling system could have aggravated this, overheating blows head gaskets. 

After reading through the Jentz book, reliability goes to the Pershing.  Pershing, a History of the T20 series documents far LESS problems than the Panther.  

Final Note, I had not looked through the Boo Bibles for years, and having read so many Hunnicutt books, I'm spoiled. They are just so much better than this Jentz and Spielburger garbage. They couldn't be bothered to put spec sheets in for the models. Trash, utter trash, but the pictures are nice.  

8 minutes ago, delete013 said:

It's this right? All in all, to my knowledge is such situation considered as quite "accurate", and claims honest. You likely wouldn't think so, but scroll down and check claim chart. It is highly likely that several aircraft shoot at the same bomber at the same time, especially since formation attacks were a deliberate tactic, ensuring good results. I think an attacker would be attributed a kill each, but I am not sure.

Some claims were actually refused.
The attackers were scattered by mustangs afterwards, so they likely couldn't observe the final faith of the bombers and could have wrongly counted some surviving bombers as kills.

Do you believe the Germany army was clean of war crimes?  The honorable germans claim that too.  What nazis do you not believe? 

1 hour ago, Beer said:

 

In a way it was indeed possible to reach such numbers but we can safely bet they were inflated - after all they were inflated for all sides as deep studies of particular engagements show. To be fair numbers of kills by US bomber crews are probably the most inflated and I guess it was done knowingly to raise morale of the gunners as well. 

 

The reasons why such disproportionally huge number of victories for German fighter pilots could be possible are mainly two. 

 

First they flew until they died while allied pilots were used to train newbies. As a result of this fly-till-death strategy Germany had smaller and smaller group of elite pilots followed by cannon fodder while Allied pilots became gradually better than common German pilots as the war went on.

 

Flying till death brough this disproportionally enormous numbers of combat missions. Hartmann flew 1404 combat sorties with 825 engagements. Kozhedub flew 330 with 120 engagements, in a quick online search unfortunately I didn't find numbers of sorties for Bong, Marmaduke, Albert or Urbanowicz but I guess they weren't higher than 300. By quick math for Hartmann 1404/352=3,99 and 852/352=2,42. For Kozhedub it's 330/62=5,32 and 120/62=1,93. If we took it as real numbers Kozhedub would have worse sortie/kill ratio but better engagements/kill ratio than Hartmann. Let's not also forget that Hartmann was 16x shot down, i.e. he was in a way also extremely lucky. After the war Hartmann was charged in USSR for various crimes including "destuction of 345 expensive Soviet aircraft". The trial was also more of a propaganda show I guess but interestingly it operated with Hartmann's offcial numbers.  

 

The second reason, why, is that to have huge number of kills you need to have someone to shoot down. We can see that the top fighter pilots of battles of France and Britain also scored plenty of kills in very short time because there was more than enough targets to shoot down and they flew non-stop in desperation. As the war went on the number of Germans flying around went so low in comparison to now overwhelming numbers of Allied planes that towards the end of the war some Allied pilots probably never even entered an aerial combat. Best scoring pilot of the Battle of Britain Josef František was credited with 17 sure+1 probable kills in 28 days. The elite French Groupe de chasse I/5 was credited with 71 kills with a loss of only one dead own pilot during the Battle of France (many were shot down but survived and fought again). I.e. in desperate situation against enemy with superior numbers top Allied pilots scored enormous number of kills as well (and their kills were of course also inflated). 

 

In the end I would say that the numbers of aerial kills could be proportionally correct but they were for sure inflated on all sides (that is normal in every war, US kills in Vietnam were grossly inflated too). 

 

 

What I don't believe however is tank kills of pilots like Erich Rudel. Various studies showed that armor losses to airforce were minimal during the WW2. The tests showed that destryoing a tank with WW2 aircraft was extremely difficult even on a static tank without AA fire.  

Great post. It wasn't just to train newbies that we pulled our experienced pilots out of combat. At least in the Pacific, they found pilots were only at peak effectiveness for about six weeks. They could recover, if taken out of combat, so again in the pacific, they rotated squadrons in and out for three tours then broke them up(Navy, or swapped in many new pilots).  Europe may have been a little easier on the pilots since the living conditions were much better, but they did similar things. Most of the 8th and 9th Air Force Aces eventually got sent home too. 

18 minutes ago, Toxn said:

I did?

 

Man, I've really lost a few steps since I had a kid 

Yeah, I'm not sure what thread it was in, but back in the day you did one. I remember being annoyed the kill claims could be possible. It boiled down to they flew a lot of damn sorties. 

21 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

Yeah the smart money is they're completely fake.

Just like their aircraft kill claims.

I know @Toxn did the math on sorties flown, and how their kill claim totals are possible. But I know just how much everyone overclaimed, and knowing the Germans on the retreat would rarely be able to confirm kills through wrecks, I find 200 plus kill counts really hard to buy. 

Their Knights of the sky were an important part of the propaganda to try and keep the people at homes morale up. Seems like Goebbels was not going to be picky about confirmations, and probably encouraged overclaims.  I think all the big Nazi aces went to the graves claiming every kill as real... But who believes those clowns?

3 hours ago, heretic88 said:

@Jeeps_Guns_TanksGo to hell asshole... And you are trying to criticize anybody. You contributed nothing to this discussion, except declaring people with different opinions than yours as ignorant, and at the same time declare your wishful thinking as facts. I bet you didnt read any literature about stuff you claim to be expert of. And when you are totally out of arguments, first you steer the conversation to politics, and finally you insult me... Congratulations. You are a really toxic, sad person.

As for the 88 in my user name... Maybe that I was born in 1988? But no, surely it was because politics... 

I have nothing to do with nazis, I hate them. My point with mentioning bolshevist war crimes was to mock your attempt to derail the discussion, which was to this point, peaceful.

But well, we learned something. Anybody who dares to say anything good about german equipment (pieces of metal... but surely possessed by the very soul of A.H.!), they are immediately nazi supporters... Looks like that now includes Spielberger, Jentz, and Doyle too! Well, now I understand why everything written in their books are ignored... 

Again, congratulations for turning this topic to this mess.

Dude, you even insult people like a dipshit boo. 

Now, I'd like to think I contributed humor to the thread, boos like you never get the jokes, but I'll keep trying.  I consider myself the forums number one insult comic. 

You know, if I was born in 1988, and I found out on the internets, just about every neo Nazi asshole ever puts some form of 88 in their name, and I had been using it in my User ID, I'd remove it. Of course, I know enough about Nazi Germany to not want to be linked to them in any way, even by mistake. First impressions count for a lot, and everyone who reads your name wonders if you're a little Nazi Asshole.  It's true in this thread, I'm not the only person wondering about it. Hell, in the moderator channel, your known as hittler88. 

Everyone gave you the benefit of the doubt too, it wasn't until you started spewing shit right off the wehraboo bingo card you got called on it.  The you went full idiot when I said the Nazis were only good at one thing, mass murder, and you go all full on Nazi Apologist right after. This is why your getting the tag. Your actions and words.  don't blame your failings on me.  Mass murder is not politics, and you know who always want to forget about the Nazi war crimes, Nazi apologists. You know who brings up other nations war crimes while defending Nazi War Crimes? Nazi Apologists.  You don't want to be seen as one? Stop acting like one. 

Spielberger, Jentz, and Doyle do not support your inane arguments. I notice you don't mention Zaloga, boos Hate Zaloga. 

Take some responsibility for your own actions, you shit this thread up with your idiot arguments, Nazi wank fantasies, and anger over the truth the Nazis only did one thing well, Mass Murder.  You look like the asshole on this one pal, we just pointed it out. 

P.S. If you were born in 1988, you're to old to be this ignorant and stupid.

5 hours ago, DogDodger said:

 

 

Although tank maintenance was a struggle for all US tank types in Korea, especially in the first year of the conflict, the M26 still showed itself to be the least reliable in that theater. To be fair, many of the M26s shipped to Korea were in poor condition and some overdue for overhauls, so the M26's performance there may be an outlier...

 

 

It would be really interesting to compare readiness rates for M26s in Europe versus the ones that went to Korea. It would also be interesting to compare the Army M26s sent to Korean to the Marines, since the Marine tanks had been purchased right after WWII and put in storage. 

I'm sure what little US Army had in funds for spares went to the units in Europe. The stories of the Army having to refurbish Gate Guard Tanks, just goes to show you have close to the bone the Army had been cut by the Truman admin. Korea came just at the right time to show just how unprepared the US Military under Truman was to fight even a minor war.  If I recall right, Truman cut the Defense Department back to Pre WWII levels. 

6 hours ago, DogDodger said:

Thanks

 

The Pershing was labeled a heavy tank from 29 June 1944 to May 1946, mostly for morale purposes. It was begat from a program to replace the M4 medium tank, and there were actual heavy tanks being concurrently developed. The M26, though more heavily armored than its T25 sibling, still weighed over 34,000 lb less than the heavy tank M6. In September 1944, i.e., two months before the 90 mm gun, 92,000 lb T26E3 emerged from the T26E1, the Ordnance Committee recommended the development of the 105 mm gun, 141,000 lb T29 and the 155 mm gun, 142,000 lb T30. These were the US heavy tanks. Production of 1,200 T29s was requested on 1 March 1945, but of course the war ended before this could occur.

 

Also, the passage of the post being replied to was referencing the suspension systems specifically, as I understood it? The M26's relatively low power:weight became an issue in the mountains of Korea, but cross-country its single-torsion bar suspension (and automatic transmission?) could be quite an improvement over even much lighter tanks: A race was held at Aberdeen Proving Grounds' Churchill cross country area involving T26E1, T25E1, HVSS M4A3, and VVSS M4A3. The T25E1, being torsion bar-sprung and having a pretty sprightly weight, came in first with a 23-minute time. The heavier T26E1 was second at 26 minutes. The M4A3s, with the same engines but ~13,150-17,750 lb less weight than the T26E1, crossed the line in 28 minutes 25 seconds for the HVSS machine and 30 minutes 40 seconds for the VVSS machine. So perhaps "immobile" is a bit unfair, and perhaps the double torsion bars were in fact a bit of luxury.

The reliability problems with the Pershing were solved fairly fast from what I've read, and the tanks on the Zebra Mission are not all that different than the ones that served in Korea. The only big item I can think of is the final drive housing braces.  The longstanding problem that was never worked out was a bad driver could cause fan belts to pop off.  US standards for reliability were so far ahead of the Germans, the M26 would have been considered almost impossibly reliable to them. 

5 hours ago, heretic88 said:

It was an excellent fighter in its time. The chronic lack of fuel, and the barely trained pilots werent its fault. ( Wehraboos love the 262, no suprise you think it was good. )

 

One of the best infantry weapon of the war... again, lack of magazines wasnt its fault.   (lol Another Wehraboo trait. Lack of Magazines was not the guns fault you retard because you can't blame a gun for Nazi Germanies problem with logistics and knowing how to do them.)

 

Yes, thats why allied soldiers envied german equipment...  (LOL Another common boo myth. Of course you buy into it because you are a boo. An extreme case bordering on Nazi Apologia)

 

 

Please, do not bring politics here! Until now this was a technical/historical discussion. Should remain that.  

(but if you really want to... khmmm... holodomor... great famines in 1930s... mao's china...)

Go fuck yourself.  If you think pointing out the Nazi Germans were only truly good at one thing, and that one thing was Mass Murder, has anything to do with politics, you're a strait up Nazi Apologist. Politics and Mass murder are not supposed to mix unless you're a Nazi asshole or a commie.   

And real smart argument you fucking twat, "hey look, if your going to bring up war crimes about my favorite war time powers, the Nazi, I'll totally own  you by bringing up Soviet Atrocities".    

Here's a clue, no one here admires to soviet union or their war crimes. A few of us are not so shot through with Nazi Propaganda, we can talk about the T-34 and soviet equipment without defending the regime.  

What's the 88 in your name stand for? Normally I wouldn't suspect the person with 88 in their name of being a Nazi Apologist or worse, but your posts sure warrant it.  

13 hours ago, Beer said:

 

IMHO this is an interesting phenomenon. Due to the fact that there were quite many German weapons which indeed were a generation ahead of the opponents people tend to generalize to an entire German war industry seeing everything German as wonder weapons. We can agree that things like Me-262, Fritz-X, StG-44, Hs-293, V1, V2 and some others really were sort of ahead of the time but that doesn't mean everything German was. 

Even this stuff is overblown. 

Yeah the 262, made it into service, it was trash, and the P-80 and Meteor were better. Granted the P-80 didn't see combat, but that's because the US was taking its time testing it. The Germans put their trash into the sky as soon as it was viable, because they were desperate. 

They had the Fritz-X we had the BAT. 

The STG-44 was not very good, was issued with a single magazine and there was a shortage, making it kind of useless.  The AK was not based on it.  Even so, I guess we can give them a little kudos here for producing a trash Weapon that would have influence on the future. 

On the HS-293, V1 and V2, they get credit. So that's one and half to far. 

Not a single tank could make the list of buck rogers like weapons.   They had that one stupid sub, that was a good idea, but was so poorly built, like most German stuff, it wasn't really viable. 

Now, if you really want to talk about where the German of WWII was innovative?  Mass Murder.  After years of trial and error, they figured out how to murder millions of people and destroy the bodies! They were truly on the cutting edge of mass murder technology!

Things they sucked at? Food productions, ships of any kind, logistics and winning wars. 

Things the Allies do not get credit for that were actually pretty amazing for their time.

The US 90mm M1,2, and 3 radar controlled AA guns. The 88 was a trash AA guns, the 90 was very good. 

The Proximity fuze. 

Code breaking and useful military intelligence systems.

Long range Bombers. 

Aircraft engines. 

Sonar and Radar.

The Stabilizer system in the Sherman and Lee. Yes the fucking Lee had a stabilizers on BOTH GUNS!  

Factories with production lines 

Automated Welders. 

Also, the Atomic Bomb. And no, the Nazis were not even close. 

So Nazi Germany gets Rockets and the technology of Mass Murder.   The people making excuses for their shitty equipment make themselves look like ignorant twats at best, or a fucking Nazi apologist at worst.  

9 hours ago, delete013 said:

Well, I guess I have rather radically different opinion on German tanks than the community here. I am a total amateur, so whatever I write please don't take as holy truths. May I also remind that I don't claim that panther was the pinnacle of tank design. It obviously had issues. Anyways, let's do this..

 

You sure are sure of yourself for someone who admits to being ignorant.  

7 hours ago, delete013 said:

no.

 

 

 

 

Where did I screw it up?

Nearly everything.  Do you run around acting like an expert while being an ignorant twat on other subjects? 

7 hours ago, Toxn said:

For a guy on a history-centric forum you know fuck-all history.

Go read about West Germany sometime.

It's mind boggling, or maybe we've just not had an actual boo around here in a while.   Between the Panther post on Walt's page, and the other thread here about the Panther, there really is very little excuse for this level of ignorance. 

5 hours ago, Beer said:

 

A weak property doesn't count if everyone knows about it or what did you try to say? 

  

 

 

Really? Please note that both tanks have the same weight. 

 

Besides that nobody claims that M48 was the best tank of its time (not even the Americans) while there is pretty widespread opinion that Panther was some sort of wunderkampfwagen which was killing legions of T-34 and Shermans like flies. 

WOW PANTHER WAY BETTE.....    Wait, a boo can't read an Armor chart, who would have known. LOL

5 hours ago, heretic88 said:

(removed the gibbering's of a sad boo)

! And also the Ford GAA...

 

 

 

 

The Ford GAA was so advanced and amazing, the Germans who saw it probably thought space aliens produced it. 1100 cubic inch, all aluminum, 4 valve per cylinder, overhead cam motor, in 1942 was AMAZING technology. And the GAA didn't need to be detuned to be reliable. If the Army had been interested in water cooled motors, they could have gotten much more horsepower out of it too. The Panthers crappy engine had to be detuned to be even remotely reliable. 

8 hours ago, Bronezhilet said:

Apparently it will be a line in the British tree. So have fun grinding 5 British vehicles for each SA vehicle you want to play!

That's better than a whole new country, with crews with no skill. Of course that assuming you've done the British stuff. I've gotten to 6.7 ish. 

5 hours ago, heretic88 said:

 

 

+ one more thing. Yes, soviets had to relocate factories. On the german side: slave labor + sabotage + bombing raids... 

You left out poorly designed. 

16 hours ago, Toxn said:

This breaks the improvements down very well:

 

https://tankandafvnews.com/2015/02/08/from-the-editor-panther-reliability/

 

In general: the engine got worked on extensively (the changes being minutely detailed), with non-specific fixed applied to the transmission and final drives.

 

By 1944 you're looking at the following:

- Engine: maximum lifespan of 1800 km (unknown average)

- Transmission: maximum lifespan of 1800 km (unknown average)

- Final drives: maximum lifespan unknown, replacement rate at around 3% of vehicles per day (ie: horrific)

- Tracks: maximum of 1800 km (unknown average)

 

Basically: Panthers were, in the best case, around 70% as reliable as T-34s (maximum lifespans of components being reported at around 2500 km) only if you exclude the final drives. If you include the final drives then they were an unmitigated dog-show compared to more or less anything.

And look at how many of the sources for Walt's post are from Jentz, the Lord God of the boos!

18 hours ago, DIADES said:

Can't comment on USSR but since there were such an immense range of radically different configurations of "Sherman", support was a nightmare.  Yes, that is a modern retrospective judgement.  The trade off was production and quantity delivered.  Never mind the quality, feel the width.  Production wins wars.  The guy who can bring the most to the fight and keep bringing more wins - always.  So "best"has many values, all relative.

You're just making stuff up. LOL "radically" different Shermans still interchanged most parts, and the US Army used the M4 and M4A1 until the A3 came along and the M4 and M4A1 are the same tank.   Why don't you provide a source for these amazing takes of yours. 

Did you read up on the T2O series, so you can see how bad your other argument was?

You're arguments are such trash, you're trolling us right?   

17 hours ago, heretic88 said:

One source is not a source. Just sayin'...  

 

And yes, quite funny that the Panther is a shitty, useless piece of junk, while the T-34, which was just as unreliable (even more so until 1942...) was a fine tank...  Love double standards!  

Dude, that's a really dumb argument, they eventually fixed the T-34 and even made it better. The Panther was such trash, it wasn't fixable, kind of like your argument. 

24 minutes ago, heretic88 said:

No idea about the G, but it is 44.8 tons for a D, and 43 tons for Bergepanther. 1800kg hardly matters. On the other hand, towing other tanks greatly stresses the whole transmission system.

Jesus, what did they do to they damn thing to make it that heavy after removing the turret and gun, and I assume the retarded turret drive?

7 minutes ago, heretic88 said:

@Sturgeon, okay, I get what are you saying, but then how would you explain the final drives of a Bergepanther that lasted for at least 4200km? And again, this isnt from a low quality book, it is from Jentz & Doyle.

4200 = 28x150... Even the best of the best Panther drivers would be unable to achieve this 

On the other hand... 4200= 2.8x1500. This is far more reasonable. 

what was the operational weight of a Panther G, and Bergpanther?

35 minutes ago, Beer said:

 

It is a techical limit of the gun. It doesn't say anything about it's installation. It only says that it shall not be fired at such ROF - the gun. It doesn't say anything about how it is loaded or if that is in Panther. It means that if you put it in a bunker with two or three loaders they shall not fire it faster. It is a limit of the gun, nothing more nothing less. 

 

 

Yeah, the mechanical limit of the gun, usually established on a fixed test mount on a range. The M3 Gun was also 20 RPM, but the recoil mechanism did not fail after a short number of rounds like the Panthers gun. 

15 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

First i agree that 20rpm isnt really a practical rate of fire especially for longer durations. It is however a reasonable indicator that the loaders position isnt as bad as represented by the chieftain who btw also uses the hull storage for some reason to demonstrate how bad it is rather than the "ready" ammo in the turret.

 

I didnt quote the entire passage because the question was if the panther or sherman in this instance had rate of fire limitations based on how quickly the gun can be loaded so in effect is the loaders position well enough desigened with the assertion being panther would be bad. The french having to write this limitation down does tell that it was at least possible for some period of time to achieve this rate of fire (if you dont have to switch targets see the soviet report).

 

Also nice going immediately resorting to calling me a wehraboo for drawing a comparison based on the documents were given because it doesnt support the panther being terrible.

Make better arguments, get thicker skin.