Toxn

The best part (and I'm glad we get to do this every few years just to show the new kids how it was in the old days) is where they eventually run off and declare victory because we 'ran out of arguments' or something. Like, the brick wall talking up its fighting technique because we all got bored of hitting it eventually.

I have this idea that most of our irrational attachments are due to the fact that our brains can only process things as a web of the other things its related to - you pull on a word and the whole person comes out. Take the word "carriage". For me the word has built-in associations from children's stories and rhymes (Private Parrige brought the carriage), illustrated history books read in the school library, and the carriages rented for the matric dance. I cannot think the word without some tiny part of me remembering sitting on my mother's lap as she read to me as a child. So I probably can't rationally think about carriages as some sort of utilitarian object without resorting to tricks like de-identification. Which is where this all gets tragic, because it means that Hitler cucked this kid's brain from beyond the grave by hijacking his childhood memories of watching the history channel with his dad or something.

What are you on about? The Panther broke down incessantly when the Soviets tested it: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/04/panther-trials.html?m=1

As opposed to the Panther, which moved like a heavy? I'm not sure where you get your OAL figures, but sure. So they're functionally identical except for the fact that the Panther's loader would have to go fishing in the sponsons or what-not when the ammo is depleted. I'm not sure why - yours shows that they're either even or that the Pershing is slightly ahead on some sort of "time to first round hit" curve. I'd happily put any major differences as down to crew skill and the situation leading up to an engagement. As it stands we only have a single well-studied clash between a Pershing and a Panther, and the Pershing got the first shot off into the side at short range (according to the German commander he was lined up but didn't order the shot due to confusion, as he'd never seen that type before). Said Pershing then pumped two more rounds rapid-fire into the right-hand side until the Panther completely burned.

Also, since you seem determined to cling onto the idea that Panther's issues were going to be fixed at some point "if the war had gone on", you're dreaming. The tank was in service for around two years and never got the most glaring issues fixed, so expecting that to change is wishful thinking. It also had, as I've been at pains to point out, almost nothing in the way of upgrade potential. If by some chance the war had gone on until 1946 (presumably because the Americans convinced the Russians that watching nuclear weapons hitting Berlin was a life-changing experience or something) then the Panther would have simply found itself as the same unreliable beast from before, only now facing hordes of T-44s, IS-3s, Pershings and Centurions. It wouldn't have been pretty.

And you remind me of an idiot who fails to understand the point. Edit: since I'm trying, this outburst aside, to approach things in a constructive manner I'll spell it out for you: the point is to sharpen critical thinking by taking the object you are examining and pulling it outside of its context. Because people are shit at objective judgements and good at motivated reasoning. If you approached your assessment of Panther the way you approach your assessment of Pershing, you'd come to a more balanced, objective conclusion about the vehicle. Which is, and I keep harping on about this point, that it was more or less mediocre once all the relevant factors have been considered.

Pershing was a medium though. I'm not sure how you get to the last part. Pershing had very well laid-out ammunition storage and a shell casing that was actually a bit shorter than Panther's. As for estimation, that's pure guesswork on your part.

So another side note: this game also works really well in reverse... Discussing, let's call it the A42 "Cataphract", as developed by the British in 1943: Designer: "Overall its dimensions were comparable to Tiger 1, but about 60cm longer and 30cm narrower. For all that, the turret ring diameter was 160cm. The vehicle weighed around 45 tonnes, ten tonnes less than Tiger, but had a lopsided armour scheme with equivalent (or better) frontal protection and about half the armour everywhere else." Wehraboo: "Typical poor British design: over-emphasising some aspects at the expense of others. This reminds one of Churchill, which paid a heavy tank's bill on weight and mobility (not to mention an over-long hull which makes turning difficult), but only has good protection from the front for the trouble." D: "The tank carried a high-velocity gun in the 75-76mm class, with good armour penetration (able to knock out all but the heaviest tanks). On the other hand, it had a less powerful HE round than existing 75mm guns like KwK40 and M3." W: "This is also typically British. They put can-openers on their tanks and then forgot the most common mission for them: infantry support! It is less of an issue for specialist vehicles such as Archer, but for a mass-production tank it's a crippling defect." D: "The drivetrain was complex, bulky and very unreliable, but provided nice-to-have capabilities like neutral steering and good gun stability over rough terrain. The engine was underdeveloped and needed a massive amount of work (including derating) before it could be used for any length of time successfully. Overall, the time-to-failure was something like a few hundred kilometres, and they didn't foresee being able to improve this (although the lifespan of individual components could have been improved)." W: "This is Covenanter all over again - a bunch of 'clever' ideas that amounted to a mess. At least then they had the good sense to keep it as a training vehicle instead of sending it into battle. They should have stuck to well-proven transmission and suspension components, and used a surplus aero-engine or something rather than bodging it." D: "Due to the issues with the suspension, drivetrain, turret ring diameter and turret design, the vehicle had almost no upgrade potential. The armour could not be thickened appreciably without causing even worse reliability problems, and the gun could not be replaced by a larger-bore weapon without designing an entirely new turret (and even then it would have been a squeeze for the crew)." W: "This was the problem with Cromwell too - forcing the British to make iterative new vehicles when it should have been upgrading existing ones. The Germans, Russians and Americans all realised this with PzIV, T-34 and M4. Each was able to be reworked with new weapons, turrets, armour, and even engines without stopping the whole production line to produce a completely new vehicle." D: "Speaking of the turret, there were technically two hatches (a commander's hatch and an escape hatch directly in the rear), but the placement made it so that only the loader could use the rear hatch and only the commander and gunner could use the commander's hatch. The hatches were very small (around 40cm diameter), but the commander's hatch was well-appointed with periscopes, a mounting for a scissors periscope and a geared azimuth indicator to show the turret's rotation in relation to the hull. The gunner had a single coaxial sight with a single level of magnification (2.5x), but later production was slated to have a selectable 2.5/5x sight. The FoV was around 28' for the 2.5x, and 14' for the 5x." W: "Again, the British talent for wonky engineering on show. The hatch is a mix of good ideas (they cottoned on to the use of periscopes quickly, after all), dubious ones (a simple ring indicator would have worked just as well) and terrible ones (Comet hatch syndrome strikes again). The gunner's sights were good and workmanlike (3x and 21' FoV is more typical for the British), but the Americans had already introduced modern conveniences such as a second unity/fixed magnification sight mounted to the roof at that point. This tank should have had these, it would made the gunner's life much easier!" D: "The tank used almost no components common to other models besides the engine (which, again, needed massive reworking), and was difficult to service in almost every respect due to the complexities and placement of the drivetrain and suspension components. This, along with a chronic shortage of spare parts (because production of vehicles was prioritised over the production of spares) meant that commanders in the field would have to rely heavily on rail to move the tanks up to the front. There were no road transporters large enough to carry them, and next to no engineering vehicles able to unditch them." W: "This is madness from the perspective of fighting a mobile war - something that the Germans excelled at but the allies had to painfully learn. A tank is only useful when it's moving under its own power. More than that - when winning an industrial war, it is rational production that counts. Look at the effort the Germans made under Speer to rationalise production of aircraft and tanks. This rationalisation probably prolonged the war by a year, giving the Wehrmacht the material to push back against the hordes of Russian vehicles being thrown at it." D: "It was made by Germans." W: "Oh its amazing! A wonder weapon! The ancestor of all modern tanks!"

You flatter me, but I'm really here more in a comedy role myself

I occasionally play this mental game where I imagine describing, let's call it the Schwer-mittel panzerkampfwagen 44 "Cougar", to the typical wehraboo. "It had a low profile, only 10cm taller than the PzIV. But the vehicle is much more heavily armed and armoured (equivalent or better to a Tiger frontally, only a little thinner on the side)." "Fantastic. Really good, compact design. The Germans were known to be good at efficient layouts." "The drivetrain was extremely compact and reliable, with a better power-to-weight ratio than PzIV, as well as a slick automatic gearbox that reduced workload on the driver and improved offroad mobility." "Wonderful, truly a vehicle for mobile warfare. Didn't Guderian say, after all, that the principle weapon of the tank was its engine and radio?" "The vehicle had lots of vision devices, a large, roomy interior and nice-to-haves like panoramic gunner's sights and an azimuth indicator in the commander's cupola." "Brilliant. We know that the crew which sees the target and fires first usually wins. This all adds up to an improvement in firepower!" "Over 2000 were produced in less than a year, making it a relatively common sight on the battlefield when compared to older heavies such as Tiger." "That's great! Wars are won by industrial production as much as by feats of arms - look at the miracles that Speer accomplished." "It had lots of upgrade potential. Prototypes were produced with guns and armour equivalent to Tiger II, but without completely sacrificing either mobility or reliability." "This is what made the Germans so formidable during the second world war - their ingenuity and ability to improve on existing designs. If only it had been fielded for longer, it would have had the potential to turn the tide of the war." "It was made by Americans." "Oh, it's absolute shit then."

Is joke, tovarisch

The Soviet tests are linked in my earlier following post. Different standards may be the root cause here. The Americans expected their vehicles to perform like medium tanks in all respects: operational and strategic mobility, speed, road marches and flotation. They also expected them to be movable by narrow-gauge rail and to cross pontoon bridges. The Soviets, being unburdened by such expectations, merely compared vehicles in the same weight class. As I said - nice to have more than anything else. Being able to actually back out of a fight rather than either stay in place or bail out under fire is nice. Oh, so better armour penetration (~10-15mm) at range, with a worse HE shell? Okay, so: 1) your suggestion is dumb - moving the turret ring back by making the vehicle longer would just make it heavier, compounding the issue; and 2) M26E5 managed to increase the armour to Tiger 2 levels all around without sacrificing balance. It didn't get produced in any numbers because, again, the Americans wanted mobile vehicles rather than impenetrable ones. The GAF was compact, powerful and reliable (again, though, not enough for the Americans. Hence M46). The end result was something like 2HP/t difference between Panther and M26, with the automatic transmission of the M26 making up a lot of the difference in practice by dint of allowing the driver to simply put foot when needed rather than babying gears and clutches. As with most things M26, the terms I'd spring for here would be things like "adequate".

My god man, watching you bend over backwards to defend Panther and then turning straight around and drubbing other vehicles for lesser faults is ridiculous. We have, in this exact instance, reliability reports that are directly comparable, and in every instance the Panther is a dog and Pershing is fine: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/03/pershing-heavy-by-necessity.html vs https://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/05/none-more-frightening-than-cat.html (direct report here: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/04/panther-trials.html) M26 was, again, mediocre. Certainly as a product of a long-running development program which nonetheless had to be rushed into service to fulfil a seemingly pressing need (do we have to keep hitting you over the head with the parallels here?). And yet it was better by most standards than Panther.

I went and re-watched Chieftain clambering around in there, as well as read Soviet reports on M26 (they claimed that the commander's station was a bit tight but otherwise had no issues). Seems pretty fine to me, especially given that Panther achieved less with an even larger hull. Edited because the last sentence became its own post. Also - it should be noted that the driver's levers were stiff. Two sights is a good idea for a number of reasons - panoramic is good for seeing over obstacles (mounted higher in turret) while backup can be used to check that the gun tube isn't aimed at something solid. It also provides a measure of redundancy in case one sight or the other gets hit. Redundancy is also key to the radioman's position - provides a way to move if the driver gets shot, as well as allowing him to take a rest during road marches and the like. It's not strictly necessary, perhaps, but not bad. I've not heard much complaining about the commander's cupola. 28g fill vs. 137g. ~120mm penetration at 500m vs ~160mm. "same effect" This is non sequitur logic - None of these statements follows from the other. Bigger bay = more upgrade potential. Turret ring diameter is 175cm - intermediate between Panther and Centurion. Plus the damn thing obviously had upgrade potential, given that the Super Pershing had a bigger gun and 4 extra tonnes of armour. We've dealt with this - mobility on a purely tactical level is mostly the same as Panther. Mobility on every other level (operational, strategic) is infinitely better. So if this is "poor" (which I'm willing to grant) then... A match for what? Biased how? I just said that it was mediocre and then jokingly gave it a score out of 10. I never said anything about it being the "equal" to anything - a statement which is almost meaningless anyway.

I'd sort of put the rankings as follows (note: I'm not very familiar with the vehicles, so take with a larger block of salt than usual): - M46: an automotive upgrade to M26, but doesn't alter too much otherwise. Shame it never saw combat against anything contemporary. 6.5-7/10, would thicken the armour and install a rangefinder. - M47: a sort of side-grade considering how soon the M48 came into the picture. The better armour and (supposedly fiddly) rangefinder are a plus. Ugly as sin though, and doomed to fight Indians and Somalis. 7-7.5/10, would remove the hull MG. - M48: generally good, and with the aforementioned sexy curves. The only complaints I've heard about it are that its 90mm gun was a bit long in the tooth by then (although kept up to date with HEAT-FS and the last of the APCR rounds) and that the commander's mini-turret wasn't great. 7.5-8.5/10, would upgrade with 105mm L7, delete the mini-turret and up the model number by 12.

Upgraded Cents get higher scores - up to Olifant, which gets an 11/10

This discussion has actually given me a renewed appreciation for the M26. It's lower and shorter than Centurion or Panther, has worse frontal hull protection than the latter (but better side, top, turret, rear protection) and is generally more comfy than either. It's gun is perfectly fine, and has decent HE capability (unlike the other two). The soft factors (crew comfort, lots of viewing devices, a low and high-magnification gun sight, roof MG mounts, raised driver's seat, duplicated driver's controls, large engine bay hatches, ammunition layout etc) are all nice. Overall, I'd say that the common historical verdict on the Pershing is more or less correct: it was an interim vehicle, advanced in some ways over its predecessor but not fully developed and lacking in certain areas. Even so, I'd say that it's the most balanced and usable of the three late-war heavy mediums. A solid 6/10 to the Cent 1's 5 or the Panther's 4. The T-44, for reference, is more like a 6.5-7, while the first-run T-54 is more like an 8.

Reading Wages of Destruction is an eye-opener in more than one way. Glad to see it being seriously discussed here

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

The other, never-considered alternative apparently being to design a tranny and final drives suitable for a 45-48 tonne tank. Also, btw, the French checked the metallurgy of the drives and found it was fine. They were underbuilt, plain and simple.

TIL that sauropods had terrifying nightmare feet:

I think part of the reason that we never saw a true t-34/M4 equivalent from the German side (besides the obvious that PzIV worked more or less well enough and that the proposed 30-35 tonne vehicle meant to replace it bloated up by 10 tonnes) is that the Germans just seemed to struggle with suspension systems in general. It's interesting to see, for instance, the development of the PzII and just how many things they tried over the course of its run, as well as the endless troubles they had with the PzIII suspension (Pz IV's suspension seems to have been tolerated but not emulated). This, again, wasn't helped by Kniepkamp and his determination to shove his own (patented) solution onto every project. But it shows that, unlike the US (who got VVSS and later HVSS to work, then just refined it until torsion bars were ready) or the Russians (who stuck with Christie as a stop-gap and went to torsion bars as and when they could) the Germans just never settled on a solution that their engineers were happy with. Instead it was just tinker, get shoved towards a politically-motivated solution, tinker, repeat. German designers of the period seem very fond of tinkering in general, come to think of it.

It seems the transmission was the real achilles heel of the DB design (the prototype broke on startup during trials). Although MAN calling the DB transmission complex and unreliable was an epic case of the pot calling the kettle black. This article lays it out in some detail: https://www.tankarchives.ca/2020/08/panthers-ancestors.html?m=1 I'd say that, realistically, the DB design (if chosen) would have eventually been boxed into almost the same corner as the historical Panther - forced to accept a front transmission, interleaved suspension and pre-designed Henschel turret.

You forgot liberty ships, penicillin and the pigeon-guided bomb. You know the Nazi's would have wet themselves over the first two. And would have fielded the last and then awarded the pigeons tiny iron crosses posthumously I guess the cavity magnetron (which is why allied radar was so far ahead of the Axis stuff) should also count. The Germans actually stole this one the first chance they could.

I'm struggling to understand your take here. You can't calculate armour thickness values (120mm at 60' is over 200mm btw), but the Germans would be thrilled to have the IS-2 regardless. Also, the Tiger's turret rotation et al sucked but (per your previous) Tiger had a 'load of features' that the IS-2 was poorer without. Also LOL at "dismantling breakthroughs". Glad to see that the Germans were heroically repulsing the enemy while being pushed back to Berlin. Rather than, you know, getting pushed back and then launching local counter-attacks to provide time for the line to reform to the rear. Because I'm right, you putz. Man, that KwK42. So much better than 17 pounder because it gets slightly less performance out of an L70 barrel than the British got out of an L55 one. Truly a wonder of design rather than just being, you know, fine. Funny how other tanks of comparable weight to Panther didn't need double torsion bars and interleaved road wheels to work, no? The similarities to Panther just keep cropping up, don't they? I'll say it again: Centurion is just Panther done competently. Wrong. God's sake, man. Read up on things before you spout whatever drivel got poured into your ear by the History Channel or that one kid on YouTube. Jumbos lead columns on long road marches (you know, that thing that Shermans did that Panthers certainly didn't) specifically to soak up anti-tank fire. The only major problems with them were ground pressure and the fact that the US only saw fit to make a few hundred rather than a few thousand. It's the definition of mediocre. Literally middle of the road in terms of power density. Again, the thing doesn't even use that advantage. It manages to be mediocre in terms of crew comfort as well. So your train of logic goes something like: use taller engine to save length -> make longer anyway for more crew comfort -> don't make the crew particularly comfortable. That's the precise problem with the Panther from a design standpoint - there were all of these compromises made due to features that "had" to be put in for reasons of preference rather than design necessity (the front-mounted transmission and drives, the turret in the centre of the hull, the interleaved road wheels, the thicker front hull), the compromises then leading to further compromises which just made the whole thing worse. So the result is that you have a 47-tonne tank packing all the features of a 35-tonne one (including a 1.65m turret ring). Hell, even it's contemporaries in terms of weight (like M26) managed to have more armour, upgrade potential and mechanical reliability. And they were considered flawed beasts. Do you see how insane your arguments are once you step back from gormlessly defending the damn thing and look at the bigger picture? Which, again, the Panther didn't manage because it's suspension setup was overloaded, prone to jamming and clogging and hard to service. Again - stupid decisions lead to design compromises that erased any theoretical advantages. This has been dealt with already. Again, know your history.