Toxn

I'm posting this again because 1) I think I'm funny, and 2) because some folk still need to get the fucking message. Also: tank tier list when?

Man, I posted links showing the opposite not a page ago. And that was done in an abundance of consideration for the argument that the Panther's flaws could be ironed out (they weren't). "Tad better". I think you mean "200+mm LoS at the thickest, 138mm on the driver's step initially, 240 on the 1944 version". And the sides are "only" 95mm. As for the load of features dispensed with - the insane turret traverse system, perhaps? Perhaps the insane interleaved wheel suspension that literally nobody found worth the time after Kniepkamp wasn't in a position to profit off of it? Perhaps IS-2 was just, you know, rationally designed with an eye towards production (nearly 4000 made vs Tiger's ~1300) rather than hoovering up scarce materials and manpower? German guns weren't bad for the era. Bulky and running at rather conservative pressures, but not bad. They could have learned from whoever came up with the casings for the long 50mm ammunition though - all the other German stuff was hilariously long for some reason. If you want the real secret to the success of German guns though - their shells. Just good, well-designed shells with careful attention being paid to alloying and tempering. Their armour quality was variable-to-shit, though. Nope. 17 pounder was a monster. It ran at monumental pressures and spat out a very heavy shell (7.7kg vs 6.8 for the German 75mm) very fast, from a very short barrel. All British guns were like this, actually - high-pressure beasts which performed well above what their contemporaries could given the same barrel real-estate. There's a reason the 17-pounder spawned the 20-pounder and, eventually, the 105mm. While the German stuff spawned nothing much. Yes, the successful French program of noodling around with German ideas for a while before discarding them completely. And then eventually copying/reinventing (depends on who's telling it) what the West Germans were doing by making a less successful Leopard 1 clone. Speaking of which - notice how the Germans, in Germany, in an army stuffed to the gills with ex-Nazis, decided to produce (when they were finally allowed to) a vehicle which had exactly none of the Panther's DNA in it? One that emphasized speed, maintenance and mechanical reliability over armour or firepower? Ya, the Cent was Panther but competent. I've said so already. It had more upgrade potential (187cm turret ring, vs 165cm on Panther), an actually-reliable engine and transmission system (that can neutral steer without something breaking and has a lifespan measured in more than thee digits) and a reliably, easy-to-maintain suspension system with generous weight margins. And it's still in service! Funny that - you fix literally all the things I complain about on Panther (most of which were inevitable issues brought about by the developmental dysfunction that drove the whole project from start to finish) and the end result is amazing. It's almost like I'm right about my core thesis here. Jumbo Sherman begs to differ with you. Nope, I re-ran the numbers using the dimensions provided by Heretic and got the same result: 0.28W/cc. So you're either bad at math, are using smaller dimensions (ie: shaving the volume down to the engine and ignoring ancillaries entirely) or are using the uprated power figures. And then, even granting that your numbers are correct, what have you shown? That this "compact, powerful" petrol engine is mediocre? Congratulations. As for "shorter", I assume you mean "less long" because it's taller than V-2. And taller is only really useful if you cunningly design the turret to fit an enlarged engine bay (ala M46 and M48) rather than doing the smooth-brain thing of raising the entire freaking hull and keeping a flush deck. Which... you know. And then, even more galling: if you actually lay out the components in Panther you'd notice that they squandered any space they may have saved by making the hull longer than it needed to be so that the turret could sit in the centre of the hull. So haha, guess the designers just wasted whatever weight benefit they'd gained by making the damn thing both tall and long. Equal? You mean in terms of having the same paper stats or being suited to win a war of production while being on the offensive? Because M4 and T-34 did the latter while still being perfectly capable of criticism for their shortcomings.

For a guy on a history-centric forum you know fuck-all history. Go read about West Germany sometime.

Ya, being on the defensive for three years in a total war does wonders for your kill ratio. Having most of Western Europe and a big chunk of the East to pillage also helps (although read Tooze for why having all that real estate didn't translate into a win on the logistical level). And nobody's denying that the German army was good at tactics and wars of manoeuvre. They have been since the dawn of the modern era. What we're arguing about here was whether their kit (and specifically post-1942) was any good. Again, not so much - lots of late-war German stuff seemed to put a premium on gee-whiz factor over boring things like reliability or efficiency. But we can go deeper still. When evaluating a design you need to look into the context of the human and material systems which build, operate and support it. So we can ask: was it fitted for their operational and strategic needs? Did it align with their doctrine? Were the logistics up to the task of supporting it? Did it have a coherent, sane development process based on real requirements? Did it meet them? Tell me with a straight face that the answer to most of those questions was "yes".

So the air filters can be moved around then? Fair enough though, I erred in how tall it was and underestimated how long it was. The overall volume is still exactly the same, and the output is still nothing special for the time period. Which would be fine, except it was also a dog and needed lots of work (which I've previously linked to) to achieve something approaching reliability (and at a lower power level). I think this is our fundamental disagreement. You think that the scales have turned too far and want to rehabilitate the tank's public image (as if German tanks need the help after decades of folk wanking off over them) to 'good'. I'm willing to grant that the view of it being complete trash is overblown and that it's a mediocrity -in the same class as British, Italian and Japanese tanks design-wise. If it had any recognisable design objectives beyond "more" and whatever way the wind was blowing during its development cycle, it might even have been said to achieve some of them. I certainly don't hate it - hate is something I reserve for people and printers only. I just don't care for the long, slightly gross love affair that pop military history has with all things German.

This also reminds me that the M48 is sexy as hell. Curvy tonks best tonks.

I thought you weren't litigating this one any more.

"Average lifespan" bruv. Well yes, because they operated Panthers for years longer than the Germans did, and without the constraints that are usually cited as affecting the German vehicles beyond the design itself. No, it indicates that they were monstrously unreliable. One example is merely a data point, yes. But eventually you end up with a trend. Nope. The Shermans did get better replacement parts and servicing (because the US can into logistics and late-war Germany couldn't) but they're more reliable beasts too. By any conceivable metric. What are you on about? The Maybach engine is huge! It's something like 1.2x1x1.3 metres (l/w/h) and puts out 440kW. That's 0.28W/cc. The V-2-34 is more compactly dimensioned height-wise (1.5x0.8x0.9m) and puts out 340kW. Which, if you can do maths, means that its specific power is around 0.3W/cc. Meaning that the Maybach is ever so slightly subpar when compared to a soviet diesel engine from 1937. As to "choosing between mobility, protection and firepower" - the IS-2 is more heavily armoured, has better firepower, is more mobile and weighs two tonnes less. How's that for optimization? Finally; "a generation above it's contemporaries"? Fucking really? A tank which was copied by no-one, whose technologies inspired no great interest, and whose legacy was a few years in the service of armies who ditched them the second they could? That's not a generation ahead of anything. That's stillbirth. The T-44 was half a generation ahead (and T-54 was all the way). The Centurion was everything the Panther was trying to be but actually successful (and even then sired no direct line of vehicles). Even the M26 was a harbinger of tank development to come. The Panther was simply a dead end, the inevitable product of a dysfunctional system. Which is not to say that it was useless, didn't have positive attributes, or that it didn't have a valid operational use once conceived and put into service. But definitely far short of being good, much less great.

Gotta love how my countrymen approach everything like the post-match speech at a rugby game. Goeie mondeling, manne.

Given our interactions and your self-stylings, I'm beginning to see the need for Astartes. The rates for PzIV vs Panther can be explained in the same way as those for PzIV vs Tiger. Panther got given to the best, most well-supplied units first. PzIV got given to everyone. You'd also be the first person to point out that the >90% readiness rate achieved by American units in Western Europe for Sherman are not inherently indicative of mechanical perfection. I mentioned earlier how I derived a 3% figure, and it's done using basic maths: divide number of vehicles with final drive breakdowns by total number of vehicles to get overall percentage. Then divide percentage by days mentioned in report. Again, the French experience with vehicles run for years without slave labour, sabotage etc is illuminating.

Just to point out: having to replace 3% of your vehicle park's final drives per day of operation lines up almost perfectly with an expected average lifetime of 150km given the operational tempo of the Germans in 1944. So I'm leaning towards the French report not being a typo.

So you're willing to concede that overall reliability was on par with tanks being rolled out from factories that were literally just relocated to Siberia? Regarding the French stuff - yeah, well that's what getting to run them post-war rather than in 1944 will do for you (most developed vehicles, better materials, no slave labour etc). Doubly damning then that they're still complaining about the final drives even then.

Ja, this is bending over backwards to see Panther in the best possible light.

Are those man-hours or total hours for a given technical team and equipment?

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.

I think you're stretching massively if you're going to claim that the T-34 had "just as many" reliability problems as Panther. Here's a quick sanity check: during the early part of Barbarossa, parts of the German front moved around 1500km (around 16km per day) against heavy resistance during a three-month campaign season. Similarly, during the last phases of the war parts of the Soviet army were moving around 1000km (around 11km per day) during a similar time period against organised German opposition. In both cases the factors limiting operational tempo were opposition and supply rather than the mechanical limits of the equipment involved. During Kursk, however, the Germans moved barely 100km over the course of twenty days (around 5km per day). During this time, the units operating Panthers were losing something like 8% of their vehicles a day due to mechanical breakdowns. At the end of some of the fiercest fighting of the war the ratio of combat-damaged tanks needing repairs to broken-down tanks was still 50/50, and only 10 out of the original 200 vehicles were actually operational. Even granting that this was the debut of a type which is often stated as being "rushed into service" (despite a more than 5-year development cycle), there is just no way that the German army could have sustained the operational tempo that they achieved at the beginning of the war with a tank force made up of Panthers. The Soviets, meanwhile, seem to have kept up more or less fine with their T-34s.

1941: clutch lifetime is shocking and lasts... around 2000km 1942: new gearbox is asked to be put into production - 3700km with no issues More on reliability.

Is there then a bonus of some sort for using the winning design from the previous design round?

That I can at least imagine working with my smooth brain - it turns your spot into an ellipse and distributes the energy over more material. The day I executed a heroic kamikaze ram on another ship and just sort of donked off, on the other hand, was where my immersion really got ruined.

The really funny part, again, is where a highly-sloped whipple shield somehow allows a ship to shrug off battleship shells.

Perhaps simply mandate a certain amount of stuff? IE: "Requirements: - At least 40/30/20mm (F/S/R) armour, at least 15mm roof armour. - At least one hatch - Suitable mounting for {selected} main gun and at least 1 coaxial MG, mounting must have at least +20/-5 degrees elevation. - At least 1 gunner's sighting device, suitable for directly engaging targets out to at least 500m, with a minimum FoV of 25 degrees and a minimum magnification of 1.5x. - Space for at least two crew members (commander and gunner). - At least 20 rounds of {selected ammunition} stored in either the turret or basket (if provided), at least 10 of which are ready to hand to the crewman performing loading of the main gun. - At least 600 rounds of MG ammunition stored to hand for the crew in either the turret or basket (if provided). - Seating arrangements provided for the turret crew during travel. - Storage for at least 50dm3 of miscellaneous stores in the turret or basket (if provided)."

Proof that the Stug was the best german afv of the war ofc.

Further thought: one thing we might want to do when proposing novel suggestions is for the would-be proponents to organise a trial run in private. Accordingly; folk are free to contact me directly if they have specific approaches they want to game out.

That is one of those emergent constraints I was alluding to. Would it be better to do it the other way around - designing the hull with a certain turret ring diameter and internal vertical volume for a turret basket, and then letting others design the turret? Or is a two-step approach (design a major sub-component such as the gun and then let contestants design an entire tank around it) a better idea?