Toxn

We literally know the name of the guy, as well as the fact that he a) had a patent on interleaved road wheels and b) was part of 6th Department, which functioned as a procurement office during the pre-war and early war period.
 
Shockingly, almost every project which passed through 6th Department ended up with requirements for interleaved suspension. And the second that Kniepkamp (and later 6th Department itself) got sidelined these requirements faded away.
 
This is one of the more obvious cases of industrial favouritism in the second world war, with engineering considerations being very much a secondary concern.

This has been dealt with already, but dude. It was literally Red Army doctrine later in the war to do successive pincer movements (as part of the revival of deep operations thinking). That's literally the entire story of the Eastern front in 1944 and 1945.
 
You are so fucking ignorant.

You categorically do not understand what you're talking about.

 

That's not the theory at all.  I'm slightly curious if you read this nonsense somewhere or came up with it on your own, but only slightly curious, so please don't belabor me with a large amount of detail.  Having more points of articulation on a suspension does not affect the force experienced by the chassis or crew.  When the tank is at rest the road wheels will exert the tank's weight against the ground via the suspension springs.  When the tank is going over an obstacle, the vertical component of the acceleration will be buffered by the travel of the independent suspension stations.  If there are more of these stations, then they will have lower K values of their springs, otherwise the suspension would just get stiffer from having more stations.  There will be a very slight difference in response from having more unsprung mass.  Having more points of articulation does increase the tendency for the tank to pitch in response to acceleration and deceleration, but for the number of roadwheels typical for tanks this distinction is immaterial.

 

Interleaved roadwheels are equivalent to overlapped ones in terms of ground pressure reduction.  Point me to any serious engineering analysis that says otherwise.

 


You need to learn that words mean things.  "Strain" has a very specific, mathematical meaning, and you are badly abusing the word here.

No. Only the very first prototype Kätzchen K1 had interleaved wheels. Read please again my post. Second prototype had Surin's suspension and the final vehicle which was never finihed was supposed to be this (yes, only wooden mockup but this is the final vehicle). 

 
  
 
Never ever was taken any final decision about anything related to E-series. In fact they were canceled before they even got to any final design. Still there were three suspension options and none of them was of Kniekamp style interleaved wheels á la Panther, Sd.Kfz-251 or Tiger. I have already once gave you this link. Please read it finally.
 
The theory is nice but it was proven to be just a theory. People told you that million times alrerady - nobody else ever used that suspension for plenty of very good reasons. Pz.III suspesnion is used by tanks till today, more than 80 years after it was designed. Kniekamp's suspension was dead and burried by May 1945. In next nearly 80 years nobody used it again. Think about why. 
 
1) It adds several tons of weight itself (and therefore also fuel consumption which is kinda bad when you don't have fuel). 
2) it takes more space inside and makes the internal volume of the vehicle larger and therefore even heavier (and often also prevents having floor emergency hatch (Panther)
3) It needs twice more manhours, twice more material and therefore most likely costs about twice more than standard torsion bar suspension. 
4) You know which steel absolutely needs all those chemical elements which Germany lacked? Spring steel. Think about how good idea is to have twice more springs on every fucking vehicle than what is needed.
5) It is terrible for mainteanance. 
6) It likes to collect several hundreds of kilos of mud which adds more weight to the whole thing and tends to freeze in winter 
 
The zig-zag variant used on Königstiger was not better because it added fast track destruction by twisting (this would happen to most of considered E-series suspension too). 
 
Is-2 has lower ground pressure than Panther. IS-2 0,0785 MPa, Panther 0,09 MPa. The reason why Panther was faster in terrain was not interleaved wheels but the double torsion bars (which added another quantum of issues). Geez... 
 
 

I know I am late here, but the loon wouldn't happen to be Ernst Kniepkamp would it? I know with the half-tracks and Panzer III he was directly the guy responsible for those elements - and the Tiger I work at Henschel was also his pet project of the time.
 
And wait, I have Forcyk's book.... and yep it is Kneipkamp. Head of all tank projects at the Wehrmacht, and had been the chief army engineer even before the Nazi takeover when it was the "Military Automotive Department". Even the tiny Kettenkrad has the interleaved wheels, and yep the patent on that is "E. Kneipkamp".

I just find it very amusing that MAN was able to submit a vehicle that did not meet the hard requirements (the 5cm gun), and still managed to win. That is some grade A favoritism.

It makes no sense to compare MiG-23 with MiG-25. Those are planes of different category used for different tasks. MiG-23 replaced MiG-21 and it was much better than MiG-21 in everything with the exception of the initial MiG-23S batch with RP-22 radar and armamament from MiG-21 (and the cost) and the Arabic "monkey" export model MiG-23MS which had the RP-21 radar and armament from MiG-21. Also the other comparisons are strange... 
 
GSh-23L has muzzle velocity 715 m/s and it's much more interesting feature is its operating principle since it is one of the only two operationally used Gast-principle guns (where recoil of one barrel operates the other and gives the gun rather extreme rate of fire with a low gun weight). AFAIK only Soviet GSh-23L and GSh-30-2 work on this principle of all serially produced guns ever (although the idea comes back to WW1 Germany). When you write about cannon the MiG-27K (used by USSR and India only) with 6-barrel 30 mm is the most interesting variant IMHO because while its GSh-6-30 gun has somewhat lesser muzzle energy than GAU-8/a it weights half, has higher rate of fire and since it is gas-operated it is more efficient in short bursts. On the other hand the MiG-27 clearly wasn't the right airframe for the gun...  

R-35-300 diagrams


 
 
We had MiG-23 too (MF, ML, BN) and they were good although rather difficult to fly and maintain. They were also quite prone to bird strikes compared to other planes we had. We had a lot of accidents with them in early 90' but those were caused mainly by general lack of discipline and spares in the rather chaotic times after the fall of the iron courtain. 
 
Some points about ML from our ex-pilots
- they mostly liked it
- they said it was very difficult to fly straight and to land if automatic flight support systems failed but manageable
- automatic landing approach up to several meters upon the runway
- they trained to use in-flight parashute release to shorten the already short landing run
- two seater had shifted center of gravity and the old, weak and problematic R-27 engine and was a bitch to fly in dogfight (most of our two-seaters were destroyed in dogfight training)
- the radar was well liked, it had also look-down/shoot down capability 
- if I unerstood right they usually trained to attack the NATO planes from bellow and from the side using ground control for ideal approach (take it with a lot of salt from my side)
 
Fun fact one. They trained to approach SR-71 flying routinely like a clock at some 15 km from Czechoslovak border. The Blackbird was tracked by common DDR-Czechoslovak air control and MiG-23 started from České Budějovice, climbed to 10000 meters, accelerated to M1,8 and climbed on a parabolic curve to have the approaching Blackbird close to 12 o'lock at some 5-6000 meters higher with the approach speed of around M4,8. At this point there was a a few seconds window where it was possible to lock the radar and fire R-23, it was always only an excercise and there was never any intention to actually shoot it down but allegedly at least once the Blackbird was shortly locked by a trigger-happy pilot. The probabiliy of successful interception like that was very low and it was all about perfect timing from the ground control (allegedly the probability of successful interception was around 30% when trained with Soviet MiG-25, i.e. lower with SR-71). They say they used both automatic guidance via LASUR datalink and human ground controler command. In this scenario the armament was one R-23R and one R-23T. 
 
Fun fact two, the first Czechoslovak pilot to fly solo MiG-23 (BN ground attack variant in 1977) was pplk. Šrámek (lieutenant colonel), a pilot who in 1953 piloting a MiG-15 shot down US F-84E of Korean-veteran G. A. Brown in a two-on-two encounter which started near Pilsen, Czechoslovakia but ended over Western Germany. 
 
 
 

This has basically been my experience making bows, but red oak is an exotic luxury wood.

His posts are better than yours. 
 
 
It's pretty clear you have no idea on just about anything you've talked about in this thread.    Like, do you know anything?  How do you not know ALL U.S. Tank Guns, from the 75mm M2 in the Lee to the current ones automatically ejected their shells. Like have you read anything but that Jentz book you posted with the suspicious stains?
 
You think a conventional pushrod V12 that couldn't make its design horsepower, is some miracle of technology, while shit talking the Ford GAA. The GAA being an overhead cam V8 with 4 valves per cylinder and being all aluminum made it right on the cutting edge of automotive technology. You having no idea about engines is clear when you spew shit about German motors being something special. 
 
 
This was such a clown shoes response. I guess you believe that propaganda. You still buy this bullshit after most of the big encounters where the Hero Nazi's you worship killed a horde of T-34s or Shermans, have been debunked, many by the guy who started this thread, and that just makes you an asshole.  It boils down to you're a troll, trolling about liking Nazi shit, or moron who actually believes the bullshit you're spewing, in either case, you don't look real good.  I hope you're a stupid kid, many of us really liked German tanks when when we were young and stupid, but we all read enough actual history to grow out of it. You could actually learn something from the people who tried to be nice to you in this thread, but at this point, you presence on this forum is so poisoned, no one is going to take you seriously. 
 
 
 
 
 

This Panther is like Deletes arguments in this thread. Full of holes. 

You shouldn't. It's what they deserve. It's what this forum was founded on. Wehraboo hunts make the clan of the comieboo strong. Aroo! Aroo! Aroo!

Guys, I've gotta be honest, I'm starting to feel a bit bad about the dogpile going on here. Therefore, I've decided to play Devil's advocate and jump into the discussion as part of team of Wehraboo. I've put together a carefully crafted list of evidence to help convince you all.
 
Exhibit A:
 
 
I think that speaks for itself, but if somehow that objective assessment by a SME doesn't have you convinced, then please take a look at Exhibit B:
 

 
According to most sources, Panther tanks maintained an average readiness rate of anywhere from 30-35% for the first two years after their introduction, AND YET, in the picture I have provided, you can clearly see no less than TWELVE Panther tanks, all of which appear to be running perfectly. Let me remind you that 30% of 12 is ~4, NOT 12. This clearly and definitively debunks all of these claims as nothing more than exaggerated, baseless lies that rely on cherry picked, if not completely fabricated, data sets from Allied reports desperately trying to save face.
 
Finally, Exhibit C:
 

 
Here you can clearly see a column of the "super reliable" T-34. Oh, but what's this? It appears that in actuality, NONE of them are in working condition. That's a readiness rate of 0%. Another thing to point out is that Allied shitbox apologists always point to the Panther's dependence on railway transportation to arrive at the front. But, what's this we see?
 
 

 
Could that be... a rail? That's right, yet another of the Panther-haters' claims proven to be nothing but projection. 
 
Check and mate, haters. I'd delete the thread at this point if I were you, because this is just embarrassing.
 

Ha, thanks. Flattery will get you...well pretty far, I suppose.
Indeed. The state of German automotive technology was unprepared for mass-production of a 45,000 kg tank. As we've been over, and as Spielberger notes, "Since it was envisaged to produce the Panther in large numbers, production costs of various subassemblies would have to be kept to a minimum...If it had been possible to foresee what difficulties the final reduction gearing was to cause, it would have been a much better solution to have selected a more expensive final drive which provided a greater degree of reliability. In the end, the final drive proved too weak to handle braking with the Klaue disk break [sic] when steering through tight curves. The use of epicyclic gearing for the final drive hinged upon the bottleneck being encountered in the supply of gear cutting machines for producing the hollow gearing. When passing judgement on the double-spur final reduction gear it should be noted that the high-quality steel originally planned for the spur gears in the final drive was not available for mass production and was unexpectedly replaced by VMS 135 (today 37 MnSi5) tempered steel (not as suitable for this purpose)...
 
"The final drive (gear teeth and bearings) was the weakest part of the Panther. It was a risky proposition to use a spur gear system for transferring the drive power - especially considering that the available steel during the war did not have a particularly high stress tolerance. A better solution would have been to use an epicyclic gear system; a prototype final reduction drive using planetary gear reduction had already been tested and had performed flawlessly. However, as mentioned previously, a shortage of gear cutting machinery for the hollow gearing prevented this type of final drive from being mass produced. In order to bridge the gap a final reduction gear system was installed in front of the main gear drive, but due to installation restrictions its mountings were far too weak and could not be strengthened. Because of gear teeth breaking under too great a load and the weak mountings, the gears were pushed out of alignment  - virtually guaranteeing mount and tooth breakage.
 
"The general consensus in the industry was that inner-toothed gear wheels could not be produced due to a lack of proper machinery. This meant that a final drive using planetary gear reduction and pre-selector spur gearing - found to be reliable in company testing - could not be installed in production tanks. All attempts to improve the final drive met with failure, despite the offers of a special bonus as an incentive..."
 
To quantify this a bit, Ristuccia and Tooze in "Machine tools and mass production in the armaments boom: Germany and the United States, 1929-44" note that Germany did make strides in increasing the number of gear-cutting machines in service, going from at least 10,407 in 1939 to 28,621 in January 1945. Even with these increases, compared to the US there were only 0.74 gear-cutting machines per German metalworking employee in 1945.

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!"
 

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"
 

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."

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!"
 

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!"
 

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!"