Beer

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.

German historian Dr. Töppel who personally spoke with Carius and other tankers said that far majority of units didn't count kills at all - that majority of the stats are basically made up post war (he speciffically mentioned Franz Kurowski as one of the authors of them) or during the war either for propaganda or when they needed something to support medal applications.

The main limiting factor (I think also according to Tooze) was that there were no skilled people to take over the industry of the occupied countries while locals were considered to be untermensch (and the terror used against them certainly couldn't make them loyal). Germany meanwhile didn't have enough specialists to be used abroad, general over-conscription of the German population didn't help too. During the war even the number of common German workers in German domestic industry went down by several millions and it had to be replaced by slave labor which was used on all levels of the economy. The economies of most of the occupied countries were not only nearly unexploited but they were even basically left to die from starvation (even French industry was nearly unused and it wasn't even allocated resources like coal). In the end it meant that while the empire grew in size the industrial and manpower base stayed nearly the same as pre-war which is of course a perfect receipt to loose the war. In Soviet union it didn't work for simple reason - there was no equipment. The Soviets either evacuated or destroyed everything and the local population was basically subject of genocide so there was anyway noone to work. There was a weird situation that during Operation Barbarossa Luftwaffe was not allowed to bomb Soviet industry to allow using capturing factories (they didn't have capacity for that anyway as was proven later) but nothinng of use was captured. IMHO It worked basically only in Czechoslovakia and Austria. Austria joined Germany basically willingly but its industry was very weak. Czechoslovakia was more complicated but there was still a lot of local Germans involved in the country's industry already before the war so it was much easier to be taken over - the skilled responsible and loyal people were gained together witht the country just like hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers who happily joined Wehrmacht and SS in the first moment together with weapons - it's unfortunately true that Bohemian Germans were overwhelmingly Nazi - 43% of all local German popuation was SdP party mebers by March 1939 and the overall support was near total (SdP was basically NSDAP in Czechoslovakia). Also the country was occupied before the war started so that there was much more time to create effective control. Most of the workers were however Czechs or slaves and they deliberately often worked as slow as possible and sabotages were a thing too (even in design stage of some weapons - usually indirect through letting known weak properties to get into production or slowing down testing processes with various issues). Still it was the only occupied country where large industry worked for the German war machine. It's anyway staggering how badly organized the industry was in Germany alone especialy the AFV production, I think that automated welding was not introduced at all, the production was more like a pre-war handcraft manufacture than the real mass-production of USA and USSR (it worked quite well with fighter aircraft though). I was once told that the Nazi leadership was too afraid of the industry tycoons so they tried not to interfere in their affairs. In the end we get again to the point that the best industrialized activity of WW2 Germany was indeed the mass murder...

Tiger was highly specialized vehicle which was indeed good when it was used as breakthrough vehicle in well prepared ofensive actions but even when I hate any sort of "best" choices Tiger absolutely can't be the one because... 1) It was hand-crafted vehicle which required absolutely enormous man hours and production cost 2) It worked well only in very specialized roles and in case of very well prepared actions 3) It didn't work at all in hastily planned actions and in difficult terrain, way too many Tigers were lost to mud, sand or river crossings 4) It had limited effect on German war effort - you don't fight a war to make an impression on future fanboys but you fight to win 5) It had enormous fuel consumption in situation when what was missing the most was fuel 6) It had very poor strategical and operational mobility which is very important when you fight on thousands of kilometers of several fronts in the same time 7) It was very difficult vehicle for mainteanance 8) It was near impossible vehicle to recover when stuck or broken down on the battlefield

Wasn't there a radar for Rapira or some other towed AT gun as well? IMHO that doesn't make much sense for two reasons. The first is that active radar is like a beacon. It gives away vehicle location to the enemy. There is a reason why APS radars are switched on only when a threat is detected by other sensors like UV or IR. The second reason is that IMO APS radar must have extremely short wavelength which means that its range may be just few hundred meters.

Of course but the principle is same. It doesn't matter that some parts can achieve longer service life. What matters is those which can't. You always have to design things to reach the requirements and I'm strongly convinced that Panther never fulfilled the reliability requirements even though I don't knowh them, hence why it is rightly considered not to be a mature vehicle. Of course the requirements may be unrealistic as well. In that case there is a need to find compromise and to find a way how to get a reliably working product shall be a priority over anything else (if you don't design something disposable). Usually it means that some other features get worse in exchange for better reliability and serviceability. That is still a thing today just like it was seventy years ago. You can always create seemingly better performing things which are unreliable. That's not difficult. Creating realistic and useful requirements is a difficult job. Requirements which nobody follows are uselessjust like those which are too easy to fulfill. No. The issue most likely was that stronger final drive would need very radical redesign of the vehicle. You can't simply take twice stronger final drive and replace the original one because the stronger one is logically reasonably larger. There is a reason why every other tank of similar weight has much larger final drive than Panther. You can see even by naked eye that there is something wrong unless the Germans used some super hi-tech materials (which was impossible).

@delete013: The following is off topic but it shall make you understand what reliability means on an example from today. Today the common projected failure rate in automotive is 5 sigma, i.e. 233 failures per 1 milllion parts during the service life (sometimes 4, sometimes 6 is required). If you turn it upside down, it means that projected service life is what 99,98% of all parts can withstand. In other words, if taken by today's automotive standards if just 2 Panthers of all produced broke down at 150 km the service life of the vehicle would be considered to be 150 km. It doesn't matter that some parts can do more. What matters is those parts which can't do what is required. I am well aware that this example doesn't consider WW2 quality requirements - it's just an illustration of what reliability means.

Absolutely no. You are not a mechanical designer, right? Because this is complete and utter nonsense what you just said. Why do you make such statements about things you have absolutely no clue about? I'm a mechanical designer who spent all his professional life designing reliable things and my brain feels offended by reading stuff like this. Do you know what takes the most time and energy in designing things? To make them reliable. Everybody can design an unreliable shit but to make it working reliably is the core of the job.

From a staunch Panther supporter this is somewhat funny statement.

Official preview video of Dita including dry shot of the autoloader in action.

9K120 Ataka? Where is the launcher and the guidance antena? Isn't that just an error in text?

You guys live in some parallel universe.

You are argueing with Guderian on the internet in 2021. I doubt he hears you. Military History Visualized by the way dug out of archives that creating a T-34 was indeed a topic and one of things officially asked by Wehrmacht towards the industry in late 1941 but the whole idea was rejected. And it is a historical truth that wording "Absolute Überlegenheit" (Absolute superiority) was used in regards to T-34 and there was no request to copy KV. A proof that this is historically true You have to take into account that Wehrmacht used a lot of captured T-34 till the end of the war and therefore knew the tank very well. You try over and over to derail the discussion to T-34, Sherman or anything else. That's whataboutism. You can't just pick engagements which you like. Once there is fog, once there is airforce, once there is mud, once there is sand, once the tanks are too new and not mature. Both sides can defend themselves with gazzilion similar excuses. You know what? The Germans deliberately chose foggy weather because they believed it was the advantageous conditions for them. Now you play it a disadvantage but in fact it just showed that the weak side armor was really important factor and that the lack of situation awareness was an important factor too becaue battless somehow rarely happen in ideal conditions especially if you don't have strategical initiative.

New Iranian UCAV looking similar to Reaper, it's larger than previous models.

It was one of the biggest tank battles of the western front and the initial part of it happened in a fog and was therefore very messy (the foggy day was chosen by the German side to avoid airforce). In the period of 10 days the 5. Panzerarmee was literally obliterated in their failed offensive with US loosing just 25 Shermans and 7 Hellcats. The 5th Army had 11. Panzer Division, 111. and 113. Panzerbrigades both armed with Panthers. The whole 5. Panzerarmee had only 62 tanks and StuG operational after 10 days of fighting from the initial 262. The weird thing about this battle is that while today we know it was a German failure in that time the German leadership thought that the massive losses were justified by forcing the allied advance to stop. They didn't know Eisenhower ordered to stop the advance one day before the battle for logistical reasons.

This is how good quality paper thin armor behaves. Anyway you are arguing against Guderian himself who complained about bad German steel quality already in 1941.

I gave you reports in my post which clearly speak about German early tanks and specifically Pz.III as having brittle armor and producing a lot of spalling. If you just delete it from quote of my post it won't disappear from history. So again: Here you go with just a few photos of early Panzers with cracked armor

This was done already for Altay and if I am not mistaken the ammo is on both sides of the driver in Altay.

Dear God... You are in a wrong place if you want to use arguments like this. What horrendous losses?

Come on, this is an irrelevant what if bullshit not worth of discussion.

Tests of early German (and Czechoslovak) vehicles shown a lot of brittleness, spalling. For example: Source: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/05/german-steel-vs-soviet-steel.html This is easy to see on photos as well. You can find plenty of photos of early Panzers with cracked armor plates. Chemical, structure, hardness properties, heat treatment evaluation of Panther ausf.A, Tiger ausf.H, both built definitely prior 1944. Big variety in samples. Often two same armor plates from different sample vehicles on the opposite end of the results. Nearly all plates not meeting German own requirements in chemical composition. http://www.tankarchives.ca/2020/02/thick-skin-of-german-beasts.html And finally one quote from Guderian himself.

That's still irrelevant because the very basic thing about any plan is that it must be realistically possible.

True that but these things actually worked and lead to a plethora of direct descentants in all armies after the war.

No, war is not a video game. Close fighting happens and surprise surprise, in 1945 25-30% of allied tank looses came from Panzerfaust, i.e. weapon used at distances like 30 meters. Your idea of tanks only sniping each other from afar works somewhere in African desert and partially on Ukrainean plains but not in typical 44-45 Panther battlefield. Tank-to-tank encounters also often happend on close distance, especially when fighting in cities or countryside with short visibility (green fences, mountains, forests). Why do you think Panther got sideskirts? Because its vertical side armor was penetrated by Soviet antitank rifles - which were capable of achieving that only from very close distance like 100 meters. The simple fact that the Germans developed a counter measure tells you that such cases happened more than occasionally. The weak side armor was very well known to the Allies and exploited whenever it was possible. Besides that Panther is 45 tons heavy vehicle and one would expect it to have an armor equivalent to such weight - but that was not possible due to its enormous inner volume (which was a result of its design requirements). IS-2 with the same weight has at least twice thicker armor all around (yes I know it carriers few ammo but a breakthrough tank doesn't need a lot of ammo if it is used for what it was designed). No, no and no. Tank is not a tank destroyer at least not in most of army doctrines. This is a misconception or an outright ignorance. In the doctrines you find terms like breakthrough, explotation, infantry support but nowhere it is written that tank is a primary anti-tank weapon. Fuller, Hart, Guderian, Tukhachevsky and others saw tanks as a primary tool to exploit breakthroughs to an operational depth capturing vital transportation and communication hubs and not as a weapon to be used in tank to tank brawl in WoT style. US didn't field 76 mm Sherman for quite some time not because it was not available but because the units resisted to it - because it was worse than 75 mm against everything except tanks and for fighting tanks there were M10 tank destroyers (which per the doctrine were to fight the tanks allowing the tank units to do their job). Don't you think that if they were scared of the German tanks they would happily take the tanks with 76 mm gun? The British Firefly is also an example of something which has a nice paper stats but was in fact only a rather problematic stopgap which was used as a tank destroyer issued to the tank platoons - not as a primary tank. The Soviets in their initial shock from Tigers fielded the T-34/57 but quickly realized that such tank has very limited use and returned back to the 76 mm F-34 with far worse penetration values but far better capabilities against everything else. And yes, the IS-2 large caliber was primarily used because of its massive HE bang (if you didn't know that the IS-2 carried only 8 AP rounds as a standard 1945 loadout). It could penetrate everything, which was good, but that was very rarely needed. It was not an obvious choice. It went directly against Guderian's vision of the tank. See that during the war Germans moved from a highly mobile light tank-heavy army to an army with much smaller number of much heavier tanks and much worse mobility (especially operational and strategic). You know there was a case where one Char-B managed to knock out 16 German tanks but all other tanks of the same Char-B unit didn't even make it to the battlefield and this one achievement became perfectly irrelevant in the grand scale of things. In the end such encounter brough about the same impact on the war as existence of Königstiger. All in all you put way too much emphasis on the gun and armor. The tank is more than that. Much more than that. When they designed the Panther they got a ridiculous requirement of 50 cm suspension travel and the interleaved bogey wheels. The designers found a solution but a solution which brought so many problems that they completely ruined the achievements (together with the frontal transmission the vehicle got absolutely enormously large, extremely heavy, unreliable and pain in the ass to maintain). Is 50 cm suspension travel good? Yes. Is it worth all the negative efects it brought? Hell no. Just throw those double torsion bars and interleaved bogey wheels away and you get probably 3-4 tons lighter vehicle which is way easier to produce and maintain (and if you reduce the now-largely empty hull you gain maybe ten tons just by using different suspension layout). Panther and other German vehicles are full of such overengineering stuff which brings some advantages but plenty of other disadvantages.