Beer

Because the T-34 discussion is very much off topic in the German thread I post here several norms valid for T-34-85 used by ČSLA (the tanks were somewhat different to Soviet ones in various technical modifications however the earlier ones used many original Soviet components from WW2 production). The source is a book: Hlavní takticko-technická data tankové a automobiní techniky ČSLA.

Basic check: during stops on march or combat or whenever needed

Basic service: 150-200 km

Technical service 1: 500-600 km

Technical service 2: 1000-1200 km

Medium repair: 3000 km

General repair: 6000 km

Unfortunately I don't know what exactly was subject of each service or repair but anyway it looks like basically nothing major was considered necessary before reaching 3000 km. 

Normative times for component change:

- engine 39,3 h

- gearbox 22,8 h

- main clutch 21,6 h

- steering clutch 23,6 h

- track - 2,6 h

- bogey wheel - 2,5 h

- first wheel arm - 4,4 h

- arms of other wheels - 3,2 h

- sprocket wheel - 3,3 h

- idler wheel - 3,7 h

- track tensioning - 4,8 h

- gun - 9,8 h

- turret - 5,9 h

Regarding the discussed about air filters there is only an information that Czechoslovak tanks used different filters BTI-3 with ejector cleaning. 

19 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

Off topic, but do you plan to make posts on these like you did the “interwar Czech bits”? 

I can write something short, why not.

By the way one of the test vehicles which is relevant to this particular German thread was a Tiger equipped with an autoloader (yes, that thing known to WoT players as armament of the Škoda T-25 existed, unlike the tank itself). AFAIK that was the only Tiger not scraped after the war but sadly it didn't survive and there are no photos I know about  

Several Königstigers which were left here ended sadly all scraped (they were nearly all broken or destroyed but few pieces were just stuck in mud). People back then had different prpblems than to think about museum exhibits of the future... 

Topic on  

2 hours ago, heretic88 said:

Wonder why... Maybe because whole eastern europe was under soviet influence? German stuff, especially heavy weapons didnt fit in that military structure. So they had to go. Also dont forget that spare parts werent manufactured anymore.

That is not true, sorry. ČSLA used Pz.IV till 1954, StuG.III till 1960 and Hetzer till 1963 (even 12 Marder III and 38 LT-38 Pz.38(t) were used). Also the Panthers and Bergepanthers were officially addopted and withdrawn in 1955 but the issue is that the standard tanks just sit in the depots. Nobody used them for anything more than few occasional drives and a movie production. The Bergepnathers were used and even several standard tanks were rebuilt to them because the army lacked heavy ARV (it had also 8 Cromwell ARV and later many Cromwells were rebuilt to makeshift ARVs). Some of the ex-German weapons were uven used in combat in Slovakia against Bandera units in 1945-47 (AFAIK mainly LT-38). 

It will probably surprise you but the most numerous tanks of our army after the war were British ones and it stayed like that well into 50'. It was 190 Cromwells/Centaurs, 20 Challengers and 30 Stuart VI. The second most numerous were German and only the third were Soviet ones. In numbers it was 42% British, 36% German and only 22% Soviet (we had more StuG than T-34 well into fiftees). The transition to Soviet machinery didn't even start until after 1950. Prior there was still ongoing domestic tank program which was later killed (largely for political reasons) and replaced by Soviet vehicles (pity because the domestic designs were a very curious mix of all AFV schools taking something from every side of the conflict).  

The argument that heavy tanks were not fit into the military structure doesn't hold water too. We had a heavy self-propelled regiment till 1956 which had officially a Panther batallion - but the Panthers were just stored. AFAIK the actually used machinery was a batallion of ISU-152 and a batallion of StuG.III. The plan was to rearm the unit with IS-3 but that never happened because of (wise) decision to concentrate on MBT only.  

PS Sorry for slightly different years than in previous post. It comes from the fact that the service of StuG.III didn't end with their sale to Syria. Only 12 were sold and the rest (95 pieces) continued serving in ČSLA till 1960.  

1 hour ago, DIADES said:

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

The Sherman "nightmare" is massive overstatement in comparison with the German mess. They had dozens of different AFV and hundreds of variants. That was a completely different scale of nightmare. 

3 hours ago, heretic88 said:

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

 

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

Panthers were replaced by T-34. Bergepanthers were replaced by VT-34. One Bergepanther was even rebuilt to use engine from T-34. Our T-34 were officially withdrawn in 1992 (believe it or not but it's true, roughly 100 stayed for some reason till 1990'). Even Syria refused to buy our Panthers while they bught all our Pz.IV and StuG.III instead. That covers just our country but it's still telling. 

T-34 keep fighting in Yemen and Africa in 2020... 

Aaaand... Rusia built a whole new T-34 batallion in 2020  

57 minutes ago, barbaria said:

Thought I would post the link to Oryx's blog: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/09/the-fight-for-nagorno-karabakh.html

 

Total loss ratio Armenia vs Azerbaijan according to visually confirmed sources: 8,5-1

 

A decisive victory for Azerbaijan.

 

This war has shown the importance of air power, both defensively and offensively.

Counting equipment losses according to the visual evidence is better than nothing but it is also very missleading.

There is number of reasons

- the officially admitted manpower losses are nearly same for both sides (1,1-1)

- majority of visually confirmed losses come from UAV footage, i.e. only one element operating on the battlefield, we know from experience that far majority of losses come from artillery and MLRS while such strikes are usually not caught on the camera

- the Azeri occupy most of the battlefield, naturally they tend to show only evidence of enemy equipment destroyed

- thanks to that they are in possession of everything what was not evacuated from the captured territory by Armenia but in the same time they could and for sure did evacuate majority of their own lost equipment bar some total losses

- most of the evacuated equipment for sure never made it on the internet 

I have quickly searched for the use of Panthers in Czechoslovak army after WW2. There were 72 tanks considered usable (of that 16 Bergepanzers). In the end some 40 were repaired but only in 1951/52 but only 14 Bergepanzers were actually used by the army till 1959, the standard tanks were mostly just stored and there was not even any training conducted with them. There were attempts to sell them to Syria in 1955 but unsuccessful (they bought our Pz.IV and StuG.III though). The Bergepanzers were used as heavy recovery vehicles for various jobs often non-military ones thanks to their very powerful winch (180 tons). Some of the tanks were used in movies (one Bergepanzer even played a sort of US nuclear cannon  ). They were replaced by domestically designed VT-34 ARV based on T-34. 

They were moved around the country near exclusively on trains. The engines were serviced by an engineer who spent part of the war as a slave worker in Maybach but they run quite little, mainly due to an enormous fuel consumption. The very same engineer even rebulit one Bergepanzer to use Soviet V-2 engine. This one was later rebuilt to a bulldozer. Aside of that I don't know about any reliability report but I did  only a quick online search. 

One particularly interesting point is that after WW2 Czechoslovakia had a major lack of tanks. It used whatever it could in a very wild mix. Aside of T-34-76, T-34-85, Cromwells, Centaurs, few Challengers and several IS-2 and IS-3 (just 2) we had quite a lot of Pz.IV, even old LT-38/Pz.38(t) in use but Panthers were just stored after a very long period of preparations and hesitations. Also their sale to Syria was unsuccessful unlike with the Pz.IV which were generally much more worn. To me it tells that the tanks were not considered worth the effort to run them.   

Most of the info is from this link (including serial numbers): https://www.valka.cz/Pz-Kpfw-V-Panther-ve-sluzbach-cizich-armad-t40205

2 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

" During rapid rate of fire it is not uncommon to be forced to break off firing when the recoil of the gun has reached its permissible limit (cease fire).

­ A rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute is only permitted in exceptional cases when circumstances so dictate."

 

I dont know how you can read this as being only a theoretical limitation to the rate of fire because you cant acheive it anyways. The way that is written sais to me they can achieve this rof at least for short periods of time but shouldnt unless there are exceptional circumstances. If you keep in mind how variable loading time for a round can be (1 round lap loaded and anotehr few already unfastened in their racks for quick access or even simply laid into the turret unfixed while in a defensive position) i dont see the possibility of the panther reaching 20rpm for 3-5 rounds as impossible.

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

Just now, holoween said:

Also limitations that never matter are not put into such reports.

I'm sorry if you don't understand written text. 

10 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

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

No, it's not an indicator of anything related to Panther. That is a technical limit of the gun alone not a rate of fire achievable when installed in the tank. Those are two very different things. 

Chieftain used ammo stored in the sponsons because there was no ammo stored in the turret in most of Panthers. AFAIK the rounds were too big to fit in the turret. 

Left is Ausf.D, right is Ausf.G I think. 

36 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

15rpm isnt exactly great in comparison when the french report has this to say about panther rof A rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute is only permitted in exceptional cases when circumstances so dictate.

 

According to the Soviet test report (posted above) the practical rate of fire for Panther was 6-8 per minute. 

20 rpm for Panther is IMHO nonsense and absolutely impossible to achieve (you really can't do this every 3 seconds). Have you seen the round, the space around the breech and where the rounds are stored? 20 rpm is practical rate of fire for tiny 37 mm or 2pdr gun where you can load by one hand. 

15 rpm for 75 mm is great (it was for sure less in practical situations).  

I didn't know that but one of the IS-2 of Lešany muzeum (4 pieces) is actually an early IS-122 with screw breach and thinner frontal armor. The tank went through many battles including Odra-Vistula offensive and Prague operation. After the war it was used by Czechoslovak army till 1949. It spent most of its life as a memorial in Přelouč town but in 1990 it was moved to muzeum and in 2014 restored to working condition. 

Photos including some curious details from the restoration (like broken torsion bar) are here. 

The tank can be seen moving for example in this video @ 19:00 and 19:55. 

9 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

If only we had some kind of test report from a country with similar doctrinal requirements to Germany but without the same institutional problems, so that we could get a more clear picture of the Panther's flaws. This is asking too much, but it would be even better if they tested a bunch of them a whole lot, so that we could know it wasn't just that they got a lemon. And I mean, I'm just out in fantasy land here, but what if they also had access to the original factories and spares, so that they could actually maintain the things if need be?

Oh.

Post-Kursk early Panther evaluation by Soviets - in short: engine kept braking over and over again. Even when the tank did only 220 km in the test, the engine broke three times, transmission and final drive worked well, the report is overall positive bar the engine reliability (and side armour - it's notable that Soviets already in this early report consider Panther to be more of a tank destroyer than a tank per se), but the driven distance is very short and in total the engine did less than 14 hours in the testing. On the other hand it's early Panther known for being an unreliable disaster on tracks and before introducing the lowered rpm range.    

http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/04/panther-trials.html

Per this February 1944 German field report the Panther engine worked for 700-1000 km. For comparison Peter adds a field report from Soviet 6th Guard Army with overall lifespan of their vehicles (including M4A2 which is rated same as T-34 at 2000-2500 with individual machines at 3000+ km).

http://www.tankarchives.ca/2013/06/tank-reliability.html 

9 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

Domestic variant is about a year away from mass production, at least according to MoD. Trials are usually a year long process, so domestic variant should be finalised.

Did they build the production line already? 

2 hours ago, eggs benedict said:

It has come to my attention that the year is 2021 yet the ideas that "unmanned turret means flawed armor" or "easy prey for firepower kills (at least more so than regular tanks)" are still around. 

 

Uralvagonzavod is making a huge mistake investing money into years of research and testing based on scientifical principles while they can just hire some internet eye ball expert to tell them what is wrong about their multi million dollar machine.

 

 

You probably chose a wrong forum or why do you bring it where there is no such discussion ongoing? 

1 hour ago, SH_MM said:

I can not agree with this statement; while there are certain truths to it - such as the stupidly fractured state of the German defence industry, stating that tanks were onlly "quickly recovered, repaired and taken back to action" by the USA and USSR. Likewise there are several tank projects - such as the WW2 Leopard "light" tank, Mehrzweckpanzer replacement for the PzKpfW IV, the PzKpfW IV Ausf. H and the Panther II - that were were canceled/delayed for exactly the same reasons. It probably was the political interference (pushed by influential companies/figures) that fucked up the stupid requirements/procurement procedures even more.

Wehrmacht fielded far more AFV designs than any other cuntry even if we don't count any trophies or vehicles based on them. I doubt there is even anyone able to count them all. One might say that few Jagdtigers don't play any role. That's true in regards to their positive effect but it's not true in terms of negatives they bring - even a dozen of such vehicles loads logistical train, requires trained crews and mechanics, spare parts production etc. Someone needs to spend thousands of hours to design them, test them and evaluate them. They require production tools to be established and labor force and material to build them (and ironically in the end they are lost due to no means to recover them when they get stuck in mud). The problem is that there were dozens of such low-volume vehicles fielded - Ferdinand/Elephant, Sturmtiger, Jagdtiger, Pz.I Ausf.F, Pz.II ausf.J, Pz.II ausf.L and plenty of others (arguably Königstiger can be counted into this group as well). They were also far from optimal for production and mainteanance (such low volume vehicles can hardly be optimized in first place). Even many of the mass-produced vehicles were not optimized - one must ask why even such stupid thing like halftracks or Kettenkrad has to be so complicated?  

It's fine for me if tanks are compared based on technical and combat properties but it's far from the whole picture which shall be taken into account. I'm myself a mechanical designer and I like the technical stuff but one has to see beyond that and that is why for me Panther is a vehicle which shall not be mass produced despite having some clearly excelent features. 

7 hours ago, SH_MM said:

I really don't like these kind of questionable discussions on World War 2 tanks, specifically not those bashing topics and "what if" scenarios with any set number of requirements and realistic look at the constraint and different doctrines. "Germany simply should have build more PzKpfW IV with sloped armor or more StuG IIIs!" is a useless statement and doesn't work. All this bashing of American/British/French/German/Soviet tanks using criteria from the respective other parties or modern day is silly. Obviously an American report will complain about the gunner/loader in other tanks not having enough optics, as in the American tank commanders - even in modern day - still love manning the turret-mounted MG to play Rambo (not the catious Oscar-worthy First Blood Rambo, but the Rambo from the later movies).

 

That is also why its silly to make any statements on the best tank - there are different ways to operate a tank, different requirements and different capacities. For the Brits the Panther might have been a bad tank (even though they copied the concept in some form to create the Centurion, but whatever...), but for a German or Soviet tank commander the M4 Sherman might have been a bad tank. That is why most such arguments are usually bullshit.

 

When the Brits tested the Leopard 1 in the 1960s, they came to the conclusion that it would offer less (or at best: comparable) mobilty when compared to the Chieftain, as the rubber-coating on the road wheels would overheat and thus limit maximum possible speed. This was obviously a false conclusion, thee rubber-coated road wheels never made issues and even faster tanks such as the Leclerc and Leopard 2 retained the concept. But this shows how silly it is to limit one's sources to a single side.

 

 

The hatch for the Panther's loader is too small? No, that is a matter of preference. The loader's hatch is not really smaller than those found on much modern tanks such as the Centurion, the Japanese Type 90 and the K1 tank. The loader of a Panther is lucky enough to have his own hatch (!) and not to be required to use the commander's hatch as in case with most early Sherman variants!

 

 

Certainly that is a good design, huh? Having gunner, loader and commander all escape from the same hatch onto which usually an machine gun was mounted.  Good luck getting out of this thing when it burns, but let me guess, its still "the best"? The Panther's loader also could escape the tank through the rear hatch of the turret, if necessary (which mean that he actually could exit the vehicle under cover...). The rear hatch might even have been the primary exit for the loader by design.

 

Just like having only a single optic for the loader isn't bad. This is a not a flaw, this is a different preference. It was good during WW2 and is still standard on many much more modern tanks just look at the Centurion, Chieftain, Challenger 1, Challenger 2 or at the T-54, T-55, T-62... they all have similar setups for the loader (but due to them being newer, these are better). On some of these tanks they are not fixed, on others they are fixed or effectively fixed (by not being usable outside of a very narrow field of view due to the interior or exterior layout).

 

The gunner had only a single optic? That's perfectly fine. How many modern MBTs provide the gunner with more than one primary and one back-up optic? Its just some bollock statement that is based on a different doctrine, not on actual short-comings.

 

The positions of (some) crew members are cramped? Well, this was a WW2 tank for fuck's sake. Pretty much all of them were cramped. The Panzerkampfwagen III and IV were more cramped, the M3 Lee/Grant, the Firefly variant of the M4 Sherman, etc. Every tank in WW2 was cramped if you apply modern ergonomic standards... even the Sherman. The Sherman however was also an incredible tall target. The gun wasn't awkward to load from a modern perspective, but by WW2 standards the huge size of the shells was uncommon and akward. I don't remember exactly if it was the Firefly or the Pershing, but in one of these tanks the loader had to rotate the round taken from the ready rack in both axis in order to load the gun. That was awkward.

 

 

Certainly the Panther was far from perfect - but it also was designed and produced in the middle of a war with an urgent need to rush tanks into service as fast as possible. The attempts to improve the Panzerkampfwagen IV (by reducing the amount of individual parts required for welding turret & hull, by replacing the commander's cupola and by implementing sloped armor) for example all failed due to the industry stating that it would introduce war-loosing delays into the delivery of further tanks.

 

The Panther's issues were known and several improvements were developed. The Panther II hulll had a completely new road wheel arrangement (that still wasn't optimal, but would reduce the amount of additional roadwheels that needed to be removed for replacement/maintenance significantly) and a new gearbox - but it didn't went into production due to the course of the war. New engines, stabilized optics, stabilizers for the gun, mechanical autoloaders and optical range finders are all upgrades that were in different stages of development at the end of the war. Meanwhile the M4 Sherman is "upgradable", because the US Army produced new and new variants every few months?

 

 

 

The reliability of the Panther certainly was bad, but its issues also seems to be massively exaggerated due to the French report on post-war use. It might have required some skill to drive, but that is also nothing unheard of for a WW2 tank. The Centurion had reliability issues well into the fifties, its specifications were massively affected by the British desire to have a Panther-equivalent tank, yet it somehow "the British got it right" with the Centurion?

Even the Sherman was not the reliability wonder that people love to make it seem. The M4A4 variant was rejected as lend-lease tank by the Soviet Red Army due to reliability concerns, and the US Army also only took a few hundred (with the bulk of the ~7,500 M4A4 tanks made being sent to the UK, who had issues making competent tank designs on their own). But hey, we only count reliable variants (for which there often is very limited data)...

 

 

The Panther was bad. The Sherman was bad. The Centurion was bad. The T-34 was bad. Don't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

A lot of the criticism has nothing to do with docrine or today's point of view. Panther was a typical product of a one big mess in which the German AFV design turned during the war. There were people even at that time in Germany who were perfectly aware of that but not strong enough to change the course. I dare to say there were many more problems related to the non-combat properties (missing unification, non-optimized production, high cost, low serviceability, difficult mainteanance, totally overloaded logistics, fragmented training, sabotages coming from slave labour or outright waste of resources on stupid projects and small-series of countles vehicle types) than tactical issues. Panther is an excelent example of all the problems German AFV development program had. 

It can't be said that this is a judgement from today's point of view when others understood it. See both USA and USSR who mastered the unification and serviceability. Tanks taken out of action were quickly recovered, repaired and taken back to action. Both states managed to resist introducing every new vehicle they developed for the sake of unification, rapid production, easy service and logistics despite them having seemingly better vehicles available and despite them having larger industrial capacities. That's complete opposite to what Germany with its limited capacities started doing during the war. In the end thank God for that. 

2 minutes ago, Toxn said:

Oxyacetaline torch, apparently.

Maybe better question is how do you get a new one in? 

Panther gearbox installation

And detail of the torsion bars 

Any idea how did they change torsion bars in real life? 

Sure the context is crucial but it's worth noting that neither Königstiger nor even Panther were able of being used in a war in which the Pz.I, II, III, IV and 35(t), 38(t) decimated the Europe in 1939-41 because of their horrendous mobility (mainly in operational and strategical depth). They were much closer to the French Char-B behemoths in terms of how they could and were used (and ulimately failed). They were oversized, overweight, and overpriced machines which were best suited for anti-tank defence but sucked whenever they had to go onto offensive. They took away plenty of resources and labour force which could have been used for something more appropriate, more compatible with the rest of the army in terms of spare parts and training and less fuel thirsty - maybe something closer to the original Panther requirements (the cherry on the cake was wasting resources on Maus, E-75, E-100 and similar crazyness). 

Of course Panther was much more useful than Königstiger but still, it's a huge vehicle of IS-2 weight, 5 tons heavier than M26. One against one Panther, Tiger or Königstiger would defeat T-34 or Sherman any day yet the issue is that such encounter needs to happen at first. Once you loose strategical initiative having slow and immobile and highly speciliazed units is the worst what can happen to you. You are late everywhere and you loose large number of units just trying to move them around without actually fighting. Your enemy selects the battlefield in a way it suits him and not you (that proved to be especially bad for Tigers and Königstigers whenever they had to fight on soft terrain). In the end you can be strong but usually on a wrong place in a wrong time. 

The tactical strike ability of the division commanders didn't disappear - they have had Smerch and Uragan. I'm quite sure that if we talk about conventional warfare these systems are much better for the task than what Luna was. 

This ability actually really disappeared in many armies (including the our) but not in yours. 

The main problem with Panther is the crazy hype about it among the people (Königstiger is even worse case) when in fact the tank was very problematic vehicle plagued with many wrong design choices and on top of that the German late-war situation (lack of everything and sabotages). For some reason people believe in those nonsense stories about invincible tank aces from Kurowski. It's natural that such hype insitigates the opposite - and Panther is in a way quite an easy target bcause there was a lot of wrong about it. 

Extremely rare footage from testing of Persian (Iranian) export vehicles in ČKD. The footage is from national TV archive however when it was broadcasted the vehicles were wrongly identified, therefore don't take care about the commentary much. 

What you see on the video is TNH-P tank and AH-IV-P tankette (or a light tank if we consider Pz.I to be one ). The TNH-P is in fact sort of predecessor of the LT-38, it shares the distinct suspension and general layout but it has weaker engine, thinner armor and different turret with older gun. Anyway these vehicles served in Iran for a long time and they keep them on display in Tehran till today. The footage is most likely from 1935. 

36 minutes ago, 2805662 said:

I don’t believe that’s been integrated into the KF41 as of yet. 

AFAIK according to the original schedule (before covid-related delay) by this time the Lynx shall have been under state trials here in CZ in its final configuration, i.e. including the Iron Fist. For sure the Australian version is different but the Iron Fists shall be present in both and by now already integrated at least in one. 

14 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

1) AFAIK 2A42 needs more space and more robust mount. If you don't have one of them, you go to 2A72.

Are you sure? I'm asking because 2A42 is mounted on helicopters and 2A72 is not.