delete013

15 minutes ago, Beer said:

My source is book of Vladimír Francev and Charles Ch. Kliment. 

Thanks, I hope I find time to read it. It is quite a privilege to have such books in native language. 

17 minutes ago, SH_MM said:

NGP vs MMP

You're fast.

MMD (mittlerer maximaler Druck) as MMP here.

57 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Another wehraboo skull claimed for the pile. This seasons hunts have been bountiful.

I think in all of the discussions on this forum a track might have broken on my tiger.

4 hours ago, Beer said:

 

IS-7 hull is shorter than Königstiger. T30 hull is only 23 cm longer. How about if you checked that first yourself before writing? 

Hm is this realistic?

http://www.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/Modern/is7/IS7vsKening.jpg

You might well be right about IS-7. It is however not 1945 vehicle.

What really matters at hull is the length of the track contact with the floor. This would make 4120cm for tiger 2 and 5182cm for T30 from (i took 204 inch for T30, can't read it well on the photo)

4 hours ago, Beer said:

 

It states that all future light vehicles shall be built with Surin's suspension. What you don't understand? I won't repeat the same sentence for the fifth time. 

 

Leave it then, if I haven't conviced you until not, I never will.

4 hours ago, Beer said:

The double torsion bars were used to fulfill the required suspension travel because there was no other chance to achieve it regardless of material available at the time (anywhere). 

Exactly, where do we disagree?

4 hours ago, Beer said:

That changes nothing. 

 

You don't make sense at all.

 

He knows. You believe. 

1 hour ago, N-L-M said:

  

  

It's rarely pointed out because it is an absolute load of bullshit, and most self respecting people have enough of a brain to not embarrass themselves in public by making such inherently absurd claims. Clearly you either have no brain or no sense of self worth if you are willing to put your name behind such an incredibly stupid line of thought.

Let us take, as a starting date, the year 1943, as that is nicely mid-war.
At that point in the war, the Western Allies were largely engaged in the Tunisian campaign, where other than defensive actions the entire battle of the Mareth line was decided via tactical maneuver, outflanking the defenses and thus rendering the line untenable and forcing an Axis retreat.

The final battle of Tunis, in May, featured a classic tactical breakthrough on a narrow front followed by exploitation by armored and infantry forces. Following the taking of the city, roughly 240,000 Axis troops, who had been defeated by maneuver, surrendered to the Allied forces there. They had been quite firmly defeated by being outmaneuvered, cut off, rendered irrelevant to the Allies achieving their objectives, and left with the choice of either dying pointlessly or surrendering. In fact, more surrendered than were killed fighting.
 

Following the Allied victory in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily was a 6 week affair, in which the Allies continuously advanced and took critical key objectives, forcing the Axis forces there to retire or be cut off, you know, as one does in maneuver warfare. Many times tougher than expected resistance was met, and rather than turn the battles into a slogfest, effort was shifted to where it could give the best results, and the results speak for themselves. The Axis were systematically and quickly evicted from the island.


In Italy, the landscape precluded maneuver warfare to an extent, but even there, after concentrated attacks on defensive positions (which did also feature maneuver on the allied side, but on a generally smaller scale) what happened? yep, exploitation maneuver by infantry and armored units forcing the enemy to retreat or surrender. One would notice that despite being on the offensive throughout all these campaigns, the Allies suffered lower casualties on the whole than the Axis did. How did they achieve such low losses? By utilizing their combat abilities better than the Axis did, and by exploiting successes to force axis retreats and surrenders at all levels.
By mid 1944, Italy had surrendered and was in allied hands, and it wasn't a result of sitting around with thumbs in uncomfortable places.


What else happened in mid '44? The largest amphibious invasion of history. And how was this invasion used to further the Allied goal of cleansing the Continent of the Nazi menace? Though maneuver warfare, primarily. The whole reason we hear so much about the Bocage and the attempts to break out of it was that the Allies didn't  want to fight that kind of fight at all. Yes, they were better at it than the Nazis were, and yes their armored vehicles were better for such close range fighting as many big cat apologists like to point out to cover for the really sad showing the Nazi metal boxes gave in Normandy, but as far as the Allies were concerned it was a bad way of conducting war. And what happened when they broke out of the Bocage? again, again, maneuver warfare. The Falaise pocket was a result of highly effective maneuver warfare, and decisively kicked the ass of the Nazis at what they considered their own game. Even the Nazi troops who escaped the pocket did so without their heavy equipment, which was irreplaceable as Nazi production was entirely incapable of keeping up with war losses.

The following high speed chase to the German border was, again, brought about by maneuver warfare of the highest order, capturing several more Nazi units in various pockets, such as the Mons pocket and the Colmar pocket.

In addition to the maneuver battles, there were also some battles, such as Hurtgen, which were not battles of maneuver, but those were A. not as common, B. not preferred, and C. Occasionally unavoidable, as previously discussed. They were, however, followed by an exploitation, as a rule, where at this point in the war the main limits on the Allies rate of advance wasn't the German resistance, as much as it was the logistical hurdles of supplying fast armies across a country where most of the transportation infrastructure had been wrecked.

Following the Nazi winter offensive, which failed to achieve any of its primary goals, the Allies proceeded to, you guessed it, maneuver their way into the low countries and the Rhine. Including taking cutting off pockets of Axis troops at many locations.

 

To conclude, the idea that the Western Allies didn't use tactical maneuver as a tool is not only wrong, it is farcical, and paints you, personally, the person bringing this up as an idea, as an absolute idiot without a shred of common sense nor the brainpower to think before you open your mouth.
 

 

The hilarious thing here is that the Cletrac controlled differential on the Sherman, or the Merrit-Brown gearbox on what really is a wide range of British tanks, were hands down superior to what the Nazis were using in the vast majority of armored vehicles (Pz 3 and 4 and variants) they produced. And they had the reliability to go halfway across the continent on their own power, not break down after a measly few hundred km and need rail transport for any real movement.
Likewise, your other point is wrong on not one but two counts.
The first is that the idea of cruiser tanks and infantry tanks was confined to the British, not all or even most of the Western Allies.
The second is that by the mid war even the British were mostly out of that line of thinking, what with them operating very large numbers of American medium tanks (M3s and M4s in various variants) and effectively abandoning the development of infantry tanks in favor of ever better protected and armed cruiser tanks - with the introduction of the Cromwell, they had a tank which was a medium in all but name, with sufficient armor and firepower to go up against the common Nazi vehicles and win, while also being much more mobile.

 

dividing up the weight of the vehicle by adding roadwheel stations reduces MMP at the cost of more weight, which is an issue all Nazi vehicles suffered from extensively. As for taking bumps, the greater unsprung mass resulting from having more mass of wheels is a net detriment, and beyond 4 or so roadwheel stations per side there's damn near no extra ride smoothness to be achieved by adding roadwheel stations, the springs, whether torsion or something else, do that work.
Also, as has been previously noted in this thread, words have meanings and you are misusing them.

 

Faster off road speeds which never seemed to materialize owing to drivetrain unreliability, maneuverability which was forbidden in the manuals for fear of breaking the transmission, a general failure to use these theoretical abilities to do anything much, a repeated set of losses to allied maneuver operations, losing more vehicles than they could afford despite being on the defensive, all the way back to the Rhine. AKA, a piss poor combat record.

 

There are several good reasons to believe the solution was not the best, for example the entire rest of the world examining it and deciding it wasn't a good idea. The French even went the extra step of building a few of them, before discarding the idea into the dustbin of history, where it rightly belongs.

Everyone else was clearly capable of making tanks which weren't absurdly heavy for their combat ability and which could actually get to the battlefields and do their jobs. The extreme weight of the big cats is a detriment, not a positive. Also, by dint of not being excessively heavy, most Allied tanks had a much better power to weight ratio and could go faster, in addition to being much more reliable.

As did literally everyone else, yes. Shitty German steel would be a reasonable excuse for accepting reduced performance, not for creating horrible monsters which were entirely unsuited for fighting the war they were in the middle of. That anyone can make excuses for a """medium tank""" with the size and weight of a heavy but none of the performance thereof is absurd.

 

Usually, when one is guessing blindly, one shouldn't brag about being an absolute idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, and listen to those who do.

This statement is entirely false. The overlapping wheels offer reduced ground pressure, at the cost of a whole host of other deficiencies, which are the reason nobody uses them any more.

 

Various napkin drawings of for the most part imaginary tanks do not imply they would ever have seen production. Especially not when such a change would require refitting entire factories to produce tanks which are only slightly different to ones already in production, and the need for said vehicles is acute.

 

In general, the square cube law favors larger tanks, but that doesn't apply when your tanks are made needlessly huge and heavy for no good reason. The overlapped suspensions, especially that of the Panther, came at a net weight penalty compared to other simpler suspension types, which means they come at a detriment to payload capacity, not an improvement.

 

lol. None of the operational analysis we have from WW2 supports this claim of yours. This is just pure fantasy on your part, which appears to be aimed at convincing yourself the Nazi tanks were superior... for some reason? One does wonder why you'd have such a fanatical devotion to the creations of the regime whose sole truly groundbreaking invention was the industrialization of mass murder.

 

you really have no clue how torsion bars work, do you?
Here's a hint: double length torsion bars and overlapping roadwheels are entirely independent design choices. Both of them are bad choices.

 

The 8.8 was quite a good gun as ww2 tank guns go, 100mm vertical is approximately equivalent to the armor of most medium tanks of the time, nothing to write home about when your tank weighs twice as much as a medium and that's all you get for your troubles.
Freezing mud and the like led to many big cats being flat out abandoned and not seeing combat, which means the combat effectiveness of those vehicles was a net negative. Again, hardly anything worth white knighting over.

The Allies, I would remind you, won the war. And they did so, on the whole, with lower casualties than the Axis suffered (in the West at least), and the general consensus among all of them was that there was very little to be learned from the Nazis about tanks. Before you go crying "victors", remember that the Allies were not above Operation Paperclip'ing any and all scientists they thought would be useful, and the Nazi tank designers didn't make the cut. The Allies didn't think they were worth stealing.

 

With overlapping wheels, you either get horrible track torsion loads or the maintenance nightmare of interleaving wheels. The only alternative is this:

The above also applies, in general, to the entire Nazi war effort.

For a Panther aficionado, you are extremely poorly informed about it. All Panthers had that 4 row interleaved roadwheel setup, with the outer wheels and inner wheels on opposing swing arms. While this layout is slightly better than that of the Tiger, it still requires the removal of an awful lot of roadwheels to get to any inner one, and still allows freezing mud to immobilize the vehicle.
 

 

wrong again. Even today, interleaved roadwheels would help reduce ground pressure, which for MBTs is reaching rather extreme values. But unlike then, nowadays everyone has the good sense to not mess around with unworkable ideas like that. Single torsion bars with dampers and bump stops gave a very good accounting for themselves in WW2, so your second point is also wrong.

 

Or, in other words: The Nazis correctly identified that vertical travel is important for high cross country speed, but instead of being sensible about how much vertical travel they needed they went with a value far in excess of what was actually useful at the time, and paid a horrendous price in design terms in order to achieve it.
There is a reason that even the postwar fast MBTs didn't have a vertical travel as large as that of the Panther, which was only done on the later NATO box tanks with much more powerful engines - below that point, it's just not very relevant.

 

Improvising by creating the most overcomplicated and resource intensive solution is not a very sensible answer when your problem is lack of resources.

Funny how even with very heavy tanks being used nowadays, many of which exceed 60 tons by a wide margin and have since they were designed, and in a wide range of extremely heavy engineering equipment, not only does nobody use overlapped or interleaved wheels, but literally nobody is even considering it as an option. perhaps, just perhaps, it is because the whole world knows it is a terrible idea?

 

Fortunately, this forum has an abundance of mechanical engineers, at least some of whom have experience with automotive systems.
Perhaps you should cease being so aggressively wrong when you yourself admit you have no clue what you're talking about.

 

If you made any, sure. For a start, you must first read the relevant literature, because as of now your arguments from ignorance only serve to accentuate your stupidity.

 

The T30 heavy tank features the CD-850 crossdrive transmission, which is a triple differential unit capable of both pivot turns and neutral turns. It also features a fuckoff huge torque converter, which allows a much easier driving experience as one only needs 2 gears forwards and one reverse to cover the entire range, and is in fact still in service today on a variety of vehicles. Which is more than I can say for any Nazi WW2 equipment.
I would like my million bucks, along with a punitive extra 1 mil for you shifting the goalposts from suspensions to transmissions yet still being horribly wrong.
and yes longer vehicles are harder to steer, but the magic number for tread-to-length is 1.5-1.8, and all Allied tanks of the late war period were perfectly fine in that regard. As Beer rightly notes.

 

You've gone straight into denialism. Tell me, do you also not believe the Allied reports on what they found in certain camps in Poland?
Regardless of what you choose or do not choose to believe, the Allies pretty much plowed through the Nazis in Europe, with the Nazis not achieving any great successes for all the divisions of brand spanking new tanks they threw into the grinder.

In conclusion, you are a total idiot blindly "defending" the products of a tyrannical regime despite lacking some very basic knowledge on the subject in general and of your specific favorites in particular. I diagnose you with a extremely bad case of Dunning-Kruger, the only known cure to which is this:

Your SNR is a net negative and the only reason you haven't yet been kicked off the forum for being a waste of electrons is that some people here still find your brand of idiocy amusing.

Spaßvogel you.

"They had been quite firmly defeated by being outmaneuvered, cut off, rendered irrelevant to the Allies achieving their objectives, and left with the choice of either dying pointlessly or surrendering. In fact, more surrendered than were killed fighting."

...aaaaaand they were in Berlin. Six weeks.

We need another thread for this, I shouldn't have replied to Lord James. You people are too easy to provoke.

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

They are, you’re just not accepting it. 
 

 

 

I gave you several American and British examples, mate... 

Arracourt: not yet corroborated by non-American sources. I don't believe in "official" US army fairy tales.

Ruweisat ridge (part of first battle of El Alamein): What about Ruweisat?

the Falaise: No noteworthy maneuver. Germans deliberately exposed their flanks for an all out attack and got bombed and shelled to dust. Then Allies failed to bag Germans again.

Mons / Colmar pockets: You mean against those depleted static units? What exactly was maneuvered there? Driving behind some mg nests?

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

Lol wut? Is that why the Nazi’s increasingly used poorly trained conscripts with minimum equipment as the war went on, or how they continued to make cheap vehicles like Hetzer and Stug as materials and time grew thin? 
 

Not all were suddenly poorly trained conscripts.

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

The Normandy campaign was not particularly hampered by the Germans efforts more than any other front. Normandy was difficult to cross because of the environment being: 

A) full of dense hedge rows (bocage), that were difficult to pass through and provided AT gun crews and panzershreck / panzerfaust teams with easy targets at close range. It took so long because each of these guns / teams had to be meticulously cleared before armor could move forward.

Around Caen there aren't many bocages. Also, bocages were a great opportunity to show  the skills of American soldiers. It didn't work too well.

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

B) the roads were so thoroughly damaged by the allied bombardment that it was difficult to drive anywhere without coming across a 2 meter deep crater or heavy debris blocking your path.

This is no excuse. Roads are fixed in a few days, especially with the amount of resources Allies had. Besides, why destroy entire north of France for an enemy that only has tanks, infantry and mortars?

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

 

After the allies had broken out of this terrain, they saw much faster and further advances.

Not at all, they were stuck around Caen due to splendid German tigers & some panzergrenadiers. They had to grind them with the help of strategic weapons that Germans neither had, nor had any answer against.

33 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

 

Also, outside of Caen is where the falaise pocket was fought, and the allies made huge advances securing land from the Nazi’s, and destroying a large amount of men and material via a large pincer movement, which requires out maneuvering the enemy. Kinda hard to do that if your vehicles are “less maneuverable”. 

Allies were 1 month behind schedule before Falaise debacle. They were likely very happy that Germans exposed themselves, especially because they knew exact plans 3 days before the attack. That "pincer" was merely clearing up the dust after massive artillery shelling and air attacks already wrecked the entire army. And yet they failed, half of German personnel escaped. They could have finished the thing right there. They could have also drove right into Germany but they failed due to logistical problems. Even at full motorisation they were at a quite shorter distance than semi-motorised German army managed during Barbarossa. Here are Soviets definitely more commendable.

4 hours ago, Beer said:

 

What my source? Vehicle you posted is second Auto-Union prototype. The hull has nothing to do with Pz.38(t) aside of the externally mounted 38(t) suspension for comparison testing. This vehicle was built before ČKD even knew that it was being developed. Picture I posted is different vehicle designed later by ČKD and only that one is based on 38(t). Period. 

 

> this is the final vehicle (https://www.valka.cz/Kaetzchen-38t-t12141)

"Napriek podpore Heeres Waffenamtu a WaPrüf 6 projektu obrneného transportéru firmy Auto Union známeho pod krycím názvom Kätzchen, existovala ešte i snaha využiť podvozok tanku Pz.Kpfw.38(t)"

Here is the answer to your mistery. Germans wanted to use the BMM production capacity and the 38(t) platform.

Quote

 

 

That's only your and all wrong interpretation and ignorance. There are countless examples that interleaved wheels are not needed for heavy vehicles and it was like that in WW2 just like it is today. Two examples of many many more. 

 

1945, 86 tons, single torsion bars

 

1945, 68 tons, single torsion bars

Count the road wheels and check the length of the hulls. Then think why Soviets (at least mediums) and Germans both wanted very short vehicles. Turning radius of these things has to be half of Texas. Some "theory" for you:

The image shows the forces that have to be overcome to turn the vehicle. Each hull extension increases them and extends the possible turn radius, decreasing the agility of the vehicle. Sure, for heavy tanks that might not be essential but it requires more powerful engine at already increased weight.

Now a question for mio $. Do these two vehicles enable neutral steering, as could Tiger 2?

Quote

I'm not interpreting anything. I'm telling what the October 1944 decision stated. There is nothing ambiguous about that. 

They stated that the Kniepkamp's designes will be dropped?

Quote

 You interpret the article wrong.  The use of double torsion bars was not a measure to overcome material issues but a measure to achieve double travel with existing materials.

What can be wrongly interpreted in that simple statement? It wasn't either-or. It was the combination of both.

Quote

You can clearly see that on Königstiger which didn't have double torsion bars (by your logic it would absolutely had to have them). 510 mm is insane value for the time, nearly double to the other vehicles of the period and it was possible only through double length of the springs. Double travel over double length means that twisting of the spring is same.

Tiger 2 was a heavy tank. This distinction makes to majority here problems. Then Pershing becomes medium when discussing armour and suddenly heavy tank when mobility. IS-2 has torsion bars, hence the same mobility as panther?

Quote

And this crazy suspension travel is the reason why Panther was good in terrain and absolutely not the fact it had interleaved wheels. 

Read my answer to collimatrix. It is the combination that works, not separate parts.

Quote

No. If you knew something about the subject you would have known that it is impossible to build springs without certain alloying elements. Even for somewhat worse spring steel you still need them.

Of course. But different alloys can achieve that and at different levels.

29 minutes ago, Beer said:

 

Where do you get the arrogance to argue about things you have no clue about? 

Then I am sure you will be able to dismantle my arguments on a scientific level.

On 3/31/2021 at 9:19 AM, Toxn said:

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.

Apart from Red Army?

On 3/31/2021 at 9:19 AM, Toxn said:

You are so fucking ignorant.

Ohoho, Bigotry saves the day.

On 3/31/2021 at 11:20 AM, Collimatrix said:

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.

Theory as an idea, not the scientific formulation.

The way I understand this is the following. Just like in stationary position, the pressure will still be distributed locally on the frontal wheel arms, sinking the vehicle less into the ground and creating smaller "Bugwelle" - the terrain curve pushed in front of the vehicle that has to be overcome (upper image). Lower image shows two vehicles with the same specific ground pressure  where the second vehicle with narrower distance between wheels has lower average maximum ground pressure. Germans combined that with large road wheels, at which only overlapping is possible.

The greater size of a road wheel is advantageous because the force is applied further lower from the wheel center, making it easier for the wheel to move out of the way. This can be compensated by the track width but broader track means larger surface hitting the terrain curve.

In hard terrain, the obstacle will again have to be overcome by every following roadwheel adding to the sum of the force exerted inversely on the axis of movement. The force on individual road wheel can be reduced with the arm distance and roadwheel diameter (because the contact surface of larger roadwheel on a soft terrain is greater). Today, the mentioned issues seem to be largely overcome through longer hulls, greater engine power, track tension and more resilient torsion bars. I likely forgot smth.
Some of this is in Merhof, Hackbarth: Fahrmechanik der Kettenfahrzeuge, but not all. You can find a pdf, google-translate, oder lern Deutsch du Hurensohn.

Quote

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

Sure from track to the ground, but the pressure from roadwheels to tracks is different. When track hits terrain at an angle the roadwheels must keep it straight or the vehicle might slip from the track. Interleaved pairs on tiger 2 exchange pressure from one side of the track to the other but four wheels share the pressure and distribute it evenly across the track width. @Beer mentioned track twisting. I don't know how much this was an issue. So tiger 1's version is essentially the best for hard terrain but the most complex and the heaviest. Big roadwheels and many of them likely mean slower acceleration. That would be smth Germans disliked and a credible criticism.

Quote

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

English is not my first language, nor am I a mechanical engineer. It's a direct translation.

21 hours ago, Beer said:

 

This is Kätzchen K2. The second Auto-Union test vehicle used for comparison of suspension variants (K1 had Kniepkamp suspension). It has nothing to do with he final vehicle which was ordered from ČKD/BMM. The hull has zero common with Pz.38(t). 

Really? Even your source claims it is based on hetzer. And Jagdpanzer 38 is based on Pz.38.

Quote

I have never implied that leaf springs were a thing of the future. I have claimed interleaved wheels were absolutely not (I can't see how you still can't understand it even when next 80 years showed clearly the truth). And that is a big difference. Simple sturdy leaf suspension of 38(t)/(d) simply worked, it was cheap, reliable and easy to produce. Those are very important criteria for mass produced vehicles especially when you are in deep shit. 

Exactly, that is the likely reason they used it.

Quote

There is no "most logical direction" in the E-series study. There are three completely different variants which never were built, tested against each other, evaluated or selected as final. 

Most vehicles on that list were either fielded or partly built. It was no clean sheet.

Quote

No. The later overlapping versions added track twisting and their very low service life. They were not better. 

Is why I said that it was worse than interleaved wheels. EDIT: Panther was likely to get the right pair?

A balanced arrangement without track twisting and roughly three layers only.

Quote

You claim that technology and threads changed... than you shall explain why most of the tanks 80 years later still use in principle the same suspension as Pz.III and KV-1 from 1930'. 

That is not how it works. The concept of interleaved wheels was a solution for the limitations of the time. The only other suspension able to carry such weight were compound solutions with limited suspension travel. Today's arrangement would never work with ww2 tech.

Quote

I have not claimed the Germans did 180° turn. I have only told you that by the decision from October 1944 they abandoned the interleaved wheels for light tracked vehicles. It's not my opinion. 

You interpret it in your own way. So far the only clear thing is that Hetzer's chassis was standardised for several vehicle types. Nothing on wanting or not the interleaved arrangement. Neither did you provide a proof that single line was considered better.

Quote

 

You take absolutely wrong historical lesson. Weapons are being developed and built to win wars. The heavy monsters lost the war. It was the light and highly mobile forces of the early campaigns which brought success to the Germans and it was again highly mobile forces which brought even greater success to the Red Army later in the war. A Schw.Abt. placed in any point is irrelevant when your enemy is able to do 150 km a day and simply bypasses you and catches you in a pocket where you run out of fuel, ammo and food sooner or later. You know that only the eatern front was around 2-3 thousand kilometers wide? Do you want to claim that you can place your few immobile heavy units to cover such front? Of course you can not, nobody can and history clearly showed that. Quantity matters. Believe it or not but you can be sure as hell that every single German field commander would tell you that they never had enough of their vehicles. In the end the Germans ended moving their armoured units by rail from place to place while the enemy was usually attacking elsewhere. They may have been able to achieve some local success but that was perfectly irrelevant for the course of war, just like that single Char-B tank which knocked out 15 or so German light tanks or the single KV-2 holding an entire German regiment for a day when the enemy's other forces were already hundred kilometers farther.

You entirely ignore the disparity between the condition of the Wehrmacht in 1941 and 1944. Panzer 3 and 4 were combined arms components dependent on artillery, air force and infantry. The first two basically ceased to exist in the west. So good luck holding the front around Caen with pz3 and 4 at such odds. Pöhlmann in "Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges"  points at this transition. With the waning of German operational offensive capability the burden was increasingly placed on the equipment. Good equipment and skill were two primary reasons why Germans managed to drag the war for so long. In Normandy a platoon of tigers was enough for the Allies to resort to day long artillery shelling and strategic bombing. Totally absurd amount of firepower against someone that only has tanks, at guns and mortars. Disparity can be countered, but not such ridiculous scales. At St. Lo where Allied breakthrough was finally successful, there were 2.5k American vs. 200 German tanks. And that is ignoring air support and artillery. None of the offensives around Caen, featuring 3-5:1 ratio in tanks in Allied favour, managed to achieve a breakthrough and for the later part it wasn't even attempted anymore. This means bad performance.

Quote

The great irony is that none of the most spectacular German victories would be possible with their late war forces due to the lack of mobility and inability to cross rivers without heavy bridges. 

You know, panther and tiger were made for deep fording.

Quote

10 cm of height is something like 1 ton of extra hull weight on a vehicle of Panther size. 

So what is better?

Quote

  

Man, you know nothing about the subject. No, it doesn't work like that and no it was not the case of Panther. You are arguing here in favor of Panther, yet you don't even know what was the purpose of the double torsion bars... It was double suspension travel, i.e. the torsion bars were twisting just like usual, they were only effectively longer to allow bigger travel.

Lets see what German professional literature says:

Germans identified the need for greater suspension travel as a precondition for fast and smooth off road driving. The steel in their torsion bars couldn't enable it, so they bound two together and achieved it "trotz schlechterer Werkstoffgüte" - despite poor material quality. (Merhof, Hackbarth: Fahrmechanik der Kettenfahrzeuge)

Quote

But if you insist feel free to build a torsion bar from a steel used for rails or for reinforcing concrete because that is what doesn't need any special alloying elements. 

You literally confirm my statements. Germans had material limitations and had to improvise.

Quote

 

What priorities and what price? They won the war and especially on western front with very low casualties.

Allied vehicle quality certainly wasn't the cause of that.

Quote

Of course. Not using interleaved wheels at all as everyone else to this very day. Can you explain why Leopard II or Abrams work without having interleaved wheels and with having basically Pz.III suspension?

Because they were designed 30 years later. If vehicles needed to exceed 70 tonnes then interleaved wheels would likely come back into play.

16 hours ago, Beer said:

 

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). 

I'm going into the void on this topic, I have no knowledge about those vehicles, so I'll make negative assumptions about what doesn't fit in the narrative.

Maybe you notice here that this is merely a version of the old Pz.38 hull. Seems as if nothing new was invented here, no future trend indicated. They used what was working at the expense of a more modern drive train. If they could, they would use overlapping wheels simply because they offer better driving. Your entire argument is based on what you think the reason for this choice was. You imply that that old chassis with leaf springs was the future. For you the interleaved wheels are the same as single line. Ask yourself why would they even come to an idea to attempt this kind of arrangement? What you claim makes little sense.

Quote

 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.

It was a study. A most logical and probable direction should the war continue. In the last year of the war plenty of regular projects were scrapped in face of reality and replaced with various cheaper alternatives. Vollsturmgewehr, Volksjäger, Hetzers all regressed in technological sophistication and one can't consider them the future of German weapons. Ultimately no complete standardisation took form, not because it wasn't wanted, but because it couldn't be realised. This factor played no role in recce vehicle contest of 1942 but it did for MTW. Good luck proving that the use of Pz.38 hull indicates abandonment of Kniekamp's concept.

Quote

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. 

It was practice with which Germans were satisfied to the point that they traded off the additional maintenance hours. Late overlapping versions were not so problematic to maintain. After May 45 Germans haven't designed anything for about 10 years. During that time the technology and threats changed the design specifications.

You claim that Germans made a 180deg turn in 1944/45. Point at it. You still have all the tanks to process.

Quote

1) It adds several tons of weight itself (and therefore also fuel consumption which is kinda bad when you don't have fuel). 

Sure, per individual vehicle. With greater carrying capacity you can put battle relevant items on the vehicle. Better vehicle means less of them needed. Two Pz.4s use more petrol than a single Panther. And a single panther against two shermans goes in the former's favour. At least this is what history tells. Luckily for the Allies they didn't have to fight with such ratios.

Quote

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)

You talk about panther's double system? Torsion bars in general are pretty narrow. They require about 10cm more heigh, that is all. Everything else is either bigger or more complex.

Quote

3) It needs twice more manhours, twice more material and therefore most likely costs about twice more than standard torsion bar suspension. 

Sure it does, no argument against that.

Quote

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.

Or you reduce the strain on each component by splitting the rotation of a wheel arm between two torsion bars and reducing the distance between wheels, as was the case of a panther.

Quote

5) It is terrible for mainteanance.

That is why initial design was simplified.

Quote

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 

It does. It is of secondary consideration though. I believe having that 8.8 and 100mm of steel justifies some freezing mud problems. Allies got these priorities all wrong and paid the high price.

Quote

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). 

This just confirms the need for tiger 1's arrangement. Or was there an alternative?

Quote

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 believe that large interleaved wheels were an important part of it. Pz.3 and IS-2 also had torsion bars. That didn't make them fast off road.

22 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

You must be taking-the-piss, the allies out maneuvered the Germans far more than the reverse, as demonstrated by the great many, successful pincer movements used by the allies during the war. 

Great many? Which ones?

On 6/23/2016 at 2:26 PM, Collimatrix said:

 

I'm actually not 100% clear on why the Germans were so obsessed with this suspension design.  It wasn't just the big cats that they stuck with these silly things, it was every single Sdkfz 251.  That was probably even worse for them, since those were supposed to be mainstay medium transport.

251 would eventually be replaced by smth akin to Gep. MTW Kätzchen, which has what? [The interleaved wheels.] One prototype had them apparently. The rest were based on Pz.38 karosserie.

Quote

If the Germans ditched the stupid suspension and were able to make a few hundred extra tiger IIs in 1944, I can't see how that would make much difference.  If they had ditched the stupid suspension and made a few thousand more Sdfkz 251s in 1939, that might have material impact.

The [theory] idea is pretty straightforward, as has been mentioned. Larger wheels with narrower gaps in-between offer better absorption of terrain and better carrying of the weight at any speed. In fact, almost every late-war German design had overlapping wheels. The E-Serie study is full of them, not only the heavies.

They weren't considered as good as interleaved but a compromise had to be made. Any other form of suspension was an emergency improvisation, especially bogies that were considered obsolete. Lucky for the WAllies, rarely is pointed at the fact that they largely dispensed with tactical maneuver mid-war, do no need for fancy drive trains. Infantry tanks suddenly didn't need speed or agility, cruiser tanks no armour. Sounds perfect for that doctrine, too bad Germans didn't abide to it.

Quote

Forczyk mentioned in his T-34 vs panther book that there was some loon in the German armor development bureaucracy who was completely obsessed with torsion bars and interleaved road wheels, and would basically reject any design that didn't have them.  This is apparently why the DB panther design gained them later in development.  But it's not clear to me why this guy had so much say in tank design, and why everyone around him didn't point and laugh.

You don't understand, is not on your favourite tank, so it is stupid? Lol. Overlapping wheels on tiger 2 were not considered as optimal as the interleaved would be. But they still offered that needed weight distribution, across the chassis but also on individual wheel. This reduced strain on roadwheel arms and individual torsion bars when hitting several bumps on uneven terrain. Which is one clue to understanding that IS-2 with its small wheels couldn't be anything but slow, unless one wanted to incapacitate the crew or the drive train. Hence, faster off-road speeds for Germans, better maneuvering, more flanking surprises, better combat performance. And it is pretty clear what the Allies were the worst at, maneuver warfare. There is no reason to think that the design wasn't the best around. Everyone else ran about with lighter or slower vehicles.

There is however another reason. Germans had to include the limitations of their steel into calculations.

2 hours ago, Beer said:

 

Sorry but you shall educate yourself a little bit because Pz.38(t) n.A. is different vehicle than Pz.38(t) just like Luchs is not the same vehicle as usual Pz.II.

Apparently I should have. I didn't know that a special recon vehicle was built.

2 hours ago, Beer said:

The "Neue Art" Pz.38(t) is what later became the chassis for Jagdpanzer 38(t). Even the chassis is not completely same as of Pz.38(t) albeit it looks same. The "Neue Art" had much larger and twice stronger...

Interesting info. I see that there was a contest between Pz.2 L, Pz.38.n.A. and T15. I doubt however that politics were involved. Germans used Škoda for TDs.

2 hours ago, Beer said:

After all the Germans decided in late 1944 that future light tracked vehicles shall be built on Pz.38(t) n.A. and preferably on its diesel derivate 38 (d) chassis abandoning Kniekamp's interleaved wheels. 

This is your assumption or a fact? The idea that interleaved wheels were abandoned due to Czech light tanks is highly unplausible to me.

On 1/11/2021 at 4:11 PM, Beer said:

 

Sorry for being late to the party but I found it interesting that the to my knowledge not a single serial vehicle, prototype or concept coming from ČKD (BMM) or Škoda during the war had interleaved wheels (not even any paper project). In the end only one of those designed during the war made it to serial production - the Pz.38(t) n.A. chassis used on Panzerjäger 38(t) Hetzer (albeit the design was somewhat affected by the deliberate effort of ČKD chief designer Aleksey Surin to sabotage it, especially the early vehicles). It's notable that the companies had German management installed to oversee any development, yet they still insisted on not to use the interleaved wheels. In light of what you wrote it is also possible that Pz.38(t) n.A. lost to Pz.II Ausf.L Luchs for this reason because otherwise it was arguably the better machine for its task.   

A lot of conjecture here on your part. Afaik, Pz.38 was kept in production due to the great need for armoured vehicles. You might have noticed that most numerous German tanks in 1940 were still Pz2s or earlier and were not considered adequate at the time. The chassis was evidently decent enough to enter the usual German vehicle lifespan cycle. But as a weapon platform.

The key to understanding Luchs is its off road mobility, the principal improvement over previous Pz2 at which Pz.38 was no better. Here comes in one of the advantages of overlapping wheels, the ability to traverse rough ground at high speeds, needed for a recce vehicle.

2 hours ago, SH_MM said:

 

 

Fancy photos.

Apparently, IFV Puma represents and achieved ideal for German mechanised infantry, set already in ww2. Together with PzH 2000 and Leopard 2 it forms perhaps the most potent conventional land combination in existence.. but then, a rather confusing move when the structure "Neuen Heer für neue Aufgaben"  disolved the armoured reconnaissance and replaced Luchs and Leopards 2 with Fenneks and drones.

12 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

you could host a midnight drive in movie with all that projection

You'll all get invited, don't worry.

46 minutes ago, Laser Shark said:

One is free to appreciate the AFVs of WW2 Germany as far as I’m concerned, but it is annoying when certain people just handwave away all of the criticism directed towards tanks like the Panther and engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics when presented with overwhelming evidence against their position.

Are you actually reading the thread or just dropped in for the last 5 posts? This thread is an emotion dumping ground. Some can't sleep unconvinced that German ww2 tanks are shit.

15 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Just now realizing that you're staring down an entire tribe of veteran cavemen drunken monkey jutsu wehraboo hunters who will dance all over you while shitposting and never spill a drop of beer?

Good.

Worthy opponents!

10 minutes ago, ADC411 said:

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.

 

Check and mate, haters. I'd delete the thread at this point if I were you, because this is just embarrassing.

 

You say that while shitposting?

4 hours ago, DogDodger said:

 

Indeed. The state of German automotive technology...

 

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.

In short, they were fucked from the get go. Also, the economy was not mobilised until 1943, because, among other reasons, nobody even remotely expected to be able to counter the Allied numbers. The early tanks were quite costly, and panthers were only some 25% more expensive than Pz4.

Frankly, I have no idea what is needed to build gear-cutting machines but early mobilisation would be likely advantageous. Sectors of industry also suffered quite significantly from certain bombing raids.

3 hours ago, Beer said:

 

OK, with this you can seriously fuck off. Your beloved fuckers murdered millions of innocent people and I'm sure I'm not the only one on this forum whose ancestors fought the Nazi scum and eventually died on the battlefield. 

 

Go fuck yourself. 

Jesus, sorry for your ancestors. I don't think of dead millions when I post panthers. If German uniform offends you, you are in a wrong thread.

54 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

Anybody else just... mentally exhausted?

8 minutes ago, Toxn said:

'ran out of arguments'

You see it coming, don't you?

17 minutes ago, Beer said:

 

I'm sorry but building a prototype (or in this case just a turretless demonstrator) is something very different than to develop vehicle suitable for production. The Schmalturm on the picture was not an integral Panther II feature but a separate later development considered for various vehicles but it also never got anywhere - not even to the final specification. 

I didn't say it is from panther 2. I said it would be the the most likely upcoming medium, be it as E-50 or smth else.

17 minutes ago, Beer said:

In the end Panther II was replaced by another, this time pure-paper project E-50 before there was even an attempt to start Panther II production done. No prototype testing was done, no trials, not even any final design specification was done and nothing was ordered. 

Afaik was Entwicklung-series basically a reorganisation and standardisation study, incorporating future vehicles or versions of already available vehicles. E-50 would most likely be de facto an upgraded panther and updated panther 2 was the obvious choice. It featured precisely the component standardisation with tiger 2 that was considered for E-50 and E-75. It was a broad orientation of German armament industry that never had a chance to take place. The only reason why panther 2 was dropped is because it was not needed. Armour on German vehicles was adequate until the end of the war.

17 minutes ago, Beer said:

Using such projects for comparison with anything actually fielded is completely useless and on the level of pure fantasy. There were dozens of demonstrators and prototypes made in all countries and comparing them to anything is simply pointless because what matters in reality is not paper stats but real service record.

As opposed to uparmoured pershing E5, there is no reason to doubt the plausibility of panther-2/E-50/whatever name. It featured components of even heavier vehicles in service. Technology was no limit. I would expect an engineer to see that.

17 minutes ago, Beer said:

Besides that there is very good reason to expect that a new lale war German armor design would end in a failure because that was the general trend in vehicles which were getting to the production towards the end of the war.

5000+ destroyed shermans and 20000+ destroyed t-34s later..

Or was it all fanatical Fallschirmjäger and mines?