delete013

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.

Yes, definitely not as time consuming (at least on T-34) as in the case of the Tiger or Panther, but still not an easy task, far harder than changing a bogie on a Sherman or on a Panzer IV, or changing a torsion bar on a tank without interleaved road wheels. Some springs are more or less trouble free, but some are nasty. In case of the british tanks, well, suspension repair is horror, surely worse than interleaved stuff (tracks off, wheels off, side armor plate off). Brits liked all kinds of weird stuff
So yes, you can bash the interleaved suspension, it indeed had problems. But it is unfair if you bash only that, when at the same time, there were other similarly less successful designs, like the Christie suspension. (in fact, you can still find some prototypes after the war with interleaved wheels, but absolutely nothing with Christie suspension)
 

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.

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

You say that while shitposting?

Yep got them.
Focus on strategic mobility is obvious. Much less on tactical. I do agree that Soviets really tailored their tanks to fit their numbers and terrain towards Europe at the expense of other features.
What numbers did you take? Isn't that for 30deg angle?
 
Ideally it wouldn't be longer. The difference is in the skill of the designers. Germans paid attention to it and had good crew compartment to engine bay ratio. More choice for turret placement and more space for complex gearbox. Ergo, throwing transmission in the back wasn't as straightforward as people  want to believe. Long after ww2 were there only two general solutions to the issue, either extending the hull and making the vehicle heavier and less agile or simplifying the steering with another heap of downsides. This is why transversely mounted transmissions are an achievement. Only with 1000+ PS engines was the power loss at turning reasonably solved.
 
With zero test info or anything beyond a prototype, I am fairly convinced that it didn't work. If ordinary pershing moved reasonably it couldn't with a few tons more.
 
GAF was good for a sherman. Let's be honest, it wasn't in the HL230 class, with or without regulator. Panther's steering was quite more advanced and an important part of tactical mobility. Dispensing with it makes the designer's life much simpler but that of a tanker worse. I think being able to have more free leg space is much less important than being able to turn and drive out of opponents sight.
 

Thanks for the links! Especially interesting is the Pershing test. It gives better impression on mobility. I am confused as to why the mobility is so emphasized in American literature. Seems fine, except that off road speed test was not performed and the agility was a problem.
The test about the panther is however seems quite positive. Apart from confirming the inability to neutral steer it has few of the British problems. It confirms my assumption that the British tests are quite lackluster. I don't know how you consider panther worse. Evaluated as a heavy tank, Pershing clearly didn't impress with firepower nor armour. Panther on the other hand seems good in this respect, even if it is medium. Plus it was nimble.

My god man, watching you bend over backwards to defend Panther and then turning straight around and drubbing other vehicles for lesser faults is ridiculous.
 
We have, in this exact instance, reliability reports that are directly comparable, and in every instance the Panther is a dog and Pershing is fine:
http://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/03/pershing-heavy-by-necessity.html
vs
https://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/05/none-more-frightening-than-cat.html
(direct report here: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/04/panther-trials.html)
 
M26 was, again, mediocre. Certainly as a product of a long-running development program which nonetheless had to be rushed into service to fulfil a seemingly pressing need (do we have to keep hitting you over the head with the parallels here?).
And yet it was better by most standards than Panther.

That's company of Mr. Šercl based in Northern Bohemia, he built the engines for LT vz.35, LT vz.38 and AH-IV-Sv of Lešany muzeum as well, also Hetzer engine for Flying Herritage (he did more Hetzers). He has also a technical muzeum. You can find tons of photos from various restoration here.

It's this right? All in all, to my knowledge is such situation considered as quite "accurate", and claims honest. You likely wouldn't think so, but scroll down and check claim chart. It is highly likely that several aircraft shoot at the same bomber at the same time, especially since formation attacks were a deliberate tactic, ensuring good results. I think an attacker would be attributed a kill each, but I am not sure.
Some claims were actually refused.
The attackers were scattered by mustangs afterwards, so they likely couldn't observe the final faith of the bombers and could have wrongly counted some surviving bombers as kills.
 
Claims of Hand-Joachim Marseille are one of the most rigorously checked: Wikipedia has a nice chart of claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Joachim_Marseille#Victory_claims
 
His claims are corroborated between 65%-75%, depending on the author, and are considered "relatively" accurate. Also note that there is quite some resistance in admitting the losses, such as 1 September 42.

You put not a drop of though in considering that the tropes your indiscriminately accepted might be easily proven wrong? If you troubled yourself a tad more you would know that Luftwaffe had the most rigorous claim procedure among the belligerent countries, requiring a witness to confirm a claim. It was not unusual for an actual kill to be refused at the ministry due to breaking a procedure. Germans were also the only I know that sanctioned fake claiming.

On the other hand, kill claims in RAF were considered a morale boost and even known overclaiming was deliberately ignored "to keep the spirits high". I assume I don't have to mention the US army air force.
 
But hey, dirty Germans are gentlemen and don't push this topic that would make their former counterparts look bad.
 
This genius logic, if there are more enemies I will shoot them more down right? Or isn't that I will shoot less since I will fight 5 planes instead of 1? So the only factor has to be? Aircraft or skill. Why not accept the most obvious explanation. Germans had better pilots that could do more sorties, had better schooling, better organisation and great planes = about hundred three digit aces.
 
Yes Allies had some good pilots too.
 
I'll correct this for you. Overclaiming was present in all air forces but German kills are the most credible, US the least, everybody offended. I you want a descriptive sample of national bias check this gem from Moran's video on air to ground tank claims:

 
Various <Allied> studies showed that <their> planes had a negligent anti-tank abilities, especially the rocket equipped. Nobody tested German planes. What if Germans had better anti-tank air arm? You can't simply generalise.

Did he? Where?
So what was it? Doubling claims or not counting at all? So what were the kill rings for? Days without food?
 
Even if you discard post-war writing and propaganda stories you are still left with claims from combat reports. Those have nothing to do with propaganda or myth making and are dead serious stuff. Those claims align quite nicely with actual loss numbers in the east, adjusted for repaired tanks and with a variance of occasional double counting or non reported kills. They also align surprisingly well with British losses in Normandy.
 
Anw, to my knowledge, kill claims were not institutionalised, as were in the air force and started as cumulative sums of stug battalions. They varied from unit to unit, some counting, some not. But the hobby was spread among dedicated tank killers, i.e. heavy tank battalions and panzerjägers.
 
None of this is 100% reliable but there is no indication that these numbers were invented. Propaganda ministry, like in other countries, sought over-performers and made emboldened story around them, rounding up their kills or pinning platoon kills on one commander. Beyond that bling there were still top soldiers.

Who had better mobility, panther or pershing?

Underpowered, too slow, bad off road. Ground clearance was too low.
Considering that it started as a medium and got steadily bigger it makes me believe that the designers exceeded the limits of their design. What they got was neither satisfactory heavy tank, nor a medium. Attempts to make it competitive against tiger B failed because the suspension was overloaded and the hull out of balance. Now, you mentioned those trials and I have nothing much to go with here apart from Hunnicutt and some public "truths". Might also have been a case of institutional inefficiency, who knows.
 
 

You don't say..

Is this up in one of those 89 pages? I've yet to get through them all. We can discuss tank's role in combined arms tactics. Are any German tankers or panzergrenadiers here? I think contemporary tactics are pretty much ww2 with new vehicles.

Why are you people so bitter? Give him a break. Who cares about politics. History hobbies should be fun.

You put not a drop of though in considering that the tropes your indiscriminately accepted might be easily proven wrong? If you troubled yourself a tad more you would know that Luftwaffe had the most rigorous claim procedure among the belligerent countries, requiring a witness to confirm a claim. It was not unusual for an actual kill to be refused at the ministry due to breaking a procedure. Germans were also the only I know that sanctioned fake claiming.

On the other hand, kill claims in RAF were considered a morale boost and even known overclaiming was deliberately ignored "to keep the spirits high". I assume I don't have to mention the US army air force.
 
But hey, dirty Germans are gentlemen and don't push this topic that would make their former counterparts look bad.
 
This genius logic, if there are more enemies I will shoot them more down right? Or isn't that I will shoot less since I will fight 5 planes instead of 1? So the only factor has to be? Aircraft or skill. Why not accept the most obvious explanation. Germans had better pilots that could do more sorties, had better schooling, better organisation and great planes = about hundred three digit aces.
 
Yes Allies had some good pilots too.
 
I'll correct this for you. Overclaiming was present in all air forces but German kills are the most credible, US the least, everybody offended. I you want a descriptive sample of national bias check this gem from Moran's video on air to ground tank claims:

 
Various <Allied> studies showed that <their> planes had a negligent anti-tank abilities, especially the rocket equipped. Nobody tested German planes. What if Germans had better anti-tank air arm? You can't simply generalise.

That rigorous system doesnť hold water when you study particular engagements. I give one example because that is very well known to me. 
 
29th August 1944 an air battle over Czechoslovak territory along the today's Czech/Slovak border. Take into account that this battle took place over German-controlled territory, all wreckage was quickly found and nearly all Allied pilots who survived on parachutes were captured (several were hidden by locals until Red army came). The real losses are 100% documented from archives, from found wreckage etc. and all names of shot down crews are known. 
 
Luftwaffe pilots were awarded 19 Abschuss, 7 Herausschuss and 1 eingültige Vernichtung. 
 
The real losses were 9 B-17 shot down, 1 B-24 crashed for technical reasons (outisde of the battle area), 4 B-17 heavily damaged and 2 B-17 lightly damaged. No P-51 was shot down. German losses were 9 Bf-109 and 4 Fw-190 (4 Bf-109 due to broken engine, all the rest but one shot down by P-51). The US awards are not known to me unfortunately. 
 
So the Germans were awarded more than double the actual kills while they must have known that the number is way too high. 
 
 

Sure, today's standards. I am pretty sure no ww2 tank passes.
 
Got any link to that?
 
You know, it is not as if there was no vehicle, even heavier that had functional final drives. The fact that neither Germans nor the French attempted to fix them in over 10 years of use and that this was the principal combat vehicle, strongly indicates that this issue is overblown.
 
Anw, I am not stubborn out of principle, I am simply not convinced. Also it would be much easier if there wasn't so many deliberately deceiving literature, pushing national biases around.

This has been a successful Wehraboo Hunt. 
Their impenetrable Wehraboo skulls, harder even than Krupp steel shall adorn our lodges. comieboo younglings shall listen in awed silence while grizzled hunters recount their kills as the Wehraboo beast flesh sizzles over the campfire.
As a wise woman once said, long ago on the television, “It’s a Good thing”.

Excellent reply!

100mm front hull under 60deg angle. That is no effective 200mm, especially not against German caped shells. The rest of the vehicle is 90 at negligent angles, compared to 80mm on tiger 1. Hence a tad more. The best about it are rounded angles and few flat surfaces, smth Soviets were good at. But anw, for Soviets was that enough to give trouble to panther's and tiger 1's and they finally solved their acute problem of being constantly outgunned at long ranges. Finally they could counter fire brigades that so easily dismantled Soviet breakthroughs before. But for that IS-2 had no spectacular performance, no double digit tank aces. Germans would be exhilarated if they could live with such a tank, they couldn't. 20-30 seconds reload. But what if facing 10 tanks? Not ideal.
Engine powered turret rotation was unavoidable, not a wanted feature. I think anyone can see that. J version of Pz4 had none, just tells what Germans had to cope with.
 
Because you read somewhere that in the second half of the war Germans lacked rare metals?
 
Check the penetration tables? KwK42 is almost identical to 17pdr, with a lighter shell, less gunpower and higher speed. So far as I know this is exactly what one wants for higher reload, flatter shooting trajectory, less fumes and more ammo in a tank. That is all thanks to better gun powder, manufacturing and shell design. All belligerent countries featured similar caliber categories but German guns were almost by the rule always at least slightly better.
 
Maybe they just didn't succeed? Maybe they lacked German skill? Leopard 1 came much late in time when solid steel armour had no effect anymore. The engine and transmission evolution also allowed for longer hulls. Since armour was irrelevant there was no need for overlapping wheels and by the 70ies, alloys in torsion bars allowed for 60tonne tanks without the complex arrangement. But heavy tanks were needed in 40s, not later and Germans could field them whereas Allies were stuck with obsolete infantry tanks and moving bunkers.
 
That suspension was an interwar design. Ask yourself why all but the British bothered with torsion bars during or after war. As I understand it, British tanks just aren't maneuver vehicles. They are to occupy a good spot (hence good climb) and shoot at a distance (armour and firepower over mobility), then relocate. But good luck running away from Soviet "hordes".
 
A mere moving bunker with overstressed drive train. That thing barely moved.
 
Correct, I admit.
 
It isn't mediocre lol, the numbers are still in its favour. There are a number of other technical advantages which I don't understand, so I will focus on it being shorter (less long), which allowed precisely what you mentioned later, centered turret and also more space for the crew. That is I believe, quite important for crew performance. Engine in a panther is pushed in one third while it is almost half of a t-34. This isn't my observation but that of German designers, all nicely explained in Spielberger's "Panther and its variants". Btw, Russians are until today obsessed with short drive train which reduces power loss when turning. This is perhaps the most ignored popular fact of tank design. Western tanks have quite some issues cooling the heat in transmission due to this fact.
 
More stable, better weapon platform (in any direction), less suspension failures.
 
Should I mention how horrendous losses t-34 and sherman incurred after 1942? I better not.