Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

There were a few reasons why heavy tanks were considered to be more difficult to deal with, but none of those were strictly speaking enough to disqualify the concept; more so, the inability of the heavy tank projects to bring a product considered sufficiently better than a medium tank (or indeed uparmored mediums like the Jumbo) to justify all the hassle.

This discussion has actually given me a renewed appreciation for the M26.
 
It's lower and shorter than Centurion or Panther, has worse frontal hull protection than the latter (but better side, top, turret, rear protection) and is generally more comfy than either. It's gun is perfectly fine, and has decent HE capability (unlike the other two). The soft factors (crew comfort, lots of viewing devices, a low and high-magnification gun sight, roof MG mounts, raised driver's seat, duplicated driver's controls, large engine bay hatches, ammunition layout etc) are all nice.
 
Overall, I'd say that the common historical verdict on the Pershing is more or less correct: it was an interim vehicle, advanced in some ways over its predecessor but not fully developed and lacking in certain areas. Even so, I'd say that it's the most balanced and usable of the three late-war heavy mediums. A solid 6/10 to the Cent 1's 5 or the Panther's 4. The T-44, for reference, is more like a 6.5-7, while the first-run T-54 is more like an 8.

I now have at least one of those for each engine.  The A57 is going to have four more.
 
I have the shop manuals, parts catalogs and TMs for all the different engines now, and enough other material, I really think I'm going to put a little book together based on my Data booklet I did for the GAA. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I've gotten really good at fixing messed up scans, and cleaning up old images. I have a system to the simple ones can be done in like 10  to 15 minutes. The complicated ones depend on how many extra things I want to label, and how bad the original was. 
 
Bad scan
 
FIxed
 
A few more GAA things. I'm going to redo all these one more time. 
 
 
 
I put a little tutorial on my website about scanning printed media. Descreen is your friend people!!
 

I now have at least one of those for each engine.  The A57 is going to have four more.
 
I have the shop manuals, parts catalogs and TMs for all the different engines now, and enough other material, I really think I'm going to put a little book together based on my Data booklet I did for the GAA. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I now have at least one of those for each engine.  The A57 is going to have four more.
 
I have the shop manuals, parts catalogs and TMs for all the different engines now, and enough other material, I really think I'm going to put a little book together based on my Data booklet I did for the GAA. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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.

I think someone posted this before.
You can find some amazing photos of a HL230 overhaul in a shop in Europe. 
http://www.armytech.com/panther_maybach_hl230_overhaul/#PhotoSwipe1611282212417
 
 

...this thread over the past pages:
 
 

What had better mobility Panther or Pershing over a month of steady use.  
 
Probably the Pershing in both cases, because American Vehicles don't break in catastrophic ways that take a long time to fix.
 
You can swap a whole M26 power pack in a few hours. That's a day at least on a Panther, since the hull roof and a bunch of road wheels have to come off to pull the Panthers Final Drives and Tranny. The engine wasn't super easy either. 
 
Pershing was 12.8 psi versus Panther G 12.65. Close enough to be negligible.  Pershing was running 450 HP for 46 tons. The Panther had between 500 and 600, (no one lists what the governed rating was) for 44 tons. It only made its 700 HP rating when it could be spun to 3000RPM, but it was governed to 2500 RPM. Call it 550, giving the Panther the edge on paper, but I just read through Panther Wank, the quest for Combat supremacy by Jentz, and the whole book is a listing off all the shit that was wrong with these tanks and how they kind of a fixed them, but never really did.  They Never fixed the HL230 of blowing head gaskets and throwing rods. Though, the horrible cooling system could have aggravated this, overheating blows head gaskets. 
 
After reading through the Jentz book, reliability goes to the Pershing.  Pershing, a History of the T20 series documents far LESS problems than the Panther.  
 
Final Note, I had not looked through the Boo Bibles for years, and having read so many Hunnicutt books, I'm spoiled. They are just so much better than this Jentz and Spielburger garbage. They couldn't be bothered to put spec sheets in for the models. Trash, utter trash, but the pictures are nice.  

What had better mobility Panther or Pershing over a month of steady use.  
 
Probably the Pershing in both cases, because American Vehicles don't break in catastrophic ways that take a long time to fix.
 
You can swap a whole M26 power pack in a few hours. That's a day at least on a Panther, since the hull roof and a bunch of road wheels have to come off to pull the Panthers Final Drives and Tranny. The engine wasn't super easy either. 
 
Pershing was 12.8 psi versus Panther G 12.65. Close enough to be negligible.  Pershing was running 450 HP for 46 tons. The Panther had between 500 and 600, (no one lists what the governed rating was) for 44 tons. It only made its 700 HP rating when it could be spun to 3000RPM, but it was governed to 2500 RPM. Call it 550, giving the Panther the edge on paper, but I just read through Panther Wank, the quest for Combat supremacy by Jentz, and the whole book is a listing off all the shit that was wrong with these tanks and how they kind of a fixed them, but never really did.  They Never fixed the HL230 of blowing head gaskets and throwing rods. Though, the horrible cooling system could have aggravated this, overheating blows head gaskets. 
 
After reading through the Jentz book, reliability goes to the Pershing.  Pershing, a History of the T20 series documents far LESS problems than the Panther.  
 
Final Note, I had not looked through the Boo Bibles for years, and having read so many Hunnicutt books, I'm spoiled. They are just so much better than this Jentz and Spielburger garbage. They couldn't be bothered to put spec sheets in for the models. Trash, utter trash, but the pictures are nice.  

Panther, but only just - and primarily due to a better and more efficient steering mechanism (Triple Diff versus good ole Cletrac steering on the M26).
 
On most terrain, the ground pressure difference is so marginal that it matters not (Panther of course has a more notable advantage in deep mud and the like) and while people love to factor in the full "power" of the HL230 once you factor in the actual *governed* net power, the Panther and M26 have almost exactly the same net HP/Ton.
 
So yes, the Panther is marginally more mobile when working but I cannot stress how slim the margin is. They are for all intents and purposes equal outside of specific terrain (i.e. bad enough mud/snow the ground pressure difference adds up) and yet everyone calls the M26 a slow pig, and the Panther's mobility tends to get highlighted.
 
I think the reason for this distinction is that M26 saw lots of service and use with the much, much faster post-war designs that made it seem like a slow pig in comparison while Panther was mostly used alongside/against wartime and even prewar designs so it seems very mobile indeed. If you compared the Panther to the same set of machines M26 usually gets compared to (even if the comparison is subconscious by a unit that say, transitioned from M26 to M46 or M47), the Panther is just as much of a slow pig.

I trust Guderian, an actual Nazi, over Spielberger, Jentz, or Doyle, yes.

Everyone on this forum has read these authors. Their books are excellent, but the authors themselves are, like anyone else, just people who write. It may surprise you, but we are not members of a church who worship people who write as keepers of pure truth. Spielbeger has his narrative, Jentz and Doyle theirs. Doyle will insist the Panther was the "first MBT", a hilarious misinterpretation of a tank that was a direct response to the T-34. So if the Panther is an "MBT", why not the T-34?* There is no conceivable reason. It's just Doyle's story, and that's ok. But neither I nor anyone else has to agree.

*The only thing even close to an argument against this point that I've ever heard goes something like "the Panther is the first MBT and the T-34 isn't because the T-34 was designed within a force structure that assumed both medium and heavy tanks would be used" which sounds like a very smart thing to say until you remember that the Tiger II exists.
 

Have you ever bothered to read or watch any interview with Otto Carius? He's very candid about the fact that German kill claims and awards were complete BS. And yet, for some reason, when it comes to this people don't want to believe him. I wonder why.

So they'll fucking murder people but they'd never lie about kill counts, flawless logic.

What had better mobility Panther or Pershing over a month of steady use.  
 
Probably the Pershing in both cases, because American Vehicles don't break in catastrophic ways that take a long time to fix.
 
You can swap a whole M26 power pack in a few hours. That's a day at least on a Panther, since the hull roof and a bunch of road wheels have to come off to pull the Panthers Final Drives and Tranny. The engine wasn't super easy either. 
 
Pershing was 12.8 psi versus Panther G 12.65. Close enough to be negligible.  Pershing was running 450 HP for 46 tons. The Panther had between 500 and 600, (no one lists what the governed rating was) for 44 tons. It only made its 700 HP rating when it could be spun to 3000RPM, but it was governed to 2500 RPM. Call it 550, giving the Panther the edge on paper, but I just read through Panther Wank, the quest for Combat supremacy by Jentz, and the whole book is a listing off all the shit that was wrong with these tanks and how they kind of a fixed them, but never really did.  They Never fixed the HL230 of blowing head gaskets and throwing rods. Though, the horrible cooling system could have aggravated this, overheating blows head gaskets. 
 
After reading through the Jentz book, reliability goes to the Pershing.  Pershing, a History of the T20 series documents far LESS problems than the Panther.  
 
Final Note, I had not looked through the Boo Bibles for years, and having read so many Hunnicutt books, I'm spoiled. They are just so much better than this Jentz and Spielburger garbage. They couldn't be bothered to put spec sheets in for the models. Trash, utter trash, but the pictures are nice.  

What had better mobility Panther or Pershing over a month of steady use.  
 
Probably the Pershing in both cases, because American Vehicles don't break in catastrophic ways that take a long time to fix.
 
You can swap a whole M26 power pack in a few hours. That's a day at least on a Panther, since the hull roof and a bunch of road wheels have to come off to pull the Panthers Final Drives and Tranny. The engine wasn't super easy either. 
 
Pershing was 12.8 psi versus Panther G 12.65. Close enough to be negligible.  Pershing was running 450 HP for 46 tons. The Panther had between 500 and 600, (no one lists what the governed rating was) for 44 tons. It only made its 700 HP rating when it could be spun to 3000RPM, but it was governed to 2500 RPM. Call it 550, giving the Panther the edge on paper, but I just read through Panther Wank, the quest for Combat supremacy by Jentz, and the whole book is a listing off all the shit that was wrong with these tanks and how they kind of a fixed them, but never really did.  They Never fixed the HL230 of blowing head gaskets and throwing rods. Though, the horrible cooling system could have aggravated this, overheating blows head gaskets. 
 
After reading through the Jentz book, reliability goes to the Pershing.  Pershing, a History of the T20 series documents far LESS problems than the Panther.  
 
Final Note, I had not looked through the Boo Bibles for years, and having read so many Hunnicutt books, I'm spoiled. They are just so much better than this Jentz and Spielburger garbage. They couldn't be bothered to put spec sheets in for the models. Trash, utter trash, but the pictures are nice.  

Yeah the smart money is they're completely fake.

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

In a way it was indeed possible to reach such numbers but we can safely bet they were inflated - after all they were inflated for all sides as deep studies of particular engagements show. To be fair numbers of kills by US bomber crews are probably the most inflated and I guess it was done knowingly to raise morale of the gunners as well. 
 
The reasons why such disproportionally huge number of victories for German fighter pilots could be possible are mainly two. 
 
First they flew until they died while allied pilots were used to train newbies. As a result of this fly-till-death strategy Germany had smaller and smaller group of elite pilots followed by cannon fodder while Allied pilots became gradually better than common German pilots as the war went on.
 
Flying till death brough this disproportionally enormous numbers of combat missions. Hartmann flew 1404 combat sorties with 825 engagements. Kozhedub flew 330 with 120 engagements, in a quick online search unfortunately I didn't find numbers of sorties for Bong, Marmaduke, Albert or Urbanowicz but I guess they weren't higher than 300. By quick math for Hartmann 1404/352=3,99 and 852/352=2,42. For Kozhedub it's 330/62=5,32 and 120/62=1,93. If we took it as real numbers Kozhedub would have worse sortie/kill ratio but better engagements/kill ratio than Hartmann. Let's not also forget that Hartmann was 16x shot down, i.e. he was in a way also extremely lucky. After the war Hartmann was charged in USSR for various crimes including "destuction of 345 expensive Soviet aircraft". The trial was also more of a propaganda show I guess but interestingly it operated with Hartmann's offcial numbers.  
 
The second reason, why, is that to have huge number of kills you need to have someone to shoot down. We can see that the top fighter pilots of battles of France and Britain also scored plenty of kills in very short time because there was more than enough targets to shoot down and they flew non-stop in desperation. As the war went on the number of Germans flying around went so low in comparison to now overwhelming numbers of Allied planes that towards the end of the war some Allied pilots probably never even entered an aerial combat. Best scoring pilot of the Battle of Britain Josef František was credited with 17 sure+1 probable kills in 28 days. The elite French Groupe de chasse I/5 was credited with 71 kills with a loss of only one dead own pilot during the Battle of France (many were shot down but survived and fought again). I.e. in desperate situation against enemy with superior numbers top Allied pilots scored enormous number of kills as well (and their kills were of course also inflated). 
 
In the end I would say that the numbers of aerial kills could be proportionally correct but they were for sure inflated on all sides (that is normal in every war, US kills in Vietnam were grossly inflated too). 
 
 
What I don't believe however is tank kills of pilots like Erich Rudel. Various studies showed that armor losses to airforce were minimal during the WW2. The tests showed that destryoing a tank with WW2 aircraft was extremely difficult even on a static tank without AA fire.  

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.