Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

Better view on M4

 
   Bonus photo

No, but the commenters on his videos are.

Ah, the typical Western front Tiger story:
- scratch unit (because most of the effort is in the East)
- breakdowns start immediately
- mauled by infantry
- more breakdowns
- mauled by infantry and halftracks
- one successful engagement (that wehraboos won't shut up about)
- yet more breakdowns
- outfoxed by Comets and their 'quick reversing'
- fail to reposition
- get ouflanked and shot in the side

Gee it's awfully funny that all of the personal combat logs whine about panzerfausts, and German records recall there being literally hundreds of them in the AO - but the fact that they didn't report the losses as being to them must mean it never happened. And yes, the losses to fausts were so low that the Soviets didn't improvise bedspring armor in a desperate attempt to do something against them, and that the soviets most certainly didn't bother capturing and reverse engineering them. Not at all. I think it is far more likely someone on the soviet side simply messed up (records are hardly faultless on any side!) with recording the losses rather than all of the combat logs being wrong and the hundreds of panzerfausts in the area apparently doing absolutely nothing despite being in a perfect situation.
 
And yes, Norge's *nominal* AT assets are quite sad. But given the condition of the battlefield I would bet money at least some bigger AT guns were attached to them ad-hoc from other battered units. Nobody records every ad-hoc attachment, look at the utter mess of ad-hoc formations during Bagration and Zitadelle - these are well known to exist but their exact composition is never going to be fully known.

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See, I get the feeling that just like Critical Mass - you only read bits and pieces.
 
If you read the whole comment chain, there were other units that likely had AT guns attached - in particular the Norge PanzerGren regiment. Which does have organic AT in their TO&E, and probably had supplementary AT attached (largely because as the German army slowly disintegrated, attaching stragglers from wiped out units to surviving ones was extremely common.)
 
Also I highly doubt that with over 600 panzerfaust in the area, that they did little damage. Soviets spend time whining about panzerfausts, and we know from German records that about 1,300-,1400 men armed with at least 600 panzerfausts were in the area. The whole crux of the argument rests on the soviets saying "projectile impact" - but who is to say the local Soviet commander didn't count Panzerfausts as projectiles? They certainly are projectiles.

How is any of this incompatible with my supposition? Surely the Occam's razor approach would dictate that, if there were plenty of other Nazi forces in the area and the Soviets were not aware of taking losses from tanks, that the losses were mostly not from Nazi tanks?
 
How do you square pinning all these losses on this one unit? Did the rest of the army just sit back for the day, while the Soviet tankers inexplicably started blaming panzerfausts for 88mm shell hits? And how does the Soviet diary not notice that their concentration point got sniped, and that the scouting party that they sent in later in the day apparently all had T-34s?

That's not a thesis, it's a vague wish. What do you think actually happened? The Nazi account has tigers ambushing a huge force of IS-2s and T-34s as they mass for an assault on the morning of 19 April 1945, in the area around Bellersdorf. Then, later in the day ("late afternoon"), the same force is attacked by "around 30" T-34s and then mauls that attack as well.
 
Meanwhile, the Soviet forces in the area have them pressing an advance over the previous few days, then overrunning the position on the 19th. They don't seem to notice the Tigers operating in the area, and it doesn't slow them down at all.
 
Now the second account is obviously true in terms of movement and casualties - you simply can't lie about your own movements and losses on an ongoing basis (such as a unit diary) without it becoming really obvious at some point. So the question becomes about how you can reconcile the contradiction of a unit taking a mauling that should have stopped their advance dead versus the unit itself neither stopping or noticing that they were the targets of special attention by an enemy heavy tank unit.
 
As I've said, you don't seem to have laid out a coherent thesis at all here, so the following is simply my first impression. But from where I stand the most likely account is that Nazi tiger 2s were operating more or less in the area (a few got knocked out in the process, it seems), did a day's work for a heavy tank unit on the defensive, and then came home to have their exploits bundled up for propaganda purposes while the position itself got overrun.

Some genuine fucking advice, mate. The Americans lied all the time. The Soviets lied all the time. This does not mean that the reality is "actually our side is the liar culture and their side was the truth culture". Everyone fucking lied. Every society in the 20th Century (and many other centuries, but especially that one and this one), had a penchant for lies.

Just because the Americans lied about My Lai does not mean the Nazis didn't lie about kill counts. Or Auschwitz, and be careful how close one takes you to the other.

The key to becoming a good historian, speaking as someone who frankly is a pretty decent one, is to recognize lies. And you're not looking at truth, with this Korner dude.

Trusting Nazis is no way to get to the truth, numbnuts. 

Trusting Nazis is no way to get to the truth, numbnuts. 

Trusting Nazis is no way to get to the truth, numbnuts. 

For one the turret stock is 22 - which both the official documents and captured examples show, 2 racks of 11. Furthermore, while the official claim was 86 (where in gods' name did you get 84?) rounds stowed - examination of actual, captured field issue tanks shows that the standard fitting was in fact 70. It would seem that not all of the official racks were actually issued, probably for ergonomic reasons. And yes, I will happily take what was found issued in tanks over what they say they will have issued any day.
 
 
TO&E doesn't magically change based on short-notice intel, and the German intelligence apparatus was notoriously insufficient in any case. How would this German unit *know* they were about to get slammed by nothing but armor and not some other mix of forces, and thus load only AP?
 
 
How do you propose that the artillery managed to penetrate the drive sprocket covering the final drive housing and the final drive housing itself without also penetrating the sides of the tank and causing more direct issues? The total LOS thickness on the sides to strike the final drives is roughly 40mm thick give or take a few mm. And from the front, it'd have to penetrate both the track and the housing for a pretty similar LoS.
 
You also seem, in your wanking of frontal armor here, to wantonly ignore Hoak directly whining in the report that the armor was frequently penetrated by anti-tank *and* tank fire. While simultaneously 100% trusting him that it was totally the arty that blew up his final drives.

Okay, firstly this is slightly fetishistic and creepy. Secondly, what's your thesis here?
 
So Korner's claims are fiction, but the 'core' of the story is real and heroic. What's the core here? That a bunch of Nazi units inflicted losses on leading Soviet units (without holding up the advance in any way) and that some of these units had Tigers? That the losses were disproportionate over and above the amount expected by a force on the defensive operating out of prepared positions? 
 
What's the actual event that you're cheering for here?

I wonder what's the point of this obsession with propaganda-driven made-up stats of several individuals leaving the other millions of common German soldiers looking like a useless inept crowd. That applies twice more if those individuals are hardcore nazi from SS. That's not only weird but also rather sick fetish. 
 

You're ignoring the part where critical mass founds his argument on the Soviet losses of that entire part of the front for that day, then elides his way into the two numbers being similar and that therefore Korner's account is somehow legit.
 
Peter goes into this at length.

Because, as I stated in my sarcastic suuuure line, the final drive is a very small target (and it's only exposed from some angles!). You'll note other armies have a conspicuous lack of 'oops all our final drives were hit by arty what a shame'. So either the man is bullshitting as to why the final drives broke, or the allies are actually putting their very best marksmen on artillery teams - with strict orders to aim only for final drives.
 
It's rather comparable to exclaiming that the enemy was scoring nothing but headshots on your infantry.
 
 
You'd think the Germans would realize that it's a wee bit unlikely that Karl and Ko destroyed *more tanks than they carried ammo combined*. Seriously, each JT carries 40 rounds at 100% stowage. Where did the ~30 extra kills come from, repeatedly limping into them with the JT's famous agility?
 
 
Thankfully, we have the soviet combat logs - Körner was ran over in a few hours, and they don't even bother to record meeting the vehicles in their logs. They spend more time whining about Panzerfausts.
 
https://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/05/cheating-at-statistics-7-korner-conjurer.html

Since he really admires Nazi technology so much, maybe he boned up on the only thing they were both technologically cutting edge on, and good at implementing. Mass Murder and the tools used to do it. It's easier to understand than a torque converter too! 

M26 was rated for 60% (31 degrees) as well.

Since he really admires Nazi technology so much, maybe he boned up on the only thing they were both technologically cutting edge on, and good at implementing. Mass Murder and the tools used to do it. It's easier to understand than a torque converter too! 

I think my favourite Western front moment is when the Nazis pulled some Wimp Lo shit, got their noses bloodied in the battle of the bulge and then decided that it was a tactical victory which slowed down the allied advance.

You are.

Man, millions and millions of automatic gearboxes in past eighty years all around the Globe have been equipped with torque converter. If you never heard about the most common coupling solution in automatic gearboxes, it means without any doubt that you have zero clue about transmissions and since differentials are rather difficult topic to grasp I think you shall not argue about them. Even what you just wrote is simply stupid. 

https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/bazooka-charlies-grasshopper-180974445/
 
Bazooka Charlie and his Piper Cub went tank busting in that battle that Delete here claims never happened.
 

 
The restoration was finished last year.