German Armour What If?

[FreakyDude]

well I have decided to take the push here and build a version of the VK3000db2 which will be called VK3000DB3 or Sabrecat for short.
Aprox equal to the Panther G in length width, the goal is too shed 2 to 5 tons while uprating the Gun for greater effect, suspension, transmission and engine. The engine and trans itself will be a modular piece so you can physicly switch it out in under 4 hours in the field. Rear drive will eliminate weight and the torsion bar system will be dropped for a bolt on design as desribed in mustclime's posted suggestion. I am in the process of refining this as we type. If anyone has any pictures of this please I would appreciate it, to date I am going blind off the description alone. One way or another I am going to make it work.
Engine will be diesel as well. When I get the chance I will build a display diesel motor that can sit outside the tank.
The gun I am going with will be the 75 kwk 42/L100 unless my turret design has the space for the 88 which remains to be seen as I will build that close to last.

Now the biggest issue I see is that Germany would never do a close to copy of the T34 which is why the VK DB2 was killed so I did up some sketches and I think I found a hull design that would be easy to produce and less expensive. It does take the angled armour approach maybe a step further than most designs I have seen but it also carries the Tiger and Panther design style to a point where you would easily recognize this as a German tank.
Whole point was to MASS Produce a hunter/fighter first though. More space for fuel and shells was a key requirement.
The Tank will also be equipped with the Vampyre system. At the 1943 stage night fighting would have been or could have been a definite asset. I think gives an idea where I am going but it don't spill the beans. You will have to check the thread to see the progress. This will be a slow build though.
From the RC point I am still looking at different electronics, motors and drive trains. There really is a lot out there when you look hard enough.

[mustclime]

take a look at the vk3002 db early.....



A proto type was made....



if you read this book....

http://books.google.com/books?id=feIBwI ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They tell you that Hitler liked the db design over the "panther" but he was pushed toward the panther by the people around him and lies that the panther design would be ready first. Here is what db was working on when their tank was cancled....




here is a pic of that hull

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The turret was being sub contracted out and the final version woul have looked somethng like this...



I love the argument that the db design was rejected because the guns would have been stuck in the ground everytime they went down hill, have the people that say this ever seen a jagpanther or any of the long barrel assultguns?

Any way you look at it, the panter was a huge mistake. It just took to much time to make, its drive tran was crap right out of the box and its design was out dated(fwd) even on the design tables. To make matters worse, the KT was a enlarged version of the panther.... Over the next year I hope to make a e50-75 and a vk3002 for rc battle. I love making ww2 german tanks from scratch as they are for the most part made out flat plates....

[mustclime]

read through this on the vk3002db

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[magmer]

From what I have read the DB design was rejected by Hitler because it looked too much like the T34 and he did not want to give any credit whatsoever to a Soviet design. The Panther was chosen instead and was arguably the best designed Medium German Tank of WWII. The problems with the gearbox were due to the fact that a lot of them were assembled and sabotaged by slave labour. Teeth were knocked off and stuck back into position, as soon as any stress was put on to the gear box the tooth fell off and caused problems. The french army used captured panthers well into the early 60s after the gearboxes had been rebuilt. I consider that the Panther was an outstanding vehicle and would give a good account of itself even today. Ref The Panther Tank by Karl F Kempf. Panther in detail by Culver & Feist

[mustclime]

The problems were more than the gear boxes that used gears that were designed for a 35ton tank, it was also the final drives, leaking carberators that would burst into flame because the seal leaked. Have you ever spent some time looking at a blow up of a panther? The transmission does not line up with the drive cog, insted it goes into a final drive that with the use of gears( again designed for a 35 ton tank) move the drive force up and forward and then stuck the drive cog out on a 3 foot lever arm....these broke all the time. What made the panthers so good was the crews, the 3 man turrets that did not have the tank comander looking through a gun sight for targets. You ever notice That the germans spent a lot of time hauling their tanks around on trains? Do you know why? Its because you could not drive the dam things more than a couple hundred miles with out a major service. Another thing about the panther that was really dumb when you think about it...How dam tall they were....you see, when you have to have torsion bars inside the hull and then run a drive shaft forward from the motor, this pushes the hull and turret up into the air. Why do you think that the panter f was going to have that little turret? They were trying to make that turret that was over 10 feet off the ground into a smaller target....

[mustclime]

The problems were more than the gear boxes that used gears that were designed for a 35ton tank, it was also the final drives, leaking carberators that would burst into flame because the seal leaked. Have you ever spent some time looking at a blow up of a panther? The transmission does not line up with the drive cog, insted it goes into a final drive that with the use of gears( again designed for a 35 ton tank) move the drive force up and forward and then stuck the drive cog out on a 3 foot lever arm....these broke all the time. What made the panthers so good was the crews, the 3 man turrets that did not have the tank comander looking through a gun sight for targets. You ever notice That the germans spent a lot of time hauling their tanks around on trains? Do you know why? Its because you could not drive the dam things more than a couple hundred miles with out a major service. Another thing about the panther that was really dumb when you think about it...How dam tall they were....you see, when you have to have torsion bars inside the hull and then run a drive shaft forward from the motor, this pushes the hull and turret up into the air. Why do you think that the panter f was going to have that little turret? They were trying to make that turret that was over 10 feet off the ground into a smaller target....

Germany used the Trains because you could move an entire Battalion hundreds of miles over night, it had nothing to do with reliability. When your trying to control a battlefield, Logistics is everything! The panther was not tall due to the Torsion bars, it was just designed big, have you looked inside a Panther? the deck for the driveshaft that comes forward and the torsion bars really does not make a big deal.. Look at the Sherman, it was a tall target too! Bottom line, the tanks really are designed around the weapon they will carry, armour protection and speed. The "F" turret was not small, it had the same foot print, it was as high as the "G" turret, it was just skinnier due to increased angles placed on the turret armor. The Panther "F" was designed to have the Schmalturm placed on a "G" chassis

Germany did make a great medium tank, the Panther.
When you look also at the proposed Panther II things get even better.. Remember, Germany was looking to mass produce, use parts from the King tiger (steel wheels) etc on the Panther to speed production. Then when you look at the "88" you see that the Jadgpanther was quite a formidable anti-tank platform.

1) all fwd tanks were obsolete after the intro of the t34.
2) the sherman was a troop suport tank, the american thought at the time was that tank destroyers were to engage the tanks not shermans.
3) the panther was to tall...look at this pic...



All that "stuff" between the top of the tracks and the bottom of the turret is just more area to be hit. Thats really bad because for the panther the side armor was to thin after the fall of 43 when the 85mm anti tank guns came out( followerd be the t3485)

look at this kv1...



all that upper hull is just more area to be hit....now look at the m26..



Again, no great big area that had to be armored....That extra hight is there becuase the suspension and drivetrain is pushing the "guts" of the tank upwards.....

As for the greman army using trains just so they move a division at a time....please.....after years reading on german operations in ww2, I think the greatest killer of german tanks was germans....how many pics have you seen with the cation "german ________ disabled by it crew"

here are a couple vids for you....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1vbkgARpE4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9NCPthmTsU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=yP4 ... ature=fvwp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZQVLQA ... ature=fvwp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zguDtwk ... er&list=UL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU35UDVX ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byyCyGxd ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH2IYgTJ ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3rP7rL ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3rP7rL ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDqsZmW ... u_in_order" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A lot of that is the littlefield panther A......do you see what I mean about the dan thing being to complicated? See how hard it is to work on? Now think how it was for the guys in the field?

[caddyshack]

I think the germans should have used Thomas the Tank Engine..he would have sorted them out..Or they would have just died laughing

[Wolftone]

Caddyshack,,

[r32]

My take is that the powerplant and fuel type used in that stage of the war mattered more than anything else, for so much of the German war machine ground to a halt due to lack of fuel. If they figured out how to make their machines more fuel efficient, there would have been more to go around. Mega ton monster tanks looked good and probably were impenetrable, but they'd run out of fuel eventually.

Now, back to the fantasy in the original post, German power at its peak was built upon blitzkreig tactics and equipment that supported it. When they started to build better, stronger, heavier, they didn't do so well strategically as they did in individual encounters. What Germany failed to do is to go back to their winning formula. Paradoxically if they focused on producing more wheeled armour vehicles with better guns (Sdkfz 222 types would have been able to take advantage of the German autobahn network for rapid movement), and German equivalents of tracked vehicles in the class of the M18 Hellcat, they might have blitzed themself back onto the negotiating table. My take is that several 20 ton armoured vehicles (tracked or otherwise) was better than one lumbering King Tiger.

[mustclime]

I have had the opportunity to go to the Munster Panzer museum, Koblenz, Danville USA, etc etc.. I have seen all the armor I could get around to see.. The Panther by accounts of War historians was quite frankly the Best German tank of WW2. The Sherman tank was not an infantry support tank, it was a multi role chassis, that being, a support tank, Main battle tank, anti-tank platform (as fielded by our allies the British) called the Firefly.
Front transmission tanks were not obsolete after the T-34, are you kidding me? We still feild armor that is driven from the front, I guess you think the Mercava tank is obsolete too? It is considered to be in the top 5 of tanks in the world, and #1 as an Urban MBT.. Front drive provides alot of protection..
Your comments on reliability were correct in the early stages, but it is coming to be known that those reliability issues you speak of were not the common place in 44-45.. The Panther D had alot of issues, so did the A,, but the "G" had it all worked out.
With regards to the comment of the tank size, really, do you think that really mattered back then? I tank commander that put his sides to the enemy was not a good commander. The Germans also knew that the Guns were effective at 3000 yds or more! If the panther and tigers were so bad, why did the T-34 and Shermans have to close to 500m to score a kill most of the time? Why is it during the war that when a commander heard that htere was a tiger or panther on the prowl in the area, he would send out 3 battalions to deal with the menace, knowing he would likely lose 80%?
Your arguements are ok,,but ill informed.
I will not comment on the US Patton tank or the M-60,,which are H-U-G-E and were fielded after the war... Today that size as you put it would absolutely matter given the technology at hand, Back then it really did not hinder the German tank, period.
I can reccomend some good books for you if you like...
Cheers!

Mercava ? really?...the Mercava was designed to keep every son or daughter of Israel alive so both the motor and trans was put in the front for pretection....not because it works better. In fact its much harder to service. I see no connection with the panther.
Again, it was the training of the panther and tiger teams that made them so good, not so much the tanks. You really should read up on the training the USSR gave their tank crews in 42-45. They were throwing farmers in the tanks with minutes of training....do you know why this was? Because they could, in 1942 the USSR produced 12,553 t34's, in 1943 they produced 15,812 t34's...in 1943 the Germans produced 842 panther D's and 908 panther A's from may to December. Think about that for a second...the soviets were making 1300 t34's a month when the Germans were making about 200 panthers a month....BECAUSE THE DAM TANK WAS SO DAM HARD TO PRODUCE! Look at the vids I posted on the littlefield panther, look at how complex the beast was and how hard it was to work on.
Now get your head around this....in the later part of 1943, the Germans lost 493 panthers...with over 50% of these were destroyed by the Germans when they were forced to retreat...this shows the poor operational readiness of the panthers....

As for the patton comment.....well, when you are looking up that list of books for me read up on, why don't you lookup the m26 purshing tank....the patton had a completly different turret. The m26 saw service on europe in early 45...