RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Ok, fist let me say I am very dislexic and I spell like a 5 yearold, I am also posting from my work computer and I am not allowed to down load spelling program.....
Look, I love german armor but it was a total mess and a major cause of the germans not being able to produce enough tanks. first issue....they were to dam tall( panther/tiger/kt). In armor, if you can be seen, you can be hit, if you can hit, you can be killed. When the german chose to make the panther/t/kt fwd/rear motor, they forced the turret up in the air and were forced to armor a lot more upper hull than they needed to. The american sherman was going to be a tall tank, the radial motor was huge but the germans were using v12's so their tanks should have been a lot lower and harder to hit. The choice to go with the fwd/rear motor means you have to run the drivetrain someplace and if you have to run it under the turret, then the turret has to go up, if you are filling the crew campartment with a great big trasmission, then they needed more space so the hull ether needed to be wider or higher. The width limit was set by what they could fit on the trains so they had to go up and anything up can be hit so you need more armor. If you think the germans did not know they fuct up, look at the panther f or the panther 2 designs, they were supose to have these small turrets to reduce the size of the target sticking way up in the air.

Second issue, the panther/tiger/kingtigers were in no way designed to be produced in great numbers. Sure torsion bars are the best choice if you not getting bombed all the time, but they should have gone with a easy to produce suspension. The db prototype for the panther that was pretty much a redesigned up armored, up gunned copy of the t34. It might have bought the germans a couple of years. The db design was designed to be produced quickly and in great numbers. With torsion bars, you have to cut a great number of holes in the armor plated hull for the suspension, you also have to produce these great big torsion bars. Have you ever had to drill through a thin peace of armor plate? Its no joke, now think of 18 torsion bar holes and then all the drilling and tapping of the mounting holes. A boggie or exteranel spring/shock system would have allowed the germans to produce a great number more tanks than what they did. The torsion bar suspension ment that most mine damage resulted in the tank being hauled to a train and shipped back to the factory for repair rather than just a field suspension repair. DB had a 500hp deasel motor and trans that would have worked well on their rwd design. The Maybeck hl230 was complety silly motor, roller bearings on the crank? red lined at 3000 rpm??? Watch some of the littlefield panther vids on youtube sometime. The fact that the germans were making the panther that complex and that hard to produce and repair is just mineboggling.

As for all the sherman stuff....the sherman was designed to on par with the panzer 3's and 4's, it was a good match for those tanks. The american fighting doctrun did not want the shermans to fight other tanks anyway, thats what the tanks distroyers were for. Tank distroyes were to use their speed and open turret's better visablility to flank heavy tanks and hit them from the sides or rear.

Now addressing the high kill rates of the germans.....first on formost, the germans were much better trained than the russins. The germans also had radios in every tank so they could work as a team. The russin only had radios in the command tank and for the most part the comander would just say "follow me". If there was a change of plan, the comander was supose to use signal flags to direct the tanks( good luck with that). The russions used numbers to crush the germans and one of the reasons they could do that was the germans were not able to give their fighters what they needed. They were to making tanks that took to long to produce and that were very prone to brakedown. When all is said and done, the panther, tiger and king tiger look like none of the modern tanks of today for a reason, their design layout was wrong. The higher profile resulted in bigger easier to hit targets and this resulted in more losses.

You want a real "what if"? As you know, the king tiger was designed as a bigger panther with a bigger gun. What if rather than germany making the tank on the top of this pic, they chose to make the tank on the bottom as the panther...and then made the kingtiger from the tank on the bottom?



btw sorry freakydude for hijacking your thread....

From what I know about the Germans using torsion bars the reason is quite simple. With more wheels to run on the ride was smoother, faster and more stable allowing a crude form of gun stabilisation.

you had little or no chance of hitting anything at ranges of over 100 yards.

Hi mustclime ,
Sorry but I will NOT accept what you are saying about the Panther...and it being too tall ..... The Front Drive Sprocket system was adopted by the Germans as I have said because it gave the BEST grip and adhesion to the surface....there is a piece of video showing German tanks ability to climb a low solid wall compared to allied tanks.....It is on YouTube and I will try and find it......
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NOW...back to the heights of the German Armour....and you pick out the Panther in particular and keep ' laying into it '......OKAY...so let us set out the statistics for the Panther, the Sherman and of course your Much Vaunted REAR WHEEL DRIVE Pershing side by side and see what they show..................

Panther :--Length 22.5 feet .....Width 11.2 feet.....HEIGHT 9.8 feet ...weight 49.4 tons....Speed 34 MPH....Range 155 Miles
Sherman :- Length 19.2 feet.....Width 8.7 feet..... HEIGHT 9 feet.......weight 33.4 tons....Speed 24 MPH....Range 120 Miles
Pershing:- Length 28.45 feet....Width 11.6 feet ....Height 9 .15 feet....weight 41.7 tons...speed 25 MPH....Range 100 Miles .. 6.5 Inches .....so Rear Wheel Drive makes a really BIG difference
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M10 :- ---- Length 22 feet........Width 10 feet.......Height 8.6 feet.....weight 32 tons......speed 32 mph....Range 186 miles
M18 :- ---- Length 21.9 feet.... Width 9.4 feet.......Height 8.4 feet......Weight 16 tons.....speed 55 MPH.....Range 105 Mles
M36 :------ Length 24.6 feet .... Width 10 feet ......Height 10.9 feet.....Weight 32 tons.....speed 26 MPH....Range 150 Miles

The last 3 :- M10, M18 & M36 are the American tank destroyers........note the ' Easy-to -conceal' heights !! especially the M36...THAT is taller than a King Tiger
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BUT:- GERMAN TANK DESTROYERS admittedly with no turrets....> BUT < Designed to carry a bigger gun and to be easier to conceal.......
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STuG III:- 6.3 to 7 feet for the later variant
STug IV :- 7.3 feet
Hetzer :- 7.1 feet
Jagdpanther :- 8.8 feet.......Tallest...and most deadly of the group ......BUT....still . LOWER . that that:- Rear Wheel Drive ( & Mechanically Unreliable ) Pershing

Allies won.......... Purely and Simply:- on weight of numbers and total air power........as the hated scum bag stalin said.....' Quantity has a quality all of its own '
Alb.

Now, lets just leave the thread to the ' Scratch-Builds'......Which is how it started....and leave the other tanks, out of it.
The ' Scratch-Builds' and ' What-Ifs' are much more interesting, especially as you can use a lot of ' artistic licence' and so do what you like.........This is my ' What-If ' ...Tiger 1....a 'Night-Fighter' with Infra-red ( V A M P Y R ) main gun search light and two smaller lights for the driver., complete with the > FA3 Suplemental Armour < ...Stereoscopic gun sights on either side of the turret and I have upgraded to 4 surface to air missiles....( My build is stalled at the moment and has been for some time....... due to lack of a work place. )
My Tiger is blatantly and unashamedly copied from this Marvelous thread...
http://www.rctankwarfare.co.uk/forums/v ... f=1&t=7929" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And part 1
http://www.rctankwarfare.co.uk/forums/v ... f=1&t=7928" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The article is by Robert Herne, who is a member of this forum and who kindly let me copy the whole thing across for us to read....it really is very good and I highly recommend reading it Part 1 and Part 2.......I just hope that he DOES continue the story.......so if you are reading this Robert....Please get writing... !

When.... not.. IF...... I finish it, my Tiger will be painted in VERY dark colours...I just need a table top to work on, Most of the 'Armour' is in place with only the rear vertical hull needing to be done.
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looks good Alb
i have read the story and seen the pics in the "what if" saga
a bit too sci-fi for my tastes but very well worth the read and his builds are excellent

liking the forth reich "chobham" on that Tiger

looks awesome alb, i love sci-fi and 'what if' stuff! i remember fleshy's what if Firefly, it was awesome too!

M@tDragon wrote:looks awesome alb, i love sci-fi and 'what if' stuff! i remember fleshy's what if Firefly, it was awesome too!

lol he rolled that at a meet in wales best not mention it ehh

Go Alb, That's always the best course of action,when all else fails just print the facts. You know I love my German Armor,and their ships as well. Their navy like their Armor was built to have the most stable gun platforms possible with the thickest possible Armor.

The torsion bar suspension allowed a much more stable foot print and so a more stable gun platform,hell the Hit rate of the Tiger and Panther at distances far beyond the penetration of the allies guns was the intent,Kill them before they can ever even hit you.Also below a confrontation between Grossdeutschland s first Tiger company (and my Tiger S13) and their Russian opponents.

(love your tiger Alb ) Wait till they see your King Tiger from the future


The period 7 - 19 March 1943 was described in Germany's Tiger Tanks by Thomas Jentz. During this period GD's Tigers saw action in the Poltawa-Belgorad area, beginning at 0615 on 7 March. There was reason to be optimistic; Tiger crews reported first round hits at ranges of 600 to 1000 metres with frontal penetration of T-34 tanks, with these penetrations even resulting in the destruction of the engine at the rear of the tank. It was found that few T-34s were made to burn when hit from the front, but in 4 of 5 instances of shots from the same ranges striking the hull side of the T-34, towards the rear, or actually hitting the rear of the tank itself, the fuel tanks were made to explode. A report indicated that " Even at ranges of 1500 meters and longer, during favorable weather, it is possible to succeed in penetrating the T-34 with minimal expenditure of ammunition."


Another report by GD Tigers told of a scout patrol by two Tigers encountering 20 Russian tanks to their front, with other tanks attacking from their rear. Both Tigers were hit at least 10 times by Russian armour piercing shells mostly of 76.2 mm size, at ranges of 500 - 1000 metres. No penetrations were achieved on the Tigers, and even hits on the Tiger's running gear that tore away suspension arms did not prove to be immobilizing. The two Tigers managed to knock out 10 enemy tanks within fifteen minutes.


http://members.shaw.ca/grossdeutschland/tigers.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

im guessing this "Bunker buster" would make a good "what if"

built by little trev and it's 1/16th and full R/C