Tiger I

>>32058420
No fuck you.

File: WWII German supply cart.jpg (294KB, 1280x1067px) Image search: [Google]

294KB, 1280x1067px

>>32058430
I hope you feel better now. Here's a picture of a glorious German mechanized offensive to keep you warm.
Also a reminder that a Tiger I have never defeated a Sherman.

File: WWII German POWs marching.jpg (702KB, 2926x1560px) Image search: [Google]

702KB, 2926x1560px

>>32058420
T-34-76 and M4 Shermans, and their subsequent derivatives, were the most cost-effective tanks of the war, able to fulfill any objective and markedly superior to German Panzer III and Panzer IV. Nazis never stood a chance, they were so incompetent. If it weren't for a couple of geniuses like Erich von Manstein, Hitler would've lost his stillborn war back in 1940, trying to pull The Schlieffen Plan all over again.

File: Assault Gun Soviet ISU-152 2.jpg (2MB, 2592x1944px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2592x1944px

The most powerful (but not cost-effective) German tank of the war was the Panther, but using Panthers for Germany was like using high-performance super cars in a taxi cab business. They couldn't afford enough of them, they were too expensive for their goals, they cost too much to fuel, maintain and repair. A total failure. The most cost-effective and strategically viable German AFV was StuG III, which was never even intended for anything other than light infantry support, just like Panzer III, originally.
Shit, even if any of those shitty Tigers and Panthers made it to combat without breaking down, the Allies always had 10 ways ready to kill them, from tank destroyers to attack planes to giant assault guns like ISU-152 that just smashed them like a hammer does cockroaches. It was pathetic.

>>32058420

Not just Panzer IV's, but StuG III's and IV's, since they would have been even easier to make due to their lack of turrets.

>>32058492

Panthers eventually become kinda reliable and costs were not much worse than Panzer IV at some point I believe. Also, StuG's became great as tank destroyer's in a defensive role even though it was intended to be an assault gun.

>>32058460
>WWII German POWs marching.jpg

At that point they should pulled the "hurr we refugees now, we go everywhere we want, gib monies gib houses gib cars gib women ooga booga". And obviously everyone would have had to comply, as we have learned in current times.

>self-propelled artillery
>assault guns
>tank destroyers

What's even the difference? They mostly look all the same, kinda like tanks just with either less armor or no turret.

>>32058420
I'm not sure trying to beat the allies at their own game was really a viable option. The Panzer IV was already at its limit. The small hull that could only house a small engine was the limiting factor. At this point any further change would be as good as designing a new tank. What they actually did - designing a new tank while extending the lifespan of the PzIII and PzIV chassis by producing Stugs was the best they could do in the circumstances.

>>32058999
iirc, self-propelled artillery is literally an artillery piece on treads, designed to be normal artillery with a bit of mobility

assault guns fire large shells out of short barrels to blow up buildings and infantry

tank destroyers have longer barrels and faster (and maybe a bit smaller) shells for fucking up tanks

>>32058988
Yea lel. Little did they know that just calling themselves "refugees" would not only instantly restore their freedom, but also give them super privileges and an immunity to any laws. Oh wait...

>dose 88 dubs

>>32058999
>Self propelled artillery
Not line of sight
>Assault guns
Line of sight, intended to attack bunkers and trenches etc, expected to be shot at directly and thus requires heavier armor.
>Tank destroyer
Form isn't important, they just need to be specialized in destroying tanks, whether that be in reality, doctrine or theory.

>>32058999
Self-propelled artillery are guns on powered carriages.
Assault guns are a type of self-propelled artillery.
Tank destroyer is a type of a battalion sized formation which was made up of self-propelled direct fire guns, towed guns, and people who used them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2KwAwOn2So even though vidya, kinda represents the tiger.

>>32059076
Are you fucking 12?

>>32059020
>>32059056
>>32059062
Thanks for the replies. So what, anyway, is the difference between a tank and an assault gun, because from your explanations it looks like an assault gun is essentially just a tank which lacks a turning turret. StuG III had the literal same chassis that Pzkpfw III had, was it just a cheaper, less versatile version of the tank?

>>32058460
>T-34-76
>cost effective
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.fi/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html

Germans did need a superior tank to fight effectively against allies, but working one of course.
They ran out of trained crews and fuel long before tanks.

>>32059124
Just doctrine. The term assault gun originated from the German policy of separate vehicles to maintain a distinction for armored and infantry formations. There's not much of a reason to not use tanks as assault guns except resources and specialization. The Stug itself had little anti-tank capability in the beginning. Later they were multipurpose, but they were attached to the infantry and kept their assault gun designation, as opposed to the tank hunters, which were for armored formations.

From a wartime economic point of view (My forte and area of interest but I'm not studying it, I learn most from a friend doing his PhD in specifically American and extremely industrialized nations wartime economies) war has essentially been a giant game of attrition. Yes specific battles make a difference on a front but ever since the Dark Ages war fronts have been so huge it takes so many successive "famous battle" tier wins to win a front that these can also be considered part of the attrition.

Ever since the advent of mechanized infantry and field guns (obviously did not happen at the same time) the factory floor mattered just as much as the soldiers training, and the general's ability to command.

Wartime economies are the epitome of economies of scale. However economies of scale can also work in reverse, making things less efficient. For example Nazi Germany only had something like 2 major ball bearing factories in the entire country. Towards the end of the war the British finally found the largest one and bombed the living Hell out of it and German Industry was (even more) crippled, past that point tank production basically stopped until the factory was repaired 6 months later.

In wars of attrition numbers matter more than anything else if the technological gap is such that you cannot simply overwhelm your enemy with advanced weapons. Numbers come down to the efficiency at which the economy functions since it is very unlikely that the population in a few years will go up if anything, so the "capacity" of the economy is basically static (GDP is not the "capacity" of the economy in this case, though most economies experience significant growth in wartime).

Basically in laymen terms from a pure economics standpoint the Germans crippled themselves by producing very large heavy tanks as even these tanks had drawbacks on the battlefield which purley from a cost view they absolutely should not have. 1/2

>>32059124
Panzer III was not able to mount bigger guns on turret.
Same goes with many other SPGs.

>>32059327
Well, let me stop you right there. Industry and logistics are very important, but sometimes battlefield tactics alone can blow a stronger or equal opponent out of the water and win a war. Case in point - Manstein's cicle cuts in Battle of France. They weren't the only thing that won Germany that campaign, Luftwaffe's role and German-leaning generals in French command played a bigger role, but if it wasn't for brilliant battlefield plan, Germany would've lost then and there.

>>32059327
For the amount the Germans were paying for them compared to their brutally effective Panzer 3's and 4's they should have been able to take entire regions and be nearly infallible. It would be like American F-35's going up against Su-25's. The SU-25's have neither the weaponry nor the design purpose to tackle the F-35 but then all of a sudden half your F-35's freeze, a quarter experience problems and can't get off the ground and the last quarter are taken out by the SU-25's with a relatively pitiful exchange rate.

This is the dilemma the Germans were facing, though it should not have been. The Tiger filled a dedicated anti tank which made sense due to the Soviet's zerg tier tank numbers and tactics, but as any historian or tactician knows; big (and slow) death machine does not fare well against fuck loads of mediocre units.

My point in all of this was historically and theoretically it comes back to something known as "producible units". This is not a measure of individual tanks or aircraft but a theoretical arbitrary value assigned to tanks and aircraft and men. Another example: An F-35 may be worth "10" units, where an F-16A may be worth "2" units. If the F-35 fails to trade 5 or more F-16's for itself in combat then we lose the war of attrition, if it succeeds in trading for 5 or more then we win the war of attrition (obviously) If we use the same numbers and apply them to the Tiger and T-34 you can see now this is the dilemma Germany faces. With no dedicated anti-armor units but either being forced into or coincidentally trading producible units inefficiently they are now losing the war of attrition.

I don't know very much about individual tactics or the tanks themselves, I just happened across this thread and thought it was interesting. Feel free to correct me wherever, but this is essentially the basic concepts of a wartime economy in combat.

>>32059124
What >>32059375 said. Assault guns proliferated during WWII and died out immediately after because at that time engineering wasn't good enough and to get a moderately-armored vehicle with a powerful anti-tank gun you had to sacrifice the tower. This gave birth to SU-85, SU-100, StuG, ISU-152 Jagdpanzer and many others.

>>32059378
Sorry didn't quite make the post before you. I'll allow you to stop me but I guess I already did myself
>I don't know very much about individual tactics or the tanks themselves


I could have just been using tank A and tank B or unit A and unit B, I just wanted to make it more /k/ and thread relatable.

I mostly post on /sci/ because I'm a math autist, but I find wartime economies fascinating.

I'll agree with you on the individual tactics making a big difference simply because I don't know any better to contradict you. An example of this would be the States vs Japan, I guess. Where (maybe?) the technology gap was very small towards the middle of the war but as far as I've seen the Japanese naval tactics are atrocious and basically lost them the war.

That and complete lack of resources nearing the last quarter of the war which was the killing blow for a small resourceless island.

>>32058420
Yeah, clearly they should have spread their hakf a gallon of fuel and 2.5 remaining trained crew members across as many of the shittiest vehicles possible.

>>32059386
>Panzer III
>brutally effective
Pick one m8. Panzer III never could mount a real gun, and most models of it can literally be penetrated from the front with a heavy machinegun fire. It's a piece of shit, Germany had to curtail its production and switch Panzer IV (which they also had to immediately start upgunning and uparmoring) to their main medium tank, because Panzer III was worthless. For all their famed panzer tactics, Jerry wasn't too good at designing Panzers.
>>32059386
>Tiger filled a dedicated anti-tank role
No, it didn't. That would be StuG III and all the things with "Jagd" in their name. Tiger filled the role of a money sink and malfunction magnet. It was marginally better armored than a T-34-76. The only good thing about it was its gun.

>>32059434
Nigger, StuG III is a better AFV than a Tiger. It doesn't break down nearly as much, is build with common Panzer parts and thus easy to repair, a main gun capable of defeating most Allied medium tanks in most circumstances, the list goes on. Tiger would just have an engine and transmission breakdown 200 miles between the motor pool and the front and sink into the ground.

>>32059462
Again I know little about the tanks but it steamrolled through Poland, Ukraine, France, and into the Balkans pretty well. I'd call that overwhelmingly effective for being so dirt cheap.

Whether the tank was shit or not was irrelevant. It was clearly paramount to grabbing to much land so quickly and the Germans paid basically nothing for it.

You're correct about the Pz4 production, and they were still yet extremely inexpensive for what they were. Iirc they saw more combat against the Soviets and Americans but were much less expensive since they weren't the tanks grabbing most of Europe in 4 months.

Yet iirc (again correct me) the KV-1's armor could not be penetrated from the front by anything but a Tiger. It seemed to me while writing that that they did lack some form of anti armor. Badly phrased maybe, they obviously had anti armor, but it *seemed* to me that it was insufficient. Like you said the only good thing about the Tiger was its gun.

The reasoning for the dilemma of building the Tiger doesn't particularly matter anyways, don't get so hung up on details though I do appreciate the correction. It was mostly for explanation in laymen terms purposes.

From what I've seen wheraboos are the only people that take the Tiger as a serious war machine rather than a meme tank and something that actually slowed German tank production to a point where they actually managed to fall behind the Soviets in tank production despite having a magnitude more industrial capacity.

File: baitzkrieg.jpg (52KB, 1000x584px) Image search: [Google]

52KB, 1000x584px

>>32059462
>marginally better armored than a T-34-76
>malfunction magnet

T-34 was considered reliable enough if they didn't break before the first battle.

>>32058420
That tank, specifically at that time, was a force multiplier. However, not longafter it's introduction there had become such a multitude of material and manpower arrayed against Germany, that there was only going to be one outcome. As it was, Germany stayed in the war effectively longer because there was higher crew survival in their equipment, but still manpower could only be stretched so far.

File: Tigers.jpg (172KB, 736x497px) Image search: [Google]

172KB, 736x497px

>>32059570
There was crew survival because Tigers broke down all the time. In fact, the only time Tiger I actually did get to fight a Sherman, it lost.
>>32059567
It was armored exactly as I said. T-34-76 had sloped armor. Tiger didn't. Their effective levels of protection were pretty much the same. Tiger could still penetrate it, if it didn't sink into mud, break down or get blasted by a Soviet tank destroyer. That is unless it was outmaneuvered by a T-34 and shot in the tin-plated side armor, or just rammed. T-34 were produced in tens of thousands. Tiger I's? Only a little over 3 thousand, and a third of that never saw combat. Tigers were so superior in battle that the first one ever to be captured was disabled by a British Churchill in 1942. Churchill was never even supposed to be a tank hunter.

>>32058420
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNjp_4jY8pY

Jump to 32:00 to get roasted immediately and BTFO

They should've built nothing but hetzers.

>>32059667
>tin-plated side armor
Just wat.

>>32059700
Tiger I only had 80mm of side armor, easily penetrated by F-34 tank gun at under 500 meters. Or you can just outrun its comatose-slow turret and ram it. A T-34-76 costs nothing and were deliberately expendable, while each Tiger is an irreplaceable loss.

>>32059745
>T-34-76
>Ever managing to outflank anything except by accident

Regardless, how many tanks do you know that exceeded 80mm effective?

>>32059780
>implying
T-34-76 was much faster, lighter and agile than a Tiger. It's engine wasn't durable, but it was reliable. It would outrun a Tiger, and probably a Panther, any day. It turret certainly wasn't crippled like Tiger's.

>>32059667
T-34 front had about 70mm effective thickness, if Tiger 1 had only that it would have been vulnerable to T-34-76 at relatively long range.
T-34 side ~55mm effective Tiger 80mm, sure is thin.
Tiger I was never meant to be the main German tank and was since manufactured only for two years, while Soviets made their shits well after the war.
Also Soviet tank destroyers would lose against Tiger in an equal battle.
And T-34 did not outmaneuver anything with that shitty gearbox.
Well it's not like Soviets were able to build better tanks, but Stalin loved killing his people.

>>32059811
Tigers are actually remarkably fast over tactical distances. Similar top speed to Shermans. Their reputation for being slow comes from the fact that they broke down a lot, and were difficult to load and unload from trains, making them slow strategically.

>>32059290
>The term assault gun originated from the German policy of separate vehicles to maintain a distinction for armored and infantry formations
The term assault gun originates from the purpose of the vehicle, which was to support infantry assaults on fixed positions.

>There's not much of a reason to not use tanks as assault guns except resources and specialization.
As a rule, tanks were not used as assault guns because they were needed for the exploitation phase that would follow the assault phase.

>>32059124
An assault gun is generally lighter armoured (favouring mobility) with a somewhat scaled down gun meant to support infantry by destroying lightly armoured vehicles and the like.