Why did the Germans not make the Tiger I with more frontal armor

>>32796057
well i am not german military acquisition body in 1940 so how the fuck i should know ?

>>32796078
I was thinking that

Would have reduced the vertical FoV of both the driver and the machinegun/radio operator.

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>>32796057

>>32796174
I know, but I'm saying why didn't they just do that in the first place?

>>32796141
hmm they could've moved the sights to the top?

>>32796174
But they had to create new tank that was 5heavy20you. Germans did modifications to the PZ ivs and iiis in order to make them a bit better.

From what I've read, early on they had a bit of a superiority complex in their designs. They viewed Russian designs, including sloped armor, as inferior simply because it was Russian. Later they figured out that it was just too good not to copy, which you can see in the Panther and King Tiger. But early on, they wanted to keep their Germanic designs the way they were. It worked well enough anyway, as it was quite a beast early on. Nothing was really a threat until later in the war when the Allies and Soviets started putting higher caliber and higher velocity guns on their tanks, but that's when they started incorporating sloped armor in their designs anyway. So really, the Tiger not having sloped armor was entirely egotistical. Still a hell of a tank, and this is just my interpretation of what happened.

The Tiger I was a piece of garbage

>>32796226
No you didn't read stupid shit like that in any book.

>>32796226
Are Germans the dumbest fucking race on the planet?

>haha lol fuck reality it's true in my mind xD

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the Tiger had a lot of ninety degree armor surfaces because fighting the bureaucracy and justifying expensive production line changes takes a lot of time and effort, and at the end of the day it has to be a meaningful improvement instead of a minor one

the answer should be obvious to anyone who's had a real job before - shit takes time and effort. you go to war with your 90% designs because you fucking have to.

>>32796226
>From what I've read, [insert made-up masturbatory national stereotype].

>>32796211
most modification to the tanks was to stop AT rifles, tiger could already handle that shit.
the thing is that when you first want to add a little armor here and there, you'll run into limitations pretty fast, you might as well redesign the whole shabang.

>>32796057
They worked with what they knew. It's like asking why everybody didn't do the same for every tank in the interwar period. Nobody's going to break out of their comfort zone until some shock happens.

>>32796226

I hope you aren't suggesting the Russians invented sloped armor

Otto Carius says, in Tigers In The Mud, that the Germans couldn't produce sloped armor like that because of something in their production process. I don't remember the full details but they fixed whatever the issue with the Panther, and by that time Tiger II was coming out to there was no reason to go back and modify Tiger I.
Not that
it really matter because 100mm frontal armor was entirely fine for what it was expecting to encounter in 1942. And was still effective later on if the Tiger i could be positioned and used at far ranges.

>>32796057
because hitler tought it would look too much like a russian tank

>>32796174
not trying to be that guy, but konigstiger actually translates to bengal tiger, not king tiger.

I know you didnt make the graphic, but it bothers me.

They were already pushing the limit of weight of armor on the Tiger, making the frontal armor sloping would have doubled the length and therefore doubled the weight of the frontal armor.

Sloping armor does not work unless it is extremely steep

>>32796322
Technically and statistically speaking that award goes to the afrikans

>>32796629
Citation needed on it meaning "bengal"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nig

>>32796661
Dat sub-IQ.

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>>32796057

>Why didn't the Germans take a tank that was notoriously overweight and make it even heavier?

>>32796661
>>32796709
You need to stop. Nobody actually believes you're not just trolling. We've been over this a gorillion times.

>>32796386
>shit takes time and effort. you go to war with your 90% designs because you fucking have to.

Not with Nazi Germany. Hitler can and did change things as he saw fit. And people will shit their pants and do it. When the Germans captured the T-34, they tried copying it but it was rejected because it was too much a 'homage' and offended their Aryanic sensibilities.

>>32796226
This
Also Hitler really liked the idea of a tank that just would richiot the enemy shells back into the direction of the enemy, if i remember correctly, probaly they also thought it was saver for the infantery behind or something.

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>>32796661
are you ill?

>>32796629
>>32796676
konigstiger literally translates to "king/royal tiger" but in germany, that's what they called bengal tigers

>>32796057

By the time they would have needed to, Panther and Tiger II were already being made.

Even at the end, Tiger Is could wreck most tanks they'd ever see, with the exception of Pershing, which can go either way, or the IS-2, which was an overmatch and better compared to Tiger-II.

>>32796057
The short of it was how Germany made tanks. Mostly, they were bolted or welded together rather than having large single cast parts like the T-34.

>>32796675
No, the Australian aborigines.

The only race suffering from an epidemic of gasoline poisoning and sleeping on roads.

>>32797167
king tiger sounds cooler.

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>>32797093

Also because when they straight-up copied the thing it looked way too much like a T-34 in silhouette which could have lead to recognition problems.

>>32798718
and that stopped them from using captured t34s or shermans

>>32798718

>Copy T-34
>but use the ridiculous German interleaved suspension

why tho

>>32796057
Because the main threats were to the sides, see armor additions.

>>32798896
It saves rubber.

By spreading the points of contact between the roadwheels and the track, it reduces stress on the rubber and lets it last longer. Also, with this setup, you can use a thinner band of rubber to begin with.

This is more important than it sounds, because Germany had no good way of getting rubber. The rubber producing regions of the world were the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya, and Brazil. All of that was overseas and held by hostile powers.

After Japan seized the Indies and Malaya, rubber was the primary currency Japan used to buy technology and specialty equipment from Germany. That rubber had to be transported by subs.

The other option was to make synthetic rubber from petroleum, but Germany had a shortage of that as well, and they never quite got the process right like the Americans did.

In contrast, the US faced a rubber crisis after Japan seized SEA and cut off rubber shipment to the US. The US began recycling the million of old tires they had, but also spent huge amounts of money to research rubber synthesis. By the end of the war, the US was synthesizing more rubber than pre-war natural production. If you look at a Sherman, that thing has rubber pads on each track link, something the Germans can't even dream of.

During the most desperate hour, the Soviets just said fuck it and made steel roadwheels on steel tracks. Sure the tracks only lasted like 500km of driving, but the tank was on average dead at 400km on the odometer so who gives a shit. However, once lend-lease rubber became available, the Soviets put the rubber tires back on immediately.

>>32797416

The T-34 only had a cast turret, and later models actually were welded. While casting does have an advantage in terms of consistency of quality, it is damn expensive, especially if you're not intending to produce in large batches.


Most German tanks were not actually bolted or riveted together, it wasn't good for the crews or anything inside due to how the fasteners react when the thing's getting shot up. The Panzer 35 and 38 did, but those were Czech designs.


>>32796186
>>32796057

Because you don't just make radical changes in vehicle design, and when the Germans were first putting the Tiger 1 through trials they were still on the fence as to whether they wanted to adopt sloped armor. More often than not it makes more sense to invest in completely new designs than to make small, incremental changes to what you already believe to be a stop-gap. People were calling for a successor to the Tiger before it had even been pressed into full service.
>>32798896

The additional road wheels actually decreased ground pressure. After that first fall in the Soviet Union the Germans had a massive over reaction to their discovery that their tanks intended for paved and cobbled roads were actually quite shit off-road, particularly in the mud.


And the first prototype Daimler Benz came up with- the 3001D- only had the 4 road wheels, so someone in German high command had a hard on for the things.

>>32796174
>I know, but I'm saying why didn't they just do that in the first place?

the stubborn military leaders thought stepped armor would be all you needed, and tradition kept that from changing until the times urgently caused change. I believe that was the reason it took so long for the Germans to switch to a sloped armor. There are German designs for tanks out there that came about the same time the Panzer IVs were going into late model full production. Instead of retooling for a lighter, cheaper, and more effective tank, they had already designed factories set up to design their outdated tank, and didn't want to redesign their infrastructure, I assume.

>hmm they could've moved the sights to the top?

They did when introducing the Tiger II with periscopes. They would have done similarly if they transitioned to a sloped design earlier, since it's a pretty obvious necessity.


Frankly, by the time Germany fully adopted sloped armor designs, they were too set in their ways of "slap more fucking armor on it" for it to matter all that much for the numbers they were churning out.

>>32798844
They definitely used both, and quite a few of them from what I recall. Towards the end, germans stole what they could

>>32797167
They don't call them bengals you retard. They call them king tigers, which means the same thing as bengals.

>>32796629
It doesn't literally translate to Bengal tiger, and literally everybody calls the tank the King Tiger

>>32799720
>It saves rubber.
jfc

Damn thing was already overweight as it was. Plus they would've had to redesign the frontal optics.

>>32800068
Well, interleaved road wheels also allowed for pretty good off road/rough terrain performance, and they also helped to distribute the weight of a particularly heavy tank as efficiently as possible. More road wheels means more torsion bars, and it also means there are as many points of contact with the ground as possible.

>>32796174
>/thread

>>32796186
>I know, but I'm saying why didn't they just do that in the first place?

Why didn't they make Chieftain? That was WW2 tech for the most part.

>>32799793
T-34-85 also had casted turret.
Back to the Tiger. I read an article claiming that Tiger was designed to shoot Soviet tanks ay maximym range. And they thought 90 degree armor worked better at range, since the enemy shell will hit it at the end of trajectory and at angle, while hitting sloped armor at 90degree angle.

>>32800658
>be henschel
>visit the eagle's nest
>"mein fuehrer, ve haff come up mit ein solution to zee gummi krisis ve are currently experiencing. behold, ein schwere panzerkampfwagen mit achtundvierzig road rader!"

>be fuehrer
>"mein gott, zat is genius! eisenkreuze mit oak leaves and swords for everyone! this is the type of thinking that will win this krieg! the americaner can keep einstein and the rest of his dirty jew friends!"

Remember that most everything that saw major use in WWII started development in the late 30's maybe at at the very latest the middle of 1942. Almost nothing learned from 1942 onwards was able to inform new vehicle development that was then ready in any significant number by the end of hostilities.

The Panther and Tiger both were started in development right before the war so they were coming up with this stuff before even the initial clashes with the Brits and Russians. Then, hostilities forced everyone to just start shoving shit through the production meat-grinder.

Everyone innovated a fuckload and tons of great designs came from the ramp up to and execution of WWII but desptite how the narrative likes to paint the war as some kind of arms race with tit-for-tat increase in armor and guns, in reality most of the development cycles were still in the range of years for a new type of vehicle so that's why we have 20 versions of the Pz IV and a billion varieties of Bf109 and so-on. It was take the thing we're making which was designed before we really knew all the stuff we know now in the 40's, and glom on better or cheaper shit.

>>32800068
The germans literally invented synthetic rubber during the war to try and solve their rubber shortage, it wasn't enough

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how well would a T-64BV do by the end of the war?

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>>32796057
the frontal transmission might have played a role, as with a sloping armor the driver and radioman would have worse range of view

also keep in mind that the tiger is based on a project that predates Operation Barbarossa and thus their encounter with the t-34

>>32802110
which has nothing to do with assertion that fighting vehicles with at least double the number of tires that would otherwise be required were designed to alleviate the rubber shortage, does it?

>>32802984
Perfectly fine provided it didn't get flanked to bad.

>>32796709
>get in the fucking panzer Siegfried

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>>32805295

>>32802984
It would absolutely shit-stomp anything that could be thrown at it. I'd be surprised if even a Jagdtiger could punch through the front of its hull.

>>32796226
>nazi tanks were shit because racism
You're an oxygen thief m8

It was just an early, unevolved tank design that had a few shortcomings. Perfectly normal

>>32805830
>You're an oxygen thief m8

could have called him a turd burglar...

>>32801104

Only the Ritterkreuzen would be eligible for swords and oak leafs. Regular Eisernekreuzen came more simply in a first and second class with no accoutrements.

>>32806012
>Ritterkreuzen
>Eisernekreuzen

you're trying too hard nigg

t. germong

>>32806063

I just want to become an acolyte of Ordnung.

>>32802984
Frontal immunity to most AT weapons of the time. Sides / rear would be penetrated by late war tank destroyers and anti-tank guns.

>>32806102
gonna be tough without knowing how to properly do declension of nouns....

>>32796174
One thing I've always wondered, how did tank crews in this era not suffocate on all the fumes that must have been pouring in from the breech when they opened it up to reload the main gun?

>>32806196

Donkey schlong, mine froynd.

>>32806213
they did. also, those tanks were not made with CNRB threats in mind and were much less "air tight"

>>32806213
Fume extractors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDqsZmWkW8&t=85

>>32806285
that was a pretty rare thing in ww2 (panther and tiger b only?). ventilator fans were the usual way

>>32802984
A single T-64BV?
Pretty well until the tracks get taken out and it gets flanked and or artillery and dive bombers dropped on it.

>>32806213
Ventilation fans.
They'd keep folks from choking on the fumes but until tanks with bore evacuators like the Panther showed up, it made long engagements difficult once the tank filled up with toxic, blinding smoke.

>>32799879
They stole what they could from the start...

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>>32806416
Yarp

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This thread, like the vehicles and weapons posted from here on out, has been appropriated by the victorious 3rd Reich.

>>32806581
>dat filename

>>32806581
>firefly

REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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There is a lot of negatives to slopped armor, at least the sloppyness like the T34 has. It either makes the design larger, or takes up crew space. If you make the tank bigger you end up making the tank easier to hit and it's of course better to not be hit in the first place. All tanks had slopped armor and it wasn't the Soviets who thought of it first. Even in OP's picture it shows the slopped armor plates. They aren't 45 degrees, but they are still slopped.

Also, people don't seem to realize that while slopped armor can sometimes make shells bounce off, it doesn't happen all the time. Shots that are deflected are of lower velocity and usually from extreme ranges. The long barreled Panzer IV's 75mm cannons were designed to penetrate the armor of a T34 at ANY ANGLE up to 1.2km away. Furthermore, tanks can turn themselves to an angle at the enemy and make their armor slopped.

If you have an unslopped plate of 10mm and a slopped plate of 10mm and both are of the same quality armor they're going to perform similarly in most cases. Now, if the slopped armor is of the same thickness, but of lesser quality it will perform worse in most cases. The Aberdeen proving grounds report of an Early T34 given to the by the Soviet Union reports that the T34's armor to be not of the greatest quality and states that if better quality of steel was used they could use 90% of the thickness and get the same protection out of the armor.

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>>32807866
sue me, I fixed it.

>>32808559
>H35
That's a SOMUA S35, not a Hotchkiss H35. And French tanks are the cutest.

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>>32808615
Clearly I'm not autismo enough.

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Some interesting mix here. Quite a few M1 Carbines, some ones that are hard to make out and a kraut fudd with an SVT.

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>>32796057
That would eliminate the key egg frying capabilities of the vehicle.

>>32796186
>why didn't they just do that in the first place?
Cuz muh war time rushed production
if they were gonna make good decisions they wouldnt have made the thing at all

>>32796226
>Later they figured out that it was just too good not to copy
this is how the DOD thinks
let other countries figure shit out

>>32796629
And panzerkampfwagon translates to armoured battle wagon but everyone calls it a tank
so shut up

>>32799720
>If you look at a Sherman, that thing has rubber pads on each track link, something the Germans can't even dream of.
you can build a sherman track without rubber

>By spreading the points of contact between the roadwheels and the track, it reduces stress on the rubber and lets it last longer
maybe this was a consideration, but the Germans were maximizing combat effectiveness. the road wheel set up minimized ground pressure, making the panther among the best terrain traversing tanks of the war.
material availability was the last thing on the Germans mind when designing these vehicles. you can see this from the brittle steel of many production units that gave far less effective armour.

>>32796661
>Sloping armor does not work unless it is extremely steep

jesus christ

>>32809097

> you can build a sherman track without rubber

You definitely can, but the Americans chose rubber pads because it greatly increased track life. This is a serious consideration, since the Americans knew their tanks wouldn't be getting train rides once they arrived in theater. If a Sherman was getting anywhere on the front, it was getting there via a road march. Durability in the automotive components was paramount.

> On the one hand this rubber-coated track was a big plus. In the first place, this track had a service life approximately twice that of steel track. I might be mistaken, but I believe that the service life of the T-34 track was 2500 kilometers. The service life of the Sherman track was in excess of 5000 kilometers. Secondly, The Sherman drove like a car on hard surfaces, and our T-34 made so much noise that only the devil knows how many kilometers away it could be heard.

http://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/

> material availability was the last thing on the Germans mind when designing these vehicles. you can see this from the brittle steel of many production units

On the contrary, material availability is always an extremely important design consideration. If you don't have the materials to build something you designed, then that design is worthless. The interleaved suspension was the system judged to give the best performance while economizing rubber usage at the same time.

As for the "brittle steel" situation, note that Germany did have the metals to make very good alloys at the start of the war. However, as the war went on, availability of alloying metals decreased. The power of the gold-backed American dollar was allowing the Americans to out-bid Germany for Portuguese Tungsten, and Germany's deteriorating position allowed Sweden to be more defiant and refuse to sell certain metals. When the Panther was designed, Germany's alloy situation was adequate.

>>32810192
>while economizing rubber usage at the same time
have you read this somewhere or is this something you've come up with?

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>>32806301
hetzers had them too

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>>32796057
What is Tiger II or King Tiger?

>>32802984
lol nice meme

>>32808615
There are H35's behind the S35's.

I think they went "It's 100mm of goddamn armor" and just rolled with it.

>>32796057
Spoiler: They actually did, but were too autistic with aesthetics so they lengthened the tracks to fit a "nice" 45° slope of the same 100mm thickness. Most folks call it the Tiger II.

>>32810192
enjoyed reading your comments mate

>>32796226
No Russian tanks were high quality in the beggining of the war later mass production desires make them shit. They copied T-34 and realized tank was front heavy, inbalanced. Makes it hard for stop aim shoot.
>>32797106
What do you even know how kinetic energy works. Steel is not some plastic bouncy ball.
>>32798896
Because Germans. Realy cons of that desing is much more higher than the pros. Imagine being a tanker and you need to change a roadwheel.
>>32802984
Top armour is simple RHA. It can be killed by a FW with rockets.
>>32802080
No panther and tiger started their devolepment after the war when Germans have heavily armour lost against KV-1s first they broke their 50mm maximum gun doctorine by adding 75mm to their Panzer 4s later they wanted to make something like T-34 and that became the Panther. There is a reason why Tiger 1 looks like a oversized 30s box tank design. Tigers unsloped frontal armour been countered by 76 mm gun M1 and 122mm D25T

>>32796057

The Tiger was a Frankenstein project made of two previous projects, neither of which had slanted armour.

>>32796588
This. Go read the "Tiger Fible" it's all written in there how you gotta turn to show the enemy not a 90 degree plate but sloped ones.

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>>32796709
It's kind of pathetic really, i mean 60 tons for meager 100mm of frontal armor? I mean come on.

They should have just scrapped the whole tank and made a new one.