Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 8:49:23 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 8:49:23 GMT -8
T-34I shouldn’t like this film. The English dubbing is so bad it is hilarious. They should have left it to subtitles only. They dub these hard-bitten Russian tank officers and crew with a voice that sounds as if it came from The Archies. If you can look past that, and I did, you’ll find the core of a pretty good tank movie. I think Artler would like this. Joseph Stalin is no friend of ours but, hey, the bad guys are the Nazis. The film starts in1941 when tank commander, Nikolay Ivushkin, is given pretty much a suicide mission: Cover the retreat of Russians forces. He’ll position his tank and a small force at the small village of Nefyodovka. He meets a squad of Kraut tanks led by Hauptmann Klaus Jäger. The Russkies do rather well in defense. As Russian tank commander, Ivushkin, takes out more and more German tanks, this is getting personal between him and Jäger. His tank is eventually disabled and he is captured. Fast-forward to 1944. The Russians are ascendent and the Germans are scrambling. They set up a special tactical training tank school and plan to use Russian prisoners as target practice. The Krauts have captured a new and improved version of the T-34 and have authorized a select group of Russian tank guys to refurbish it. The will then be sent out in war games against several German tanks driven by students who will be using live fire. However, the T-34 tank will have no ammunition. The Kraut in charge of this training school is the same one who had fought Nikolay Ivushkin at Nefyodovka. He chooses Ivushkin to lead the T-34 crew. It’s a rematch! But Ivushkin has other plans. While refurbishing the tank they find a few live shells and hide them. They plan to do a little more than just be a target. They’re going to make a run for the Czech border. They even throw in a love interest, fellow prisoner Anya Yartseva who acts as an interpreter for the Krauts. And she wants out of there in a bad way as well. There’s some dorkiness about this film (no help from the awful English dubbing). But there is some cool stuff too. The tanks (whether actual tanks or CGI) are very convincing. The tank-to-tank battles are well done and exciting by using the technique of slowing down the tank shells as they are shot. You follow their trails as they hit, miss, or just glance off a tank. This technique is so over-used and badly used in movies (aka “bullet time” which started with The Matrix) but it works here to add immediacy, drama, and even realism to the battles. Whether any of this is based even remotely on a true story, I have no idea. The tone is that of a typical America war film. The Russians are shown as the good guys but it’s not as superficially jingoistic as you might expect. For a Russian movie about The Great Patriotic War, this even appears even-handed. And they did have a hell of a tank. 
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 9:03:13 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 3, 2019 9:03:13 GMT -8
The T-34 (which was based at least partly on the American-designed Christie tank) was indeed a fine tank, far better than anything the Germans had until late 1942. Note that going to the Czech border meant leaving Germany for the Sudetenland or for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, so I have to wonder about that. It might make more sense if they just wanted to use their few shells to kill some Germans. They weren't likely to get away in the end anyway.
The map is a bit surprising. I would have thought that by mid-April the 7th Army was further into Bavaria than this shows. As for the coastal enclaves, the Allies left many such behind, gradually taking some but not all of them. I think the Germans still held the Channel Islands at this point with a division jokingly referred to as the "King's German Legion". There may have been a few Breton ports as well, though Brest already fell in September 1944.
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 9:22:40 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 9:22:40 GMT -8
I don’t know about the logistics of their escape attempt. You get a bit of a Clint Eastwoodish ending to this quite aside from the geographical logistics. They have an old Western-style shootout on a bridge at the end, commander vs. commander. Or maybe it was more like the knights of old in a joust. Like I said, sort of dorky in spots but still entertaining in its own way. The only aircraft they sent against the escaping T-34 was a small non-armed reconnaissance plane. Whether in the fog-of-war (and real fog) this tank could have escaped, I have no idea. But in the film, the Czech border was seen as a safe zone. Maybe in 1945 escape was closer, at least according to this map:  [ Original] It’s interesting the little pockets that were bypassed in the Netherlands and East Prussia. There’s a pocket at Dunkirk as well which is interesting. |
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 10:03:32 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 3, 2019 10:03:32 GMT -8
I'm not sure of the exact positions, but Prague wasn't in Allied hands until the end of the war. In late 1944, they probably were just hoping to somehow link up with resistance elements. Bohemia might have been the nearest place to do that. Of course, this was probably just an idiot plot designed to set up the final shootout. If the German had a Panther (Panzer V) and the Soviet had a T-34/85, the match was probably close enough to even. (The Panther had a 75 mm L/70, the late T-34 an 85 mm L/51. At any range at which either was likely to hit, each could probably penetrate the other's armor.)
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 11:27:12 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 11:27:12 GMT -8
Well, of course, the Russian tank drivers were far more skilled! This is a Russian movie, after all. I don’t know what variant of the T-34 they used but apparently they did used a restored and working T-34 for the filming. In the 1941 scene, they apparently used authentic winter camouflage as well. I don’t have screen shot of that. But a little more research reveals that it was likely at T-34/85 they used in the latter part of the movie. Apparently in 2014 it was put up for sale. Here’s an article about the movie. Shock of shock’s it’s a “propaganda film.” And, shock of shocks, The Russian Ministry of Culture helped to finance the film. But, really, this is little different from any America film regarding WWII. I’ve seen some really obnoxious Russian propaganda films. This one is more even-handed. And the backdrop is that a lot of Russians were killed at the hands of the Nazis. But the Russians sacrificed much and eventually prevailed against seemingly great odds (especially with Stalin killing off so many of their comrades). Oh, if only Hollywood could be as supportive to America. I don’t blame the Russian army screening that for their troops, if that is the case. And American films often (perhaps nearly always) cooperate with the armed forces in some way. And our armed forces will cooperate only if these are not leftist Hollywood anti-American hit piece, although the way the hierarchy has been infiltrated, I can image them now saying no to ones they don’t have enough women in them, etc. Or maybe that tank mentioned above wasn’t for sale. The article also states this: And it says: That’s ignorant hyperbole. The Russians deserve to show heroic movies of the bravery and sacrifice made. Was every film real life as portrayed by John Wayne? No, but that was the ideal. The Russians had/have an ideal as well. Do they expect them to have films that apologize to the Nazis? More from that article Okay. I get it. These are anti-American pervert supporters. Again, the movie is a bit dopey here and there. But otherwise it tells a pretty good story. It doesn’t bother me at all that there isn’t a rainbow flag draped across the hull of the T-34. |
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 11:36:18 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 11:36:18 GMT -8
One apparently Russian reviewer writes:
As I said, having watched more than a couple outlandish Russian propaganda films (not including that very good one that Artler had recommended last year), I know what they look like. It's interesting to see the Russian filmmakers making more populist, less dogmatic films while Hollywood retreats to their dull, Stalinistic ways. Hollywood films are often insufferable because of their front-and-center political dogma.
That I find a Russian film more entertaining and even-handed is interesting, but perhaps not surprising. After all, there is not (yet) the Russian requirement for self-hatred.
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 12:16:19 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 3, 2019 12:16:19 GMT -8
I just checked the movie on wikipedia, and it certainly sounds like an interesting basic plot, though not a realistic one. For one thing, I doubt the SS (the Waffen SS, to be precise, and in 1941 on the way to Moscow probably the 2nd SS Das Reich motorized infantry division) had any tanks at the time. Nor is it likely that a tank commander would go hunting for them in a Fieseler Storch. Was he the pilot, or just an observer? The latter might conceivably happen.
But of course this isn't intended as a realistic movie. It appears that the hero wasn't even a tank officer initially, but just took over one whose commander had been killed. How skilled would he really be? Of course, experience is the best teacher, and he had that -- and a crew that might have helped him learn. But the reality -- in 1941 the Soviets had much better tanks (at least the T-34 and KV-1 were) that they were starting to make in numbers beyond what Germany ever managed, but the Germans had better crews -- was not one they'd want to mention in a movie.
Here's an incident that might be worth making into a dark movie. Just after the invasion, one of the German panzer divisions found a single KV-1 on its supply line. It sent up AA guns to knock it out, but the Russian tank kept knocking them out before they could penetrate it with a shell. It got something like a dozen 50mm guns and an 88 before a 2nd 88 finally got it, and probably significantly delayed the advance of the division when the Germans were trying to advance as fast and far as they could.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 12:32:13 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 12:32:13 GMT -8
I guess if they wanted realism, you’d grab some captured tank crews and press them into the training scenario. But you’d have to give them time to get their strength, etc. Given that it is arguable that the Germans had little to learn from the Russians about tank tactics, it would have made better sense for experienced German tank crews to man the T-34. But then that was the problem. This was late in the war and the Germans were obviously in desperation mode and scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Fieseler Storch looks about right although I’m not sure if it had a fixed landing gear. Maybe I’ll go back and watch it again. Better yet, one of you guys can take a look at it. But the Kraut tank commander was a passenger, not the pilot. He kept pushing the pilot to fly lower and lower. Eventually they were just skimming the tree tops. At first, I couldn’t figure out why Jäger wanted to fly low. The T-34 put out a pretty big exhaust cloud as it went. You’d think you’d want to go higher. You could see the thing from 10 miles. But apparently Jäger was looking for fresh tank tracks in the muddy roads. Yes, apparently Jughead and Reggie had been captured or killed so Archie stepped in. I mean, the voices did not at all match the actors. I don’t mean the sync. I mean the character of the voices. It was pretty awful. Or maybe the dumb, unschooled, vulgar, 13-year-old mentality has hit Russian yutes as well and that was actually a good dubbing of voices. And he did seem to have Super Tank Powers that seemed beyond his means. Maybe he’s a quick learner. The guy who actually drove the tank seemed to know what he was doing though. That sounds like it make a good part of a movie. Nowhere in this does it say “based on a true story.” But maybe that was a real event it had in mind. Also, apparently in real life there were some Soviet pilots who stole a Nazi plane and escaped.  KV-1 |
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 14:58:46 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 3, 2019 14:58:46 GMT -8
I suppose the German was concerned that the smoke could come from any kind of tank (though the T-34 used a diesel engine, unlike most German tanks) or even truck, so he wanted more reliable evidence.
The wikipedia entry mentions the plane, so I suppose that they got an actual Storch. It was a very slow plane, but also had a correspondingly low stalling speed. Otto Skorzeny bundled Mussolini into one when he rescued him from a mountaintop. Fitting the giant Skorzeny, Mussolini, and the pilot in a single plane was a most interesting experience. Note that dive bombers also usually had fixed landing gear. If you don't need (or maybe even want) high speed, it was cheaper and simpler to do so.
I think the courier who accidentally landed in Belgium in early 1940 with a copy of the invasion plans (which is one reason they switched to the Manstein plan) was flying in a Storch. (He tried to burn the plans and was at least partly successful, but the Germans didn't assume he got enough. They also punished him for his error -- in fact, carrying them into the air had been a security breach. Not having the initials HRC . . .)
Franz von Werra almost escaped in a British plane, a brand-new Hurricane. He was in the cockpit waiting for some sort of external gear needed to start the plane when they caught him.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 3, 2019 15:40:24 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 3, 2019 15:40:24 GMT -8
The Storch is a nice, photogenic little plane.  |
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 4, 2019 9:29:51 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 4, 2019 9:29:51 GMT -8
I’m assuming the Abrams M1A2D (the latest American battle tank) for purposes of this thought experiment. You may assume a different battle tank and might have good reasons for it. Here’s your task. There will be three assumptions: 1) Ample ammunition, fuel, food, and routine spare parts (not gun barrels or entire engine blocks, for example) can be flown in and parachute-dropped by a modern stealth bomber. But no replacement crews. 2) At least one bridge will remain intact over any large rivers. 3) You may safely disembark your tanks on any beach of choice in Europe The start date is June 6, 1944, but you may bring your tanks ashore from wherever you like. The beaches of southern or western France, away from The Atlantic Wall, seem a likely starting point. But you may give your rationale for where you would start. And the question is, given these premises, how many modern battle tanks would it take to force the Third Reich to either capitulate or cease to exist as an effective fighting force? You might then run down a list of what that would entail: Knocking out the German tanks. Knocking out heavy industry. Or maybe just killing the major the leaders. You decide what you think would be the parameters for defeat. One obvious point is how effective a WWII German Panzerfaust would be against a modern battle tank. Even if partially effective (knocking out treads), massed Panzerfaust attacks might easily stall a small super-force of tanks, particularly in urban areas. But if they bounce of them like a pea-shooter, then perhaps a very small force of tanks is all that is required. Given these parameters (and he helped to set them), my brother figured anywhere from 25 to 50 tanks could get the job done. He figured there would be some attrition even despite vast technical superiority. An Abrams M1A2D with an off-road speed of about 25 mph can fire on the move and would be a difficult foe for any German tank or 88 artillery gun, assuming they had penetrative power. Would remaining German air power be of any use? His numbers seemed plausible but I'm be interested to see what others say about it. One can imagine, for example, that simply one A-10 Warthog with unlimited fuel and armor would have easily and decisively tipped the battle for either side in the Battle of Kursk. That wouldn’t be winning the whole war, but it would go a long way. So if your only weapon is a modern front line battle tank, how many would you need to conquer the Third Reich? What problems have I overlooked or that would be a rationale for using more or fewer tanks?  |
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 12:27:40 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 7, 2019 12:27:40 GMT -8
One of experts interviews in a series on the tanks of WWII that I watch on Amazon Prime said that the Germans would have been better off mass producing and incrementally improving the Panzer IV. Although the Panzer V (the Panther) was a better tank, the attrition rate for tanks on the eastern front was so great, they needed volume more than quality.  [Panzer III - 5,774 built]  [Panzer IV - 8,553 built of all variants]  [Panther - 6000 built] But the Germans did acquiesce to the production realities with the introduction of huge number (something I was not aware of) of the Sturmgeschütz IV which used the chassis of the Panzer IV. They built 1108 + 31 conversions.  [Sturmgeschütz III]  [Sturmgeschütz IV] Without the requirement of a rotating turret, they could mount a bigger gun and manufacture these quicker and cheaper. Even more numerous was the Sturmgeschütz III built on the Panzer III chassis. Over 11,000 of these were built. When the Russian front went from an offensive operation to mainly a defensive one, the Sturmgeschütz III and Sturmgeschütz IV were excellent in this regard. They could be set up to protect certain roads or strategic places. Their lack of a movable turret was thus less of a hindrance for this kind of defensive role. Both the Panzer III and Panzer IV chassis were apparently very reliable and were used for a variety of conversions. But the Germans definitely needed volume. Although they were cranking out armored vehicles of all types, one commentator noted that due to the attrition, there were only a few hundred of any one type available at any one time. About as fast as they were built, they were destroyed on the front. Ironically, the Communists did an expert job of mass-producing the T-34. It was apparently much better than the Sherman, but using the same philosophy as the Americans, it was thought that a whole swarm of “good enough” tanks was better than a relative few superior tanks. Nothing could beat the Tigers (I or II). But there were not enough of them. And because they were so heavy and prone to breakdown, their effectiveness was reduced. The Germans would scoff at the crude welding easily seen on the exterior of the T-34s. But they worked and were extremely reliable. Also, the Russians built them precisely for the battle conditions in Russia. They had wider tracks to could go through the deep snow that would otherwise sideline the German tanks. And operating on diesel instead of petrol, the engines could operate at a much lower temptation. The T-34 also was the first with sloped armor and also had the efficient 3-man crew in the turret…a must for efficient operation of a tank (which the Panzer III and IV had as well): An interesting (horrific, for sure) subtext of this is that apparently Hitler (with defeat on his doorstep) said that the Russians were the superior people after all. David Berlinski in an interview I watched recently said that the Germans never planned to stop at the Jews, the Poles, the Slavs, etc., in terms of annihilation. He said the final plan was for nothing but the SS to exist. That’s the first I’ve heard of that. But maybe that was their end goal and belief. |
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 12:51:04 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 7, 2019 12:51:04 GMT -8
Here's a somewhat tedious video, but it does give you a good inventory of German armored vehicles. At the top of the heap is the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte. This may have been a purely fanciful design by Krupp but only a German could have conceived of it.  But then they did make this:  [Schwerer Gustav] |
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 13:38:42 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 7, 2019 13:38:42 GMT -8
I'm surprised the land cruiser advanced enough to have an actual design to work with. I don't think they ever even started to build one. They only built a pair of prototypes of the Maus. Some of the others may have been similar. F. M. Von Senger und Etterlin's German Armored Fighting Vehicles of World War II has a good listing of what was available, including full chapters on the major tanks.
The Panzer 35t and 38t were both Czech vehicles (the t was for the German work, "tchech" or something like that) built by the Skoda Arms Factory. Some of the 1939-40 divisions had those instead of Panzer IIIs. (At this stage, the Panzer III had a 37mm gun like theirs, which Germans called the "doorknocker". This was upgraded to a 50 mm L 42 for 1941 and then a 50 mm L 60 a year later. The Skoda tanks weren't upgraded, but the Hetzer was built on the Panzer 38 chassis and had the same 75 mm L 48 gun used by the later Panzer IV models. (The Panzer IV started with a 75 mm L 24 and finally began upgrading in 1942.)
Note that the Panther weighed about twice what the Panzer IV did, and the Tiger even more. The largest AFV actually deployed by them was the Jagdtiger, which carried a 128 mm L 55 gun. (The Maus, as I recall, had a 150 mm with a coaxial 75 mm gun. Presumably the first was mainly for high explosive shells and the second for armor-piercing shells.)
The Nashorn, Jagdpanther, Elefant (Porsche Tiger), and Tiger II all had the long 88 mm L 71 gun; the Tiger I (Henschel) had a shorter version. (Porsche and Henschel both came up with Tiger designs. The Elefant was more powerful and may have been better armored, but it was slow and lacked machine guns, a problem when facing infantry. Guderian referred to it as "quail shooting with cannon".)
The Gustav, I think, was a 600 mm gun. At any rate, it was a siege warfare weapon. They probably made about as many as they did the Maus, but it actually saw a little use (e.g., against the 1944 Warsaw uprising).
The US used aviation gas to fuel its tanks. This no doubt made them faster. It also made them much more flammable, hence the German nickname of "Tommy cooker" for the Sherman. I will let you figure out what they meant by that, but your first guess is likely to be mordantly accurate.
Incidentally, the early T-34s had a one-man turret. This meant the commander also served as main gunner and loader. The German 3-man turrets, eventually adopted by the Soviets, had commander, gunner, and loader. It gave them a much greater rate of fire. The Germans saw the advantage of the wide tracks of the T-34 and came up with modifications to help. The Tiger had very wide tracks -- though with its heavy weight, it really needed them. The Sherman didn't, which occasionally hurt its mobility.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 13:51:50 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 7, 2019 13:51:50 GMT -8
The T-34/85 had the 3-man turret. Earlier versions did not. Some more info on some of the disadvantages of the early T-34:
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 18:22:20 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 7, 2019 18:22:20 GMT -8
I did some checking on wikipedia, and found that Schwere Gustav was an 800 mm armored railway gun, originally intended to destroy the cupolas of the Maginot Line. It was used at Sevastopol, and later sent to Leningrad but not used. The other gun of the design, Dora, was sent to Stalingrad but not used before Uranus (the Soviet counteroffensive) forced them to withdraw. (For some strange reason, it took the Germans a long time to set it up.) They also considered using one or both at Warsaw, but again it wasn't set up in time.
Obviously, a gun that took months to set up was virtually worthless.
Various options were considered for the main gun of the Maus, including 150 mm (Guderian mentions that). But the actual prototype used the 128/55 also used for the Jagdtiger. The concept of the Ratte land cruiser had a pair of 280 mm guns. No wonder it would have weighed 1ooo tons and had a crew of about 20 (and that may not have been enough to handle such large shells).
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T-34
Dec 7, 2019 22:01:47 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 7, 2019 22:01:47 GMT -8
If I recall correctly, the complete parts of the gun required several hundred railway wagons, and the weight of the assembled gun was so great that the engineers had to construct a new railway system to move it and the cranes necessary to put the thing together. I gather it did a real job on Sevastopol, but the men and material used for the gun would have been much better used in several smaller guns or even many much smaller guns.
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 10:12:25 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 10:12:25 GMT -8
I’m not a Freudian, but if that gun wasn’t a substitution for a penis, I don’t know what was. Or it was just that Germans like their toys big. Certainly that was the case with the Tigers. One problem they had was that they were so heavy, they couldn’t cross many bridges. Here’s a series taking a look at the Tiger that the British captured in North Africa. If you want to skip to descriptions of the interior, jump to IV: Inside the Tanks: The Tiger I: Part I Inside the Tanks: The Tiger I: Part II Inside the Tanks: The Tiger I: Part III Inside the Tanks: The Tiger I: Part IV Inside the Tanks: The Tiger I: Part V I’ve read that although the Tiger didn’t have sloped armor, the armor was so thick that little could get through on the front. So how do you start a Tiger? A key? Roll it downhill and compression start it? In the third episode, the show a crank being inserted into the back in order to start it. Something else I’ve learned is that the Tigers were relatively quiet. Those “squeaky tank” noises so famous in the movies are probably more true of the Shermans. Some of the info regarding the outside of the tank can get a little tedious. But it’s nice to have the detail. It’s pretty cool when they show the driver’s station inside. He has both a steering wheel (I had no idea) and the regular levers. You could use both or either, I guess. And it’s got a hand brake that looks like it came right out of an old Studebaker. The Tiger originally had four batteries. They’ve modified it to run on just two. This is the only operating Tiger in the world. Part of the process of starting is pushing a primer button to pump in a little gas, I think. You have a choice of two fuel tanks (left and right, apparently), primary and reserve. There’s also an “Off” setting regarding the fuel tanks which I find interesting. When starting, depress the clutch and apply the handbrake. Apparently it’s a bad thing if you start a Tiger and it jolts forward…over someone’s car, for example, or through the back of the building. I’m not seeing this in order. The driver does indeed have an ignition key (with button….like an old car). I don’t really understand what that crank was for in the back. Before going anywhere, you’ve got to let the oil heat up or else it’s difficult, if not impossible, to change gears. I had an old Ford like that. The radio guy also operated the MG 34 gun. (The barrels were armor to harden against shrapnel.) The gunner had a nice sight that gave 2.5 magnification and 25 degree field of view. A peddle turned the turret left and right. It could do a 360 in sixty seconds. The commander has an auxiliary traverse wheel for controlling the turret. His station also has the mechanism for releasing the smoke. There were mechanical backups for some of this stuff in case the powered systems failed. Now the firing station. The Tiger was specially built in order to handle the recoil of the massive 88 gun. That little cup at the end of the barrel acts to reduce recoil considerable (40%?). By directing the gasses outward, you get less recoil backward. Even with this feature, the gun could recoil up to 620 mm (24.4 inches). If damaged, it was in the manual to not fire the gun. There’s a recoil indicator to note if you are getting excessive recoil. There’s a rather straightforward mechanical safety pin for the gun…not unlike most handguns. The Tiger could carry 92 rounds (about a split of high explosive and armor-piercing). |
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 10:55:29 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 10:55:29 GMT -8
That was a thorough discussion. The gigantism of German weapons comes from many reasons. The 800 mm gun was computed as what they thought they needed to take out the cupolas of the Maginot Line. The flyers of the Halpro mission (an attack by a small group of B-24s on the Astro Romana refinery in Ploesti in the early summer of 1942) saw the flash of the heavier German shells being used at Sevastopol while in the vicinity of Constanta on the way there. Look on a map and see how far that was.
But there's also no doubt that the Nazis liked things BIG. Some of this was a matter of evolving -- tanks such as the Tiger and even the Maus started out much smaller but grew during the design phase. But their plans for Berlin (after the war, when the Reich was fully established) involved a lot of gigantic buildings and such. Speer, who designed them, commented on them in his memoir, Inside the Third Reich. He concluded that there was too much bigness; they needed a better mix of building sizes.
The early tanks didn't have muzzle brakes. Presumably they didn't need them, and (as I found when looking the subject up in wikipedia last night) they do have disadvantages. As they upgunned the Panzer IV and then created the Panther and Tiger, muzzle brakes became more useful. A book I read on the T-34 (part of the old Ballantine series around 50 years ago) noted the problem gun recoil gave the commander/gunner in the early versions.
Those Russian tanks tended to lack refinements, but they were cheap and effective. The T-34 was inferior to the German tanks in many relatively minor ways -- but it had better armor (partly because of the superior slope), a more powerful gun, and more speed (and range, for that matter). And once the Soviets went to mass production, they could make a lot more of them.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 13:05:11 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 13:05:11 GMT -8
Ploiești, RomaniaOne might say that liked their terrestrial things to be big. They never produced a large bomber. The couldn’t reach beyond the Urals. Here’s A Popular Liberals (formerly Popular Mechanics) article on the Tiger. And I call it that not because of this one article. But when I had subscribed for a couple months to the magazine via Apple News+ — sheesh, it seemed every other article was on global warming. Anyway, this article states: Didn’t other tanks, on all and both sides, have mechanical problems? I’m not sure if that’s factored into that second ratio. I didn’t know it was that many. But the same thought had occurred to me about how many German 88’s could have been deployed in the place of a single Tiger. The answer is: a lot  German sFH 18, 1500 mm Howitzer
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