Quote:
Originally Posted by Roddoss72
Well yes i can understand your confusion, and i intended none, it is just i reduced it down to weight of material and overlaying it to the 25 tonnes per Panzer Mk IV which equates to something like 11,500 Panzer Mk IV's, but having said that the issue of large guns could be negated with say reducing the Panzer Mk IV stregth from a hypothetical 20,000 to say 14,000 and build 6,000 Nashorns which were built on the Panzer Mk IV chassis and armed with the mighty 88, this number of Nashorns would still outnumber Tiger and King Tiger.
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Trouble is it doesn't just come down to base steel weight. I tried to illustrate before that each component from Guns to sights may require special materials or treatment. Increasing the available lump of steel does not necessarily increase the amount of vehicles/guns that industry can physically produce by that amount, given finite special materials, tools, space, manufacturing bottlenecks etc.
Cancelling one Tiger may theoretically give roughly enough base steel to produce chassis and superstructure for 2XMk.IVs but it only frees up material/production of 1XGun, 1Xengine etc.
I've spent the last few years carefully picking away at the 'wunderwaffe' reputation of Germany's vehicles as I think it's been most important to redress the balance of opinion and try to get a more realistic assessment of the panzerwaffe's tools. However on production I'm now having to accept (or even concede!) that Germany did
exceptionally well at producing what they could with limited resources & that the logic of the heavier vehicles must have seemed inevitable to their situation. There was still much wasted and misdirected effort but where it really happened and it's true effects are much harder to pin down.
(I place the Jagdtiger outside of any thinking on this... just plain loopy as far as I can see, the one at Bovington just makes me giggle).
Cheers,
Adam.