Maus Tank

By high priority do you mean high inteseaty russian break-outs with overwhelming force? A slow thing like the maus woudnt be able to get in (or out) anouth. It coudnt pick its battles.

 

Germans could plan some offensive,don't you think so?What if they succeed in building 10 and use them in group??IS2 and T34-83 could only watch they and run,no metter how much of them would there be.Of course,there is a another problem-to many Russian infantry.We can only discuss if something happened.Generaly Hitler made lot of bad moves,so even if the Mouse that was made it would be destroyed in some dumb way,as the Tiger tank was captured(muddy terain)for an example.

 

Building 10 of these(plus the modified train carts ect) would use a lot of resources. A german offensive with 10 of these wouldnt have sufficent infantry,ait and artillary support. They would get isolated and destroyed like the tigers at kursk.

 

Do you realy think that i don't know that?They hardly made 480 King Tigers.Maus is 188t.But what if air-raids didn't destroy Wechrmachts main factories??What is Battle for Britain was won??I am only saying what could happen if something happen...

 

I know you were doing a what-if. I was offering my opinion on what would have happend.

 

It is fairly simple to defeat an attack of ten Maus - just make a large encirclement, and wait until they run out of fuel and shells, or use heavy artillery to destroy it.

As for the Tigers at Kursk, they weren't encircled and destroyed - only 13 out of 147 were lost.

 

Maus could be used as a weapon of fear.In,out.Moral of Soviet tank commanders would definetly go down after gettin face to face with Maus.As it was with Tiger on Western Front.But i could say that any bunch of good tanks could be encircled and destoyed.And that is not the truth.Maus could have been secret weapon.

 

Doing what? If they were used in combat theyd get encirceld ecy

 

Do you here what you are sayin?Everything could be enricled,right?Then were is there the art of warefare if we know what is goin to happen?Maus would be used in top secret,fear and propaganda generating,actions.

 

The Maus is way too heavy and bulky to be used as a surprise weapon; the vehicles and support units needed to field a Maus tank or a unit of Maus tanks would be instantly noticed by Allied intelligence or even by simple reconnaissance. The tank itself is so slow and uses so much fuel that the very notion of it being used as a lightning strike weapon is not very realistic to say the least.

Besides, the Maus's armour is thick but not impenetrable.

 

How can a secret weapon be used for propaganda purposes?

 

With the severe lack of fuel at the end of the war it would be foolish to use up valuable resources on tanks that were destined to fail. No one here has evan considered any mechanical problems that the tank would have. As most people on this forum are aware when the Germans pressed their new tanks into action they often had catestrophic mechanical failures that prevented many of the tanks to enter the battle. Back to my main point the fuel that would be needed to make 10 Maus tanks operational could fuel many for other german tanks that were proven to be reliable.

 

Correct.But Tiger B tanks were also very slow and unreliable.Best use for Maus could be found on Eastern Front.Now,lackage of fuel was very big.Maus was a failure(as some other tanks) because it would be slow,and fuel-eating tank.But,if Germans didn't have their fuel problem,Maus could have had a nice future.Hitler planed much bigger tanks,for coastal defence.When they lost momentum all has changed.Maybe the biggest failure(talikn about tanks) is allowing Russian to get their hands on Tiger tank.Hitler insisted to be used as soon as posible.And it was used on muddy terain.Tiger+mud=failure.This caused Russians to build IS2.Rest of the war is known...

 

No it wasn't.

The JS-2s didn't cause the Germans to loose.

 

Also the JS-2 wasn't developed on the basis of a Tiger but on the basis of the KV-1. This is clearly visible when the two designs are compared. In fact the JS-1 was a direct descendant of the KV-1 which was originally to be given the same name, but by that time Klimenti Voroshilov had fallen from grace and the name was changed to Josef Stalin.

 

When did i say IS2 was developed on Tiger chasis???My God....IS2 was a Russian response to Tiger and Royal Tiger tanks."It suffered mechanically with many breakdowns and had poor maneuverability. Many roads and especially bridges were not suitable for a tank this size and the fuel requirements was enormous. Many were abandoned due to lack of fuel rather then being destroyed during the offensive in the Ardennes." -from http://www.worldwar2aces.com/ to make sure i didn't imagine something about Tiger 2...
Overall Germans produced 1500 (aproximatly) Tiger I and Tiger II together.Russians built 1400 IS2 alone!!!IS2 could take Tiger 1 and Tiger 2 with it's 122mm gun.And of dicussion??

 

The information provided at your link is wrong (and clearly contradicts at least one of the sources used, which is interesting). If you would care to look at the causes for all the lost Tiger IIs, and the statistics for every German tank, you would see that the Tiger II wasn't nearly as prone to breakdowns as some authors wants it to be. Furthermore, if you would care to look at the automotive specifications of the Tiger II, and compare them to those of other WWII tanks, you would see that it certainly didn't have poor maneuverability.

The Tiger II had similar automotive capabilities to other German (and Allied) tanks, and the availability rate is not different from that of the Pz.Kpfw.IV or Pz.Kpfw.Panther. The breakdown rate seems to compare well to that of the M48. Furthermore, only 15 Tiger IIs are known to have been lost due to a lack of fuel on the Western Front, from D-Day to VE-day.

1,347 Tiger Is and 492 Tiger IIs were manufactured in total.

I would recommend that you buy some books on the Tiger II, rather than trusting websites.

As for the JS-2, it was superior to the Tiger I (which is no surprise, considering the time seperating the two), but the 122 mm D-25 was not as effective against other tanks as the 8,8 cm Kw K 43, and the frontal armour of the Tiger II was superior to that of the JS-2. Furthermore, the rate of fire and ammunition storage capacity of the Tiger II was greatly superior to that of the JS-2.

 

You implied that the Russians won the war because they got their hands on a Tiger which resulted in the JS-2. This is not true, because the JS-2 is not based on the Tiger but on the KV-1 and KV-13. It may have been built as an answer to the Tiger but that doesn't make it relevant that the Russians captured a Tiger. They would have designed the same tank if they hadn't.

Production of the Tiger I and II together totals some 1900 - more than the total JS-2's. However, there were plenty of tanks that could deal with Tigers at close range, not to mention artillery and tactical air power. The war wasn't about single tank on single tank combat.

 

I was just tellin how much IS2 only was produced that were able to destory Tigers not counting there any other tank.I was showin that Russians had much more tanks that are able to destroy enemy's best.Of course Germans had much better tank commanders,but when ratio 1:3 or higher for Russians then their is nothin to talk about.

 

Just as a side note on Tigers maneuvrability. How many WW2 tanks could move one track opposite to the other? Tigers could pivot on place. Nice for a 56t tank!

Actually, german tanks were reliabile enough if they were given enough attention. Russian tanks quite suffered here, but there were plenty to get by with.

From what I know, there were 2 Maus built by the time soviets reached germany, but I doubt their practicability for an blitzkrieg. Too slow, too big... Just a target for aircrafts. (by this time, all nations have understood that air power is a great asset for to help tanks roll forward, tactically speacking)