German Kill Claims

It is a throwback to when I first started posting years ago. Everyone then was in thrall of tales of single German tanks holding up entire Allied divisions and 'everyone knew' German kill claims were 100% verified and could not be challenged. A tank without a black cross was nothing more than a death trap and Soviet tanks were all made from sticky backed plastic and old yoghurt pots. No one can post that today and go unchallenged but 10 years ago anyone who challenged was shouted down by the believers.

In short I think the poster is an anachronism.

 

This is an example of the outdated thinking.
Even the most basic Google would show that information to be total fiction.
It appears to be a variation of the von Luck Luftwaffe/Cagny Flak gun myth

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/45330-hans-von-luck-and-the-cagny-88s-fact-or-fiction/

so the poster isn't even bothering to read the current threads!

 

That is the great thing about this forum, the ability to improve your knowledge with the exchange of ideas and debate. Let us guide, not chide.

 

Ah,as usual :my tanks are better than yours,while the truth is that tanks were not made to fight against each other,thus,there were NO better tanks .

 

That simply does not hold up logically. Look when the T-34 was introduced then when the Pz-IV or M-4 were introduced. There's a period there where the T-34 has a clear leed. Then there are things like:
http://english.battlefield.ru/evaluation-of-the-t-34-and-kv-dp1.html
if you keep in mind the dates on things the T-34 gets a somewhat mixed review but overall I'd call it good particularly if the Soviet comments are considered.

The T-34 wasn't as good as some people claim it was but it certainly was a good tank in a lot of ways. The telling thing was the Soviets were able to mass produce and use them in a very trying period and prevailed.

 

So much here I want to comment on.

The Russians, on the other hand, almost always lagged behind the Germans. Testing shows that the Russian 76 and American 75 would bounce off the Panzer III at more than 500 meters. They are identical in performance...

Which Pz3? in 1941 they were up against mainly the early models these had 30mm of front armour even the early 76 could penetrate 60+ mm @ 500yds. and 50mm @ 1000yds.

The German 50mm would penetrate ANY American or Russian tank of 1941. Not one of them could take a hit... Rommel even tested a captured tank and wrote that it could not take a hit regardless of range, even at 1400m, the Armor of a 1941 American tank would not take the hit. Interesting, because the same thing was documented on the eastern front, with more than 75% of T-34 lossed in 1941 being to calibers under 75mm...

Just not true. The 50mm L42 with a normal round could penetrate 40 odd mm at 500 yds meaning the Matilda, KV1, KV2 were safe and with 47mm armour even the T34 was borderline. Even the Pzgr40 round only did 55 mm at 500yds meaning the first three are pretty safe. The normal 50mm could only penetrate 55mm at 100yds meaning the KV's and the Matilda were pretty safe at 100yds.

But as you point out most German tanks at Barbarossa did not have the 50mm gun (and those that did had the L42). When Germany invaded they did so with:

200 PZ1's
620 PZ2's
570 PZ35 or 38's
270 PZ3's with the 37m

All of theses are worse than a T34, KV and probably BT's and possibly T26's.

PZ3's with 50L42 580
PZ4's with 75mmL24 4460

(stats from Jentz)

So my point being, the Russians lagged EVERYONE... and they had tremendous casualties. It is perfectly possible that the Germans had large numbers of kill on the eastern front, where they always maintained a superiority in firepower until 1945...

The Pz4 is way outclassed by the 85mm in 1944 and the Soviets have T34/85's, SU85's plus JSII's which are as good as the Panther and Tiger in many respects including firepower. Then throw in the SU100, the 152 and 122 tanks destroyers and the Soviets are certainly not lagging in firepower.

The IS-2 was beaten to the field by the King Tiger, which saw action in 1943... several months before.

The first Tiger II's aren't delivered until 1944 going into action in Normandy and in Aug44 in the East (where they get chewed up by some T34/85's and JSII's). JSII is in production October 43 and deliveries start Dec 43.

The JS-122 (Object No.240) passed the Government tests quickly and successfully. Thereafter, the tank was moved to one of the Moscow military testing grounds where it was demonstrated to K.E.Voroshilov. The tank's 122 mm gun was fired from 1500 metres at a captured German Panther tank.
The round hit the side of the Panther's turret, penetrating it cleanly and tearing the opposite side out at the welded seams, throwing it back a few metres. During these tests the muzzle brake of the A-19 blew up almost killing Voroshilov. After this accident it was decided to change the muzzle brake to a 2-chamber design similar to that used by the Germans.

Further, after the first encounters between the JS-2 and German heavy tanks, it turned out that the sharp-nosed 122 mm APHE round - BR-471 - could only penetrate the frontal armour of a Panther up to 600-700 metres. The less powerful frontal armour of a Tiger could be penetrated at distances up to 1200 metres. However, at such distances only very well trained and experienced gunners could score a hit. The vertical armour of a Tiger I, although thicker than that of a Panther, was more easily defeated by the sharp-nosed projectile of the JS-2 Main Gun, whilst it often ricocheted off the sloped armour of a Panther. Later, Soviet designers noticed the blunt-nosed projectiles worked fine against sloped armour. After several tests, designers revealed the effect of "normalisation". The powerful HE round, OF-471, when fired at German tanks, caused cracking and could even completely tear off the front armour plate at the seam weld. The first results of the IS-2 in combat (backed by the results of its tests at the Kubinka testing grounds in January of 1944) forced designers to look for new solutions to its problems.
However, in the summer of 1944, the problem of the poor AP performance disappeared. The performance of the D-25T gun of the JS-2 against the German tanks improved dramatically. The reports from the front described cases where the BR-471 APHE round 122 mm projectile fired from 2500 metres ricocheted off the front armour of a Panther leaving huge holes and cracks in it.
(from battlefield.ru)

Poor firepower?

 

I tend to think people back-rationalise current German engineering prowess onto their WW2 equipment.

i.e. because BMW's are better than Chevrolets, Austin Maestros and ZiLs, German tanks must have been better than Shermans, Cromwells, T-34's etc.

(think German cars are hugely overrated, personally though).

 

Hello everyone, its strange when you hear stories about the T-34 being this wonder tank and the Germans having no answer to it, I remember reading that out of the total of 20 500 Soviet tanks lost in 1941, approximately 2 300 were T-34s.

Yan.

 

What's so strange about it? Look at the Allied reaction to the Tiger I & 88mm. Every German tank was a Tiger and every artillery shell came from an 88.

 

Hello Takao, I think we have crossed wires here, your point has nothing to do what so ever with what I said, giving that the German army was still mainly equipped with 37mm ATGs and tanks also with 37mm and short 50mm guns they still managed to knock out over 2000 T-34s.

Yan.

 

Did they ?If 2000 T-34s were lost,this does not mean that they were lost by the guns and tanks you are mentioning .

 

I don't think that's true. German was actually the favored language in scholarly communication for the first part of the 20th century. Today, English is generally considered to be the lingua franca of the scientific community. For example, roughly 80% of all the journals indexed in Scopus are published in English today. But in the 20's and 30's, German was the language to be published in.

The twenties saw some amazing developments in engineering, architecture, science, and culture all from German-speaking areas of Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Expressionism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Ohain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Delbr%C3%BCck

Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded to people living in Germany / Austria
From 1901 until 1939, there were Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1901), Philip Eduard Anton von Lenard (1905) Karl Ferdinand Braun (1909) Wilhem Wien (1911) Max von Laue (1914) Max Planck (1918) Johannes Stark (1919) Albert Einstein (1921) James Franck, Gustav Hertz (jointly 1925) Werner Heisenberg (1932) Erwin Schrödinger (1933). Considering that the prize was not given out during 1916-1917, native German speakers bagged 25% of the awards in this period.

The same pattern occurs for Chemistry, where almost 40% of the prizes in Chemistry went to Germany and Austria.

There's more, but the idea of German science and engineering of the 30's as being a frontrunner in numerous fields is not merely some inferred reverse-rationalisation based on a subjective view of the number of quality products manufactured in the German Federation today.

 

Greetings yan,

From what I have read, the early T-34s were very unreliable mechanically, and up to 50% of the T-34 losses were due to mechanical problems or otherwise, and not destroyed in combat with German forces. Several sources also point to the inexperience of the T-34 tank crews as a factor in t-34 losses(crews placing their tank in a position where it was vulnerable to incoming 37mm or short-50mm rounds from the side and rear).

That being said, the T-34 was still almost invulnerable to the 37mm and short-50mm fired in it's frontal arc.

 

Add in the lack of a radio in the early T-34 as well, and you have a recipe for disaster with inexperienced crews.

 

LJAd, of course not, how could these two weapons have any major effect on the T-34s sloping armour.

Hello Takao, thanks for the reply, I agree it was down to German tactics and inexperience by the T-34 crews that they managed to knock out so many.

Have a look at this;
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html
And the German take on things;
http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-german-response-against-the-soviet-t-34-and-kv-tanks.html

GS, lack of radio two man turret in the early versions, there are quite a few.

Yan.

 

Both the above .'Myth-Buster' articles are grossly distorted re-writes of history that bear no relation to reality.

 

You are probably right, what do you suggest?

 

I didn't read all of the first one but it didn't look that far off to me. I think they did exagerate the import of some things but that's a matter of degree rather than overall veracity.

 

Hi Lwd, I thought that the links would be ok to use as a guide as the topic was about kill claims and that site does seem pretty good.