http://www.worldwar2aces.com/tiger-tank/

Tigers that is. I wonder how much Petsamo nickel was used on these. That was their biggest source of nickel no?

"The armor was also very different from that used on other German panzers. The Tiger used rolled homogeneous nickel-steel plate armor which had the highest level of hardness of any armor during world war 2. This allowed the Tiger to engage enemy tanks even on closer ranges without taking too much damage itself."

Here's a link covering the region & mentions the arctic railway, which I'd like to know more about.

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/sami/dieda/hist/wwii.htm

on June 7th, 1945, several Soviet POWs in Narvik and Bodø areas were in horrible shape. They had been forced to build Hitler’s arctic railway and were treated almost as badly as victims in the German concentration camps. Many of these Soviet POWs were Sami from the Kola Peninsula.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkenes
Map of area. Road was completed to Kirkenes, but rail system only to Bodo, 435 miles short.

Kirkenes was one of the most bombed towns during World War II (reportedly, second after Malta), with 320 air attacks and more than one thousand alarms. Only 13 houses were left in October 1944."

[ 04. September 2006, 08:08 PM: Message edited by: chromeboomerang ]

I sometimes think the exceptionally hard armour and associated nickel-welding techniques are just another German waste of resources. 'Hardness' can be a hindrance as well as a help in armour and towards the end of the war Russian testing revealed the welding on German tanks had become of a significantly lower quality seemingly due to its complicated nature. Modern restorers of German armour have discovered to their cost that straightforward normal welding considered fine for most succesful ww2 vehicles just doesn't cut the mustard.
Cheers,
Adam

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"Wars cannot be fought with dream stuff" - Sir Percy Hobart.

Nickel, molybdenium, manganese, chrome, tungsten etc are steel alloy metals which to a land bound economy like the German, with no access to world wide sources tend to become scarce and it's use is reserved for machine tools fabrication.

Hence the abandonment of speciality metals intensive weapons like the squeeze bore guns (expensive, heavy wear on barrels, and what's the point of shooting all that tungsten on the enemy's general direction?), progressively lower grade armour alloys (hence the reports on mild steel Tiger II side armour), so that the machine tools industry could be kept alive so you can keep making engines, guns, etc).

As for armour plate, as von Poop says homogenous hardness is a hindrance as the plates become brittle and whilst withstanding penetration the plate may splinter. Much better to use face hardened plate, which keeps a hard external surface backed by a softer layer which absorbs vibration and avoids shattering. Of course this is more time consuming and expensive to fabricate.

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Here´s something we discussed a while back:

http://www.ww2forums.com/cgi-bin/ubb...c;f=6;t=000273

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Ah, yes, and to add to chromeboomerang's figures Hitler also had access to practically the entire European stockpile of scrap metal, which is very important as a source of refined metals as opposed to ores which steel need processing.

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Some notes on armor:

Most alloys used for armor are nickel-steel and various "triple alloy" types with various mixes of vanadium, molybednium, chromium, silicon etc. The big thing with armor is to manage grain size during cooling. Bigger grain size makes weak armor.
As for heat treating, it usually only faces the plate to a depth of a few thousandths to hundreths of an inch at most. When comparing homogeneous rolled plate to castings the rolled plates are more resistant by about 10% in thin section decreasing to parity with castings at about 3 inches thickness. This is because as the thickness of the cross section increases the value of surface hardening as done in rolled plate decreases compared to the toughness of the material in the rest of the cross section.
For the Germans, as the war went on maintaining quality levels became more difficult. The lack of alloying agents in many cases also tended to produce more brittle plates.
If you look at photos of late war German tanks that are knocked out you often see large chunks of armor literally broken out and caved into the vehicle. This is due to the armor being far to brittle and shattering under the impulsive load of the AP round hitting the vehicle.

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Truth is stranger than bullshit!

thats quite a fact their ^ and something i did not know, thanks for sharing T.A.

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"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill

Interesting indeed. The book Shadow divers echoes the degrade of steel for Germans as war went on. U-869 could not be identified for quite some time & only after several dives as the plates with the number were made of low grade metal & it all eroded. It was only after a toolbox found at the rear that has U-869 stamped on it was the boat able to be identified.

& to finish up on the link above from Kai, Kirkenes was Finlands only Atlantic port, & this would be the likely route of travel for most of the Petsamo nickel to Germany. There was also the paved road, but ship travel seems the more plausible explanation.

haha, so that clearly tells you that the toolbox was made of a better grade metal

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"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill

Well, it was a small plate on the side of the box as I recall.

& the arctic railroad was advanced 125 miles, 435 short. I imagine rough terrain & as well the harsh weather played a role in that. Germans being there since 39 one would think they might've done better. But perhaps they didn't start soon enough.