Tankery, The Thread

[Psychosplodge]

This was a conjectural design (no prototypes built). Basically, after a couple bottles of schnapps, some tank designers got the brilliant idea of mounting a battleship turret on an armored mobile chassis.

Why not just bolt tracks onto a battleship for the shiggles?

[Mr Mystery]

Can we all take a moment to consider and reflect upon the spirit of early tank designers.

Their grand invention was used in a war it was spectacularly unsuited for - yet they persevered, and gave us one of the iconic warfare developments of the 20th Century.

[Psychosplodge]

I think the ideas outstripped the abilities of the time?

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, plus the roles they'd be used in. If massed tank use had been seen in WWI, we'd have broken the German lines far earlier. It was their deployment in ones and twos as infantry support which made them useful, but not overbearing.

Tank design also diverged all over the place because no-one knew what role they should fill or how they should be deployed, at least until WWII made tank vs tank battles a thing, and a thing of massive strategic importance at that.

[Mr Mystery]

That's still a helluva resolve they showed - especially for military designs.

I do like Tanks me, but I remain pretty ignorant about them. I just like the way they look!

[CoffeeGrunt]

I'm quite a fan of tanks, both from an engineering perspective as well as a childlike love of Things What Go Boom.

It's also interesting to see how various armies approached the same thing very differently. Russians? Make a solid tank, then crank it out by the tens of thousands. Germans? The most highly-engineered and probably superior tanks, though maintenance is a pig due to how complex the builds are, and they take longer to manufacture.

Americans? Make one tank, give it a load of different turret options over time, and make a lot of it. (I genuinely can't find anything that implies the Americans fielded tanks that weren't Shermans in any significant numbers.) The Japanese have tanks that are light and great at infantry support, but would lose a tank battle with almost any Western tank.

Oh, and the Italians. I.e., kinda half-*ss it because they didn't seem to really want to go to war anyway.

[grimmas]

The Sherman was an awesome military vehicle really the utility and ability to be upgraded was really stunning, in its ultimate form it totally outclassed the T34-85 in Korea. As noted by CG it's chassis was used for many other types of vehicle, tank destroyers, SPGs and the like. Say what you like about the Yanks' tactics by they totally smashed it when it came to industrial warfare.

If the Germans had concentrated resources on the PzIV with the long 75mm they might have had the numbers to beat the USSR. It's a much forgotten Tank that tends to get overlooked for the flashier German stuff.

You forgot British Tanks CG, random genius and lunacy mixed in equal measure (sounds like us in general really). I do like the Valentine though (and so did the Russians allegedly)

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, when you look at the industrial capabilities of Japan vs the US, it becomes pretty obvious that a war between them could only have ever went one way. Japan is tiny, has a relatively-low population, has nearly-no native resources, and the majority of it is mountainous. Has basically no capacity for manufacturing anything. Conversely, the US is vast, has massive resource wealth, swathes of land and a large population. Their tanks weren't great, but were superior to Japanese tanks. Their navy was bigger, their airforce, everything. Even with a decisive first strike against the US Navy at Pearl Harbour the rest of the war was just a fighting retreat for the Japanese. They could never have landed in enough force to take America, and the Americans could have defended in depth much as the Russians did.

Plus we made the Sherman Firefly, which is a hilarious tank. British tanks are about as oddball as everything else we make, and the Valentine is a great, little tank by the look of it.

IIRC, it was Rommel who told the Reich command to stop making endless prototypes tanks and just produce the Panther, as it was arguably the best tank of the war. It was at the very least "good enough" to be produced en masse in the same manner the Sherman and T34-85 were. Would have massively helped their logistics in the long run, and might have allowed them to draw it out a bit longer.

Probably didn't help them that Hitler had Rommel shot. One of the few decent tank warfare commanders they had, and by the account of ol' Monty, an opponent who treated prisoners of war fairly in that, "last gentlemanly war." Rommel's refusal to fight to the, "last man and bullet," saved a lot of resources that helped in the long run. Unlike the entire Sixth Army Hitler left to rot in Stalingrad.

It's a horrible sort of irony that the worst thing you could do in history is go back in time and kill Hitler, because the man was such an egotistical, strategically-incompetent mess that they could only replace him with someone better who might have actually won the damn war. And that would be awful. :/

[Psychosplodge]

[grimmas]

It also worth remembering that the American made and supplied Tanks to all the other allies as well (including the USSR).

Yeah to be honest Hitler's stategic incompetence did the allies a number of big favours. He probably lost the War (against the USSR) as much as they won it.

Those late war German tanks inefficient as they were are truly awe inspiring. The Jagdtiger version of the Tiger II is like a building on tracks.