Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[The Akasha Colony]

On the Tiger I, I was just reading about an action in August of 1944 where four Tigers of Kampfgruppe Schürer were able to trap 25 Soviet tanks and kill 14, somewhere south of Gradnas. How is a scenario like this possible?

The lack of radios made Soviet tanks fairly easy to ambush and trap. Without radios, most Soviet tanks had to play follow-the-leader and any moderately experienced German crews would know that their first shot should be to knock out the lead tank, and then the second shot was to take out the rear tank, reducing the remaining column's mobility and decapitating its leadership. This is when the real inexperience of the rank-and-file Soviet crews would be decisive.

After that, it was simply a matter of finishing off as many targets as possible before the Soviets regrouped, which again would be rather hard without radios. Assuming it took twenty shots to kill fourteen tanks for a hit rate of only 70%, the entire engagement could be over in less than five minutes.

[Federated Kingdom of Prussia]

I hardly think the T-34 was a bad tank. It wasn't quite on the same ergonomics level as the Sherman, but a good crew on a T-34 could easily beat a Tiger or Panther. More importantly, T-34s weren't breaking down every second by 1944.

[Laritaia]

it isn't an especially good tank either

it meets the minimum criteria for a 30 ton medium tank

[Fordorsia]

It wasn't quite on the same ergonomics level as the Sherman

Understatement of the year

T-34s weren't breaking down every second by 1944.

Pretty much still were were

but a good crew on a T-34 could easily beat a Tiger or Panther.

Any crew could, but it depends more on the individual situations. You could have an extremely well trained, well seasoned crews in the Russian tanks and barely trained crews in Tigers. But in that situation, with the Tigers ambushing the Soviets, the result will almost certainly be similar.

[Austrasien]

On the Tiger I, I was just reading about an action in August of 1944 where four Tigers of Kampfgruppe Schürer were able to trap 25 Soviet tanks and kill 14, somewhere south of Gradnas. How is a scenario like this possible?

(((anecdotes)))

Many of the same reason the Arabs always lost X tanks for every Israeli tank.

• Their tanks were designed to be operated with the hatch closed and had a chronic shortage of radios. This made coordination of tactical movements very difficult and probably predisposed them towards simplistic maneuvers that could be effectively controlled with flags and flares.
• Not much effort was made to ensure tank crews were kept together or tanks were crewed with experienced crews. Consequently the skill of crew members could be highly variable and because of the generally high attrition rate tended towards low - tank crews would rarely not have some novices and even experienced personnel were regularly shuffled between different crews.
• Crews tended to be too small for efficient operation. Especially in the T-34-76 and IS-2.
• A predilection for FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY attacks were a large number of tanks would advance across open ground towards entrenched defenders. This resulted in some absurdly lopsided defeats where German tanks used terrain effectively to pick off advancing Soviet tanks from hull down positions.
• New crew members were generally trained with very little time in actual tanks and very little real ammunition because both were urgently needed on the front. Many if not most did not get a proper introduction to tank combat until they were in combat.

It was mostly a multi-year lesson in the importance of human factors in the design of tanks. On average the Soviet tanks had better cardinal characteristics - armament, armour, weight, profile - than German tanks and on average enjoyed numerical superiority, but the Soviets continued to lose tanks at a significantly higher rate than the Germans for the entire war. Again not unlike the Arabs in the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War.

[Austrasien]

But IS-2 is supposed to be a Tiger killer or something.

(((Archive awareness)))

The average number of stowed kills in the IS-2 magazine was under 2 given it normally took 17 or 18 shots for each hit in WWII tank combat. The 122mm gun was chosen because it was readily available, effective against armour with simple AP shot and had good HE performance. But the limited ROF, small magazine, and low velocity of the shells all limited its effectiveness as an AT gun. The D10 and KwK 36 were both better AT guns for this reason.

The IS-2 could definitely wipe a Tiger off the map with a solid hit, and do so at great distance, but it was only immune to the Tigers shot at ranges over a kilometer. Most tank battles occurred at much closer range were both tanks were equally capable of penetrating each other with a solid hit. A Tiger/IS-2 match up would come down almost entirely to who shot first and who hit first.

Considering:

• In the later part of the war the Germans were usually on the defensive, and the defender usually spotted targets and fire first.
• A tank commander operating heads up was much more faster to spot a target in all circumstance.
• The KwK-36 could be reloaded faster than the D-25T and had a deeper magazine.

The Tiger had a pretty solid chance of scoring the first hit in an abstract late war encounter. And more often than not that was enough.

[Purpelia]

Honestly I would take any such report with a big grain of salt unless its something confirmed independently by both sides. It's just way too easy (and thus happened way too often) to turn trucks into tanks and T-26 into IS-2s when you are remembering things after the fact. This is especially obvious once you take into account just how false the myth of 10 Russians for each German is.

[Fordorsia]

This is especially obvious once you take into account just how false the myth of 10 Russians for each German is.

This isn't a myth.

[Purpelia]

This is especially obvious once you take into account just how false the myth of 10 Russians for each German is.

This isn't a myth.

Yes it is. In fact, if you compare the overall numbers of troops involved in the war even a 2:1 kill ration would have completely won the war for the germans.
Because even as Germany was completely collapsing in 1945 the Soviet army only had about a 3:1 advantage.

[Austrasien]

There was also that time an IS-2 took out three KIng Tigers or something like that - things happen.

Small unit actions are as a rule very noisy. The outcome usually depends so much on incidental factors that anything else can only be observed by looking at many engagements.

[Purpelia]

There was also that time an IS-2 took out three KIng Tigers or something like that - things happen.

Small unit actions are as a rule very noisy. The outcome usually depends so much on incidental factors that anything else can only be observed by looking at many engagements.

2-3 to 1 happens a lot. But I basically don't trust anything where it's like 10 to 1 or something unless its corroborated by both sides. And again, not even because one side might be lying. It's just that you don't really take your time after barely surviving a battle to walk up to every hull and try to figure out exactly what it was before you pumped several shells into its side all whilst holding an actually accurate (good luck with that) tank encyclopedia about enemy vehicles for refrence.

[Federated Kingdom of Prussia]

Here's the citation, btw. I think my wehrabooism has started to reverse in on itself.

[Purpelia]

Here's the citation, btw. I think my wehrabooism has started to reverse in on itself.

wehrabooism is just the newest in a long line of anti-russian rhetoric that has existed in Europe since before Germany was a thing. For as long as Russia has existed European powers have felt threatened by its limitless pool of manpower and natural resources and thus denied it the rightful credit and respect it deserved. They always, and I mean always, tried to push Russia out of the European power "club" and treat it as a bunch of savages up east. That is, always except when they desperately needed Russian aid such as against Napoleon or Wilhelm or Hitler. Than suddenly the Russians became best friends and respected allies to be begged into throwing their lives away by the millions until they outlived their usefulness. At which point it returned to business as usual. A good example of this is how during WW2 the allies had zero qualms about selling Eastern Europe including half of bloody Germany out to Stalin but after the war they suddenly wouldn't even give him god dam Korea. Seriously, 1/2 Korea > All of Eastern Europe?

wehrabooism is therefore the product of the times after the war. Russia, no longer being instrumental to the survival of the west, again became a dark looming threat to be hated. So it was extremely inconvenient for the western allies to admit that it was Stalin and not them who had won the war in Europe. And thus, when a bunch of disgruntled WW2 German veterans started writing their memoirs whitewashing German military, industrial and political failure and replacing it with a narrative where the mighty noble German colossus was, alas, overzerged by the newer ending tide of Russian bodies they let it happen and indeed encouraged it in order to downplay the effectiveness and excellence of the Red Army. This was all to create a narrative where the big distraction in France back in 44 was what won the war and not the years of actual fighting in the east.


It's a classic case of politics creating history.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Give me back my Finland :purp:

[Husseinarti]

(((Communism))) apologist.

Also for the most part we've gotten down that we allied with the Soviets with a 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' type of deal.

[Purpelia]

Give me back my Finland urp:

You literally just need to look at European history to see what I mean. Like, you don't even have to look that hard.

(((Communism))) apologist.

There is nothing to apologize for. The Soviet Union saved Europe from Hitler and the americans jumped into the whole thing at the photo finish so that they could claim the glory. Sort of like what the Soviets did in China against Japan.

Also for the most part we've gotten down that we allied with the Soviets with a 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' type of deal.

Sure didn't look like that at the time.

I'd like to hear what the same soldiers reading this poster in the mid 40's would have said about it a couple years later when they were shooting at that same Russian in Korea.

[Sevvania]

is my friend

Sure didn't look like that

A tiny kek was had upon reading the first line of the poster

In regards to Russia being underappreciated and actually a pretty swell guy, there was the whole "purge" thing which could be seen as less-than-cool.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Give me back my Finland :purp:

You literally just need to look at European history to see what I mean. Like, you don't even have to look that hard.

Funny you should mention that because you should know that there's two countries in Europe who've been fighting the Russians since the Crusades.

[Gallia-]

Russians are a fake threat (though, fair, they were a past threat). They're a dying race. The future "Russia" will be a neo-Mongols, right down to the Islamism. We can argue that this doesn't change anything, though. Maybe future Russia will be more aggressively subversive or something, like a Saudi Arabia with competence. Right down to using the same "Salafi/Wahhabism" vocabulary of Saudi Arabia.

http://www.interpretermag.com/thanks-to ... gist-says/
https://jamestown.org/program/marlene-l ... ge-russia/

It will be hilarious if Iran loses its war for the Middle East because it'll potentially be surrounded by Sunni states on all sides.

The F-14 versus F-15SA, F-16E/F, F-15SE, PAK FA, Su-35, Su-27, and MiG-29K. All at once. Colonel Harmon Rabb, IRIAF scores 50,000 kills with the AIM-54.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-u7NZk4F3w

[Purpelia]

In regards to Russia being underappreciated and actually a pretty swell guy

Actually it's more the fact that all the major western (and frankly eastern, southern or what ever*) powers were all blatantly self serving and at best morally ambiguous. Nobody is nice and clean here. And when ever a new guy pops up to be a major player they try and demolish them as much as possible via propaganda in order to prevent their positions of power being disrupted. And the way this manifests it self in recent European history is centuries of trying to push Russia out of being an European power.

I am just stating this extremely obvious fact as what it is, a fact, that should be taken into consideration every time you read any piece of official history or media. Just like you should consider Roman propaganda when reading their accounts of supposed "barbarians".

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

In regards to Russia being underappreciated and actually a pretty swell guy

Actually it's more the fact that all the major western (and frankly eastern, southern or what ever*) powers were all blatantly self serving and at best morally ambiguous. Nobody is nice and clean here. And when ever a new guy pops up to be a major player they try and demolish them as much as possible via propaganda in order to prevent their positions of power being disrupted. And the way this manifests it self in recent European history is centuries of trying to push Russia out of being an European powe

yeah sure. "propaganda".

[Gallia-]

In regards to Russia being underappreciated and actually a pretty swell guy

Actually it's more the fact that all the major western (and frankly eastern, southern or what ever*) powers were all blatantly self serving and at best morally ambiguous. Nobody is nice and clean here. And when ever a new guy pops up to be a major player they try and demolish them as much as possible via propaganda in order to prevent their positions of power being disrupted. And the way this manifests it self in recent European history is centuries of trying to push Russia out of being an European power.

I am just stating this extremely obvious fact as what it is, a fact, that should be taken into consideration every time you read any piece of official history or media. Just like you should consider Roman propaganda when reading their accounts of supposed "barbarians".

Russia was never really European. It's basically a Central Asian country, like Iran or Turkey, with similar internal derailments from joining Europe/the West. It's liberalizing at a glacial pace and really seems like it'll be stuck at "neo-feudalism" for maybe another human generation. Perhaps longer. Anyway in the future it will become more Eastern/Asian as the population of Chinese and Muslims grow and Russians shrink. Eventually too, it will become a plurality state like the USA, with the majority being Asians like Kazakhs and Chinese, or Muslims.

Although at that point, Islam may be a defining feature of European identity.

[Austrasien]

Russia's role in WWII being "underappreciated" is a meme from before Purp was born and was mostly a symptom of the fact the Soviet archives were closed and largely classified. Western historians had no choice but to rely exclusively on Axis sources and Soviet propaganda when studying the history of the Eastern Front which led to a poorly formed, contradictory, understanding of Soviet military efforts in the East. But it has been a literal generation since western historians with access to Russian archival sources wrote ground breaking histories which provided nuanced and balanced accounts of the Eastern Front from the Russian perspective. This has long filtered into popular culture as well.

The real question is why keep flogging a horse which is dead and buried. But the answer is fairly obvious, Purp is a tankie.

[Gallia-]

Does "tankie" have anything to do with actual tanks though?

[Austrasien]

Does "tankie" have anything to do with actual tanks though?

Sadly, no.