German Wehrmacht vs. the Allies Military WW ll

In Western Europe the Sherman actually won more often against Panthers than the Panthers won against Shermans.

The Panther (and other German tanks) had excellent aiming optics for the gunner. The Sherman was noted for having quite crap aiming optics. However, the Sherman had superior spotting optics for the gunner. It was wide field. The Germans used narrow fov for spotting optics for the gunner. This meant that the Sherman gunner could more easily locate his target and engage it and in tank combat it was usually he who fired first who won.

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Well, it's a 75mm. Couldn't tell you which particular M4 though.

 

I believe the American tactics was for three Shermans to gang up on one Panther while one of the Shermans sucker punches the Panther from the rear.

 

No, that's a myth.

An American tank platoon was 5 tanks and so that was the smallest tactical unit of tanks that the US would send into combat.

A German tank platoon was 3 tanks but it wasn't unusual for them to be under strength.

The platoon was the smallest tactical unit for tanks.

Plus you didn't need to shoot a Panther in the rear to kill it. Its side armour was atrociously thin. If you were a good shot, and it was a pre Ausf. G model, then you just had to hit the lower gun mantlet to kill it due to that being a shot trap.

 

The Panther already blew up the other two Shermans so you're down to three Shermans.

You obvious didn't notice the emoticon at the end of my post.

 

The process (don’t remember the name) used at that time, allowed a mass production of light fractions such as petrol and paraffin. Heavier fractions wear costly to produce due to issues with catalyzer decay. Although production of disel fuel existed but I guess it was “when we do not care about the costs” issue.
Modern processes used to turn coal into gas are different, and the results might be different. I know that South Africa was producing both petrol and disel in 1990s, the petrol was of good quality.

 

Not all coals and shales are alike, even across the same seams, so yes, the yield of coal oil and the quality will vary widely. In the Americas, for instance, the best coal for processing into lamp oil came from Canada, in Nova Scotia; don't remember the specific type, but it quickly became obsolete when the oil industry started up with a bang in the Pennsylvania oil regions, which in turn were themselves made viable by the relatively short 5 years or so where the refining techniques for making coal oil into lamp oil where found to be applicable to crude oil, at least the crude oil from the Pennsylvania Oil Region, a very high quality crude compared to most crudes. Crude oil varies in quality as well; the crude in California was almost all only useful for making asphalt, for instance, with the exceptions of a few pools.

West Texas crude is usually cited as a baseline price for market reports, because it is also of low quality, lots of sulfur and chemicals in it, and mostly cost effective as a diesel fuel for marine engines in its heyday and took little in the way of refining, but the East Texas field was of a pretty good grade for getting higher yields of gasoline per barrel, preferred by refiners, so it sold for a higher premium.

 

My Dad was an infantryman (American) in late '44 to the end of the war. They'd see the occasional abandoned Tiger tank while slogging through Belgium, not sure what kind; usually pristine. The crew ran out of fuel. They were not known for having much of a combat range. Absolute beasts, but fuel hungry as heck. The tanks couldn't keep with up with the retreating columns and a few were left as they were.

Take out the Axis supply routes and the tanks would starve, no need to challenge them in combat. No gas, no go. .

 

For Germany, it was the only solution. Germany was not able to do a lot of simple tanks, as the Russian T-34.



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The Germans had little fuel and people.

 

here much complexity German version of the T-34.....

 

And this can not be stressed enough.

At the very start, the US was encouraging women to work in factories, as well as minorities that had previously been prohibited from doing so. And doing so changed the fabric of our nation.

Germany on the other hand did the exact opposite. Women were to stay at home and have babies, minorities were to go up in clouds of smoke. By the time they "got it", it was to late. As Germany was making pitiful use of minorities primarily as slave labor, the US was fielding entire "Colored" Infantry divisions, regiments, and battalions.

 

Actually, the biggest problem with the later German tanks (Tiger, King Tiger) was not so much fuel, but fuel pumps and gaskets.

Germany simply lacked many of the supplies that the Allies did, and compounded that with trying to make "high tech" solutions.

For example, the US and USSR tended to engineer very basic designs, but produce them in mass quantities. Germany tried to do the opposite, manufacturing limited quantities of a superior design.

Now while the issue of quality-quantity can be iffy, then the quality suffers, it is all over. And in Germany, one of the biggest problems was gaskets and seals.

The war put huge issues on things like rubber and cork. And those are the two main componants used in the 1940's for seals. One of the things Germany used as a replacement was compressed paper. Worked short time, but invariably the thing failed. And failure on a battlefield means you abandon the thing and walk.

Interestingly enough, the US went a different direction. With it's complete "war economy", it diverted all rubber and other resources to fighting the war, and for civilian use dedicated a huge amount of R&D into synthetic materials. Is it no wonder that after the war was won, the US became the world leader in modern plastics, nylon, rayon, and polymers. Just look at the former use of "stockings" (once made of silk), into the modern use of "nylons". Even the word we use to describe them has changed, thanks to the effects of R&D during WWII.

Hell, even Silly Putty (tm) started as a program to create a synthetic rubber. Germany may have been making superior equipment, but they could not keep them working in the field. And they sure could not come anywhere close to the output of US-USSR when it came to combat losses.

And as an interesting modern-day analagy, consider Titanium. During the Cold War, the USSR was responsible for over 30% of the world's titanium production. And they used it lavashly in a great many military projects. The US on the other hand started research into composites because it knew it's supply of titanium was limited.

And in modern military useage, composites are what everybody is trying to use.

 

It wasn't man power the West and even the Soviets had vastly superior industrial output.

 

If you knew the history, then you would know.....

....how much the Wehrmacht tanks was destroyed Russians.
....how much Wehrmacht tanks was destroyed Americans and the British.

disparate figures.

These figures show:
The Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht .


...The Red Army defeated with the help of America and England. But not vice versa.