No one is suggesting elbow grease up the side of a mountain. Those are your words, not mine.Graniterail wrote:Lack of motor transport is going to be a pain when siting guns on rougher terrain.Svrclr wrote:
Even if the Germans had sufficient production capacity to build as many Pak 40 or even Pak 43 for that matter, the lack of motor transport to tow the guns is a significant liability for the infantry. The PAW600 can be towed by lighter vehicles or horses for longer distances. For purely tactical redeployments, the crews can move them, something that the Pak40 can barely do under ideal conditions, and the Pak43 cannot due at all.
Ask the gun crew to haul a 640Kg PAW 600 up the Mountainside with nothing but rope & elbow grease? Yeah, maybe.
Ask them to haul a 4,380Kg Pak 43 the same way? Pervitin or not, Fughettaboutit.
The point is that a PAW600 has some mobility. Maybe not much mobility, but some. The bigger guns have none unless the rare motor transport is allocated to tow them.
Again, the overall point of the PAW600 is not that it is a better gun than what the Germans had historically. Pak40 and larger AT guns are better guns from most ways of viewing performance.
Even though the PAW 600 it is NOT as good as the other, historical guns, it is still a useful weapon, that fills a valuable role. The point of the PAW600 is:
1). It allows a certain savings of manpower due to it's ability to take over the role of the light infantry gun, while adding a useful AT capability.
2). It is cheap and easy to produce. While the cost itself is not that important, that indicates that only a minimal amount of machining, so lighter industry can be used, and they can be produced more quickly than conventional AT guns.
3). The PAW600 is far more effective (140mm penetration) than a Pak 36, 38 and even more effective than the Pak97 (although the Pak 97 can barely penetrate a t34).