Info: Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Elefant Sdkfz 184

[Michael Kenny]

But, the main point was eleven in, two out means that nine were lost. Only two were talked about being lost to enemy action, divebombers, and five to mechanincal or recovery problems. That leaves us with only two vehicles that were not talked about, if you say that they were both lost to enemy action then the 1st Company of the 653 lost 36% of their vehicles to enemy action in Italy, 45% to mechanical or non-enemy actions and returned with 19% of their equipment. If you use the total of Ferdinands available for the war 91 then the losses in Italy are 4.4% to enemy action and 5.5% to non-enemy action. So most of the Ferdinand losses were not in Italy.

Ah my favourie subject! I really think we should accept a destroyed or written of tank as just that, a total loss. What I find odd is the constant reworking of German loss figure to exclude every tank that was not destroyed in sight of 10 impartial observers.I
If only such effort were put into finding the same causes for Allied losses.............

[Andreas]

I guess it was SOP that Elefants stuck in mud or with track damage were to be blown up. Be that in Sennelager during training, or in front of advancing Allied troops in Italy. That's why it is only fair to not count them as lost to enemy action in either case.

All the best

Andreas

[AikinutNY]

Münch's History of the 653rd uses a lot of German Army reports which list total vehicles and number available for action. So you can see the total number dropping and the vehicles available going up and down. They also cover things like vehicles damaged and then recovered and repaired by the unit or when a vehicle was stuck in the mud and destroyed by the crew after numerous recovery attempts.

I know that to most people that when a tank is hit it is "destroyed", but then it can be repaired and fight again. This might be one of the reasons that Shermans were hit several times until they caught fire, which would destroy the temper of the armor and render it not repairable. Like a M1 in Iraq last year the Auxillary power generator caught on fire and started an engine fire. The crew bailed out and the tank was recovered and most likely repaired, but the news media made it sound like the tank and crew were total losses to the attack.

[Andreas]

This is getting off-topic, but the problem with this is quite clearly that there maybe different procedures to judge when a tank is a total write off (TWO), which make numbers incomparable, and also the view held by at least some people (including me) that when a tank can not be recovered following damage and has to be blown up, it should not be counted as a non-combat loss.

That was the point I tried to make - if the same Ferdinand had gotten stuck in the mud in Sennelager in 1944, the crew would not have blown it up. The M1 example you bring up is a good point by the way. Even if it were to be rebuilt, it is still a total loss as far as the theatre command is concerned, since such a rebuilt is most likely going to be at factory. Or maybe it won't be rebuilt, but the decision will only be made after three months, when some engineer has had the time to examine it and submit a report about it. So it will only be taken off the OOB three months after the incident, but it will not have contributed to combat ops in between.

So coming back to the two 'non-combat' TWOs in Italy, IMO those were combat losses. Without combat operations nearby, the Ferdinands would not have been blown up. The only one where I think an argument can be made that it was not a combat-loss is the engine fire. But as I said above, it depends on how much you want to narrow things down.

All the best

Andreas

[AikinutNY]

Andres,
Using your logic then all Ferdinands were combat losses. If there wasn't a war the tank would not have been driven to over heat the engine and start the fire. I was looking at whether the loss was due to a poor design, supply shortages, crew desertion, or enemy action.

The reports list total vehicles 100, and 80 available for action, that says that 20 are down for some reason. Maybe the commander does not want to report that he lost twenty vehicles! The next report lists 90 total vehicles and 76 available for action, that report clearly shows that some how twenty vehicles are missing. So he was not covering the losses up very well.

In Italy the crews letters, journals and official reports match on the losses, except for the two unkown vehicles which neither covers.The commanders report said X losses and the crews letters said that X was for three different reasons you should believe them. I know if my tank was lost and I wrote home that it got stuck in the mud and we blew it up I woold not feel like a hero. If I said that I was fighting off the Mongol Horde and one of the little sneaks got a "Lucky" shot in and we barely escaped with our lives, then my friends and family might look at me as being a brave or stupid soul.

[AikinutNY]

In the 653rd's and 654th's Histories, a number of Ferdinands lost at Kursk/Orel were in mine fields,both Russian and mismarked or unmarked German ones, that would be a combat loss. But you could not say that the Ferdinand was a failure because it lacked a MG, infantry attack was not the cause for the vehicle loss. You could not say the T-34 stopped the tank, since it hit the mine and the crew blew it up. You also can't look at the picture of the Russian soldier walking by one that looks like Swiss cheese and think that the tank was shot up in combat,since you can see the missing roadwheels from a mine along with a massive internal explosion.

A lot of tankers fired rounds into them for a lot of reasons, testing their guns or sights, not knowing that the tank was dead or just because it was German and they had a loaded weapon. The Americans did it in the west, sometimes not knowing if the target was live or dead. The Germans put multiple shots into Shermans until they caught on fire, either to make sure the tank was dead or to keep it from being repaired.

Sometimes in Kursk, the damage was minor, but the death of a crewmember, the closeness of Soviet infantry and the lack of recovery equipment the vehicle was destroyed. If the Germans had provided the proper support, both infantry and recovery equipment the vehicle would not have been lost. So, the problem is not was the tank defective but was there a lack of planning by the commanders higher up the chain to provide the support for the vehicles.

I know that you can't always take people's word as fact, Russians always talk about hitting a Ferdinand more often then there were Ferdinands, Or that the most GI's any tank was a Tiger and one French commander talked about seeing Ferdinands in post D-Day France. So, I have to wonder how many T-34's were that and not a BT. But if the commander's report lists five fewer tanks in a more resent report,then I will have to say that they are gone and not just down for repairs. Vehicles down for repairs might be covering combat losses, yes, but when you pass it up the chain of command that they are gone, they are.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Mechanical breakdowns in Italy, as opposed to all other fronts, was very high for Tigers, so I'd assume this would be the case for Elefants as well.

[Lkefct]

I think many of Zhukovs accounts contridict things I have read in other accounts. I was just reading something the other day that comments on his work as being heavily censored, although where ther it was done to paint a rosey pciture or not I am not sure. Also, I think most of us are fimilar with teh fact that soviets and particuarly Soviet genreal can be fairly matter of fact about heavy losses, and is commented on by numerous german and western allied courses, FWIW.

I always find it interesting that everyone is aware of the Elefants/Ferdinand weakness, but this same lack of MG is rarely mentioned for StuG's. ocnsidering the role they where being used in at Kursk, it seems at least somewhat inconsistent.

[AikinutNY]

I forgot about Stugs or assault guns, but some did have that little shield that the gunner could put a MG thru and shoot. Like that gave hime a lot of protection! Does any one know how many assault guns, Marders or Nashorns were used in Kursk/Orel? and how they fared? Did they have the Nashorn/Hornisse then?

I think the big thing about the Ferdinand/Elefants was the size and how people did not understand how to use them correctly. They would have been far more useful driving to Moscow instead of charging into a well fortified position like Kursk.

[Andreas]

I know that you can't always take people's word as fact, Russians always talk about hitting a Ferdinand more often then there were Ferdinands

Please see my post above. Following the appearance of the Ferdinand at Kursk, it seems as if 'Ferdinand' became a generic term for armoured SPGs. Which could be taken as a testament to the survivability of the Stug. So you have remarks about a German counter-attack using 'Ferdinands' during the Iassy-Kishinev Operation in Romania August 1944, etc.pp.

All the best

Andreas

[Andreas]

Andres,
Using your logic then all Ferdinands were combat losses. If there wasn't a war the tank would not have been driven to over heat the engine and start the fire.

Well, there you are wrong. You are confusing war and combat.

I was looking at whether the loss was due to a poor design, supply shortages, crew desertion, or enemy action.

That's fair enough, if enemy action is in fact defined as direct enemy action (such as putting a round into the tank, rendering it hors de combat). As soon as you stray away from that narrow definition however, it should become clear that a vehicle blown up because of track damage in order to prevent it falling into enemy hands is in fact a combat loss too, and that fact also tells us something about the usefulness of the vehicle type in question in a combat environment. Because if it had been a different vehicle (e.g. a Jagdpanzer IV), it may have been possible to recover it, because it weighs a lot less. So when talking about the combat performance of the Ferdinand compared to other AFVs in the German arsenal, the logistical situation leading to vehicles being blown up should be taken into account, and that is where I do not agree with your division into 'enemy/non-enemy' action.

Going further down this road, we get stuff like this from Wilbeck in 'Swinging the Sledgehammer', which is just plain silly, in my view:

Of the seventy Tigers lost, however, almost fifty were destroyed by their own crews to avoid being captured. Thus, the kill ratio of direct combat losses was 3.3 enemy tanks for every Tiger destroyed in combat.

Here, magically, Tigers that had to be blown up because they could not be recovered are somehow not lost in 'direct combat'. Of course, Wilbeck is trying to prove a point to the US Army of today (heavy tanks are important force multipliers), so maybe he should be forgiven for writing nonsense, since it is for a good cause.

Then there is a group of people who analyse usefulness on a kill/killed basis. If the ratio is high enough, the vehicle was useful (see e.g. egon's post above, which at least implies this sort of analysis, or Wilbeck again, who is in my view very guilty in pushing this type of unsuitable comparison). Unfortunately this analysis also often seems to count with double standards, and ignoring the different standards for when a tank was written off in different armies, or just takes German kill claims as a realistic basis for its calculations.

I realise you were not attempting to make such an analysis, but I think it is still correct to point out that things are not as clean-cut between 'enemy/non-enemy' action, especially if it is not stated clearly where the analysis is leading to in the beginning.

All the best

Andreas

[tigre]

Hello to all ; a little more............................

Sd Kfz 184 Elefant - Modifications.

AFAIK, After Kursk the surviving vehicles were pulled out of the Eastern front and entirely overhauled at Nibelungenwerke in Austria. A proper commander cupola was welded in place over the roof’s simple hatch (with 7 vision blocks), a ball mounted MG 34 was added for the radio operator, and Zimmerit anti-magnetic paste was applied. The nickname was officially changed to “Elefant”.

Source: http://www.ebay.de/itm/Elite-Jagdpanzer ... 234wt_1362
http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/n ... lefant.php

Cheers. Raúl M .