Hello All :
Mr. Richard Anderson posted:
To repeat an initial post of mine, it is difficult to rationalize madness.
You, and certain others, still seem to want to miss the power of the sunk cost
fallacy of which the Panzer III was the poster child in World War II.
This is quite true, it is difficult to rationalize madness. And, to expand on this theme, as the legendary
philosopher Ron White has so brilliantly put it,
" You cain't fix STOOPID ! "
As anyone who knows how to play Poker will tell you, putting more money into the pot when you
have busted flush or a four card straight is the defnition, not of insanity, but of
STOOOOOPID !
The failure of anyone in the Heer to look at the two chassis, Pzkw III and Pzkw IV, and realize that
the 'IV' chassis, which was in production and apparently a quite successful design, could be substituted
for the 'III' chassis, which was going through as series of unsuccessful redesigns, one after the other, is
a
monument to human stupidity.
One of the things that made the U.S. successful in WW2 was the appointment of men like Knudsen and
others, men who had a broad range of experience and knowledge about manufacturing and production.
In fact, when Roosevelt appointed him as Chairman of the Office of Production Management, one of
Roosevelt's cronys criticized the move, on the grounds that the appointment would be a political plum
that would allow the distribution of a lot of money, and that a Democrat would be able to steer that
money to friends of the Democratic Party. Roosevelt replied that he appointed Knudsen because there
weren't any Democrats who knew how to build things.....
So, if you had a German equivalent of William Knudsen, who wasn't a strutting Nazi Jackass, but was
instead an educated engineer who knew how to build things, he might have made the decision to kill
the Pzkw III chassis in favor of the Pzkw IV chassis.
Agreed, but the sooner you start the sooner the output increases.
Industrial capacity didn't delay production, it was the lack of an accepted design.
Exactly. And, if the decision to kill the Pzkw III chassis had been made in early 1937, when it was
already obvious that the prototypes didn't work, and re-tool the factories to make nothing but Pzkw IV
chassis, with differing armaments to suit differing requirements, then the production from ALL the
factories would have been ramping up equally.
The failure of the Krupp works production method would have been discovered a year earlier, and
the necessary ' fixes ' to get it corrected would have been applied.
Since the size, weight of materials, engine, and transmission were essentially identical, to extrapolate
how many Pzkw IV chassis could have been built, you simply add the historical number of 'IV' chassis
to the historical number of ' III ' chassis, but move the production figures of the ' III' up by about one
year, to take into account the fact that the factories are not wasting a year waiting for the ' III ' to
have it's design problems corrected.
And, if you do that math, you will find that the Heer could have had the number of tanks that I
stated were possible in my earlier posting. It's just basic math. ( it will help if you arrange it on
a Gant Chart, to clarify the issues. )
Historically, the chassis of the M-2 medium tank was enlarged and beefed up to make the M-3
Medium Tank, and then again enlarged to make the M-4 Sherman tank, and the chassis was used
for Tank Destroyers, and SP guns, and mobile artillery platforms, up to the 200 mm howitzer -
and some of the chassis of M-3s were stripped out to be used as Prime Movers and Amored Personnel
Carriers. It is amazing what can be done if you hand an engineer an angle grinder and a welding
torch !
Historically, as the weight of the M-4 increased, the U.S. Army added growsers to the tracks, spaced
out the tracks from the hull to add growsers on both sides of the tracks, and then came up with
HVSS suspensions and tracks, which dramatically reduced ground pressure and increased flotation,
resulting in increased mobility. Different engines were tried, and horsepower increased to account
for the increase in vehicle weight. Armor was added, sometimes extemporaneously, to improve
survivability. And the guns were upgraded, not as fast as should have been done, but enough to
win the war .
Like the RAF with the Spitfire, the Russians with the Yak and LaGG series of fighters, and the U.S.
with the P-51s and P-47s, steady improvements were made to keep the vehicles 'state of the art'
with respect to the needs of the fighting. The same could have been done with the Pzkw IV chassis,
and it would have been easier to do this than working with the Pzkw III chassis, due to the wider
hull and larger turret ring.
Historically the Pzkw IV chassis were used for AA guns, SP guns, and, of course, tanks. If the Heer
had standardized on them early, they would have been the equivalent of the M-3 and M-4 chassis
in Allied use, adaptable to virtually any requirement, and, it would not be too much of a stretch
to believe that, with some lengthening and widening of the hull, and an extra pair of bogie
wheels on each side fitted with wider tracks , along with a 500 hp engine, they might have been
expandable to the point of making the Pzkw V Panther an unnecessary luxury !
Respectfully :
Paul R. Ward
