andreobrecht wrote: Major overhaul of transmission and gearbox were required after only 600-800 miles, tracks lasted 500 miles,
Source?
That is why they spent 2/3 of their life off the battle field being refitted and repaired
Source? and how that compares to another tanks? (sourced please, I have no use for your speculations),
A majority of Panthers were lost because they broke down and had to be abandoned.
Source? (by the way, what happened with the T-34 losses in 1941?).
T-34 and Shermans were orders of magnitude easier to build and to repair
This needs to be to be proved, and quantified
and were just as good as Panthers in infantry support roles and urban warfare
Not really, for example, I don't see how the advantage of superial frontal armor is lost during that circunstances...
. so what if the Panther would win most one-on-one engagements?
What is it with your obsession with the one on one? that has nothing to do with the way the Panther was designed.
It was always more important to have more tanks and more reliable tanks than to have "the best tank" on the battlefield.
Depends.
In a battle between a Sherman on the battlefield and a Panther currently in the repair shop, the crappy Allied tank wins every time...
That's great... of course, the opposite is also true
Regarding the option of fielding 20 tanks to one by choosing to build a simpler model I did take into account the fact that not only were the Panther/Tiger units much more costly to build but also that their poor reliability/sophisticated design prevented them from being on the front line most of the time contrary to the simpler machines that rarely broke down and could be quickly repaired by mobile workshops.
What you did not take in account was that:
1) the Panther was not much more expensive than a Pz IV (that's one of the reasons why their production rates were very similar)
2) There wasn't many differences beetwen Pz V/IV/VI operational readiness:
Percentage Operational At The Front:
Code: Select all
EASTERN FRONT WESTERN FRONT
Pz IV Panther Tiger Pz IV Panther Tiger
31 May44 84 77 79 88 82 87
15 Sep44 65 72 70 80 74 98
30 Sep44 65 60 81 50 57 67
31 Oct44 52 53 54 74 85 88
15 Nov44 72 66 61 78 71 81
30 Nov44 78 67 72 76 71 45
15 Dec44 79 69 79 78 71 64
30 Dec44 72 61 80 63 53 50
15 Jan45 71 60 73 56 45 58
15 Mar45 54 49 53 44 32 36
Overall 68 62 70 71 65 65
From Jentz "Tiger I and II combat tactics"
Whether the ratio would be twenty to one is impossible to determine
Of course is impossible, because it is so wrong...