Introduction:
First I want to make clear that this post does not attempt to vindicate the German heavies especially the Panther in terms of reliability and ease of maintenance, there is little doubt tanks like the Sherman were superior in this category and the important question would certainly be: "by how much?". This post will not try to answer this question it will show how readiness rates are misused to mislead readers and in the end serve little value as direct "evidence" for reliability. The numbers presented will be a major surprise for those who read them. Have fun.
Unnecessary 2nd introduction:
You might have heard about German tank "readiness rates", the rate of tanks operational in any given German unit. Those numbers are often used to show how xyz tank was unreliable and badly designed. Tank X had low readiness rate at point Y, tank X is, therefore, bad. As simple as that. You might have seen Zaloga, Moran, Forzyck seen referencing low Panther rates in July 1943. If you are more around in the forums and don't read real books you might have heard "tankarchives" saying the Tigers were bad in terms of reliability because the 503rd had bad rates in 1943. Both examples were actually used by the "historians" in question.
As with most talking points, the data is cherry picked and intended to mislead the reader. I will present more comprehensive "readiness" data and follow up with some context for those who are interested in learning more.
The main "targets" of the "readiness" argument are the German heavy tanks especially the Tiger and Panther. People will pick a juicy month that suits their argument and base their conclusions on this. The so-called cherry. But the readiness argument crumbles pretty fast compared to many other deceptions. A simple look at the numbers exposes the trick. But first:
Apples to oranges:
Comparing a Sherman unit to a Panther unit in terms of readiness, is it possible? No, it is not. German tank units retained most of their damaged vehicles within their unit "administration" but more importantly, they stayed on the books. This means if a German unit sustains major damage during combat the damaged vehicles will be listed as non-operational and therefore affect the overall readiness rate. Does the same happen in a British unit? No, it does not. Shermans with major damage would be moved from the unit to a second line REME workshop, they would leave the books of the unit that moved into combat with the Sherman. This just means that non-operational tanks are removed from the books and don't affect the readiness rate any longer for the British parent unit. New or freshly repaired Shermans will be drawn from replacement pool. A Sherman unit, in theory, isn't even "able" to have a low readiness rate, the vehicles will just get struck from the unit strength and the readiness rate rises. An exception are the "light" casualties which can be repaired within the unit. The Allied system was focused on keeping units at To&E with piece mail reinforcements whenever necessary. The German system prefered bulk reinforcements this led to German units being gradually ground down while Allied units received a constant flow replacement. Eventually, the German unit would either receive a major batch of new vehicles or be pulled out of line replaced by another fresh combat formation. The German system was obviously affected by shortages. The effectiveness of both systems is up to debate. A piecemeal replacement has the issue of lowering efficiencies of the combat assets. On the other hand, shortages can be addressed more quickly. But you also have a lot of idle assets while German combat assests would be pooled in combat formations that are ready to enter the frontline on their own.
I will give on example:
Goodwood 1944 18-20 July. Two units that took part in this battle, the 1st LSSAH and the 11th Armoured Division "Black bull" will be examined.
As we know the 11th suffered substantial casualties, but so did the "Leibstandarte". Let us evaluate "readiness rate".
On the 17th the 11th AD has 189 Shermans all of them ready for action. Very nice. 100%. The Sherman like we know and love it.
They move into combat. On the 19th they report only 81 combat ready of a total of 210? The unit now had more Shermans in total and the reports of the 18th are missing but that is not important here. More than a hundred Shermans became casualties, also as we know it. We see less than half of their Shermans are combat ready, obviously many of those aren't really Shermans any longer but destroyed vehicles.
So what happens now? They refer the salvageable vehicles to repair shops. The 11th Armoured Division is now done with those vehicles unless they get some back later from the pool when they are repaired.
On the 21st they report the following: 131 Shermans of which 126 are ready for action.
The unit got replacements and struck the casualties of their strength. Now they are back 95+% readiness rate. But all the Shermans that can be repaired and are non-operational are now in a workshop somewhere, they don't influence the readiness rate any longer. This means of the Shermans that were actually in the 11th at 18th only a fraction is combat ready now the rest is non-operational in workshops.
Now to the German unit. The LAH was also in the mix and suffered big damage to their Panther Battalion. Was it big damage? Doesn't look like it if you watch closely. At least not to me but that doesn't matter.
They report 46 Panthers combat ready on the 17th July, likely some in repair so no 100% like the Shermans. Now battle happens:
20th July: Well only 20 Panthers combat ready with 28 in repair, this is the number people would now refer to as 28 casualties, aka more than 50% losses. Germans had always high % losses, right? The nice mathematical truth about percentages, you can make the losses of a small unit appear bigger by not using absolute numbers. But let's not get sidetracked. Well, on the next day they have 29 operational with 20 in repair. The British would now have dropped those damaged vehicles and their readiness would bounce back, the Germans readiness doesn't, the vehicles remain in the books. Despite minor combat, the Panthers numbers eventually creep up again and many damaged vehicles get repaired, but the readiness remains far lower than the Sherman unit due to damaged vehicles being repaired in-house and count into the "rate". How many Panthers got repaired is hard to tell due possible replacements of Panthers which were in transit in July, but looking over the numbers only a small part of the "28" casualties appears to have been write-offs.
This is no value judgement on the system employed by the armies, I am merely demonstrating the differences. This is also how the huRr dUrR "different types of casualties" evolved. Which is generally mentioned to somehow lower the 140k destroyed Allied tanks. A write-off is a write-off at the end of the day.
Either way, "readiness" rates are not comparable between different armies, they are meaningless due to this.
Back to the numbers and their misrepresentation:
Here "historian" Zaloga about this issue:
>the Panther's operational rate rose from an appalling 16 percent at the end of July 1943 to the merely wretched rate of 37 percent by December 1943
What Zaloga does not mention here is that in July 1943 there was only a single unit with Panthers and that was Regiment Krauss that fought during Citadelle with the infamous "debut" including the drive through major minefields that damaged nearly all vehicles. Either way, since this was the only Panther unit it meant that the average readiness rate was from a unit that was involved in direct combat over the course of the time frame when readiness was measured. Not much value can be derived from this number. This does not absolve the Panther but it has to be understood that the "average" rate, in this case, was of a sample that completely in combat
Let us take a look at the readiness rates presented in Steven Zalogas "Armored Champion" for the entirety of 1944
X|January|February|March|April|Mai|June|July|August|September|Zaloga|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
StuG III|60|56|57|65|76|85|75|65|71|68|
Pz III|34|38|38|50|60|69|68|63|63|53|
Pz IV|49|45|46|54|76|84|73|60|60|61|
Pz V|52|***38***|***>>26<<***|***39***|70|80|73|51|60|54|
Pz VI|43|45|54|40|64|75|60|48|40|55|
Some interesting observations jump out. The Panzer IV on average is at 61% while the Panther is at 54% and the Tiger respectively is at 55%. Shouldn't the German heavies be laying in the ditch yelling for transmission replacements? Yeah they should if we would believe revisionists. On the first glance, we see the "readiness" argument goes poof and joins many of its fellow talking points. The numbers for the Panzer IV,V&VI are comparable with the Panzer IV being a bit better. Who would have guessed the tanks being up to 20 tonnes heavier would be a tad more difficult to maintain? Those numbers alone would finish this discussion but you know me for going above and beyond, let us take a closer look.
Let us bring in the arch nemesis of Revisionists like Zaloga, ***context***.
Gather around, I will explain you the difference between a StuG and a Panther/Tiger when it comes to availability.
What the revisionists don't tell you is that a Tiger/Panther was used differently compared to a StuG or even a Panzer IV, the heavy tanks on average would sustain more heavy combat. Especially Tigers would be employed as "Fire Brigade" force. This means those tanks would be employed wherever necessary. Furthermore, a more robust tank will also operated longer after having sustained damage. A Sherman gets hit and is toast, the percentage of pristine Shermans on the battlefield will always be far higher than the percentage of Tigers.
You might have noticed that I bolded some parts of the above table. As I have said before the Wehrmacht would employ their more "valuable" assets in the regions that were expected to see the most Red Army "aggression". Let us take a look at the Panthers. Look at the table again, in February the Panthers were "combat ready" at 38% which is quite bad and it got even worse in March with 26%, the lowest of all readiness rates according to Zalogas table. Let us find out how this happened. Again be careful, if you keep reading you will encountered ***context***. The kryptonite of the Revionists.
The Panther was introduced in July 1943 and in early 1944 only a handful of German divisions were equipped with the Panzer V. Take a guess how many units got a major contingent of those vehicles? Here are the units that got a sizeable amount of Panthers in 1943 and early 1944:
* Panzerabteilung 51&52 ( The Kursk Panthers, eventually GD )
* 2nd SS Divsion "Das Reich"
* 23rd Panzerdivision
* 16th Panzerdivision
* 1st SS Division"LAH"
* 5th SS Division "Wiking"
* 1st Panzerdivision
* 3rd Panzerdivision
* Panzerregiment 26, intended for Italy never employed
* 11th Panzerdivision
Several other units got some Panthers as well but the above-mentioned divisions had a big share of the Panther production. Well, let us check where those units operated in the time frame with the low "readiness rates". To the nitpickers you might wanna check the above list I am sure there are some unimportant mistakes in there. Here is a map
of the early 1944 operations on the Eastern Front. The major offensive happened in the south, the umbrella operations is called Dniepr-Carpathian offensive. One of the most prominent operations was the Korsun pocket. The vast majority of the Panthers operated in both Southern army groups.
Let us check which of the divisions fought in the well known Korsun battle.
* 5th SS Wiking encircled in the Korsun pocket.
* I./Pz.Rgt 26 ~70 Panthers, engaged already in January and heavily damaged
* Pz.Rgt 11 ~45 Panthers already engaged in January during Operation Watutin same sector.
* LAH also Watutin same sector later Korsun relief.
* 16th PD relief force over February ( Operation Wanda )
* 1st PD arrived in February for the Korsun battles 50 Panthers
* II./Pz.Rgt 23 attached to units for the Korsun relief
* 11th Panzerdivision
Niklas Zetterling summarizes this well with his comments about the III Panzercorps:
He later adds:In fact, more than half of all Tigers and Panthers on the Eastern Front were either with Breith's corps or on the way to it.
The fighting around Korsun was extremely difficult due to weather circumstances and "readiness rates" for all the vehicles was low, and because a major chunk of the Wehrmacht Panthers were in this area this disproportionally affected the overall readiness rate. The fighting was characterized by a switch between snow and mud, both sides suffered under those conditions and supplying vehicles was difficult.Considering that by February 1944 only 7 Panther battalions had yet reached the front. ***Of these all but one were engaged in the battle to save Gruppe Stemmermann***. The idea to place Panthers at the tip of the attack, and use the older Panzer IV to cover the flanks could usually not be carried through in practice, as most Panzer divisions had to rely on Panzer Ivs and StuG III. At Korsun there was usually high number of Tigers and Panther available, and indeed almost all terrain gained by the III Panzercorps was taken with them in the lead. ***The ligher Panzer IV and StuG III were mainly used for flank protection***.
Eventually, the German forces managed to break out the encircled forces. Calling a victory would maybe be a tad optimistic. Either way, those weeks of dirty combat through mud took a heavy toll:
There you have the low readiness rate for this time period of the entirety of the Panthers. The front stabilized and they started maintaining their forces. The Panthers as the spearheads obviously suffered disproportionally and had the lowest readiness rates by far in the involved tank corps. Since nearly all of the Panthers were used during this operation while StuGs and Panzer IVs were spread all other the Eastern Front, including more silent regions, their rates were lower.For example, of the 187 Panthers in the first Panzer Army on 29th February, no less than 171 were in workshops.
Here we see why context is important and why "historians" and "hobby historians" like Zaloga and tankarchives avoid it like the plague. Let me grab isolated factoids and without context I can argue every point regardless of how silly it is. Let's see what happened when StuG forces became substitutes for tanks in the last year of the war. You might have heard that eventually the German tank forces expanded on paper but lacked the actual Panzers to fill those units. Here take a look how German "Panzerdivisions" looked at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge:
Unit|Panzer IV|Panther|Tiger II|Total tanks|Tank destroyed and Assault Guns|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
1st SS|37|42|45|124|26|
12th SS|37|41||78|64|
SS PzBrig 150||5||6|5|
Total 6th SS PzArmy|74|88|45|208|95|
2nd PD|28|56||84|40|
116th PD|22|43||65|25|
PD Lehr|34|29||63|15|
Total 5th PzArmy|84|128||212|80|
Grand total:|158|216|45|420|***175***|
The StuGs became more and more used for offensive actions, this together with fewer "safe areas" increased the level of combat intensity for StuGs which decreased their readiness and brought in more in line with the tanks. In 1943 mostly the Tigers were in all around constant combat by 1945 everybody was. Check this out.
Status:|Stug|Panzer IV|Panzer V|Panzer VI|Total:|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
15 December||||||
Available|598|503|471|123|1695|
Operational|410|391|336|79|1216|
Readiness rate|**68,56%**|**77,73%**|**71,34%**|**64,23%**|**71,74%**|
||||||
30 December||||||
Available|676|550|451|116|1793|
Operational|335|345|240|58|978|
Readiness rate|**49,56%**|**62,73%**|**53,22%**|**50,00%**|**54,55%**|
||||||
15 January||||||
Available|716|594|487|110|1907|
Operational|340|330|221|64|955|
Readiness rate|**47,49%**|**55,56%**|**45,38%**|**58,18%**|**50,08%**|
Here you have the entire Armored force in the West. You see how the StuGs fared on the Western Front where a big chunk of the armoured formations found themselves in combat. Quite surprising, isn't it? The readiness rate of all vehicles fluctuated with StuG units even being the lowest at the turn of the year. The difference between the heavies and the rest is not as big as you would expect after decades of "rEaDIneSs rAte" blabla. Here you see how fake news works. Pick some cherry-picked data and run with it, sadly people will gladly spread the talking points. We are in a post-fact society.
Those who claimed the German heavies were unreliable and nightmares for the crews, what now? German heavies were constantly used as fire brigade units and relentlessly in combat. Why don't the readiness rate show the supposed strong disadvantage against "matured" designs like the Panzer IV? Because apparently the reliability issue of the German heavies compared to other designs are overblown. And I actually believe the Panther was far more suspectable to reliability issues than other vehicles and so I am surprised how low the differences actually are. Maybe readiness rates are just useless for this.
Want to see something funny? Check out the readiness rates before the heavies even entered the frontlines:
Type ( in % )|Panzer II|Panzer III|Panzer IV|Panzer 38(t)|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
Operational|73|48|58|58|
In repair|27|52|42|42|
Those rates are for August-September 1941. Hmmmm
The readiness of a vehicle is connected to far more factors than the reliability of the tank design. German tanks had a notoriously low readiness rate after Barbarossa the main reason for this being massive planning failures in the OKW and not the design of the tanks. Nobody argues the Panzer IV was a maintenance nightmare yet we can find many months were all the Panzer IV were ready at a rate below 50%, but nobody is interested in this narrative so you don't see those numbers.
Check out what Zaloga thinks about employing Tigers compared to StuGs. He completely fails to understand how the readiness rates developed. As we have seen for some parts of the Western Force the StuGs had actually lower rates but this was due to their increased share of combat.
Here we see the last proper Eastern Front count in March 1945 right before the collapse.
Type|StuG|Pz IV|Pz IV 70|Flak Panzer|Panzer V|Panzer VI|Total|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
Available|545|603|357|97|776|212|2590|
Operational|314|345|189|50|387|125|1410|
Readiness rate|57,61%|57,21%|52,94%|51,55%|49,87%|***58,96%***|54,44%|
The Tiger has the highest rate. Again, this is fascinating, isn't it? Well, mostly for those who consumed too much cherry-picked data. Should be mentioned that Tiger units at this point were still ravaging Red Army tank hordes. The same data looks different in the West were several units already started collapsing, look here:
Type|StuG|Pz IV|Pz IV 70|Flak Panzer|Panzer V|Panzer VI|Total|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
Available|126|59|77|41|152|28|483|
Operational|67|19|33|19|49|6|193|
Readiness rate|***53,17%***|32,20%|42,86%|46,34%|32,24%|21,43%|39,96%|
If you are reading works of revisionists or Sherman lawyers they would likely prefer this set of numbers. That it is how it is done. A possible explanation for this would be that serviceable German tanks were relocated towards the East for offensives like "Spring Awakening".
The question now is how big the reliability issues with the Panther really were, going from those numbers above we should be able to say with quite some confidence that the Tiger was very reliable for its size, given that Tigers saw on average more combat and on average were older due to withstanding combat ( compared to a T-34 for example ) the fact that most counts show higher numbers for the Tiger is impressive. On the other hand, the Panther rates just don't seem low enough to justify the entire narrative. Like I said, in the beginning, there is little doubt the Panther was not very reliable but going from the numbers it didn't seem to impede the combat to the degree that pseudo historians try to imply.
Readiness rate offers very little value...
Used Books:
Steven Zaloga: *Panther vs Sherman*, *Armored Champion*
Jentz: *Panzertruppen 1&2*
Niklas Zetterling: *The Korsun pocket*
Christer Bergström : *The Ardennes: 1944-1945*