MarkF617 wrote: ↑23 Feb 2019, 11:47
Hello,
Christian Munich said:
they were aware of the pak40 and derivates long enough, they did nothing in response and let their tanks be total victims to the already standard issue AT weapon of the enemy.
The Germans were well aware of the 17 pounder in service in 1942 and the standard issue AT weapon of the British army in 1944 yet the only response from the Germans was to churn out a few hundred King Tigers. They just kept on making Panzer IV, Panthers Stugs etc even though they knew these would be "total victims to the already standard AT weapon of the enemy." IIRC the Americans made just as many Jumbo's as there were King Tigers so the Americans reacted just as much as the Germans did. Do you believe that the battle for NW Europe should have been contested by King Tigers and Sherman Jumbo's?
Thanks
Mark.
No reaction was needed the 17pdr was inadequate against properly manufactured Panthers. The Germans already had the counter to the 17pdr. They also build Jagdpanzer IVs. The German "reaction" was actually well suited to the 17pdr. To my knowledge, the only nation to decide to full produce non protection tanks was the US. Keep in mind we have still not found a picture of a regular Sherman withstanding a proper hits. Panthers and other vehicles were perfectly capable to withstand 17pdrs frontally. In this scenario the 17pdr and 76mm were comparable failures to the Sherman frontal armour, both those weapons were the "new thing" and already didn't get the job done that was not getting done by the 75mm before. The actual impact of the 76mm was for example far smaller than people think, it did close to nothing against the Panther glacis and in general had comparable threat profiles like the 75mm, one of the biggest differences it the Tiger, the 76mm was far better against the Tiger I which quite funnily was irrelevant due to Tiger I and 76mm Shermans likely never meeting.
Also remember the 17pdr was only a small share of the tubes faces, compare that to the pak40 and derivates that was pretty much the smallet AP weapon you could expect to meet from 1943 onwards.
Check the isgniy tests out a properly manufactured Panther defeated the 17pdr, so the Germans in terms of frontal armour were well situated at the Western Front.
I believe even the Hetzer was ok protected against the 76mm from the top of my head.
Here Isigny test firings:
There is the argument of issues with German manufacturing which resulted in different performing armour but as you can see the best Panther plate was easily able to deal with the 17pdr and we can assume the best plate was the closest do actual specifications. From a strategic perspective the Panther armour was a very good choice if we stick to your argument. Failing to properly manufacture those tanks in obviously an enitrely different topic. In terms of specifications, the Panther was defeating the "new weapons" of the Western Allies. Again, the Western Allies were not good at planning this stuff, their main tank weighted a whopping 32 tonnes and protected against nothing and their new main guns were exactly good enough to not defeat the fronts of Panthers Jagdpanzer IV, Hetzers et cetera. Looks sometimes like they planned for maximum downside with minimum upside. A 32 medium tanked that was penned by everything that hit it looks like a quite spectacular failure especially if just some tonnes more would have alleviated the problem.