Ideal German tank?
- Thread starter DUWANG
- Start date
The factories weren't so much destroyed as they were damaged
The production of an new machine tools to replace the damaged ones was prioritized for factories that produced newer Panzer models
You misunderstand the weapon system
It can be fired from it 'wheels' in exactly the same way as the PAK 38 if necessary but can also in about the time its taken you to read this post be setup by its 3 man team to fire from its 'deployed' setup.
Here is a training video where the gun is shown deployed in both fashion
LOL.
Brooke was commission in the Royal Regt of Artillery. He served all his regimental appts from 2Lt through to Lt Col in various units of RA. His Corps training is as a gunner.
It has been claimed that during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 he introduced the idea of the creeping barrage system. An expert on artillery tactics, Brooke was mentioned six times in dispatches and became chief artillery officer in the 1st British Army.
Just because you put on Gorget patches, you may be technically above Corps, once a gunner, always a gunner! You don't forget 21 years on the gunline and artillery HQs.
GoC can be any Corps or Service. Inspector of Artillery, must be gunner. GoC AA-Comd as a RA dominated formation, will also be a gunner.
Brooke is always a gunner and a general.
The perfect WW2 German tank is one that required 10 hours of maintenance for one hour of service. And the best is to build one that easily catch fire and where the crew burned alive inside because they are trap by a bad ergonomy.
That is a separate issue. Whether fired straight off the march, or fully deployed. The tactical placement of the gun in either mode needs to be considered.
With such short range, 360 deg fire offers little advantage. A gun with that with high profile, has very poor survivability.
As guns should never be placed alone, but in pairs or groups. Again 360 deg is not an asset.
Look at photos of guns deployed, and the arcs they can use?
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Well that appears to be your opinion
The Royal Artillery who might be considered subject matter experts on artillery - thought otherwise.
They did. They never repeated. 6 pdr, 17 pdr and 32 pdr didn't bother. That's the RA wartime opinion, not mine!
Nigel states it clearly....
The deployment principles for anti-tank guns were to site them with an uninterrupted (enfiladed) field of view over their arcs of fire. The need for surprise at the most effective range meant the ideal positions were defiladed that covered an obstacle. Effective fire meant concealment and surprise: camouflage, defiladed from enemy observation and dug-in whenever possible. Digging was often easier said than done, it took 12 - 15 hours to dig-in a 17-pdr. Defilade usually meant engaging tanks from the side, which presented the largest target and had less armour than the front, the first Pz KfW Mk VI Tigers were destroyed by 6-pdr fire from their flank at ranges between 500 and 900 yards.
ANTI-TANK
nigelef.tripod.com
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Again much larger and much heavier weapon systems - not nearly as easy to achieve a 'crew deployable 360 degree system' and while the 2 pounder was a peacetime weapons system with time to develop, the 6 pounder and subsequent guns had war time expedience and were 'rushed' into service with the 17 pounder initially mounted on a 25 pounder carriage as the 'Pheasant'.
And yet no angst!
9 and 617 squadrons have a jolly day out with Tallboys and Grandslam. I doubt the Ratte would be able to get out of the crater.
A friend has a 72nd model of one and it's huge in the scale. I joked that someone should do a Bergeratte with a Blohm and Voss dock crane.
The 6 pdr goes back to '38, and there never any plan to repeat 360 deg fire.
Remember 25 pdr was choosen, not as the best caliber, but one that could be retrofitted to 18 pdr carriages.
So it was the first time BA, used a hybrid system. It was already force to use miss-use 25 pdr as an AT gun due to the short comings of it's AT guns.
It retrospect, the French probably had it right. The 25mm, would have being enough for infantry, and for use against thin AFVs (eg IJA tank), and the 47mm with a very useful, slow and heavy HE (1.4kg shell /142 g explosive vs 40mm .86kg /85g explosive). BA could jump straight to long 75-77mm.
The 6 pounder was a heavier gun with far greater recoil than the 2 pounder - to have given it a 360 mounting would have made the gun far too heavy for a 3 (6 including driver and ammunition handlers) man crew to manage without increasing the size of the gun crew.
The 2 pounder having such a feature and later heavier war time guns not, does not make it a bad system
The choice of 25 pounder was not only driven by the 18 pounder but also as a realisation that increasing to 105mm did not improve the ability to destroy prepared positions and the then understanding that sustainable rate of fire had a greater suppressive impact - IMO they were correct in choosing the 25 pounder gun/howitzer system and it served the British commonwealth well.
Garrison
Donor
Watched a bit of that video, looks like a good system and almost certainly better than this:
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-299-1831-26 / Hähle, Johannes / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5476984
Not bad, does not make it good.
The real choice for what become the 25pdr was actually 3.7"/94mm. The British decided to retain a combined gun and howitzer. 18pdr dragged that down.
Germany and the US put more faith in heavier slower, steeper angle of descent howitzer to fully use shell effects on target.
It's a pity the British didn't get the 3.7" and get the sweat spot they wanted. A howitzer/gun.
As to platform, the box trail and wheeled platform allowed very precise technical gunnery. The gun rotated over a single pivot point, unlike split trail, where the rotation point is not, and you get parallax with your sighting posts.
The downside is lack of elevation. Any 3.7" would have need more elevation and the weapon give more, overcoming the main limitation of the real world 25pdr.
Garrison
Donor
What makes it good is that it was effective against the enemy tanks it faced in the early part of the war and frankly a better weapon than the PAK 36 which was ineffective against the British infantry tanks. You need to measure these things against direct contemporaries, not weapons that didn't enter service until much later.
By infantry tanks, that means only Matilda 2, which only a very few were in France and entered general service much later.
All other British tanks were easily penetrated by Pak 36.
47mm was in service, in multiply countries and true, limited service in France (same as Matilda)
Garrison
Donor
Which of course ignores North Africa where the 2pdr was highly effective again and the PAK 36 proved inadequate, again. The PAK 36 is the direct counterpart of the 2pdr, if the 2pdr is bad, what does say about the far less effective PAK 36?