If the Tiger Tank was rejectd?

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Deleted member 1487

No, but moving the design, materials and production from 1943-44's 1200 Tigers, 400 Tiger IIs, 90 Elefant, 650 Panzer Wesps ('43-44), 571 Panzer Grille, 6,500 StuG III ('43-44) and 9,000 Panzer IV variants ('43-44) would certainly free up capacity to make more Panthers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II

I mean, what the hell were they doing producing 3,100 conventional (i.e. not TDS or SPG) Panzer IVs in 1944 when the Panther has been in production for over a year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germa...icle_production_during_World_War_II#Panzer_IV

And of course there are reasons for this splattering of resources across multiple platforms. But it didn't have to be. Today's German army has basically two combat vehicles, the Leopard II MBT and Panzerhaubitze SPG.
It doesn't work like that, the production lines that made the PZ III, IV, Wespe, Hetzer, Grille, etc. couldn't make Panthers. Even the Henschel Tiger production was done by a train manufacturer that had specialized equipment to make heavy tanks in batch work, not production lines like the Panther. Even saving the labor and raw materials still means you need production lines to use them on and with US bombing by 1943 (including of the factory that made Tiger/Panther engines) that bottlenecked production. The Germans kept making Pz IVs and the rest because they had no choice due to the heavy disruptions that would be caused by upgrading production lines over the period of years instead of having major output now.
 
All those production resources wasted on Tigers would have been better spent on Panthers.
Long barrelled 75 mm guns were needed in huge numbers to defeat WALLIES. Long barrelled 75mm guns could poke holes in most of the WALLIES AFVs.
SP guns - on any chassis - were an inexpensive way to deliver 75mm ammo ..... the painful way!

WALLIED fighter bombers never killed significant numbers of German AFVs. OTOH, WALLIED bombers and fighter-bombers devastated German railroads, shipping and trucks, shattering German logistical trains. Large numbers of Sherman AFVs were abandoned when they exhausted ammo, fuel and spare parts.

Given that WALLIES lost 5 Sherman tanks to every Tiger, WALLIES win because of better logistics and being able to deliver replacement Shermans fatter than Germans could kill them.
 

Deleted member 1487

All those production resources wasted on Tigers would have been better spent on Panthers.
Long barrelled 75 mm guns were needed in huge numbers to defeat WALLIES. Long barrelled 75mm guns could poke holes in most of the WALLIES AFVs.
SP guns - on any chassis - were an inexpensive way to deliver 75mm ammo ..... the painful way!

WALLIED fighter bombers never killed significant numbers of German AFVs. OTOH, WALLIED bombers and fighter-bombers devastated German railroads, shipping and trucks, shattering German logistical trains. Large numbers of Sherman AFVs were abandoned when they exhausted ammo, fuel and spare parts.

Given that WALLIES lost 5 Sherman tanks to every Tiger, WALLIES win because of better logistics and being able to deliver replacement Shermans fatter than Germans could kill them.
Never really understood why they didn't do a Marder type mounting of the long 75 on a PZ III chassis. it would have done exactly what you suggest.
 
They not good organised: when DB stopped production of PzIII, Vk1602, and Vk3002+T34 adaptations was good option. Or, if they decided production of Panther only, then sent production of MAN to DB, and recruit DB factory for panther - production alongside MAN. But they left DB for product - nothing new. Soviet produced T34 in various factories,that was point of succes.
 
If the Tiger was rejected because it was too expensive and heavy, would the Germans continue the Panzer IV line? The Panther would have been developed? Would Porsche have the crazy idea of developing the Maus?

Vk36.01 by Henschel in 1941, 40 Metric tons

10460051a.jpg

It's 80% of what the Tiger grew into

It was the Heavy version of the Panzer IV replacement, the smaller Vk30.01, 32 metric tons
VK3001%2B-H%2BAusf%2BA.jpg

that work began on in 1938

EDIT: oh, old thread. Thought I had answered this before.
 
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