Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.
- Thread starter allanpcameron
- Start date
It would be nice to see the german perspective on british tanks especially what they thought of the a11s and the valiants
"Mein gott wir ist tot!" And afterward "Weren't we supposed to have the best Panzers?"
ITTL, to the Germans in 1941 the Valiant isn't a wonder weapon. It's got a decent gun and good armour, but the Char B1bis and Somua were also well armoured with good guns (let down by 1 man turrets and poor radios) and the Germans still won, so not a big deal.
The Germans will be thinking the Valiant is not as good as their Panzer 3s and 4s because the allies need numbers to win.
They'll know the allied 2 pounder is only just good enough, and just as they adopted a 50mm gun in place of a 37mm, they will be expecting the Allies to introduce a more powerful tank gun any day soon.
ITTL, most likely the DAK will be on the way to Canada or involved in an awkward and slow trip across French North Africa before the upraded allied gun becomes available, so some othèr unit gets the privilege of being ripped apart by the 6 pounders.
The Germans will be thinking the Valiant is not as good as their Panzer 3s and 4s because the allies need numbers to win.
They'll know the allied 2 pounder is only just good enough, and just as they adopted a 50mm gun in place of a 37mm, they will be expecting the Allies to introduce a more powerful tank gun any day soon.
ITTL, most likely the DAK will be on the way to Canada or involved in an awkward and slow trip across French North Africa before the upraded allied gun becomes available, so some othèr unit gets the privilege of being ripped apart by the 6 pounders.
Just from a psychology standpoint, I think the interesting question is if the German leadership is comfortable developing and producing "equivalent" tanks, or if there is a Teutonic need to ensure their tanks are better? Example: Earlier development of Panther and Tiger?
marathag
Banned
That already was ongoing from the start, the Germans had heavier tanks planned from the start, with the then 'Heavy' 30 ton Durchbruchswagen in 1937, and that morphed into the Tiger after meeting the Matilda and Char B1, while the T-34 influenced what the Mk IV Medium replacement would be, the 45 ton Panther
I'm not sure German industry has capacity and raw materials to develop new tanks much faster than OTL. Improving cooperation between companies might help a bit, but that's verging on ASB in Nazi Germany.
Not sure how well that would work the German concept of divide and rule has sort of trickled down to the companies to a degree, they also have to deal with the fact that they are mostly looting the captured economies of the occupied territories and their puppets, this isn't a really sustainable model though in the long term. It also doesn't help that any reserch is going to be based to change on the whims of the Furher.
The Valiant has thicker armour, yet is still decently fast, because it has a more powerful engine.
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You know that. I know that. The Brits iTTL know that. The Germans may even have the facts under their noses, but do they UNDERSTAND what those facts mean?
Quite possibly not, as in @CaptainCalvert 's post several posts up posits.
They do know that, despite losses, the Valiant absorbed an inordinate amount of fire. It's a tank with good speed and manoeuvrability, good armour, but with a not particularly good gun.
allanpcameron
Donor
Before you start too much discussion on food or small arms or planes or....
The thing I've been working on is getting Ship Shape sorted and finished.
The thing I've been working on is getting Ship Shape sorted and finished.
the Char B1 was only deployed in penny-packet numbers, and had a one-man turret, while the Valiant is being deployed in comparable numbers to the Panzers, and has a three-man turret. Of course, they're still only facing Valiant Mark 1s, so they don't know the British are also working on better tanks, and better Marks for their existing tanks.
Irish Gaelic.
Basically Merry Christmas. I could have put the "to all today" in Gaelic* too but thought it better to mix the languages.
* courtesy of Google translate i confess
Agreed the Valiant isn't anything mind blowing, as in OTL they will have carried out a technical analysis and report and they'll have reported that it's in the same capability range as their tanks, a bit better on armour and speed, a bit worse in firepoweron the more important "soft" stats of reliability and ease of maintenance it's also comparable, therfore much better than OTL but on comms the Germans will correctly regard the Valiant as worse.
The bigger impact will be the wider performance of British armoured forces which have repeatedly given them bloody noses. This is actually very easy to fit into the Nazi world view, the British are Aryan Empire Builders, of course they outperform slavs and Latins. This will, I think, make the shock of the T-34 bigger not smaller.