the german panzer 34

guderian requested a committee of german tank design experts to tour the russian front to see the effect that the advanced russian tank where having on german armor... this was done in the fall and winter of 1941 they where impressed by some aspects of the t-34 but felt the design was too crude and not up to german standards of quality

one cant fault they for having pride in their own designs but the panther and tiger where too big and too difficult to produce in large numbers to compete with their numerous russian adversaries

lets say the germans swallow their pride and just copy the t34 more or less the only changes being more advanced german radios and the installation of the high velocity german long 75mm gun

keep in mind when the germans used captured t34s to bulk out their own divisions they where extemely successful

ease of production in my opinion is huge in 1942 the germans buil only 900 mark4's with the long 75 and a few tigers could they have done better with 1800 german mark 34's?
 
The Daimler Benz Version of the Panther was in realy a Germanized verison of the T-34. It had improvements which made it a far more effective tank. Unfortinatly it was never put into production.
 
Although it would even out the armour strength between Russia and Germany before the full weight of Russian industry was felt, I cannot see it doing much to ultimately change the war, mostly because the Russians would still be out producing Germany in all areas and eventually would win through strength of numbers. This could be interesting though because there would be no faulty Panther tanks (if there is even the Panther) used in the battle of Kursk, so you could have the Germans place more of their armour into the battle.
 
Germans used best features from T-34 and designed their own tank from there, allowing them to use superior quality agaisnt superior numbers. Simply copying T-34 would result in both sides having same quality (OK, gemrans have better/more radios) but soviets have higher numbers. Germany is in serious disadvantage.

Not to mention simply producing copies is not as simple as it sounds. You need to have proper blueprints, you have to have proper tools in factories producing them and so on. And once you reconfigure your plants why not improve on design as well? Unless of course you capture plant that produces them intact and simply continue production but that is unlikely to impossible.

Why do you think Chinese copies of Soviet hardware are inferior? Were simply taking captured/donated/stolen/whatever hardware, taking it apart and start building it on your own that simple Chinese would produce equal quality weapons, not inferior copies.

OK, copying 1960s jet and T-34 is not exactly same thing but point still stands.
 
The Daimler Benz Panther was a German version of the tank. It was Germanized and had improvements which would have removed many of the problems that the Russian had with their tank. As such it would not have had a lot of the teething problems that the Panter design by the other company had.

Reverse engineering which is what the Chinese did is a possibility. Was their equipment as good as the original design there is some doubts but it did give them a tank, jet fighter planes and Sam missiles (all stolen).
 
The T-34 was very slow firing tank. The Germans found they could out shoot the Soviets 3 or 4:1 in tank battles. The last thing you should do is copy that tank.

Had they stuck with the VK-2001/2 design plan as it was modified with sloped armor through 1941, they would have had a 25 ton tank with a Panzer III style turret with 50L60 gun able to up gun to the Pak 40 gun, when required. The design proceeded to a Vk 2023/24 models with bigger turret [Turret ring expanded from 1.35m-1.6m].

The top speed would be 56km and 50mm frontal armor sloped at 55°. It was essentially a Shortened Panther tank with a smaller turret, that matched the T-34 in armor and gun power, with out suffering from poor ROF. The VK 2xxx programme was begun in 1938 , which means mass production should have begun in 1942.

The sloped 50mm front hull would be impervious to all 76mm shell penetration , and the turret front should be the same if it uses the Vorepanzer spaced plates against the earlier AP rounds. Against later APBC shells, penetration should be at several hundred meters.

While the Panther was too large to produce in some firms, forcing the Panzer III to continue in production in an altered from [StuG-III], the VK-2xxx would have replaced the Panzer-III one for one on the production line. Going on multi year fixed price contracting thats potentially ~ 2600 in 1942 & 1943 ; unless the PzIV is also replaced with this tank. In that case the 1943 production could top out at ~ 6500 VK 2xxx and the 1944 production could also hit 6,000 mark.

The growth potential of this chassis should be to over 30 tons , which means a Panther Turret with 75L70 could be mounted ,with some compromise on armor if needed. In that case such a "VK Panther" tank could replace historical Panther production, resulting additional 7800 VK Panther produced in 1943 and > 15,000 in 1944.

Going on 'historical steel consumption' , the above tank building programme should run out of steel half way through the VKPanther programme in early 1944. However with increasing production efficiency, comes reduction in wastage, which means more % of steel reaches the final product. IF one chassis is used for all production, the resultant savings should just about make up enough steel to complete this building programme [for example you may have to make the first 1000 VK Panthers, conversions of older VK 2xxx].

To illustrate this the 1944 steel allocation for tank building programme amounted to 1.23 million tons [USSBS] . But the total tank production by mass in 1944 is only about 565,000 tons total. Now according to USSBS they destroyed about 10% of the German armor in the factories, which should bring this figure up to ~ 622,000 tons.

That means the 1944 tank industry was utilizing only 46-50% of the steel allocated, the rest was being wasted during the production process. Reportedly in 1941 the same efficiency was less than 1/2 that . In other words they were wasting more than 3/4 of the steel allocated to them. In the same year the LW efficency in Aluminum was on the order of 67% utilized and 33% wasted. Back in 1941 those figures were reversed.

Thats what happens when you shift production from runs of hundreds up to 1000 'cost plus annual production', over to 'fixed price multi year production runs' in the thousands and thousands.

So if you'd applied 'fixed price multi year production runs' in the thousands during 1941 , you'd have produced over twice as much tonnage of tanks. Further if the production runs are shifted from thousands to tens of thousands, a further evolution in waste reduction would occur.
 
i think reverse engineering the tank is certainly doable... the germans certainly had hundreds of captured examples plus they captured quite a few tank techs sent to the front
the chinese copies of things stink because china has no quality control which germany certainly has
the germans successfully copied and improved on the american bazooka

i wasnt event going for an assertion that a german t34 would have anything like the knockout ratio of a tiger or panther but i would think it might be somewhat better than the mark4... and easier to produce
i see an extra couple hundred tanks being critical in 1942 if the germans had 500 more tanks they could have cut off stalingrad from the north or had more strength at the tip of the spear with army group a in the south
 
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