Saw This and Thought of FSN - Part II

[fsn]

Interesting rant. Iconoclastic!

Have you any sources for ways tanks were killed? I would have thought that panzers would have been disabled by artillery and air strikes far more than Shermans - unless it was the USAAF flying overhead. So the exchange rate may have been 1.1:1, but were the Panthers destroyed by 75mm guns, or 60ib rockets?     

[toxicpixie]

Yes, but only on line without going thru the loft Zaloga did most of the actual leg work, but those army studies are on line somewhere in the mostly raw. And weirdly the WoT historical stuff is very good - the stuff by The Chieftain is well researched with lots of interesting bits and bobs in.

The bulk of Sherman "kills" were mines, then infantry AT weapons, then arty, then ATGs, then tanks. Something like 70/10/10/8/2% IIRC but a web search should break that down better. Cooper did indeed work on repairing Shermans, but essentially took every single Sherman saw as being gutted by a Tiger. Despite the units he was supporting never actually facing a Tiger... BUT his post war book was exceptionally lurid and sold a lot of copies, so he "wrote the narrative" on the issue which we've swallowed as fact.

Panzers "disabled" - most lost to being crap tanks and just not working, then being abandoned as unrecoverable. Never mind "wonder weapons", the Germans could barely operate what they actually had!

In combat losses are very few to air despite some pilot claims; lots lost on trains though. Anecdotal evidence from pilots suggest they really, really didn't like going near the front couple of KM's as the amount of flak a German unit could put up was lethal. Much better to hammer the rear echelons. Also avoid "friendly flak" AND "friendly fire"...

I did have a breakdown somewhere for the Germans but it's very few to air (2% "combat" losses?), can't remember off hand where the others went but a much higher proportion to tanks than the Allies lost (Allied tanks were numerous & reliable enough to be in any fight, any time; German tanks (almost) ALWAYS end up fighting Allied tanks ). Still large numbers to mines and arty and infantry AT weapons though.

[fred.]

The Germans were forever loosing tanks due to breakdowns or lack of fuel.

One example from the German counter attack on Arnhem, they de-trained 13 Tigers, 12 miles from Arnhem and attempted to drive them to Arnhem, only 1 made it. The rest broke down.

By comparison a few weeks earlier on the breakout from Normandy the British Armoured divisions drove 100+ miles in two days, with only the odd tank per division being lost to breakdown.

Its interesting to see that mines were so deadly to tanks - this doesn't come up that much in games. As gamers we seem to only want big battles of manoeuvre whereas these were very uncommon.