What Was the State of German Tank Design In Between the World Wars?
score:12
The Panzer I, the tank sent to Spain, was initially designed as an "industrial tractor" in order to get around arms controls agreements. It had a number of limitations ranging from slow speed to engine problems to inadequate armor to less effective armament. It's primary/original purpose was for the German command to teach soldiers armored warfare while not having treaty breaking armor.
The Soviet built T-26 was a much better design and taken from the successful British Vickers tanks. It, like a lot of Soviet armaments, was easy to manufacture and maintain and simple for the average soldier to use. The T-34 continued this trend.
The Panzer III and IV were the main battle tanks when WWII started in 1939. These tanks did well against the unprepared French and British forces. When the invasion of the USSR began, it became clear that these tanks had inferior guns. Superior armor tactics, however, gave the Germans about a 6:1 kill ratio over the Soviets.
The Tiger was still in the design phase during the late 1930's. It incorporated the famous German 88mm cannon and sported heavier armor than any contemporary tank. It suffered from being so technically advanced, making it expensive to build, difficult to maintain and prone to mechanical breakdown and malfunction. It was first deployed to North Africa and the Eastern front in 1942. Due to Allied bombing and the complexity and cost, the Tiger didn't see a wide deployment. Allied tank tactics used the low numbers to their advantage through flanking maneuvers that the outnumbered Germans couldn't effectively counter.
Upvote:3
German tanks were generally inferior to Allied and Soviet designs in the pre-war years.
The Germans were limited in what they could build due to the restrictions imposed upon them by the Treaty of Versailles, limiting their military. Indeed this treaty stated that they were not allowed any tanks at all but in the 1930s as they began to re-arm the treaty was largely ignored.
When Germany invaded France in 1940, their tanks were inferior to the French (and British) designs as this quote from Wikipedia (and Heinz Guderian) illustrates:
The French Army preferred to fight a defensive battle and built tanks accordingly. But there were some instances when some of the French tanks were able to slug it out with the German tanks and get the better of it, sometimes spectacularly so as when on 16 May a single Char B1 French heavy tank, the Eure, frontally attacked and destroyed thirteen German tanks lying in ambush in Stonne, all of them Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, in the course of a few minutes.[1] The tank safely returning despite being hit 140 times (this event is not trackable in German documents and relies on the statements of the crew[citation needed]). Similarly, in his book Panzer Leader, Heinz Guderian relates the following incident, which took place during a tank battle south of Juniville: "While the tank battle was in progress, I attempted, in vain, to destroy a Char B with a captured 47 mm anti-tank gun; all the shells I fired at it simply bounced harmlessly off its thick armor. Our 37 mm and 20 mm guns were equally ineffective against this adversary. As a result, we inevitably suffered sadly heavy casualties".
The main reason that Germany won so decisively in early battles was due to Blitzkrieg tactics and the way their armour was organised. The French tended to use their tanks in defensive positions that negated the advantage of mobility and they spread them out so tanks were not concentrated together. This meant when French tanks did engage German armour they were almost always fighting against superior numbers.
The Panzer IV was the most advanced German tank produced before the war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_IV
Total numbers were around 200 before the outbreak of war.
Strangely the Germans didn't learn the lessons of the Blitzkrieg themselves and when faced with the more agile and numerous Russian T34 tank they produced slower and more expensive tanks that were always going to be outnumbered.
Upvote:7
In addition to the excellent answers, German inter-war tank designs had two technical advantages: turret layout and radios.
The Panzer I and Panzer II both had the commander also operating the gun. The Germans learned that being a tank commander was a full time job: commanding the tank, scanning for targets, listening to the command radio network. With the Panzer III they settled on the three person turret design that remains to this day: commander, gunner, loader. Their superior ergonomics gave their tanks a better situational awareness, rate of fire, and could allow more complicated tactics. Other nations, most notably the Soviet Union with the T-34, were slow to learn this lesson and their tanks were hampered by a two man turret.
At the beginning of WWII radios were expensive, heavy, and power hungry. Many tanks, especially light tanks, did not have radios. This limited the tactics and maneuvers they could perform: tank tactics either had to be very simple, slow and deliberate, or they would just sort of run around pell-mell. The Germans put a radio in every tank allowing rapid communication, coordination and complex, fluid tactics that could adapt to the situation. This allowed them to use their often inferior tanks to great advantage to outflank and outmaneuver the enemy and generally press the pace of battle at a speed the Allies could not keep up with.
More post
- 📝 What was the first regular airline service to pass low over urban areas?
- 📝 Did the British somehow imitate the Greek colonizers in India?
- 📝 Did Stalin want to restore the Russian Empire's borders?
- 📝 Was public transportation free in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Why didn't Tiberius Gracchus seek the consulship?
- 📝 Einstein's World War IV quote?
- 📝 In which situation is the broadside more preferable than every gun firing on their own time?
- 📝 When was the deadliest year in human history in absolute terms?
- 📝 Has any medieval army ever fought 3 or more distinct battles on the same day?
- 📝 Why do people (governments) hang on to the idea of East and West?
- 📝 Were there any Roman villas in Britain which were used rather than destroyed after the Romans left?
- 📝 Demonym for someone from the kingdom of D'mt
- 📝 Did the Czech Legion bring POWs to Czechoslovakia? And if so, why?
- 📝 What is the single longest Presidential Campaign run in the United States?
- 📝 What was regicide conspiracy and what was the role of Djordje Gencic in it?
- 📝 Why wouldn't the South make salt from seawater during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 What's the text in "Mystische Jagd" by Martin Schongauer?
- 📝 Pre-1900s advertising methods targeting a sub-population stratified by demography/social classification
- 📝 When did the Knights Templar dissolve and why?
- 📝 When did people start saying about the US that "it's a free country"?
- 📝 What proof would a Roman patrician have of his status?
- 📝 Entry-level articles on USA slavery?
- 📝 To whom does Jefferson refer in the "Tree of Liberty" quote?
- 📝 What was the strategy to protect the British Museum during the World Wars?
- 📝 Are state funerals always held on a Monday?
- 📝 Is it really true that more high-ranking Nazis died in Tatra cars than in combat?
- 📝 Has Matéo Maximoff's book Die Ursitory been translated to English?
- 📝 What were the manpower and gunnery levels of the seven gunboats that assisted Grant at Fort Donelson?
- 📝 Why did the population of Descartes, France increase by so much in the 1960's?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What Was the State of German Tank Design In Between the World Wars?
- 📝 What was the state of the German rail system in 1944?
- 📝 What was the significance of the BEF moving into the gap between German forces in First Battle of the Marne?
- 📝 What was the procedure for prosecuting criminals in England between the World Wars?
- 📝 What was the combat effectiveness of German infantry in the western front of the Second World War?
- 📝 What was the state of relations between Baathist Iraq and Taliban Afghanistan?
- 📝 What was the significance of ball bearing factories during the World Wars and in the economy at the time in general??
- 📝 What was the military age in Romania between the world wars?
- 📝 What was the nature of conflict between Helvetii and German in prelude to Gallic Wars?
- 📝 What was the extent of military conscription by the German Army during World War 2?
- 📝 What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
- 📝 What was the longest a World War II submarine stayed at sea without being resupplied at a port?
- 📝 What was the ratio of German to Soviet losses on Eastern front during different stages of the war?
- 📝 What was the strategy to protect the British Museum during the World Wars?
- 📝 What was the shortest time between a historical event occuring and a museum opening dedicated to said event?
- 📝 What was the ratio women to men after World War 2 in the Soviet Union
- 📝 What was the "Favorable result" that the German admiralty was expecting from the naval attack on the Royal Navy in 1918?
- 📝 What was the first successful mass tank battle of WW1?
- 📝 Why was the Cold War carried out over the whole world instead of between Siberia and Alaska?
- 📝 What was the liquor that was based on petrol which was produced in the USSR during the Second World War?
- 📝 What was the legal status of an East German once he had reached West Germany?
- 📝 What was the contemporary German public opinion on the Herero Genocide?
- 📝 What was this small state in the south of France in 1789?
- 📝 What was the world population around 970 BC? Does it fit the biblical narrative?
- 📝 Was the Iraqi Mukhabarat modelled on the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and in what ways?
- 📝 In the British empire, what was the difference between a Governor General and a Viceroy?
- 📝 At the start of Barbarossa, what was the state of Germany's oil supply?
- 📝 What was the border regime between Poland and Czechoslovakia like during the 1970s and 1980s?
- 📝 What was the most accurate map of the world before artificial satellites?
- 📝 What was the relationship between Indian caste system and martial skills?