Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Panther: The most Controversial Panzer" video.

Speer mentioned that this drive problem reached the highest level of the Nazi government. They lost something like 35 Panthers in one morning as they rolled out to meet Patton. The result -- the war expedient that is not in the books// histories -- was to SLOW DOWN the crews. They were soon instructed to accelerate slowly -- to baby their transmissions. This resulted in a vast improvement in field results -- zipping around might be fun for the drivers -- but it had no military utility. Consequently any war gamer has to re-jigger the movement rating of Panthers to reflect this General Order. Test track numbers simply did not pan out. On the front, Panthers were no faster than a Mark IV. Most simulations also over rate the speed of a Mark VI Tiger. With elite crews ( Tigers got them ) they knew enough to not trash the engine and tranny. Still, the break-down rates for the cats were pretty BAD. No small part of this is due to sabotage by the forced-labor on the production line. Recovered Panthers -- by hobbyists -- consistently show sabotage where it's virtually impossible to spot -- without a total strip-down. Heh.
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@selfdo You are incorrect on one point: on paper, the Germans schemed to establish entire panzer divisions -- two battalions of Tigers ++++ and etc. However, once the man-hours were figured in, Speer (the source of this tid bit) realized that such a super-concentration of Tigers was just never going to pencil out. This then shifted over to heavy tank battalions -- to be assigned to higher commands. (corps & armies) Even so, even keeping a few heavy (regular count) battalions proved too much. So they were scaled them back down to 36 Tigers as a heavy panzer battalion. In practice, the Tiger was such a garage queen that in every account I've read, such battalions lost at least 50% of their strength after three-days. Such losses were not due to enemy action, just mechanical breakdowns in the drive train, suspension, engine.... That's why you keep reading about 'companies' of four-Tigers. The other eight are in the rear being repaired. [The rotten gasoline consumed meant that mechanics were constantly changing out spark plugs. The more one uses tetra-ethyl lead to raise octane, the quicker the plugs foul. Cold weather starts were so problematic that crews were compelled to keep their engines warm. This became a plot minor element in Kelly's Heroes.] Until the Tiger, the panzer force simply did not have independent heavy battalions. (They did have trick companies of Nashorns, etc. to spice up the panzer force. Such kluge ups were never expected to be more than a stop-gap.) [ Kelly's Heroes was filmed in pretty cold weather. The actors were wailing about it. Any colder and they'd be filming in snow. The Tigers in the film were fakes based on T-34-85 machines. (Irony alert) So, they really DID need to keep such engines warm.]
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@vladmartyn6246 The T-34 was so weak that it was nothing for the Soviets to lose entire companies without inflicting a single German loss. The T-34c -- with the 76mm gun -- was a DOG. It had a TWO-MAN turret. No tank is ever effective with just two-men in the turret. The tank commander simply becomes overwhelmed. He needs to keep his head on a swivel during combat -- looking OUTSIDE. I cannot play at loader-gunner at the same time. The T34-85 hugely corrected the original very flawed design. But compared to the M-4// Sherman it's still a DOG. The Soviets never really ever corrected its transmission. (Yeah, this is the tank that came with a hammer to switch gears!) Further, the T-34 had astonishingly THIN armor in its chassis... even at the front glacis. This was only corrected with the Soviet SU-85, SU-100, SU-122 assault guns. Now those were true panzer killers. The thin armor was why Stug IIIs could pop open T-34c and T-34/85 straight through the war. The Krauts built scads of Stugs, of course, hugely nullifying the T-34 fleet. Some Stug crews knocked out so many tanks that no-one could believe the stats. One reason for the lopsided results: the Soviets used GREEN CREWS straight through to the end of the war. For there was no surviving a T-34 that had been hit. As the Chieftain shows -- you can't get out! The Germans became used to cooked drivers, gun-crews. In Korea, T-34/85s fared VERY poorly up against M4 tanks. They were coffins when facing America's equivalent of the Panther -- its heavies. Its one saving grace was massed concentrations. Tactically, the Norks really did try and provide more targets than you could deal with. Shades of the Eastern Front.
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Germany lost entire companies to bridges during Ostheer retreats. Time and time, again, the Soviets would cut off access to Tiger-rated bridges. ( As in at Kiev.) When done this would strand Tigers -- or get them to 'swim.' This weight issue HUGELY determined the design of the M-4//Sherman. Sending Tigers to North Africa was an engineering challenge all by itself.
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And he designed the current ones. Cute.
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@ericreckless541 The US used a fair number of aero-engines in its tanks. This meant that said tanks had to receive aviation grade fuel. This proved to be pretty easy -- for the Americans -- to do. Avgas could still fire up the common automotive engine of that era. And avgas still had to be shipped in staggering volumes for the USAAF and RAF. What all the combatants were facing was the sudden need for VERY high power automotive engines -- something that the pre-war civilian market didn't need. (Today's highway rated trucks just didn't exist -- anywhere. Back then, a three-hundred hp machine was deemed a beast. Turbo-compressors were in their infancy. It's this latter technology that makes today's Diesels so 'peppy' and efficient. The first generation of truck oriented Diesels in the US didn't have them. Mechanical air compression, super-chargers, had their own problems. They weren't so cheap to make and they took power right off the drive train -- not the hot exhaust gases. Roots blowers were finally made viable by GM's 2-stroke Diesel design. But such exotic designs were deemed not suitable for a tank that simply figured to be shot to pieces by combat. This was also behind the GMC 2.5 truck. Volume production, not endurance, was the key metric. )
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