Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "What \"killed\" the most tanks in World War 2?" video.

+Military History Visualized In his book "Armored Champion: The Top Tanks of WWII", Steve Zaloga puts up some interesting data on this which also goes into the ranges at which tanks were most likely to be destroyed by gunfire. Inevitably people draw the wrong conclusions about this and start arguing over armour/range/penetration data. That has its place but the ranges at which these vehicles were destroyed were usually well within the theoretical radius of capability. One of his charts shows that only 0.5% of Soviet tanks were destroyed at ranges of 2,000 metres, making that a statistically insignificant part of the total. Indeed, it seems that the best range for the 75 mm was 400-600 metres and the best for the 88 mm was 600-800 metres. Rumours of Tigers destroying tanks at three kilometres need to be taken very much with a grain of salt. Zaloga also points out that at 500 metres, it took an average of five shells to knock out an enemy tank. At longer ranges up to two kilometres, the average could exceed forty rounds. So the important conclusion is that the success of an attack depended not the power of the gun but the methods employed by tank and anti-tank crews. It implies a high level of artillery discipline and not just a big gun. Probably also worth pointing out that tank warfare was almost never like the Gunfight at the OK Corral. It was usually made as lop-sided as possible. Highly concentrated tank forces going in or carefully planned and constructed ambushes. They weren't playing by Queensberry Rules.
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+Evilsamar If your weapons were swords then you belong to an era when ten times as many troops died of disease than weapons.
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Kman31ca Highly experienced anti-tank gunners would not fire at such long ranges for two reasons 1) the likelihood of a decisive hit is much reduced and 2) it gives away the position. The best tactic was to set up a carefully planned ambush with multiple fire lanes and complete control of the terrain. Then, when the time is right, you cut loose. Many people have a problem understanding this. There is no such thing as a fair fight here. This is cold blooded killing because you have to wipe out your enemy before he can fire back effectively. Long range shots are usually a noob error that give away the gunners’ state of mind. It is usually the result of fear and inexperience. All it says to the enemy is, “I’m afraid of you. Go away”. Remember the old command, “Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.” That takes discipline but it also results in a much more decisive action.
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@matshagglund3550 Yes but it seems that only Tigers get the credit. Like I said; people saw a Tiger sitting on a hill 3 kilometres away and didn't see the 75mm - or indeed the StuG III as you pointed out - in the bushes 400 metres up the road and in the heat of battle, it was impossible to reliably comprehend what actually happened. German sources credit the StuG III with 18,250 but there are no truly reliable sources. Even so, that is more than was destroyed by all Tigers, and all this while the venerable StuG was doing infantry support duties as well.
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Unfortunately, these figures have never been challenged. Not saying they're wrong or lies, just that they are only one side of the story.
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I thought a Kolibri was a typewriter until I discovered Smirnoff...
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@101jir Which is why the air force should be attacking supply lines. They can do far more effective work this way than trying to target individual tanks. Blow up one tank and that's all you achieve. Blow up a fuel dump or an ammunition train and you can stop an army.
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tomo braica Even on this channel? Okay, fair enough.
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tomo braica They certainly have no concept of tactics and talk incessantly about how tank A can “pen” tank B at X,000 metres ergo; tank B is useless. They seem not to have read any history either, which is why I asked about this channel because it’s not the sort of place I would have expected to find those kinds of attitudes. All the tank games I have seen are just FPS games on tracks. You get no points for using your brains.
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@World View Well, you tell us where the claims of "5%" came from and we'll have a look. Why distrust Soviet claims any more than anyone else's? In this case there was virtually no propaganda value.
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Garbage alert. Myths, my arse. You want to play speculation games? Okay. Can you prove any of these "certain" cases? Everything you say is from presumption, with a partisan bias. You know the commanders were in fear of their lives, don't you? They could have been eliminated at a whim. You know also that Stalin evaluated their performance on results, don't you? You know that he allowed people like Zhukov and Rokossovski to plan operations like Citadel and Bagration respectively don't you? They relied on accurate assessments of what they had available. Without that their battle plan was useless and they would likely have gone to the wall. Writers like Robert Forczyk have been researching unit audits for a while now and have turned up nothing particularly smelly. You claim to have evidence. Go right ahead: present it. But please do yourself a favour and back it up with something approaching cited sources, rather than faux logic. https://tankandafvnews.com/2016/06/02/tank-warfare-on-the-eastern-front-an-interview-with-robert-forczyk/
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+jaikumar848 +Battleship009 +19Koty96 The GAU-8 is rather overrated in terms of tank busting and overkill for anti-personnel work. It would probably still be effective against a BMP but that's about it. The vast majority of tanks destroyed by the A-10 in the 1991 Gulf War (the were two other Gulf Wars and this was the second) were with AGM-65 Maverick missiles. The GAU-8 was designed to penetrate tanks up to the T-55 but is relatively ineffective against T-72's and above, especially if they have composite armour. The F-111 used GBU-12 laser-guided bombs to destroy as many as 500 Iraqi tanks, though I'm not sure how reliable that figure is. The weapon was known for a while as "the tank plinker".
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Not true. Not true on either count. Shermans were not destroyed by the hundreds and the most likely gun they would have come up against was the 75mm. Furthermore, if you take the trouble to read about it, there are only three known occasions in France when American Shermans came up against Tigers and in one case the tank was sitting on a flat bed rail car.
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Very low. But fighter v tank is not a very smart way to do it.
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@djones9122 The P-38 was of little use against tanks. It would have been far better used against tank supply columns but even then there were better choices.
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@talltroll7092 Sounds like Soviet tanks were only as unreliable as German ones.
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@101jir The only rider I would have on the German advance - and this is much-misunderstood - is that the Red Air Force airfields had all been attacked and all their aircraft shot up. They really couldn't have attacked anything without an air force. Advances stretch the supply column to breaking point, which makes them all the more vulnerable. I think what you're talking about it pure CAS. You really have to be able to do both. Since at a time like that, the only thing you can do is deal with the immediate threat, then you deal with it...which is what I think you're saying anyway.
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@chadjustice8560 The best way for aircraft to stop tanks was to attack their supply lines.
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Chad Justice So did I once.
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tomo braica What expert told him that?
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Not really. There's hope. Almost all the data we have been exposed to from the eastern front is from German sources. Only now is Soviet data starting to come to light. A lot of this has been superficially dismissed as "propaganda" but in fact, it is simply unit audits, where they exist. These things were used to inform high command who were not playing that game because their personal survival depended on their ability to plan successful actions. In short, they needed accurate information about the state of their units. I think it will be a while before there is anything like the same level of detail in descriptions of actions on the Eastern Front as there is in the West.
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