Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Pak 43/41: Deadlier than the Flak 88" video.
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I do not see the point in puttinger Panther and Tiger I into service when countries are developing newer tanks that are better.
Retraining crews takes time. And USA, Britain, Germany and Russia all used different sizes for their ammunition. The germans used 150mm howitzers, while the Americans used 155mm and Russia 152mm.
Germany used 88mm guns while the American used 90mm guns and the russians used 85mm guns.
So getting a tank for which you do not produce any ammunition creates problems. And a tank without ammunition is worthless. Just look at the Ukraine war today and you see that Ukraines biggest problem they have is the lack of ammunition.
The german tanks were also built for German doctrine, while the American tanks were tailor made for American needs and logistical apparatus to be carried on ships, being transported on american railroads and being able to use american military bridges. Those things were not solved as well by the germans as their panther tanks were typically too heavy even for their own military bridges.
So the option would therefore be to borrow the best ideas from various countries and from the germans in particular to make a new tank. A tank a bit like Centurion with a powerful gun, good mobility and armor, and maybe the suspension from the panther, IR gun sights and good optics.
Personally do I think that Panzer IV was hopelessly obsolete in the 1970s. Indeed this vehicle was clearly inferior to the new allied tanks such as M4A3E8, Comet, Centurion and T-34/85. And even more so compared to T-55 and M60 Patton. Its short 75mm gun already had much problems fighting the most powerful allied tanks in 1944 so it would not be a tank I would want for an European army in the 1950s and 1960s.
It would only be a tank to consider if you couldn't get your hands on anything better. Finland used StuGIII after the war at that was truely a capable machine excellent for defensive warfare during the 1940s and 1950s but then it came too weak to fight allied tanks. However Switzerlands long use of Hetzer is in my opinion a bad budget choice. Hetzer was a good tank if you needed a cheap vehicle that could be produced fast. But in the cold war there was no longer any need for that which is why turretless vehicles as a class soon died out. Firepower, mobility and a turret was more important.
Swedens S-tank was a succesfull improvement of the StuGIII idea. But it when gun stabilizers came and chobham armor did this vehicle become obsolete. Swedens use of world war 2 tanks was not that impressive either. After the war it wanted to buy surplus M4 Shermans from the demobilizing USA, but USA offered older variant, and batches of small numbers of this or that model instead of allowing Sweden to buy large numbers of one modern variant to make logistics easier.
Britain refused to sell any tanks, but then the country got into economic problems and decided to sell some Centurions to Sweden to get some cash. But this was in the early 1960s so Centurions was clearly no longer the best tanks in the world so to say. Sweden made some upgrades to them. And they were okayish as 2nd line tanks I guess. But not so fun to use against T-72 or T-80 I guess.
Sweden did however do upgrade its own old WW2 tanks quite succesfully, Stridsvagn 74 did become something like Swedens M41 Walker Bulldog that was built on a M24 Chaffee chassi.
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