Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Why was German Sloped Armor so late?" video.

@sergeyboychuck8872 But you are comparing apples with oranges I think. Tiger I was an old design. It was very good at its job facing tanks made before its introduction in august 1942. But it was never really meant to be invincible against tanks made after that. And the Soviets also deliberatly armed their tanks with the only guns they had that had been proven effective against the Tiger - such as the 85mm Anti-aircraft gun they put in the turret of T-34. And the 122mm gun they gave IS2. And the 152mm gun on SU-152 and ISU-152. No tank could survive a hit from those guns. Just like no tank today can survive a direct hit from a 155mm or 152mm artillery piece. But it would be stupid to say that armor protection does work because it cannot survive direct hits from high calibre guns.
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125mm is good enough. It is very good. Tiger I was considered almost impossible to knock out and it "only" had 100mm front armor. So personally would I consider 70mm armor with say a 50 degrees slope (or more) to be good enough for a medium tank. Having thicker armor than that would only be wasteful in my opinion and bring extra weigth, slow down the tank, make the tank too heavy to the front, having too much armor at the front so weight have to be saved by cutting down side armor and making the tank weaker and vulnerable to hits from the sides, rear and top. So I think your suggestion is a bad idea. And then it also depends on the type of tank. Hetzer would I consider to be extremely well protected. Its small and easy to hide. And the enemy cannot shot at you if he does not know that you are there. And when he discovers you, then he will have a diffucult time hitting a small target like the Hetzer. And Hetzer in a hull down position its even harder to see and to hit. And if you manage to hit it, then will you probably only hit it where the armor is the strongest - the frontal top of the hull. And there will the thick armor with a sharp sloping give pretty good protection, even against pretty large caliber guns at longer ranges. So its a pretty cost-effective use of armor the Germans had with this little vehicle.
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@sergeyboychuck8872 T-34 and M4 Sherman did have sloped armor and somewhat okayish thickness. So I think they were better designs than the German tanks that either had crappy armor or was too frontally heavy. I guess low quality steel in the russian tanks made their frontal armor not so fully effective as their american counterpart. And bad tank crews and poor ergonomics and other shortcomings could probably explain much of the high soviet tank losses. But the general idea was sound. It had frontal armor of the right thickness. And it had a gun of almost the same calibre as a Tiger I and inside a medium tank.
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I think its a design choice, if it is possible to have a sloped plate without eating up too much internal space then why not have it? I think the S-tank was smart in that way. And if a 1 centimetre steel plate angled at 60 degrees gives the same amount of protection as a 2 centimetre thick steel plate without any angle.. then of course can you reduce armor thickness by half and still get the same amount of protection. I think it was this that made T-34 such a good and feared tank in 1941. It was a bit bigger than most tanks in the world in 1941. But it could still be as fast as other tanks because it was not too heavy because its armor was sloped, and the broad tracks allowed it to drive in thick snow and muddy terrain that even smaller german tanks could not handle. So one can slope a plate in many ways, not just upwards and downwards, but also sideways. The S-tank did get very good safety levels for its time despite unimpressive armor thickness. Its extremely hard slope on the armor more than doubled the road an enemy projectile had to travel before it could drill its way through the armor. The heavy sloping also increased chances of shots just bouncing off the armor and richochet away. The problem with angeled armor however is that it is less reliable than armor thickness. When you got 2 centimetres of steel on a tank you always got 2 centimetres of protection. But if you got 1 centimetre of very well sloped armor, then the protection of that armor can be reduced under certain circumstances. A M4 Sherman tank will not be so well protected if the enemy shots at its well sloped front armor from above - because then will the angle of protection be reduced. Perhaps even reduced down to zero extra protection. So this angled steel plate that was meant to give 8 centimetres of protection under normal circumstances now only gives 4-5 centimetres of protection - which means that it can be penetrated even by pretty weak anti-tank guns.
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But both Panther and Sherman also had sloped armor
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I guess that T-34 was a bit unique for its time as it had well sloped armor all around, and its thin side armor was still enough to stop most pea shooter guns from the 1930s. However guns quickly became more powerful, and adding more side armor was not practical as it made tanks too heavy if they were to gain sufficient protection from the sides. Not even the heaviest tank in history - the King Tiger - did have any impressive side armor capable or resisting 90mm anti-tank guns. So if the side plate is too thin to protect the tank. And sloping a thin plate would not be enough to save the tank from flanking fire, then why bother? Other priorities like ease in manufacturing the tank would be more important than angled side armor then. I also guess that a V-shaped hull would give better protection against landmines, so an American T-57 with its angled hull underside would have better mine protection that the Swedish heavy tank Kranvagn.
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I think that depends if the tank is big or small. I know nothing about tanks, but I imagine that a tank big as a house like Jagdtiger or M3 Lee that is big enough for a football team to fit inside do not have as much space to lose from sloped armor as a more tiny cramped tank. So the gains made per tonnage by armor sloping is probably bigger for big tanks.
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@wolfhunter98 There is some truth to that. M3 Lee was not a good tank I think with its high siluette that made it an easy target and the armor had to be spread around a large area - which resulted in either a weakly protected tank, or a heavy weight tank. The opposite extreme are the russian tanks that are crampy as you say. They got much armor thickness and low weight. But can be very crampy inside. However I do consider some tanks as very good despite being crampy, like Hetzer that packed much punch for a small outdated tank chassi that was cheap and easy to produce and did not weight much. And the French tanks in 1940 that had so much armor thickness that they were immune to german tank guns. I think that makes them deserving of being called the worlds best tanks of that time, no matter what this germanophile says about radios and the drawbacks of having a only two man crewed tank turrets like the french. Personally I think that it doesn't matter if situational awareness is slow and the workload is high, if the tank got so thick armor that it can survive many hits from german guns before it decides to fire back at them. So I think that one main compromise in tank design is to gain as much armor protection as possible with as little added weight as possible. Sloping armor is an attempt to gain more protection without adding weight. Chomham armor is another way, as it is said to give the same amount of protection as a 4 times thicker plate of battleship steel. Cage armor, spaced armor and such are other examples. And it is possible that steel foam armor is the future as it adds thickness to the armor with much less extra weight compared to steel. And barracuda camouflage stealth might also add to survivability and trophy and electronic warfare equipment that can combat enemy drones.
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I guess the combination of old school team of tank designers and old tank projects that not easily could be modified to carry sloped armor might be the reason. TOG2 was built and was hopelessly obsolete when it entered service in 1943, and it would probably not done well against Tigers, Panthers and Ferdinands. The germans also could not take the Churchill tank seriously after they got a first hand experience with it when the allies had launched the Dieppe raid. Churchill was considered as obsolete junk by the germans. Britain was the country that built the worlds first tank, and they were world leader in this area in world war1, but after the war they got stuck in their outdated views on tank designs - which the long TOG2 is an example of, as it is a long long tank capable of crossing trench lines.. but that capability came at the expense of extra weight, slower speed, and being a bigger target and a tank more difficult to produce.
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