Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "British Armour Doctrine \u0026 Tactics World War 2 with David Willey of @thetankmuseum" video.
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I would say that both France and Britain had better tanks than Germany in 1939-1940, and I say this more as an objective fact than a subjective opinion. Germany began the war with tanks with shitty armour, underpowered engines (compared to the allied tanks which had a better horsepower per ton ratio), and some french tanks had so thick frontal armour that it was immune to frontal hits from any German panzer.
Furthermore was the German tankers also heavily outnumbered, and their tank fleet was mostly consisting of pzII light tanks since their production of medium tanks was so low that they wasn't able to replace their weaker machines to any significant extent.
Germany was also pretty much in love with the idea of building boxshaped tanks, while the french on the other hand was early into that. The only minor advantage German tanks had, was having a two-man turret (which was hardly close enough to compensate for all the advantages french tanks had overall). But the Germans was good at realizing the importance of the radio early on, so they could oftentimes deal with enemies with better tanks thanks to better tactics - such as when they faced KV1 and T-34 tanks in Russia who lacked radios.
The only time in the war Germany actully had better tanks was in 1942-44 I would say. Because then they had the PZIVH and the Panther. And in 1945 the allies got their Centurion, T-44, ISU152, and Pershing... which were just as powerful machines as the German ones.
And overall did Britain actully build quite good tanks. Panzer IV and StuGIII was usally the best thing Germany had, and the Sherman, the Cromwell and Comet could easily take those tanks on quite well. Indeed, they were even slightly superior to those machines, and junk like Panzer III and Marder that Germany used is simply a sign of desperation since those things were hopelessly outdated.
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Germany was better at the tactical level, but they lacked supplies, they lacked experienced manpower, they didn't have air superiority, and they also made many severe blunders at the strategic level (much thanks to Hitler) - D-day, Arracourt, Bagration, Ardennes - which certainly speeded up the defeat of the reich with a year or two. Had Normandy and Operation Bagration not ended up as allied victories, then history would definatly had another course. Germany would still lose the war, but it would have taken a much different path to get there.
So was the German defeats in 1944-45 caused by bad equipment? No. An army can suffer terrible losses even it got excellent equipment - which the Soviet union proved in 1941 when it had the worlds best tanks, KV1, T-34 and Bt7.. and had very good artillery and yet suffered millions in losses.
Another thing we also need to remember when we talk about killratios and such is what kind of opposition our forces are meeting. Having a killratio of 30:1 would be impressive if a plane from the 1950s manage to shot down some MIG15s with skilled pilots, but having a killratio 30:1 is not that impressive if our pilot got a 5th generation fighter from 2017, those MIG15s are driven crappy pilots.
So a high killratio of a tank doesn't tell much, if we don't look at the circumstances on the battlefield, the training of the men and quality of the equipment and such.
And in 1945 things were dire for the Germans, their lack of rare metals had made the steel quality in their tanks really shitty, they lacked paint to camouflage their tanks, they didn't have much fuel. And having great tanks doesn't mean much if the support organization has fallen apart.
Without AA guns tanks were vulnerable to airpower, without proper recon they could easily fall into ambushes, without artillery to soften up the enemy attacks could turn into costly failures and so on.
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The allies had both better tanks and larger numbers of them than the Germans.
Somua 35 had sloped armour and was immune to all tank guns the shitty German tanks had in 1940. And the french 47mm anti-tank gun had the best muzzle velocity and armour penetration of any anti-tank gun in the world at that time. Its true that the allies used many old machines, but so did the Germans too. In fact, 90% of the German tankforce was outdated garbage (panzer I, Panzer II, Panzer 35t, Panzer 38t). While PanzerIII and PanzerIV only existed in small numbers, and their guns, engine and armour was inferior to the best allied tanks and those huge disadvantages could hardly be compensated for by any radio or extra crewman in the turret. Panzer IVD (of 1940) had only 30mm frontal armour, compared to Char B1's 60mm and Matilda II's 78mm.
Char 1b, S-35 and MatildaII were clearly more powerful than any German tank.
Here is what Mosier writes:
By May 1940 the French, as we have seen, had twelve armored divisions, comprising literally thousands of tanks, together with twenty-eight independent battalions of R.35 and H35 tanks." By that same point the British had managed to assemble one armored division, the First, comprising 156 Cruiser tanks and 174 Mark 6 vehicles, 100 Matilda tanks in two independent tank regiments, and another 200 or so Mark 6 tanks distributed among the "cavalry" regiments.
Like the Germans and the French, the British were still thinking about how to deploy armor, so in addition to separate cavalry regiments equipped with light tanks, there were two independent tank regiments equipped with "infantry" tanks, which in 1940 meant a vehicle known as the Matilda, owing to its ungainly waddling movement. The Matilda 2 was a massive vehicle weighing about 27,000 kilograms and armed with a two pounder gun. It was decently armored, and certainly the best tank the British had. The problem was that production was late starting (in September 1939 there were only two of them) and plagued by mechanical problems. In France the BEF had far too few of them to make much of a difference on the battlefield, although the combination of thick armor and a hard-hitting gun gave the Germans some nasty shocks in late May.
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1. Good question. I guess that the intent was to give the tank a limited ability to defend itself against other tanks. A short fat gun is good for dealing with soft targets of flesh and blood, while a long gun barrel is good for dealing with enemy tanks. This is because a fat gun fires large grenades that contains large amounts of explosives and therefore kill lots of men where the shot lands. And a long gun barrel gives a higher muzzle velocity, so a gun shot will hit an enemy tank with much more power and speed - and that will make it more likely that the shot will pierce the armour of an enemy tank and kill the men inside.
In the 1930s tanks were still a new thing and people were unsure about its role of the future battlefield. And the tankdesign was not that developed, so engines were weak, the suspension was not that sophisticated, the tracks was not that wide and thus unable to deal with the heavy weight of a tank that well.
And tanks were not broad and could not therefore have a huge gun turret, and the tanks were too weak to carry a heavy gun that was both long and fat and thus capable of both killing tanks and infantry.
2. Germany was forbidden to have any tanks after world war 1, so when Hitler decided do ignore this restriction he had to build whatever tanks Germany could get their hands on. So he started building Panzer1 and Panzer2 tanks....and he hoped that he one day would be able to replace them with better panzerIII and PanzerIV tanks that were better able to fight both enemy infantry and tanks since they atleast had some real guns.
And in 1942 it was decided that the Panther tank that would be able to do all jobs would replace all earlier tanks. It took it barely a year to get the tank from the drawingboard to the battlefield, so of course did the tank have many design flaws that had to be corrected at the beginning.
There was of course other firms that was designing other tanks that competed with the Panther for the contracts, when in 1942 it was realized that the PanzerIII was inferior to the KV1 and even the upgraded panzerIV would perhaps soon become inferior to the next generation of allied tanks.
And some E-series projects were alternatives to the Panther. While other monster tanks, were heavy "supertanks" thought of as "breaktrough tanks" that was able to smash any heavy enemy resisitance.
And the Tiger and the King Tiger was such machines. And they were never intented for massproduction or playing multiple roles on the battlefield. But irony meant that Germany could never use the Tiger for the offensive war it planned for. Instead it fought without air support and had to fight defensive actions instead.
3. I think that all countries had good and bad commanders. But German NCOs had more freedom to do what they wanted without having to ask for permission from their high ranked officers. Indeed, panzer commanders were even encouraged to take their own iniatives on the battlefield and act the way they seemed fit.
A General sitting long behind the front could not know all the circumstances at every place at the battlefield and give rational detailed orders to everyone what to do. So instead the Germans decided that their NCOs should get an order or goal from above, and then they themselves should decide the best way to fullfill that goal.
And usally this tactic worked well. The Germans could use tactical opportunities on the battlefield that a slower clumbsier organization couldn't. And they were masters of speedy improvised warfare.
Their auftragstaktik and their kampfgruppen combined with their good skill level gave them superiority on the battlefield. They could take all men and machines that was available in an area and form an improvised battlegroup to solve a problem that had shown up on the battlefield.
This tactic gave the Germans, and the Israelis the upper hand in their wars. But sometimes it also resulted in disproportionally high losses of NCOs in the fighting.
So the tactic was good. But the higher leadership in Germany was just as incompetent as the worst allied leaders - which shown itself in the great offensives Germany made in terrain totally unsuitable for German tanks such as the ardennes, the marshes in Hungary, the offensive in Normandy.... and the allies also thought that breaktroughs could easily be done in unsuitable terrain, which resulted in the costly failures at Normandy, Caen, Metz and Market Garden.
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PanzerIII was intended to be main tank of the German army - and it was the best tank they had in the beginning of the war, so this was the tank they wanted to use against other tanks.
And PanzerIV was a bigger machine that was just thought of as something to support other tanks or helping the infantry. Its gun was short because it was used to kill enemy bunkers and enemy footsolidiers.
And that was the German idea on how the war should be fought. But those dreams got crushed in 1940, because Germany didn't have enough panzerIII tanks to fight against France since the production of the German industry was so small. So Germany had to attack France with all that they had - which was mostly weak light tanks such as Panzer I, Panzer 35t, Panzer 38t and the most numerous of all German tanks was the Panzer II.
And Germany only had a very small number of somewhat good tanks as Panzer IV, Panzer III and StuG B.
But Germany won over France anyways.
And after the battle of France the Germans realized how good the StuG B was so the started to build them in large numbers, and they also realized that they had to replace their weak light tanks with more powerful Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, and give the PanzerIII tank a new better 50mm gun so it would have any chance of winning a fight in a modern tank battle.
Then when Germany invaded Russia they had a much more powerful tankforce with much more StuGs and medium tanks - but even in 1941 so was the weak Panzer II still the most used tank in the German army.
And in Russia the Germans got many nasty surprises - they meet monster tanks like t-34 and kv1 which was the most powerful tanks in the world in 1941... just as the Panther and Tiger was the most powerful tanks in the world in 1943.
And the only way of taking out those tanks was to fire at them with the powerful 88mm anti-aircraft guns. And the shots from German tanks just bounced off the Russian armor of those beasts. The German solidier felt powerless against those Russian tanks, and the Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunners didn't like their new job as tank killers, since this was nothing they was trained for, and driving this high siluette unarmoured thing close to the enemy lines was nothing they liked.
So Germany realized that they needed better tools that was able to kill those tanks before the Russians could start building them in large numbers.
So Germany started the Panther project in 1942, and they continued their development of the Tiger tank since the German army deseratly needed anything that could take on the Russian monsters. And to solve the most urgent crisis the Germans put some Russian 76mm guns they had conquered and putted them on Czech panzer 38t tanks and used them as the Marder38t tank destroyers.
And the old PanzerIII and PanzerIV got better guns so they would be better able to kill enemy tanks. Panzer IV got a long 75 gun and thereby became the best tank in the world in 1942, but the little panzer III was too small to carry such a big gun so it only got a 50mm gun that was good enough to kill most tanks, but it could not destroy the frontal armour of a KV1... so the German infantryman now always felt safer standing next to Panzer IV.
Panzer IV had become tha main tank of the German army because it had a better gun against enemy tanks, while Panzer III became more of a support tank because it too weak to fight the best enemy tanks.
But panzer III would live on for the rest of the war, because it was a reliable good tank that could turn fast. Its big problem was its weak gun, so the Germans took away the turret from the tank and built it like a box with a large 75mm gun on it. And without a turret, a tank becomes cheaper and easier to produce.
The turret also weights a lot, so by taking the turret off, the Germans could instead put a larger gun on the tank and give it extra thick armour. So the StuG became the most produced German tank of world war II, and also one of the most succeful. It was cheap to produce and it killed 3 tanks for every StuG that was lost.
In August 1942, the Tiger tank entered service, just about the same time when Germany was trying to conquer southern Russia and push forward into Egypt. And it was not a tank Germany planned to build in large numbers since it was too expensive and too difficult and time consuming to produce.
This heavy tank was intended to be a huge sledgehammer that would turn even the most well defended enemy position into pieces. And it would be a weapon superior to anything the enemy have, and it would be a great morale booster to the German troops and make the enemy solidiers piss their pants when they saw one these monsters show up.
And it was a good tank, but not good enough to justify all trouble that went into producing these machines. And they had their drawbacks - they were too heavy to use most bridges, and also most German military bridges.. and they needed 3 trucks to draw them to a repairshop because they were so heavy, and doint that thing is not a funny job at a battlefield where fire is raining down everyware.
And by 1943 the war had changed and Germany was now no longer the attacker, but now needed to defend her territory. And then the Tiger was forced to fight a type of war it was never build for.
And in 1943 Germany was getting the Panther which was starting to replace the old Panzer IV as the main medium tank of the German army. It was fast, had a good gun with excellent precision, penetration, range and reload time, and it had good frontal armour....and it could travel over snow and mud better than all other tanks - even those half its own weight, and its optics was superior to any tank during the war, and it was a pioneer in IR-sights (something Nato only began using in the 1960s).
But the tank also had serious drawbacks. It was expensive to produce and consumed many workhours to make one tank. It was too heavy to use on most military bridges. Its sidearmour was no better than other tanks despite this tank was so expensive to make. And the tank was an overly complex design so it often suffered from all kinds of problems from engine fires, electrical failures that prevented the gun from firing to all kinds of things. It needed so much repairs that it every year spent half its time in a repairshop, and therefore only could help the troops on the battlefield half the time. While Sherman and T-34 could be at the battlefield 80-90% of the time because they were tanks with less design problems.
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