Comparison of WWII Tank Production Methods

[Scherf]

This vid on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ&list=FLUXMApkWwjwak_5s6jadN6Q&index=4

has some fairly bog-standard yadda yadda about Kursk, but from about 26:20 a guy comes on who presents some very interesting facts & figures about how the various combatants went about producing tanks. Very interesting stuff which I'd not seen before.

[Brooke]

Interesting.  Thanks for the link.

[Rich46yo]

Fascinating. I cant wait to watch the entire thing when I have time.

[icepac]

Dr. Porsche's autobiography has some interesting stuff about his inspection of captured T34s.

One story is that the front of the hull on some was forged using the worlds strongest press.........which they had purchased from germany only a couple of years before the war.

[SmokinLoon]

Very interesting.  Great info to take in to consideration when discussing WWII's "best tank".   

Thanks for sharing that.

[SmokinLoon]

BUMP.

This thread needs to be read and the video needs to be watched for all those peeps who like to thump their chest for one tank or another....

good stuff.

[GScholz]

The Teutonic national spirit strives too hard for perfection, and perfection is the enemy of "good enough". While it was broadly correct, the analysis was not quite fair with regards to German production because they chose the Tiger production line as the German example. The Tiger was never supposed to be mass produced; it was designed and built to be the spare-no-expense ultimate fighting machine to be used by elite breakthrough units. A single Tiger cost as much as half a squadron's worth of 109s. In many ways it was built like we build MBT's like the Abrams or Leopard 2 today. They also did not consider that Germany (like Britain) deliberately decentralized their production to make it less vulnerable to bombing. This meant many small production lines rather than huge factories like in America, and beyond the Urals in the Soviet Union. It was a necessity of war because of Germany's geographic location and the strategic realities that were unavoidable. Both Ford and GM had huge assembly lines in Germany before and during the war. Henry Ford was even awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, for his assistance in rebuilding Germany's industry. To think that the Germans were somehow unaware of effective mass production is historically naive.

[pembquist]

They also did not consider that Germany (like Britain) deliberately decentralized their production to make it less vulnerable to bombing. This meant many small production lines rather than huge factories like in America, and beyond the Urals in the Soviet Union. It was a necessity of war because of Germany's geographic location and the strategic realities that were unavoidable.

That's what I thought. I also thought that German production of armaments increased until the end of the war.

[GScholz]

Indeed it did. In many ways German production shared a common timeline with America in that it wasn't fully tooled up for war production until late 1942 and we see the largest output of war materials in 1944. Germany went to war with the hopes and faith in a quick war; blitzkrieg. They fought with what they got and thought it would be enough. Production never kept up with losses, but it wasn't until after the disastrous winter of 1942-43 (Stalingrad in particular) that the true reality of a war in the East became obvious to even the staunchest Nazi supremacist. Germany was producing luxury articles as late as 1943, and it wasn't until 1944 that they fully utilized Germany's production capacity for war materials. It should therefore be no big surprise that Germany produced about half the total of everything war related in 1944-45.

Another oversight of the lecturers in that video is that German production priorities were different than that of the allies. Britain, America and the Soviets focused heavily on tanks while Germany produced a large range of other armored combat vehicles like the StuG-series of assault guns and turretless tank destroyers. While Germany only matched Britain in tank production, both producing around 50,000 tanks during the war, Britain also only produced a similar number of other armored vehicles. Germany produced over 300,000 other armored vehicles. In this respect they even outproduced the Soviets.

[bozon]

This vid on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ&list=FLUXMApkWwjwak_5s6jadN6Q&index=4

has some fairly bog-standard yadda yadda about Kursk, but from about 26:20 a guy comes on who presents some very interesting facts & figures about how the various combatants went about producing tanks. Very interesting stuff which I'd not seen before.

wow, thanks! This was much more interesting than I expected.

Projecting this on the aircraft industry, it makes me again appreciate Grumman with their designs and manufacturing. They made planes as simple as possible and just as good as they needed to be - not more, and then proceeded to manufacture them at a crazy rate. With the F6F they were producing almost a squadron a day. I cannot quote any figures, but I remember from old discussions on these boards that the Brits and the Italians had particularly inefficient designs and manufacturing processes that required much more man hours than equivalent US and German planes. The mosquito required a lot of man power to produce but at least they pulled it out of a different pool (wood workers) then the Spits and Lancasters.

[Rich46yo]

As important was the German failure to modernize their tank repair and recovery procedures. All was rosey for the first 2 years with their centralized maintenance pipeline but once they attacked the Soviets and started running into the difficulties of vast distances, different rail sizes, partisan action, interruptions from bombing...ect placed a heavy stress on German tank maintenance. One that forced them to play catch up the entire rest of the war. I dont know if this was mentioned in this presentation or not but even great tanks were only as good as their maintenance supply chain was.

The first waves of Tigers in particular were almost a total waste because there were very limited spare parts to keep them running. Most of all engines and transmissions. And not only was this a resource intensive tank to build it was even more so to keep running. The same thing, actually worse, happened with the introduction of the Panther tank. It was rushed to the front without proper testing and quality control and there was no forward maintenance units able to fix the design flaws and get them back into the battle quickly, "those even recovered". So because the Germans were still trapped in their centralized repair procedures hundreds of Panthers had to be sent back to factories in the Reich to have components redesigned and repaired.  

All this turned front line repair units into cannibal repair units that fed on their own just to keep others running out of sheer desperation. And every tank cannibalized is one less tank in action.

So tank "production" is just one chapter and not necessarily the most important. Nor is tank "design". Tanks are only good if they are kept operating. In the east, where the real war happened, I think this haunted the Germans the entire war.

[GScholz]

Very important and often overlooked point Rich.