Tank found in working order after 57 years underwater

[Lucifer Box]

Oh I agree. Given what they had, they would have been better off concentrating on two tank designs only, the Panther and the Tiger (and their Jagd variants), rather than dispersing efforts into keeping a bewildering array of tanks in service and wasting effort on producing tactically inflexible machines such as the Tiger II (and designing totally ridiculous machines such as the Maus).

[AtW]

They had to keep older tanks too - Tigers needed support from other tanks anyway, plus Germans used crap old tanks everywhere with dedicated heavy batallions of heavy tanks as mobile reserve to provide support here and there, it is this tactical usage of limited resources that helped them last so long.

Maus was a joke for sure, Ferdinand was not that bad though even though they lost enough of them in Kurst due to lack of MGs, yet Ferdinands destroyed like around 1000 Soviet tanks. If you look at modern self propelled artillery pieces and actual main battle tanks you will see in them Ferdinands and Tiger IIs.

[Lucifer Box]

Those German engineers were technically streets ahead of the Allies. At the other end of the scale, look at the MG42. Still in service today as the MG3 (modified to fire NATO rounds, of course).

[AtW]

I liked it how visual design German's MP 44 assault rifle was knicked by Kalashnikov - apparently internally they are different, but given how much stuff was borrowed after the war from Axis R&D it seems to me that this is likely to be one of those things that was knicked.

Jets, missiles, tanks, military tactics and strategy and lots more from Axis determined dev of military of all countries for many decades. I'd say only now with smart bombs and real time info nets (that don't work yet) military make step ahead of what Axis developed 60 years ago.

[AtW]

If Germans declared their main goal of defeating communism in exchange for long term lease of Russian territory, obviously without atrocities, then they would have won: Stalin was not exactly universally loved and at first Soviets, especially in Ukraine, helped fight against the regime, however in 1942 it sunk into people that they are being exterminated and this is fight not for communism but for their own survival and this was really the turning point in terms of morale: this is really when brutal fights to the death started, something that made Ost Front war much more feroucious than anything Germans or anyone else really faced before.

[Lucifer Box]

Add a folding stock and visually there is little difference between the Kalashnikov and even earlier war-era German counterparts.

It's amazing what they managed to achieve despite having most of the above gorund facilities reduced to rubble. Thank heaven the Soviets were prepared to throw millions of men at the problem.

[AtW]

Allied bombings were not that efficient in terms of impact on industry - civilians are the ones who took the main hit, even though I think in 1944 Allies started focusing on key supply chain elements, like say focus on power stations rather than disperse efforts, this had very bad effect - Speer wrote well about it in his book: he seems to be pretty much the only senior nazi who gone through the Trials and retained respect of his enemies, died in London I believe.

[Mailman]

...Soviet build quality...[/i]

Hehe, now there's three words that just dont look right together

Ill tell you what though, once the Ruskies had a design that they liked they literally stuck to it until it fell apart!

BTW, wasnt it something like 40,000 T34's built during the entire course of the war, as opposed to the Germans who's TOTAL TANK production of around 20,000 vehicles?

Regards

Mailman

[Lucifer Box]

Industry relies on civilians. But you know what I mean - what would the difference have been had not the western allies conducted its brutal bombing campaign? A lot.

[AtW]

But you know what I mean - what would the difference have been had not the western allies conducted its brutal bombing campaign? A lot.

Allies should have focussed on bombing of key factories knocking out of which would have serious effect down the supply chain - this is what they started doing in 1944 and it had serious effect - if you have not read Speer (who was responsible for armaments so he knew it first hand) then do, I find his book very honest and he comes across actually like a decent person.

A lot of German civilians were not working in military factories - men were on the front, and Hitler did not want Reich's women to work in factories.