Excellent video on Panthers in WWII

[vandorenp]

A professional presentation 52 minutes long http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-I239livXc

[Perturabo]

Very nice. I like how the author doesn't use music and stuff like that for cheap dramatics like many other documentaries do nowadays.
The claims of T-34 and KV being more modern than German tanks aren't exactly true, though.
Both tanks are known for very bad ergonomics, very crude gearbox and poor observation capability. These are much more telling marks of technical advancement/obsolescence than thick armour and big guns.

[Arjuna]

Actually there is a good discussion on this in "Tank Men" by Robert Kershaw. One of the lessons the German's learnt from their initial experiments with armour in late WW1 and then in the 1920s was the need to provide for an effective human interface in their tanks. This was something the other powers were not to learn until after WW2. So it was really a question of priorities. It could be argued that you can have a machine with good human interface but if its going to be beat on the fundamentals like armour penetration then it's not much chop. You need to ensure that the fundamentals are good and then add the human interface elements in my opinion. Obviously the best option would be to have both and that's what you find now days with modern AFVs.

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Actually there is a good discussion on this in "Tank Men" by Robert Kershaw. One of the lessons the German's learnt from their initial experiments with armour in late WW1 and then in the 1920s was the need to provide for an effective human interface in their tanks. This was something the other powers were not to learn until after WW2. So it was really a question of priorities. It could be argued that you can have a machine with good human interface but if its going to be beat on the fundamentals like armour penetration then it's not much chop. You need to ensure that the fundamentals are good and then add the human interface elements in my opinion. Obviously the best option would be to have both and that's what you find now days with modern AFVs.

Armour and gun is important. It doesn't make a tank more modern, though - it just puts the tank in a different weight class, unless the armour or gun itself is more advanced technologically - and AFAIK Soviets lagged when it comes to armour technology too.

[mariandavid]

But surely the significant design features of the T-34 were:
- much more efficient use of armour (sloped)
- much better power source (diesel)
- heavy gun

In all three parameters of which it led the world and set a target which the Germans aimed to match. Which is at least my definition of 'modern'

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: mariandavid

But surely the significant design features of the T-34 were:
- much more efficient use of armour (sloped)
- much better power source (diesel)
- heavy gun

In all three parameters of which it led the world and set a target which the Germans aimed to match. Which is at least my definition of 'modern'

Diesel engine was consistently rejected as a power source by all world powers examining T-34s. Panthers, Tiger I, Tiger II, M26 and Centurion all had gasoline engines.

Heavy gun wasn't more modern. It merely had a different role (and it still had poor rate of fire due to cramped turret interior and bad optics). Gun of Panzer III was optimized towards destroying lightly armoured tanks (most common on battlefields of their times) and gun of Panzer IV was an anti-fortification/gun gun.

Which leaves only the sloped armour.

On the other hand T-34 had:
Non-functional gearbox requiring high physical strength to shift gears.
Horrible ergonomy (important for stuff like aiming, rate of fire, etc.) and visibility.
Too small crew.
Radios only in command vehicles.
Very bad internal communication.
Horrible engine filters and poor engine cooling drastically reducing the lifetime of the engine.
Very bad suspension.
Poor quality armour with many defects and inconsistent hardness.

T-34 tanks were simply grotesque. While they featured some good ideas like using sloped armour or mounting a big gun, they used some foreign outdated/rejected technologies and lots of horrible local ones. To make things worse, many tanks were delivered defective.

T-34 became a somewhat modern tank only when the 85 version entered production as it had a three man turret, new gearbox, decent radiostation, commander cupola and new observation devices.

[jimcarravall]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Actually there is a good discussion on this in "Tank Men" by Robert Kershaw. One of the lessons the German's learnt from their initial experiments with armour in late WW1 and then in the 1920s was the need to provide for an effective human interface in their tanks. This was something the other powers were not to learn until after WW2. So it was really a question of priorities. It could be argued that you can have a machine with good human interface but if its going to be beat on the fundamentals like armour penetration then it's not much chop. You need to ensure that the fundamentals are good and then add the human interface elements in my opinion. Obviously the best option would be to have both and that's what you find now days with modern AFVs.

There are many dynamics that go into design of modern AFVs. Working the trades between lethality, mobility, transportability, reliability, communications, crew safety, survivability, man machine interface, and logistics (always last ) arrives at consensus platform designs biased toward the decision priority weights the design engineers negotiate among the design attribute advocates.

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: jimcarravallah

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Actually there is a good discussion on this in "Tank Men" by Robert Kershaw. One of the lessons the German's learnt from their initial experiments with armour in late WW1 and then in the 1920s was the need to provide for an effective human interface in their tanks. This was something the other powers were not to learn until after WW2. So it was really a question of priorities. It could be argued that you can have a machine with good human interface but if its going to be beat on the fundamentals like armour penetration then it's not much chop. You need to ensure that the fundamentals are good and then add the human interface elements in my opinion. Obviously the best option would be to have both and that's what you find now days with modern AFVs.

There are many dynamics that go into design of modern AFVs. Working the trades between lethality, mobility, transportability, reliability, communications, crew safety, survivability, man machine interface, and logistics (always last ) arrives at consensus platform designs biased toward the decision priority weights the design engineers negotiate among the design attribute advocates.

I'd like to remind that it was Soviets who lost 20000 tanks, not Germans. And in next year they suffered equally horrible tank casualty ratio.

It was impossible to employ T-34s in coordinated manner, fire effectiveness was severely limited due to lack of proper observation devices and cramped turret. Which drastically limited its combat effectiveness.
When losses are taken into account, it turned out that in the end that guns and armour aren't the most important part of the equation.

And most of problems with T-34 and other early war Soviet tanks had nothing to do with trade-offs but with grotesquely bad soviet engineering.