in 1942 the germans only produced 900 upgunned Mark IV tanks with the l43 75mm gun. This tank started becoming available in march. What if Hitler rationalized tank production so that an extra couple of hundred Mark IV could have been made throughout the year. The germans in 1943-44 easily produced more than 900 tanks once they were on full war footing. could a hundred or two hundred extra tanks allow them to crack alemain or make stalingrad fall?
No, but they could help in the long run. The standard answer for German rationalization that would allow them to produce much more and compete with the Soviet production would be to focus on the Mark IV for the bulk of their tanks, maybe only introducing new upgraded models once a year instead of the variety that they constantly produced. Keep the Mark III and Czech for Panzer Jaegers models/light tank/recon units. Abandon the Tiger and stick with the Panther, but hold back to iron out the kinks before deploying it when it could be most effective. Produce heavy Panzer Jaeger models with the 88mm gun, but with the Panther chassis. Focusing on these three models should help, plus it wouldn't hurt to focus on fixing the underpowered engines and gear boxes on the Panthers. They could produce more with the limited resources they had and then used them for a mobile defense in the east, hopefully without launching Kursk first.
they wanted at one point to stop producing the panzer 4 all together and just use the turrets as pill boxes for the west wall according to guderian. the panzer 4 could at least cross most bridges, didn't weigh so much that it would sink instantly in mud, and could be produced much more easily than the panther. the other big thing was it didnt burn so much fuel. i think they would have been better off just producing the panzer 4 tank/nashorn spat (high velocity 75mm) combination only. 1 type of chassis 1 type of main gun ammo. this would provide a much larger armored force
The only problem was building the factories and closing the earlier model factories. The Germans needed everything they could get, so they are kind of forced to use everything they can get. The major issue in 1942 and onward would be building too many factories for new models, creating too much competition for scarce resources. The best bet is to focus on existing models and phase out older/useless vehicles such as the Marks I and II. A heavy tank is necessary though, which is why the Panther is needed. The Soviets have the IS series and the KV's which the Mark IV with the 75mm gun cannot compete with. The heavier Jagdpanzers are needed, ones that can accommodate the 88mm gun. The Panther chassis can work for that with the Jagdpanther, which historically was quite useful. The Stug. III's were also pretty damn good and that used the Mark IV chassis. So, though in itself a more rational armor program is not going to change the outcome of the war, it will help keep more men alive, as there will be enough vehicles to maintain a larger tank force, which in turn would help counter the Soviet advantage. However, for the program to make a real difference, it would have to be coupled with a doctrinal and strategic change that realized by 1942 Germany could not win the war through conquest of territory and was going to be massively outnumbered in the coming years. It would require foresight that no one at that time possessed, as none of the German leaders wanted or considered a war of attrition. But the war was not to be won through maneuvers, only through a series of maneuver battles that focused on attriting the Soviet armies.
the 88s can be fixed to the outgoing older tanks... it doesnt need to be put on anything else because the second generation high velocity 75mm actually had better balistic qualities than the 88mm gun. the panzer 4 despite not being as thickly armored as a panther still achieved a good knockout ratio. like stalin always said quantity has a quality all its own
According to Dunn Jrs "The Soviet Economy And The Red Army 1930-1945 ", In 1942 the Red Army started that year with roughly 800 T-34, 600 KV 6300 light tanks [mostly BT-5/7 and T-26] . ~ 7700 tanks. Through 1942 the Red Army built .. ~ 13,400 medium tanks [T-34] 2600 Heavy tanks [KV?] 11,900 Light tanks [T-70?]. At the end of that year the're inventory counted 7600 T-34 2000 KV-1 11,000 light tanks 20,600 tanks. By the end of the following year [1943] the're inventory counted 9200 T-34 1600 KV-1 10,300 light tanks 21,100 tanks. I dont know where the Su fit into these numbers? What ever gets done needs to be contrasted against this back drop.
esl you are the master of stats you would need the rommel approach AT guns and lots of them built to enormous depth with interlocking trench systems, well covered by minefields, with strong armored reserves behind the lines
Thanks BW, I do what I can. I was reading a paper decades ago about 1980s USArmy NATO mechanized defence against WARPAC shock army invasion. There solution was the standard lame nuke and counter attack. They invited a couple of Bundeswehr commanders who happened to be staff officers in Mansteins army group in WW-II. They asked the Wehrmacht commanders to show them how they would have handled the soviet attack based on their WW-II experience. The Wehrmacht officers noted the the inflexibility of Soviet Operational decision making was most pronounced when having to respond to a flanking counter stroke[AkA Mainsteins "back handed blow"]. They proceeded to show the gathered conference how they could have manuevered the USArmy Korps to smash the soviet invasion without resorting to nukes and all present agreed it would work. In the conference afterwards they related that this was the common thinking in WW-II , but they were never given the freedom of maneuver from OKW[AKA Hitler]. In essence their defence was to treat it as a korps battle and split the forces into three groups, the screening force backed up with artillery, the ATunits battalions vectored to attrite the enemy break through and all the panzer brigades concentrated in the rear to strike when the time was right. All the Korps/divisional heavy artillery [150mm or larger] were pooled and used to beef up the front line screening infantry divisions to prevent any further penetration into the korps area and increase rates of attrition. All the Panzerjager battalions in the Korps and divisional level were then vectored into the soviet break through route to snipe the increasingly vulnerable colume along its length. When the Korps commander decided the soviet offensive was wavering and lossing sufficent % of tanks, he would unlesh the counter stroke and smash the colume driving back to seal off the breach point and restore the line. As some can tell you the March 1943 battle for Kharkow essentially went this way but instead of manipulating panzer brigades he was maneuvering entire panzer korps in the counter stroke against an soviet front attack, suggesting the plan is scale able up [and down?].
Digging up some more info to compare against the German panzer figures for the end of 1941 ,[from Jentz; Speilberger and chamberlain etc] Group A ~ 600 StuG-III 511 x Pz IV 1825 x Pz-III 426 x Pz-38t ~ 160 Pz 35t 881 x Pz II 728 x Pz-I 300 Bef command tanks In addition the records reveal that another 2400 captured French tanks were also in German hands at this time , but by the tie they were converted in 1942/43 only about 2/3 were still usable. These initially included . Group B ~300 Char B ~375 Somua ~600 Hotchkiss ~800 Renault ~ 370 AMR/FMC ~546 Lorraine Schlepper load carriers ~3200 Ue-630 tankettes ~ 450 Ue-303/4 half tracks plus it seems several hundred capture polish AFVs and 500-1000 WW-I French FT-17/18. That’s ~ 7800 tanks plus ~ 4000 tankettes and other AFVs. However the official lists only included the 5400 tanks in group A . At that time roughly 1/4 of the tanks, in group A, would be either needed as munitions Schlepper [Ammo haulers] , Bergeweg [ARV], Pz Art Beob [FO] , Pz Bef [Radio HQ] plus numerous detachments at the regimental level back home for training [Ersatz Heer]. So of the 5800 German tanks likely only about 4400 were actually with the troops , of which only a small fraction was still operational at the end of 1941. However into 1941 panzer divisions were being raised using formations of Hotchkiss and Somua tanks before transitioning to Panzers. Jentz figures suggest 300-350 French tanks for this purpose. So at least some of these French tanks were being put to good usage. Of the total German tank inventory of group A & B, about 1/2 are captured French tanks that would have to be converted before used. While such conversion may be labor intensive ,its not resource intensive especially if you also used capture enemy guns. One of the first changes towards 'total war economy' is 'incentive based contracting' to reduce man-hours per unit and adding second shift . Combined this frees up labor much faster than can be re channeled into producing more panzers, due to lack of resources. If this second shift is used to convert captured or obsolete tanks, all the tanks in Group B could be converted through 1941. If the entire 7800 vehicles are to be used , then the 1/4 set aside for training command etc, becomes ~ 2000 vehicles which could be covered by the captured French tanks. That intern would leave all the German tanks in the inventory for the Front line units plus at least 700 French tanks. Given the cramp and slow nature of French designs, the biggest and fastest would be the likely candidates for front line usage. For example the [300] Char B & [375] Somua tanks, since both had the excellent French 47mm guns and are large enough to be used , but the Char B is slower. The [600] Hotchkiss tank is fast like the Somua and could instead be used at a pinch , but its 37mm gun is puny even by 1941 standards. The next alternative would be to re task them to lesser combat roles that they could manage. For example ~ 1700 of the German tanks were obsolete Pz I & II plus some Pz 35t, that were being phased out of usage through 1941/42. These would be less combat value than a Hotchkiss tank or a FMC/AMR tank. But alternatively they could all be converted en mass into 2000-3000 x Panzerjagers mounting some of the Capture French or Czech 47mm ATG [Germany produced 500-600 in 1939/41] or some of the 7000 captured French 75mm field guns. Converting to the roles of recovery or munitions haulers is fairly basic conversion of removing the turret and opening up the fighting compartment and installing racks for shells….or mounting a winch and crane assembly plus filling up the interior space with & tools etc. The ARV should have large engine for most torque to pull out tanks stuck in the mud etc. Command tanks should resemble the Regimental tanks so as not to be singled out by enemy fire and may have to be reserved for Panzer III/IV as is the case for Pz Art Beob tanks [artillery observers]. Looking at the 1934 idealize panzer division, the artillery included a armored howitzer to follow the armored panzer brigade giving it organic artillery in any break through operation. To that end a batch of the conversions could be directed towards supplying each Panzer division with at least 1 armored howitzer battalion. In this role only small howitzers of in the 2-3 ton range can be mounted on chassis in the 10 tons region. That narrows the field , but the 10.5cm LeFH18 howitzer makes most sense unless these are in short supply. Alternatively some of the 600 x older German sFH-13 , 150mm howitzers could be used in an open topped armored chassis. This was actually done with the French Lorraine Schlepper cargo hauler, although a massive digging blade had to be mounted to ensure stability during firing. In theory you could end up with 550 x “15cm sFH13/1(sf) auf Geschutswagen Lorraine Schlepper (f)” by the end of 1941. The ~ 1/3 of the 3200 UE 630 tankettes were converted later into the war sprouting LMG 34 and armor or as primitive mounts for PAK 35/6 guns. In theory these could fill some kind of Armored recon forces for the infantry? Perhaps a better alternative might be to mount 4 of the newly produced 28cm , sWG 40/41 engineer rockets. Historically this was done later in the war producing a simple engineer vehicle for heavy assault. By 1942 the Char ; Somua & Hotchkiss tanks would be obsolete along with the Panzer 38t tanks leaving an inventory of about 800-900 tanks to be converted to secondary roles through out 1942. In addition the Germans had also captured in 1941 ~ 5000 Soviet tanks intact , that they could convert and put to use later. I have no firm figures of those but given the 1941 soviet inventory of tanks it could mean about ~1400 Bt-5/7 light tanks [similar to Hotchkiss/Panzer 38t] ~2100 T-26 light tanks [similar to slow Renault] ~1500 other tanks including some T-34/KV and older tanks By the end of 1942 the German panzer inventory included ~ 2000 Panzer I & II & Pz 35/38t [converted to Panzerjagers in ATL] . Although historically ~ 600 had already been converted as such [1940-42] and are not included in these numbers. In addition another 825 xPz II /Pz 38t were historically built as Panzerjagers. So the figure of Panzerjagers could actually top 3000 in total. Historically about 2100 x PaK 40 [75L48] guns were built and could be used in larger heavy Panzerjagers [Pz-II/Pz-38t & BT chassis]. Further 5000 Russian 76mm field guns were captured along with several million shells, which could be until these captured guns can be re chambered into PaK 36r to accept German ammo later in 1942/43. 2793 Panzer III [with the excess labor all should be up-gunned to 50L60 by early 1942 by re channeling some of the production of ~ 4400 x 50mm guns as “PaK 38” into more production of tank guns as “KwK 39”.] 957 Panzer IV. [ 823 Panzer III built as StuG-III mostly with 75L43 guns. The rule of thumb on Sturmgeschutzen production was that it took 10% less time to produce so if they were instead produced as Pz IV that could result in 740 additional Pz-IV f produced through 1942. By the end of 1942 the Pz IV inventory should be up by ~ 450 additional Pz IV] 35 Tiger I plus ~ 400 older StuG-III built prior to 1942. That’s 6600 German tanks plus ½ of the 2400 captured French tanks and ½ of the 5000 Soviet tanks. That’s about 3500 captured tanks for a total of ~ 10,000 tanks/SPGs, or about ½ the Soviet inventory of 20,600 tanks. Historically only the most modern tanks were in usage by the end of 1942 limiting the Panzerwaffe to about 5500 tanks. Of both totals ¼ would be set aside for training , recovery command and munitions haulers. So historically the Germans were outnumbered more than 5:1 if you include the Africa component. This ATL could reduce that soviet advantage to ~ 3:1.
i take your point about production potential very seriously esl in your opinion does an increase in panzer 4's with the long barreled 75 in 1942 make a serious difference?
Well looking at the simple change in production/inventory the potential tank divisional armament goes from 34 Panzer divisions with 81 x Pz-III [1/2 ; 50L42 & 1/2 ; 50L60] plus 28 Pz-IV [only 1/3 with 75L48]. Thats one Panzer IV for every 3 Panzer III into 34 Panzer divisions with 81 x Pz-III [All 50L60] plus 41 Pz-IV [3/4 75L48], Thats 0ne Panzer IV for every two Panzer III . You would still have to strip off panzer divsions from other sectors to bring the Case Blue Divisions up to strength. It would help , but by itself should not change much [like the out come of "Operation Uranus"]. If the 6th Panzer Army ends up in the same situation , a few more tanks might help to bail some of them out, but that won't prevent the whole sale collapse of Army Group B. On the other hand if you read some of the Panzer histories, its evident that through out 1942/43 , up to 1/2 of their divisional armored units were being parcelled out to neighbouring infantry korps to give those Korps some serious anti tank counter attack ability, thus further weakening these Panzer reserves. If this type of alternative armament programme was flowed instead , the infantry korps would have several PanzerJager battalions organic to rely on. In that case this should free up any Panzer divisons attached to the Army or Army Group to be kept at full strength and thus are much better able to furfill their mobile counter strike role. But all that depends on Hitler given them the freedom of maneuver. I always think in terms of Stalingrad as the first real soviet attempt at blitzkreig. Stalin baited hitler into a war of attrition in the city sapping the best units from the area leaving the flanks vulnerable. As Long as Hitler is so fixated he can't see this danger, "Operation Uranus" should always have a similar outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Uranus
uranus outcome wasn't a sure thing. if hitler panicked when the 6th army was encircled and immediately dispatched all of the 9th army and army group center's panzer reserves to rescue the 6th army Zhukov could have blown through the front. assuming such a move freed the 6th army it would doom the 9th army its probably a toss up