A historical comparison in the Game

Soviets and Americans fighting on a unified Front. Uh huh. HISTORICAL.

Torgau

That'd be a great map. You'd have Americans on one side, Soviets on the other, and no germans. Then you meet in the middle and stand off and build up forces for sixty years.

If the t-34 was so crappy, then why did the germans base their panther on the t-34? Why did the germans value captured t-34s and used them to great effect?

The only thing the panther borrowed from the T34 was the concept of slopped armor. Everything else was based on existing German designs (gun, engine, suspension, transmission).

That'd be a great map. You'd have Americans on one side, Soviets on the other, and no germans. Then you meet in the middle and stand off and build up forces for sixty years.

Axis objective: Cross the Elbe River and surrender to the Americans. If more than 20 of your men are captured by the Soviets, they go to the Gulag and you´ve lost.

The Panther was a direct competitive reaction to the T-34 series. The German designers intended for it to achieve combat superiority on the eastern front. It was also somewhat unsuccessful as a tank while the t-34, when married to Soviet doctrine and resource configuration, was wildly successful. It's not just the tank, but the military system that surrounds it. (production cost/speed, training/organization, deployment, repair & maintenance, combat readiness/field presence....)

The only thing the panther borrowed from the T34 was the concept of slopped armor. Everything else was based on existing German designs (gun, engine, suspension, transmission).

The Panther was a direct competitive reaction to the T-34 series. The German designers intended for it to achieve combat superiority on the eastern front. It was also somewhat unsuccessful as a tank while the t-34, when married to Soviet doctrine and resource configuration, was wildly successful. It's not just the tank, but the military system that surrounds it. (production cost/speed, training/organization, deployment, repair & maintenance, combat readiness/field presence....)

Undoubtedly the T34 was the catalyst that started the development of the Panther (& tigers). However, Burts post implied that the Panther was a copy of the T34 with tweaks. My post was a reply stating that from an engineering point of view, this isn't the case.

Don't forget there were two tanks that could become the Panther. Only one made it.

Soviets and Americans fighting on a unified Front. Uh huh. HISTORICAL.

In a passive way it is: from my own third party knowledge, the biggest danger to Allied troops when they met up with the Soviets, was alcohol poisoning. Out came the vodka....and slamdunk!

Rather as in UK in current times, the phrase "Don't go drinking with the Scots" has a certain resonance-------------> you will only lose

Well, yeah I agree mechanically although doctrinally and tactically I believe that parallels can be made between the T-34 and the Panther. In comparison to the Panzer III/IV and the soviet light tanks, the T-34 and the Panther, on the other hand were designed to fight and win in tank to tank fighting and defeat most period anti-tank guns with their armor. The Panther one up'ed the T-34, which lead to the T-34/85 as the counter-response.

The Tiger tank was actually in development before the war (hence its visual similarity to the Panzer III/IV).

Undoubtedly the T34 was the catalyst that started the development of the Panther (& tigers). However, Burts post implied that the Panther was a copy of the T34 with tweaks. My post was a reply stating that from an engineering point of view, this isn't the case.

Undoubtedly the T34 was the catalyst that started the development of the Panther (& tigers). However, Burts post implied that the Panther was a copy of the T34 with tweaks. My post was a reply stating that from an engineering point of view, this isn't the case.

I never said that the panther was a copy of the t-34. All i said was that the panther was based or maybe the better word here would be inspired by the t-34

The Panther was a direct competitive reaction to the T-34 series. The German designers intended for it to achieve combat superiority on the eastern front. It was also somewhat unsuccessful as a tank while the t-34, when married to Soviet doctrine and resource configuration, was wildly successful. It's not just the tank, but the military system that surrounds it. (production cost/speed, training/organization, deployment, repair & maintenance, combat readiness/field presence....)

Yeah, the whole ''My tank beats yours!!'' rhetoric often ignores that tanks are just one part of a combined arsenal. No matter how cool your tanks are and how good they are at blowing up other tanks, if they cannot properly support the rest of your force, suffer frequent mechanical breakdown and cost more to produce than what they destroy on average, it doesn't matter much.

Don't forget there were two tanks that could become the Panther. Only one made it.

Yeah, the whole ''My tank beats yours!!'' rhetoric often ignores that tanks are just one part of a combined arsenal. No matter how cool your tanks are and how good they are at blowing up other tanks, if they cannot properly support the rest of your force, suffer frequent mechanical breakdown and cost more to produce than what they destroy on average, it doesn't matter much.

Oh I wish this was captured in the game. All the "uncool stuff" like logistics, mechanical failures, dependence on resources, etc that were crucial in WW2 are not captured in the game.

Because is not a simulator

Because is not a simulator

Given the balance currently, a perfect simulator would be more balanced.

The Panther was a direct competitive reaction to the T-34 series. The German designers intended for it to achieve combat superiority on the eastern front. It was also somewhat unsuccessful as a tank while the t-34, when married to Soviet doctrine and resource configuration, was wildly successful.

How so? The Panther Ausf. D was unsuccessful. The other versions were great and caused a lot of trouble to the Russians and almost lead to a disaster for the western allies who thought it was just around in small numbers like the Tiger. In the end the T-34 was "successful" because it was produced by the Russians in big numbers (if they had produced the Panther, that one would have been the successful tank). Most AT weapons the Germans had could defeat the T-34 later in the war (Pak40, Panzerfaust, etc.). Doubtful that it would be as disastrous if they had Panthers.

TL; DR : The T-34 wasn´t that great. It was the production capacities of the Russians.

... cost more to produce than what they destroy on average, it doesn't matter much.

Panthers destroyed more than they costed. T-34s did not.

Panthers destroyed more than they costed. T-34s did not.

Never bothered to learn too much about the Panther, so no idea how successful it was, but I think I read its production costs werent much higher, if not the same, as the PIV. Germans just never managed to fully switch over production.

The best tank is always the one you have right now at your disposal.

Panther by no means could be best tank.
Start with design. It's a tank that outweights PzIV(H) by 20 tons (44.8 tons against 25), T-34 by 12 (32.2 tons for T-34-85) and Sherman by 14 (30.3). Germans could call it like they wanted, but it wasn't a medium tank to start with.
Is it a miracle that it had superior armor?

But add two more tonns and you've got IS-2 that had better armor protection, better gun (75-mm of the Panther was more like dedicated AT, 122-mm being slower but stil more versatile)

Add the fact, that Panther's design left no place for any upgrades(check how PzIII and Pz IV evolved). So afterwards Panther was intended to be replaced first by Panther 2, then remember E-series E-50 project.

Add some problems that weren't fixed until the end of war, famous Panther's and Tiger's wheel system and gets even worse.

None of the tanks was or is perfect. But this one is definitely not the one

They are called 'Soviets', not Russians.

The T-34 optics were fine. Actual tank combat is within 1,000 meters or less so the 'superior' german optics mattered very little. The T-34/85 had an expanded turret, physical upgrades, five men crews, and eventually most of the tanks got their radios. The 85mm gun had good penetration.

The Panthers were good when they worked, were supported by all the assets of a panzer division, and were well supplied. Their lifecycle in heavy wear and tear, however, was measured in days, not (potentially) many weeks and months like the T-34s. The early models of the Panther were a failure (200 panthers attached to PzD GD, 23rd PzD in the fall, 1st SSLAH, 2nd SS DR, etc.) in 1943 with many total losses. The Panther also required many more spare parts than the T-34. It had final drive defects and major components needed to be periodically replaced. All this wasted time and increased the likelihood that the tank would not be available for combat. If spares were missing the tank remained with maintenance crews. Meanwhile, the ground forces suffered for having so many missing panthers.

The late model Panther tank had poor field presence compared to the 1943-1945 T-34s and could only be used for short periods of time. That's a major weakness and a major opportunity for the soviets. The tank to tank kill ratio may have been nice but tank kill ratios don't win battles. T-34s were knocked out 2-3 times before they were writeoffs, anyway.

If you read 'T-34 in action' and other materials the T-34 tankers interviewed generally destroyed few panzers but killed lots of German infantry and support weapons.


I think you are thinking about tanks incorrectly (IRL is not like in the games). The tanks should be thought as artillery shells expended in order to win. That is how the soviets used them: very aggressively. If they used tanks like the Germans did their losses would be far lower. They would have also fought much more poorly and won fewer battles

Also, 3/4th of Soviet tank kills were credited by the RKKA to their AT artillery and SPGs, not tanks. They used tanks very differently than the Germans. 75% of German panzers were with the divisions. In the RKKA it was only 55%- a major doctrinal difference.

The 1943-1944 T-34s had great field presence: 85%, 90% were often there. They had much fewer parts, and mechanical difficulties were generally fixable by the...driver. More complex ones required repair crews. The simplicity of the T-34 kept it going and kept it around. Knocked out T-34s were quickly recovered, repaired, and sent back to action.

The Panzers?

After a few days it would drop quickly to 20% of available AFVS. The German infantry always had lower numbers of armored support and had serious problems actually taking and consolidating ground as eventually the armor that they had would be non operational. Their counterstrikes in 1943-1945 were quite often like this: The Panzer divisions would inflict heavy armor losses against the soviets but they too would suffer heavily. Then a few days later, their Panther battalion is down to 15 units or something pathetic, and the Soviets have recovered many of their T-34s, and repaired them already. Then the Panzer divisions get pushed out before they could consolidate, cauldron, and capture the soviet formations they overran in the area.

The Panther is a good tank on paper, but it suffered from being German. The Panzer III and Panzer IV were also much more temperamental than US or Soviet designs. The defects of the Panzers often constrained panzer operations to short-term surgical strikes. Then operational pauses in between to repair and bring up the numbers of tanks. The soviets had a much more active tempo during the course of a battle.

Panthers were good for skirmishes and a few days only....The T-34 and Sherman were good for winning battles and campaigns. The German army would have been tougher if they were the ones with the T-34/85 and used it to replace all those heterogeneous models including most of their assault guns and tank destroyers.