Your favorite AFVs: what the designers got wrong? (1 Viewer)

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Would say PzKpfW V Panther.
For his time, I think nothing went so wrong.
T34-85. Radio and optics.
 
There was a lot wrong with the design of the M3, but its one of my favorites because it looks like a pillbox on wheels.

I think Humphrey Bogart would agree with you! :)


Amazing story about the Atomic Tank!

Centurion tank 169041 survives a nuclear test, kind of funny story : theBRIGADE

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"The test was codenamed Operation Totem, and was one of a number of British atomic tests carried out in remote areas of Australia during the 1950s."
 
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I have always wondered with the M3 if the turret was ever found useful with a 37mm gun or could the turret have been deleted and the main hull up armoured. I can see that increasing the frontal/side armour would move the weight forward compared to with the existing turret.
 
The first thing they should have done was make a cast hull and get rid of all those rivets.
 
The M3 was always an interim design. Chassis of the M2 Medium adapted to a 75mm gun in the hull WHILE a turret the size needed for the 75mm was worked on. Futzing about with "improved" M3s was only going to delay the M4.

M2 Medium:

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The order for 1,000 M2A1s was cancelled days after it was initially placed and on August 28, 1940, an order for 1,000 M3s was made. The Ordnance Department decided that 60 days was enough in which to design the M3.

On August 29, 1940, (the day after the M3 was decided to be put into production) work began on a tank that would mount a 75 mm gun in the turret
 
The M3 was in that select group with the Char B and Churchill. Carrying a 75mm HE gun in the hull and it's own anti tank gun in the turret. The Churchill moved the HE capacity to the turret. The Germans in 1940 found that only an 88mm could expect to stop one and they could act with relative impunity where logistics could keep them going. The 47mm gun did at least have some HE capacity and could knock out any German tank at the time vis actions in Stonne and Juniville. But by 1941 the US 37mm turret gun was too weak to be an anti tank gun but could not provide extra effective HE fire either.

I was thinking of British users in the Western Desert. The US M3 troops were too rigidly commanded to change kit in use but the 8th Army were open to initiative in these matters. Already they had replaced the US 75mm ammunition with a better hybrid. The turret had no real utility except to rear up and reveal the tanks position from it's absurd height. Rip out the turret and weld/bolt some extra (ex ship, ex Italian tank?) armour plates to the front and crew sides, some decent netting and you stand half a chance of hiding the vehicle, especially in a prepared position.

If you could only get the tactics to change as well and channel advancing German tanks onto concealed lowered M3s rather than the desperate cavalry charge in brave but flawed attempts to close to within 2 pounder range of German and Italian tanks or machine gun range of anti tank guns.
 
Tiger 1 Porsche and the VK.30.01 leopard, what Mr Ferdinand got wrong ? The electric engines, too much copper that Germany didnt had.
 
I would argue that the whole tiger concept was a tank Germany could not afford. Fantastic Tank, but too heavy, too complex and too expensive for germany to afford or build in her later years.

Panther was by far a better option and I think StugIII even better, considering germanys economic weakness.
 
The whole system was too complex/bulky/heavy and reliability was a major problem.

Yes, the VK 30.01 (p) was a very cute tank though, It was better armored than panzer III and IV, it could became the "intermediate" tank between the pz III and the Tiger, very expensive to make aniway given his petrol engine-generator-electric motor drive trains.
 

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While the Tiger was an impressive tank, the lack of sloping armor put it at risk...also, the Tiger and Panther's turrets traversed much to slowly, and even the attempt to hydrostatically traverse it in relation to higher engine RPM made it almost a liability on the battlefield...

This was one of it's short-comings in a fast moving tank duel against a more mobile adversary
 
till the very end, both tiger Is and IIs remained formidable on the battle field. Few succumbed to outright battle damage. but relatively large proportions were lost to abandonment, either because they ran out of fuel or broke down. During the Bulge, wasnt an entire battalion (well 42 out of 45 vehicles?) were abandoned due to fuel shortages.. so too did Peipers panthers, but at least peiper was fighting for the fuel dump near to Stavelot(?). the Tigers ran out of fuel enroute. They might have made a difference tactically to the outcome of that battel if they hadnt run out of fuel
 
That was always the gamble that the offensive had to make from the German point of view. They did remarkably well to gather such a force and move it into position for the attack without the Allies finding out. But I would argue that these men and resources would have been better used on the Eastern Front.
 
Would the manpower machinery employed at East (instead at Bulge) represent only a drop in the bucket there? Another thing: German army was under-fueled, even for the limited distances in the West; Germans hoped to capture Allied fuel stocks. Much more fuel would be needed for the Army to do something at East.
 
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Yes, that is probably true - a drop in the bucket.
But with so many units under-strength and ill equipped trying to hold up the Soviet juggernaut heading to Berlin, some elite units with first class armour could make a dent / give them a bloody nose?
 
Germans were hoping to make sort of DUnkuerque redux, effectively putting the Western Allies out of the game? That gives them one land front less to worry about, while plentiful amount of Allied soldiers captured provides them with an important chip in the bargain table?
 
I agree that was the plan, but given the dire situation in the East, I think the men and weapons would have been better used there.
Also, as soon as the weather lifted the fighter bombers were going to make this attack a very risky business!
I am not saying that it would have been a holiday in the East, but maybe could have slowed up the Soviet advance and allowed the Western Allies to get further into Germany before terms were agreed.
 
An American instructor lecturing troops about the Grant tank, February 1942.
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The Commander in Chief, General Sir Claude Auchinleck, (farthest from the camera) and Major General Campbell, VC, standing on a Grant tank, watching as it fires at a practise target in the Western Desert, February 1942.
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A Grant tank in the Western Desert, 1942.
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