Which do you feel was more effective in dealing with Armor Tank or Tank Destroyer?

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by Herroberst, Aug 9, 2006.

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Panzer or Panzerjäger? The most effective weapon against Allied Armor.

  1. Panzer

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Panzerjäger

    100.0%
  1. Herroberst

    Herroberst Senior Member

    Panzer or Panzerjäger? Which do you feel was more effective in dealing with Allied Armor and why? Please give examples such as Villers-Bocage.
     
  2. Pog

    Pog Junior Member

    It kinda depends on the situation.

    In defence the Panzerjager, JagdPanzer or StuG is as effective as a turreted tank, with the benefit of a lower silouette. The use of increasing numbers of these types of vehicles Late-War when the German Army was on the defensive would seem to bear this out.

    For more offensive action, such as Villers-Bocage or Tetrevino, then a turreted tank has the advantage due its better field of fire.

    So perhaps the benefit depends on the tactical situation the vehicle is to deal with. This is of purely in relation to Tank vs Tank encounters as the assault guns proved invaluable in infantry support against enemy positions.

    However I would say that it depends more on the crew than the vehicle. A good crew in any vehicle can make it perform miracles! This can be seen with Wittmann in his StuG III and Bix tackling KV-1s with a 38t! The opposite is is also true, put a poor tank crew in a 'superior' tank and the result is as expected: Poor performance, as at Arracourt with Panthers and green crews.
     
  3. Herroberst

    Herroberst Senior Member

    All true points and I am well familiar with that which you have mentioned. But overall, was the analysis I was looking for. Germans made Tank destroyers out of production necessity. Would they have preferred to stick with tanks? Also allowing that a series of new hull and turret designs may have been required for various increasing caliber weapons mounts. The crews are off course decisive but what of just the weapons platforms?
     
  4. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    I believe the Stug., in it's varied forms, accounted for more allied vehicles than any of the turreted tanks. 20,000 tank kills by spring '44 is the closest figure to hand. (?)
     
  5. Cpl Rootes

    Cpl Rootes Senior Member

    i think Panzerjager. It's record speaks for itself
     
  6. montgomery

    montgomery Member

    I think it was the panzer for exsample the was this german tif=gr ace that killed 256 allied tanks.
     
  7. BulgarianSoldier

    BulgarianSoldier Senior Member

    Of course the Jagd is beter 88mm 12-cylinder mybach and 700 horse power.I would LOVE to drive this baby :)
    And panzerjager 47mm but its more capable because its drive by 3mans crew.I sould say that i dont like tanks that are open from behind you can easy shot the people inside the tank.Why didnt you put the elepfant tank?
     
  8. MikB

    MikB Senior Member

    I've always thought that turretless types must've been a nightmare for the commander, trying to coordinate driver and gunner to bring the weapon to bear. Many only had 20 degrees or so of traverse. Fine if the enemy presented himself obligingly over a narrow front, but hopeless if the action turned into a melee.

    True, the StuGIII configuration allowed them to shoehorn a 75 L/48 into a Pz.III chassis, and so made them useful when the 5cm gun tank was obsolete, so they had weapons that could still have some effectiveness where otherwise they might've had nothing worth fielding.

    But there weren't all that many things that - for example - the Jagdpanther's long 88 could knock out that the standard Panther's long 75 couldn't - and by the time they were deploying these, the chances of fighting successful defensive actions without risk of outflank were dropping rapidly. Irrespective of spectacular individual successes, I think the later Jagdpanzers were a mistake, designed for the battles of 1942-3, when the Germans still had some measure of control as to how battles developed. By 1944, they could really make themselves felt only in favourable circumstances which became progressively rarer.

    Unfortunately for them, they'd already made the decisions years earlier to go for large, expensive and sophisticated vehicles. They could never produce enough of these, while earlier, simpler designs like Pz.IV were at their limit of development and had no more scope left in them.

    They'd've been better off 'value engineering' the Panther design to make it buildable in quantity, like T34. Even dropping that massive rack of torsion bars in favour of a coilspring swinging arm like the Christie would've saved them tons of fancy steel and hundreds of man-hours per unit. It would've been far better to make savings that way than by losing the turret.

    Note that the Allies only used such bizarre developments when there was no other way of fielding a highly mobile AT gun that would work - Valentine Archer, for example.

    Regards,
    MikB
     
  9. Tavarish_Alexei34

    Tavarish_Alexei34 Panzer_fan

    I think that each tank and tank destroyers had their own special roles, that of tank destroyers to "snipe" from 1km away, while turreted tanks like pz 3+ were on the battlefield. I would personally be more comfortable in a turreted tank like the Tiger or Panther. The Tiger was almost immune to fire from the front like the Jadgpanther. Shooting the lower plate would have the same consequences on both tanks. The Stug 3/4 had about the same armour as the panzer 4 with perhaps a small increase (need to be checked) and on a PZ IV, you had the perk of being able to move your turret to meet the enemy, while in a Stug you have to move the whole tank which leaves you exposed to flanking fire. The big gun on the TD's also had long reload times and not enough armour to compensate. Take the Pz 4 and Stug 4 against a t34/76. Panzer 4, you can angle your tank to make the T34 shot glance off, while keeping their turret fixed on them. In the Stug, you have to be really quick at aiming and shooting to get a hit on the enemy, and if you want the shot to glance, you have to move the tank and consequently the gun away, which could expose other areas that were more lightly defended on your tank.
     

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