Operation Barbarossa: The Biggest Military Adventure in History

[The SC]

@waz, can you please pin this thread..

 

[Georg]

for sure Russian numerical advantage was overwhelming. However, stil it is not enough to belittle the Russian ingenuity. We should not forget the fact that for a long time Germans had no aswer to T-34 and KV -2 tanks! and thats why Germans came up with the tiger and T 34 had direct influnce on the German tank design i.e panther. Russians introduced some iconic weapons from T-34 to Shturmovík, Katyusha.............

Sorry but this mythos german had no anwser to T-34 and KV-2 Bullshit...

1. Germany faced only months befor attacking russia, heavy armored tanks in france from frensh and british troops... Matilda was better armored than T-34 with up to 78mm armor..

2. the Russian had 1000 T-34 as Germany attacked (Germany had less than 900 Pz III and IV) ...that did not stop the Germans to race to the gates of Moscow.. and not the winter or russian soldiers stoped them... simple poor planing with not enough reserve and replacement dryed the Wehrmacht out

3. The KV-2 was such a shock and such a excellent equippment that Russia nearly lost all of them in 1941 and did not bother to continue to produce them... in fact the KV2 was a useless pice of poo.... extrem unreliable extrem slow... could only fire if tank standing leveled because otherwise it could not turn the turret..

4. Russian research found out that in 1941 60% of the T-34 were knocked out by 5cm rounds... 18% by 3.7cm rounds ...10% by 2cm rounds and only 3% by 8.8cm... the rest was taken down by Arty Luftwaffe or mines...

5. Tiger development was no reaction to T-34

Tiger < VK3601H < VK3001H < DW2 <DW1 development started in 1937... and was a process that ended finaly in the Tiger ... btw the turret development order for the DW1 was from late 1936!

6. The order to build VL3601H prototypes was given in 1940... the Tiger directly base on the chassie of the VK 36.01H

7. Early T-34 were no good tanks... the turret was designed for a smaller gun and left next to no room for the crew.. the firerate was a joke... 2 rounds a minute in combat... 5 rounds on a shooting range with prepared crew.. no radio... every 5th with a radio that mostly did not work... the reliablity of early T-34 was a joke and let Panthers look like a reliability temple... the build quality was extrem poor.. the armor quality was extrem poor on 1941 T-34 and never matched paper stats.. overloaded crew... the T-34 has the worst survive rate of all mass produced tanks of ww2 (450.000 Red Army tanker lost mostly their life in T-34.... US Army lost less than 5.000 Tank crewmember ) ... getting penetrated in average 3 crew member got killed... (to compare M4 for every penetration 1 crew member killed) ... very poor optics and fircontroll system... there was a T-34 hit 23times by 3.7cm round befor getting knocked out by one... the crew was never able to locate the enemy shooting at them..

8. in 1941 the best all around tank in the world was the Pz III with long 5cm KwK ... it could deal with every russian tank of 1941... it was well layout...extrem reliable.. easy to maintain... could carry many rounds ...excellent optics ...reliable radio equipment... good crew survive rate ...high rate of fire...