Panther and Tiger were too heavy shit, that broke all the time.
Any reason why they didn't simply add sloped armor to the Panzer IV?
It seems to be very simple, remove the front gunner, this would save some weight already.
Then add a sloped armor plate on the front.
Then put the panther turret on the panzer IV chassi and profit.
>Panther and Tiger were too heavy shit, that broke all the time.
Debunked long ago as brainlet fairy tales.
Any reason why they didn't simply add sloped armor to the Panzer IV?
It's a 1936 design for an infantry support tank, and they wanted to fully replace it by 1942. They actually designed a hull with sloped armor (Jagdpanzer IV used the hull), but when that was ready the plan was to actually standardize on the Panther successor as standard tank (E-50).
Things took long enough for the war to end before theyx went beyond teh prottyping.
Also, the Panther turret does not fit on the PzIV hulll. They did design a better turret, but that was pretty heavy and it was easier to just make more of the tried and tested model while waiting for the E-50.
Backing up what first anon
already largely explained: The Panzer IV was simply a hopelessly outdated design by the time the Panther came around. The Panther improved on everything the IV could do, while being far more easy and quicker to produce at only a marginally higher price tag. The Panther F variant was on par with the t-34 and Sherman in terms of production costs.
The Panzer IV could no longer be upgraded beyond the H variant. The final J retrograde did fix a couple more issues, but it lost so much more for that. In short, the chassis just couldn't take any more weight. The turret ring couldn't fit the Panther turret, and it wasn't robust enough to fit a bigger gun into the turret that could fit. Redesigning it to fit sloped armor and a wider turret ring would have cost as much time as the Panther did. Which was nonsensical, since the Panther was already a massive upgrade on everything the Panzer IV did, right down to production and the number of weldings necessary to make the hull.
>Debunked long ago as brainlet fairy tales.
no one has yet deunked either zaloga or hunnicutt
Zaloga liked the Panther. IIIRC he at least partially attributes the differences in tank readiness to other factors than the tank designs.
Like how the spare parts kept getting blown up by Allied Air Raids?
Yes.
It's the only mid-30s Design that served throughout the war.
Back then International space was considered more important because nobody expected the kind of armor that was needed later.
It was more efficient to just build Panthers instead of redesigning the Pz.IV. while a design was done later, it was better to just have more tanks.
>Panther and Tiger were too heavy shit, that broke all the time.
Both were about as reliable as the Pz. IV after a while.
>zaloga or hunnicutt
You're a decade or two behind.
Zaloga quit being an authority when he said "buy M60A3 not the M1A1"
>zaloga or hunnicutt
zalupa or hunnic**t
The "front gunner" is the radio operator. If you removed him, you'd remove a whole ass crew member, with the associated problems.
>add sloped armor
That's what they did with the Jagdpanzer IV. It had the same sloped 80mm front armor as the Panther and Jagdpanther.
>It seems to be very simple
Yeah, almost as simple as designing almost a whole ass new tank.
Any new weapon system will have various bugs and whatnot when introduced, which will hopefully be worked out as time went on. The reason the PzKpfW IV seemed more reliable/robust because it was already a mature design, most of the problems and shortcomings had been found and fixed.
As with any product development cycle, Germans tried their best given the circumstances to to fix the initial problems with the Panther ausf. D. That resulted in the ausf. A, and then ausf. G, and then eventually ausf F.
tl;dr given the natural development processes, it made more sense to fix the problems with the Panther instead of try to retrofit an old design for something it wasn't meant to do
If you look at the numbers, Germans built as many Panthers as the long barreled Panzer IV. The primary reason the Panzer IV was kept in production was because tanks were need in the field and so kept the Pz IV production lines going instead of disrupting things.
>ass crew member
What?
Frick ya mudda
pz 4 with the long gun and add on armor was pretty much the limit of what it's chassis could handle. It was heavy shit too
the recurring popular desire to "but what if?" the Panzer IV because the current paradigm is often to shit on the Panther does not cease to fascinate me
The current nature of WWII discourse is to just shit on the Germans at all times regardless of any basis in reality.
the reality is that they deserve every bit of it
have a nice day israelite
Crew comfort and ergonomics were a priority in the design of the Pz. III and IV. While sloped armor is more effective, having flat armor and right angles makes the internal volume of the tank larger relative to it's external bulk. They could have had sloped armor, but they would have either had to make the tank much larger, visible, and harder to go hull down in (like the Sherman) or much more cramped, uncomfortable and difficult to fight in (like the T-34). It was a compromise.
The pendulum continues to swing from "the Germans could do no wrong, they were supermen with an army from 50 years in the future, they only lost because uhh hitler didn't listen to le generals" to "the Germans were absolute imbeciles who couldn't build anything ever and everything they made just exploded on it's own" back and forth and back and forth, and maybe someday once we've had these discussions for the 500,000th time it'll come to rest somewhere in the middle.
Not sure if anybody has brought this up yet, but to add; 30mm of slightly (11-14°) sloped armour also seemed just fine in 1936. When the design debuted it had perfectly fine armour for an infantry support tank while also having vastly better ergonomics than other 30s designs as mentioned by everyone else here.
>S.35: 1936, 35-45mm sloped hull, underpowered, dogshit ergonomics
>T-34: 1937, 45mm sloped hull, dogshit ergonomics, made by ruzzians
>Cruiser Mk II: 1938, 30mm unsloped hull
honestly would have preferred them as the cold war big bad boy replacing the vatnik union in its role. Vatniks are so pathetic today. We could have post reich cold war panzer derivatives waging war right now in eastern euro instead of seeing another batch of t-55 get slaughtered like a line of lemmings
but nope, the simps behind the ocean decided letting snowmalia tear everybody with them into their miserable shitpile is totally worth it. Now they are kveching their asses when faced with the reality they have to give a helping hand in finishing what the germans started
There's a million other threads to talk about Ukraine please don't do it in this kind
The Germans would've been more annoying, as bad as communism is, the Germans were fricking insane and would've eventually developed into an oligarchy were everyone that isn't a rich frick working for the party would have everyone else working as their slaves.
You'd also have the Germans with a much better industry and economy taking, with not just the USSR states but everywhere from Warsaw to southern France. Essentially, you'd have an Europe with a gigantic labour pool, industry and access to resources and food under the control of what amounts to a death cult that wishes for nothing but total war forever.
Although, it would be fricking hilarious to have a cold war between giga homie evil EU against the the Allies. I would actually see the US letting Japan still remain somewhat intact if they agree in countering Germany.
>Even more schizo version of TNO
>giga homie evil EU against the the Allies
Would be absolutely kino
this isnt the "pulling massive shit out of my ass" competition anon.
Creepy image
The sloped plate would be longer and thus heavier. The bow gunner was also the radioman so removing the MG wouldn't have saved much weight. Also, the transmission and steering access hatch was right in front of the bow MG and would have been covered up by a sloped armor panel.
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>The sloped plate would be longer and thus heavier.
It will be thinner therefore the same weight.
a 50mm plate at 60 degrees and a 100mm plate at the vertical would both weight the same and have the same LOS protection
but in 90% of cases, the thinner plate at a steeper angle would provide greater protection than a thicker, unangled armor of the same weight
all projectiles that arent a long rod will deflect and take a longer path through the armor, with the deflection being greater the steeper the slope
some projectiles will simply fail to bite into the armor and simply skid across the armor rather than penetrate, which is why APCR rounds with nominal penetrations in excess of 200+mm of armor fail to penetrate an 80mm armor plate, they simply cause a gouge as a majority of their energy is spent sliding across the armor instead of into the armor
only a very few niche cases would have a thick unsloped armor plate provide better protection than its equivalent weight in sloped armor
such as a massive difference in bullet diameter to thickness of armor
though most howitzers with that large caliber arent firing a very fast round to begin with and arent specialized against armor
and a decade later they are still totally right
Sloped armor often provides more protection against AP rounds, but by definition by being thinner it's more vulnerable to HE rounds.
You can in theory bust a T-34 to pieces with 75mm HE rounds. But doing that to the 100mm frontal plate of the Tiger isn't going to work despite it only being 10mm thicker LOS.
that is an extreme outlier, since even the thin 25mm roof armor of the M4 sherman could stop the explosive force of a 105mm howitzer
so thick unsloped armor would only really help against soviet 122mm field guns which were utilizing direct fire
Lmao what? 25mm absolutely won't stop a 105mm howitzer. I wouldn't even trust 50mm to resist more than a single hit from a 105.
And redditspacing is cringe bro.
tankers have reported exactly what happened when a german artillery shell hit the roof
it would ring the inside like crazy and sometimes leave a huge dent, but it rarely killed them
it could cause more damage if it didnt explode, with one crew getting hit by a dud and it crashing through the roof and landing between his legs
> I wouldn't even trust 50mm to resist more than a single hit from a 105.
artillery rarely destroyed tanks, only 10% were due to either direct destruction or mobiliy-kills
it was mostly used to hold enemy tanks in place by forcing them to button up and separate them from infantry allowing tanks and infantry to maneuver into a position to threaten them
Wow, 45mm gets cracked to shit and back. 25mm will crumple inwards for sure.
Read a book, normalgay.
>tankers have reported exactly what happened when a german artillery shell hit the roof
>it would ring the inside like crazy and sometimes leave a huge dent, but it rarely killed them
I wouldn't trust the word of tankers when they're reminiscing about what incoming shells their tank survived hits from, especially artillery. How would they even know what hit them?
They wanted to stick to the panzer 3 it was a frickload more durable then the panzer 4 unfortunately due to the t34 and other tanks they needed to put the long 75mm gun on anything they could as quickly as they could to combat that threat reliably. due to the panzer 3s small turret ring the only viable tanks they had in quantity was the panzer 4 you must also understand the panzer 4 was the cheaper alternative to the 3 and had a weaker engine transmission etc. so the panzer 4 became the main tank in the german army this change happened around late 42 the panzer 3s were for the most part pulled out of the frontline and into secondary front service. some didn’t mind you and saw heaps of action or went back to the factories to be converted into stugs the other thing about panzer 4s once the conversion to the long 75 happened they were even then massively overweight once schurtzen was put on it rose to a 25 tonne tank mind you this was a tank envisioned as a 20 tonne tank.
>terrible thread you've seen a thousand times
>remember when you first saw one
>over 16 years ago
Man. You made me think about when I first started lurking. Now I feel old. 2008 isn’t that long ago, right bro?
its only 2014, that's not that bad.
Phew. Thanks man.
At least the old culture was still thriving, and we still had Moot.
2008 was pretty late in the great raiding days... might not have been entirely sucky yet but definitely on the way down.
Children born in 2008 can get their own driver's license in the US and are two years away from being able to vote.
The thread answers almost makes the Panzer IV inadvertently sound cursed, by being good enough that they didn't feel the need to replace it earlier.
they wanted to replace it earlier, it’s just that they didn’t want to disrupt production lines switching over so they just kept on building it
its longevity is entirely because it was available
Your mother was prostitute
>Any reason why they didn't simply add sloped armor to the Panzer IV?
Because they were already making the Panther and the Panzer IV was an outdated design. German production was already notoriously fricked combined with German Industry being bombed day and night along with material shortages for about everything.
>panzer IV kept being made into 1945
>we dont need to upgrade it, the panther will replace it
>even though panthers only ever made up 50% of a regiments tank strength, entirely by choice, because each regiment needed a lighter tank that could be deployed without bogging everything down
>despite the fact we keep building panzer IVs, doctrinallly include them in the battle order, we are totally going to replace them
Yes, German production and logistics was awful, they simply kept producing Pz IVs because they were “good enough” and needed replacements ASAP, meaning switching production would’ve taken too long. Panther production replaced the Pz III production lines.
Tiger I was actually relatively mechanically reliable, and had the same ground pressure as a sherman. Really good tank. On the expensive side to make though.
The panther wasnt that heavy overall, similar weight to an IS-2, a bit heavier than a pershing, but the final drives had issues (of debatable cause-some claim bad steel for the gears, others inadequate bearings and housing strength) and everyone bought albert speer's post-war explanation of blaming hitler for his frick-ups. The original design was to use the planetary gearbox of the Tiger I, speer pushes the spur gear because cheaper, proceeds to not work. The interlocking road wheels did complicate maintenance, but those were used because of a lack of access to rubber. The Panther was meant to outright replace the Panzer IV+III, and be the main tank in german service. It wasnt expensive to produce and had much better armour and firepower than the panzer iv could achieve.
Many of the later Panzer IV chasis were used for Tank Destroyers (pz IV/70+stug iv), much of the continuing production was either to replace what was lost for units still using them, or because they couldnt re-equip with other tanks due to non-stop allied bombing, particularly of the Tiger plants. They had all the tooling set up for them already, plus they didnt have as severe as reliability problems as the panther so they often had a higher readiness rate. The panzer IVs were upgraded continuously up to about 1944, the ufp of the H was 80mm thick, from the previous 50mm, and the 7.5 KwK was sufficient to threaten almost any commonly encountered allied tank into 1945. In 1945 it isnt great, its ultimately a 1942 tank, but neither was the sherman or the T-34, and getting vehicles into service was important. The IV is the only early one which remained in production in 1945, as the gun kept it viable, the III's were retired in early 1944 and continued as the StUG, and the II's vanished in 1941.
>Many of the later Panzer IV chasis were used for Tank Destroyers
panzer IV was only eclipsed by casemated panzer IV production in 1945, by which time it was too late for the casemated guns to actually see much service other than surrender
> much of the continuing production was either to replace what was lost for units still using them,
regiments were deliberately setup to have both panthers and panzer IVs despite the supposed desire to phase IVs out completely because the lighter weight panzer IV was easier to transport
so they kept making panzer IVs entirely by choice
>The panzer IVs were upgraded continuously up to about 1944, the ufp of the H was 80mm thick
the J was from late 1943 and was a downgraded model
the H was from mid-1943 and the last major redesign
the K was a true upgrade, including a 80mm turret face and sloped front armor, but was cancelled because they thought they wouldnt need the IV anymore
which was obviously untrue
they certainly thought about it, but they wanted to stop making PzIV all together, which obviously didn't happen.
There was also VK28.01 "Multipurpose Tank" (Merhzweckpanzer) that was meant to fill some of the gaps that PzIV did but Panther and Tiger were less suited to. That also didn't happen.
and here's my second image
it was getting too heavy for its running gear, making it any heavier would require a new gearbox and suspension system.
C - 18 ton
F1/2 - 22 ton
G - 23.6 ton
H - 25 ton (gear ratios lowered)
7.5 cm KwK 40 weighs 750 kg
Pz IV turret weight is maybe 3200 kg
7.5 cm KwK 42 weighs 1000 kg
Panther turret is around 7500 kg
The chasis is small, you cant get much more on it, the panther turret would be too large for the chasis and far too heavy.The ufp is flat like that because its much easier to weld, and the design provides much more internal crew space. To slope the ufp and maintain crew space, you'd need to extend the chasis and have an angled weld, which is not only harder, but also worried the german engineers in the 1930s, as they thought this might dislodge the ufp when hit. The germans ultimately perform a more complicated (but stronger) weld for the panther where you have slots which fit into one another, instead of a simple flat weld. By 1943 it is not a good use of time or resources to radically redesign the panzer IV.
>remove the front gunner
The "front gunner" is the radio operator. Also, the driver is sitting right next to them, and the gearbox and radio are stuffed in-between them.
Your "simple" proposal would require a total redesign of the hull layout, crew positions and drivetrain. IE, an entirely new tank design in effect.
A tank with 60mm armor @60°, equally resistant turret with good gun depression, 4 man crew with a 3 man turret and the 76/85/Kwk40 would have been the best tank in hindsight.
You could have had very solid protection and firepower at like 30 tons.
More or less a baby T-44.
This thing, but with thicker armor, would have ruthlessly mogged all WW2 medium tanks.
>4 man crew
>in WW2
No, anon. One of the reasons why the krauts were so successful in the beginning stages of the war was because they stuck a fifth member into their tanks solely to operate the vehicle's radio. It allowed the krauts to maintain cohesion and coordination that nations with objectively better tanks like France and Russia couldn't match, leading to them getting brutally outmaneuvered and mopped up.
One of the T-34's most blatant problems (among numerous others) was that it only had a 4 man crew, with no one to focus on the radio.
It also didn't help in the early models of T-34 the commander also loaded the gun, lack of good internal communications and the ability for the crew to see what was happening outside of their vehicle was awful.
The early T-34 had a radioman, the problem was that they usually didn't have a radio.
As for crew cohesion the big issue was the lack of a three man turret, which was rectified on the T-34-85.
The British seemed to manage OK with the commander operating the Radio, so I think a 4 man crew is entirely feasible in WW2, the KV and IS series operated like this for example.
>No, anon. One of the reasons why the krauts were so successful in the beginning stages of the war was because they stuck a fifth member into their tanks solely to operate the vehicle's radio
ah yes, that successful setup we still use to this day. very important to have an extra degree of separation between the TC and the other units around him
>ah yes, that successful setup we still use to this day
yeah cause radios haven't changed at all in the past 80 years you fricking moron
wait until you find out what the fifth man did on Shermans, moron
in case someone doesnt know:
manning the hull MG and about nothing else
the radios on the sherman were clear and crisp, negating the need for a full-time operator and the commander used the radio in practice
the radio operator was named the co-driver and his official job was to take over the driver if he died, got injured, or tired
and was usually the lowest position in the tank for the FNG to learn tank maintenance and operation
but it was difficult to remove a dead body in the driver seat in combat, so his replacement duty was more operational than tactical, and so the co-driver used the hull MG in combat and little else
the gun was competitive, the rest of the tank less so
the gun still had a 2.5x sight in 1944, where the 75mm sherman had a 3x sight and the 76mm sherman had a 5x sight
and the panzer IV never got gunner periscopes either
crew safety was also negatively impacted by its upgrades, the addition of schurzen meant the turret hatches were useless and so the only point of egress was the single turret hatch (not that you could easily fit out of the ammo hatches in an emergency, but it was something)
>negating the need for a full-time operator and the commander used the radio in practice
Radio operator could also use key transmission that about trippled comm range in the same conditions.
Slopped armor comes with the trade off of loss of internal volume, and while it certainly helps with protection, it isn't the magical solution people think it is. The Panzer 4 wasn't exactly a large vehicle to begin with. Also, German tanks "front gunner" was the typically primary radio operator.
Also, the Panzer IV was a tank designed in 1936, it's suspension system was reaching it's limits by 1943 and just putting on a Panther turret, outside of needing a total hull redesign, was not possible.
What you're suggesting is a whole new tank, with slopped armor, larger gun and turret, which also is roughly the same in terms of production costs.
It's called the Panther.
The base panzer IV was designed at a time when AT rifles were the primary anti-vehicle threat, the armor was not well optimised because it didn't need to be.
Against WW2 era AT guns there is practically no argument against sloped armor besides perhaps ease of construction.
It is basically OP against AP and APC; AP rounds cannot penetrate a plate with equal thickness to the round diameter angled at 60 degrees.
120@60° is more or less immune to all pre HEAT and APDS munitions.
Slopped armor on the front I will not argue against, however having it anywhere else is largely pointless and isn't worth any of the drawbacks.
>slop armor is goo... ACK!
[Open]
>At 500m the JPz.38t, a 15 ton IFV, would resist the Kwk 36
Yeah I'd say that's a pretty good result lol.
>IFV
AFV
VBCI
>120mm weight armor (60mm at 60 angle) is penned by 85mm
>85mm can only pen 100mm of armor at 90 degrees, cant pen 120mm armor at 90 degrees
BR-365K from a D-5T had an 80% chance of 75% of projectile mass penning at least 119mm flat @ 100m you moronic frick where the hell did you get that idea from.
The East Germans, likely using the 50% standard, put it at 126mm@100m. Both of these figures are noticeably higher than 100mm flat and give a fairly high (although probably lower than 50%? angle effect) chance of a significant remaining mass penning 60mm@60deg@100m.
The simulation video in question doesn't even show a clean penetration, only a small mass of the projectile passes through, which is what you might expect from the testing data.
The problem with that chart is that german results aren't real tests but a calculation using k = 2400 (which is wrong).
Huh, didn't know that, thanks!
I assumed the wildly different results were just due to different standards.
>were too heavy
>why they didn't add
They did on the Panther. Overall, sloped armor would not have solved anything meaningful.
>Any reason why they didn't add sloped armor to the panzer IV?
It had sloping, like at the uper frontal plate but full on sloping wasn't used because it wasn't worth the trouble at that time. Sloped armor isn't simply better than flat, it has trade offs which is why most modern tanks only have sloping at the front.
Sloped armor leads to worse internal volume and a narrower top of the chassis. The latter forces either a smaller turret ring, with smaller gun and/or gun elevation or a substantially larger tank which will weigh more, need a stronger engine, is larger and has worse fuel economy.
Sloping was objectively better in WW2, all post war tanks made heavy use of it, only modern HEAT and APFSDS treat armor like LOS.
APFSDS does even better, it'll "bend" into the plate, taking a shortcut instead of going through the whole LoS, meaning it'll actually do better at high angles (~60-75) kek
Classic "bored out of your mind doing static display" facial expressions.
moron answer. Sloping the Panzer IV in any direction would had added more volume. Sloping the Sherman would had removed volume, but that's not what's being asked.
Logistics, probably. They already had the production facilities, crew, etc for P4s, changing the design would cost time and money that they probably didn't have.
yeah why didn't they just add sloped armour, a bigger gun, and a more powerful engine? Maybe then change the suspension and widen the tracks to support the extra weight
Would have been the best tank of the war
It would've been if speer didnt override the original designers and cheap out on the final drives.
needlessly big and heavy with an in-efficient armor scheme.
could easily shave 10 tons of this thing.
You're only going to shave 10 tons if you physically shrink the tank down to the size of a Sherman. At which point you've basically made a 76mm Jumbo and now it has all kinds of issues.
>It seems to be very simple
Why do non-technical people have opinions?
Crew ergonomics was considered more critical to battlefield performance of the vehicle. They adhered to this principle all the way up to the Tiger 1m after which they realized tanks had become so much bigger that sloped armor would be the way to go, see Panther and Tiger 2.
Also a radio operator was needed anyway so might as well give him a machinegun to help out as well.
Now if you want to talk a really bad design decision the Germans did that is almost never talked about is not giving the StuG assault guns an internal machinegun. In fact, before a top-mounted one became available the commander was actually supposed to draw his MP40 and give fire support out of his hatch with it.
because the Panzer IV remained "competitive" up to the end of the war. A 75mm will frick up a negative quality control T-34-85 or a Sherman for that matter.
It was a "make do" platform that was too costly to replace or switch production from.
Same with the Bf-109 that remained competitive with upgrade to the end of the war. Where there better alternatives? Yes. Did they do their job sufficiently well enough that didn't warrant replacement? Yes.
>lets remodel our entire industry in the middle of a war, halt all production now.
Because it would be useless in stopping the kiribati bvll.