The Hetzer was the best tank of the war
>better armor than Tiger 1
>the excellent German 7.5 cm
>same weight as a light tank at 16 tons
Being light weight, small and simple it was incredibly cheap to produce and logistically friendly to field while providing almost the same combat effectiveness as huge fat tanks like the Panther at 45 tons that proved to be impossible to field effectively.
Had the Germans had these little bad boys fielded in numbers in 41 when they first met the Soviet T-34's and KV-1's they would have unironically won.
Turrets are dumb. Being small means that you can achieve the same firepower and armor with a cheaper and lighter vehicle that you can actually move from place A to place B
>Being light weight, small and simple it was incredibly cheap to produce and logistically friendly to field while providing almost the same combat effectiveness as huge fat tanks like the Panther at 45 tons that proved to be impossible to field effectively.
All of this is true
> Had the Germans had these little bad boys fielded in numbers in 41 when they first met the Soviet T-34's and KV-1's they would have unironically won.
Well no. Tank destroyers are good for defense because they’re ambush weapons. They are not adequate for offensive actions for the reason here:
>Turrets are dumb. Being small means that you can achieve the same firepower and armor with a cheaper and lighter vehicle that you can actually move from place A to place B
Cramped boxes with no turrets are not what you want when you’re trying to push forward. They’re what you want for holding what you’ve got.
"tank destroyer" is just a term that came along as a result of doctrine/usage and it does not predispose a vehicle only for certain type of usage.
Assault guns like the Stug or the Hetzer work 95% as well as a turreted equivalent while being significantly superior in other aspects.
>Cramped boxes with no turrets are not what you want when you’re trying to push forward.
That's not what matters. What matters is if you've got the periscopes etc. to first see the enemy before he sees you first, the gun to effectively engage him, and the armor to take return fire. And all that is a moot point if you cannot even get your 45 ton behemoth to the battlefield because it got stuck in the Ukrainian mud and you don't have anything strong enough to pull it out from there.
maybe there's a reason why only one major country adopted a turretless tank during the cold war, whose doctrine was largely defensive, and they replaced them with turreted tanks when they retired them
At the same time there was no tank on tank fighting for any significant amount in the cold war era
So its not like you can claim the validity of either doctrine
Every single last major military across the world, including those that extensively used turretless tank destroyers and assault guns during WWII, unequivocally decided that turreted tanks were the way to go, based on their experience in WWII. It's telling the one notable Cold War turretless tank was introduced by... Sweden, who sat out WWII.
So ultimately: Your argument or the argument of every single military that actually operated turretless tanks/TDs/assault guns? I know which one I'm more willing to believe.
Peace time designs always have all of the useless bells and whistles whereas designs made during a total war do away with useless frivolities.
Many combat studies done on the Strv103 show that the turret doesn't really make that much of a difference but hey might as well have one since it's nice to have and it's not like we have to build 5000 of these things like yesterday like during war time.
>one major country adopted a turretless tank during the cold war
Sweden
Switzerland
West Germany
Ah yes the major country of Switzerland
KanonenJagdPanzer 90
>Assault guns like the Stug or the Hetzer work 95% as well as a turreted equivalent while being significantly superior in other aspects.
No.
For Germans doctrine of Stug and tank was vastly different. You don't know what are talking about.
Tanks attacked in large formation, tanks going first infantry mounted on APCs followed therm tanks themselves destroyed all resistance, infantry only mopped out survivors were tanks can't go in them (trenches, bunkers, buildings). Key aspect is tempo, tempo, tempo. Armored division penetrated defense very fast to maintain tempo in deep maneuver.
Assault gun was deployed in small numbers (24-36 pieces per infantry division), infantry went ahead of the assault gun and baited enemy fire with their bodies. Then assault gun advanced from cover and suppressed enemy machine gun or whatever. Key aspect is economy of scarce resources, in this case assault guns. Infantry is plentiful you don't mind losing some, sot they go ahead and take main losses, guns are camping behind them.
In tactical aspects that means that assault guns had no need for close combat capabilities as they always surrounded by mass of friendly infantry and only advanced over ground after infantry took it.
Tanks had much need of the close combat capability because their tact's was literally rush over enemy trenches and swipe the with machineguns and depressed tank main gun fire. It's a chaos of close combat.
>Tanks attacked in large formation, tanks going first infantry mounted on APCs followed therm tanks themselves destroyed all resistance, infantry only mopped out survivors were tanks can't go in them (trenches, bunkers, buildings). Key aspect is tempo, tempo, tempo. Armored division penetrated defense very fast to maintain tempo in deep maneuver.
Yeah and there's zero reason a turretless tank cannot do that all the while being cheaper, lighter, with a better gun and better armored than a tank
lack of a turret means you need to turn the whole vehicle to aim, which is a pretty huge deal
'there is a big reason why panzer divisions had 4 regiments of tanks and just 1 battalion of TDs
>which is a pretty huge deal
But it's not. Why would it be? You will always turn to face the enemy anyhow so you can present your strongest armor to him.
>But it's not.
it clearly is, since they kept building turreted tanks until 1945
>you will always turn to face the enemy anyhow so you can present your strongest armor to him.
hull traverse is slower, liable to throw a track when you do it, and requires the commander to coordinate with the driver, which may be difficult in the field
you also have very little control over the angle at which you meet the enemy, who is unlikely to do what you want all the time
even with a good ambush spot overlooking a road, the enemy may have decided to read a map and approach from elsewhere that day
repeated re-acquisition of targets, some of which may be spaced widely apart, means that you are going to be constantly turning the whole TD
its simply faster and more efficient to turn the turret to acquire new targets
especially for tanks with a commander override and unity sight, which allows the commander to use the turret himself
>it clearly is, since they kept building turreted tanks until 1945
Well yeah but did you ever consider the possibility that they were just stupid like the moronic germoids they are?
>But it's not. Why would it be
Because using tank you go drive along trench and fire machine guns and canon shells into this trench.
And overall driving into close combat mean targets can appear from all sides and turning turrt is faster and sometimes only thing you can do (hull turning can be blocked by terrain and obstacles).
P.S. during WWII driving tank into close combat with infantry was not bad ideas because RPGs didn't exist, it was different meta, infantry was extremely weak against tank in close combat too.
>Because using tank you go drive along trench and fire machine guns and canon shells into this trench.
Same can be done with a turretless tank just as well.
>turning turrt is faster
Not significantly so
>(hull turning can be blocked by terrain and obstacles).
Grasping at straws here
>there's zero reason a turretless tank cannot do that
Hetzer ergonomics are exceedingly bad. All the good features are wasted because the men inside are struggling to do any task. The stug much better laid out and even has better traverse.
The Stug armor scheme is moronic and overcomplicated.
>Assault guns like the Stug or the Hetzer work 95% as well as a turreted equivalent while being significantly superior in other aspects.
bullfrickingshit
>t. former Abrams gunner
>What matters is if you've got the periscopes etc. to first see the enemy before he sees you first, the gun to effectively engage him, and the armor to take return fire
And you're radically cheaper, econimizing strategic production resources in an environment that can't make early war high quality steel; and the low weight favors not getting bogged down (and being much easier to tow out); and the very low/small silhouette.
Late war German steel was just as good as any ordinary RHA of the day, the various 'tests' showing otherwise are all suspiciously soviet-performed and on burnt out tanks.
Guess what a shitload of heat really quickly can do to armor plate?
didnt tests on a german plate reveal a lack of molybdenum that led to increased brittleness?
Everyone's metallurgy changed throughout the war as resources became plentiful or scarce, in Germany's case they substituted alloying materials with superior heat treatment, resulting in plates of the same quality. Less expensive material-wise but more expensive process-wise.
dont think you can substitute molybenum with heat-treatment, since you need it to increase shock-resistance without decreasing brittleness
Evidently they figured it out because late-war armor plate was still up to snuff with any other RHA of the time.
And yet there's not a single verifiable example of this, and no, posting pictures of burnt out wrecks doesn't count because it's going to frick with the heat-treatment and make the armor more brittle.
You see this kinda shit on a lot of surviving late war german vehicles, they take a round that sometimes pens, sometimes doesn't and then the armour develops these extensive cracks.
>Hits 80mm plate with 122mm frickoff howitzer round
>Tank crumples to shit
You could do that to any WW2 tank and get the same results, post something that actually means anything.
>and get the same results
hitting a tank with a more ductile armor would result in a bulge rather than a shatter
>No evidence presented
>Still no evidence
"pls spoonfeed me"
No, figure out you're wrong on your own
Cool, so we have established late-war steel didn't have any issues.
other than substituting molybdenum with extra chromium and nickel, which resulted in reduced shock resistance
Made up for with better heat treatment.
without molybdenum, then making it more ductile would result in a corresponding decrease in hardness
its why they put it in there in the first place
Sloped armor has to be relatively soft you moron Black person, that's why the Hetzer, Panther, etc were sloped.
except for the fact that what little molybdenum they did have was used for the frontal plate to allow it to retain some ballistic protection, though with percentages halved
side armor, the part that was either less sloped or unsloped, was often free of molybdenum entirely
>Zero documents to back any of this shit up
Most late-war German armor plate was designated as E (electro), because the process let them make higher quality plates out of complete garbage materials.
that's clearly not any 122mm shell, the entire superstructure would be half off the assault gun at that point, this shit happened with 85's and 75's from shermans and T34s
nah he's right late war german metal was known for it's brittleness, under repeated hits the armour would just crack and spall like crazy.
This. You can't even see to your right side with the hatches closed.
Good for defense when you know where the enemy will be coming from, not so good for offense. Hull mounted gun also means limited gun depression.
If that were a real issue they could easily just add another periscope up top. In fact I'm somewhat surprised that the commander doesn't have a cupola. Cost constraints I guess.
as this was a vehicle mainly ment for defense and ambushes, adding a cupola would make the vehicle larger, hence being harder to hide
The commander doesn't have a cupola because the commander is so crammed in that he wouldn't be able to turn around and actually use that cupola to any real effect anyway.
Look at this shit. This is NOT a vehicle you want to spearhead long raodmarches or armroed pushes with, you're gonna run your crew into the ground in short order trying that.
The commander has plenty of space
What a moronic fricking take, have a nice day. The cupola only adds space you moron, even if you can't turn completely it's infinitely more useful than a shitty periscope.
Again, have a nice day you dumb WT kiddie
Using Warthunder's Xray mechanic to explain the internals of a well known vehicle is 100% less moronic than what-if spitballing about gluing a Tiger cupola to a vehicle that never historically had one. How do you manage to embarrass yourself against someone posting WT screenshots? That's actually impressive.
Literally nothing wrong with using Warthunder screenshots etc. as a source. That game is autistically accurate. Much more so than ANY other easily accessible source.
Also, there is absolutely nothing incoherent about attaching a Pz IV cupola on a Hetzer. It makes sense, giving the commander more visibility and doesn't add significant bulk or weight.
>autistically accurate
more cramped than a late model stug ?
That's exactly what the Germans did with later redesigns, but none saw combat as by then the war was over
Hetz > Stug.
>hetzer thread <3
Wasn’t this thing in the class of “good in video games but irrelevant in history”?
They made almost three thousand of them in a year with bombed out factories so you tell me.
It was good for what it was, a cost-effective and reliable ambush weapon that fit the needs of late-war Germany. An unceremonious workhorse that did its job as well as it could, and is often forgotten because it’s basically the opposite of a wunderwaffe (cheap, built en masse, greatest strength was cost-effectiveness), and people usually remember Nazi Germany’s equipment for their pop-culture fuelled images of ”superiority” or weirdness.
>Drives to your side
Nothing personnel
ww2 tanks turned a lot faster than they could spin a turret
Not true. Not even close to true.
It's true for heavy tanks like the Tiger series. Many commanders would rely on turning the body of the tank, with the turret only for minor adjustments.
You got a source for that, moron? Because that's barely half true if we're being generous and if you knew anything about a tiger's turret traverse you'd know why.
All German tanks had slow turret traverse, if you want to get on target today and not tomorrow you turn the whole tank.
well yes, but no
their hydraulic traverse was actually fast when used on the panzer IV, because thats the tank it was designed for
it wasnt fast, 16 degrees per second, but it was good enough for most purposes
the panther D only traversed so slowly because it waw low-geared to compensate for the longer gun
but the panther A could use the engine to directly traverse the turret at between 19 and 24 degrees per second, depending on engine RPM
whether this setup was fast or slow was very commander dependent and how well they could coordinate with the driver to set engine RPM
a good commander could have a workable 19 degree per second traverse rate before switching to the slower but smoother hydraulic traverse when they were close to target while a bad commander might rely solely on one or the other
>gets BTFO by a Hetzer that is 500m behind mine
nothing personnel
You posted a tank almost as bad as the hetzer. You could have posted literally any other tank and it would have been a stronger argument.
I can only imagine the boner that Soviet anti-tank riflemen would get upon realizing the Germans are relying on a casemate gun carrier with paper thin side plates and a cramped interior as their primary offensive vehicle
>The Hetzer was the best tank of the war
Germany lost.
Everyone lost.
i know it's not scientific but using the ATs in BFV is fricking painful. If your target moves you have to move the whole tank, then move the turret. oop - it moved again
No its fricking not. Go back to WT/WOT
Look at the fricking visibility and ergonomics that the crew has. Its AWFUL.
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Literally you'd be better off in a soviet T-26
Idk what fentanyl someone must have smoked in order to conclude that a vehicle that has 15 degrees of traverse on the gun where the gunner is looking through a straw and the driver is looking through a straw can be considered "best tank". A hetzer would not be effective as a tank even if there were a million brainless t-34s that didn't shoot back directly in front of him
>Had the Germans had these little bad boys fielded in numbers in 41
Yeah OP, had the Germans had a vehicle that was inspired by a 1943 Romanian TD design, armed with a gun produced in 1943, and that didn't enter service until mid 1944 they might have done better against 1941 tanks. Thank you for that incredible insight. Could you let us know anything more, such as perhaps putting the Me-262 into service by early 1942, would that have helped?
There's zero new technology in the Hetzer. Even designs up to the T-55 etc. used just ww2 tech and clever geometry to achieve incredible protection and firepower in a tank that weighs ten tons less than a Panther.
Define "new technology"
>providing almost the same combat effectiveness as huge fat tanks like the Panther
>turrets are dumb
C'mon man
moron here, how do you even aim with that thing?
the gun can move say 10 degrees to either side, further than that you need to turn the tank itself
About three degrees left and nine degrees right. The total sweep is ~12 degrees. The hetzer is bad.
>The hetzer is bad.
Nah, it's great. OP is trolling, but the Hetzer was still a great success. 12° is q lot more than you think at range.
What if the enemy is reported as 30 degrees to the left, so you order the driver to pivot left, and he pivots 20 degrees to the left, and now you cant see him because the driver couldnt see him in the first place because he cant see shit and the gunner cant see shit either because he is looking through the periscope that is physically attached to the gun mantlet that has 11 degrees of traverse to the right, and even though the gunner could have the enemy tank in his arc, again, he cant see shit and nobody can see shit because it has no fricking optics you c**t
>better armor than Tiger 1
along the frontal arc only
its 20mm side armor is still less than ~30mm thick when angling is taking into account, and the lower side hull isnt angled at all
zone of protection against even smaller guns like the american 75mm or russian 76.2mm was restricted to a narrow frontal cone
while far superior to the pz38 its based on and very good for a light vehicle, its laughable to suggest protection close to the tiger
having slopes on both the side, front, and rear also sacrifices a lot of internal space
>Turrets are dumb
germans considered the stug III only 1/3rd as good as the panzer IV in mobile operations
>germans considered the stug III only 1/3rd as good as the panzer IV in mobile operations
Baseless slander. You DO NOT talk shit about the Stug
>Turrets are dumb
Yeah, that's why the Saint Chamond was the greatest tank for having a 75 mm gun decades before it was in vogue
The main problem with the St Chamond seems to be that its tracks were far too short compared to the length of the vehicle.
It was conceived for the same reason as the much later M3 Lee: brass wanted a 75mm gun on tracks *now*, with whatever materials they had on hand. IIRC its chassis is just a commercial tractor they bolted its ungainly superstructure upon to house the gun.
I thought the hetzers had some kind of major flaw
something about the gun being unbalanced and shifting the centre of gravity I think
It was dogshit mobility wise and could be penetrated by AT rifles from the side. Pass.
OP a better tank designer than the entire history of tank designers
Why are you talking about yourself in third person?
armor than Tiger 1
Your daily bait threads about Germany are improving, anon.
Had they set upon it years earlier on that chassis and cancelled all the other shit overweight SPGs/TDs based on it to the point of being able to field them ubiquitously with infantry as organic direct fire support/TD presence, then they might have been as significant as the Sherman qualitatively or the T-34 quantitatively. Barring that it's a timing and inherent limitations as a design issue-- towed guns were nearly always write offs if a position was lost even once (bad when you're counter attacking immediately whenever possible to dislodge Russians when they attack successfully), so Hetzer made a lot of sense for the price/survivability/mobility.