![]() The Panzer IV was Germany’s ‘good enough’ tank and it was kept in manufacture through the war because it met need and it filled the gaps that slow production of both Tiger I and Panther tanks created. A few stunningly well engineered tanks could not win a war against thousands of ‘good enough’ tanks in the East or West. However, like the Tiger I, it was too expensive to make and took too long to manufacture. The tank was rapidly rebuilt and improved and became a highly effective vehicle. The Russians were able to learn of the tank and its weaknesses before it was fully developed. It was rushed into production and early versions deployed in combat. It used the sloped armour idea learnt from Russian tank design, along with suspension and engine forms developed in the Tiger I project to create a superior medium tank. The Panther is often described as the earliest form of a modern Main Battle Tank – the balancing of mobility, weapon power and armour. He was ignored and German engineers went to work designing the best tank they could imagine using the lessons learnt from the T34. One German general said he’d be happy just for German factories to copy and build T34 tanks. It led to a rapid speed up in the Tiger I project and the start of the Panther tank project. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, the army rapidly discovered that their Panzer III and IV tanks were utterly outclassed by the T34 and KV1 tanks of Soviet Russia. Germany built too many vehicle types, using too many expensive materials to create too small a physical army force. They built them cheaply, en masse with few adjustments over time. The Americans built Sherman tanks and the Russians built T34 tanks. Products made to impress a small coterie of politicians that sucked up increasingly tight supplies of materials and money. This was the undoing of many German projects. ![]() The care and attention shown in its manufacture impressed the British army engineers but they calculated, correctly, that it was hugely expensive and would absorb both scarce factory time and resources. ![]() An early version was captured by the British and stripped down. The Tiger was an impressive and powerful tank but it was unreliable and extremely expensive to make. World War 2 German technological development was completely focused around favour finding and impressing the Fuhrer. That competition was charged with the desire to find favour with Hitler at demonstrations he attended (sometimes organised around his birthday). The Tiger tank was created in competition between engineers at Porsche and Henschel. The idea of a heavily armoured ‘breakthrough’ tank had circulated for years but lighter, faster medium tanks made more sense. The Tiger I tank is probably the most famous German tank of World War 2 but it is an early example of how obsession with size and brilliant engineering led to overall failure.īuilding big things appears to be an obsession in authoritarian governments and the Tiger came out of this behaviour.
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