Tanks Are Mighty Fine Things (1946) | Hacker News Reader

Tanks Are Mighty Fine Things (1946)

imperialclub.com

73 pointssmacktoward39 comments

One of the interesting things I've heard the Soviets did [1] was operational research: The lifespan of a tank on the Eastern front was less than 6 months, and once in combat was less than 14 hours. Less than 1000 miles driven.

Knowing they didn't need a tank that lasted more than 1000 miles let them lower the number of parts and man-hours for each tank, allowing them to get them off the production line that much faster.

You can imagine what an advantage it was that the Allies produced four times as many tanks as the Axis powers.

[1] https://youtu.be/N6xLMUifbxQ?t=2295

Although it was immensely efficient, I cannot help but wonder if it was a circular reasoning: they wanted cheap, mass produced tanks, which means you're going to hand in on quality, which means that they break down faster and are less resilient, so your research shows that tanks don't last long, so you spend less on each individual tank, etc. etc.

You would also need to look at the causes of decommisioning to avoid this.

Russian strategic thinking in the 1930s was "we don't fight wars of attrition, we fight wars of annihilation" (not 100% sure on the exact quote but the words "attrition" and "annihilation" were used and that was the gist of it). The biggest advantage they brought to the table was sheer manpower (the second biggest arguably being the Russian winter). They specifically intended to fight Verdun type engagements where both sides take massive losses because they could replenish the losses but all their potential enemies could not. They fought exactly kind of war they had been planning to fight. Once you've committed to that on a strategic and tactical level throwing in many lower quality but still good enough to hold their own tanks is exactly what you want to do.

I think you're being rather generous here. By all accounts, Stalin did not wake up to the seriousness of the German threat and the unpreparedness of the Soviet Army until the Winter War against Finland in late 1939, and even this didn't stop him from purging the Red Army to the tune of executing 30,000 officers until the Germans finally invaded.

The one foresighted move that really saved their bacon was moving most military production including tanks deep into the Russian heartland, safe from the German advance.

Yeah, the start of the war was totally botched but all the management types knew what the plan was. This stuff was basically settled in the 1930s. The problem was that half the people who knew how to actually execute on it were in the gulag and the other half were dead. Once they got over that problem and actually followed the plan that they had laid out for themselves they steamrolled the Germans.

Other people are smart, too.

I've been to the tank museum in Munster (not to be confused with Münster if you ever decide to go!). Looking up close, comparing the American and German WWII tanks to the Russian ones is absolutely night and day.

The alignment of the panels and the welding on a Tiger tank looks (to an untrained eye) pretty much as good as you could make a mass produced vehicle back then. A T34 by contrast has haphazard misalignments connected by welding that looks like mine did when I was learning in high school.

So you can see with your own eyes that they essentially put the bare minimum of quality in to them.

This is a very interesting talk on the manufacturing efficiency of the US, Russia and Germany in WW2, which drills down into the details of how the factories were organized and the difference in man hours spent on each (which I'll spoil the bottom line of here: US 10k, SU 35-50k, DE 300k).

We've all heard stories about how Russian tanks in certain cases were driven out of factories partially completed straight in to combat, but up until I watched it I hadn't heard of Tiger tanks being rejected by the Wehrmacht because they didn't latest gear stick design. I highly recommend it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ&ab_channel=TheNa...

If you wanted to win a battle, you'd want a Tiger or Panther, if you wanted to win the war the T-34 would do. A Tigers might kill 30 T-34s, but eventually the weight of numbers would do you in. Same thing with the Sherman, 1 on 1 the Tiger generally wasted it, but with enough Shermans the Tiger would be doomed.

But with 30 tanks vs 1, you need to have a good access to a lot of fuel, which Germany didn't, whereas the allies didn't had this issue, so having less tanks, but more higher-quality, could have been a sound decision (maybe the same with manpower?). On the other hand, fuel used for tanks might make up only a small part of the overall fuel used.

Could be, but they weren't actually higher quality. Tigers were powerful, but the first batch was very unreliable, and they still consumed enormous amounts of fuel.

Most tanks the Germans had were PzIVs, StuGIIIs and Panthers.

The T34's were designed this way on purpose. They purposely skipped on making things perfect so long as they were functional. The guns worked. The engines worked. The transmissions worked. This is what they needed, nothing more. See the CIA document regarding this tank: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp81-0...

The German tanks, on the other hand, were designed and built meticulously...at least in the early days of the war. The downside is they were expensive to build and maintain...and they were not reliable.

For instance, the M4 was designed to be simple and easy to maintain, and required 3 times less the amount of man and materiel than the German tanks required. The engine and transmission in an M4 could be replaced by two men in four hours. For all the fear the larger German tanks (Tiger 1 and II, Panther) caused, the reality is, they did not construct very many because they were expensive. At any one time, half of them were broken and needing time consuming repair.

The German tanks were put together by highly skilled craftsmen. Often, the parts were hand machined or finished for each tank. This meant that the tanks did not have interchangeable parts, and were difficult/impossible to fix in the field. Being unable to fix equipment in the field was a general problem for the German army, as a very large proportion of their trucks and other equipment was captured from other countries, and they had no spares.

Once the Soviets moved their factories beyond the Ural mountains, the Germans, who lacked heavy bombers, had no way to knock out the factories. They stood no chance against the Soviet T34s and tank destroyers at that point.

If you're interested in digging deeper into this kind of history, take a look at "The Second World Wars" by Victor Davis Hanson.

Fascinating. In Britain it's long been recognised that our frequently innovative design engineering is often let down by poor production engineering. Many exmples can be cited: most F1 cars are UK built, but we no longer have an mass market car producer. Everything built by Jaguar and Land Rover! Spitfires took four times as many man hours to build as ME109s. The Rolls Royce Merlin was the best aero engine available to the Allies early in the war, but was effectively hand built. When Packard started building Merlins for the P51 they had to retro fit the production engineering tolerances to the design [2]. So I'm surprised to learn that tank production engineering was so poor. I wonder which models were most affected? Panzer III or IV? King Tiger?

[1] Stephen Bungay - The Most Dangerous enemy. [2] https://www.tested.com/art/makers/492418-packard-merlin-how-...

I only learned this while studying German, but King Tiger is actually a poor translation.

The German nickname for the tank was Königstiger, which is the German name for a Bengal tiger, but if translated literally it would instead be Royal Tiger.

The decision to allow production of Merlin by Packard was a masterstroke. The UKs engineering talent was amazing, and the American production engineering was also amazing. The collaboration of the 2 superpowers was unbeatable.

> So I'm surprised to learn that tank production engineering was so poor. I wonder which models were most affected? Panzer III or IV? King Tiger?

Probably the Pz III and IV, particularly early in the war.

They stopped manufacturing the Pz III in 1943, and around the same time started to rationalise tank production to keep costs down. So a Pz IV produced in 1944 or 1945 would be of a lower production quality standard than one produced earlier in the war.

Another important example seems to be the cavity magnetron in WWII. Developed in the UK, it provided about a thousand times more power than the klystrons the US was using at the time and let the Allies maintain a lead in radar technology: probably an important component of the Allied victory, though under appreciated by the public at large. UK designed, mass-produced in the US. The “Tizard Mission” that this was a part of sounds pretty fascinating and I’ve always told myself I’d pick up a book on it someday.

From the moment Hitler invaded France, he was never more then two months away from running out of oil. German railroads were gridlocked and mismanaged compared to the Russians. Germany spent more money on the V2 project then the USA did on the Manhattan project. Hitler survived a dozen assassination attempts. And then there is the fact that most of their encrypted coms were compromised. It really is a wonder that Germany stayed in the war for as long as they did.

My post was certainly not intended to be read as an indictment of the T-34, though in retrospect it may read like that.

In my opinion, the man hour stats say it all. With the benefit of hindsight, you'd have to be nuts to consciously decide to produce one Tiger instead of 6 T-34s.

Because their air forces were more effective, the Brits and the Americans could rely more on their air forces to neutralize their enemy's tanks (an approach they continued during the cold war, where the A-10 and the Apache helicopter were developed primarily to kill Soviet tanks).

On Battle Stations' episode on the Tiger, a former British M4 commander told the camera that encountering a Tiger sucked, but that the air force responded very quickly whenever he reported one. (The air force used rockets against the Tiger.)

German Stukas were also excellent tank killers, and early in the war, it was the only weapon that could hurt the heavier Russian tanks.

Germany lost their early air superiority in the Battle of Britain, though. Having your pilots shot down over enemy territory while shooting their pilots down over their own territory is a battle of attrition you're eventually going to lose.

>The T34's were designed this way on purpose. They purposely skipped on making things perfect so long as they were functional. The guns worked. The engines worked. The transmissions worked. This is what they needed, nothing more. See the CIA document regarding this tank: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp81-0.... The German tanks, on the other hand, were designed and built meticulously...at least in the early days of the war. The downside is they were expensive to build and maintain...and they were not reliable.

This way undersells the T-34 tank. It was a better designed and superior tank to the Sherman and Panzer IV tanks fielded by the US/Germany armies. It may not have been as good as a Tiger, but that's not an apples to apples comparison.

It's not like all T-34s were necessarily bad, it's just that Russia had to build so many of them that they had to accept poor quality tanks.

At the start of the war, Russia had a lot of very different tank designs. Many of those were crap, a few were really good. The T-34 was one of the good ones: it was fast, had a powerful gun, and armour that the German tanks at the time couldn't penetrate. On top of that, it was fairly simple and easy to produce, unlike the heavier KV-1, which was another very successful, but more expensive design.

Once Russia realised they were fighting an existential war, they had to churn out as many tanks as possible to stop the German tide, and the T-34 was simply the most obvious choice. Simple tractor factories were quickly retooled to produce T-34s, and unavoidably, the people making them weren't always properly trained. There just was no time. If it could drive and shoot, it was needed at the front.

And having something that looks like a T-34 but isn't as tough as a good T-34 is not necessarily a bad thing; the Germans can't see the difference from a distance, and they're going to treat it like any other T-34. Swamp them in good and bad T-34s, let the Germans waste their time on the bad ones, so the good ones can kill some panzers.

If you think this is stupid, look at how Russia fought some of the early infantry battles. Desperate measures for desperate times.

The association may not be remembered now, but Imperial was a Chrysler brand from times past. Here's another booklet I love from the site: http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/003/cover.htm

and previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397926

Re: Tanks - there are so many things that are obvious in hindsight, but its amazing how effective US production was.

I just watched a good talk by Nicholas Moran, the in-house historian at the shop that makes the game World of Tanks, talking about all the little ways the designs of the M3 and Sherman tanks were optimized for maximal production. It’s on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/TwIlrAosYiM

I think it was Max Hastings in one of his books on WW2 who makes the point that there is no point having tanks that are six times as good as your opponents if your opponent has ten times as many tanks as you do!

The tank crews would probably disagree; Allied tank crews sustained terrible casualties during the invasion of Europe.

And it did little good for morale to know that a German tank would knock out yours and probably kill your crew in the time it would take to fire tree rounds. (Twice to find the correct angle and the third to score a hit).

Strategically, this worked out nicely in WWII due to massive manpower advantage and the Germans’ severe weakening on the Eastern front, but the poor performance of Allied tanks was still a serious strategic blunder.

>The tank crews would probably disagree; Allied tank crews sustained terrible casualties during the invasion of Europe.

Sarting on page 72ish TFA handles this common criticism. While the crews probably would have preferred something that could go toe to toe with the Tiger in a 1:1 engagement the strategic and tactical reality of invading Europe with such a tank meant that was basically out of the question. The article also mentions the differences between a tank that's optimized for offensive use and one optimized for defensive use. If you read up on German armor you'll see them actually making this transition as they refined their tanks throughout the war.

With such a superior numerical advantage your average allied tanker never engaged more than one or two enemy tanks and had a pretty good chance of surviving the war all things considered. American tanks in France spend more time blowing up fortifications and hosing down enemy infantry than engaging enemy tanks because when you have such a massive numbers advantage your tanks do not need to spend all their time engaging other tanks. Your average German tanker was not so lucky. He would have a nearly endless supply of allied tanks to shoot at.

>but the poor performance of Allied tanks was still a serious strategic blunder.

How was it a strategic blunder if it worked exactly as intended?

It's really easy to sit in an air conditioned office and hand wring about people in 1940 not caring enough about the value of human lives but the simple fact is that times were very different and a lot of lives were going to be lost regardless so they may as well be lost winning quickly.

EVERYBODY suffered terrible casualties during the war. Statistically speaking, tank crews had one of the lowest mortality rates of anything else in the war that also was in battle.

Also, all tank crews were not happy to see any other tank. Germans hated seeing Allied tanks just as must as we hated seeing Axis tanks. 70% of ALL engagements were won solely on who got the first shot off.

The Germans had Tiger I and Tiger II tanks, but the reality is that they didn't make very many of them. The vast majority of the tanks the USA went up against were Panzer III's and Stugs...of which any variant of the M4 was more than a match for.

The so called poor performance of the Allied tanks was a complete myth. The M4 was a giant success and more than filled its mission.

Further, the M4 was so good that it remained in production for more than 40 years after WWII and was used very effectively by Israel during the 6-day war which occurred 22 years after WWII.

The M4 tank is an underrated tank. It does have one major flaw: its main gun is undersized--but the tank crews themselves were saying "we don't want a bigger gun" when the tank was being designed, and no one realized the mistake until late 1944. It also excels in other areas, most notably reliability and survivability (it's incredibly easy to exit the tank in a jiffy if it's on fire, especially compared to German tanks). German tanks notably had a deficiency in reliability--they may look powerful on paper, but if a tank is spending half its time awaiting repairs, it's not contributing to your actual war effort.

The British Sherman Firefly fixed that particular problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly

It wasn't a mistake. US tank doctrine was to use specialised tank destroyers against Tigers; the Shermans were there to support the main army. And a few Shermans had the more powerful 76mm guns which were better against Tigers. But the 75mm guns were fine against the vast majority of targets they were likely to encounter. Tigers were incredibly rare.

The Brits did put a 17 pounder gun on the Sherman to create the Firefly, which was much more powerful, but also too large for the small turret of the Sherman, making it a cramped, uncomfortable and impractical tank. The basic Sherman was fine. Arguably the best tank of the war.

> Here's another booklet I love from the site: http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/003/cover.htm

I think the bit about doing a hone job on a single cylinder without taking the crank out is a wee bit dated, lol.

And in case anyone was wondering most of the tolerances mentioned are out of date thanks mostly to better materials but somewhat also to better manufacturing as well though the general principals remain.

1946 - "Tanks Are Mighty Fine Things"

1955 - First Anti Tank Guided Missiles developed

2019 - "ATGMs Are Mighty Fine Things"

I knew that the authors name as my late grandfather was fond of saying 'rang a bell'. This guy started in newspapers at 17 and ended up editing the Saturday Evening Post.

The Post at the time was the largest selling and most influential magazine in America. They actually sold the magazine like a newspaper complete with paperboys. My father was one of those delivery boys in Detroit during the depression.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/16/archives/i-wesley-w-stout...

War is stupid.

Written on a device, invented for war, send by a device ment for a war, transfered by a device, engineered for economic competition (a war in all but name forced to peace by a governments monopolizing force), read while eating food that was taken away from other critter who would prefered to have eaten it.

Stupid processes can give rise to usefull things and create intelligent incentives.

The people dieing in wars, are lost to us forever though. Thinking about all the russian mathematicians, jewish pianists, german painters and american poets who died in the war, oftenn without ever noticing there talent, one can come to the conclusion that war makes stupid.

Yes, but unfortunately necessary.

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