Unlike most game settings that influenced people's traditional thinking, tanks in real wars didn't have a health bar setting like in the game world, and the damage of attacks could be taken step by step.
When a tank was attacked by any kind of attack, the outcome was either successful or not.
Therefore, for a tank in combat in the real world, it was like a tank filled with ammunition. Oil. They relied on their own armor plates to protect these fragile mobile fortresses.
If the tank was not penetrated, it could naturally continue to participate in the battle peacefully. However, if it was penetrated, the consequences would undoubtedly be disastrous for the tank.
If they were lucky enough, and the location of the penetration was not so precise and tricky. Ignite the fuel. It was definitely a relatively good outcome to have one or two members die.
However, if the internal members of the tank that were penetrated were not so lucky, then what awaited these poor unlucky people might be the catastrophic consequences of being directly hit by the enemy's armor-piercing bullets, causing dozens of rounds of ammunition to explode at the same time, and then flying off the turret and destroying the car.
It was precisely because of the requirement of instant kill and anti-instant kill in a real tank battle that " could ensure that our tank main gun could penetrate the front armor of the enemy tank, and could also ensure that the front armor of our tank would not be penetrated by the enemy tank cannon ". As a superpower that developed epoch-making heavy equipment such as tanks, Dog had walked out a basic principle of " protection = firepower> mobility " on the road of self-developed tanks. The T34 crisis on the battlefield of World War II prompted the country to speed up the appearance of the No. 6 tank.
Why did the Tiger Tank make the Allied soldiers feel almost invincible in 1942-1943? The answer was mainly composed of two aspects
1. frontal defence and firepower
In the North African battlefield of 1942-43 and the Eastern Front battlefield of the same period, what was the enemy armor force faced by Tiger 1? T-34/76, KV-1, Mathilda 2, Crusader MkIII, M3 Lee, M4 Sherman with 75 cannons (M3/M5 Stuart, Crusader MkII and the like need not be discussed). The main cannons of these tanks were basically unable to penetrate the 102mm armor on the front of the Tiger 1's body and turret even at a close distance (100-200 meters)(only the 6-pound cannon and the M375 cannon that fired hard-core armor-piercing bullets could penetrate it). In 1942-43, the Eastern Front and North Africa battlefields often had tanks fighting or tank-antitank artillery firing from 1000 meters or more, so the front armor of the Tiger 1 was difficult to penetrate at that time. On the other hand, the Tiger 1's KWK 3688mm tank cannon could easily penetrate the front armor of all the tanks in front of it within 1500 meters (further distances could only be guessed based on the aiming and fire control conditions at that time, and there was basically no significance in statistics). It wasn't until the second half of 1943 that the British 17-pound anti-tank gun was put into actual combat that the Allied forces had the anti-tank firepower to steadily penetrate the Tiger 1. The service of the Allied tanks (IS-2, T-34/85, Sherman Firefly) that could stably penetrate the Tiger 1 tank firepower had to wait until 1944.
2. Omni-directional defense layout
To be honest, the all-round defense was one of the main reasons why the Tiger 1's weight soared to 56 tons (the other two were the size of the power pack and the transmission system), but it was also the second core reason why the Tiger 1 was almost invincible in the 1942 -43 years.
1942-1943 What were the main anti-tank weapons of the allied infantry in? The anti-tank guns were M337mm, QF2-pound anti-tank gun, QF6-pound/M157mm anti-tank gun, and M1937/M194245mm anti-tank gun. The light weapons were the M1 Bazooka, the PIAT anti-tank grenade launcher, and the PTL/PTL anti-tank rifle. Among them, only the PIAT and QF6-pound/M157mm anti-tank guns could theoretically penetrate the 82mm rear armor of the Tiger 1. The reduction of armor-piercing weapons and the scarcity of 57mm anti-tank guns (the US military in the European theater had only completed the installation of 57mm anti-tank guns during the Normandie landings) made these two direct routes even more unreliable.
Speaking of which, compared to the Tiger 1, the Panther tank's KWK4275mm main cannon had a deeper penetration and a harder head (80mm 55 degree tilt). However, it did not cause as much impact on the allied forces as the Tiger 1, and it was not as good looking as the Tiger 1. One of the main reasons was that the side of the Panther was only 45/40mm, and most of the anti-tank weapons mentioned above could penetrate it stably (and in 1944, when the Panther was deployed in large numbers, the infantry anti-tank guns of the Alliance were basically upgraded from 37/45 to 57/76).
When the author was discussing with other World War II military fans, he heard this sentence: Based on the level of technology at that time, mobility and reliability were the most difficult to guarantee, but they were the most fundamental indicators. Therefore, firepower and defense should be abandoned to ensure mobility.
Brother, do you have any idea where the Crusaders and Cromwell went with the sack and baseball bat today?
Secondly, if they gave up on firepower and defense, what was the point of having tanks? Explode a half-track or light tank, the mobility is superb.
Three main indicators of tanks--fire protection and mobility
Only one of the three is trash. Of course, there were basically no tanks that could be so f * cked up (excluding caterpillar vehicles and SPG).
One and a half of the three could basically be used. For example, the Mathilda 2's solid armor and 2-pound cannon had indeed caused a lot of trouble for the people of the country. Not to mention KV
It would be considered pretty good if two out of three could be considered. Tiger King, IS2, 3, 4, 76 Sherman, M18, etc. Most of the famous cars are in this category.
Those who took up two and a half of the three categories could be considered classics among classics, such as Tiger, Black Panther, T-34 (76 and 85)
It could be said that there was no such thing during World War II. The T-44 and T-54 could be counted, but they were post-war (E-series).
In addition, there was an awkward part of the Tiger Stance.
Compared with the opponents they met the most (the allied countries 'light tanks, other vehicles, etc.), the advantages were obvious, so I won't go into details here.
Looking at this car alone, the more you look at it, the more problems it has.
1. Good reliability--I admit that this is a very reliable tank among the heavy tanks in the country (including the Leopard).
However, good reliability did not mean that it was easy to maintain. The trouble caused by the staggered load wheels was obvious to all.
2. Strong firepower---mm, the AWK36's apbcc can penetrate 100 meters vertically to a depth of about 140 meters, which is not bad for a tank cannon of the same generation. However, the depth of penetration alone was not much higher than the 75L48, but it was also lower than the 75L70.
3. Excellent defense--
4. The design is compact--obviously, there is no such thing. The advantage is probably that the interior of the car is bright.
5, cost-effective-sorry, the German tanks seem to have been deliberately avoiding this requirement.
6, flexible use-I feel that as a heavy tank, the expansion function is much worse than a medium tank.
7. Easy to give birth-I really didn't mean to be like a black tiger...
What kind of military technology was leading the way that caused such a huge gap?
In terms of the various parts of the tank, it seemed that every part of the Tiger was only considered to be above average in the same period of the warring countries, but they did achieve the effect of 1 12, and it was in stark contrast to a certain country that had the best engine, the best cannon, and the thickest armor but could not make a good tank.
Don't fall into the misconception of 'weapons-only theory'. Victory in performance indicators can never be simply equated to the outcome of battles and wars
In the later stages of the game, the Tiger would not have much of an advantage against the JS-2, the Super Pershing, or the M4A4 Firefly, which was equipped with a special weapon. It was not a problem to say this based on pure data, but there were not many cases of Pershing versus the Tiger in history. Pan Xing and the tiger could basically penetrate each other. On the other hand, if the Super Pershing (T26E4 equipped with additional armor and T15E2) were to face the tiger head-on, the tiger would be destroyed by a few shots. As for the fireflies, the cannon was very good at piercing the front of the tiger, but they would be attacked by the tiger's fancy moves. Most of the time, it was effective for ambushes.
In addition, the total weight of the tiger was 56 tons. There was a very basic cause-and-effect error here. During World War II, no country had designed a new cannon specifically for tanks. In other words, whether it was the Soviet Union, Germany, the United States, or the United Kingdom, the tank cannon was derived from other cannons. For example, the highly acclaimed 85 (D-5T), 88 (KWK36), and 90 (M3) mm guns of the three countries in World War II could all be traced back to an anti-aircraft gun of that country.
Therefore, most of the time, the cannons were evolved according to the process of anti-aircraft cannons, flat-fire cannons, tank cannons, and TD-type cannons (except for some howitzers). There were very few cases of reverse evolution.
The Tiger Stance was a tragedy. Its strength was just like what some people said. It won a battle but lost a war.
What was the use of a tank? Tactically, it can be used to deal with the enemy's tanks. However, many military fans like to fight against the T34 and Sherman. I think this can only bring about a tactical advantage in most cases. The strategy was to make use of the high mobility of the tank and its firepower to break through the enemy's defense line and destroy the enemy's effective strength in mobile warfare.
In fact, whether it was the Soviet Union, Germany, or the United States, the positioning of tanks was initially to support infantry combat, similar to the positioning of self-propelled artillery, so they were scattered to infantry units. Guderian, Barton, and others (Who was the Soviet Union?）They believed that tanks should be used as a strategic force to penetrate the enemy's depths. This was the greatest use of tanks. From the Dé country to the other countries, the Soviet Union used pincer attacks (such as the Battle of Kursk), which used the mobility of tanks to surround and divide the enemy, defeat the enemy's formation, and eliminate the enemy's effective strength.
Using tanks as weapons to deal with tanks was not wrong. It was possible tactically, but it had to be consistent with the strategic goal. Otherwise, it would be like the Tiger Stance, which might have an 80 - 90% chance of winning a single battle, but it would not be able to make the final decision in any battle.
Before World War II, there was a huge difference between the advancement of weapons and the matching of war theories. To put it bluntly, weapons technology had advanced too quickly, and orthodox war theories had not been able to keep up with the times. Not only tanks, but aircraft carriers were also used to scout and support battleships and heavy cruisers. Even Yamamoto 56, who had successfully attacked Pearl Harbor, still had a battleship complex.
The two sides of the Soviets and Turks first established the concept that the tank's combat target was another tank. The Soviets 'T-34 and the German Tiger tank, the Panther tank, were regarded as the ancestors of modern tanks. In addition to its design and structure, its concept was also widely used for modern tanks. At that time, the Western allies, the Ying country, still used the classification of patrol tanks and infantry tanks. The US tanks were responsible for supporting the infantry, and the anti-tank missions were handled by specialized tank destructors. It was not surprising that the German army had an advantage over the American army.
The outcome of a war was never affected by the level of advancement of weapons. It was stable, cheap, easy to produce, and easy to maintain.
To put it simply, the Tiger tank was designed to fight to the death with the enemy's heavy tanks and destroy them. The allied tanks of the same era, especially the British and American tanks, were used to bring infantry to clean up the enemy's infantry and fortifications. While everyone was complaining about the irrationality of the Tiger Tank, did they ever wonder why the French people would create such a tank? Someone has already explained it, so I'll just give a simple explanation of my thoughts. Before the Soviets invaded France, the tanks of the French were very similar to the Soviet's BMW series. High mobility, light armor, low firepower.
This was very suitable for the blitzkrieg that the people of Dé were passionate about: The armored group advanced quickly and even strategically outflanked the French Maginot line. However, in the process of attacking France, the French encountered the French B1 heavy tank. For the main Type 1 and Type 2 tanks at that time, this was a tough nut to crack. Later on in the North African battlefield, the No. 3 tank equipped with a short-barreled 50mm cannon would also encounter the Ying country's weirdo, the Matilda infantry tank (actually, they encountered it when they invaded France). It was almost impossible to defeat it head-on. In the end, it was said that it took 88 cannons to defeat it. Thus, Princeps was furious!
Of course, I didn't know what the other officers of the German armored forces were thinking. After all, from the perspective of modern tank warfare, B1 and Mathilda could be said to be behind the times even after only two years of the Soviet-German battlefield. Misled by the two countries that used tanks wrongly, the head of state's chariot plan went astray. Before that, in the mid-to-late 1930s, the people of Dé had plans to develop "heavy tanks", but the weight of the vehicles was also around 30 tons. The fragile ones like the DW1, DW2, and then the VK3001, as well as Henschel's own VK3601 (H), were not too heavy. However, the 3601H's protection level was already very high. The front of the car was a 100mm vertical armor, which was on the same level as the Tiger. However, in order to deal with high-defense targets at a longer distance, the new tank required 8.8cm kwk36 tank cannons. Therefore, the existing VK3601 turret was not enough. In order to adapt to the distance of the KWK36's rear seat, a larger turret had to be used.
This was indeed the reason why the people of the country were so stubborn. In that era, to create a weapon with firepower, defense, and mobility that surpassed the opponent, one had to have a completely new design concept or have advanced and reliable technology. Now it seemed that the people of the country only accounted for half of the latter-advanced technology, and not advanced enough to surpass the standards of the times. Therefore, the final Tiger Tank was a monster that exceeded all its specifications. It had a stronger main cannon, a larger turret, a larger body, and better protection. As an offensive weapon, its mobility could not be reduced. As a heavy tank that weighed nearly 60 tons, the early version of the Tiger tank could reach a highway speed of 45kph under the push of a Maybach HL230. However, because this would cause the engine to overload, the speed was limited to 38kph in the later stages.
As an offensive weapon, the Tiger tank needed to ensure that it could withstand a large amount of flank fire when it attacked the position. Therefore, the side armor of the Tiger tank reached a thickness of 80mm. This was obviously a very troublesome problem for the allied tanks. Even if they circled around to the flank, if it was not close to the front, the defense of this thing was almost the same as the front. Some people might ask why the Tiger tank uses vertical armor. The one explanation I've seen is that it uses weld-rolled armor instead of the lower cost cast body. I don't think this theory is valid, because it's obvious that welding armor can also easily make a large inclined plane. The Chinese didn't do this because their thinking was too old-fashioned. It wasn't until the T-34 crisis on the Soviet-German battlefield that they made the Panther tank into a similar large inclined front armor.
Speaking of tilting armor, I believe that students who have played World of Tanks know the so-called "positive effect". When the armor-piercing bullet hits the surface of the armor, it will deflect in the normal direction of the armor, which will offset the inclination of the armor to a certain extent. In order to simplify the game, the angle of all the armor-piercing bullets (AP) was set to 5 degrees. However, the effect of tilting the armor was actually much more complicated. According to the tests conducted by the US military, there would only be a positive effect when the caliber of the projectile exceeded the thickness of the armor. When the caliber of the projectile was less than the thickness of the armor, there would be a "negative to positive" effect! In other words, the actual effectiveness of the tilted armor was far higher than the equivalent thickness obtained by trigonography!
An example was the IS-3 heavy tank of the Soviet Union, which had a 110mm inclination. In the game, due to the existence of the official position, the 88mm/L71 tank cannon of the country could easily penetrate the top armor of IS-3. In reality, the top armor of IS-3 was immune to the cannon at most combat distances. The problem with the Tiger tank was that the tilted body of the Tiger tank had an overwhelming defensive advantage against the Western Front's allied tanks. Even the 80mm surface carbified side armor could effectively protect the 75mm fire rod of the early Sherman tank. A Tiger tank with a 40-degree tilt would have at least 130mm of frontal equivalent armor and 125mm of side equivalent armor.
In terms of firepower, the 8.8cm kwk36 was indeed an excellent tank gun. When using the Pzgr39 apbcc (armor-piercing bullet), even at a distance of 1000 meters, it could almost guarantee the penetration of 100mm armor at a 30-degree angle. Moreover, due to the high initial velocity (800m/s), coupled with the Tzf9 scope produced by Leitz, the accuracy was also quite high. The frontal hit rate of a medium-sized tank at 1000 meters was almost 100%. The design was completed in the middle of 1941, and the official production and service were in the late 1942. At this time, the Soviets 'main T-34 was still using the 76mm F-34 main gun. When firing the AR350 armor-piercing bullet, the initial velocity was only 655m/s, and the penetration depth was only 70mm within 500 meters. This meant that it could not penetrate the Tiger at zero distance. The T-35-85 equipped with the 85mm main gun would only appear at the end of 1943. America's M4 Sherman would enter the war for the first time in October of 2042. They would still use the 75mm M3 short-barreled cannon with a muzzle velocity of 620m/s. When using armor-piercing bullets, they could only penetrate the hardened surface armor with a thickness of less than 80mm at an angle of 30 degrees at 100m. The first M4A1 equipped with a long-barreled 76mm cannon would only enter the battlefield after the Normandie landings in July of 2044.。。However, from the data, the tanks of the allied forces were indeed beaten up.
In a nutshell: the power built with cost
The cost of a Tiger tank was about the same as two IS-2s. If converted to the cheapest 1942 T-34-76, it could be made up of about 12. However, the tactical value of two IS-2s or 12 T-34- 76s (even if they were 1942 models that cut corners) was obviously much higher than that of a Tiger.
Moreover, the Tiger Style was given priority to experienced vehicles, which meant that the cost of human resources was also piled up. In fact, when the Tiger encountered IS-1, which had similar hardware and software levels (the crew was often an old driver with a guard title), it did not have any special advantage.
He tried to be all-encompassing, but everything was fair. The Tiger 1 became a famous car because only the best crew could drive it.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。