Snippet on the Tiger tank

[CINDERS]

A small cut with scissors or a small piece of information, but some interesting stuff has come out and I hope others have learned a bit and got enjoyment from the thread.

---------- Post added at 10:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 PM ----------

Funny thing is Gil the WWI tanks were issued with a bag of salt which they threw it out the side visor slits to keep the snails from overtaking them otherwise they lost traction. OOPPS? sorry just had a stoopid moment !!!!!!!!!

[kettbo]

CINDERS
earlier you said 45* angle vs front head-on. seemed to be too much.
Check this out, I stumbled onto this tonight, what fun!
WWII Gun vrs Armour Calculator

this calculator indicates 30* is ideal....very useful tool. I do like the "Maybe" zone. In the advanced features, you can doctor things up a bit. Like any calculator, it does not calculate for hitting a storage bin or corner of something...but a pretty good representation
Let me know what you think.

[CINDERS]

From my original post #1 When engaging targets. Tiger crews were encouraged to angle the hull position 45 degrees to the Mahlzeit Stellung of 10 ½ or 1 ½ o'clock. This would maximize the effective front hull armour to 180mm and side hull to 140mm, making the Tiger impervious to any Allied gun up to 152 mm.

Thanks kettbo not a bad thing to play around with saved it cheers

[BushyFromOz]

Well you will just have to stay mad then BFO .....compare the ballistics at the top thread and below compared to the attachment for the 75mm M-4 to the one below it was the ineptness and material superiority that defeated the Tigers plus 24 x 7 bombing did not help either. I may not respect what certain elements of the German heirachy did nor some units but the tankers were very well trained and good at the game you cannot deny that. How long did it take for the allies to build a ground based weapon that would go toe to toe and win the Russians had to build the IS series as the T34/85 could still have issues getting close enough.

Comparing a medium tank to a heavy tank is not an apples to apples comparison

For starters, the us had to ship there armor from the other side of the planet and were limited by the maximum load that dockside cranes could lift. When the 6 Pershing were shipped to theatre my understanding is it was a logistical nightmare to get 6 units into the field and support them due to their sheer size let alone support them. Britain could add as much armor as they wanted to any platform but were always stuck with small turret rings as they did not have available the heavy industry to make chassis with bigger turret rings to fit bigger guns - aka massive Churchill with 75mm pop gun

The Sherman was the equal of any medium tank the Germans had until the Panther materialized at Kursk - no one knew anything about the panther until then

[Daan Kemp]

British tank sizes were dictated by rail transport width. Thus tank width for rail travel resulted in small turret rings to be able to get the tank carrying trains through tunnels. I know, but that was the thinking then.

[WarPig1976]

through tunnels.

And along the same vein, Swedish tanks where horizontally thin to cope with Swedish road bridges.

[CINDERS]

BFO ~ they were not the same one could say the M-4 was not a heavy in relation to facing a Tiger though some interesting tid bits 1. the crews in the M-4's had courage beyond reproach, now whether the information supplied by the commanders hatch on there only being 4 recorded M-4/Tiger contacts seems a bit inconsistent with the battle fields the way they were and the disposition of units, anyway thats what he stated. In fact Montgomery forbade the word "Tiger" to be used in describing the tank due to Tiger phobia. 2. the Panthers I think over 200 were sent to Kursk and I think @80% of them suffered mechanical break downs or fires before they got to the battle, the T-34 was well progressed prior to WWII starting it was not something that the Russians just thought up and developed quickly it was just a very well kept secret. 3. the M-4 crews must have has devastating affect on the Japanese types of tanks when they encountered them as the Sherman would have opened them up like butter they were that inferior sort of like the Tiger/M-4 1 on 1.

Poor leadership stopped allot of potentially war winning weapons from getting the correct go ahead and thank goodness it happened that way otherwise the world would be a very dark void had the allied forces not triumphed and for their sacrifice of those soldiers fighting for freedom I shall be eternally grateful.

[henry r]

British tank sizes were dictated by rail transport width. Thus tank width for rail travel resulted in small turret rings to be able to get the tank carrying trains through tunnels. I know, but that was the thinking then.

That makes perfect sense. The road networks as we know them now simply didn't exist then (with the exception of the autobahns in germany) and heavy vehicles of the time also bear no relation to what we have now.
Railways were THE way to transport large amounts of goods efficiently.

I'm not sure on the dates for these or how/if it varied between companies but the standard wagon width in england was 9' vs 10' 6" for the us.
This is oversimplifying it, but, railways are built so that all rolling stock will fit inside a set loading gauge and all structures are outside a set envelope based off the track centre line. There is a clearance built in between the two sets of dimensions so any rolling stock can run anywhere on the system.

The clearance built in means you can run out of gauge loads in wagons up to a certain point but there are lots of rules and regulations to be followed. Plus lots of checks and calculations that need to be done first. Heavy speed restrictions often apply too. Not what you want to be doing during wartime.
There are obviously limits to how far out of loading gauge you can go, if you shipped a wagon built to us specs to the uk it would probably hit the first piece of inferstructure it passed.

[Flying10uk]

It wasn't just the width of the train that had/has to taken into consideration but also of equal importance is the height, off the rails, of the combined wagon and whatever is on the wagon. Different parts of the U.K. rail network did and still do have different "loading gauges" and although all standard gauge rail in the U.K. is now 4' 8 1/2" the "loading gauges" differ between different parts of the network. Part of the reason for this differing "loading gauge" on the U.K. rail network is due to the fact that at one time we operated 2 sizes of "standard gauge" rail. We had the size that I have just mentioned and a significantly larger gauge designed by Brunel, known as Broad Gauge, with a significant amount of track and infrastructure built to this wider gauge. After much argument and debate it was decided to convert all Broad Gauge rail tract/infrastructure over to the smaller 4' 8 1/2" gauge which was more widely used. Generally, rail lines in the U.K. that were originally built for Broad Gauge trains but then converted to the smaller gauge are likely to have larger/bigger loading gauges than lines that were originally built for the smaller gauge track. This is because much of the infrastructure such as over bridges, tunnels and cuttings etc etc remain, as built, wide enough to accommodate the wider Broad Gauge train.

[BushyFromOz]

the crews in the M-4's had courage beyond reproach, now whether the information supplied by the commanders hatch on there only being 4 recorded M-4/Tiger contacts seems a bit inconsistent with the battle fields the way they were and the disposition of units.

I think he was talking US units encountering tigers. Plenty of examples of British armored units finding tigers. I also like the point he made about every PzIV with schutzen armor looking like a tiger form the right distance and angle