Thursday, March 28, 2013

Lies, damned lies, and statistics - The case of the unreliable Panther tank

The Panther is often castigated because it had a low serviceability rate, especially when it was first introduced in 1943. For example:

1). ‘Panther Vs T-34: Ukraine 1943’, p33 says: ‘In contrast no German panzer unit equipped with Panther Ausf D or A model tanks was able to sustain an operation readiness rate above 35 percent for any sustained period in 1943.

2). ‘Panther vs Sherman: Battle of the Bulge 1944’, p10 says: ‘The Panther's operational rate rose from an appalling 16 percent at the end of July 1943 to the merely wretched rate of 37 percent by December 1943.
Hmmm only 35%-37%? That is embarrassingly low.

Or is it?

What was the general serviceability rate for all the German tanks in the East in the same time period? According to ‘Panzertruppen vol2, p110 the German rates peaked in June ’43 at 89% and then collapsed. The average for the second half of 1943 was 44%.
Not much difference between 44% and 35% is there? Did the other German tanks also suffer from mechanical problems or were there other factors at play?

Maybe the low rates were mainly caused by the heavy fighting and lack of maintenance? Just a thought…

8 comments:

  1. Speer in his memoir (Inside the Third Reich) mentions Hitler's obsession with numbers of new Tigers and Panthers; the pressure to increase the production of tanks left little room to manufacture the replacement parts in sufficient numbers for servicing and repairing the already deployed tanks, the timely delivery of spare parts to the front units was also difficult and often neglected. So once the few available spare parts (that were included with each new tank) got used up...

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    1. That is true. Emphasis was on production of new vehicles at the expense of spare parts. You can read more in Foreign Military Studies P-040 ‘Tank Repair Service in the German Army’ - 1951.

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  2. How much of the collapse in the serviceability rate after 43 is caused by the large scale introduction of the Panther.

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    1. From ‘Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis’ there are 204 Panthers in the East on 30 June 1943 (roughly 2.300 tanks total) and 349 on 31 December 1943 (roughly 1.900 tanks total)

      Jentz in ‘Tiger I and II combat tactics' gives the operational rates for Pz IV, Panther and Tiger for May 44, Sept-Jan 45 and March 45. If you calculate the average without March 45 (due to collapse of Germany) you’d get Eastern Front: Pz IV-71 , Panther -65 , Tiger-72 – Western Front: Pz IV-71 , Panther -68 , Tiger-71 .

      Different vehicles, same stats.

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    2. Christos, I know that this is a VERY old discussion, but as I was reading through, I have to ask, would you have any idea as to how much of an impact sabotage had on Wehrmacht vehicle maintenance? I ask because it is know that the Germans were very pressed for technically skilled labor and tradesmen, so they were forced to rely on labor drawn from occupied territory.

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    3. I don’t know if there are any accurate statistics available on sabotage at the plants so I’m afraid I can’t answer your question. Apart from actual sabotage you could have quality problems in the last years of the war caused by the shortage of raw materials, the Allied bombings and the dislocation of German industry and of course by the exhaustion of the underfed/overworked work force. I can tell you that the Luftwaffe used to spend fuel testing each newly produced aircraft for a few hours to make sure it worked right. In the last years fuel shortages meant that this check was scaled back so some of these planes often malfunctioned during combat missions.

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    4. Those duel books are just terrible! The match ups don't make any sense, the details of the vehicles being discussed, are often full of errors or based off of older variants specifically to prove the author's view point.
      The Panther is painted very generally as a mechanically unreliable vehicle. No attention is given to variant changes and fixes that the Panther series under went rather every issue is universally dumped on the entire series without concern if the issue was fixed or not.
      The final drives where modified and strengthened by the G series some claim that despite this the Panther G still suffered higher reliability related issues than other vehicles ( usually with no sources). In any case the reliability of the late Panthers is far superior to the earlier vehicles and this is on record in primary sources these lazy "duel" book regurgitate popular "knowledge" or more accurately put popular ignorance.

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    5. They are a product sold to a specific audience. Not all Osprey books are terrible but yeah those two have many problems. The T-34 book will say it was the best tank in the known universe, the M-4 will say it was a war winner unlike the German tanks etc etc. They’re not even internally consistent. If the T-34 was so great why was it slaughtered in WWII and Korea? If the M-4 was a war winner compared to the ‘slow’, ‘heavy’ and ‘unreliable’ German tanks why was it replaced by the ‘slow’, ‘heavy’ and ‘unreliable’ M-26 Pershing?

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