>>64407986mostly they were thinking either "how do we build more of these" or "how do we keep this relevant"in the case of the mark H, they increased the frontal armor to 80mm, because the 50mm was really vulnerable to soviet 76mm guns and even the british had switched to 75mm and 6-pdr guns that could pierce the front at most rangesthe schurzen was primarily due to the soviet 14.5mm AT rifles, and a 5mm mild steel skirt was cheaper than increasing the thickness of the rolled armor steel sidessure, it made the ammo-loading hatches useless, but keeping the crew from being ventilated is probably more important than making reloading the tank slightly faster
Same as with the Bf 109 — both were pre-war designs that Germany kept upgrading over and over. Switching production to something superior would have been industrial suicide, so they stuck with what they had. But those pre-war designs made upgrading difficult, which meant some issues were never fully solved.
>>64407999>the schurzen was primarily due to the soviet 14.5mm AT riflesThisI didn't believe it until I read up more on tested effectiveness of schurzen and other spaced armour of WW2It's true
>>64407986Cope plates.>>64408072Great Nazi economics, huh? On top of sticking to a peace-time economy until the very last moment and holding onto competitive, market-based procurement systems for the benefit of your corporate cronies, having such superior technology and science to back it up, you run yourself into an industrial dead end.I hate Nazis for many reasons, but triggering my autism with their 4D Technicolor incompetence is a very personal one.
>>64407986METAL BOXES!
In reality, HEAT warhead appears to have maintained its penetration power over considerable distances, but Schurzen would have been effective against spalling caused by direct hit from HE shell.
Best german tank btw
>>64408226>Best german tank btwStug
>>64408144>sticking to a peace-time economyExploded mythRead your Adam Tooze
>>64408208>HEAT warheadNot very common at the time
>>64407999>sure, it made the ammo-loading hatches useless,this is why i still keep coming here. i didnt know that desu.
>>64408231technically not a tankthey werent even part of the panzers, falling under the purview of artillery>>64408208schurzen could have stopped a bazooka, tests against the side of the panther showed that relatively thin road wheels would have provided enough stand-off to stop a penetrationbut it could have easily also made the penetration worse, since the mechanical fuzes actually had too little sensitivity and would go off too close to enemy armor, so the skirts could delayed the fuze and cause the round to detonate closer to its optimum standoff
>>64408266you can see it clearly on older panzer IVs, sometimes they get forced open when the ammo brews upto be fair to the panzer VI H, theres actually a hinge on the schurzen in front of where the hatch is, so you can still sorta use the ammo hatches, albeit at greatly reduced efficiencythe hatches was removed entirely on the model J as a cost-cutting measuresince the hatch made it harder to produce the turret, the hinges on the skirts made it harder to produce, and the benefit of having the hatch was compromised already
>>64408275oh misremembered that, the J has the hatches on the side tooit was the pistol ports that were removed
>>64408244Yeah, and? They didn't start moving over to a war economy until 1943 and didn't reach that until early 1944, curtailing the civilian economy to direct the full attention of their industrial capacity to war production only by the time it was too late.The Bongs had started working on that half a decade earlier.
Hardening of armor surface, which had a high shattering effect against small-caliber bullets, was gradually omitted, so to compensate for this, it was necessary to use a Schurzen, which would distort the bullet's posture as it penetrated.
>>64408072The Bf 109 was an ok design besides the landing gear. Its aerodynamic was completely redesigned during mid war (including the info gathered from the Bf 209), the problem was the size but that doesn't matter for its original role: local defense.
