The T-34 reliability during the first years of the war was extremly poor.
“The majority of vehicles in 1941 were lost due to equipment malfunction. The same reliability problems continued during the period 1942-44. The evacuation and relocation of industrial facilities combined with the loss of skilled workers could only lead to the fall of reliability. "
" *Our armored forces and their units frequently suffer greater losses through mechanical breakdowns than they do in battle. For example, at Stalingrad Front in six days twelve of our tank brigades lost 326 out of their 400 tanks. Of those about 260 owed to mechanical problems. Many of the tanks were abandoned on the battlefield. Similar instances can be observed on other fronts. Since such a high incidence of mechanical defects is implausible, the Supreme Headquarters sees in it covert sabotage and wrecking by certain elements in the tank crews who try to exploit small mechanical troubles to avoid battle.’”
]‘‘The T-34 was supposed to be the first tank that employed sloped armor.’’
Who claims this? Seriously, who claimed this to be the case? WW1 tanks featured sloped armour already.
This seems like an argument invented by the author of the blog.
‘but turned the T-34 into a deathtrap.’’
Oh no, it’s the ‘‘The M4 was a deathtrap’’ all over again.
‘‘American experts who examined a T-34 at the Aberdeen testing grounds’’
This betrays a reliance on old western sources for the T-34 instead of using primary Soviet sources.
If we turned this situation around and judged the Panther or M4 Sherman solely on Soviet opinions, we’d also get false narratives.
‘‘However Soviet tank guns suffered from low velocity leading to poor penetration and accuracy at long ranges.’’
Then proceeds to not do a comparison between penetration values.
I’m seeing that that blog stirred up quite a lot of arguments at the time, many of which debunking his arguments.
Unfortunately it seems to have devolved into a mud slinging match.
another difference between the german and italian Pz. IV G I haven’t seen anyone mention is that the german one gets some extra track armour on the hull, though I don’t know how much it helps
No your text is all red and if you look at the rules that is reserved for moderators. I only mention it because I have seen them remove comments made in red.
I am not trying to police the forum or be pedantic just pointing it out.
I know, don’t worry.
But I’m telling you it’s literally in brown, not red (I even showed a screenshot of the text saying it’s coded as brown). Maybe it’s your monitor settings?
Anyways, this is going off topic so I’ll leave it here.
My 3 cents as to the German IV G. vs IV H. vs Italian IV G
The German IV G has the shorter gun and smoke
The Italian IV G has the longer gun and smoke
The German IV H has the longer gun and track armor
Personally, I would rather have the smoke than track armor, but at the same time the extra bit of pen doesn’t matter that much vs. the German IV G. Imho the IV Gs are actually the better tank since the longer gun doesn’t really matter, you get smoke, and you’re a bit faster.
I love playing both and played them both a hell of a lot.Thing is some tanks just fit a line up nicely.
It is nice to have plenty of choice at 3.7 BR or whatever and that is why I find moving BR like it’s trivial is such a major pain.
I play a tank for 3 years at the same BR then some fool suddenly decides it’s game breaking.Like the T34,same BR since I started then suddenly its 4BR material. Nothing about the tank changed to my knowledge and in Sweden it didn’t fit the line up I had at the time which was all 3.7.
Second best part, in that very bug report I linked an effectively identical bug report that had been done to the Japanese M4A3 (76), which weighted 32.9 tons even though it didn’t have add-on armor, and that one went through and got fixed.
But I suppose the Italian StuG III G is special or something.
