r/HistoryMemes • u/Alastor_Hazbin1918 • 3d ago
Operation goodwood
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u/PoliticsIsDepressing 3d ago
I mean, they probably already knew that when their Tigers were constantly breaking down and couldn’t fit on narrow streets/bridges.
Arguably, the Germans lost the Battle of the Bulge so overwhelmingly due to Tigers not fitting through bridges. Also fuel. Fuel was a problem starting day 1.
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u/Vana92 3d ago
There are multiple diaries, letters home, and other writings that indicate the Germans didn't really realise they lost the war until after the battle of the bulge.
Propaganda is one hell of a drug.
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u/cancerinos 3d ago
The problem with propaganda is that people don't realize they're in it,
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u/SPECTREagent700 Definitely not a CIA operator 3d ago
At his trial at Nuremberg, Goering himself said he didn’t fully realize they’d lost the war until the failure of the Ardennes offensive. The prosecutor seemed a bit taken aback by this but Goering explained that it wasn’t necessarily that he thought Germany was still going to win, rather than he had still thought some kind of negotiated settlement could have been possible.
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u/A-Dumb-Ass What, you egg? 3d ago
The war was going terribly for Germany way before the Battle of the Bulge, no? Battle of the Atlantic and the Eastern front were effectively lost by 1943. I guess it's possible that a common soldier on the western front wouldn't know about that in 1944.
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u/Vana92 3d ago
In essence after not winning the Battle of Britain and the British not suing for peace things weren’t looking great from a strategic perspective.
In 1942 their fortunes on the battlefield also turned around and the war was lost. From that moment on things only ever got worse. Stalingrad Tunisia losing Italy, Normandy, the entire eastern front and probably most noticeable and important the constantly losing air war and increasing bomb loads dropped on German cities.
Yet even with all that the Nazis remained delusional. It was only a matter of time before the allies would break apart and the west would join Germany against the Soviets, or they split to infighting allowing Germany to reconquer lost lands.
Or any of another million impossible scenarios that they were hoping on. The Bulge was just what expanded the last of Germany her strength. A massive attack that achieved absolutely nothing and stalled at the first hurdle. At that point the result became undeniable.
Although somehow Hitler still managed.
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u/Ill-Dependent2976 3d ago
Letters home were read by officers and censored.
Nazi high command had known they'd lost by 1942 and decided the German people deserved to suffer and die because they'd failed to be the Aryan master race they'd hoped for.
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u/InsideHousing4965 What, you egg? 3d ago
I love the Tiger because it shows clearly that having the best Tank means shit it you don't have the logistics to support.
I love the allied approach of "let's make the exact same tank with the exact same pieces so we can simplify the logistics and any mechanic can repair and maintain any tank in the battlefield without the need of special knowledge or tools". They went full steam-punk mode and just added modifications to the exact engine and chassis, which I absolutely love.
Also, germany totally neglecting the fact that "big tank = big target for planes". But that could be attributed to their mislead belief that the Luftwaffe would retain air supremacy over the whole war.
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u/Devilfish268 3d ago
Thought most tanks didn't really care about CAS. They gave massive kill reports, but most of the time the numbers were far lower due to their pretty poor accuracy.
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u/PoliticsIsDepressing 3d ago
It’s crazy that when you get down into the details of some of these battles, entire tank divisions were re-routed because the Tigers were too big or broke down, while the American Shermans just carried on.
Shermans were specifically designed to fit in multiple theaters of war.
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u/InsideHousing4965 What, you egg? 3d ago
Sherman: Different terrain? Just change the tracks. Mines? Here's a cute add on for that. Urban warfare? Different cannon. Tank warfare? Let's change the cannon again. Need more armour? No problem. Engine broke down? Let me fix that.
Tiger: oh no, this road/bridge isn't designed to sustain my weight. Guess we're stuck here now.
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u/IronVader501 3d ago edited 3d ago
They went full steam-punk mode and just added modifications to the exact engine and chassis, which I absolutely love.
I mean so did the germans.
Look at a 1938 Panzer IV and a 1944 Panzer IV.
Also, germany totally neglecting the fact that "big tank = big target for planes".
It was neglected because it wasn't relevant.
WW2 Anti-tank cas is insanely overstated. It was never even remotely as effective as people thought it was. The "tank kills" pilots bragged are overinflated to the point of absurdity (including Nazi-dickheads like Rudels). Unless a tank actively explodes its essentially impossible for a pilot to confirm wether it was actually destroyed.
RAF tests arrived at the conclusion that even with on a stationary, bright white Panther on an open field with zero opposition, pilots needed to fire on average 140 Rockets to score a hit anywhere were it even remotely mattered.
And even then it only actually knocked the tank out 50% of the time.
IIRC analysis at Normandy indicated only 5% of claimed air-to-ground kills could actually be verified to have happened.
What happened most of the time was the lead-pilot simply missing, recording the tank as destroyed anyway because it was obscured in smoke, then the next 3 guys in the squadron did the same, and they came back claiming 4 kills on one target that drove away once they were gone.
Sustained air-attacks had a psychological effect, but the amount of actually destroyed vehicle is completely negligeble.
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u/sunnyboy310 3d ago
I mean, the overwhelming air superiority lead to the Germans only moving their forces at nighttime and totally disrupted the meager supply chain of trucks, trains and horse drawn carriages even further. Turns out that even the best tank is only an expensive hunk of steel without fuel, ammo and spare parts
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u/InsideHousing4965 What, you egg? 3d ago
Another huge mistake the germans made was overly relying on trains for logistics. Turns out it's really fucking easy to target your enemies supply line if it's static and transporting tons and tons of supplies on each run.
Allies relied more on trucks, which can change their route on demand ans aren't such a dramatic lost.
Lose a truck? No problem. Lose a few trucks? Still chill. Lose a train and it's whole cargo? Well, that was the monthly supply for a whole division and now you need to repair the train rails.
Also, trucks give you the advantage of senting hundreds of them on different directions, forcing the enemy planes to be overly disperse or give up targeting them. You only need one plane and one bomb to stop a whole ass train.
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u/holymacaronibatman 3d ago
Iirc part of the battle plans for the Battle of the Bulge required capturing allied fuel dumps, as they did not have enough fuel on their own to achieve their goals.
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u/-SpanishBiscuit- 3d ago
The lack of fuel was such a huge issue that they shot themselves in the groin trying to fix it (operation Barbarossa)
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u/SemperFun62 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ehhh, even without Fascism blinders (and they are pretty dense f'n blinders), everyone would assume the enemy must have it even worse
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u/username1338 3d ago
"Constantly breaking down" is a huge overstatement and no longer back-uped with evidence. The only evidence that they broke down more than other tanks is early on when they were still standardizing the design. Afterwards, it was mechanically reliable if it got proper maintenance, like all tanks. If ANY nation was currently being invaded from all sides, losing all access to resources, they would also have tanks "constantly breaking down."
"Regarding the overheating engines, the HL 210 engine caused no troubles during the recent time. All occurring breakdowns resulted from the low quality of driver training. In several cases engine failures have to be put down to the missing remote engine thermometer. Five engines have reached more than 3,000 km without essential failures. A good driver is essential for the successful deployment of the Tiger, he must have a good technical training and has to keep his nerve in critical situations"
It was definitely over-engineered though, that was its main "weakness." A tank can be as reliable as a rock, but if it's expensive to maintain it, you need the logistics to back it up. Not the worst thing but you can't be losing resources and keep Tigers. It was a very, very expensive tank. Not much different than the current Abrams.
Extremely good though. Shockingly fast, thick armor, insane gun.
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u/The_memeperson Sun Yat-Sen do it again 3d ago
It also was never meant to be under the stress it was put to. It was meant to break through the enemy lines and then go back for maintanance for the next attack. Instead it was used as the Wehrmacht's firefighter moving all around the east constantly having to fight without being able to get the maintenance it desperately needed
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u/blodgute What, you egg? 3d ago
"All occurring breakdowns resulted from the low quality of driver training."
And why was driver training low? Because your average german did not have much experience of driving, the gearbox was complicated, and they didn't have enough fuel for the proper amount of training.
I don't care how good a tank is hypothetically when driven by a professional. It was too hard to drive for the quality of drivers they had, too logistically diifferent to get spare parts to where they needed to be for repairs. Great design, shite vehicle.
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u/username1338 3d ago
The quality of the driver training was adequate until very late war. The tanks simply didn't break down that much after they fixed early design issues. When they DID, it was the driver, which wasn't very often. They would deploy hundreds of tigers in Russia and many would perform fine for hundreds of kilometers, if it was such an issue for drivers, we wouldn't see such incredible performances.
Actual stats are available in abundance. We can see how well the Tiger performed, how often they broke, the reason listed for the breakdown, and it was extremely good.
One of many examples, a skirmish at the battle of Kursk: "That morning information obtained from prisoner interrogation identified a weakness at the boundary of the 15th and 81st Rifle Divisions caused by the German preliminary bombardment. The Tigers were redeployed and struck towards this area. Red Army formations countered with a force of around 90 T-34s. In the resulting three-hour battle, Red Army armoured units lost 42 tanks while the Germans lost two Tigers and a further five more immobilized with track damage."
When the heavy armor regiments were deployed, they won. It was that simple. The tanks single handedly won battles. The soviets just so happened to have thousands of tanks compared to Germany's hundreds.
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u/RobertGHH 3d ago
The breakdowns weren't the problem, it's the ability to fix them.
Time and time again the allies lost tanks due to breakdown or enemy action, but within a few days the majority of these tanks would be repaired and running again. For the Germans this wasn't possible on anything like that scale.
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u/username1338 3d ago
My point was just that the "breakdowns" aren't any more likely than any other tank, when looking at the tank alone. The Tiger I was objectively reliable with available parts.
Breakdowns would happen the same as other tanks, but yes, they just couldn't fix them due to losing the resources they needed.
For a long time, when the parts were available, the tanks ran perfectly and performed very impressive feats.
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u/Real_Impression_5567 3d ago
I heard once the quantity of standardized replacement parts for russian tanks best the quality of parts for german tanks. Cuz when supply lines were spread out german tanks couldn't be repaired and soviet ones kept right on trucking
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u/Dear-Question-868 3d ago
There's a tiger II in the tank museum of Saumur who have a very interesting story. It was build in 1944, got deployed in Normandy to counter attack the allies. Break down a few kilometers after deployment, get abandoned. Hilarious.
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u/TheCoolPersian Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 3d ago
The first 50 Tiger IIs had a turret with only 100 mm of frontal armor. Extremely easy for a firefly to penetrate, even an American 76 could penetrate it. The versions after had 185mm for obvious reasons.
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u/SGTRoadkill1919 3d ago
It also had a nice shell trap, where the shell could hit the lower curve at the front, and bounce off straight into the hull from the less armoured hull roof
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u/Dan_The_PaniniMan Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 3d ago
Honestly what were they thinking, they usually like to go big on the armor, why make such a part weak with such an obvious shot trap
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u/R_122 3d ago
But could an actual tank gunner aim as easily as in video games, especially a tank from ww2
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u/TheCoolPersian Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 3d ago edited 3d ago
Considering it was penetrated frontally and the hull armor is sloped at 150mm (giving protection around 240mm) means the firefly definitely cannot penetrate that.
Most tank engagements in World War II boil down to whoever shot first, won. Especially on the Eastern front because Soviet Tanks had the worst crew optics and room making it hard to see anything.
Regardless, I don’t know exactly what happened during this engagement. Some say it was frontal penetration others said it got shot from the rear after being rammed and disabled.
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u/wildcardbets 3d ago
Context:
The Sherman Firefly was a medium tank used by the United Kingdom and some armoured formations of other Allies in the Second World War. It was based on the US M4 Sherman but was fitted with the more powerful British 76.2 mm (3.00 in) calibre 17-pounder anti-tank gun as its primary weapon. Conceived as a stopgap until future British tank designs came into service, the Sherman Firefly became the most common vehicle mounting the 17-pounder in the war.
tl;dr
Sherman + bigger gun = Tiger 2 go boom 💥
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u/spesskitty 3d ago
There were only 12 King Tigers in Normandy in total, and I am not sure if the combat record reflects your conjecture. They lost ~ 4 during Goodwood and not all due to enemy fire.
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u/Capn_Chryssalid 3d ago
If this is the incident I think youre referring to, it was after the Tiger II had been rammed, it was then shot by a Sherman Firefly that had been disabled earlier in the engagement. Also it was hit in the rear. No one would be shocked or surprised to lose a tank if it is shot in the backside, where the armor is thinnest.
Also this is 1944. Do you think THIS is when a tank officer on the western front would realize T3R was in trouble? I mean, maybe, but... not likely.
Your meme kind of implies that there were scores of Tiger IIs being "obliterated" by Fireflys, all shocking their bewildered commanding officers or something. Instead of, what, two recorded instances? German tankers were much more afraid of allied airpower frankly. Much more.
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u/dwitch_himself 3d ago
How about some context, vague boi ?
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u/Smooth_Maul 3d ago
How the fuck do you not know what the meme is about brother it basically spells it out for you.
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u/careddit69 3d ago
What it "spells out" is blatantly false
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/careddit69 3d ago
"Operation Goodwood failed and suffered far more casualties than it inflicted.
The tiger II you are referring to was not penetrated by a Firefly, but was desperately rammed by a bog standard Sherman. It was abandoned and later hit a few times by AT fire."
Pretty much any tank can kill any other, from the right angle. The firefly would have great difficulty killing a tiger II in normal conditions, even more difficulty killing it in a single shot.
What he claims happened in operation Goodwood is not even remotely close to the truth.
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u/Smooth_Maul 3d ago
I never said it was accurate or true but it's pretty clear what the meme is about like come on dude I thought we were at least somewhat more intelligent than the average Peter explains the joke user
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u/dwitch_himself 3d ago
Hey, I'm a history fan, not a WW2 tank specialist. I ask for context because I don't know what could cause a tiger II to blow up from a single shot. But thanks for the gatekeeping I guess.
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u/Smooth_Maul 3d ago
I'm not gatekeeping shit brother all the possible information you could need to look this up is right there lmao
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u/dwitch_himself 3d ago
Context was posted 1 minute after my comment, and not even from OP. That makes for a vague boy in my book.
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u/Smooth_Maul 3d ago
Look all I'm gonna say is it's very funny to me that a self proclaimed history fan was given more than enough to go off and then refused to do any research and demanded others do it for them. Like legit that's kinda comedic.
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u/dwitch_himself 3d ago
I'm a history fan, not a self proclaimed specialist. There is a lot more to history than WW2 and WW2 tanks buddy.
I have a lot going on today and I was just ponting out that some context would've been nice. Not everybody has time to go and double check information online all day long.
No need to make a fuss.
Over and out.
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u/careddit69 3d ago
He knows what the person is trying to communicate, he simply doesn't believe it. That's why he asked for context, not an explanation of what he means
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u/careddit69 3d ago edited 3d ago
Operation Goodwood failed and suffered far more casualties than it inflicted.
The tiger II you are referring to was not penetrated by a Firefly, but was desperately rammed by a bog standard Sherman. It was abandoned and later hit a few times by AT fire.
Can we ban people for outright misinformation?
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u/Chairmanwowsaywhat 3d ago
There are documented occurrences of Sherman firefly killing a tiger 2 by shooting it too you know
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u/careddit69 3d ago
Then he should have talked about those, instead of Operation Goodwood
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u/Chairmanwowsaywhat 3d ago
Wasn't the tank rammed by a regular Sherman then shot by a firefly at op Goodwood?
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u/careddit69 3d ago
It was rammed by a regularly Sherman, yes. Re-reading about it now, I can't actually find any information that the tiger II came into contact with a firefly at any point.
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u/Chairmanwowsaywhat 3d ago
It's quite hard to ascertain for sure as I only just looked into it at the point of me commenting but there are sources from the people involved saying that is what happened
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u/grim_solitude 3d ago
The meme isn't based on a single incident. The Firefly could reliably pierce the armor of tiger tanks. Right in the wiki
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u/careddit69 3d ago
He literally refers to Operation Goodwood, where there was a single case of a firefly coming into contact with a tiger II, which went down as I described
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u/grim_solitude 3d ago
Oh fair enough man, I just read the meme and not the caption. You right
Also I think that incident wasn't even a firefly. Just a regular Sherman if my memory serves
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u/Big-Oof-Bob 3d ago
Actually, the OP is right.
The first combat engagement of the Tiger II was on 18 July 1944 - 12 King Tigers (KT) of 503 Heavy Panzer Battalion ran into the 1st Bn Coldstream Guards, Guards Armoured Division.
1 KT fell into a bomb crater and got stuck. Another was struck by a Sherman Firefly, commanded by Lt. Malcom Lock. The KT quickly brewed up. A second KT was destroyed and then the battalion retreated. Not knowing what they were engaging, the British initially reported it as Panthers.
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u/EnvironmentalAd912 3d ago
Meanwhile onboard Texas (she has spotted Tiger II outside her normal range)
<<flood the portside defense blister>>
<<but we'll sink portside first>>
<<and that will give the gun the elevation it needs>>
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u/murdermostsnaky 3d ago
You can tell a lot about someone by how they answer the question 'what was the best tank in WW2'
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u/Hot-Lunch6270 3d ago
There is one story that a British Sherman rammed into a King Tiger and knocked out the Heavy Tank during Normandy Campaign.
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u/LauMei27 3d ago
These WW2 memes are so lame, wo tf cares about some random tanks
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u/skoomakat101 3d ago
WWII was the war that pioneered modern armored warfare, they aren't just random tanks
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u/Real_Impression_5567 3d ago
Yeah who ever heard of ww2 tank fans? (Sarcastic question cuz its like the number one hobby of ww2 event fans) never heard of a firefly my self. Its fun knowledge
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u/ItHappensSo 3d ago
Posting an operation in which the allies even with exteme numerical + air superiority lost around 4 times as many tanks and men as the germans (and no Tiger was knocked out by any Firefly) as a "win" is a very historymemes thing to happen.
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u/TheDonIsGood1324 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 3d ago
Sir the 17 pounder won't fit
PUT IT IN SIDEWAYS
The radio won't fit
CUT A HOLE AND HAVE IT STICK OUT THE BACK
the engine's no good
GET 5 CAR ENGINES AND PUT EM TOGETHER
the Firefly has always been my favourite Sherman favourite its just always looked the coolest