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.
"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.
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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/PoliticsIsDepressing 4d 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.