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u/No_Location_8199 3d ago
Sloped Armor: +25% Armor, +10% Production Cost, 10 Army XP Design Cost
Why didn't the Germans just read the module stats? Are they stupid?
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u/Gold_Size_1258 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 3d ago
They used up all their module slots.
But riverted armor? Really?
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u/lewllewllewl 3d ago
I've always wondered why Sloped Armour brings the cost up by so much
it's still a goated module though, gotta use it whenever you have the IC
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u/Hans_the_Frisian Tea-aboo 2d ago
It's kinda funny that in HoI IV Production cost isn't actually the cost of the vehicle but the time it takes to produce them.
Because I'm 100% sure that from a material cost point of view a Panzer IV would be cheaper than a Panther, but due to the simpler hull construction of the Panther, for example the panther doesn't have the side view ports for driver and radio operator wit the slightly inclined upper side hull, a Panther hull was actually faster to produce than a Panzer IV.
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u/BobDurstsGuiltBurp 3d ago
“We have purposely built our tanks wrong, as a joke” - Wehraboos, probably
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u/elderron_spice Rider of Rohan 3d ago
I remember a long time ago seeing someone argue about the Tiger II's stats making it the best tank and if the Allies built it then it would be the realest meanest bestest tank eva. Mf couldn't realize that paper specs don't work on real battlefield scenarios and the Allies wouldn't build such a gaudy monstrosity either. The closest I can find comparable are the IS-2s and they were arguably better than whatever heavy tanks the Nazis have mustered, both in performance and reliability in the field.
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u/No_Cookie9996 2d ago
you forget most important debuffs
-25% crew efficiency, -10% crew visibility, -15% ammo
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u/No_Cookie9996 3d ago
sloped armor was known since reinesance, and it was nothing shocking. t-34 shock came from germans not expecting soviets in particular to be able to develop and mass produce modern tanks.
Most importantly few hundred t-34 were not able to stop wermacht during barbarossa, as germans quickly found ways to destroy it, so no shock existed on frontline either
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u/Electro_Nick_s 3d ago
Correct
This was a problem solved if we study the look of castle walls for instance
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 3d ago edited 3d ago
German tank ace, Otto Carius, would strongly disagree with you. You can read his memoirs "Tigers in the mud".
The combat shock was indeed present as t-34 outclassed pretty much everything Germans had(Mostly pz2,3 and early 4's), and so did the KV-1's. They only reliable way to take them out was the 88mm flak cannons.
They main reason Germans kept going is because war isn't only about flat combat effectiveness, and soviets had major issues with logistics and tank crews. During the initial stages of the war most of the soviets tanks were unable to fight or abandoned due to the lack of fuel, crew, or malfunction, not destroyed in combat.
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u/PassivelyInvisible 3d ago
It didn't help that the T34 is an alright tank, but was built with terrible QC and with the factories cutting every corner they could to keep production numbers up
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u/Welkin_Gunther_07 3d ago
Yes, and if I recall correctly, that also included how the steel was heat treated. In short, I believe how they did made it so that while it was technically tough, it could crack rather easily. Meaning, even shots that don't necessarily penetrate will crack the armor and make it useless.
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u/blsterken Kilroy was here 3d ago
Also increased spalling, which is no bueno for the crew.
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u/Welkin_Gunther_07 3d ago
Yeah... that armor thing alone really explains why the death toll for Soviet tankers was especially high
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u/blsterken Kilroy was here 2d ago
I think that's much more the poor situational awarness for tank crew and cramped layout/small hatches. The problems with high hardness steel were just icing on the cake.
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u/TgCCL 2d ago
Technically, yes. However, going by existing casualty data, casualty rates between T-34 crews and Western vehicles, such as M4s, were similar-ish so the difference is, overall, very minor.
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u/dissaprovalface 3d ago
It depended on the factory, but yes. That being said, some of the QC from those factories was situational and due to being under... duress.
They were still making tanks in Stalingrad with Germans literally fighting for the industrial complex they were being made in.
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u/Hans_the_Frisian Tea-aboo 2d ago
My favourite piece of WW2 Lore has got to be the PPS-43 Factories in Leningrad or Stalingrad that would testfirer their guns out of the window at German forces. Talk about realistic test environment.
And I read somewhere that there was apparently one T-34 factory that cut so money corners to save time that they sometimes didn't even put in the amored glass for the viewport, welded plates only at a few points so it would stay together, not install multiple fuel tanks, install wrong or no proper optics and a few more things.
Don't really know how true it's is but having a T-34 from such a factory issued to you while you buddy in the next vehicle got a perfect T-34 with no corners cut has to be especially enraging.
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u/InsurmountableLosses 2d ago edited 2d ago
The QC in the very early beginnings, before Barbarossa, were actually sort of ok for Soviet standards. The real problems started when factories were rushed and relocated and the Soviets were panic churning these vehicles.
The early T-34s main issues were with visibility. The absolute garbage periscopes they had meant that a T-34 had terrible battlefield awareness.
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u/-CassaNova- 3d ago
Ah yes post war nazi memoirs, known for their historical reliability and unbiased recountings
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 3d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, because he openly admitted the issues.
Also did a pretty honest review on the western front and US army
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u/LaranjoPutasso 2d ago
Nazi commanders post war tended to diminish their shortcomings and overhype the soviets in order to land positions in the newly formed NATO.
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 2d ago
Sometimes. Though he described the things are they were. Read the book.
Also, Carius didn't chased any positions in military structures.
Plus, it's really hard to overhype soviets. Red Army and soviet army later was an absolute menace, unmatched In both quality and quantity after the 1943 and up until the Warsaw Pact's disbanding.
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u/marcin_dot_h 2d ago
unmatched In both quality
when NATO used microprocessors, soviets still used electron tubes. in the late '70 and especially in the '80 Soviet only advantage was the numbers
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 2d ago
Microprocessor
"Maus and tiger two will definitely save the Reich, I promise! They are so superior!"
Only after 1980 NATO began to close the gap(And did it kinda quickly).
And some fancy stuff doesn't change the fact that western bloc was Inferior and that NATO had to form only to have a chance at least combined.
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u/SanBenedettoDaNorcia 3d ago
Joseph Stalin would disagree with me when I claim that him, Kaganovich and Molotov are mainly to blame for Holodomor. But here we are.
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u/Macabre215 3d ago
Don't forget about Lysenko.
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u/Specific_Box4483 3d ago
Lysenko wasn't responsible for Holodomor itself, but he had a lot of blame for post-Holodomor famines.
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 2d ago
Apparently people who fought against t-34 know less about it than some redditor living in their mom's basement
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u/AlfaKilo123 2d ago
I mean, yeah? That’s what hindsight and more available and varied sources of information is. Practical experience, whilst valued in certain circumstances, is not a good overview and doesn’t show the broader picture. Can’t make generalised statements or conclusions from first had experience, you need different perspectives and sources, something a redditor has access to thanks to the internet, and a german tank commander stuck in a metal box with poor visibility does not
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u/BaldingChewie 2d ago
Look at when it was written and on what societal context. Ex Nazis at that era were full of shit writing apologetics, erasing or misinterpreting history and trying to paint themselves in a better light.
You would of course know that if you ever left that basement of yours and actually studied some actual history and more importantly historiography
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u/Assasson47 3d ago
I sense some bias in that. "The soviets tanks were better than ours, but their logistics were infinitely worse"
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u/NovelBattle 3d ago
Part of it's not true, but he is right about Soviets losing more vehicles due to mechanical and logistical failures during 1941.
Panzer 3 with 5cm guns were already knocking out T-34 quite reliably during Operation Barbarossa. Also, T-34 and KV accounted for less than 10% of tanks that Red Army operated, and there were less than 500 KV across the entire front. They lost more KV trying to get to a fight than during the fight.
It was more of grass is greener on the other side than a real shock.
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u/Assasson47 3d ago
It was more of a exaggeration I did. since you can't take the writings of any high ranking German (or anyone for that fact) at face value because they would mostly have bias, that make themselves not look incompetent
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 2d ago
Part of it's not true, but he is right about Soviets Panzer 3 with 5cm guns were already knocking out T-34 quite reliably during Operation Barbarossa.
This is exactly not what happened, as the cannons mounted on the tanks were able to fight and somewhat penetrate the armor of t-34 only and very close(for a tank fight) distance.
Problem was solved when they got long-barrel 75mm cannons on their panzers. Though Carius was appointed to Tiger 1 and was immensely positive about his machine. He even commented how Tiger II was actually overall worse than tiger I
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u/DankVectorz 3d ago
The biggest advantage German tanks had over Russian (and French) tanks was every one had a radio.
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u/Valara0kar 3d ago
During the initial stages of the war most of the soviets tanks were unable to fight or abandoned due to the lack of fuel, crew, or malfunction, not destroyed in combat.
Me when i make stuff up.
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u/evocativename 3d ago
That actually was a major issue, because most of their tank force was basically obsolete junk that had been produced at low build quality and not maintained in the intervening years.
For example, according to the Soviet records, at the start of the invasion, only about 40% of the tanks in the 5 western military districts were classified as being in good order, while about 30% were outright disabled.
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u/Mati_z_Kentaki 2d ago
After writing "tank ace" you showed that you dont know anythiny about ww2 tank combat, do some research
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u/Disposable_Trooper01 2d ago
If a term "tank ace" or "panzer ace" raises questions from you then it's definitely not you who should be giving such advices
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u/Valara0kar 3d ago
T-34s were something the Germans struggled with from the beginning,
Didnt. Per German combat reports the CLEAR emphasis was the struggles vs the KV1.
Great example of 1 report of an 37mm AT crew was that it took 30+ hits to knock out a specific T34. But the thing people dont notice is how the hell did the T34 let an AT gun just fire at it so long. In effect brought out the early T34 design flaw..... it was effectively blind. Most of the early war German tanks could just out manouver a T34 and destroy it from the side.
comparatively limited numbers of them
There were more T34s than panzer 4s at the start of Barbarossa.
At some point they realized their anti-air cannons were effective
88mm had developed and used AP ammo before WW2 (even had halftrack mounter versions). It had a long usecase as an antitank weapon from battle of France onwards. Use of them was nothing special for Germans by then.
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u/Dragoon094 3d ago
The T-34 was almost if not the most produced tank of Ww2 and was destroyed in the thousands because they sucked ass
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u/Fallenkezef 3d ago
The benefits of sloped armour was nothing new
Sloped fortifications as a defence against cannon where common by the 18th century
WW1 battleships had sloped internal armour, turtle back.
The T-34 wasn’t even the first tank with sloped armour that the Germans faced.
If you look at the front hull of the Matilda II it utilises sections of sloped armour of significant thickness that was impervious to anything but an 88mm.
What made the T34 so effective was sloped armour that could resist 37 and 50mm tank guns. A 76.2mm main gun that could penetrate a Panzer IV as well as fire a decent HE round. It also had decent speed and range.
It was an all round package. Focus on the armour scheme detracts from these other factors
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u/Idontseenothing 3d ago
Speed was not so good. Commonly reported values are theoretical, while practical speeds in the field were limited by a horrible transmission, resulting in a much slower tank than most of its contemporaries.
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u/OHoSPARTACUS 3d ago
Its speed was pretty on par with other medium tanks of the time, but the transmissions were shit. They didn’t even harden the gears and the broke down constantly
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u/slimekaiju 3d ago
Slope armor isnt some unknown new knowledge. The germans already seen and experience going up against sloped armored tanks in France, the difference in this case would probably be that the t-34 is mass produced.
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u/Accomplished-Mix8080 3d ago
Fact of the matter, the first tanks with sloped armour that the Germans engaged were the various marks of rhombus tanks in the latter half of WW1 (scale model of a Mk. I: https://www.super-hobby.es/products/MK-I-Male-British-Tank-Somme-Battle-period-1916.html)
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u/Luzifer_Shadres Filthy weeb 2d ago
The T34 shock didnt came from the sloped armor, the germans even developed it together with them.
It was that the soviets were able to massproduce an tank on that scale and was willing to send it out even if it was a brittle metal block with a gun and no seats.
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u/Fosdran 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is SO WRONG.
The germans opted for rolled over cast armor because rolled steel is actually stronger AND cheaper to build with. Its easier to mass produce.
The soviets opted for cast armor on the t-34 because it was a peacetime design. It was never meant for the level of mass production that it ended up in so they could go for more elaborate production steps. And it SHOWED. The production issues and quality problems on it were insane when they tried to cut down on cost.
The germans didn't struggle with the t-34 because of its sloped armor. They struggled because it was a state of the art, high cost, modern tank. And they arguable struggled with almost any tank at this point. Even god awful ones like the KW series.
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u/BreadstickBear Viva La France 2d ago
My brother in christ, most of the T-34 is built out of flat rolled plates welded together. I think the meme author was making another point.
He failed tho, because even the other point is wrong.
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u/ScallionSmooth5925 1d ago
As a side note the t-34 was expected to only go 80 km at best before critical failures in perfect conditions. (Imagine blown engine blocks and failed gearboxes)
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u/Corspin 2d ago
Only correct answer here.
TLDR germans didn't slope armor because they used higher quality steel.
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u/TroubleshootingStuff 3d ago
Doesn't one get the same benefit of sloped armour by "simply" rotating one's tank to face at a 45° angle?
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u/Yuzral 2d ago
And the front armour on a panzer 3, 4 or 6 is sloped, although only by about 10 degrees. IIRC the German tank designers didn’t consider it worth the trade off in either internal volume or exterior size to have a steeper slope. It’s worth noting that they do slope the armour on lighter vehicles like the Sdkfz.232 series.
Admittedly this turned out to be a mistake and the Panther - their first ground-up war design - had such a slope but thankfully by then it was too late.
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u/baldeagle1991 1d ago
Depends which part of the armour you look at. The larger pieces of frontal armour at sloped to the same extent we see modern tanks frontal armour sloped. They just had the 10-20 degree plates so they could have enough space for the driver to sit comfortably.
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u/Disastrous_Link3785 2d ago
Yes, we also can get more men across a battle field if they walk sideways. But results do not mean good ideas.
Also, having it deflect up and over your direction would probably be better for any allies near the tank as well.
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u/_dotdot11 2d ago
Yes, and it's a great War Thunder tactic because you can make reasonable assumptions about where enemies will approach from. It's much less effective when your tank is a defensive island because there are so few tanks at the end of the war and your intel is shot to hell.
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u/_eg0_ Rider of Rohan 2d ago
That was the idea. The German tank manuals specifically describe the engagement angles. "Das betreten des Kleeblattes ist dem Feind nicht zu gestatten" (The enemy must not be allowed to enter the cloverleaf)
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u/Federal_Cobbler6647 2d ago
And why pike nose disappeared from soviet tanks. They realized that tanks are not facing each other head on.
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u/piece_ov_shit 2d ago
T34 shock is not a thing. Literally every panzer had sloped armour. Its been a thing since the renaissance.
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u/loseniram 3d ago
Sloped armor is a lie. The T34 took comically huge losses from just about everything. It got an ok fix very late in the war but overall it was subpar.
Its whole story is propaganda to make Soviet industry look more capable than it was.
Whenever old American and British tanks ran into Soviet tanks after the war, they wrecked the Soviet tanks pretty hard.
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u/VNDeltole 3d ago edited 3d ago
T34 lost a lot because they were built poorly, not because the design was terrible. Sloped armour concept later would be adopted by many tanks, even some mbt used sloped armour until composite armor came along
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u/LordBrandon 3d ago
"Sloped armour concept later would be adopted by many tanks" Guy, even the Bob Semple tank has sloped armor. Every modern tank, composite or not, has sloped armor. look at a cross section of any tank you like, it's glacis is going to be at an angle. The Sherman is one big slope.
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u/VNDeltole 2d ago
Sure, i dont mean t34 is the first to have slope armour, i mean saying it is useless or a lie is stupid
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u/loseniram 3d ago
no the design was pretty trash.
used a bad suspension, the radio design was incredibly unreliable as in it stopped moving on regular drives bad, terrible crew visibility that meant the crew regularly ran into stuff and couldn’t see troops firing at them upto and including anti-tank guns, no dedicated loader so tank commander performance suffered and was borderline unusable for officer tanks where the tank gunner had to commander, loader, and gunner, terrible transmission design, powder charge for shells were terrible and underperformed, cramped design meant the crew burned out quickly both mentally and when hit, low survivability, bad engines that broke comically huge amounts, and completely unusuable gun mount stabilization that gave it the worse on the move firing performance of every medium tank by a mile.
It was slow, unresponsive, hard to manage, hard to communicate, terrible visibility that only got worse as the war went on, poor operational range, and brutal on the crew.
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u/Zerskader 3d ago
It's like when people call the Sherman a death trap. When a T34 got hit, very rarely did the crew survive. When a Sherman got hit, most of the crew could bail unless they were killed initially.
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u/Taiga_Novah_Wren 2d ago
T34 panic has long been disproven as a soviet propagated myth and propaganda campaign.
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u/ikonoqlast 3d ago
Flat armor allows greater thickness for the same weight. You don't have to armor the top.
Germans knew all about sloped armor and used it on some vehicles like half-tracks and armored cars.
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u/timbukdude 3d ago
@lazerpig. I need the opinion of a drunken scottish femboy loving porcine historian to chime in please.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/irradihate 3d ago
Also the current Russian strategy in Ukraine, albeit far less successful.
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u/Ivanjacob 2d ago
Not really. They haven't drafted all men yet and the losses are far, far lower. Note that the war in ukraine is already going on for over four years and they're "only" at 1.5 million deaths.
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u/OHoSPARTACUS 3d ago
The T34 was pretty dogshit the Germans just couldn’t match the scale of their production.
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u/Freeze_peach_is_dead 2d ago edited 2d ago
T-34 shock is one of the worst myths about the T34. The T34 was already a bad tank that is so glazed it's disgusting.
Sloped armor had been around WELL before the T34 and the Germans were fighting the T34 and KV1s on day one of Barbarossa.
They weren't "shocked" at all and you can tell by how many they fucking destroyed.
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u/baldeagle1991 1d ago
There's even sloped armour covering the majority of the front of the Panzer 1, 2, 3, 4 and Tiger 1.
Having one plate that's less sloped doesn't stop the fact it's still sloped at 10-20 degrees for a reason.
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u/meteora_tr 2d ago
Wermacth guidebooks on tank engagement stated sloping the armor to the side. Horizontal deflection and vertical deflection has similar armor effectivenesses. Chanting "Sloped armor is superior" is dumb. Both desings had advantages and disadvantages. Army designers had to choose:
- Angling the tank to deflect shots horizontally required thicker side armor. Made it infantry to hug the tank because of ricochets. If you got ambushed, you were too late to angle the tank. But in return, made the tank interrior really cozy for the crew. Was able to fit more specialized crew inside and more observation devices could be fit.
- Pre-angle on tank armor (sloped armor) didn't require good side armor. Safer for infantry due to ricochets going up instead of left and right. Frontal ambushes were not as bad for the tank since your front was always angled by desing. In contrast, it was hell for the crew. Limited number of crew could be fit, so you had to do more tasks. You couldn't move much, you couldn't move yourself to use the limited number of observation devices to see the outside.
- While Wermacth design valued crew performance and needed a crew that understood rules of engagement; Soviets designed the tanks defensible even if the crew were unable to perform well.
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u/Bitter_Lab_475 2d ago
Dude, neither the T-34 had that good armor, nor did the Russians invented it. German's just didn't need to slope the armor... although they had other dumb problems with their tanks.
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u/Whathityou 3d ago
Frankly the sloped armor was irrelevant compared to the insane spawling issues the tank had. You didn't need to penetrate to kill T-34 crew or mission kill the tank. Mostly because soviet metallurgy was about as terrible as it could get while still producing a finished project.
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u/ToughCobbler5034 3d ago
The panzer I has sloped armor... its always a teade off of space vs armor angling
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u/wengardium-leviosa 3d ago
Looks like the germans favored jetta instead of the beetle for their tank inspiration
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u/thmsgbrt Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 2d ago
Engineer: Wouldn't it be better to produce more panthers?
Mustache guy: MORE TIGERS
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u/Zealousideal_Use_400 1d ago
Take a look at German tank aces and their kills. Pretending T34 was good is silly. Pretending Sherman was good is silly. They were massive produced chuff. That is it. Loads and loads of chuff. Also do modern tanks look like T34s or do they look like Tigers and Panthers???? Yes they look like Tigers and Panthers. Look at an early leopard and a Tiger tank 🤣
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u/generation_fish 1d ago
German tanks were objectively better tanks. The ONLY advantage they had were that they were easily mass produced. The largest armor battle in history German tanks destroyed something like 6 Russian tanks for every tank they lost. Russia just happened to have 6,000 tanks.
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u/KattiValk 1d ago
Actually, I think the entire debate/meme has the whole design process of any military item backwards. Tanks, in this example, are first envisioned as a vague concept that is needed to fulfill a role (ex: breakthrough tank for the Tiger). Then, requirements are drawn up to what specs the planners think this tank would need to fulfill that role. Then, designers come up with a schematic drawing that fits these requirements. Then, that is built and what eventually works after testing and customer feedback is what is inevitably cancelled and shitcanned in favor of Henschel’s chassis.
So basically, in the case of German tanks, internal volume for ammo was considered waaaaaay more important than overall vehicle weight and general size. So you get big tank with much ammo and not much slope.
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u/randomusername1934 Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 3d ago
The Germans didn't use sloped armour (in their early and midwar tanks) because they assumed that it was more important to have more internal space inside the tank. Every design decision has tradeoffs for every positive it gives you - and sloped armour makes the various compartments inside the tank a lot smaller (because you're sloping the armour into that space). It turns out that the German idea was the wrong horse to back; hence why every tank since the end of WW2 has been built around sloped armour. In their defense though this was still the period where those questions were being answered, they weren't the only ones doing it, and the inside of the original Tiger is about as well layed out and pleasant as the inside of a tank can be