why didn't germans slope their armor?

[Kebabiman the Kebab-Giver]

ignore the tiger 2 and panther, this is a historical question, i don't want any of you to fight in this discussion because of the current br system

[Rei]

My guess is that their experience was that with the Panzer IV, having box armor wasn't an issue, it was the lack of really thick armor it had. The Tiger H1 was sort of an upgunned and uparmored Panzer IV. I imagine with the Panther they learned from experiences in the Soviet Union and developed the Panther after the Tiger 1. After learning that box armor is a big no no, they just stopped using it.

[Kebabiman the Kebab-Giver]

Originally posted by Rootin Tootin Putin:

My guess is that their experience was that with the Panzer IV, having box armor wasn't an issue, it was the lack of really thick armor it had. The Tiger H1 was sort of an upgunned and uparmored Panzer IV. I imagine with the Panther they learned from experiences in the Soviet Union and developed the Panther after the Tiger 1. After learning that box armor is a big no no, they just stopped using it.

but how fast did they adapt?
couldn't they just upgrade pz4s to better, sloped ones?
would it change anything if they adapted faster and/or sloped their panzer 4s?

[cobalT]

The Panther was based on the T-34

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by Kebabman The Kebab-Giver:

Originally posted by Rootin Tootin Putin:

My guess is that their experience was that with the Panzer IV, having box armor wasn't an issue, it was the lack of really thick armor it had. The Tiger H1 was sort of an upgunned and uparmored Panzer IV. I imagine with the Panther they learned from experiences in the Soviet Union and developed the Panther after the Tiger 1. After learning that box armor is a big no no, they just stopped using it.

but how fast did they adapt?
couldn't they just upgrade pz4s to better, sloped ones?
would it change anything if they adapted faster and/or sloped their panzer 4s?

How do you change pz4s to have sloped armor? You don't jsut weild on soem sloped peice of steael those hulls are massive feats to assemble the way they did, would need to redesign the entire thing to have mroe then some angled spall liners on it.

And they did that it was caleld the panter tank, and till they fought the Russians they didn't need sloped armor every one elses armor was utter ♥♥♥♥ minus the B1 they never fought anything that was that great an oppenet till they saw the Kv-1 and t-34s

Add in they were going broke from making synthetic oil to run their tanks a stupid expesnive proccess as no one woudl sell them oil, so their machines were very limited, and yeah they kind of had to attack USSR for their oil once stalin said "nah I think we won't share our oil," after US who went "were netural" told Axis, they didn't want to sell oil either.

[Kebabiman the Kebab-Giver]

Originally posted by cobalT:

The Panther was based on the T-34

my question is directed towards pz4 and tiger I

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by Kebabman The Kebab-Giver:

Originally posted by cobalT:

The Panther was based on the T-34

my question is directed towards pz4 and tiger I

PZ 4 was already made you can't rmake a tank with sloped armro that would be the pz 5 and need an entirely new blueprint that is why we got the panther isntead. And the TIger was built to be a mobile 88 gun platform, not a MBT so they didn't bother with sloped at all its whole job was take the 88 AT gun that they had to use stationary to kill kv-1s and t-34s and make it mobile. At no point was it suppose to lead charges with its utter ♥♥♥♥ engine, it was to supprot, its basicly a giant TD with rotating turret. It had insane reach in real life for a reason, that giant gun on it was to snipe tanks with its massive AT gun not to brawl in a city...

[The American Berserker]

From what i hear the Germans had really good armor to begin with so they didnt bother to much with sloping it. The tiger is a boxy tank but its really tough. even if its no sloped they can still ricishay by turing a little to the left or right

[Katokevin]

Originally posted by Kebabman The Kebab-Giver:

Originally posted by Rootin Tootin Putin:

My guess is that their experience was that with the Panzer IV, having box armor wasn't an issue, it was the lack of really thick armor it had. The Tiger H1 was sort of an upgunned and uparmored Panzer IV. I imagine with the Panther they learned from experiences in the Soviet Union and developed the Panther after the Tiger 1. After learning that box armor is a big no no, they just stopped using it.

but how fast did they adapt?
couldn't they just upgrade pz4s to better, sloped ones?
would it change anything if they adapted faster and/or sloped their panzer 4s?

They idea was tossed around, and they concluded it would be worse then the current Panzer IV. The result was a Panzer IV with sloped armor, but the weight and material cost went up while interior space went down. The idea of sloped armor was not a huge thing at the time either, and for some time, many nations saw tanks as infantry support weapons (often the mediums) while the lighter ones were cavalry replacement. The idea was that the larger assault tanks would break through while the lighter ones would take advantage, speed through, and cause havoc behind the enemy lines.

The Germans had a demenstration vehicle by November 14th, 1942 in Berka (near Eisenach) where the first Panthers were presented (one produced by MAN, the other Daimler-Benz). By January 1943, MAN had completed the first 4 Panther Ausf. D's. They had full intent for the Panther to replace the Panzer IV, but it was a bit late for that to happen, and there were still constant changes and development problems.

Waffenprüfämter 6 initally called for the older VK 24.01 project to re-work armor design to incoperate sloping walls similar to what the Soviets had been doing. If you look at the VK 30.01 design by Daimler-Benz, you will notice how similar it is to the T-34 and how it influnced the Germans decision on sloping armor.

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by The American Berserker:

From what i hear the Germans had really good armor to begin with so they didnt bother to much with sloping it. The tiger is a boxy tank but its really tough. even if its no sloped they can still ricishay by turing a little to the left or right

Well yeah vrs the 76mm t-34 while it sniped it did good like I said it was a long range TD not a realy heavy tank like people assume at least the brawling kind liek the Kv-1s. Problem was the t-34-85 varriants, and right as they pushed into germany finally the IS-2 which yest was to break bunkers but worked splendedly sniping Tigers as well

[Kebabiman the Kebab-Giver]

makes sense, thanks for the answers
but why double your medium tank's weight just to slope it?
and, with upgrading panzer 4s i didn't mean cutting their front and replacing it with a sloped version, i meant taking the pz4 blueprint and redesigning it so it has sloped armor and then star making those instead of pz4s

i know that i sound like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ right now btw if you wanna call me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ go ahead

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by Katokevin:

Originally posted by Kebabman The Kebab-Giver:

but how fast did they adapt?
couldn't they just upgrade pz4s to better, sloped ones?
would it change anything if they adapted faster and/or sloped their panzer 4s?

They idea was tossed around, and they concluded it would be worse then the current Panzer IV. The result was a Panzer IV with sloped armor, but the weight and material cost went up while interior space went down. The idea of sloped armor was not a huge thing at the time either, and for some time, many nations saw tanks as infantry support weapons (often the mediums) while the lighter ones were cavalry replacement. The idea was that the larger assault tanks would break through while the lighter ones would take advantage, speed through, and cause havoc behind the enemy lines.

The Germans had a demenstration vehicle by November 14th, 1942 in Berka (near Eisenach) where the first Panthers were presented (one produced by MAN, the other Daimler-Benz). By January 1943, MAN had completed the first 4 Panther Ausf. D's. They had full intent for the Panther to replace the Panzer IV, but it was a bit late for that to happen, and there were still constant changes and development problems.

Waffenprüfämter 6 initally called for the older VK 24.01 project to re-work armor design to incoperate sloping walls similar to what the Soviets had been doing. If you look at the VK 30.01 design by Daimler-Benz, you will notice how similar it is to the T-34 and how it influnced the Germans decision on sloping armor.

Every nation had this just Russia caleld theres "Deep Battle" and they won their civil war with cavaly as russia is well flat and empty. So Stalin saw the little dinky 1917 era tanks in the civil war and said those are neat, too slow to be good but neat, and told his army we need tanks that coudl work independently like their calvary did in civil war, that were fast, armored, and hit hard.

They made the t-26 sent it to spain civil war where it fought the german backed side who killed it with 37mm AT guns, and at end of war they had the 88 fixed AT gun in play. So they said screw that design we need better. So they bought the Christie tank a US invention from some guy who built it with no credentials at all and US army laughed in his face saying no oen needs that ♥♥♥♥, so he sold it to stalin and to get past customs marked it as "TRACTOR" on the shipping container lol. They bought 2 of them then made the bt series off the same suspension and what not as the US inventors toy tank. Then decideded they wanted more so made the KV-1 and t-34 got trashed in finland where the KV-1 came out like a prince as it was a ♥♥♥♥ show from great purge ruining their leadership and training.

And they decided the t-34 would be the new one and KV-1 would support then KV-1 got more adn mroe armor till it was too slow to keep up with the t-34s so it was made into seperate units, then replaced by IS-2 as by then the heavy tanks whole role was to attack dug in spots in the lines and support t-34s

[Katokevin]

Originally posted by Kebabman The Kebab-Giver:

makes sense, thanks for the answers
but why double your medium tank's weight just to slope it?
and, with upgrading panzer 4s i didn't mean cutting their front and replacing it with a sloped version, i meant taking the pz4 blueprint and redesigning it so it has sloped armor and then star making those instead of pz4s

i know that i sound like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ right now btw if you wanna call me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ go ahead :2017meatball:

That's what they did, it was called the Panther and they produced just over 6 thousand. The Panzer IV was quite out of date and they need to replace it, and the Panther was the result. But, they would never be able to fully replace the entire fleet of Panzer IV's in the German army, so they had to keep using them (and the hull protection was still ok and the gun worked just fine against the most common tanks and light targets).

The Panther was simply the next step in the Panzer line. The Panzer I was replaced by the II, II by the III, III by the IV, and so on. Those older models would simply be used in lesser rolls, replaced, or given to allied nations of Germany. If they had started the ability and time to build the Panthers, the Panzer IV would simply start to be replaced by Panthers like the Panzer IV did to the Panzer III while the Panzer IV's would take the lesser roll like the III.

The Panzer IV had simply hit its limits, specifically the engine. To add a new gun, increase armor, change the engine and transmission, and keep it mobile would require such a redesign that it was easier to begin a new project to match, and be superior to the enemy.

[Scheneighnay]

Sloped armor was and still is questionable. It's nice to have but you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to have it.

Interwar French and American tanks already had very deliberately-sloped armor, so it wasn't a new concept when the T-34 was deployed.

[Tankfriend]

It's a myth that the Germans didn't use sloped armour or didn't know about it. If you look at more than just the boxy upper frontal armour, you'll quickly realize that much of the rest of the frontal armour is already sloped, even down to the puny Panzer I.
The major difference on the late tanks is the single evenly sloped front that no longer has the vertical "step" in it.

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

Sloped armor was and still is questionable. It's nice to have but you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to have it.

Interwar French and American tanks already had very deliberately-sloped armor, so it wasn't a new concept when the T-34 was deployed.

They had it but never realy used it that well, and its not really questionable at all its actually the standard for entier world to this day. Every one uses slope armor now every one. You look at teh abrams and other tanks? angled armor all over it... I mean the t-26 had some slopes but the t-34 was the first to really ever put the concept to work on the entire tank.

And no question about it it worked so well germans only kileld them in mass due to teh fact they had one hour trainng to use the tanks in early days of war, and germany killed them with superior teamwork, training, and discpline. But many boots were shaking as they faught the kv-1 and t-34s in 1940-1945

I mean KV-1 one was such monster the pz IV would have to get close range and shoot it in the side to kill it, and well that was stupid as they outnumbered the Geraman tanks even in 1940. But the crews had no idea how to use the damn kv-1, so they got lucky and used tactics, as well as fixed 88 at guns to kill the ♥♥♥♥ out of them.