World War II in colour

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[Guderian]

I thought it was called a deathtrap (Tommy cooker , tin can)

Cause at its top rear it had almost no armor, and right under it the ammo storage was to be found.

[perfil02]

How about this for superior in every way, is the tiger cheaper to manufacture? No, it costs four times as much as a Panther does, which is double that of a Panzer IV, which is DOUBLE that of a 76mm Sherman.

Do you have any reference?
It's not that I say it's not true, but i've read that the sherman cost was just slighly more expensive than a Panzer 4 (something like 46000$ M4 - 46500$ P4) and the panther cheaper than 1,4-1,3 shermans, don't remember what the tiger was about but I doubt it was 8 times as expensive as sherman i would bet it was something cheaper than 4 shermans.

The operation sealion would have never succeded, (maybe with massive air superiority and support from the reggia marina) but that never happend.
Germany will was just to firm peace with the allies, (probably that influenced the dunkirq decision) but Uk would have never accepted peace since they had USA helping them.

[Malevolence]

No you have no clue what you are talking about

he is right the brits fled over the canal..running away like bunnies    in a mad rush and left all their equipment and weapons

my grandfather was there they got the order to stop to let them free retreat
they could have captured huge amounts of the british army for prisoners

if an invasion would be possible no one can really say for sure...there where no organization left on brits side at that time

The Heer was instructed to stop because they were undersupplied and overstretched while the Luftwaffe was given the task of stopping the evacuation while the Heer resupplied for a push into Dunkirk.

Unfortunately the Luftwaffe fudged it and the British escaped, at least unfortunately for Hitler. Hitler certainly didn't "let them go" by any stretch of the imagination.

Do you have any reference?
It's not that I say it's not true, but i've read that the sherman cost was just slighly more expensive than a Panzer 4 (something like 46000$ M4 - 46500$ P4) and the panther cheaper than 1,4-1,3 shermans, don't remember what the tiger was about but I doubt it was 8 times as expensive as sherman i would bet it was something cheaper than 4 shermans.

Sorry, I was thinking of time to build, not cost to build. The costs were pretty similar for most tanks, but the time to build them was ENORMOUSLY different. For cost the Panzer IV was around 115,000 reichsmarks while the panther was 130,000 and the tiger was 300,000.

For man-hours to build the panzer IV was around 90,000 and the panther 156,000, while the tiger again clocks at around 300,000.

For comparison a T-34 was 17,600 in 1943 and only 3251 normative man hours to build in 1945. The Sherman took a similar amount of time to build. So for cost? Not much different, but you can build two dozen Shermans in the same time it took the Germans to build a Tiger as long as the economy scales properly.

The operation sealion would have never succeded, (maybe with massive air superiority and support from the reggia marina) but that never happend.
Germany will was just to firm peace with the allies, (probably that influenced the dunkirq decision) but Uk would have never accepted peace since they had USA helping them.

Yar, Sea Lion would never have worked in reality, even though the threat was real at the time. If the British had any idea of the decayed and sorry state of the Kriegsmarine's "landing fleet" they would have laughed and ignored preparations for invasion altogether to just focus on more anti-aircraft capabilities.

[AmPM]

The T-34 was amazing, better than any other tank in the war actually.

Sure the early crews sucked, but thats what you get when nobody is trained.

Good sloped armor, added copula, good gun, good speed, easy to maintain and build. Great tank.

And the T-34-85 is sexier than the Firefly, and was much more plentiful.

At least one T-34 was built in a barn by a small village....seriously, they got the parts and were told to build the tank, it was built inside a freaking barn...with cattle....

[perfil02]

Do you have any reference?
It's not that I say it's not true, but i've read that the sherman cost was just slighly more expensive than a Panzer 4 (something like 46000$ M4 - 46500$ P4) and the panther cheaper than 1,4-1,3 shermans, don't remember what the tiger was about but I doubt it was 8 times as expensive as sherman i would bet it was something cheaper than 4 shermans.

Sorry, I was thinking of time to build, not cost to build. The costs were pretty similar for most tanks, but the time to build them was ENORMOUSLY different. For cost the Panzer IV was around 115,000 reichsmarks while the panther was 130,000 and the tiger was 300,000.

For man-hours to build the panzer IV was around 90,000 and the panther 156,000, while the tiger again clocks at around 300,000.

For comparison a T-34 was 17,600 in 1943 and only 3251 normative man hours to build in 1945. The Sherman took a similar amount of time to build. So for cost? Not much different, but you can build two dozen Shermans in the same time it took the Germans to build a Tiger as long as the economy scales properly.

Emm.. I disagree, in the cost of a product the time to pruduce it it's represented.
You buy things with money not with time.
So no, Tigers didn't cost 4 times as Pz4, neither Panther costed like 2 Pz4, neither Pz4 costed like 2 shermans.
Sherman tanks were massively produced because of the massive production capacity of USA, not because they were especially cheaper.
Shermans aren't T-34.

[AmPM]

Really? I would never have guessed that a Russian tank design was not the M4 Sherman. Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Now if I could only learn to differentiate the Sherman and P4, so I wouldn't get confused....

Seriously, I was just making a comment in regards to his bringing up the T-34.

As for cost, time involved does = cost when you are paying for the facilities, labor, and utilities needed.

[perfil02]

As for cost, time involved does = cost when you are paying for the facilities, labor, and utilities needed.

Actually the cost of a product involves all those things, I'll explain you with exaples (since it seems you don't understand it and start talking about T-34 tanks).

If you buy a car, you're paying(the labour of the workers, the manteinance of the machinary wich produces its, the salesman who sold it you, the driver of the lorry who got it to you, the manteinance of the lorry who drove it to you, some benefits ...)

Just some common sense... you don't need to study economics to understand this.

[AmPM]

Again the lack of reading comes in.

To clear it up for you, please reread this line

As for cost, time involved does = cost when you are paying for the facilities, labor, and utilities needed.

[Malevolence]

Emm.. I disagree, in the cost of a product the time to pruduce it it's represented.
You buy things with money not with time.
So no, Tigers didn't cost 4 times as Pz4, neither Panther costed like 2 Pz4, neither Pz4 costed like 2 shermans.
Sherman tanks were massively produced because of the massive production capacity of USA, not because they were especially cheaper.
Shermans aren't T-34.

In a war time economic model the government has no problem going into the red, therefore things are built on war time economies with time, not with money.

So while the cost of a Sherman is only about a third of a Tiger, the time to produce is one tenth or less.

A Sherman is similarly streamlined in production to a T-34 whether they're the same tank or not.

Chrysler made 5000+ Shermans per year, 42 to 45. Equivalent companies in Germany built 1200 Tigers during that time total. Very roughly that suggests almost a 20:1 production ratio...

[perfil02]

Country's are most of the time in red numbers, but they don't go bankrupt during war.
If you spend more than you have, you go bankrupt, the limitation of the war capabilities of a country are it's economical values wich are defined by monetary values.

Comparing Chrysler production with german production of tanks is useless to know the cost of the tank.
Comparing the payments of the state to Chrysler and the German payments to their tank factories does help, (more or less) to calculate the cost of the production.

Some basic logics too.
All dogs are animals ----> All animals aren't dogs.
Cost invovlves time ----> Time does not involve cost.

I don't really think you don't understand it so I suppose you don't want to understant/accept it.

[Mysthalin]

In war, all that matters is the man-hour cost of producing something, as long as you have access to the raw materials. There's not really such a thing as money any-more, reason why there's "food stamps" given to the populace during a war  .

Though, I can go by your logic and claim this.
*not real numbers, used only for example purposes*
It takes 10 days to build a sherman by a single worker.
It takes 30 days to build a tiger by 3 workers.
The wages of all the workers are the same.
In 30 days with 3 workers, there will be 9 shermans, or a single Tiger, with the exact same wages being payed to the workers. In total - the tiger builders are paying more reichsmarks to their workers than the sherman builders are for each tank built. The tiger, is therefore, non-cost effective, because it costs 9 times more to support the workers when compared to the sherman.

In this case - time does involve cost.

At any rate, it's the manpower cost that matters in a war, not dollars or reichsmarks.

And to be honest - what would you take, 5000 shermans built in a year for 22.5 milion (45,000 dollars per sherm), or 1200 tigers for 120 milion(roughly 100,000 per Tiger)?
Oh, snap, the tiger just became way not cost effective both in time, and in cost.
Now to turn it around into your logic again, and say that time does not matter.
I'll take mah 27500 shermans for 120 milion over 1200 tigers for the same.

[gamesguy2]

The T-34 was amazing, better than any other tank in the war actually.

Sure the early crews sucked, but thats what you get when nobody is trained.

Good sloped armor, added copula, good gun, good speed, easy to maintain and build. Great tank.

And the T-34-85 is sexier than the Firefly, and was much more plentiful.

At least one T-34 was built in a barn by a small village....seriously, they got the parts and were told to build the tank, it was built inside a freaking barn...with cattle....

Russian tank crews preferred the lend-lease shermans they got over their own T34s.

There were a bunch of reasons, amongst them the fact that shermans lasted longer and were more reliable, their rubber tracks lasted an amazingly long time compared to the steel tracks on the T34.  They had an auxiliary generator that can charge the battery and turn the turret while the engine is on idle, where as on the T34 you had to turn the engine up to full speed to charge the battery or turn the turret at a decent speed.    The shermans were much much quieter compared to the T34, the Russian tankers complained about how you can hear the T34 coming the next village over, where as you can actually flank and ambush enemies with the sherman.    The T34 also had a tendency to blow up when its on fire, where as shermans did not, etc.  The sherman had way better optics than the T34, making identifying and targetting enemies much easier.

Tanks are more than speed, armor, and gun.

[AmPM]

Not so much for the Russians actually, the ability to keep feeding tanks right into the battle was great. Also during the fall, winter and spring, the T-34 and its much wider tracks gave good advantage to mobility on the soft ground.

The T-34 series was improved greatly, and it didn't brew up any more than the Shermans. I'm at work but if I remember right, they replaced most of the Sherman gasoline engines with Russian diesels. Something to do with needing the gasoline for their planes and having more parts available.

I've also read accounts where they hated the Sherman for its narrow tracks, higher profile, and small gun. Not to mention harder to repair and more complex making it harder to maintain, especially after 1944 when most supply was going into the Western front.

Other hated tanks involved all the British ones (guns too small) even if they liked the armor, and the US Grant (everyone hated it) and Stuart.

[gamesguy2]

Emm.. I disagree, in the cost of a product the time to pruduce it it's represented.
You buy things with money not with time.
So no, Tigers didn't cost 4 times as Pz4, neither Panther costed like 2 Pz4, neither Pz4 costed like 2 shermans.
Sherman tanks were massively produced because of the massive production capacity of USA, not because they were especially cheaper.
Shermans aren't T-34.

Yes it did actually.   A Chrysler built sherman costed around 33,000 USD in 1943-44.

A Panzer IV costed 115,000 Reichsmarks, a tiger I costed 290,000, tiger II 320,000.

There is actually set conversion ratios for currency at the time.   One British pound was fixed to 5 reichsmarks as set by the nazi government(this did not change the entire war), one British pound was fixed to 4.06 American dollars for the duration of the war(again, did not change till war ended).

So with these conversion ratios in mind, a dollar is worth about 1.25 reichsmarks.  

Which means a panzer IV costs ~92,000 USD, and a tiger costs 232,000 USD.  Thats ignoring man-hours spent on production, which vastly favors the sherman.

Just by cost, you can have almost 3 shermans for a panzer IV, and 7 for a tiger I.

Tigers did not kill 7 shermans for each lost, some tiger battalions didn't even reach a 1:1 ratio. And the panzer IV was inferior to the sherman.  

Surprisingly, the stug was not that much cheaper than a panzer IV, coming in at 82,000 reichsmarks to build.  However, it was much easier and quicker to assemble in terms of man-hours.

There are also hidden costs for the tiger, like the fact that it guzzled an obscene amount of fuel, it required rare materials and alloys that Germany simply did not have by the end of the war, etc.

[Malevolence]

Country's are most of the time in red numbers, but they don't go bankrupt during war.
If you spend more than you have, you go bankrupt, the limitation of the war capabilities of a country are it's economical values wich are defined by monetary values.

Which is why such a thing exists as defecit spending. No, wait, that's the policy of purposely spending more than you have, yet there is no bankruptcy.

Comparing Chrysler production with german production of tanks is useless to know the cost of the tank.
Comparing the payments of the state to Chrysler and the German payments to their tank factories does help, (more or less) to calculate the cost of the production.

Cost doesn't matter, I already went over cost per unit, we're discussing man hours. The cost of a Sherman is about as much as a PIV, which is about 40% that of a Tiger. The man hour cost is significantly less.

I don't really think you don't understand it so I suppose you don't want to understant/accept it.

You're not addressing my points.

And to be honest - what would you take, 5000 shermans built in a year for 22.5 milion (45,000 dollars per sherm), or 1200 tigers for 120 milion(roughly 100,000 per Tiger)?

Worse than that, the Tigers were built at only around 300-400 per year.

[gamesguy2]

Not so much for the Russians actually, the ability to keep feeding tanks right into the battle was great. Also during the fall, winter and spring, the T-34 and its much wider tracks gave good advantage to mobility on the soft ground.

The T-34 series was improved greatly, and it didn't brew up any more than the Shermans.

I've also read accounts where they hated the Sherman for its narrow tracks, higher profile, and small gun. Not to mention harder to repair and more complex making it harder to maintain, especially after 1944 when most supply was going into the Western front.

Other hated tanks involved all the British ones (guns too small) even if they liked the armor, and the US Grant (everyone hated it) and Stuart.

Ya the earlier models of the shermans with the narrow tracks was a problem, the Russians worked around that, they widened and lengthened the tracks, which wasn't exactly a difficult task.

There was also an amusing story where an entire Russian corp ground to a halt on a highway.  Apparently their sherman's rubber tracks burned off the road or something and the entire corp was halted.   But somehow their logistics came up with replacement tracks for all those hundreds of shermans within a few hours and they kept rolling.

The Russians hated the British tanks, especially the matilda.

Cost doesn't matter, I already went over cost per unit, we're discussing man hours. The cost of a Sherman is about as much as a PIV, which is about 40% that of a Tiger. The man hour cost is significantly less.

Panzer IV costed nearly three times as much as a sherman.

This is due to a combination of factors, shortage on certain alloys, inefficient German factories that built way too many different designs, poor optimization, etc.

[AmPM]

Whats interesting is that the Russians took every P3/P4 chassis they could recover to either use, or convert into a SPG, Panthers and Tigers that were recovered got minimal repairs, and were only used till they broke down.

[perfil02]

Which is why such a thing exists as defecit spending. No, wait, that's the policy of purposely spending more than you have, yet there is no bankruptcy.
Cost doesn't matter, I already went over cost per unit, we're discussing man hours. The cost of a Sherman is about as much as a PIV, which is about 40% that of a Tiger. The man hour cost is significantly less.

You can't spend more than you have without destroying the economy.
Following your logic, converting all your "goods industry" to  armament industry would increase your production, (¿but who is going to pay for it?).

Sorry but it's not even worth commenting Mysthalin post since he seems to misuderstand the concept of production cost.

And gamesguy, please introduce references to your data.

In 1940 1USD= 2,5 Reinchmarks not 1.25

R.L. Bidwell, Currency Conversion Tables: A Hundred Years of Change

[Malevolence]

You can't spend more than you have without destroying the economy.

Current United States national debt (spent money that they do not have): $11,300,000,000,000.

The economy there appears to still exist.

[gamesguy2]

And gamesguy, please introduce references to your data.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/panzer-statistics.htm

Cost of a bunch of german tanks in WWII.

http://www.allpar.com/history/military/arsenal-of-democracy.html

Chrysler charged the US government $33,500 for each sherman tank, but in the end it gave the government back $7.8million in a rebate check for a contract for 5000 shermans due to improved methods lowering cost(and this was in 1942, end war shermans were even cheaper).   This comes out to about $32,000 for each sherman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reichsmark

1 Reichsmark = 5 British pounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling

"In 1940, an agreement with the U.S.A. pegged the pound to the U.S. dollar at a rate of £1 = $4.03. This rate was maintained through the Second World War "

Simple conversion will show that 1 USD is therefore equivelent to about 1.25 Reichsmarks.

Ergo, you can buy almost three shermans for the price of a panzer IV.  I knew German industry was inefficient in ww2, didn't realize how inefficient they really were.   This is pretty terrible considering the sherman was better than than the panzer IV in almost all aspects..

In 1940 1USD= 2,5 Reinchmarks not 1.25

R.L. Bidwell, Currency Conversion Tables: A Hundred Years of Change

!940 was before the US government fixed the price of the dollar relative to the pound and to a specific weight in gold.