Why did the Panther, Tiger, and Elefant tanks had mechanical breakdowns?

Why is it that?

Projects like tank development require coordination of planning and flexibility. The Tiger tank was a very heavy tank, and rather than designing it around the limitations of current engines, designers simply had to choose the most suitable one. You either redesign the tank to suit the engine, design a new engine, or throw the current one in. Since the two former requires time to develop, the decision was to field the Tiger tank with full specification onto current yet inadequate engines. What you get is the tank you got but engine problems.

It was essentially the same with the Panther and Elefant. The Elefant was more a stopgap between current and newer tank designs- in fact, the only reason Elefants were made was because Porsche lost the contract bid to Henschel's Tiger prototype, the remaining vehicles made were cosntructed as what we now called the Elefant tank destroyers. Like the Tiger, design changes were not implemented to accomodate the engine being used.

One thing to note is that tanks undergo modification and upgrades, whether factory or on the field. One thing to note about mechanical breakdowns were that relatively few of these upgrades were for the engine- most upgrades concerned replacing the main gun or adding armour and other features, most of which added weight to the tank and thus constributing to the problem. The Panther series started with poor design flaws, but later models proved to be far superior along with better crew training. While engine problems continued, they were reasonably dealt with.

did the Rhinoceros have mechanical breakdown problems?

Yes, and so did the giraffes, the lions, the hippopotamuses, the zebras and in some occasions the chimpanzees. ;D ::)

Toorstain wrote:
Yes, and so did the giraffes, the lions, the hippopotamuses, the zebras and in some occasions the chimpanzees. ;D ::)

What the heck Toorstain? I am talking about the Nashorn! It might be rhinoceros in german. It had a 88mm gun, and one of the few tanks able to take on M26 Pershing.

The more complex the design, the more parts it has.

The more parts it has the more parts you need to replace to service/fix it.

The more high tech the design the more slow/difficult it is to to manufacture and get a steady stream of spare parts needed to keep the vehicles in operation. Especially when being bombarded all the time by 1000 B17s every other day.

The inability to produce and deliver the parts to maintain is where the problem lied.

In hindsight many claim they should have made less quality designs to produce and maintain more vehicles but in truth that is rubbish as they could never match/outproduce the combined allies/soviets and neither could they match their manpower. hence why they went for quality.
It was the same scenario US vs Soviet Union in the cold war, more quality vs more quantity.

Plus, all these vehicles were up-armoured at the end stages of their design causing problems to their suspensions/transmissions/engines that weren't originally designed for the increased weight.

PS. M26 doesn't really classify as a WW2 tank much like the Centurion and T44. They took no real part in the war.

Last edited April 5, 2010 at 7:43 PM by Zerstörer

I never really learned about Nashorn breakdowns. I have for the 3 other tanks in my question. I guess the Nashorn was a powerful tank, but wasn't a complicated design

Well. Every tank had technical problems during the optimization. The first Chritstie tanks ( the "prototypes"
for the T-34 ) had a lot of problem with the tracks.
The first Lee/Sherman tanks had problems with weight,
armor, weapons and gear ( Laufwerk? ).

Tanks arent a "normal vehicle" and so beacuse of this each tanks isnt perfect from first prototype.
Germans decide to build high technical tanks for a their
hightrained panzercrews. The result were tanks with
problems but on the other side german panzercrews were
able to repair their own tank. Russians T-34 was reliable but when T-34 had technical problems the panzercrew cant repair their tank because they werent trained for this.

Each nation had their own ideas and military doctrines for
armored warfare and a lot of person just see the high
"technical outage" without seeing the technical achievements and successes of german panzers.

Till today tanks profits from Tiger, Panther and Co. ;)

Lord wrote:
Till today tanks profits from Tiger, Panther and Co. ;)

Not exactly, T34 is the first true 'ancestor' of all modern tanks. First one to combine the 'holly trinity of modern tank design' and the most successful concept. Anything after that only added  technical advancements to improve this design.
After the war Soviet and Western tank designs went down their own different paths.

Nashorn was just the first successful attempt to fit the long 88 on a vehicle until they could construct a new vehicle around the gun, aka the KT.
Like any extremely tall(easy target), paper thin armoured open topped vehicle, it could only ever be used in AT role (meaning it had limited use as a combat vehicle). Also in that role it had to lay an ambush firing a few shots before retreating to avoid return fire from anything as that meant certain destruction.
In game terms its what the Geshutzwagon is as they've clearly and incorrectly oversized the gun of the model to appear like the Long 88. Relic just messed it up

QuoteAND CO.

Thread name ->

QuoteWhy did the Panther, Tiger, and Elefant tanks had mechanical breakdowns?

So i had write Tiger, Panther and Co.  ;)

I know that people on the factory's in Czech sometime did sabotage the german vehicles produced there, wich caused mechanical problems or breakdowns in the field.

DrCashpor wrote:
I know that people on the factory's in Czech sometime did sabotage the german vehicles produced there, wich caused mechanical problems or breakdowns in the field.

you mean the Skoda works? I thought the 38t's (later Hetzer I recall) had the best performance, and reliability of all German hardware??

Also if I recall correctly, alot of Tigers, Elephants, tanks in general were taking out by artillery. The ISU's were classified as line-of-sight artillery. Just the kinetic energy of a ISU 152 shell landing nearby a tank (even heavy tanks) was enought to disable it and had to be destroyed by their own retreating crews. (IF I RECALL CORRECTLY) I forgot where or if it was a book but it wasn't the heavily modified wiki :P

Last edited May 21, 2010 at 4:11 AM by Jagged

The main reason to the best of my knowledge is simply the weight. the Germans had such massive guns and thick armour on vehicles where the engine was simply not powerful enough to sustain its weight. Also the near impossibility of the Germans to get replacement parts and equipment from the factories to the front contributed greatly. I suggest a great book, the German Armour in World War Two (I think the name is)