There was a good article in WWII magazine recently that compared tank manufacturing philosophies between the US, USSR and Germany.

The basics were:

Tiger tanks took between 200,000-300,000 man hours to produce an cost $320,000 each.

Shermans took 10,000 man hours to produce and cost $33,500 each.

T-34's took 35,000 to 50,000 man hours to produce and cost $50,000 each.

Additionally the Soviets did a study and found that the average life of a tank was six months and the combat life expectancy was only 14 hours. They didn't put a lot of time/manpower in creating technologically superior tanks because they would be 'dead' in a relatively short period of time. Someone mentioned that the T-34's transmission was crap. The Soviet philosophy was "Why design and manufacture a superior transmission that will last 1,500 miles when the tank will not live that long?"

Regarding Lend-Lease, one of the best assets the Soviets received from the US were soft skinned vehicles. The US sent over 400,000 jeeps and trucks to them allowing for increased logistics. Most German units stilled relied upon horse drawn transport for most of the war:

"Despite highly ballyhooed emphasis on employment of mechanized forces and on rapid movement, the bulk of German combat divisions were horse drawn throughout World War II."

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Posted by Ace Midnight

Between sanity and madness

Member since Dec 2006

89810 posts

Posted on 10/25/14 at 12:21 pm to SadSouthernBuck

quote:
"Despite highly ballyhooed emphasis on employment of mechanized forces and on rapid movement, the bulk of German combat divisions were horse drawn throughout World War II."

As a member of the US Army Reserve, it would be remiss of me to not point out our role in the advantage the U.S. held in motorization in WWII.

Around the time of WWI - there was still horse cavalry, of course, but it was a clearly dying combat branch. The tank and armored car saved it and the branch continued doing what it was doing with the new tools. Transport (particularly tactical and operational) was still mainly horse drawn (or worse, soldiers on foot and handcarts) for many armies through WWII. The Germans were notorious for loading up the elite units with everything and leaving the filler units with the scraps.

In the United States, with the formation of the Army Reserve, there was a choice to be made - you see - every day the Good Lord sends, a horse has to eat, drink water, be groomed, walked, shoed, etc. So, the USAR could keep horses that had to be fed every day, or go with motor vehicles that only had to be fueled and maintained at irregular intervals for a reserve unit's schedule. Detroit wasn't complaining, as it was relatively young then. The regular army was small they would be damned if the reservists were all going to be motorized and they weren't, so - boom - there we were, about 30 years ahead of most other armies in that capacity.

This post was edited on 10/25/14 at 12:23 pm

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