The Japanese vehicles were dug in deep enough they were effectively bunkers, not tanks. Actual tanks-in-motion unit-level combat happened happened during both Philippine invasions and the Japanese night tank attack on Saipan. (The later being a marginal case as most of the Japanese tanks were destroyed by infantry and artillery; the last few penetrated US lines only to run directly into a platoon of Shermans coming up to seal the hole they got through.)
Actual Japanese tank deployment is a bit more common, but mostly it either saw them pitted against US infantry, or dug in to the point they were immobile.
Nous restons ici.The first Philippines Campaign also featured a cavalry regiment
repulsing an armored assault (led by the 4th Tank Regiment).
So, the Panther was shit.
http://tankandafvnews.com/2015/10/02/from-the-vault-british-report-on-captured-panther-tank/
http://tankandafvnews.com/2015/11/13/from-the-vault-post-war-british-report-on-panther-reliability/
@Tom: Your Ford Mustang isn't getting hit repeatedly by antitank rockets, running over land mines, getting blown up by roadside bombs...
Comparing a main battle tank to a passenger car is apples to oranges. Instead, it would be more comparable to a bulldozer or some other piece of heavy construction equipment. They don't rack up high mileage, either.
edited 19th Nov '15 1:59:28 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.The tank is also rolling cross country and hauling around a few tons of steel. You start adding things like a big heavy dozer blade and hill billy armor on soft spots it adds up and increases wear and tear.
Tanks are notoriously high maintenance vehicles. I would imagine if it was getting smacked by AT and other things it got partial rebuilds in some parts anyway possibly extending the life before it finally gave up the ghost. It is why if possible it is preferable to haul them around by train then have them travel along a road for long distance travel.
Most dozers and similar vehicles also get hauled around by large flat beds and they aren't hauling around tons of armor, ammo, and guns taking weapons fire.
Who watches the watchmen?
rollin' on dubs
@Achaemenid:
@Angelus Nox: don't forget that the Russians got better at tank warfare than the Germans and only had a 2:1 advantage. This got Fladerized into Eleventy Zillion to One when people wrote the first wargames and movies about the Eastern Front.
edited 20th Nov '15 12:33:47 AM by TairaMai
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....
Yeah with the gradual improvements both Sherman and T-34/85 received, the rations started to become more favorable to both Yanks and Rooskies.
Besides the maintenance issues with the Tiger I, Panther and the Tiger II were turning those things into liabilities, not assets.
The Germans decided to go the bigger and heavier route for tank development when they couldn't afford to.
Inter arma enim silent leges>Muh german engineering
>Muh Kurp steel
>Muh over 9000 Shermans and T-34 destroyed
Were there even 9000 Shermans destroyed in the war? Most tank loss counts I've come across suggest that while total western Allies losses were in the thousands of tanks they were neither all Shermans nor were there 9000 losses.
I know T-34s had an atrocious attrition rate at times.
The joke is the Germans inflating their kill count to credit the effectiveness of their Tiger and Panther tanks, not them literally destroying over 9000 tanks
rollin' on dubs
And worse was that after the war, the Nazi "untermench" sterotype was somehow "de-nazified" as German officers wrote their memoirs. Why did they lose the war? Pick one:
- Eleventy Zillion Dirty Communists on the battlefield.
- It was all Hitler's fault and they were Just Following Orders.
- Did we mention the faceless robotic waves of Dirty Communists?
After the war, Rooting for the Nazis was the cankersore on wargaming fandom for years. Those handsome, scrubbed clean "Heer" soldiers vs. those dirty dirty Ruskie hordes played well during the Red Scare.
Now there were several books from the tinfoil hat crowd and the green ink brigade that seemed to think this was some conspiracy when the realty was that a lot of German officers didn't want to admit that they were beaten. It's not like Hitler was gonna complain about being blamed for "losing" the Eastern Front.
It all got flanderized into "german engineering" and "If the Nazis had [INSERT WONDERWEAPON HERE] they would have won".
This took a massive dive in The '80s, in part because it was the 40th anniversary of The Holocaust. It picked up again because most hack authors found it easy to write about Nazis With Gnarly Weapons and movie Kitch had made the Nazis Acceptable Targets.
But NATO and the DOD had long since found out the truth. The '70s saw leaks from Soviet archives and people began to look at the actual history. The US Army was scared straight because the Soviet "Operational Art" explained a lot of the reason Ivan does what he does. We even adopted it.
The "Muh Germans are Cool" has faded from most wargaming fandom aside from those idiots who post on Image Boards and very old grognards who bitch when your Russian units curbstomp their hand painted Panzers....
edited 20th Nov '15 8:20:36 AM by TairaMai
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....It got mentioned a bit above, but the bit about a Ford Mustang being extremely lightweight compared to any armored vehicle you can name will play a big part on the level of wear-and-tear and maintenance required for it. One issue they found when they uparmored Humvees was that everything started breaking, not just the shocks, due to the additional weight. The extra weight means the suspension is under more stress, which means it doesn't absorb shocks as well, which means every bit and piece is getting rattled around.
Plus, whenever the vehicle needs to stop, go, or change directions, there's a lot of inertia to swing around.
@Taira
Literally every time I bring up German tanks you make some post as though I've just found out about it. I knooooooooooooooooooooooooow, girl. I already knew. It's like the first thing you learn when you research WW 2.
Also, I'm kind of curious as to what the source is for the Hummel having 2x as many parts as the Priest.
edited 22nd Nov '15 7:35:15 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der Partei
Yep; Type 74
. The design was started in 1962, and after a protracted design process, was built 1975-80.

What kind of warranty and bullshit deal are they getting these from? And here I have an older (2000 model) Ford Mustang that has 150,000 miles. At 5000 miles it should just need some minor maintenance work and a new barrel of oil for the engine, not a complete factory rebuild. What kind of crap are they making if it needs that?