Tuesday 17 September 2019

Ferdinand Intel


"Captured enemy vehicles

Ferdinand SPG

Characteristics: 88 mm gun with an elongated barrel on the Tiger tank chassis, immobile armoured turret. Mass: 67-70 tons. Chassis: width 3.5 meters, length (with gun) 10 meters. Top speed: 20 kph, average speed: 10-15 kph.

The gun is installed in a ball mount in the front plate of the fighting compartment. Fire can be direct only. Crew of 6: driver, radio operator, gun commander, gunner, two loaders. The vehicle has 6 hatches: two in the front, three in the turret on the roof (one with a periscope), and a reserve one in the sloped rear plate. Tracks are 84 cm wide. The vehicle is 3 meters 20 cm tall. Road wheel diameter is 80 cm.

Armour: turret and front hull: 20 cm, sides: 8 cm, rear: 8 cm, roof: 4 cm. Equipped with two Maybach XII 120 TRM engines (800 hp). Two fuel tanks, 1100 L capacity. Range: 100 km.

Drawbacks:
  • Low speed
  • Weak engine
  • The track is unreliable (slips off often)
  • Restricted vision to the left and right
  • No observation slits
  • Catches fire easily
  • Can be defeated by artillery of all calibers, anti-tank rifles, anti-tank grenades, and incendiary fluid."

Via Valeriy Lisyutin

21 comments:

  1. That list of things those oversized METAL BAWKSES could be defeated by seems either startlingly over-optimistic or to be using an unusual definition of "defeated by"...

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    1. There were reports of Ferdinands turning back after being fired upon with anti-tank rifles, even though the defenders themselves admit that no penetration was observed. Everything else is pretty conventional, although 45 mm guns couldn't really do much with AP alone.

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    2. Imagine being inside the Ferdinand knowing that as soon as anyone flanked you they could knock your tread off and you would be sitting inside a bunker who's only gun was a cannon, with a very limited field of fire. I would start backing up as well.

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    3. I mean yeah but that's not exactly what the phrase "defeated by" means in normal usage. At St. With a M8 Greyhound managed to take out a damn King Tiger - talk about David and Goliath! - with three point-blank rear shots but nobody's going to say the big cat could be "defeated by" that dinky 37 mm peashooter on the basis of such outliers, if you see what I mean.

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    4. I'd definitely define it as "defeated by". A mission kill does not need to be a catastrophic loss. Even if you can't manage to fully destroy a vehicle, if you've made it incapable of fulfilling its mission (because you destroyed its tracks or scared it off, for example) that vehicle has been "defeated".

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    5. By that token any AFV could be "defeated by" any popgun that only scratches the paint but manages to make a poorly-trained crew piss themselves and vamoose. Which is not only stretching the meaning rather beyond reason but so generalised as to be analytically quite useless.

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    6. Yes but the King Tiger had a bow machine gun and a turret with a coaxial machine gun. Without the infantry, the Ferdinand Elefant was a one trick pony that could only shoot forward and could only retreat at about a walking speed. Not something very comforting when by 1943 Russia T-34s were now getting common.

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    7. What's the problem with the lack of coaxial machine gun? Soviet didn't see the need of them even during the war nor in post war turretless vehicles.

      Was it due to lack of proper German armoured vehicle/infantry combined tactics or the usual excuse of "if the elephants had machine guns Nazis would dominate the world"?

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    8. There was so much artillery concentrated on the heavy vehicle that infantry couldn't stay close to it. At least around Ponyri.

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    9. An anecdotic experience of a single vehicle shouldn't be used to judge overall experiences of all vehicle families.

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    10. Not like it generally took more than mortars and machineguns to pin down the footsloggers and separate them from the advancing tin cans if the combined-arms training wasn't up to snuff, anyway...

      But really, the whole concept of the design was to hang back and destroy things at standoff distance while being more or less immune to return fire; as-such that role does not particularly demand secondary antipersonnel weapons and the like. But I think we all know what they say about plans and contact with the enemy, never mind now that AFVs routinely found themselves in various messy and confused skirmishes instead of the kinds of stately and organised set-piece battles that concept somewhat presupposes...

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    11. I would say that a design intended for long range standoffs would be closer to the Nashorn where thick armour isn't necessarily required, since you'd shoot from an ambush and retreat quickly. Thick armour would imply that the idea was to get close and personal, where you might suddenly find yourself without an infantry cover.

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    12. They were working with an already heavily-armoured base hull so not putting heavy plate on the superstructure too would of been a bit silly (and rather schizophrenic from a conceptual standpoint), though. Heavily-armoured direct fire support vehicle capable of shrugging off most if not all return fire seems like a fairly reasonably thing to go for when you're starting with the base of a heavy assault tank in the first place.

      The problem with something like a Nashorn or the older Dicker Max/Sturer Emil is you pretty much can't put it anywhere *near* the immediate frontline due to its fundamental fragility, which can be problematic in offensives and hazardous on the defensive too if things don't go according to plan. Having enough armour to "tank" incoming fire gives more versatility in usage and more tactical options if nothing else.
      There's a reason German direct-fire SPG design evolution eventually largely converged into a fully-armoured form (ie. the various "Jagdpanzer" types from the little "Hetzer" to the giant white-elephant Jagdtiger) quite similar overall to the analogous Soviet assault guns.

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    13. Agreed wit Peter. When you build a monster with 200-mm armor against 1943 Allied antitank weaponry, even if it was supposedly designed as a long-range tank killer, you shouldn't be surprised if someone get the idea to use it as a close-range slugger. Armor it like a close-range slugger, and you can count on that it will be used as one.

      Although Kellomies has a point too, you could go with a compromise. No Allied tank-mounted weapon in 1943 could penetrate anything close to 200 mm of armor even at point-blank range. In fact, 100 mm, or even 90 or 80 mm, for engagements at 1500-2000 m would be good enough. Give it Panther-like slope, and you might even be able to cut that further to 75 mm and it would still bounce shots by any Allied tank-mounted gun at 2000 meters, or even at 1500 meters, and bounce shots from 1944 Allied tank guns (the Soviet 85, the US 76 mm) as well. You could lighten such a vehicle, reduce its cost, improve its tactical mobility, and improve its operational reliability mightily by going that route.

      Plus the fact that there is nothing much you can do in WWII era AFV to make your indestructible vehicle immune to direct hits in heavy caliber artillery barrages and Katyusha salvos. Being able to shoot and scoot on a moment's notice out of harm's way is still very important.

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    14. Hey, not saying the *extra* armour they added made much sense. But this is about the same bunch that gave us the Jagdtiger at a time when nothing in the enemy roster required a high-velocity 128 mm shell to kill...

      "Overkill isn't an option, it's a way of life" I guess. And Hitler did always like him some pointless excess.

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    15. In tankers school they teach you the best armor is a berm or any obstacle in front of you to absorb the enemy rounds. Good drivers always keep this in mind as at any moment, they might be ordered to go for some unidentified berm.

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  2. Considering all the vulnerability of the Ferdinand due to weight. It's a wonder that no one at Porsche suggested stripping off the armor and just mounting a old WW-1 21cm gun instead. Being able to move heavy artillery close to the front lines can play havoc with enemy staging points making it near impossible to refuel and reload ones vehicles. And this way there would be no need to ad machine guns

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    1. Not sure how you'd go about "stripping off" the armour of an already-built hull. Cut away the plates and replace them with thinner ones or something? Sounds like a waste of good steel (and a LOT of work hours) that, esp. as you'd have to do it over much of the surface area...

      As far as SP artillery goes the Germans already had the Hummel online for Kursk whose 15 cm gun had essentially equivalent range as those far bulkier 21 cm monsters, so that idea seems pretty moot insofar it comes to the ability to project fire into the enemy rear areas anyway...

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    2. I figured a slow ponderous artillery gun is less in danger of being over run than a tank which must be able to see the enemy to fire.

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    3. Doesn't mean it makes any sense to just about rebuild a heavily armoured hull as a lightly armoured one (seriously they'd have pretty much had to swap out most of the plate above the hull floor) merely in order to get it to fill a niche you already have dedicated serial-production designs for. The Ferdinand conversion was a way to turn the awkward leftovers of Herr Doktor Porsche's hubris into something decently useful without further excess expenditure of industrial resources.

      ...and given the basic mindset of the German military in general and of the guy with the stupid 'stache who gave them their marching orders in particular I've a hunch the issue of their potential vulnerability, never mind now difficulty of evacuation if things went pear-shaped, was simply never really considered (or at best given a cursory glance and then flatly ignored). There was a shockingly strong institutional culture of "wishing away" any amount of awkward details and worrisome concerns at work in that outfit. (It's probably no coincidence the Imperial Japanese military, heavily based on the Prussian model, demonstrated similarly reckless habits...)

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