Hi Richard,
>> I for one was VERY impressed with the Panther I saw at Borden and the two I
>> saw in Paris many years ago. I understand that these Panther tanks had
>> running gear reliability problems, but other than that were very, very good
>> tanks.
>>
>Hmmmm, they _could_ have been, average availability a little over 50%
tends to
>fly in the face of "good" as an overall rating, certainly when
>operational they were good.
This is the old reliability vs. performance standard regarding rating a
vehicle. Obviously if something is so bad it never works right, it
deserves to be kicked in the pants. But the Panther had a superior
performance record when crewed by trained crews correctly supplied with
spare parts, fuel, and shops. Fortunately for the Allies, the Germans
were not working under ideal circumstances.
To illustrate my point... I don't think many people would argue that the
M1A1 Abrams is one of the finest, perhaps the finest (depends on who you
ask!), tank ever to grace the battlefields of this too often fought over
Earth. But... how good do you think they would be if the US Army's rear
area was constantly bombed, shelled, and overrun, not to mention its
factories and infrastructure being bombed back to the stone age? Me
thinks not many would be running very long :-)
In fact, there was a report that came out at the last stage of the Cold
War which predicted readiness numbers for US/NATO forces in the event of
an all out nuclear war. It was not pretty. They figured that whatever
survived the big boombooms would quickly fall out of service due to the
inability to keep them running/flying.
BTW, US/Commonwealth readiness numbers were very often horrible as well.
Sometimes they had tanks and no crews, other times crews and no tanks.
All depends on where and when and what you look at. But unlike he
Germans, the Allies could decide when to stop and refit. The Germans had
to wait until the Allies gave them a break.
Steve
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