*Excerpts from Blitzkrieg: Manoeuvre war on the Eastern front(London: Osprey Books, 1991)
The Pz. Kpfw. IV “Nashorn” or “Rhino” to English speakers; underwent many iterations, first seeing service in the invasions of Poland and Yugoslavia where it seemed to be virtually invincible against anything the outmatched eastern european armies could throw at it. Singular battalions could rampage with virtual impunity against even the heaviest resistance, and though there was room for improvement, it would find its place in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS for years to come. In the fateful combats of operation Teutonic, the behemothic heavy tanks would accompany the initial scrum through the USSR’s western territories, bulldozing its way through any number of BT-7s or disorganised T-34s that had the misfortune of encountering the heavy battalions of the Panzertruppe and finding worthy adversaries only in the Soviet Union’s own mighty KV-1 tanks.
The further improved Ausf D with a significantly improved engine and transmission as well as improved armour and armament made world shattering combat debut in summer 1941’s Operation Landsknecht , the fateful drive on the Soviet city of Leningrad. Unlike the typical medium and light tanks of the Wehrmacht , which were grouped into divisions, the meticulous heavy tanks would be deployed as independent “schwere Panzerabteilung”(heavy tank battalions), reporting directly to field army headquarters. Like the StuG battalions, the ‘s PzAbt’ would be attached as needed to support breakthrough missions by the infantry and tank troops, delivering overwhelming direct fire support on enemy defences.
But while the StuG III was an economically lean design courtesy of the engineers at Ford-Werke, armed with the ubiquitous 7.5 cm Pak 40 and modest armour, the Nashorn was cladded and equipped like knights for the thickest close fighting, and cost nearly 260,000 Reichsmarks. They would be the final legacy of German craft production, well made and spacious fighting vehicles, boasting considerable engineering refinement as well as crew ergonomics of the likes never seen before, but they would inevitably be superseded by the Front Ford philosophy.
Physically, the Nashorn resembled an enlarged Pz. Kpfw. III, with the Ausf D even sporting the enlarged side-skirts common to most later era Panzer IIIs. Indeed, in initial engagements it was often mistaken for the smaller medium tank in the haze of the battlefield, to the misfortune of the enemy. The armour profile is very similar, a rectangular hull with vertical armoured sides, and a vertical front plate for the driver vision port and hull machine gun port. But the face-hardened steel armour was 120mm thick on the front hull with certain platings reaching up to 140mms, and an average of 80mm on the sides and rear, all enough to shrug off everything but the heaviest howitzer shells and to equal the power of the tank it was designed to match and counter; the KV-1.
When coupled with the fighting manual’s recommended 30 degree angling, this presented a target that was practically immune to fire from the Red Army’s standard 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank gun, like a knight in shining armour charging towards peasant archers. Armed with its 8.8cm/L56 calibre gun, it was able to puncture most anything short of another heavy tank at most combat effective ranges, while designed to potentially accommodate larger guns in the future should the need arise. The hope was that the tank would be able to serve as a long-lived basis for the heavy combat formations of the Panzertruppe for years to come.
For the standards of the time, the large calibre main cannon also allowed for the delivery of a powerful high explosive shot, following complaints from the infantry about how the Panzertruppe either could deal with tanks or field positions but never both. While the modified Pz. Kpfw III was able to fit a potent 7.5cm gun, the gain in velocity came at the price of the previous medium calibre gun’s high explosive performance, resulting in impeded effectiveness against dug in VOSCOM forces and frequently forcing Stahlpakt formations to wait for the arrival of assault guns such as the StuG III and the Brummbar, something that heavy tank battalions equipped with the Nashorn never needed.
Though concerns were raised by the tank’s mechanical requirements; particularly by engineers associated with Ford who had been schooled in the American interchangeable parts philosophy of design hammered in by decades of working on cars; it was believed that the tank’s role would mitigate this issue. As a breakthrough tank, the vehicle could be simply shipped to the battlefield and driven into the heaviest fighting along narrow fronts to open passageways through enemy defensive formations that more mobile assets could then exploit. With the limited duration of the combat missions in the concept of the vehicle, any that broke down could be seamlessly moved back for maintenance and repair and the vehicles held in reserve until the need for them arose once more.1
This was at least, the general theory behind the Nashorn’s design. And when allowed to function in this role, it excelled against virtually all possible opposition. As has already been mentioned, Breakthrough formations equipped with Nashorn tanks simply pushed through any opposition the Polish armed forces could offer, moving with contempt for the lacklustre firepower of the Polish anti-tank formations and engaging any targets of their choosing at will.
With more Nashorn tanks deployed to the Polish Campaign than the Polish had tanks at all, the Nashorns were portrayed as virtually invincible and their crews certainly seemed to believe it. And against the Polish army, they may as well have been, with no confirmed losses to Polish anti-tank fire throughout the entirety of the Polish war.2
Nashorn tanks would be the first German mechanised assets to breach into Warsaw where they would overwhelm the final lines of defence, unable to be halted by anything short of direct artillery strikes by crews that were not well trained in anti-tank warfare.3 And it would be in the sight of the mighty tanks of the German army that the annexation of Poland would be signed, while the president would shortly commit suicide as Nashorns would drive down Warsaw’s streets in parade formation.
The Nashorn compared very favourably to its opponents during the first two years of fighting on the Eastern Front. It easily outclassed the available medium tanks of the Red Armies, and its relative immunity most anti-tank weapons prompted a crash program to uparm Soviet and American tanks with the high velocity 76mm, still insufficient against the Nashorn’s frontal armour but capable of flanking engagements at range. Even against the Soviet KV series of heavy tanks and the American T-5 of the breakthrough tank brigades, the Nashorn was largely superior in firepower and overall protection.
The 8.8cm KwK 36 was significantly more powerful than the 85mm ZiS-53, and would not be surpassed in tank-killing ferocity until the 90mm D42 could be retrofitted. But the Nashorn’s faults could also not be ignored in the vast expanse of the USSR: it was a heavy tank, with all that this implied.
While the mud and rains in the Russian countryside are a hazard to all vehicles, and Nashorns had better ground pressure ratings than lighter PzKpfw IIIs due to the much wider tracks and interleaved roadwheel design, any vehicle can and will be bogged down in the rasputitsa conditions. The Nashorn suffered from a lack of suitable armoured recovery vehicles to dislodge them when they did get stuck.
In most circumstances, it was incredibly difficult to recover and repair any Nashorn unable to move under its own power. Field services often had to set up at the site of a wreck and field repair the tank to get it back into a maintenance depot. The Wehrmacht wanted an armoured recovery vehicle derivative to alleviate this problem, but Henschel & Son could not produce enough hulls to meet the demands of the heavy tank battalions even without diverting production.
What the Wehrmacht needed was a medium tank that could be efficiently mass produced and could also engage Soviet and American armour on favourable terms. True to the pseudo-Darwinian philosophy of Hitler, the Reich Armament Ministry hoped to find the way forward through competition.
Two major projects would compete to succeed the PzKpfw III; the conservative VK 30.03(M) project by MAN AG and Rheinmetall, and the more ambitious Entwicklung 50 project by Ford Werke.
The VK 30.03, originally intended to be a 30-35 tonne medium tank when greenlit in spring 1940, would balloon to the 47 tonne PzKpfw V “Panther” in its final pre-production version. While less burdened by the legacy of German craft production than the Nashorn, the Panther was proving to be expensive, and as the armour thickened and chassis lengthened to adjust to the shifting needs of the Wehrmacht, this overstressed the engine, transmission and final drive components greatly.
The E-50, by contrast, was designed under the tutelage of American expat engineers and Fritz Todt’s philosophy of war economy. Intended to be produced on an assembly line by forced labour, and sharing components and design philosophy with other Entwicklung series projects, the E-50 began in a heavier weight class and successfully trimmed down through careful engineering and volumetric analysis.
Externally, the two prototypes were quite similar. Both tanks were tall and boxy tanks, with a rear engine and frontal transmission typical of German tanks. Both had clean lines compared to the greebled armour pattern of their predecessors; well sloped glacis plates of 80mm thick sloped at 55 degrees on the Panther and 54 on the E-50.
The major visible difference was in the turret. The Panther’s turret was largely rectangular, with a transverse cylindrical mantlet 100mm maximum thickness which could unfortunately deflect shells through the thin hull roof armour. The E-50 had a hexagonal turret and small conical mantlet over the rear of the breech. This presented a smaller vulnerability zone, more thickly armoured at 120mm at 21 degree slope.
The two tanks took different philosophies with their main armament. The Panther prototype was armed with the 7.5cm KwK 42 L/70 gun, a very potent anti-tank weapon that suffered from poor performance in high-explosive shells. Ford chose to equip the initial E-50 with the same 8.8cm KwK 36 as the Nashorn, which had less armour penetration but was favourable logistically due to the shared ammunition train with the Nashorn and the numerous Flak 36 anti-aircraft guns. The roomier turret of the E-50 was also designed to fit a derivative of the longer 8.8cm PaK 43 heavy anti-tank gun when it became available and required.
The development of both prototypes reached a fever-pitch of urgency during the campaigns of 1941. Even in the great Wehrmacht victories at Kiev and Pskov, the Panzertruppen took tremendous mechanical attrition, to say nothing of the loss of veteran tank crews. Upgraded to the limits of the chassis, the PzKpfw III Ausf M was still heavily vulnerable to everything from the excellent ZiS-2 anti-tank gun to the PTRS anti-tank rifle. Anti-tank rifle teams used the extraordinarily powerful 14.5x114mm BS tungsten-core shot to pierce the side and rear armour of German tanks in volley-fire, and the spaced-armour side-skirts required to stop the rounds from achieving catastrophic penetration put already overloaded chassis in dire straits.
As Red Army formations bristled with more anti-tank firepower, including their own analogues to the Pakfront, as well as new innovations in recoilless rifles firing shaped-charge warheads, the beleaguered PzKpfw III would have to give way.
PzKpfw 50 Ausf. D near Kursk, Summer 1943
On 1 January 1942, Hitler gave his final decree on the subject. Development of the PzKpfw V would cease immediately, and all existing materials at MAN AG would be recycled as a heavy assault gun/tank destroyer. This gave the MAN AG konzern a means to save face after all the development cost of the Panther was sunk, and the contracts for the resulting Jagdpanther would write their own illustrious story in the war. By the same decree, the E-50 would be accepted for serial production, with modifications, as the PzKpfw 50 Jaguar.
While Jaguar production would take precedence, and thus Panzer formations would operate for a time with a mix of Jaguar and PzKpfw III companies, the less developed PzKpfw 25 Gepard would soon follow in serial production to finally replace the remaining PzKpfw IIIs.
- This was the OTL justification given for why the panzertruppe was not overly concerned with the mechanical reliability of its heaviest vehicles due to the expectation of using them in limited duration offensive operations.
- This is not exactly true and discounts losses to anti-tank mines, artillery, and airpower.
- Post-archive opening evidence revealed roughly five years after the publishing of this book as part of detente measures demonstrates that the fault was more in the lack of high grade Polish armour piercing shells due to little access to Tungsten rather than any lack of training on the part of Polish troops who were well versed in anti-tank warfare but lacking in the means to prosecute it.
AN: A follow-up post on American tank development is already finished and will come soon as we resume more regular posting of content. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
Bình luận
0