[OT/DSII] Re: Shermans and Panthers

Pardon a, at best, dilettante vis a vis groppos (at least I'd heard of
the
Wiesbaden, even if I couldn't recall the name), but everything I've read
suggested that Russian armor was at least as good, and generally better
than German, but wasted due to bad tactics and some particularly
advantages
of the German tanks.

In the tactics, I'd heard that nobody did combined arms as well as the
Germans, especially early on, and Russians had a number of bad habits,
such
as always putting a troop(or whatever they were called) commander in the
second tank, combined with rigid command structure, so that the Germans
just picked off the second tank in ambush, and wasted the rest at their
leisure.

The main advantages I heard mentioned were FM radios in almost every
German
tank, while only Russians had the inferior AM, and superior optics in
the
Germans.

On the American, and perhaps Brit side, I seem to recall a quote of a
surviving panzer commander: I could always kill their tanks 10-to-1, but
they would always come up with an eleventh.

Of course, these are probably oversimplifications, but the discussions
seem
to fly in the face of what little I've read in recent posts, though the
above was repeated often enough. Am I a victim of the wartime equivalent
of
urban legends?

The_Beast

PS. In the Wiesbaden incident, I think I heard that, before it went
down,
the fires got so intense, that parts of the metal glowed; though it
could
be explaned as reflection of the fires, somebody seemed pretty certain.

-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon

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