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Originally Posted by Stealhead
Indeed the T-34 is not much of a threat in ones and twos but in large numbers you wont be able to destroy them fast enough.
I would honestly say that another factor hindered German tank design; over complexity their designs where very complex and required a lot of intensive work that other tanks like the T-34 and M4 did not have war machines usually only last several months in combat conditions if they are not destroyed the lack of intensive maintenance will bring them down.In war like WWII logistics is the true key to victory as you said.If you cant construct enough tanks,planes,bullets and bombs you are in all likely hood going to loose.
Tanks like the Tiger and Panther where very impressive but a large enough number of them where never produced to make a difference.On top of this by 1944 the quality of German tanks was very low on average and most captured German tank crewman during interrogation had low confidence in their tank quality sure they knew the potential and they understood the fear factor.Another little know fact is due to war shortages alloys normally added to steel to make the armor strong but not brittle where not available in large quantities in Germany in the last year of the war they had to come up with alternate methods of producing the steel armor it was not successful though and it was not uncommon for armor to shatter due to its brittleness.
I often wonder if the Germans had designed somewhat less complex tanks they could have been able to produce larger numbers of them and this most certainly would have had some effect.Of course it would have helpful if the Germans had the ability to seriously damage its enemies industrial capacity.The Germans needed a very rapid war they got in over their heads and the rest is history.
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Another problem that really plagued the Panther in regards to alloy shortages was the fact that the final drive used a singe-teeth spur gear design as opposed to the double herringbone used in the Sherman s. This design was simply not adequate for a tank whose weight eventually doubled. Once key alloys started to become scarce, these single-teeth gears became more brittle and quite a number of Panther breakdowns was attributed to this. The increasing amount of inexperienced drivers only made the situation worse.