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Indeed. If you look at any report/book/etc about the strategic production of war goods in WW2, you'll quickly realize that the Germans over-engineered most of
by hylaride 6y ago
Indeed. If you look at any report/book/etc about the strategic production of war goods in WW2, you'll quickly realize that the Germans over-engineered most of their equipment. This resulted in fewer weapons and more maintenance for said weapons. The famous Tiger II tank (and most of their other planes/tanks) took longer to make, required more maintenance, consumed more fuel (a precious commodity for Germany at the time), and required more one-off spare parts (even the tracks were designed for one specific side of the tank). On top of this, Germany had more tank models than the rest of the allies combined. The allied tanks were simpler and could be mass-produced at insane quantities, parts were interchangeable, and could more easily be taken from disabled machines.
The Russians even went further, specifically engineering their tanks to only pass QA to last a very short amount of time (as little as a few dozen KM of use) during the first half of their involvement in the war because they'd be destroyed before then on average anyways.
- jjk166 6y agoIt should be noted however that the Axis could never compete with the Allies in terms of quantity - America alone had over 5 times the industrial capacity of the entire Axis in 1944, and Germany was critically limited in resources like oil. Germany needed weapons that could get 10+:1 kill ratios. Further most of the late war German equipment was designed during the early war when they were doing well: it looked like their industrial base was expanding and they mostly needed equipment for well supported offensive actions. If germany had spammed tanks like the Russians did, they'ed just run out of fuel sooner. It was a gamble to go for over-engineered equipment, but it was rational even if it ultimately didn't pan out.