SoleSurvivor
Posts: 1493
Joined: 7/13/2001
From: Germany
Status: offline
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sherman´s are the best......esp. the "EASY 8" is one great example of american engineering capability...US builds 4-5 shermans/76mm for one panther on the german side.
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here a copy & paste:
All-in price for a Panther was $129,000 RM, or about US$32,000. Price for a Sherm was $40-$60,000 depending on the model.
Final assembly of a Panther took 2,000 man hours. All-in including subcomponents 55,000 man hours. The 'cheap' Sherm? 48,000 man hours.
Perfect example, the Tiger weighed about 25% more than a Panther, but cost 100%+ to build - raw materials represents only a fraction of the cost. The Tiger contained almost 100% more parts than a Panther.
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I think it would be more useful to break out the "cost" of a tank into two parts.
1) The type and quantity of raw materials used to construct the tank. Larger quantities of certain strategic materials were used in Tiger tanks for example. This makes Tiger tanks far more "expensive" than the Panther, but is are these materials reflected in the costs cited above?
2) The man-hours necessary to construct the tank. This is a more acurate reflection of the actual "cost" involved in building the tank.
I've got some data on the materials used in the construction of German tanks. Does anybody have any man-hour figures?
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Consider the following info:
On 1 March 1945, a total of 9,968 workers were employed in the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nurnberg (MAN) AG works, of which 5,448 were involved in tank construction. these were broken down as follows:
- in administration: 124
- in tank machining department: 841
- in tank manufacturing: 3,985
- in tank assembly: 500
5,023 of these were men, 425 were women. 2,719 of the men were foreigners*; among the women 230 were non-German. Two shifts were run within a 24 hour period, each shift comprising 12 hours.
Now lets go through the following exercise, lets say every one of the foreigners were slave labor, and all of them were employed in machining, assembly or manufacturing (no admin jobs), that would comprise almost exactly 51% of labor. My SWAG is that 25% of the cost of manufacturing a tank is labor (in line with Komatsu & Caterpillar products), that would mean that the cost of a Panther is artificially understated by about 13% - nah, lets just double it, to be safe - The cost of a Panther would come up to say US$39,000**. Still a bargain compared to the Sherm.
Bear in mind that all German tanks were procured at a profit to the manufacturer by the German state, same as their US counterparts.
That the US built more copies of a certain weapon type does not mean they were 'cheaper', the US procured expensive weapons, for example the Garand M1 was four times as expensive as the Kar 98, half again as expensive as an STG44. Tank prices are in line with those of the Soviet Union, the average price of a T-34/76 ('41-'44) was US$34,000 and that of a T-34/85 US$29,597 (yes, that's right, it was cheaper - a deflationary effect of munitions production in wartime Russia).
On a side note, the detail on the Panther assembly man hours, they are broken down as follows:
- Hull production: 55 hours
- Turret production: 38 hours
- Chassis assembly: 485 hours
- Turret assembly: 150 hours
- Final assembly: 85 hours
All info Walter J. Spielberger's "Panther & its Variants" and Mark Harrison's "Accounting for War"
* In this timeframe, 1.8 million Italian workers were working under contract in Germany, and were definitely NOT slave labor. Undetermined numbers of guest workers of other nationalities were also working in German factories. For purposes of this analisys, I am assuming ALL foreign laborers were slave labor because I want to maintain a conservative bias.
** Exchange rate is derived from international commodity price normalization, based on actual RM transactions. Not quite bread , but pretty indicative.
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I am late coming to this thread.
I admit I know little of the costs and man-hours to produce various tanks - thanks for the info, by the way, very useful - but I think the reason the USA and the USSR out produced Germany is because they could. Or in the case of the USSR had to. Both countries had the man/woman power and the space to build huge tank factories, long assembly lines and so on. The USA had spare capacity in its economy, it was the only economy that grew druring the war, everyone else had to cut back. And both had the funds to burn. It matters not if the Panther is cheaper or not, or whether it takes longer to make; if you can throw money into the pot, hire people, ensure there are no hold ups in supply, have people who come to work and then go home to a safe, warm bed, if you want to, you are going to make more tanks.
I think it comes down to economic power not cost per unit. The USA had, the USSR developed it, the UK never had it and did not got it.
A question for the experts on tank production: were German factories working at maximum production in the period we are talking about? Could they divert production to build more/expand the factories they had? If yes and no, then that's why the USA and the USSR made more tanks.
Side issues: Neither the USA or the USSR had labour problems or 'guild' problems - that is over coming established practices that were counter-efficent. The USA because they were paying good money and the economy was booming, the USSR because they shot anyone who tired to cause problems
Also, how efficent were those 'guest' workers? Slaves are difficult to use for precision engineering; you have to station an engineer over nearly every on of them to be sure they are doing what they are told, so why not use the engineer to do the work? Even the ones who volenteered like the Italians were in a strange country - thier own had just surrendered if we are talking production of Panthers - how hard were they really working?
There is a cliche that WWII was won in the factories. Who had the most? who was able to buid more? who was able to keep them running 24 hours a day, with no fear of bombing - and I know that allied bombing had little effect until close to the end. The Allies, hence more tanks.
///////////////////////////////////Summary//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
cost of a tank, ok, but you wont like the answer.
Panther between US$32,000. US$39,000
Tiger US$64,000.
Sherman was $40-$60,000 depending on the model.
T-34/76 ('41-'44) was US$34,000 and that of a T-34/85 US$29,597
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What does this mean? Yes, they build more, but partly because they have a larger industry.
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[ November 18, 2001: Message edited by: GI Seve ]
[ November 18, 2001: Message edited by: GI Seve ]
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I've learned (the hard way) that you can't even open a can of sardines with a 37mm... ONE 88 is worth more than 50 PaK37's! (seriously, I can't even kill Bren carriers or soft targets with 'em... *klonk* *klonk* *klonk*)
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