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Gandalf3019 -> RE: Why was the German 88 so great? (11/22/2017 10:23:06 PM)
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The 88 was a great antitank gun as pointed out above. The statement "It was in every way a superior weapon to anything the Allies had" is nonsense. The USA had a 90mm AA gun that was its equal but generally not used in an antitank role. The Brits had the 17 pounder. USSR had 100mm and 122mm AT guns. All of these had equivalent penetration to the 88 and in the AT role had a lower silhouette compared to the AA version of the 88. There was a version of the 88 on an AT mount but that was rare, IIRC there was major problems with the mount under that much stress. Something that never gets brought up in these discussions is exactly what ammo are you talking about. The Sherman's 76 using APCR had BETTER penetration than the Tiger's 88 using normal AP rounds. While the Germans also had special ammo, it was more scarce to begin with and became even more rare as the war went on. So while comparing APCR to AP is apples and oranges, the western allies got more of the special ammo and it became more available as time went on. BTW there were different 88s used by the Germans. I am refering to the ones like that used on the Tiger I and the famous AA gun. The 88 on the Tiger II was more powerful
One thing that must be said is all reports of German guns or tanks has to be taken with a massive grain of salt. Soldiers reported every gun as an 88 and every tank as a Tiger. This is especially true in Normandy where the restricted terrain of the bocage led to very close engagement ranges. In that situation the 88 had virtually no advantage compare to the 75 (both cut through armor like butter at those ranges) and the 75 was much easier to conceal. In fact there were very few allied tanks taken out by 88s in Normandy (according to data directly from the German 88 units) as most were held back for INDIRECT FIRE (something the AT 75 could not do) and surprisingly AA fire.
When looking at tank on tank engagements you will see endless drivel about how wonderful the German tanks were compared to the allied tanks. It's pretty much all nonsense. 'It took 5 Shermans to take out one Tiger' is repeated endlessly, yet there is absolutely no battlefield data to support it. In fact, the single biggest determinant of who won a tank duel was (by far) who shot first, not which tank, which gun, which nation, etc was shooting. Of course the whole topic of tank on tank is overblown. In NE Europe, prior to Germany, more than half of all battlefield losses of Shermans were to AT guns. Only about 10% were to tanks or AFVs. After entering Germany, mines became the biggest Sherman killers. In terms of what tanks did, any way you look at it they used far more MG ammo than gun ammo. For the main gun, more of the ammo used was HE (i.e. used against soft targets).
As an aside, the HE characteristics are never discussed even though HE was used more than AP and the vast majority of threat to the tank were soft targets (AT guns, infantry, infantry with AT weapons like a panzerfaust, etc.). People talk about how the US were imbeciles keeping the 75 over the 76. The reality was that the 76 shell had about half the explosive as the 75 since the casing for the 76 was thicker due to the higher muzzle velocity. Which would you rather have, a gun that is twice as effective against 90% of the threat to your life or one that is 4 times as effective against 10% of the threat?
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