A comparison of US and Soviet tank losses in WWII shows little significant difference in scale...

Taking into consideration the difference in overall scale, in comparable operations, the attrition experience of US, British and German armored forces in the Western Front was generally similar in nature and pattern to those of soviet and German armored forces on the Eastern Front.

The ratio of the tank loss rate to the casualty rate appears to be a function of the density or proportion of tanks in the force. A force can be considered armor-heavy when the proportion of tanks exceeds 6 per 1,000 troops. Furthermore, this ratio of tank loss rates to casualty rates appears to remain relatively constant as the proportion of tanks increases above 6 per 1,000 troops. On the other hand, that ratio decreases, apparently in more-or-less linear fashion, when the proportion of tanks declines below 6 per 1,000 troops."

Ok guys, if the Colonel is right, it appears that the 'quality' of your tanks DOES NOT MATTER.

Comments?

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Originally posted by Alex H:

Ok guys, if the Colonel is right, it appears that the 'quality' of your tanks DOES NOT MATTER.

Comments?

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Yikes! You've hardly had the book and you are already picking it apart sentence by sentence!

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Originally posted by Alex H:
Ok guys, if the Colonel is right, it appears that the 'quality' of your tanks DOES NOT MATTER.

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I don't know how you get here from there. Obviously, for the guy in the tank fighting other tanks (hopefully other inferior tanks), the quality makes a whole lot of difference. Once you scale up into to platoon and company size battles, a whole lot of other elements come into play (command, tactics, terrain, unit cohesion, etc.). By the time you get to brigade and division-level operations, then those other factors play such a part in the battle outcome, that the differences in tank quality "wash out in the data". It is not that it is not important, its just that there are dozens of factors as important. In the original version of the QJM, Trevor listed some 73 variables.

Actually, we did do some work on "East Front" versus "West Front" armor battles recently. Let me post some of our data (from the EPW Phase I & II Report, page 28)

1. Number of Engagements

2. Average Attack Tank Strength
3. Average Defender Tank Strength
4. Peak Tank Strength

Italian Ardennes Battle
Campaign Campaign of Kursk
1. 75 71 49

2. 77 84 86
3. 40 37 59
4. 304 335 437

Both sides have more than:
100 tanks 4 3 10
60 tanks 8 8 15
30 tanks 39 31 21

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Originally posted by Chris Lawrence:
Alex,

Yikes! You've hardly had the book and you are already picking it apart sentence by sentence!

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I had the book, but I lost it.

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...that the differences in tank quality "wash out in the data".

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Do they? Or is it just that the qualitative difference is not enough to matter?

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Originally posted by Alex H:
Do they? Or is it just that the qualitative difference is not enough to matter?

Seems to me victorious forces of the same size and tank density will lose similar amounts of tanks, be they Shermans or Panthers. Is Mike J right and the qualitative difference shows up in the numbers of casualties inflicted on the loser?

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We may be saying the same thing here. If you actually had a senario where you could compare two victorious forces of the same size and density (and all other factors were equal), I have no doubt the Panther armed force would both cause more casualties and recieve less casualties (compared to the Sherman force).
The problem is that these incremental differences in hardware do not show up in most analysis of the historical weapons (except by case studies or individual accounts). This is partially what has lead to US analytic community to try to build their models from the bottom-up based upon weapons duels (SSPKs, or Single Shot Probability of Kill). While this has allowed them to look at the differences in weapon performances, it has lead to many distortions in reality when compared to the real world (meaning historical data).

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Originally posted by Ruslan:
Conclusions?
1) The UK tankers were less competent

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Ruslan: No fair operating under an alias! Anyway conclusion 1 is probably wrong. Instead say that the Brit force mix was much more armor heavy than was the US. With about equal numbers of troops on the ground, they had nearly twice as many tanks operational at this early stage of the campaign and were operating in terrain where masses of armor could be deployed.

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Originally posted by Rich:
Anyway, stop distracting me.

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