"How the Germans repair their Tanks" Topic

"When a vehicle was too badly damaged to be repaired by the field repair shop it was sent back to Germany for homeland repair. The repairs were usually done at the factory making the vehicle. When the vehicle was received, one of four things could happen:

•Repaired and sent to the Feldzeuginspektion (campaign inspectorate). These vehicles were not included in the Waffenamt (ordnance office) production numbers.
•Converted to a different type of combat vehicle such as a Pz Kpfw II being converted to a Marder II. These vehicles were were generally included in the Waffenamt production numbers with a note that they were rebuilt vehicles.
•Converted to school vehicles.
•Scrapped, if the damages were too extensive…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Repaired and sent to the Feldzeuginspektion (campaign inspectorate). These vehicles were not included in the Waffenamt (ordnance office) production numbers.

A refreshing difference from Soviet practice, where not only repaired/reconditioned vehicles, but reworked vehicles that had failed to pass RKKA inspection (in some cases multiple times) were entered into the books as "new vehicles", thus inflating Soviet production figures (but meeting or exceeding quotas and keeping factory managers out of the Gulag).

Fascinating , they seem to have problems repairing Tigers and Panthers .

There was a TV series some years ago about rebuilding WWII tanks by collectors. After watching the one on the panther, what a piece of crap. no wonder thy had low availability numbers.

Yeah, the US definitely had the better setup for keeping tanks in the field. Starting with truly interchangeable parts, none of this "file to fit" like most of Europe seemed to use at the time.

Thanks Tango, that is some very interesting statporn. The Panther data is indeed very telling. Of those sent in they scrapped 61 and only managed to repair 116, leaving 182 unrepaired.

The high figure for Panzer Is is odd – they were still repairing these as late as July 1944. I'd have thought this long after a Panzer I's use-by date, unless these were command or "well, it's better than nothing" Panzerjäger variants. One wonders if these were originally sent back for repair because they had had an ATR bullet through them that was disabling but structurally minor.

In fact the ratio of repaired to scrapped is very interesting. A high number is good because it means the vehicle was highly repairable, a low number means it was likely to need scrapping. On that basis the Panzer I scores well with a tanks-repaired-per-tank-scrapped score of 19, versus 6 for Panzer III, 5.6 for Panzer IV, only 1.9 for Panther and a hopeless 0.7 per Tiger. A Tiger damaged, recovered and sent back to be considered for repair was 8 times more likely then to be scrapped than a Panzer IV.

This is pretty counterintuitive, because these tanks were feared because they were so well protected. You'd have thought the protection would translate into an ability to shrug off more punishment than could a less robust tank, i.e. they'd then be easier rather than harder to repair. Instead it's the opposite. I wonder to what extent this is because these more feared types were thoroughly pounded and thus more damaged when they were shipped back, versus because as dwight and badger suggest, they were so complicated to build to begin with that the less fiddly Panzer IVs and StuGs got fixed first? Were there any hard-to-find strategic materials in a Panther that you didn't need to repair a Panzer IV?

If you had a finite pool of labour and materials sufficient to repair (i) three Panzer IVs, or (ii) one Panther, I guess you would repair the three Panzer IVs. Presumably a lot of those left in stock were repairable too? I can't think why they'd have kept 180 damaged Panzer Is and 89 damaged Panzer IIs in stock in August 1944 if they were unrepairable. If that were so they would surely just have been scrapped.

The high figure for Panzer Is is odd – they were still repairing these as late as July 1944. I'd have thought this long after a Panzer I's use-by date, unless these were command or "well, it's better than nothing" Panzerjäger variants.

I would presume that they would still be somewhat useful as training vehicles (especially for drivers) at that time. Which is what Panzer I was originally pretty much intended for.