Steve thinks that ... | Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II |...

As advertised | Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II | Christopher W. Wilbeck

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	• Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II Christopher W. Wilbeck The Aberjona Press, 2004 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

great book on tigers - very good info on their actual usage and how effective they were

highly recommended for any fan of german armor and especially tiger tanks.

Steve thinks that ...

Very careful in the historical documentation. Very sharp in the critical assesment of the tactical doctrine underlying the battlefield deployement of the Tigers.

As advertised

This book is exactly what the title says it is. Very concise. Doesn't get bogged down in minutia. After reading it, I was amazed at just what was accomplished with these tanks. From other sources, I knew that Tigers and Tiger II's had maintenance problems. In no way did I realize just how extensive these problems were until reading this. Start the day with 45 operational tanks. Drive them 10 miles down a road, and have 6 tanks able to fight. But then attain a 10+ plus kill ration.

The author presents all this information very objectively, which is something I also appreciate.

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TARGET! TARGET! TARGET!

Major Wilbeck has done a great service in writing a top-notch book that is applicable to today's armor or mechanized infantry officer as it is to any military historian or Tiger tank enthusiast. At a minimum I must say it is very thought provoking. I found myself reading a few paragraphs and then pausing to analyze the author's synthesis and comparing it with my own experience with mechanized forces.
This compact and focused study effectively integrates and illustrates the development, tactics, and deployment of the Tiger tank. With historical specificity the author reveals the strengths and weaknesses of what has become a tank of legend.
Professional Soldiers will find that many of the points brought out by Major Wilbeck continue to plague us today as we move from a Heavy force developed to defeat the armored threat of the Soviets during the Cold War to a more mobile, lightly armored force tailored for swift deployment to regional hot-spots.
Adding to this book are the wonderful maps that I have come to expect from Aberjona Press.

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Great analysis of why the Tiger tanks failed

This is a terrific book, and is primarily a summary and analysis of the available literature on the combat history of the German Tiger I and II tanks of WWII. There are only a few descriptions of individual tank to tank combat, which is probably the only weakness of this book. Wilbeck instead concentrates on painting an overall picture of the effectiveness of the Tiger tanks in combat. In the end, Wilbeck concludes that despite their fearsome reputation, born out of many anecdotal tales of awesome lethality, the Tiger tanks were severely limited in what they could accomplish on a strategic level.

In tank to tank combat, the Tigers were incredibly good at killing other tanks, reaching kill ratios up to 13:1 in many cases. But, as Wilbeck points out in great detail, the end result of designing a tank with very heavy armor and extreme firepower was a tank that was very heavy and extremely expensive and time consuming to manufacture (Hitler personally ordered the specifications for the Tiger tank). The Tigers were very prone to breaking down (mostly because of their weight, which strained the entire mechanical system), could not cross most of the bridges in Europe, and had to be shipped by train to the battlefield (they would break down if they had to be driven for any great distance). There were only a few Tigers ever manufactured (1,348 Tiger Is and less than 500 Tiger IIs ), and even fewer that actually showed up on the battlefield. They guzzled gasoline, were extremely slow (with an average speed of about 4-9 miles per hour on rough terrain or dirt roads - well below the stated maximum design speed of 25 mph), and had an extremely short combat radius and duration. The high kill ratios when they did engage in combat were offset by their tendency to either run out of gas or break down in combat, which resulted in large numbers having to be abandoned (more than were destroyed by Allied tanks). Also, U.S. and British forces had superior mobility due to widespread mechanization, as well as superior artillery and airpower. Because of the immobility and limited numbers of the Tiger tanks, it was possible to avoid confronting them with tanks, and instead, Allied forces would try to bypass and isolate them, or destroy them with heavy artillery or airpower.

There were other major weaknesses - for instance, the German Army was the only one of the major armies in Europe to not have minesweeping tanks. Inexplicably, the Germans persisted in using these precious few Tiger tanks to "bull-through" minefields, a tactic that led to long trails of busted Tiger tanks whenever a unit encountered a minefield, leaving few to carry out the attack at the other end of the minefield. The Germans also suffered from a lack of sufficient retrieval vehicles that could handle the heavy Tigers. This led to the abandonment of many Tigers that could have been repaired had they been retrieved.

Wilbeck gives the statistic that each Tiger I tank cost 800,000 Reichmarks, which was equivalent to the weekly wages of 30,000 people, and required 300,000 man-hours to produce. [Note bene: at those rates, the Tigers were very much high end super-weapons, equivalent on a cost basis to something like the U.S. B-29, which cost about a million dollars apiece, or a Navy destroyer].

There is an interesting analysis in this book of Tiger ace Michael Wittmann's famous attack at Bocage-Villers. Wilbeck points out that although the battle did temporarily halt the British advance and take an appalling toll on their tanks, by the end of the day, Wittmann's entire unit had been knocked out and was combat ineffective whereas the British tanks were quickly replaced. Continuing the story, Wilbeck describes how Wittman was later killed in another attack on the Caen-Falaise road in which he unknowingly charged into battle against some 900 Allied tanks with only some 50 on his side (only 8 of which were Tiger tanks). Wittmann's Tiger was most likely flanked by a Sherman Firefly which fired the fatal round.

Ultimately, as can be seen in the demise of Michael Wittman, numbers were what won tank battles in WWII. By 1944, the technology for destroying tanks had far outstripped the ability to make armor protection. Tank losses were very high on all sides as a result.

The German Army understood the value of powerful tanks, but never took to heart the even greater importance of producing large numbers of tanks. This is what made the Tiger tank a failure - the fact that such an enormous amount of German resources went into producing so few tanks that could be so easily disabled or bypassed.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3

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