Since this was derailed anyway, I am looking forward to some evidence backing up those mighty statements.
I'm being snarky, but it's not that terribly far from the truth.
You are looking for the value of sub 5%, and that is just the first battle at Kursk.
So yes, 25% is that terribly far from the truth.
Military history will be well served if people stopped memorizing pointless trivia in favor of developing actual analytical skills.
Blustering about the Panther's engine compartment is entirely pointless when the fires were caused by hydraulic fuel pooling at the floor of the Panther (which happens outside the engine compartment), which tends to set off the ammunition near the floor which is the real cause of vehicle loss.
Engines are not the main cause of fire loss in any tank. It's the ammo stowage going off that's the problem.
Engine problems connected to defective gaskets and seals leaking fuel was exactly what caused the
engine fires according to every single source you could find on the internet. Literally everyone from Niklas Zetterling through Thomas Anderson to Michael & Gladys Green to British Royal electrical and mechanical engineers would tell you that.
I dont even dare guess where you made this up from.
Heck, the Russians found that the Tiger II could be set on fire using a single 122mm HE round - because even if the round technically did not penetrate the spalling damage was nonetheless enough to set the hydraulic fuel pooling on the floor on fire (which was the same issue with the Panther),
Completely false.
This is why games presently pretend that non-penetrating shots have little to no effect, when in reality American and Soviet tankers simply "fired twice" - often hitting the same spot if the target hadn't moved - and the cumulative damage of two AP shells was enough knock out vehicles with even the hardest armor.
I dont think you have any idea how penetration, dispersion, and simple weather works in this context.
. For instance one of his biggest problems with the Panthers was that its gun was too long for the narrow hedgegrows and they couldn't turn the turret. Why bother with a turreted tank if the terrain was too narrow for a turret with a long gun?
"Memorandum on the Führervortrag dated 26 June 1944.
Changeover of PzKpfw IV to StuG L/48 resp. L/70
I.) Tactical and technical matters.
The 7.5cm KwK L/48 firing PzGr 39 is sufficient to fight all known British, American and Russian tanks at combat ranges from 600 to 1,200m, including the British ‘Cromwell’ tank. After-action reports dealing with the deployment of PzKpfw IV in comparison to the Sturmgeschütz, imply that the latter, when operating in mountain areas or on coastal roads in Italy or in the narrow, deep, hedge-lined lanes [bocage] of Normandy, is tactically inferior to the PzKpfw IV. Firing to the side is possible but is very limited, since the terrain does not allow the vehicle to turn on to the target… Furthermore, the low position of the gun impedes firing over hedges."
This might be the reason.
It's not about armor thickness or penetration.
Yes, it is.
Assault guns were not worse in the attack. This was often contended by Guderian and many post-war British publications (who often took Guderian's word at face value) but never proven by any statistic; and it's worth noting that Guderian and other Panzer officers had plenty of political reasons to naysay Stugs as the assault guns belonged to the artillery arm which was a rival of the Panzers.
They were worse in attack.
The Stug was better than pretty much all German tanks because it had an extra periscope for spotting and a rangefinder for accurate long-ranged shooting. It was not until the war was almost over that a Panther variant was developed to have these two critical features.
I think you mean the actual periscopic guns-sight, the only one in the vehicle, and scissor periscope, which was used at extremely long ranges.
What is this.
Finally, if the Stugs were so bad then why did the Panzers start getting their own Stug units and used them on the attack? Economy is part of the reason certainly but the Stug-armed units were never proved to have performed significantly worse than the Panzer IV-equipped ones.
Because of economic reasons and 3 were formed/reformed as heavy Panzer divisions with integral StuG units.
How can one be so wrong that correcting him would double the word-count of a thread?