Editing Nazi Equipment (section)

====Tank Destroyers/Assault Guns====
Between the First and Second World Wars, various nations were still trying to figure out what good designs were for armored vehicles and how to use them in general. The Germans were the most successful, creating the famed Panzer divisions, each of which was a small army in and of themselves, but everyone knows about those. However, Nazi military theorists realized that lowly grunts also required some armored support. Enter the brainchild of Erich von Manstein (at least officially), the assault gun. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the top brass about the need of ''Begleitartillerie'', "escort artillery" that could move into battle alongside infantry formations and lob 6 kg shells at any machine or field gun that interrupted the advance. The initial concept was to stick a huge gun (too big to put in a proper turret with then available technology) onto a Pz III chassis with a fixed casemate and open top (this was later changed) to allow the heavy gun to be moved around easily. Think of it like a [[Vindicator]]. The idea was approved, and the work on ''Panzerselbstfahrlafette III'' (quite a mouthful) begun with gusto. While primarily designed to bust fortifications, demands for the Pz.Sfl. III specified the ability to take on all types of existing armor at the distance of 500m. After being officially approved for production, they received the name of [[Stug_III|Sturmgeschütz III]], abbreviated to the StuG III. During the battle they usually engaged the enemy from the second line, where their limited firing arc wasn't such a big problem, and were universally praised both by infantrymen and their own crews. This all changed in 1941 when the Germans first encountered the [[T-34]]. The need to stop well-armoured tanks assaulting in mass shifted from a theoretical into a practical problem. The StuGs had to be upgunned and up-armored, and other, dedicated anti-tank vehicles had to be designed and built. The main difference between assault guns and tank destroyers was their affiliation: the former belonged to the artillery, the latter were part of the Panzer corps, which sometimes led to political disputes like Guderian's temper tantrum about getting Hetzers. Starting with lighter Panzerjäger tank destroyers as a stopgap measure, later in the war, Germany replaced them with big heavy tank destroyers, with thick armor and guns big enough to make an Ork blush with envy, and labeled the class "''Jagdpanzer''" (hunter-tank). Panzerjäger of both types had the advantage of being cheaper and simpler to make than turreted tanks, and having lower silhouettes that allowed for easier ambushes. Plus it was easy to convert an otherwise out of date, under-gunned tank into a destroyer. The disadvantage was, of course, that they had no turrets, so they could be outflanked and had no way to point their guns at any targets that did not drive in front of them short of turning the entire tank around. The StuGs and their descendants were such a huge success the Nazis actually pondered the idea of making them the mainstream of Panzer divisions even in 1943 (however, Panzer IV/70 (A) which was tagged for this role was ultimately labeled "unfit for frontline service"). Nevertheless, the turretless constructions meant that they were sacrificing much needed flexibility in the field, especially during bad weather or in difficult terrain, and the advantage of being able to build more units quickly becomes irrelevant if you're not losing them in the thousands yearly, so every major power in the post-45 world order didn't want to bother with it, especially since the British Centurion MBT showed the world for the first time that a tank could reliably perform all roles that were previously assigned to a variety of models. Only Germany kept some tank destroyers around after the war (the [[Kanonenjagdpanzer]]) and even that was thoroughly outclassed once self-directing ammunition like TOW missiles became available. 
*'''Panzerjäger I''': Remember that little note in the Panzer I's description on how it was repurposed? Well, this is the end result. What basically amounts to a Panzer I with its turret taken off and a casemate installed instead, it had a nice 4.7cm anti-tank gun but was relatively weak otherwise. There were no vision slits in the casemate, meaning that in order to aim, the crew had to peek over the top and get themselves shot in the head (a pressing issue in particular for Anti-Tank Battalion 643).
*'''Marder:''' The Marder I, II, and III were all very similar tank destroyers, hence why they share a listing. The Marder I is based on the chassis of the French Lorraine 37L tractor, the Marder II is based off the Panzer II chassis, and the Marder III is based of off the Panzer 38(t) (the "T" means it was Czech in origin, not that it weighed 38 tons). All three were open-topped and armed with either 7.5 cm cannons or converted Soviet 76mm cannons they stole early in their invasion of USSR. At the start of Operation Barbarossa, German tanks were again under-gunned and armed compared to their enemies, especially when compared to the T-34 (which one German field marshal quipped was the best tank in the world in 1941). But, like the battle for France, the Germans alone in the world had an actual understanding of how to use tanks most effectively and were thus able to make massive advances anyway through superior tactical coordination. Still, a better antitank weapon was needed, so the Marders were created and armed with 7.5 cm weapons (although there were never enough of them, so they would revert to using Russian guns).
*'''Wespe''' and '''Hummel''': The Wasp and Bumblebee, respectively, and both with a nasty sting. Both were re-purposed tank chassis, but sporting artillery howitzers instead of antitank guns (Which makes them technically self-propelled artillery instead of assault guns, but in the end it's a huge gun on tracks so fuck that noise!) the Wespe was based off the Panzer II and sported a 105mm 'light' howitzer; the Hummel was based on a modified Panzer III chassis and sported a 150mm howitzer. They're the real-life equivalents of (and probably the inspiration behind) the Imperial Guard's [[Basilisk Artillery Gun]].
*'''Hetzer''': Repurposed Panzer 38(t) with a casemate-mounted 75mm gun. A nice late-war re-design and a dangerous opponent since its small chassis and decent speed made it easy to get in position for a good ambush, and its gun was strong enough to take on any Allied medium tank. Notorious for being an absolutely awful thing to be in, the interior was cramped to the point of farce and ergonomics were very poor. The chassis was overworked too, so mechanical breakdowns were constant. The Hetzer had some armour, but couldn't slug it out with the late-war tanks. Despite all this, it was adored by German grunts, because having an artillery gun at your side is always better than not having it.
*'''Nashorn''': Also called '''Hornisse''', this was a Marder-like tank-destroyer, with a chassis specially designed to mount the fearsome "Acht-acht" 88mm gun. Just like the Marders it was open-topped, but the huge range of its gun made it a dangerous opponent. The Germans later experimented with even bigger guns (105mm and 128mm) mounted like this, but those vehicles proved simply too heavy and impractical to use, so they did not evolve beyond a couple of prototypes.  
*'''StuG III & IV''': By far the most widely produced German vehicle of WWII, the StuG was easily one of the most versatile combat platforms fielded in the war (and famous in the Panzer General series for easily knocking out Russian tanks).  StuGs, short for "''Sturmgeschütz''" or "''assault artillery''", were built to combat a problem Germany encountered in World War I: that infantry alone lacked the ability to take on fortifications, and the artillery was too slow to keep up to allow direct fire on these targets. The StuG was the solution: by mounting a 7.5 cm <s>howitzer</s> [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgesch%C3%BCtz_III  gun] in a fixed casemate on a Panzer III chassis, they allowed the vehicle to roll up with the infantry and blow any fortifications in the way to rubble.  Of course during the invasion of the Soviet Union the Germans ran into tanks much better than their existing vehicles, namely KV-1s and T-34. In order to quickly counter these threats, the StuG was "up-gunned" (quote marks are there because the gun's caliber did not change), to mount a high-velocity 7.5 cm anti-tank gun. In 1943, the StuG chassis was changed from a Panzer III's to a Panzer IV's, otherwise no major changes were made but several production variants exist of the III. StuGs, despite looking like and being compared to tanks, were not considered tanks, and were crewed by artillery personnel. StuGs are estimated to have destroyed 20,000 enemy tanks in the course of the war, impressive when you consider that just over 10,000 were made, and not all of those were armed with actual anti-tank weapons.  After the war, the Soviets gave a number of captured tanks to Syria where they were used up to the 1960s. In a funny twist of irony, some of those ended up in Israeli hands during the Six-Day War and remain on display in Tel Aviv today. (There was a self-propelled-gun with an actual howitzer, too: the StuH 42.)
*'''Sturmpanzer:''' Known commonly to the Allies as the ''Brummbär'' (Grouch), this infantry support gun was based on the Panzer IV chassis. It mounted a 15cm mortar-sized direct-fire cannon, which fired a combined shell-charge weighing in at over 100lbs, designed to make infantry and buildings not be there anymore.
*'''Ferdinand/Elefant''': To put the Ferdinand into perspective, this is a tank that even Hitler though was too complex, too unreliable, and too theoretically advanced to use. The Ferdinand is the result of a competition between two of Nazi Germany's top companies, Porsche and Henschel (both of which still exist today), to produce a heavy tank that could use the 8.8 cm gun, what would ultimately become the Tiger I. The initial plan was to produce both tanks simultaneously, with contracts to make a "small" series of 100 tanks for both participants signed with Krupp on the same day of 22th of July, 1941. Both Tigers (P) and (H) had A LOT of problems, but due to unclear reasons even before final tests conducted in November 1942 came the order to stop production of Porsche version. That's why, despite losing the contract, Porsche had 90 Porsche Tiger hulls laying around, though he couldn't make more as he lacked production lines of his own. It was decided to turn those unused Tiger P prototypes into tank destroyers, and so they bolted even more armor on and added a fixed super structure for the gun, and thus the Ferdinand (named humbly after Porsche himself) was born. The Ferdinand was a troubled vehicle: rather than one engine, its immense bulk required two, and thanks to poor ventilation they often overheated. Bizarrely, the two engines did not even connect to the drive train (possibly because of issues keeping the two engines synchronized without modern computer control), and were instead connected to a set of electric generators that in turn powered a pair of electric motors. That's right, in 1942, the Nazi's built a 65 ton gas-electric, hybrid-powered tank destroyer, good for the environment maybe (but not actually, because the primitive technology just made the combo even less efficient), but maintenance for the thing was a nightmare worse than the Tiger. The concept of diesel-electric propulsion is not even as advanced for the time as many people think; the Soviets had developed such an engine for a locomotive in 1924, the German U-boats used the same technology for their underwater propulsion system (diesel engines charging a large set of batteries that drove an electric motor when underwater) and Porsche's own patent for this system dated back as far as 1896. The only innovation was that it was the first time this concept was implemented in an armoured vehicle. And before we forget, it did not have any machine guns for point defense. To be honest, it wouldn't have been that much of a deal (StuG-IIIs didn't have a machine gun until December 1942, for example) if Guderian hadn't used them as heavy tanks (he even calls them "Porsches' Tigers" in his memoirs), and even then out of 39 Ferdinands lost during the Battle of Kursk, only 4 were confirmed to be destroyed by Molotov cocktails, and in 3 cases they were damaged either by mines or artillery shells before that. It had one hell of a gun, however: the 8.8 cm Pak 43 could destroy any Allied tank at distances exceeding 2000 meters. In 1943, all 48 remaining operational tanks were converted to have a machine gun, more armor, anti-magnetic Zimmerit paste coatings, and a commander's cupola. The modified tanks were named Elefants. Overall, more Ferdinands were destroyed by their own crews after their tracks or suspensions were damaged by mines or artillery fire than were lost to enemy fire. Before we forget, the Elefants were also then sent to fight in Italy. [[Derp|Yes, they sent the tank destroyer known for its serious engine issues to a country known for its incredibly rugged and mountainous terrain]]. They did not last long. Maybe it is the inspiration for the Shadowsword Imperial Guard superheavy.
*'''Jagdpanzer IV''': A Panzer IV chassis mounting a long-barrelled 75mm gun in a casemate mount. Worked generally very well, the low silhouette being a great advantage over comparable assault guns, but had some notable downsides too. The inclusion of additional armour and the long 75mm KwK from the Panther strained the Panzer IV chassis to the absolute limit, limiting range and mechanical reliablity. The extra armour and long gun also made it particularly nose heavy, making it a bitch to drive and limiting its maneuverability, never mind being almost unable to make steep descents without bumping the gun on something, a problem tanks with a similar nose-heavy loadout like the Russian T-34 and SU-85 also had.
*'''Jagdpanther''': A Panther chassis mounting a long-barrelled 88mm gun in a casemate mount. Arguably the best "Jagd-" model combining decent mobility, decent protection and a very powerful gun. 
*'''Jagdtiger''': Tiger II chassis outfitted with a long-barrelled 128mm (!) naval gun. Pure overkill, and ultimately a poorly-performing design. To put it in perspective, the M1 ''Abrams'' TODAY has a smaller and shorter 120mm cannon, even if most of its armor busting power comes from the fact it fires modern (and far more deadly) sabot rounds. Even back then, two of the most effective AT guns of the war were the German ''Acht-Acht'' 88mm gun and the British 76.2mm ''17 pounder'' gun; both much smaller, lighter and with a better rate of fire than this 128mm monster. No war machine used on the front line called for such a massive gun to be dealt with in World War II (save perhaps for the Soviets's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS_tank_family IS heavy tanks], which were designed to be have armor good enough to stand up to 88mm AT gun fire, but ironically the Jagdtiger only served on the Western Front, making it a moot point) and even the fact it could double up as artillery support in a pinch didn't make up for the fact it was just too big and unwieldy and slow-firing a gun to deal with tanks. Add to that, a tank with a 128mm main gun is especially stupid when your enemies on both sides favored zerg rushes of Shermans and T-34s, much lighter vehicles that could reliably be taken out by much smaller guns. While anticipating future enemy capabilities is important in wartime weapon development, pretty much no one was working on a vehicle sufficiently armored to warrant this firepower (excluding absurd super-heavy design studies like the American T28/T30 and T95 or the British Tortoise), unless it was intended to fire on battleships from the shore—and firing from a stationary coastal-defense position probably would be for the best, because even at its crawling pace, going off-road tended to knock the gun out of alignment and require it to be recalibrated before firing again, so good luck with flanking maneuvers. The nicest thing that could be said about it was that it was great for shooting at enemy tanks hiding behind buildings, because it would shoot straight through building and tank alike. (Seriously, read Otto Carius' memoirs. His opinion on these is as first-hand as it is scathing.)
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On a sidenote:
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One could reasonably point out that the Russians weren't much better in that regard, since they too threw a couple of 'overcompensated' tanks/assault guns into the fray over the course of WWII: The KV-2 sported a 152mm howitzer in a gigantic (and horribly impractical) turret, and the SU-152 and ISU-152 were also equipped casemate-mounted 152mm howitzers (basically, the only difference is that the SU was based on the KV chassis and the ISU on the IS chassis). The difference here is that these vehicles had been designed for infantry support (and demolishing ''festungs''), making the huge gun just mobile enough to keep up with the grunts and chucking high explosive death at the enemy from medium/long range instead of blasting other tanks to smithereens. This doesn't mean they couldn't: indeed the ISU-152 was effective enough in that regard to be nicknamed the ''Zveroboy'' (''Beast Killer'' in Russian, which it inherited from the SU-152), but being able to blast a Tiger on its back was merely a handy bonus. Add to that the low-velocity 152mm howitzer was a good 30% lighter than the massive PaK 80; resulting in lighter, more compact, and more mobile vehicles overall once they realized trying to mount a huge howitzer in a turret wasn't such a good idea after all. All the Russians did was switch the unwieldy 152's for lighter  85's, 100's and 122's to make actual tank destroyers.  
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*[[File:Sturmtiger.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Contrary to what it looks like, this is not a mock-up of a 40k [[Vindicator]] but a real combat vehicle.]]'''Sturmtiger''': The Sturmtiger is one of the most striking example of Nazi "mad genius" given form, to the point that this assault gun could almost belong in the "Wunderwaffe" section. As you can see from the picture, it looks like a [[Vindicator]], which is not a coincidence: both vehicles' role is to rumble up to a strongpoint and obliterate it with extreme firepower. Very quickly, the Germans realized that fortifications were a major pain in their Aryan butts to deal with and that static artillery was too slow and vulnerable to keep up with their ''Blitzkrieg'' attacks. So at first they relied on airplanes and Pz.IVs and StuGs, but as their opponents started to contest the skies and howitzers on both tanks and self-propelled artillery had to be replaced with antitank guns to stem the endless tide of T-34s, the problem of bunker-busting raised its head once again. The Sturmtiger is what you get when the point where you should have stopped putting bigger, larger guns on tracks is long passed, yet one still keeps going... and somehow manages to make it work. Starting as a direct response to the Soviet SU-152 (there's even an urban legend about some German general looking at it and going "I want this, but BIGGER") and based off of the Tiger I chassis, it sported a [[bolter|''380mm gun/rocket launcher'']] [[awesome|''adapted from a Kriegsmarine depth-charge launcher'']] as its main gun; [[wat|and only because the 210 mm howitzer they intended to use first wasn't available]]. Although it sported a gun that could obliterate anything in front of it, the Sturmtiger suffered the same problems as the Tiger itself. Overstressed drive train, maintenance-intensive and prone to breakdown, ''Schachtellaufwerk'' tracks to keep ground pressure tolerable, and an underpowered engine. On top of that, the rocket was so powerful that in order to not break the barrel of the gun or kill the crew, the exhaust gasses from launching the depth-charge rocket had to be vented out of a number of tubes that went back up the barrel. 
*'''Flakpanzer IV''': Tanks whose main gun had been replaced with one (or more) anti-aircraft guns. With the Luftwaffe having been squandered by inability to adapt to changes (i.e. realize that ''maybe'' it should have switched priorities to defending the Fatherland before the latter half of 1943), the Germans came up with these SPAAGs in other to try to defend themselves from all those nasty American ''Jabos'' (German shorthand for fighter-bomber) making their lives hell. Didn't really work, because towards the end of the war the ground attack aircraft had become too fast to be engaged reliably by guns relying on human eyes to acquire and follow their target. They were, however, [[rape|murder on tracks]] when facing infantry and lightly armored ground targets. Four variants were made, all based on the ever-reliable Panzer IV chassis: 
**'''Möbelwagen''': Odd looking thing that more or less was an armoured AA-emplacement on a tank; when deployed, the crew would fold down the "walls" of the open topped fixed turret with a 3.7 cm AA-gun on top of it. Needless to say, it didn't offer any significant improvement over existing and far more simple AA-vehicles which consisted of little more than an armoured truck with the gun in a trailer. 
**'''Wirbelwind''': Perhaps the most iconic of the four, it massively improved the design by adding an again open-topped turret that could be turned almost as fast as a regular AA-gun on its mounting. Armed with a quadruple 2 cm FlaK 38 and 105 being built, it was ultimately the most common variant of the Flakpanzer IV. 
**'''Ostwind''': The last Flakpanzer IV to be put into serial production. The turret remained pretty much the same from the Wirbelwind, although the introduction of a single 3.7-cm FlaK 43 made one of the two loaders on the Wirbelwind obsolete and a hydraulic turning mechanism pumped its turning speed up to 60 per second. Its prototype partook in the Battle of the Bulge and returned back home undamaged. 47 were completed by the end of the war. 
**'''Kugelblitz''': Similar deal to the Type XXI U-boats, the Kugelblitz was the peak of military engineering for its time that remained unsurpassed until computer-guided tracking systems and heat-seeking missiles revolutionized ground-based AA weaponry. The Kugelblitz utilized a fully enclosed, roughly ball-shaped turret with two 3 cm MK 103 borrowed from the ME-262 fighter plane that were fed by belt instead of magazines or clips like the FlaK guns before. The shape of the turret, combined with an improved version of the hydraulic turning mechanism of the Ostwind, made for an incredibly deadly package that could cover the airspace above it completely and inspired many imitators after the war. That being said, the 37mm AA gun was really showing its age and post-war AA guns went for either high-caliber autocannons or rotary guns. Only 5 prototypes were made by the end of the war, one of which actually saw combat in Thuringia, where a direct hit by a bomb blasted its turret off into a forest, where it was recovered in 1999.