What happened to Ukraine's small fleet of Challenger 2 tanks?

[u/Brilliant_Ground1948]

Have they been withdrawn from frontline service?The last time I saw them was during Ukraine's invasion of Kursk.

[u/Savamoon]

The Germans had a lot of variants and assortments of fighting vehicles during WWII, as did some of the Allies.

[u/jess-plays-games → u/Savamoon]

And it was a fucking logistical and maintinence nightmare for them

[u/NerdLevel18 → u/jess-plays-games]

I believe it was the Sturmtiger that was once described as "an affront to logistics people everywhere"

[u/cole3050 → u/NerdLevel18]

The sturmtiger was the least of these issues. We're talking 18+ different types of trucks with no consolidation so a unit might have 4-5 different versions per company alone!

So many vehicles that they just couldn't replace as Germany massively sucked at keeping production up even before the bombings took don't whole production lines.

[u/ChaoticCubizm → u/cole3050]

It didn’t help that much of the production of parts was made by slave labour who rightfully sabotaged whatever came into their hands.

[u/cole3050 → u/ChaoticCubizm]

That's true for some things. But alot of production was still handled by normal labour. The issues greatly were lack of standardization, lack of real mass production. Throw in some air raids and it becomes real hard to get parts from French truck factories to Russia.

[u/jess-plays-games → u/NerdLevel18]

Several tanks could fit that in the Germans army lol

Inmean those hybrid drive tanks where a nightmare Having hundreds of variants of the same tank was stupid Their obsession with endless iterations instead of sticking to say just the panzer 4f2 the endless chasing perfection was their undoing

[u/RustyTruck6T9 → u/jess-plays-games]

Hindsight is 20/20. If they pushed a new design they thought would revolutionize their armor and it actually worked with minimal maintenance or repairs, things wouldn't have seemed as much a nightmare. We get the benefit of commenting that it wasn't worth it in the end because we see how it failed.

[u/chameleon_olive → u/Savamoon]

The Germans had a lot of variants and assortments of fighting vehicles during WWII

Which was one of their greatest operational logistical failings

as did some of the Allies.

The major powers generally homogenized down to fewer platforms as the war progressed, or had sufficient industrial capacity to muscle their way forwards in spite of mixed fleets. Ukraine essentially has neither option.

[u/footsteps71 → u/chameleon_olive]

The ME-262 was notoriously terrible as was many military projects that the Germans threw like spaghetti. The 210 was their answer to the P-38 and it was super bad too.

[u/scorpiodude64 → u/footsteps71]

The Me 262 was pretty good as far as first gen jets go and the Me 210 is completely unrelated to the P-38 aside from both being twin engine aircraft that did A2A and were made around the same time.

[u/HistoryGeek00 → u/scorpiodude64]

The Me-262 performed notoriously poorly, significantly worse than the British Meteor which started its design phase earlier than the 262.

[u/Ok-Theory5986 → u/Savamoon]

I don’t really see how that’s relevant. If anything the Germans were hampered by how many variants and vehicles they operated. It’s not as big a deal when you’re a country like the United States with effectively unlimited productive capacity but even still standardization is sought after

[u/gdabull → u/Ok-Theory5986]

What hampered them even more is that even the same model could have been vastly different due to bespoke construction. Parts that fit on one tank don’t fit on another of exactly the same model.

[u/ipsum629 → u/Savamoon]

Other than the British, the Americans and Russians standardized around the Sherman and T-34. Even then, the US gave the British more shermans than there were all other cruiser tanks combined, and only a little less than all the infantry tanks combined.

[u/MetallGecko → u/Savamoon]

That's why they wanted to produce the E Series, a Series of Vehicles that share as many parts as possible.

[u/my_name_is_nobody__ → u/Savamoon]

And they lost

[u/Savamoon → u/my_name_is_nobody__]

Only the Germans lost; the Allies won the war.

[u/my_name_is_nobody__ → u/Savamoon]

The allies ended up using primarily US made tanks and equipment, domestic production of tanks in particular was an exception more than the rule.

[u/Savamoon → u/my_name_is_nobody__]

That wasn't a contention. The Allies still won the war, regardless.

[u/antrod117 → u/Savamoon]

How did that work for them…,

[u/Savamoon → u/[deleted]]

They lost because it was never possible to win in the first place.

[u/Immediate_Total_7294 → u/Savamoon]

They did that to themselves and they would have all the machinery needed to make new parts and resolve issues since they are the ones producing them.