Maresal tank destroyer, development

I am not aware of Mr. Kliment's sources. I quoted his reply ad verbatim.

However, as per your request, I will make sure to convey him exactly what you've said.

Gen. Dénes

The section on the Romanian armor from Third Axis, Fourth ALly was wrote by Cornel Scafes, I believe, who is the probably the no. 1 authority on the subject of Romanian armored vehicle construction.

Here is his reply to your post:

Gen. Dénes

Here is his reply to your post:

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on December 28, 2005 01:43 am

Whether Hetzer was better than Maresal or not, this was not our topic. However, Mr. Kliment admitted he was wrong so I consider the case closed.

I think that a historian who co-authored a book about the Hetzer should really know more about Maresal.

Hi Guys,

Fascinating thread.

According to my dictionary, the German word "Hetzer" (with a capital "H", unlike other non-nouns with the same root like the verb "hetzen") means "baiter, instigator, agitator, rabble rouser" in English. I would therefore suggest that it fits into the context that Dragos 03 offers, especially as the Maresal was not "grosser" than the conceptually similar but bigger German Hetzer.

Charles Kliment is a very respected researcher with at least three decades of specialist armour publications behind him, so his opinions are of some weight. He is very much an authority on non-Romanian evidence, especially Czech, and any comparison he draws between the likely performance of the Maresal and Hetzer is definitely worth listening to. However, if new information is emerging from Romanian archives, then even his knowledge may be behind the times. In any event, Denes is to be congratulated in getting an important expert to contribute to the debate here.

It is, of course, of particular interest to Romanians, if not to others, if their engineers had an influence on weapons design in one of the major powers. If the Maresal did influence the design of the Hetzer it offers no more than an interesting minor footnote to general military history, but it necessarily figures rather larger to Romanians, whose conception the Maresal was.

However one looks at it, the Maresal seems a very creditable design solution to a difficult technical problem using limited resources, and the more we know about it the better!

More please!

Cheers,

Sid.

Mr. Kliment certainly is an expert in armour, particularly Czech-made; hence my effort to obtain his point of view (which is definitely not "irrelevant", as it has been implied) regarding this controversial topic, to the benefit of this forum.

I had the pleasure to know him personally while visiting him at his home in New Jersey, where we spent many hours with highly interesting talks on topics of mutual interest.
A very knowledgeable and interesting gentleman, I might add.

Gen. Dénes

I too have enjoyed this thread. It's good to improve the level of scholarship on the forum occasionally. Even better when the expertise comes from New Jersey (my home state)

Does anyone know the rationale behind the 2-man crew on the Maresal? Was it an allowance for the general manpower shortage afflicting the Romanian Army at that time? Or was it to allow the vehicle to be made smaller? (Or both of these...or something else).

I can't think of a successful tank (or tank destroyer, assault gun, etc.) with a 2-man crew. There are simply too many things to do when a tank is in combat.

The two man crew might have been the big fault in the design of the Maresal, but because it never saw action we will never know the real answer to this question, but we can presume.

So this is my opinion:

A two man crew would be easier and cheaper to train; a bigger crew will mean more space in the hull that was already cramped, a longer time for training and a longer time to replace.

How so? With a small crew, each member of the crew must train on more tasks.

But bigger crews are better able to absorb casualties and continue to function. For example in a 4-man crew (commander, gunner, loader, driver), the loader can train as a gunner, the commander can drive, and so on. Lose one crew member and you still have an effective vehicle. That's harder to do with a 3-man crew, and impossible with 2.

But you're right about the space, and larger vehicles are easier to hit. Bigger crews also raise the cost of a catastrophic hit (one that kills the vehicle and all the crew).

In this respect, I think we should consider Mr. Kliment's educated observation, posted earlier:

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on December 28, 2005 09:50 pm

Gen. Dénes

The driver was steering with the pedals so he was also the loader.

I don’t think the Maresal had a radio!? But I am not sure about this.

How so? With a small crew, each member of the crew must train on more tasks.

But bigger crews are better able to absorb casualties and continue to function. For example in a 4-man crew (commander, gunner, loader, driver), the loader can train as a gunner, the commander can drive, and so on. Lose one crew member and you still have an effective vehicle. That's harder to do with a 3-man crew, and impossible with 2.

But you're right about the space, and larger vehicles are easier to hit. Bigger crews also raise the cost of a catastrophic hit (one that kills the vehicle and all the crew).

By the last years of war the chances of only one crew member to be hit diminished, because the antitank rifles that could injure only one crew member were used in smaller and smaller numbers, there place being taken by the big number of AT guns in Russians case and the many small antitank weapons developed by the Germans (panzerfaust series, and panzerschreck).

All of the new weapons tended to explode inside the vehicle.

Hi Guys,

I doubt the 2-man crew had anything to do with manpower shortages. The crewing of Maresals would have been a priority and would have over ridden almost any other army manpower demands.

I suspect the 2-man crew is due to the limitations of Romanian industry and the limited availability of imported components within German-occupied Europe by 1944. These factors restricted the size of any armoured vehicles the Romanians were likely to be able to produce, with a knock-on impact on crewing. I guess the Romanians went for the minimum crew they could get away with.

At half the weight but with similar armament, the Maresal necessarily had to make some sacrifices compared with the Hetzer. In order to justify its existence the Maresal simply had to be better than the alternative - a Resita 75mmm gun and tractor combination. However, at half the weight but with similar main armament, the Maresal necessarily had to make some sacrifices compared with the Hetzer.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. I think it highly unlikely the Maresal would have had no radio.