A lot of German kit in WWII required lengthy, expensive maintenance to perform to spec - this is not a problem in a military optimized for brief lightning strikes where you are the aggressor and so can dictate the schedule to match your maintenance timetables and just use the brief window of combat to run out your maintenance intervals.
Not only that, but it seems to be a highly German conceptual problem going back to the Prussian Academies in the 1700's. They would obsess over the timing of infantry movements. Something about the German culture is autistic about order and control over disorderly things. I would argue it's actually an extension of trauma from the 30 years war, but I don't think that it's just that the German strategy was based on short war. It was, but the Germans were routinely building weapons and systems they could only maintain under the best of circumstances.
There is a problem with the German psyche somewhere.
Compare this to, say, US equipment which was built with maintainability very much in mind
Or Soviet, where maintainability was figured out by trial and error, or building for the cheapest possible result.
True, true - it's worth contrasting US and USSR production practices - the US had any number of Sherman variants but, through rigid manufacturing specifications, still had decent parts compatibility across the type, whereas the USSR, utterly focused on throughput above all else, simply shelved several improvements to the T-34 until they could fit them into the production line without interrupting the volume of tanks built.
There's also the point that the actions that made the British Firefly famous - the initial encounters with significant numbers of heavier tanks in France - the US had an equivalent tank, armed with the US 76mm - not quite as good at knocking holes in tank armour as the British 17pdr, for sure, but still more than capable of killing anything the Germans could put in front of it - but didn't bring it because the assessment was that they would not be necessary. ISTR they had 200 of the things parked up somewhere in the UK.
Not only that, but it seems to be a highly German conceptual problem going back to the Prussian Academies in the 1700's. They would obsess over the timing of infantry movements. Something about the German culture is autistic about order and control over disorderly things. I would argue it's actually an extension of trauma from the 30 years war, but I don't think that it's just that the German strategy was based on short war. It was, but the Germans were routinely building weapons and systems they could only maintain under the best of circumstances.
There is a problem with the German psyche somewhere.
Or Soviet, where maintainability was figured out by trial and error, or building for the cheapest possible result.
True, true - it's worth contrasting US and USSR production practices - the US had any number of Sherman variants but, through rigid manufacturing specifications, still had decent parts compatibility across the type, whereas the USSR, utterly focused on throughput above all else, simply shelved several improvements to the T-34 until they could fit them into the production line without interrupting the volume of tanks built.
There's also the point that the actions that made the British Firefly famous - the initial encounters with significant numbers of heavier tanks in France - the US had an equivalent tank, armed with the US 76mm - not quite as good at knocking holes in tank armour as the British 17pdr, for sure, but still more than capable of killing anything the Germans could put in front of it - but didn't bring it because the assessment was that they would not be necessary. ISTR they had 200 of the things parked up somewhere in the UK.