The thing that leaps out to me from this article is tha the author seems to assume that once a tank is knocked out, it is gone forever.
In North Afrika, the british were quite astonished at the efficiency of the small recovery force of the Afrika Korps. One estimate (pre Alam Halfa) made the rather surprising assertion that fully two-thirds of all knocked out german tanks were recovered by the germans. Of these, most could be refurbished, and the rest stripped for parts. (At Alam Halfa, someone, possibly Monty but more likely his Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, put out directions targeting the german recovery forces.)
During Normandy, there are a number of accounts that the british would put blankets or wood, soaked in petrol, inside german vehicles to keep them from being recovered. The Tiger, with its immense hydraulic system, was thought to be vulnerable to this treatment.
As to Soviet tank recovery, this is something I've never read about. One would expect they had some recovery services, so the huge numbers of destroyed tanks, may be unrealistic.
Good point. In Death Traps (
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=grogheads-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0891418148) it was the author's job to collect destroyed Shermans, recover and refit them for action again.
This may explain the discrepancy between why Zaloga, for instance, thinks Shermans held up better than the guys who drove them. It's an accepted fact that it took four or five Shermans to take out a single German tank. But modern historical revisionists have tried to argue that the Sherman "wasn't that bad."
Problem is it *was* that bad - we just did a really good job of recovering and refitting the dead tanks so the absolute losses didn't look as bad as they really were.
Funny thing is, that Soviet analysis indicates a similar loss to kill ratio for the T-34. It would appear that no matter what that Allies used, it took four of them to kill a German tank. Chalk it up to doctrine, equipment, or elan (or all three) - no doubt about it, fighting the Germans was a tough slog.
