That's just it. They were great and could have been fantastic. But they
never standardized anything and improved them to their full potential.
Even when they had a good tank (or plane) that would have been amazing
with some further development, they would jump from that to the next
"wonder weapon" and have to start all over.





The US is criticized
by armchair warriors for building so many Shermans, but this was the
idea. It was good enough when it came out and then improved upon,
especially on the mass production side. The firefly versions were still
decent even at wars end. Thing is they were reliable, good enough in
their intended role and were somewhat easy to produce. Not to mention huge
inventories of spare parts that were on hand to keep existing ones
running.





Then there was the T-34. It was not the greatest, but it was good and there was a lot of
them. There were stories of them being driven right from the factory to
the front lines without even being painted, with no lights, lacking
fittings etc. Troops would take a broom and some limestone paint (white)
and slop some on when they got a chance.





The Germans wouldn't
anymore than field one complicated tank, then decide on building and entirely new
"better" one. This is why they had such a large array of cool looking
types of tanks and planes, but varity is not a good thing in wartime. It
had to be a logistical nightmare for armourers to keep any spare parts
for so many types. It was. So when a simple part broke, there was no
replacements all they could do was burn their precious tiger, king
tiger, panther, etc, cause it most likely was not going to get fixed.
Only a few dozen Tigers were rolling out of the factory each month.
Their losses do to breakdowns exceeded production.





This doesn't even take into account training crews for an entirely new tank or plane that was constantly being fielded.


Any
Russian or American tank crew could jump into any of their MB tanks and
know its operation. Not so when you field a dozen types. Again same
with planes.