26, 2010: this post, as published by Wired.com on Oct. 20, did not properly attribute material sourced from Wikipedia. We have updated the post to include that attribution.During, Allied forces readily admitted German tanks were superior to their own. The big question for Allied forces, then, was how many tanks Germany was producing. Knowing that would help them counter the threat. Here's how they reverse-engineered serial numbers to find out.To solve the problem of determining production numbers, Allied forces initially tried conventional intelligence gathering: transmissions and interrogating captured enemies.