Had no idea the Panther was only marginally more expensive than a Panzer IV. The other issue for the tanks was the total loss of air superiority, especially in Normandy. It doesn't matter how good your tank is when a fighter bomber can just drop a load on it
That was the allied trump card....overwhelming air superiority! ,during Overlord (Lucifer) launched at 6 in the morning ,on the 6th day of the 6th month 1944 the odds was 100/1 against the Germans! The evil one takes care of its children!
Something I've tried to convince the countless of people who keep thinking Germany overengineered and had too expensive tanks. The fact the Panther cost 1½ times the manpower and materiels of a Pz4 and half that of a Tiger made it a better choice to produce than the others as Germany lacked materials and getting a 2-3x as good tank than the Pz4 for only 1½x the cost is a cost benefit. Also they only used slightly more fuel than the Pz4. I'd rather have 20k Shermans if I had the crews and the materiels and unbombed factories, but seeing Germany had neither, I'd also had gone with the Panther. Albeit it had flaws, all tanks had flaws and it was a better route than the smaller tanks. The E50 and E75 plans to even streamline the medium and heavy tanks more was also a great plan, just too late. And the over engineering was done during prototype and design. The manufacturing itself was surprisingly simple. Go watch the Australian Armor and Art musem videos of restoring a Panther. They had some genius simple ideas on how to do stuff compared to say Brits or US etc. Also, the airsuperiority was mostly down to being spotted ment artillery bombardment. Artillery took out most tanks. Some lost in tank vs tank but only arund 6% were lost due to air strikes. The fighter bombers knew to go for the logistics. The rockets on the Fighter bombers had less than 3% accuracy on hard moving targets, but effective vs soft targets due to splash.
@@beersmurffwow.. Your commenting or presenting your basic research report about Panther Mark V 'panther'!? So detail... Are you in Military or a Military Researcher and Historian!? Or youre just a Sucker of War and or Military histories and all off its legends and myths facts that goes along with it etc like me!?😅 Im not in Military and or everything that associated or related with it,im just a regular dude who ❤ about war and Milotary history and favts.😅
@@zadzad4353 I used to be in the military, but tbh it doesnt give me any expertice on this as I was 1st gunner on Medium 80mm mortar from 1994 to 2003 . The closest I was to a tank was driving the Piranha APC for a while. So nothing that compares even remotely hehe. Just like you I am just a nerd for history and my brain always want facts and details and I hate when people who played some video game or read one source claim the generic myths.
The loss of air superiority made the German develope night fighting kits for their panthers. They started to equip panthers with infra red search lights in the last month of the war in Europe.
One of the design flaws that couldn’t really be addressed in the Panther was the position of the loader. He was positioned on the right side of the gun, which meant that in most cases the loader was loading the long and heavy shells with his weaker arm. And due to the length of the gun and shells he couldn’t load the shells straight i to the breech he had to lift them up and over the gun and angle them in. All of this reduced the rate of fire, making the tank a lot less efficient than it could have been. Also, an odd bit of trivia about the Panther. The French actually operated them longer than the Germans did, though not in combat. They used a bunch of captured ones and even built new ones from remaining parts to equip their army until new tanks were available.
Reported firing rate was 6 to 8 rounds, which was pretty good for wwii standards. Further more with left hand loading the strong right hand supports the weight of the shell and is aiming the tip into the breach, your weak left arm just has to push it in. Chieftain made this argument up, I never heard of an actual report, pointing this out as a weakness.
@@HaVoC117X Yes, he has made a career out of being ill-informed to the ill-informed...yet another yank who thinks they know everything. No time for him at all.
some information about the French - " I find among the French soldiers of Dunkirk the same ardour as that of the poilus of Verdun in 1916. For several days hundreds of bombers and guns have been pounding the French defences. However, it is still the same thing, our infantry and tanks cannot break through, despite some ephemeral local successes." "Dunkirk proves to me that the French soldier is one of the best in the world. The French artillery, so feared in 14-18, once again demonstrated its dreaded effectiveness. Our losses are terrifying: many battalions have lost 60% of their strength, sometimes even more! “ "By resisting about ten days to our forces, which were significantly superior in terms of numbers and resources, the French army achieved a superb feat in Dunkirk that is to be commended. It certainly saved Britain from defeat, by allowing its professional army to reach the English coast." War diary General Von Küchler commandant of the XVIII army
My dad drove Churchills in 1944-45. I always got the impression that they were more scared of the Panthers than the Tigers. The ability of that gun to penetrate armour was they main thing to fear.
They feared the Tiger more. Brit and US solders would report seeing Tigers when they was really Panthers and Panzer 4's. Men often report what they fear the most in these cases and mistake them to be there bogyman. My grandfather told me about Tigers when they ran into them and told me how our tanks would try to avoid them and slip behind them if they could but hope they can call in an air strike first. Tells me something about that tank.
Soviets stated tiger was harder to penetrate from the side 80mm Vertical vs 40mm sloped armour. Tiger armour was better quality made early mid war years before shortages of Stràtegic steel minerals degraded armour
Poor Turret turn rate? Model D's yes but later models were much faster with the the upgraded Hydraulics and could spin the turret around in 19 seconds at high engine RPM's.
@@daltonhunt4878 Funny thing about the Panthers is that the D's were the initial model, then followed by the A's and then the G's (G's are sub-divided further by Early G's and Late G's).
As and Gs had their own problems. The turret rotation speed was tied to the RPM of the engine, which meant the driver needed to be in sync with the turret crew about revving it up in idle whenever the turret needed to be rotated. Sherman drivers complained bitterly about the advantages of the Panther, but among the few advantages they listed was faster turret rotation. (along with a higher RoF and usually getting the first shot off)
Panzer IV G and H without gun and radio was 105,000 RM. Panther D, A and G without gun and radio was 117,000 RM - and the Panther's gun was actually cheaper (less man hours) than the Panzer IV's. Tiger II cost 320,000 RM.
Nice info but I would argue these figures are next to useless without production figures. You cant compare, for example the cost of production of say Panzer IV Ausf A through Ausf H over say 12000 units and just as many chassis to say the first 2000 of 4000 Panthers. Panther #700 is going to be more expensive than Panzer IV #6000. -Me 109 went from 5500 hours for an Me 109E1, around 3000 hours for an early Me 109F to 2000 hours for a Me 109G to 1000 hours Me 109K4 in 1945. -Mass production dramatically reduces costs and even material usage.
@@williamzk9083 Panzer IV G, H and J were produced in about the same timespan and numbers as Panther D, A, G. The difference between Tiger I and II cost, however, is undoubtedly due to the lower number of the latter, as it was designed to be easier to mass produce than the Tiger I.
My Opa was in the 8th Panzer Division. They received Panthers. He said it needed a skilled driver to drive it. The transmission would shred it self if not treated correctly. He was a Panzerjager and his vehicle had the same gun as the Panther. He said that gun was fantastic. His friend was in the Panther and they did like it very much. Better than the P4
8th Pz. Div.(Ost Front) had the PzJgr.Abt 43 The only Jagdpanzer equipped with the Panther gun (7.5 cm Pak 42) was the Panther tank and the JgdPz IV (two Varients). The first Division equipped was the Pz. Lehr with 31. Later the following Pz. Div. "Hermann Goering" Other units included 2nd Pz, 116th Pz, and 12 SS HJ (All on the Western Front) all with 21 vehicles each. 17th SS GVB PzGdr. arrived late to effect a counter vs the US Airborne. Other units in the West received them. 9th,11th, 10th SS Pz. Divisions. By the time of the Ardennes Offensive, there were few and scattered. 2nd SS DR had 20, 17th SS GVB had2 (Rest Stug III), 22nd Pz had 4, 25th PzGdr had 5. Italy AOO, Hermann Goering Div, plus the 3rd and 15th PanzerGrenadier Divisions. (83 in Italy in total). Eastern Front AOO, 8th Pz (PzJgr.Abt.43) lost 3 out of its 4. Kampfgruppe “Scheppelmann” had 13. IV SS Pz. Korps had around 55 in its inventory in regard to the Hungarian relief efforts. I am glad your Opa made it out of that war alive. The PzJgr. IV was considered a rare vehicle. Not many even in the German Army would even see one.
Cca 2000 pz4L70 were manufactured Another plan was pz3/4L70E and Nashorn E[ Nashorns had Jagdpanther's gun] which wasn't realised because war ended. Another candidate for Panther's gun was pz38D td; two prototypes constructed but war ended. Elongated 38D used 88mm also[Kubinka tank museum]. Another myth is 88mm turret for Panther-tanks ; with Schmalturm turret panthersG and F[ maybe P2] still used wariant of 75mmL70 without muzzle brake but it isn't 88mm. Yes , DB conceptualized Schmalturm 88mm for F model but prototype not existed in 3D form before end of war.
@@mirkojorgovic my grandfather loved his L/70 gun. His Panzerjager IV L/70 was the last vehicle his unit used. They did have one Hetzer and a few Marders left at the very end
I don't know why the German heavy tanks get such a bad rap for reliability issues. Compared to a Soviet T34 the Panther and pretty much all tanks used during the war were superior. The T34 sometimes didn't even have a driver's seat and all of them had no turret baskets which caused horrible wounds for the crew if they didn't watch out. The armor welding was terrible and the tracks were known to fall off. It was tight and hard to move inside because of the Christie suspension and sloped armour took up alot of interior space. Then there's the transmission which was the T34s biggest issue. They would always fail and most T34 crews carried a spare transmission tide to the back. The driver kept a hammer with him to hit the shifter in gear. Soviet mindset was quantity over quality and the T34 tank is the perfect example of that.
See but they didn't get it in comparison to soviets. No one expected Soviet tanks to be reliable, not even the soviets cared about that. Germany was invading, they were pushing away from their industry, reliability was far more important to them.
Another problem was getting them repaired. Since each manufacturer made the T-34 according to their own interpretation of the tanks specifications they were given. You could have a specific piece held by 4 bolts by one manufacturer. And another would have that same piece held by 6 bolts.
Ergonomics matter a great deal - but crew comfort and efficiency was not considered of paramount importance to the USSR during the dark early days of the war, and it never really was emphasized as it should have been. Equipment which is difficult or uncomfortable to work tires the crew members more rapidly, and their operational/combat efficiency suffers. Of course, early on after Barbarossa, when crew survival of those old obsolete Soviet tanks was measured in hours or days, ergonomics didn't matter. But later on it became important. It matters a great deal when a crew is basically living in their tank for long stretches of hours or even days at a time. An example of how the design philosophy of U.S. & British tanks differed from Soviet Cold War designs is seen in the fights on the Golan Heights during the various Arab-Israeli Wars of the 1950s to the early 1970s. Israeli crews, often in British Centurions, for example, could park hull-down on the crest of ridges and escarpments, and depress their main guns enough to target advancing T-55s, etc. Since the Soviet tanks had such sloped armor, and limited interior room, with some designs of Soviet armor, it was discovered that the main gun could not be elevated or depressed enough to match the American and British designs used by the IDF. Sometimes, such design defects came back to haunt them. Of course, in return for greater range of elevation, the British & American designs usually had higher silhouettes.
The T-34 was pretty crude, if you ever see one up close all your comments about workmanship ring true. But, they worked and Russia could produce them in vast numbers. But the Panther final drive failed often, because Hitler insisted on more frontal armor and that overloaded the gears in the final drive. The Panther differential was space limited, so there was only so much they could do to improve the reliability-they introduced higher grade steel and heat treatments, but that was costly and the alloys needed to produce high grade steel were in short supply in Germany. The extra armor the Fuerher mandated may have saved a few tanks from Russian rounds, but it resulted in MANY more Panthers breaking down on the battlefield. Germany would have been much better off had they not added the extra armor.
@@heyfitzpablum - The Russians have been known for a long time for simple - even crude - weapons which are rugged, work on the battlefield, and get the job done without a lot of fanfare. I think the T34 fits into that category, and for that matter, so does the Sherman. It was less-crude than the T34 in many ways, but it was also a weapon of expediency just as the Soviet design was. Produced in staggering numbers, it worked well enough - as the T34 worked well-enough - to see the final victory through. As one German tanker gunner said, "We could knock out ten T34s, but there was always an eleventh one..." or words to that effect. It is a generalization, but mostly an accurate one I believe to say that the Anglo-American and Soviet alliance won the war largely using weapons of the 1930s, while Germany and the Axis powers lost it, using a small amount of technology of the 1950s as well as older technology as well. The U.S. wasn't as backward as some history buffs believe, though: The Germans pioneered the use of infrared searchlights and viewers on tanks by equipping some of their Panthers with night-vision technology late in the war. It didn't change the final outcome in any meaningful way. The U.S. put night-vision infra-red gear into use in the field late in the war in the Pacific, on Okinawa to be specific. The projectors and viewers (scopes) were bulky and somewhat fragile, so the only rifle deemed suitable was the M-1 Carbine, whose recoil was modest-enough to spare the mechanism. One post-war estimate credited the system with a substantial portion of the Japanese KIA total. Japanese troops bunkered underground or in cave complexes, would come to the surface at night, thinking they were safe from detection, only to find out the hard way that they sometimes were not. And of course, American high-tech won the race where it mattered most - the Manhattan Project. Hitler may have had V-2 ballistic missiles, but he had no nukes to arm them with.... thanks heavens for that. And for the heroes of Telemark.
My father operated the new Panther from 1943 on and saw combat at Kursk and Charkew with the 1. Panzer of the Waffen SS , Leibstandarte. The fire power was superior, the optics most advanced and the protection very good with the already modern requirments of firepower, mobility and protection. He always said the Tiger I was brutal and spread blank fear with everyone which faced the Tiger. The 88mm was already on long range very effective. The Tiger II he called Life insurance and the long barrel 88 outstanding. The Jagtiger with his 128mm gun not from this World. Like many time one single German Tank hold the line against an overwhelming mass of attacker, like ever 100m was a German solder in a fox hole....In overall he loved his panther and would not have trade it in for any other tank. Like with any tank, the way you use the tank and the skills of the crew made the big difference. For example, they were named in the Nazi radio propaganda February 1945 when the SS made an offensive in the east (operation spring awake) when they were suddenly confronted from 11 T34/85 (was a German 85mm Rheinmetall Gun) and two JSII . Like all T34 tanks they fired the coaxial MG and when it hit the target they used the gun, no real optict to aim. The hit rate was miserable. However, the frontal attack of the T34, they hit the Panther three times at around 800m and bounced off. It took the Panther 15 minutes to take out the 11 T34 from an range of 1300-600m. Behind the burning T34 two JS II , the newest monster tank of the Soviet, crawled slowly toward the battle and stopped several times to fire at the panther, with a firing rate of two rounds a minute. They got hit twice on the front from its 122mm gun which showed they used optics to aim. However, the slow firing rate made the JS not an good tank buster, more useful against bunkers and enemy positions. The two rounds made a big gong in the Panther and even a dent on the gun protection of the turret. However, each JS needed two hits from two rounds of the Panther to lose, like all Russian Tanks already back in time, the turrets. Means, the Panther with the skilled crew took out 13 Soviet tanks in around 20 minutes , got hit five times without impact. No wonder the French Army used the Panther till the mid 50s , it was a Tank far advanced in time. By the way, the replacement for the Panther was already on blue print and called Marder, with a 100mm gun which the French build as AMX30 after the war. The inability of the turret to use a bigger g+un the expirience at the battlefield made a new tank design necessary. Dad got hit a month later from a hidden JS on the side at around 400m range and the driver and radio operator got killed instandly . The turret crew with my Dad made it out of the tank but he lost his left food ...he survived , his two comrades died from small arms fire when the Russians try to catch them....After the war he was enlisted , like many SS folks , from the US and trained tankers . He called the Sherman Tank a crime to send kids at war in this tank....
The M4 Sherman had an average loss of 1 of the 5 crewmen on initial knockout, with the other US tanker losses were while they were OUTSIDE the tank. Not a single German tank could match the road marches that the M4 could pull off with far less maintenance required. Tank combat was far more involved than fantastic tales of single tank heroics taking on multiple targets. German tanks spent inordinate amounts of time in repair depots or being loaded onto trains to avoid winding up in repair depots. The M4 crew enjoyed far superior ergonomics for both combat and road marches, and daily life. Easier to repair and more tanks available on a daily basis translates to an immense advantage before the battles even began. In the end over 50k Shermans were built and just 1,581 US Tank Crewmen died in ALL theaters in ALL tank types. The crime is by those who repeat myths about the Sherman without understanding the specific role it filled.
@@TheSaturnV The crime is those who believe the myths about the Sherman.Stop this crap about 1581 US tank crewman, totally meaningless. All Allied forces used the M4 Sherman, please tell us how our Canadian friends went. So 1581 Americain tank crewmen died, 741st Tank Bttn on D Day alone suffered 45 dead & 65 wounded. 743rd tank bttn in 11 months of combat suffered 141 killed, 22 missing & 316 wounded but i guess they must all have been cooks and clerks because it was almost 100% casualty rate. Highly experienced tank commander Sergeant Jake Wardrop who commanded a Sherman Firefly in Europe examined a knocked out Panther ! It was some tank and no mistake! I took a good look and decided I would examine no more of them as it was bad for my morale. Jake died a soldiers death RIP. Can you find a single occasion where a German tanker examined a knocked out Sherman and was despondent about its abilities, To quote Lt Colonel William Lovelady who had plenty of experience with the M4 Sherman ! Sherman tanks were not nearly as efficient or as armoured as the Pz IV. They were undergunned when fighting Tiger tanks and out manouvered when facing Panthers. Regardless of the reasons for the Shermans problems individuals of 3rd Armoured division dealt with them in their daily lives. They prevailed simply because of overwhelming numbers, nothing more.
@@TheSaturnV That's literally a sample study of about 49,000 USA tanks crews and 10,000 tanks, some of which never left the USA and were multiple types of tanks.... Only about 1,000 tank's were lost, it literally says it's a sample study on the document. Over 22,000 USA tank crew members died from memory, and some 76,000+ were WIA, with the losses of some 10,000 tanks as in totally destroyed.
My dad was a crew member in the Semovente 75/18 at the battle of el-Alamein. He was 20 years old and survived the war . I’m 68. Cheers friend , from NJ , USA 🇺🇸.
I love this tank, the turret is so unique and the tank itself is "sexy". I have assembled the model tanks in different scales by different companies. Simply love all of them.
@@cy894 Mam w skali 1 :25 z Ardenów z noktowizorami , nie mogę się napatrzeć i na profil tylni w szczególności . Jak zobaczylem na żywo to mialem chyba tętno 150/ min 😁😁😁
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I always thought Panther's were kind of ugly. The Tiger 1 looks cool however. The Tiger 2 also looks cool but in a different way.
I think it's safe to say that had it not been rushed into production and gone through the proper birthing process that it would have been absolutely formidable The day it hit the battlefield.
You do realize that by the end of Kursk, most of the Panther Ausf D's were refitted into Ausf A's, and later progressed into the G model by March of 44. The G model was the last Panther production model with a chin mantlet upgrade by Sept. of 1944. The problem was Logistics (spare parts and Tank maintenance repair areas, fuel), crew training, and lack of recovery vehicles. Thomas L. Jentz is a great book. "Panther Tank"
I think if you want to draw the distinction, that it was one of the best tank _designs_ of WWII, but failed to live up to the potential of the design, making it a much more mediocre combat vehicle, because of impaired production and the continual imposition of modifications that increased the weight of the tank without corresponding increases in engine power and the capability of the drive system that should have been made to accommodate the modifications, leaving it underpowered and overstressed.
Good overall assessment. IMHO the only unforgivable aspect of the Panther was the unreliable final drive. I'm not going to ding the tank too much for not being perfect after being rushed into combat. As for other aspects, the tank made traded strong frontal protection, a great gun, great mobility for weak side armor. The weak side armor was the necessary tradeoff, but the Panther's side armor really wasn't weaker than any other medium tank. In the end you got a tank that cost about the same as a Mk IV, had much better frontal protection, a much better gun, equivalent side protection (not very much), and better mobility. I think that's a pretty good deal.
The side armour of the turret and the lack of a gun mantle was a real weakness-they had a marked tendency to brew up from an ammunition fire in the turret
150 kilometer final drive shitwagon...should have focused on more STUG III/IV,Panzer IV and most definitely TIGER I's....the Panther wasnt worth the time and the Deutsche marks.
It wasn't worth investing heavily in side armor. That's because if you got flanked and the enemy shoots first you lost. Most tank engagements are won by who shoots and lands a shot first. Even if the round doesn't do any actually damage. Structural integrity is lost and the crew is shaken by the noise. There's accounts of Sherman's blasting a tiger with so many HE shells that the crew expired with any penetrating rounds. Countless people lost their lives in such horrid ways during that war. None of those people should ever be forgotten regardless of the side they fought for. They paid the ultimate price for humanity to learn a lesson..
The turret traverse system was bad, this combined with the narrow field of view in the gunner's sight, meant it often took too long for the tank to get the gun on target.
@@milt6208 Relax already. It is an opinion. And I have relatives who faced the NAZIS in Europe and Africa, they weren't thinking too much about getting fancy when they stumbled upon them, later yes in the moment no.
@@milt6208 Battle of Arracourt is a hyped myth. The Allies suffered the same losses as the Germans. The only difference was that 1/3 of the German tanks were taken out by the air force, and I might add, that part of the Germans were so untrained they couldn't even read a map properly...yet they still inflicted these losses on the Americans.
Oh course not! That’s what tactical aircraft and artillery are for. Allied tankers weren’t looking for one on one tank engagements. Allied tanks and Tank Destroyers can take on German tanks directly. But that’s never the preferred way. If you want an example of American tanks & TD’s destroying German armor look at Arracourt or the Ardennes.
Couple things many seem to overlook: -The tiger was greenlit for a different method to make final drives. This kind of machining was in short supply in Germany during the war. The Panther could have never been produced in the relatively large numbers it was if it had used a Tiger style final drive. By mid 1944 half of all tanks in the German Army were Panthers (Supposedly late model Bergepanther and JagdPanther had upgraded final drives, which would make sense for their applications, and one rarely hears of any failures with these 2 models despite being more stressed in the drivetrains, but I only read about this in one source. A second source was just quoting the first. So it may not be true) -The "weak" side armor. Actually nearly all allied tanks of WW2 had similar or even lesser side Armor. - The Panzer IV offered no advantage over the Panther, even the reliability differences were incremental by late war. But a Pz IV cost about the same to make and only the need to keep production lines open and the inability to shut them down to convert to Panther production kept any pzIV lines open until the end of the war. -The Panthers suspension travel (50cm) would remain unmatched by any tank until the advent of the Leopard 2. - As the front got ever closer to Germany, Panther operational availability rates, very nearly matched those of the Sherman (undeniably the most reliable tank of the war on any side) For some reason the human brain is not very good at nuances. The german tanks were subject to engineering and production rules like everyone else's. The T34 for example in popular culture pictured as a very reliable tank (due to post war soviet narrative that has never been challenged in the west) for example was actually less reliable than the Panther. But it was still a competent design that the Soviets were able to produce in large numbers. But almost any reasonable tank design produced in those numbers would after the war be hailed as "war winning".
"the Sherman (undeniably the most reliable tank of the war on any side)" There are no hard evidence to support this statement, only anecdotal. Actually, in British service in the summer of 1944, the Cromwell was slightly more reliable. And Shermans broke down en masse during road marches, too. All WW2 tanks did. According to Belton Cooper, who was an engineer and Sherman mechanic, 35% of Shermans could be expected to fall out due to major or minor mechanical issues during a 30-40 miles road march. Probably not very different from a Churchill, Cromwell, Tiger, Panther or Panzer IV.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Fair enough. I am not a fangirl, but one always hears that the Sherman was the only tank designed from the outset for an expedtionary war far away from home shores. I once saw availability statistics from the Sherman as being the highest. Once we were past fall 1944 the Panther was only incrementally less operationally available than the Sherman. Yes I know thats not exactly the same as reliability, but still I found it of note. We have no global offical statistics from the Soviets that I am aware of, only individual reports from the front that many, if not most, T34s would have a severe transmsision failure and needing replacement, during most longer battles. Especially in the early part of the war. From this I surmise, the arc for T34 was similar than for Panther, most unreliable to acceptable reliability in approx 2 years of service.
Part of the reason the Panther "reliability" and availability increased was not due to actual improvements in those factors but the implementation of operating restrictions primarily for the driver.
@@brucenorman8904 Mostly because it went through the normal stages of a tank's development; from brand new with the typical children's diseases in the summer of 1943, just slightly more than a year after design work started - and to a relatively well functioning tank by the spring of 1944. There was simply not time enough to make it a fully mature tank. By the time production went into full gear, the German industry in general also suffered severe quality problems, mostly due to bombing, lack of important alloys and the widespread use of slave labor. Many of the French Panthers showed sign of sabotage, often to the point that it was considered a near miracle that the tank could be driven at all. Add to that allied strategic and tactical air targeting tank factories, spare parts, fuel, supply lines and work shops.
@@TTTT-oc4eb the real difference is that if 35% out of 6000 is going to make a big difference, but 35% of 50000 is going to make a big difference too, but it's gonna be felt at a lesser extent
Good video. One other flaw I'd like to point out if I may. The gun mantlet aa originally designed contained a shot trap. Numerous times a shot from an antitank gun or other tank would hit the lower half of the mantlet causing the projectile to penetrate the area occupied by the driver and/or radio man. However, this flaw was corrected by adding a "chin" to the lower part of the mantlet in subsequent models.
This is a great video on the Panther in combat, the good and the bad. Tiger and Panther looked good and generally performed well. But in they were not super tanks, they were destroyed by the allies and had little impact in the battles in which they fought. There is also tank mythology were avery Allied tank was destroyed by a Tiger or Panther. But in reality the vast majority of allied tank losses were due to Anti-Tank Guns, which greatly outnumbered German tanks, and later Panzerschrek type weapons.
Short of identifying the actual killer, there is no way to tell whether an anti tank gun, tank or assault gun has made the kill. A 75mm Panzer IV or Stug III shell makes the same hole as a 75mm anti tank gun shell.
@@lyndoncmp5751 75mm Panzer IVs, StuG III's and StuG IVs, Marder IIs and III's, Jagdpanzer IVs(both versions), Hetzer, Panther, PAK40s or 7.5 cm Pak 97/38... And let's add 7.62 cm bore guns too... It is a barely any difference in diameter after all.
@@AKUJIVALDO Absolutely. A hole is a hole. You also can't tell if a Tiger, King Tiger, Jagdpanther, Nashorn, 88mm anti tank gun or 88mm Flak gun has made the 88mm hole.
@@lyndoncmp5751 The figures were based on the tanks or artillery reported at the time of the battle. Logic was also in favor of artillery, there were approximately 6 guns for every tank.
@@billballbuster7186 But they don't tally up with German accounts and records. Zetterling in Normandy 1944 explains the conflicting allied v German records. In places where German armour and anti tank guns are in the same places, the armour recorded more kills yet the allies claim it was the anti tank guns. I think I'll go with who was actually doing the shooting.
When it worked, it was great. Germany had already played with sloped armour prior to the T34 but chose the block design due to costs, ergonomics, and added weight.
The gunsight used by 85% of all Panthers, the TZF-12a, had selectable magnification/field of view settings of either 2.5x/28 deg. or 5x/14 deg. respectively. The field of view of 28 degrees was in fact far wider than the field of vew of gunsights on most Allied tanks. For example, the M70 telescope from an M4 76mm Sherman had a fixed magnification/field of view of just 3x/12 deg. So although a Panther gunner did not have his own pericope, he could select the 2.5x/28 deg. setting for his gunsight during closer combat.
IMHO the only fundamental problem the Panther had was its interlocking wheel suspension. It was a royal pain to service and repair. Everything else could've been fixed had the Panther undergone a proper trial/testing period - and the Panther would've been by far the best medium tank of WWII. Excellent gun, good speed, good armor, and great armored tactics may not have won the war, but it sure would've prolonged it. My grandfather served in the Canadian armored corps, and fought his way from Normandy to the end of the war. He told me (back in the 70's) that the tank he was most afraid of wasn't the Tiger, but the Panther thanks to the Panther's speed and maneuverability. His Sherman Firefly (with the high-velocity 17 pounder gun) could take out both the Tiger and Panther - provided the Sherman got the first shot. His Sherman could also maneuver far faster than the Tiger, but the Panther could maneuver just as easily as his Sherman. It's a good thing that Germany didn't have the production capability of the Allied side (particularly the Soviets and Americans) because if they did, WWII might have turned out quite differently...
Panther was designed to replace the German medium tanks, the Pzr III and Pzr IV. While the Pzr III was discontinued (the chassis was still a basis for StuG’s), Panther never replaced the Pzr IV and shared the makeup of armored divisions. A huge mystery is why the gunner only had his gunsight. The commander had to acquire a target and then talk the gunner onto target. WTF? At 2 kilometers, on flat, open terrain(Russian Steppes), this was acceptable. At closer ranges, in urbanized, or broken country, this was inefficient and extremely slow. While Germany said the Panther was only slightly more expensive than Pzr IV they used Reichmarks as their unit of measure. I suspect some sleight of hand may be featured here. I’m curious as to what the cost in man hours was between the two? Panther had some incredible features that made it very dangerous on the battlefield. It also had some negatives that prevented it from achieving the kind of success it ought to have enjoyed.
One more flaw was the famous "shot trap" between the cannon frontal half cylindrical cover and the top flat plate of the tank. If a shot hit the lower frontal side of the half cylinder where the cannon is fixed it most probably ricochet and penetrate the top plate of the tank below with disastrous effect.
As the war turned against Germany, the need to get these tanks to the front necessitated cutting corners. Design flaws exist everywhere, once most were ironed out, that was a excellent machine.
The vehicle itself was great, but the KwK 42/70 was definitely the best gun of the war. The final drive/transmission was probably it's biggest weakness. The overlapping road wheels where also a general maintenance issue.
You have to think the 75mm was almost as deadly as the 88mm at least at short to medium ranges and far more practical in that the shells were considerably smaller so more could be carried and they’re easier to move around in the confined interior.
Unfortunately not. From what I can find, the APCBC ammunition for the Panther’s KwK 42 L/70 cannon had a case length of 640 mm (25.2”), while the APCBC ammunition for the Tiger I’s KwK 36 L/56 cannon had a case length of 571 mm (22.5”). I haven’t been able to find an overall length for the Tiger’s Pzgr. 39 round, but a full-scale replica is approximately 87cm long. The Panther’s Pzgr. 39/42 round is 893.2mm (or 89.32cm.). If this information is accurate, the Panther’s was about one inch longer than the Tiger’s.
The Panther's full round was slightly longer , but also slightly slimmer than the Tiger 1's round. The Tiger could, if packed full, carry up to 130 rounds, the Panther 120. The 75mm L/70 penetrated slightly more armor at short and medium ranges than the 88mm L/56. At 2,000 meters they were identical, after which the "88" were slightly superior. The APCBC-HE round for the KwK 42 was optimised for dealing with sloped armor - the downside of this wasa poorer ballistic shape and loss of velocity at longer ranges compared to the round for the KwK 36. The "overmatch factor" (diameter of round vs. thickness of armor) meant the the bigger and heavier 88mm shell probably was at least as effective at all ranges.
The 7.5cm round for Panther can travel faster than any german gun that's not a 8.8cm L71 or a 12.8cm... it has a lot flatter trajectory compared to the Tiger I gun
All german medium-heavy tanks store their ammo on the side of the hull, is understandable getting an ammo rack from it but is really not the case considering their Tank ACE survive lot more than the Ally tank ACE, or at least they can drop the tank and fight for another day unlike the soviets...
It was Hitler so adamant for the Battle of Kursk that he ordered the Panther and Tiger I to be rushed into service. The freaky issue was both tanks were still in the prototype phase with mechanical issues yet to be solved...
The Chief Flaw was not the engine, but the transmission same as Tiger 1 , they were built up and modified for both Panzers, the transmission would also be used in the Konigs Tiger and the Jagd Hunting Tiger, and in these latter Panzers the engine was over stressed. The other issue was the interleved inter locking road wheels, was a time consuming affair if you had to change an inner road wheel. This would be improved with later marks.
@@TTTT-oc4eb according to numerous texts I have read over the decades the transmission for the Konigs Tiger and Panther and Tiger 1 were modified for these different Panzers, and were not specifically designed for them they were built up to handle the increased weight , and over time the stress took its tole on these over worked transmissions. Then you have the Jagd Tiger and when its tranny went you had an immovable object.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Agreed, the final drive gears were the weak-link in the Panther drivetrain (engine/transmission/differential-final drive). The gears always broke first, mostly due to the fact the Fuerher insisted on more frontal armor for the Panther.
People fixate too much on the technical aspects of different tanks. Postwar analysis showed that the circumstances of the engagement mattered way more than the technical characteristics. The Germans were operationally most successful with panzer IIs and lightweight Czech tanks because the had great training, doctrine, and combined arms tactics. Later they had technically better tanks but none of the other factors - and were on the wrong end if every operation thereafter.
The Panther was a good as its crews. During the late war period the quality of trained crews dropped considerably as experienced crews were lost in combat.
It's curious in the beginning the crews will have only had training experience not battle savvy yet later on those experienced crews were being lost faster than they could be replaced
@@charlesburgoyne-probyn6044German practice was to issue Pz. IV to experienced crews and Panthers to new crews. The reasoning being that exp. crew could get the most out of the PZ IV and the Panther being better protected would keep the new crew alive long enough to become experienced. Do not think this actually worked out the way intended.
I have seen a Panzer IV and a Panther in the museum in Sinsheim, Germany. The Panzer IV was larger than I imagined and the Panther was just huge. A single track link of the Panther next to a link from the Panzer IV showcased the difference in the museum. The Panther was simply not serviceable in the field and often had to be abandoned, the Panzer IV was more on a human scale. The Germans would have needed a tank somewhat larger than the Panzer IV but smaller than the Panther ... it was already way too large for the times. The ideal weight for the roads, bridges, rail, repair shops etc would have been around 30-33 tons and definitely not 44 tons. With some ingenuity, the larger gun cold have been mounted into a tank with low profile (not taller than a standing soldier), tracks about 50-60 cm wide, no complicated suspension and everything field serviceable easily and sloped armor just in the front ... actually there were plans to upgrade the panzer III/IV to such a tank but then they were shelved and the big cats were produced. (the Nashorn could carry a 88 mm gun so a slightly larger tank than the Pz IV could also carry a big enough gun for WW2, either 88 mm or 75 mm long, in fact the Pz IV was also capable of mounting a 75 mm (albeit shorter than the Panther) ).
Panther had potential, but due to wartime shortages, time constraints, and top-down meddling in its design, it ended up being close to a flop. A later A variant or a G-model with an experienced crew and good support (logistics, AA, etc.) could be the wunderwaffe it was supposed to be, but that's asking a lot for late in the war.
I have no idea why people knock the Panther so much. It was a excellent design. It was just rushed and needed time to work out the flaws. Imo far better then the stop gap T34/85 or Sherman. Its frontal armor was very good and saw was its gun and systems.
The interlapping wheels in German tanks were meant to protect the side of the tank from magnetic mines. Enemy soldiers would run up to the side of the tank where the tank crew has zero field of vision and stick in a magnetic mine under the track, between two wheels. The interlapping wheels made that impossible and would toss off the mine or cut off the soldier's hand.
I like the panther but I always was of the opinion that the tiger was the better of the two,better armor all around,the gun was abjectively better(little bit less pen but more destructive and better HE shells), much more reliable mechanically and more comfy to drive(leather seats,an actual steering wheel,better ergonomics). Panther does have the advantage in mobility particulalrly the suspensions ability to eat up obstacles. But overall I'd take a Tiger I over a panther
@@robinsonsstudios That extra side armor came in very handy in a world where more than 90% of your opponents used venerable 75mm (US, British)and 76mm (Soviet) guns.
@@SkunkdMonk Except turret front armor, allround armor, armor quality, HE round, ammo load, barrel life of main gun, penetration at long range, more access to APCR rounds, transmission, better ability to pivot in place, final drives, ergonomics, reliability ... and probably some more I have forgotten.
5:03 Actually the gearbox wasn´t overengineered but underengineered. It was just not adapted to the rising weight of the tank in the design process. Germany was also low on materials like tungsten so the gears were made of lower quality steel. The main reason for the myth of the unreliability of german tanks is that they were in battle for weeks nonstop. This causes huge stress on material and crew. Tank crews also used whatever fuel and oil they could get, often not the best stuff possible but just avaible. Even modern machines would fail under these conditions.
It is obvious that you are not well read on the subject. If they hadn't put more armor on, the tank would not have been effective. The problem that the Panther had the most trouble with at the end of 1944: final drive. All German tanks had a problem because the Germans could not produce adequate strength material.There is a separate German military meeting report on this from January 1945.
Like ALL the big cats , its MASSIVE Achilles' heels were it's temperamental engine , and its overworked transmission - many Panther turrets were turned into pillboxes , rather than have them "placed" onto chassis - when it ( the Panther tank ) did its job according to purpose , it was rightly feared , but there WERE countermeasures available
@@goldenhawk352 I knew about the engine problems. It was fixed by troops with all kinds of shed tuning, and by 1943 december, On the orders of the Bureau of Weapons, Maymach was ordered to correct the problem. it was fixed by 1944 jan-february. They knew that repairs take time to reach everywhere. So in April, Guderian asked for a report on the progress of the repairs so far, and they concluded that the Panther's reliability had become equivalent to that of the Panzer IV, and it could travel 1000-1500 km without major repairs. "Guderian wrote on 5 March 1944: "The frontline reports said service life of the tank's engine had increased up from 700 to 1,000km [435 to 621 miles]. In addition, the same Panther tank-equipped unit reported that final drive breakdowns had ended and that transmission and steering gear failures were now within an acceptable range, which is damning with faint praise" [128][129] Guderian commented on the reliability: "From 6 March to 15 April 1944, the 1.Abteilung/Panzerregiment 2 (1st Battalion, 2nd Panzer Regiment) reported a distance of between 1500 km to 1800 km. Four of their seven Panthers was still combat ready without any transmission or engine failure."[130][49] On 22 April 1944, the same battalion reported how a good driver and commander can improve reliability: This kept in mind, the battalion reported PzKpfw V Chassis No. 154338, Engine No. 8322046 reading 1,878km with driver Obergrefeiter Gablewski, 4.Kp/PzRgt 2. The vehicle was still totally operational. All items were in great condition but the tracks. The consumption of the engine has been 10ltr per 100km. The vehicle was still operating with its first engine and transmission.[131][132][49]" From wiki, with historical sources. Check it on wiki.
@@rolandhunter ....and what of the armour that was now protecting the big cats ? , as allied bombing took its toll , the quality of protection afforded the crews diminished , just as other problems were being solved
@@rolandhunter They are talking about the fact that later German tanks armor was not as good as it had been due to lack of some needed elements and the factories that made it being bombed
My Father was in the 825th Tank Destroyer Bat. in wwII. They were heavily engaged with the Germans at Malmedy in the "Battle of the Bulge". I asked Him what was the best German tank and He answered the Panther. He had also been inside of a "Royal Tiger" so I guess He knew.
The Panther was plagued with issues even after the G variant. The G variant was uparmoured, making the tank even heavier than before. The shot trap was fixed, but many issues persisted as they were conceptual - like the transmission and final drive. The French found this out through 1945 to 1947 as per the 1947 "Le Panther" report they wrote. They tested different variants of the Panther (G included) and found out many of the "early" issues were still present and were not fixed, as they would essentialy require a full on re-design of the vehicle It was an okay tank, in certain circumstances even an excellent one. But in combat you rarely get favourable and good circumstances. It was a logistical and mechanical nightmare. Germans heavily relied on rail, even as much as using it to transport the tanks for a trip of mere 25 kms as reported by the French. Transport by rail meant equipping the tank with "travel" tracks as the combat tracks were just too wide. This changing of tracks took a while. There was also an issue of lack of spare parts, as the tanks broke down quite a bit, especially the final drives. More than 50 % of all abandoned Panthers had final drives broken or heavily damaged. The prototype vehicle from which the Panther later came was designed to weight at around 20 tonnes, but the transmission essentialy remained the same - thats a recipe for distater. The turret wasnt great, the gunner couldnt see anything, it took a while to bail out. The coordination (as the video mentioned) between the commander and gunner was... shite. Its reported that it took the crew of a Panther at least 30 seconds to fire after spotting an enemy. Overall... it wasnt a bad vehicle, but certainly wasnt a great strategic vehicle
Lazerpig did a good video on the Panther....The Panther Paradox. He basically said that while the Panther excelled in hard factors like Fire Power, Mobility, and Armor, they failed in the soft factors like crew survivability and maintenance. Personally, I think it depends on the situation. There were battles where Panthers made the difference, battles were they performed so poorly you'd never believe it, and there were battles where the Germans used them until they were just knocked out to last.
the panther didn't represent a problem with crew survivability, there's a good example in a video of a 1945 battle where a panther destroys a sherman and pretty much all its crew end up either wounded or dead, then a pershing fires at the panther numerous times while the crew is bailing out, all germans survive except for the ones getting shot outside of the tank, so much for american engineering
@@mrhqyangtechnic_q_emx8180 even with equal resources, the panthers poor reliability will still cause 3/4 of fielded tanks to be out of commission. The operational panthers would still be out swarmed by more reliable allied tanks.
They would've done better to have stopped at the panther and not wasted time and resources on the tiger. The panther was either superior or at least equal to almost everything it fought against so it was all they really needed. They could have taken the resources and material they wasted on tigers and would've been able to build a lot more panthers and panzer IV Fs. Even so, Hitler being overly ambitious is what cost them the war, particularly invading the USSR. Had he not done that he could have possibly fought the US and Britain to a stalemate and been able to negotiate an end to the war with terms favorable to him.
Hitler rushed the Panther into service to participate in "Operation Citadel", aka the Battle of Kursk, where it had many defects and breakdowns. It needed several more months to mature.
the Panther had a gun- 75 mm KWK-42 high velocity armament. that shell developed at about 3300 f/s compared to the M2 75mm gun on the shermans which was 2050 f/s . the Panther shell could go through the front of the early variants of Sherman and out the other side. and the Shermans couldnt get thru the Panthers front armor no matter how hard they tried.
Many American tankers in WWII swore that it was the best tank in the war by far. It's maneuverability, armor, and gun were all excellent, but its mechanical reliability sucked ass. The reason the M-4 Sherman was the US Army's MBT was because of its reliability. The US could've fielded several better tanks than the Sherman, but they were deemed mechanically unreliable for field service in late 1942/1943.
The US didn't have any 'better tanks' in 1942 and 1943. The only tank the Army had in 1940 was the M2 Stuart. Ordnance and Chrysler began designing the M3, M4 and M6 in 1940. The M4 went into production in 1942 where Ordnance went to work designing its replacement by developing the T series. In 1943 they had two versions called T25. One used the Ford GAA V8 with a GM Hydromatic transmission and the other using an electric drive. The Army was extremely interested with the electric drive since it would allow the tank to travel at the same speeds in forward and reverse. The Army ordered the same number of both models to be produced for testing. At the same time in 1943, Congress was more concerned about being re-elected in 1944 so ordered the War Department to get a heavy tank in combat before the elections. Ordnance supersized the T25 to create the T26 that didn't see combat until March of 1945. Ordnance did have Fisher Body up armor some M4'S to create the heavy M4 Jumbo assault tank. As for the T25 models, they cancelled further development of the electric drive model since it required more maintenance than expected and problems with it's speed control couldn't be corrected by the manufacturer. The conventional model also needed further refining so was cancelled in the Fall of 1944 when it was obvious that Germany couldn't last much longer.
As I stated many times, the Tiger 1 in retrospect was much better than the panther, it didn't have reliability issues other than those issues being faults from its own crews not doing maintenance checks after the 240km mark, very impressive for such a tank as the Tiger to even reach, it had more or less the same armor protection if the Tiger was to angle 30 degrees making that 100mm lower and upper glacis plate 140mm or slightly higer including the 80mm side armor to 120mm thick, It whether people believe it or not had better penetration than the panther thanks to the larger diameter of the shell ( Yes because the shell is larger, General armor penetration laws go out the window, because the shell on impact rather than needing energy, as long as the shell is larger or 10% less than the armor thickness, penetration is done through total armor ablation = the armor fails and combusts instantaneously), the Tiger had basically the same sight as the panther with the turmzielffehrnröhr 9b optical sight having ranges out to 4000m on the H variant and 9c sights having 6000m on the E variant of Tigers and yes having viable zoom options 2.5 and 5.5x, the Tiger had better anti infantry capabilities with 3 maschineguns( one for the radio operator, one coaxial and on the E variant of Tigers one on the cupola, the Tiger had more or less the same speed and greater traction on soft terrain thanks to wider tracks and same engine out put of 2700rpm(3000 rpm was taxing on the engine) and yes going 38kmh on off road and 45kmh on road , the Tiger had a turn radius of 3.2m, meaning it couldn't not get easily circled, and carried about the same lethal poutacy of ammunition of 92 shells carried on board (sometimes even more against regulations), it proved to have a greater kill to loss ratio of 5:1( meaning generally was responsible for proving vital without losing so many that production costs to loss ratio was exceeded and ultimately gave impressions that it was impractical and lastly the Tiger 1 had better crew survivability options installed( it had a loaders hatch, driver hatch, commander hatch and a back turret hatch for the loader and gunner. I will be happy to share the source from the one and only Thomas L. Jentz and Hillary Doyle's book Tiger tanks 😊
The Tiger's effective front turret armor (gun mantlet + heavy bars of 100mm turret armor up and down) was 140-225mm (center 140 -150mm, everything 125mm or thinner were backed up by the 100mm bars) - much more than the Panther. The Tiger 1 also had special made high quality armor plates, while the Panther had to do with the standard ones. British tests of captured Tigers stated that the armor performed 15-20+ % more than expected from the thickness, especially when hit at an angle. In addition, the Panther was not really combat ready until the early spring of 1944. Meanwhile, from 1942, the Tiger had a margin of superiority over opponents that have never been equalled, sooner or later. That's where its reputation stems from.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Thank you, people need to understand that this tank was far from inferior, including the problems it had, granted DUE TO IRREGULAR MAINTANANCE procedures after the 190km mark 240 was the breaking point limit to do maintance checks but most were ignored
Автор вказав дуже багато надуманих проблем Т5, взятих як кліше інших країн, які випробували трофейні пантери. Є інтерв'ю Дмитра Москальова, який відновив пантеру у Кубінці. І те, що ви в більшості озвучили про блеми Т5 є міфами і легендами! Трансиімія не була поганою чи слабкою в пантері і досить легко мінялася в польових умовах на нову кпп. Всі недоліки трансмісій були пов'язані з низкою якістю виготовлення внаслідок бомбардувань заводів союзною авіацією. Теж саме і опорні катки. Тобто ви вважаєте, що змінити торсіон чи пошкоджений опорний каток було важко?а на т-34 вам чомусь не здається змінити пошкоджений каток? Ровію міф! В пантері катки було легше замінити ніж в т-34, бо вага катка т-34 складала 250кг!а у Т5 вага опрного менше 80кг))і поки ви всім екіпажем на т-34 намагаєтеся змінити на новий пошкоджений каток в т-34, то в пантері 2 члени всього екипажу міняють вже 5ий чи 6ий каток. Це міф про про погану ремонтнопридатність підвіски пантери. Нагадати, скільки важить сдвоєний опорний візок у шермана? Понад 120кг і щось ніхто не каже, що у м4 погана підвіска! Бортова броня Т5 слабка?а в кого вона не слабка? Навіть післявоєнний центуріон мав не набагато товстішу броню в бортах і цей танк був досить захищений на свій час. Важка пантера? А ІС-2, Черчилль чи м26 не були важкими? Щось з їх переміщенням на мостах чи пантонах не було проблем))а в Т5 у 44 тони були проблеми. Ви самі заперечуєте логіці... можна багато про що говорити в німецькі танки, про їх недоліки, але не про пантеру. Ця машина випередила свій час і по суті була першим ОБТ у світі. І серія в 5700 штук це велика кількість для виробництва 3ого рейху. Якщо врахувати, що 1940-1945 рр. Було виготовлено 8000 Т4, а лише за два роки зроблено було 5700 пантер. Танк був простим і великосерійним. Проблеми булв тільки одна: бомбардування промисловості, комунікацій і добування нафти німців. Тому пантери лишилися запчастин, бензин, а якість їх виробництва впала дуже низько. Я думаю, що під бомбами м4 шерман теж сходили з конвеєрів не тої високої якості,яку ми бачили....
The panther was heavy tank period, it weighted more than 50 tons, in normal conditions would be considered a heavy tank, except for the Reich the heavy status was related with the gun claiber ratter than the weight of the platform... the gun of the Panther was only a 75 mm gun, but funny enough, the Kwk 42 of the panther was cappable of a higher level of penetration than the Tiger 88mm Kwk L56 gun... despite having a lower caliber, it had not only a higher muzle velocity, as it was cappable of penetrating more armor on distance. Essencially the Reich did a mistake by not creating a standard vehicle, they went for quality of quantity, because they lacked resources, they could built 4 panzers IVs with the resources of a tiger, and likely, the better option for them would be to give the Panzer IV an improvement like a more spacy turrent, in other to fit the Kwk 42 gun there... from the panther which was considerably better than the Panzer IV one. also the Panzer IV weighted only 30 tons, almost half of the panther, and had room for improvements, such as, having a better engine, and better frontal armor... Had the germans just give a better frontal armor to the panzer IV, like introducing a sloped version, and a new better protected turret with the kwk 42, and they would possibly have 4000 panzer IV's of a new variant ready for kursk in 1943, ratter than having only roughly 1000 tigers (which didn't even had) So it was always a question of Nazis obsession with "huge" tanks and guns ratter than efficiency. which fortunately they never had and thats why they lost a war, even when their army was likely the strongest men to men in ww2, not only in overall individual efficiency, leadership or technology, they lost the war due to chewing more than they could eat.
Exaggerated. The Panther's only selling points are its heavy sloped frontal armor and powerful gun. The thing is that that was an option for the Allies too, but they passed because of the drawbacks. The likes of the M26 Pershing, T-44, and Centurion came out in the last year of the war and were equal if not better. The Panther was the Dreamcast of tanks, released too early. The number of Panthers made was impressive, but that came at costs. For one there werent enough replacement parts. Repairing a Panther was difficult, requiring very heavy field vehicles to tow them back to workshops or to even lift them to replace parts. The double-wheel system in particular meant field repairs and maintenance difficult. Transmission, engine, suspension, ergonomics, it was all flawed.
Your entire post is exergerated and a dreamcast and as far away from the truth like statements like "Nazi super weopons" and "sherman death traps". You try to turn Memes into historical facts and became the one thing you believed to destroy.
And the best off-road mobility of any WW2 tank. So, among standard tanks, it was pretty much the top dog in all three categories of "the golden tank triangle".
@@TTTT-oc4eb I would imagine it would have terrible off-round potential due to its high weight and poor engineering. There are videos of the Panther catching fire in mud. Cleaning the double-wheel tracks on a Panther would be ridiculously time-consuming. Most Panthers were moved by train because of their fragile engineered systems, poor longevity, and high maintenance requirements. Ive heard of the Golden Triangle, and the Panther ultimately fails because it ignores any soft facts like engineering, weight, suspension, maintenance, and so on. Maximum Speed doesnt matter if the safe speed is much lower.
Nice coverage of the Panzer V (Panther), and special kudos for pronouncing the word "formidable" using the correct and primary pronunciation. FORM -id-a-ble. Not For-MID-a-ble. I'm pretty sure this latter and secondary pronunciation is only listed due to the rise of this silly alternate pronunciation and the dictionary people caving to this trend. For decades I have heard this word, and only in recent years have I heard anyone say this word this odd way.
Every nation knew about sloped armor before the T34 was introduced. It is a design decision to use it or not and has its own problem. (structural integrety)
The T34 and Sherman, while having their flaws, WERE the right tanks for the time and the job they had to do; AND ease of production meant they could be built in the thousands!!
The Panther was quite easy to produce, almost as easy and cheap as a PzIV. The production numbers of the Panther are not far behind the PzIV even though produced during a far shorter time period. Even heavily flawed, especially in the beginning, it was a better tank than both the Sherman and T-34. With production facilities and supplies the Soviets and Americans had in their tank production the Panther would have reached similar production numbers. Vice versa, if Germany would have had the Sherman or T-34 they still wouldn't have been able to produce sufficient numbers to counter the Allies. The Panther was the best compromise of a medium mass produced tank Germany could have fielded, it certainly wasn't a failure.
WW2 was the best thing that ever happened to America it dragged it's economy out of the depression and as they were in safe protected areas with unlimited resources and an overseas market with no choice but to purchase these products.the Sherman and t34 were both products of there time the t34 was a lot more important to the final result than the Sherman the panther was a way better tank than the other two it was just a victim of Germany's lack of industrial resources and raw materials
The M4 Sherman was designed so that it could be maintained in the field by the average farm boy. Forget production , if its not easy to maintain, its not much use.
@@peterrobbins2862no German tank was the product of an assembly line. They were all artisan products. They were never going to approach the production numbers of the T34 or Sherman nor could German Industrail logistics sustained such an effort. Fritz Todt candudly warned Hitler of that reality in February 1942 before his mysterious demise
The question is would it have been more effective to keep manufacturing more Panzer IVs instead. Could they have manufactured 12,000 extra IVs instead of 6,000 Panthers, and what would the impact of that have been?
they would have run out of fuel before. The Romanian fuel was lost after 1942, and that was another bad turning point. Together with poor LUFTWAFFE performances after 1943/1944, it was another nail in the coffin. Germany WOULD NEVER HAD TO DECLARE WAR TO USA (while already in battle against USSR), nor they were obliged to. It was Japan fault to attack USA instead of east USSR (they feared 1938 brutal loss), and doing that, it was a personal bad decision either, by AH himself.
Originally the Panther was meant to operate at a maximum shooting range. When everything goes bad you start using the tank as a proverbial microscop used instead of a hammer to drive nails.
The early production of Panthers troubles , stemmed from sabotage during assembly , mysterious engine fires , gear box issues and final drive breakage .
I found that the Heavy Tanks (Tigers, Elephant, IS-2, etc.) were the ideal center tank (or tip of the spear), and if I didn't have them available, then the self-propelled guns (Jagdtiger, Jagdpanther, SU-100, etc.) would function (normally) just as well. Then, on their flanks, the Medium Tanks (Pz III, Pz IV, T-34, Shermans, etc.) would get deployed. So, for me, all tanks are invaluable for their capability to go on the offensive. Not having tanks meant that you had to rely upon infantry in trenches, supported with AT Guns and AT Mines, and hoping that your artillery could hit them (whether they were moving or not). If they broke through your lines, your only option was to retreat. So yeah, any tank is better than no tank unless they were badly outclassed (which was effectively the same thing anyways).
The Panthers flaws boiled down to quite a few issues when really looking at it beyond its design. Crew skill, which by the time it really could shine as a refined design, most experienced crews were killed in prior engagements in its predecessors. Production issues became a hinderance as factories were now under attacked and supply lines were disrupted along with the heavy reliance at this point in the war of slave labor. Sabotages, manufacturing defects and lower quality material began to take its impact. If the Panther Ausf. G was to have made its appearance sooner, it probably would have gave the experience tankers a slightly longer life span, but do to the building pressure and massive wave of enemy tanks, would still have succumbed. The Panther in my opinion was an excellent design once refined by the point they reached the Ausf. G variant, but wasn't fielded fairly due to many other variables.
It has always been my belief that during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans should have left the Tigers on the eastern front and gone in with Stug IIIs and Pzkw IVs due to their better mobility and lower fuel requirements along with being more than capable of handling any Allied armor they would encounter.
An engineering marvel as originally conceived, but Hitler insisted on more frontal armor and that overtaxed the transmission and final drive gears-leading to many failures, usually at the worst possible time. This issue was improved over time, but was never entirely eliminated. The torsion bar suspension was difficult to service in the field with it's interlocking wheels. The German military philosophy that tanks should be optimized for opposing enemy armor really compromised their designs and made them less effective in the infantry support role-for which the Sherman Tank was designed for. The high velocity gun of the Panther was a great anti-tank weapon, far less effective when taking on infantry. Finally, all German tanks were difficult and time-consuming to build. Only 6000 Panthers were built and another 8500 Panzer IV's for a total medium tank production of less than 15,000 units. Compare that to 50,000 Sherman tanks of all models produced during the war-the Sherman was designed for mass production and easy serviceability in the field. The Sherman couldn't slug it out with German heavy tanks, but it could do everything else very well, was used all over the world and was produced in large numbers. Entirely different philosophies between the Wehrmacht and the US military.
I wonder maybe somebody can tell me If the panther with? It's. KW7542 fired a modern duplicated uranium round. What would the destructive power? be with that old 75 high velocity?
It is important that your tank be as simple to build, and maintain, as is possible. Cost is the other factor. Panthers, when you look at things like raw materials, and TIME needed to assemble one, were arguably, more cost effective than building say, a Tiger or Tiger II. In resource constrained Germany, this should have been the over-riding critera. Instead, the ultra expensive and resource hungry heavy tanks, were also built alongside relatively modest tanks, like the reliable Panzer IV, or even the Panther. It was interesting how this piece notes that late production models had brittle steel. This is often under-appreciated. Early model tanks, had much better steel than late model ones. So the tanks design problems finally get sorted out, but, the quality of the steel gets progressively worse over time. At the end, I bet the material the panther was made from, could only loosely be called 'steel' it was that bad.
The Sherman was on the attack and had qualities relevant to that (range, reliability, maintainability, crew survival). Panthers were on the defence and had qualities relevant to that (frontal armour, gun power). Comparing them outside the situation is limited in relevance. A Sherman on defence and a Panther on offence would be very problematic.
Panthers were a huge problem late war - especially for the Americans who brushed off British and Russian warnings. Panthers were undeniably great in many battlefield situations. For the defensive war Germany was fighting in the late war they were pretty effective. However, panthers overloaded engine/final drive could have never withstood the huge offensives over hills/rivers/in towns like Sherman’s and t34/85s did. Even in battle of the bulge something like 1/3rd of panthers were out of action at any given time due to mechanical issues, compared to 1 out of 10 Shermans. Panthers were great sitting in an ambush on a prepared battlefield with a long range of sight. But would fall apart in major offensives.
Im a tanker and an armor historian. It was ahead of its time and was the father of the main battle tanks of today. It is the actual father of the leo 1 and grandfather of leo 2
I was better than almost any tank in 1943 faster and more manueverable and lighter and slightly a little more reliable and almost same armour thickness as the tiger but it had some problems like almost all of its german big cat counterparts but I think facing this was a nightmare however if you are on the sides luckily just hope it dosent turn around you and your loader is faster then the turret rotation anyways panther-death
Does not seem to draw upon the German initial field report in Kursk that points out that sides were so vulnerable to even AT rifle fire that it was recommended to only deploy Panthers in sizeable quantities with large infantry cover to keep sides covered. A fatal flaw, given that infantry was rapidly going extinct by that point, and often was so indoctrinated on the “Panzer myth” that they believed tanks can do everything and infantry was there just to mop up and hold (something Panzer crews of ‘43 and beyond often bitterly lamented about)
Maybe... Counting MK IV's (8k), Stug III's and IV's (14k), Jgdpzr IV (2k) and V (400), all made on tank chassis with lethal cannons, I think the situation is considerably redressed with about 25k more vehicles. 33k vs mostly the Soviets (who lacked tactical trucks for refuel, maintenance, etc.) was closer to a fair fight.
@@Truthaholokz The russians alone fielded 64.000 medium tanks and 13.500 heavy tanks in WW2. The americans fielded a total of just over 60.000 relevant medium and heavy tanks combined. The british fielded a total of about 22.000 relevant medium and heavy tanks combined. The germans fielded a combined 34.000 relevant SPG's, medium and heavy tanks. That makes 159.500 tanks vs 33.000. That's just for tanks. Not the greatest calculus.
@@skdKitsune You just showed raw numbers devoid of any context as if that's an accurate picture of the situation.... nope. When Operation Barbarossa kicked off it was 3350 German vs 24000 Russian right? Is that your kind of calculus? Even though it ignores the excellent German operational readiness rate as opposed to the abysmal Soviet rate, and the fact that Soviet armored formations were incapable of mechanized ops? If you can't provide relevant context, you're a hack.
@@Truthaholokz What? I showed raw numbers in tanks. You really want to go down the route of "operational readiness" and logistics? Should we also compare access to resources such as rare metals, oil and manpower? If you argue that somehow the allies were the underdogs in WW2, that's not gonna end well lol
@@skdKitsune Don't try to assume or make my argument for me (strawman BS). The fact is, the equipment (tanks, etc) that matters is at the front able to operate in its/their intended role. What I am saying is that the production disparity looks quite different when comparing relative combat power at any given time, any given front. CONTEXT Also, don't assume anything about who you're conversing with... I've been researching, analyzing, debating these topics before there was an internet. Name the WWII forum, I'm probably on it.
The panther had legendary status but so did the tiger 1. They were probably just as valuable as the allied tanks. But respect to the Germans for producing outstanding armor way ahead of there time
Main problem that was never fixed, transmission and gear box. France after the war tried the panther for several weeks or months then decided it was garbage.
ironic that an upgraded version of the Panther tank's 75 mm gun , was used on the French AMX 13 light tank , which was used by the Israeli Defence Forces during the six day war !!
Had no idea the Panther was only marginally more expensive than a Panzer IV.
The other issue for the tanks was the total loss of air superiority, especially in Normandy. It doesn't matter how good your tank is when a fighter bomber can just drop a load on it
That was the allied trump card....overwhelming air superiority! ,during Overlord (Lucifer) launched at 6 in the morning ,on the 6th day of the 6th month 1944 the odds was 100/1 against the Germans! The evil one takes care of its children!
Something I've tried to convince the countless of people who keep thinking Germany overengineered and had too expensive tanks. The fact the Panther cost 1½ times the manpower and materiels of a Pz4 and half that of a Tiger made it a better choice to produce than the others as Germany lacked materials and getting a 2-3x as good tank than the Pz4 for only 1½x the cost is a cost benefit. Also they only used slightly more fuel than the Pz4. I'd rather have 20k Shermans if I had the crews and the materiels and unbombed factories, but seeing Germany had neither, I'd also had gone with the Panther. Albeit it had flaws, all tanks had flaws and it was a better route than the smaller tanks. The E50 and E75 plans to even streamline the medium and heavy tanks more was also a great plan, just too late.
And the over engineering was done during prototype and design. The manufacturing itself was surprisingly simple. Go watch the Australian Armor and Art musem videos of restoring a Panther. They had some genius simple ideas on how to do stuff compared to say Brits or US etc.
Also, the airsuperiority was mostly down to being spotted ment artillery bombardment. Artillery took out most tanks. Some lost in tank vs tank but only arund 6% were lost due to air strikes. The fighter bombers knew to go for the logistics. The rockets on the Fighter bombers had less than 3% accuracy on hard moving targets, but effective vs soft targets due to splash.
@@beersmurffwow..
Your commenting or presenting your basic research report about Panther Mark V 'panther'!?
So detail...
Are you in Military or a Military Researcher and Historian!?
Or youre just a Sucker of War and or Military histories and all off its legends and myths facts that goes along with it etc like me!?😅
Im not in Military and or everything that associated or related with it,im just a regular dude who ❤ about war and Milotary history and favts.😅
@@zadzad4353 I used to be in the military, but tbh it doesnt give me any expertice on this as I was 1st gunner on Medium 80mm mortar from 1994 to 2003 . The closest I was to a tank was driving the Piranha APC for a while. So nothing that compares even remotely hehe. Just like you I am just a nerd for history and my brain always want facts and details and I hate when people who played some video game or read one source claim the generic myths.
The loss of air superiority made the German develope night fighting kits for their panthers. They started to equip panthers with infra red search lights in the last month of the war in Europe.
One of the design flaws that couldn’t really be addressed in the Panther was the position of the loader. He was positioned on the right side of the gun, which meant that in most cases the loader was loading the long and heavy shells with his weaker arm. And due to the length of the gun and shells he couldn’t load the shells straight i to the breech he had to lift them up and over the gun and angle them in. All of this reduced the rate of fire, making the tank a lot less efficient than it could have been.
Also, an odd bit of trivia about the Panther. The French actually operated them longer than the Germans did, though not in combat. They used a bunch of captured ones and even built new ones from remaining parts to equip their army until new tanks were available.
Bruh, every tank had this problem except British and American on those types of tanks that had the loader on the left.
Reported firing rate was 6 to 8 rounds, which was pretty good for wwii standards.
Further more with left hand loading the strong right hand supports the weight of the shell and is aiming the tip into the breach, your weak left arm just has to push it in.
Chieftain made this argument up, I never heard of an actual report, pointing this out as a weakness.
@@HaVoC117X Nice to see you back on the Panther front. :D I haven't seen you in a while.
Can I have your email or anything to keep in touch?
@@HaVoC117X Yes, he has made a career out of being ill-informed to the ill-informed...yet another yank who thinks they know everything.
No time for him at all.
some information about the French -
" I find among the French soldiers of Dunkirk the same ardour as that of the poilus of Verdun in 1916. For several days hundreds of bombers and guns have been pounding
the French defences. However, it is still the same thing, our infantry and tanks cannot break through, despite some ephemeral local successes."
"Dunkirk proves to me that the French soldier is one of the best in the world. The French artillery, so feared in 14-18, once again demonstrated its dreaded effectiveness.
Our losses are terrifying: many battalions have lost 60% of their strength, sometimes even more! “
"By resisting about ten days to our forces, which were significantly superior in terms of numbers and resources, the French army achieved a superb feat in Dunkirk that is
to be commended. It certainly saved Britain from defeat, by allowing its professional army to reach the English coast."
War diary General Von Küchler commandant of the XVIII army
My dad drove Churchills in 1944-45. I always got the impression that they were more scared of the Panthers than the Tigers. The ability of that gun to penetrate armour was they main thing to fear.
Probably because there was MORE Panthers then tigers
@@IronWarhorsesFun the later version of Panther G, in effect, was more powerful and effective than Tiger I.
They feared the Tiger more. Brit and US solders would report seeing Tigers when they was really Panthers and Panzer 4's. Men often report what they fear the most in these cases and mistake them to be there bogyman. My grandfather told me about Tigers when they ran into them and told me how our tanks would try to avoid them and slip behind them if they could but hope they can call in an air strike first. Tells me something about that tank.
Soviets stated tiger was harder to penetrate from the side 80mm Vertical vs 40mm sloped armour. Tiger armour was better quality made early mid war years before shortages of Stràtegic steel minerals degraded armour
Pànther didnt have slow rate of fire ????
Poor Turret turn rate? Model D's yes but later models were much faster with the the upgraded Hydraulics and could spin the turret around in 19 seconds at high engine RPM's.
@@daltonhunt4878 no. A and G ..
@@daltonhunt4878 Funny thing about the Panthers is that the D's were the initial model, then followed by the A's and then the G's (G's are sub-divided further by Early G's and Late G's).
As and Gs had their own problems. The turret rotation speed was tied to the RPM of the engine, which meant the driver needed to be in sync with the turret crew about revving it up in idle whenever the turret needed to be rotated.
Sherman drivers complained bitterly about the advantages of the Panther, but among the few advantages they listed was faster turret rotation. (along with a higher RoF and usually getting the first shot off)
Superior power to weight
@@christopher-ke9nj which one?
We all need a Panther in our garage.
Compare costs (field ready)
Pzkw II (8.8 tons): 50,000 Reichmark (RM) Gun 20mm
Pzkw III (23 tons/ 35kmh): 103,000 RM Gun 50mm
Pzkw IV (25 tons/ 42kmh): 115,000 RM Usual gun 75/40
Panther Pzkw V (44 tons/ 46-55kmh) : 140-170,000 RM ~2,000 manhours Gun 75/42
Tiger Pzkw VI (57 tons/ 45kmh): 250,000 RM ~10,000 manhours Gun 88/40
King Tiger (69 tons/ 38kmh): 800,000 Reichsmark and ~30,000+ manhours Gun 88/43
Stug III (23 tons/ 40kmh): 82,000 RM (the top tank killer of WW2) Usual gun 75/40
Panzer IV G and H without gun and radio was 105,000 RM.
Panther D, A and G without gun and radio was 117,000 RM - and the Panther's gun was actually cheaper (less man hours) than the Panzer IV's.
Tiger II cost 320,000 RM.
@@TTTT-oc4eb yeah the panther was suprisingly cost effective
Nice info but I would argue these figures are next to useless without production figures. You cant compare, for example the cost of production of say Panzer IV Ausf A through Ausf H over say 12000 units and just as many chassis to say the first 2000 of 4000 Panthers. Panther #700 is going to be more expensive than Panzer IV #6000.
-Me 109 went from 5500 hours for an Me 109E1, around 3000 hours for an early Me 109F to 2000 hours for a Me 109G to 1000 hours Me 109K4 in 1945.
-Mass production dramatically reduces costs and even material usage.
@@williamzk9083 Panzer IV G, H and J were produced in about the same timespan and numbers as Panther D, A, G.
The difference between Tiger I and II cost, however, is undoubtedly due to the lower number of the latter, as it was designed to be easier to mass produce than the Tiger I.
tiger 2 is useless it dosent even look good@@TTTT-oc4eb
My Opa was in the 8th Panzer Division. They received Panthers. He said it needed a skilled driver to drive it. The transmission would shred it self if not treated correctly. He was a Panzerjager and his vehicle had the same gun as the Panther. He said that gun was fantastic. His friend was in the Panther and they did like it very much. Better than the P4
8th Pz. Div.(Ost Front) had the PzJgr.Abt 43 The only Jagdpanzer equipped with the Panther gun (7.5 cm Pak 42) was the Panther tank and the JgdPz IV (two Varients). The first Division equipped was the Pz. Lehr with 31. Later the following Pz. Div. "Hermann Goering" Other units included 2nd Pz, 116th Pz, and 12 SS HJ (All on the Western Front) all with 21 vehicles each. 17th SS GVB PzGdr. arrived late to effect a counter vs the US Airborne. Other units in the West received them. 9th,11th, 10th SS Pz. Divisions.
By the time of the Ardennes Offensive, there were few and scattered. 2nd SS DR had 20, 17th SS GVB had2 (Rest Stug III), 22nd Pz had 4, 25th PzGdr had 5.
Italy AOO, Hermann Goering Div, plus the 3rd and 15th PanzerGrenadier Divisions. (83 in Italy in total).
Eastern Front AOO, 8th Pz (PzJgr.Abt.43) lost 3 out of its 4. Kampfgruppe “Scheppelmann” had 13. IV SS Pz. Korps had around 55 in its inventory in regard to the Hungarian relief efforts.
I am glad your Opa made it out of that war alive. The PzJgr. IV was considered a rare vehicle. Not many even in the German Army would even see one.
@JuergenGDB I have a photo of the Abt 43 Panzerjager IV L/70 with that “panther” gun.
Cca 2000 pz4L70 were manufactured
Another plan was pz3/4L70E and Nashorn E[ Nashorns had Jagdpanther's gun] which wasn't realised because war ended. Another candidate for Panther's gun was pz38D td; two prototypes constructed but war ended. Elongated 38D used 88mm also[Kubinka tank museum].
Another myth is 88mm turret for Panther-tanks ; with Schmalturm turret panthersG and F[ maybe P2] still used wariant of 75mmL70 without muzzle brake but it isn't 88mm. Yes , DB conceptualized Schmalturm 88mm for F model but prototype not existed in 3D form before end of war.
@@mirkojorgovic my grandfather loved his L/70 gun. His Panzerjager IV L/70 was the last vehicle his unit used. They did have one Hetzer and a few Marders left at the very end
I have assembled the model tank in different scales by different model companies. Love all of them. ❤
I don't know why the German heavy tanks get such a bad rap for reliability issues. Compared to a Soviet T34 the Panther and pretty much all tanks used during the war were superior. The T34 sometimes didn't even have a driver's seat and all of them had no turret baskets which caused horrible wounds for the crew if they didn't watch out. The armor welding was terrible and the tracks were known to fall off. It was tight and hard to move inside because of the Christie suspension and sloped armour took up alot of interior space. Then there's the transmission which was the T34s biggest issue. They would always fail and most T34 crews carried a spare transmission tide to the back. The driver kept a hammer with him to hit the shifter in gear. Soviet mindset was quantity over quality and the T34 tank is the perfect example of that.
See but they didn't get it in comparison to soviets. No one expected Soviet tanks to be reliable, not even the soviets cared about that. Germany was invading, they were pushing away from their industry, reliability was far more important to them.
Another problem was getting them repaired. Since each manufacturer made the T-34 according to their own interpretation of the tanks specifications they were given. You could have a specific piece held by 4 bolts by one manufacturer. And another would have that same piece held by 6 bolts.
Ergonomics matter a great deal - but crew comfort and efficiency was not considered of paramount importance to the USSR during the dark early days of the war, and it never really was emphasized as it should have been. Equipment which is difficult or uncomfortable to work tires the crew members more rapidly, and their operational/combat efficiency suffers. Of course, early on after Barbarossa, when crew survival of those old obsolete Soviet tanks was measured in hours or days, ergonomics didn't matter. But later on it became important. It matters a great deal when a crew is basically living in their tank for long stretches of hours or even days at a time.
An example of how the design philosophy of U.S. & British tanks differed from Soviet Cold War designs is seen in the fights on the Golan Heights during the various Arab-Israeli Wars of the 1950s to the early 1970s. Israeli crews, often in British Centurions, for example, could park hull-down on the crest of ridges and escarpments, and depress their main guns enough to target advancing T-55s, etc.
Since the Soviet tanks had such sloped armor, and limited interior room, with some designs of Soviet armor, it was discovered that the main gun could not be elevated or depressed enough to match the American and British designs used by the IDF. Sometimes, such design defects came back to haunt them. Of course, in return for greater range of elevation, the British & American designs usually had higher silhouettes.
The T-34 was pretty crude, if you ever see one up close all your comments about workmanship ring true. But, they worked and Russia could produce them in vast numbers. But the Panther final drive failed often, because Hitler insisted on more frontal armor and that overloaded the gears in the final drive. The Panther differential was space limited, so there was only so much they could do to improve the reliability-they introduced higher grade steel and heat treatments, but that was costly and the alloys needed to produce high grade steel were in short supply in Germany. The extra armor the Fuerher mandated may have saved a few tanks from Russian rounds, but it resulted in MANY more Panthers breaking down on the battlefield. Germany would have been much better off had they not added the extra armor.
@@heyfitzpablum - The Russians have been known for a long time for simple - even crude - weapons which are rugged, work on the battlefield, and get the job done without a lot of fanfare. I think the T34 fits into that category, and for that matter, so does the Sherman. It was less-crude than the T34 in many ways, but it was also a weapon of expediency just as the Soviet design was. Produced in staggering numbers, it worked well enough - as the T34 worked well-enough - to see the final victory through. As one German tanker gunner said, "We could knock out ten T34s, but there was always an eleventh one..." or words to that effect.
It is a generalization, but mostly an accurate one I believe to say that the Anglo-American and Soviet alliance won the war largely using weapons of the 1930s, while Germany and the Axis powers lost it, using a small amount of technology of the 1950s as well as older technology as well.
The U.S. wasn't as backward as some history buffs believe, though: The Germans pioneered the use of infrared searchlights and viewers on tanks by equipping some of their Panthers with night-vision technology late in the war. It didn't change the final outcome in any meaningful way. The U.S. put night-vision infra-red gear into use in the field late in the war in the Pacific, on Okinawa to be specific.
The projectors and viewers (scopes) were bulky and somewhat fragile, so the only rifle deemed suitable was the M-1 Carbine, whose recoil was modest-enough to spare the mechanism. One post-war estimate credited the system with a substantial portion of the Japanese KIA total. Japanese troops bunkered underground or in cave complexes, would come to the surface at night, thinking they were safe from detection, only to find out the hard way that they sometimes were not.
And of course, American high-tech won the race where it mattered most - the Manhattan Project. Hitler may have had V-2 ballistic missiles, but he had no nukes to arm them with.... thanks heavens for that. And for the heroes of Telemark.
My father operated the new Panther from 1943 on and saw combat at Kursk and Charkew with the 1. Panzer of the Waffen SS , Leibstandarte. The fire power was superior, the optics most advanced and the protection very good with the already modern requirments of firepower, mobility and protection. He always said the Tiger I was brutal and spread blank fear with everyone which faced the Tiger. The 88mm was already on long range very effective. The Tiger II he called Life insurance and the long barrel 88 outstanding. The Jagtiger with his 128mm gun not from this World. Like many time one single German Tank hold the line against an overwhelming mass of attacker, like ever 100m was a German solder in a fox hole....In overall he loved his panther and would not have trade it in for any other tank. Like with any tank, the way you use the tank and the skills of the crew made the big difference. For example, they were named in the Nazi radio propaganda February 1945 when the SS made an offensive in the east (operation spring awake) when they were suddenly confronted from 11 T34/85 (was a German 85mm Rheinmetall Gun) and two JSII . Like all T34 tanks they fired the coaxial MG and when it hit the target they used the gun, no real optict to aim. The hit rate was miserable. However, the frontal attack of the T34, they hit the Panther three times at around 800m and bounced off. It took the Panther 15 minutes to take out the 11 T34 from an range of 1300-600m. Behind the burning T34 two JS II , the newest monster tank of the Soviet, crawled slowly toward the battle and stopped several times to fire at the panther, with a firing rate of two rounds a minute. They got hit twice on the front from its 122mm gun which showed they used optics to aim. However, the slow firing rate made the JS not an good tank buster, more useful against bunkers and enemy positions. The two rounds made a big gong in the Panther and even a dent on the gun protection of the turret. However, each JS needed two hits from two rounds of the Panther to lose, like all Russian Tanks already back in time, the turrets. Means, the Panther with the skilled crew took out 13 Soviet tanks in around 20 minutes , got hit five times without impact. No wonder the French Army used the Panther till the mid 50s , it was a Tank far advanced in time. By the way, the replacement for the Panther was already on blue print and called Marder, with a 100mm gun which the French build as AMX30 after the war. The inability of the turret to use a bigger g+un the expirience at the battlefield made a new tank design necessary.
Dad got hit a month later from a hidden JS on the side at around 400m range and the driver and radio operator got killed instandly . The turret crew with my Dad made it out of the tank but he lost his left food ...he survived , his two comrades died from small arms fire when the Russians try to catch them....After the war he was enlisted , like many SS folks , from the US and trained tankers . He called the Sherman Tank a crime to send kids at war in this tank....
Great comments sir.
The M4 Sherman had an average loss of 1 of the 5 crewmen on initial knockout, with the other US tanker losses were while they were OUTSIDE the tank. Not a single German tank could match the road marches that the M4 could pull off with far less maintenance required. Tank combat was far more involved than fantastic tales of single tank heroics taking on multiple targets. German tanks spent inordinate amounts of time in repair depots or being loaded onto trains to avoid winding up in repair depots.
The M4 crew enjoyed far superior ergonomics for both combat and road marches, and daily life. Easier to repair and more tanks available on a daily basis translates to an immense advantage before the battles even began. In the end over 50k Shermans were built and just 1,581 US Tank Crewmen died in ALL theaters in ALL tank types.
The crime is by those who repeat myths about the Sherman without understanding the specific role it filled.
@@TheSaturnV The crime is those who believe the myths about the Sherman.Stop this crap about 1581 US tank crewman, totally meaningless. All Allied forces used the M4 Sherman, please tell us how our Canadian friends went.
So 1581 Americain tank crewmen died, 741st Tank Bttn on D Day alone suffered 45 dead & 65 wounded. 743rd tank bttn in 11 months of combat suffered 141 killed, 22 missing & 316 wounded but i guess they must all have been cooks and clerks because it was almost 100% casualty rate.
Highly experienced tank commander Sergeant Jake Wardrop who commanded a Sherman Firefly in Europe examined a knocked out Panther ! It was some tank and no mistake! I took a good look and decided I would examine no more of them as it was bad for my morale. Jake died a soldiers death RIP.
Can you find a single occasion where a German tanker examined a knocked out Sherman and was despondent about its abilities,
To quote Lt Colonel William Lovelady who had plenty of experience with the M4 Sherman ! Sherman tanks were not nearly as efficient or as armoured as the Pz IV. They were undergunned when fighting Tiger tanks and out manouvered when facing Panthers.
Regardless of the reasons for the Shermans problems individuals of 3rd Armoured division dealt with them in their daily lives.
They prevailed simply because of overwhelming numbers, nothing more.
@@TheSaturnV That's literally a sample study of about 49,000 USA tanks crews and 10,000 tanks, some of which never left the USA and were multiple types of tanks....
Only about 1,000 tank's were lost, it literally says it's a sample study on the document.
Over 22,000 USA tank crew members died from memory, and some 76,000+ were WIA, with the losses of some 10,000 tanks as in totally destroyed.
@Paul Hicks When Germany surrendered, there were only about 1,500 to 2,000 t34 left, when the Japanese did about 6,000....
My dad was a crew member in the Semovente 75/18 at the battle of el-Alamein.
He was 20 years old and survived the war . I’m 68.
Cheers friend , from NJ , USA 🇺🇸.
Lets admit the fact that Panther was the most sexiest tank of WW-2 !!
I love this tank, the turret is so unique and the tank itself is "sexy". I have assembled the model tanks in different scales by different companies. Simply love all of them.
@@cy894 Mam w skali 1 :25 z Ardenów z noktowizorami , nie mogę się napatrzeć i na profil tylni w szczególności . Jak zobaczylem na żywo to mialem chyba tętno 150/ min 😁😁😁
I love the tiger II better
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I always thought Panther's were kind of ugly. The Tiger 1 looks cool however. The Tiger 2 also looks cool but in a different way.
I think it's safe to say that had it not been rushed into production and gone through the proper birthing process that it would have been absolutely formidable The day it hit the battlefield.
They had no choice, time was running out and with the Russians putting pressure on them
You do realize that by the end of Kursk, most of the Panther Ausf D's were refitted into Ausf A's, and later progressed into the G model by March of 44. The G model was the last Panther production model with a chin mantlet upgrade by Sept. of 1944. The problem was Logistics (spare parts and Tank maintenance repair areas, fuel), crew training, and lack of recovery vehicles. Thomas L. Jentz is a great book. "Panther Tank"
@@JuergenGDB If I remember correctly by the end of curse, the germans had lost most of their armor.
I think if you want to draw the distinction, that it was one of the best tank _designs_ of WWII, but failed to live up to the potential of the design, making it a much more mediocre combat vehicle, because of impaired production and the continual imposition of modifications that increased the weight of the tank without corresponding increases in engine power and the capability of the drive system that should have been made to accommodate the modifications, leaving it underpowered and overstressed.
Yes in June of 46. 🫡😂
Good overall assessment. IMHO the only unforgivable aspect of the Panther was the unreliable final drive. I'm not going to ding the tank too much for not being perfect after being rushed into combat. As for other aspects, the tank made traded strong frontal protection, a great gun, great mobility for weak side armor. The weak side armor was the necessary tradeoff, but the Panther's side armor really wasn't weaker than any other medium tank.
In the end you got a tank that cost about the same as a Mk IV, had much better frontal protection, a much better gun, equivalent side protection (not very much), and better mobility. I think that's a pretty good deal.
The side armour of the turret and the lack of a gun mantle was a real weakness-they had a marked tendency to brew up from an ammunition fire in the turret
@@MegaBloggs1 EVERY tank in WW2 on the allied side had no better side armor and most had weaker side armor.
150 kilometer final drive shitwagon...should have focused on more STUG III/IV,Panzer IV and most definitely TIGER I's....the Panther wasnt worth the time and the Deutsche marks.
It wasn't worth investing heavily in side armor. That's because if you got flanked and the enemy shoots first you lost. Most tank engagements are won by who shoots and lands a shot first. Even if the round doesn't do any actually damage. Structural integrity is lost and the crew is shaken by the noise. There's accounts of Sherman's blasting a tiger with so many HE shells that the crew expired with any penetrating rounds.
Countless people lost their lives in such horrid ways during that war. None of those people should ever be forgotten regardless of the side they fought for. They paid the ultimate price for humanity to learn a lesson..
The turret traverse system was bad, this combined with the narrow field of view in the gunner's sight, meant it often took too long for the tank to get the gun on target.
It may have been a "problem child" , but I will bet NO Allied tank ever wanted to face one.
Literally the only footage of a ww2 tank battle in cologne filmed how a Panther destroyed 2 allied tanks without problem
That is why tactics are used to find weak spots. Explain the Battle of Arracourt then.
@@milt6208 Relax already.
It is an opinion.
And I have relatives who faced the NAZIS in Europe and Africa, they weren't thinking too much about getting fancy when they stumbled upon them, later yes in the moment no.
@@milt6208 Battle of Arracourt is a hyped myth.
The Allies suffered the same losses as the Germans. The only difference was that 1/3 of the German tanks were taken out by the air force, and I might add, that part of the Germans were so untrained they couldn't even read a map properly...yet they still inflicted these losses on the Americans.
Oh course not! That’s what tactical aircraft and artillery are for. Allied tankers weren’t looking for one on one tank engagements. Allied tanks and Tank Destroyers can take on German tanks directly. But that’s never the preferred way. If you want an example of American tanks & TD’s destroying German armor look at Arracourt or the Ardennes.
One of the Panzer Mark V’s problems was the constant updates to the point that older models were not interchangeable with newer models.
I think that we can all agree that the Panther was the best looking tank of the war.
German engendering! What can I say.
Supermodel of tanks❤
It’s definitely the Pershing, not the Panther
Oj tak 👍
Couple things many seem to overlook:
-The tiger was greenlit for a different method to make final drives. This kind of machining was in short supply in Germany during the war. The Panther could have never been produced in the relatively large numbers it was if it had used a Tiger style final drive. By mid 1944 half of all tanks in the German Army were Panthers (Supposedly late model Bergepanther and JagdPanther had upgraded final drives, which would make sense for their applications, and one rarely hears of any failures with these 2 models despite being more stressed in the drivetrains, but I only read about this in one source. A second source was just quoting the first. So it may not be true)
-The "weak" side armor. Actually nearly all allied tanks of WW2 had similar or even lesser side Armor.
- The Panzer IV offered no advantage over the Panther, even the reliability differences were incremental by late war. But a Pz IV cost about the same to make and only the need to keep production lines open and the inability to shut them down to convert to Panther production kept any pzIV lines open until the end of the war.
-The Panthers suspension travel (50cm) would remain unmatched by any tank until the advent of the Leopard 2.
- As the front got ever closer to Germany, Panther operational availability rates, very nearly matched those of the Sherman (undeniably the most reliable tank of the war on any side)
For some reason the human brain is not very good at nuances. The german tanks were subject to engineering and production rules like everyone else's. The T34 for example in popular culture pictured as a very reliable tank (due to post war soviet narrative that has never been challenged in the west) for example was actually less reliable than the Panther. But it was still a competent design that the Soviets were able to produce in large numbers. But almost any reasonable tank design produced in those numbers would after the war be hailed as "war winning".
"the Sherman (undeniably the most reliable tank of the war on any side)"
There are no hard evidence to support this statement, only anecdotal. Actually, in British service in the summer of 1944, the Cromwell was slightly more reliable. And Shermans broke down en masse during road marches, too. All WW2 tanks did. According to Belton Cooper, who was an engineer and Sherman mechanic, 35% of Shermans could be expected to fall out due to major or minor mechanical issues during a 30-40 miles road march. Probably not very different from a Churchill, Cromwell, Tiger, Panther or Panzer IV.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Fair enough. I am not a fangirl, but one always hears that the Sherman was the only tank designed from the outset for an expedtionary war far away from home shores. I once saw availability statistics from the Sherman as being the highest. Once we were past fall 1944 the Panther was only incrementally less operationally available than the Sherman. Yes I know thats not exactly the same as reliability, but still I found it of note.
We have no global offical statistics from the Soviets that I am aware of, only individual reports from the front that many, if not most, T34s would have a severe transmsision failure and needing replacement, during most longer battles. Especially in the early part of the war. From this I surmise, the arc for T34 was similar than for Panther, most unreliable to acceptable reliability in approx 2 years of service.
Part of the reason the Panther "reliability" and availability increased was not due to actual improvements in those factors but the implementation of operating restrictions primarily for the driver.
@@brucenorman8904 Mostly because it went through the normal stages of a tank's development; from brand new with the typical children's diseases in the summer of 1943, just slightly more than a year after design work started - and to a relatively well functioning tank by the spring of 1944. There was simply not time enough to make it a fully mature tank.
By the time production went into full gear, the German industry in general also suffered severe quality problems, mostly due to bombing, lack of important alloys and the widespread use of slave labor. Many of the French Panthers showed sign of sabotage, often to the point that it was considered a near miracle that the tank could be driven at all. Add to that allied strategic and tactical air targeting tank factories, spare parts, fuel, supply lines and work shops.
@@TTTT-oc4eb the real difference is that if 35% out of 6000 is going to make a big difference, but 35% of 50000 is going to make a big difference too, but it's gonna be felt at a lesser extent
Good video. One other flaw I'd like to point out if I may. The gun mantlet aa originally designed contained a shot trap. Numerous times a shot from an antitank gun or other tank would hit the lower half of the mantlet causing the projectile to penetrate the area occupied by the driver and/or radio man. However, this flaw was corrected by adding a "chin" to the lower part of the mantlet in subsequent models.
You may not.
This is a great video on the Panther in combat, the good and the bad. Tiger and Panther looked good and generally performed well. But in they were not super tanks, they were destroyed by the allies and had little impact in the battles in which they fought. There is also tank mythology were avery Allied tank was destroyed by a Tiger or Panther. But in reality the vast majority of allied tank losses were due to Anti-Tank Guns, which greatly outnumbered German tanks, and later Panzerschrek type weapons.
Short of identifying the actual killer, there is no way to tell whether an anti tank gun, tank or assault gun has made the kill. A 75mm Panzer IV or Stug III shell makes the same hole as a 75mm anti tank gun shell.
@@lyndoncmp5751 75mm Panzer IVs, StuG III's and StuG IVs, Marder IIs and III's, Jagdpanzer IVs(both versions), Hetzer, Panther, PAK40s or 7.5 cm Pak 97/38...
And let's add 7.62 cm bore guns too... It is a barely any difference in diameter after all.
@@AKUJIVALDO
Absolutely. A hole is a hole. You also can't tell if a Tiger, King Tiger, Jagdpanther, Nashorn, 88mm anti tank gun or 88mm Flak gun has made the 88mm hole.
@@lyndoncmp5751 The figures were based on the tanks or artillery reported at the time of the battle. Logic was also in favor of artillery, there were approximately 6 guns for every tank.
@@billballbuster7186
But they don't tally up with German accounts and records. Zetterling in Normandy 1944 explains the conflicting allied v German records. In places where German armour and anti tank guns are in the same places, the armour recorded more kills yet the allies claim it was the anti tank guns. I think I'll go with who was actually doing the shooting.
When it worked, it was great.
Germany had already played with sloped armour prior to the T34 but chose the block design due to costs, ergonomics, and added weight.
Yep, turrets on Pz I and II f.e.
The gunsight used by 85% of all Panthers, the TZF-12a, had selectable magnification/field of view settings of either 2.5x/28 deg. or 5x/14 deg. respectively. The field of view of 28 degrees was in fact far wider than the field of vew of gunsights on most Allied tanks. For example, the M70 telescope from an M4 76mm Sherman had a fixed magnification/field of view of just 3x/12 deg. So although a Panther gunner did not have his own pericope, he could select the 2.5x/28 deg. setting for his gunsight during closer combat.
IMHO the only fundamental problem the Panther had was its interlocking wheel suspension. It was a royal pain to service and repair. Everything else could've been fixed had the Panther undergone a proper trial/testing period - and the Panther would've been by far the best medium tank of WWII. Excellent gun, good speed, good armor, and great armored tactics may not have won the war, but it sure would've prolonged it.
My grandfather served in the Canadian armored corps, and fought his way from Normandy to the end of the war. He told me (back in the 70's) that the tank he was most afraid of wasn't the Tiger, but the Panther thanks to the Panther's speed and maneuverability. His Sherman Firefly (with the high-velocity 17 pounder gun) could take out both the Tiger and Panther - provided the Sherman got the first shot. His Sherman could also maneuver far faster than the Tiger, but the Panther could maneuver just as easily as his Sherman.
It's a good thing that Germany didn't have the production capability of the Allied side (particularly the Soviets and Americans) because if they did, WWII might have turned out quite differently...
German over engineering for ya, when it worked, it floated in the terrain.
Panther was designed to replace the German medium tanks, the Pzr III and Pzr IV. While the Pzr III was discontinued (the chassis was still a basis for StuG’s), Panther never replaced the Pzr IV and shared the makeup of armored divisions.
A huge mystery is why the gunner only had his gunsight. The commander had to acquire a target and then talk the gunner onto target. WTF? At 2 kilometers, on flat, open terrain(Russian Steppes), this was acceptable. At closer ranges, in urbanized, or broken country, this was inefficient and extremely slow.
While Germany said the Panther was only slightly more expensive than Pzr IV they used Reichmarks as their unit of measure. I suspect some sleight of hand may be featured here. I’m curious as to what the cost in man hours was between the two?
Panther had some incredible features that made it very dangerous on the battlefield. It also had some negatives that prevented it from achieving the kind of success it ought to have enjoyed.
It had an azimuth indicator which quickly gave the gunner the accurate direction of the target.
@@TTTT-oc4eb source for this? And how quick? French postwar accounts said acquiring targets was slow.
2:41 is a Sherman firefly !!!!
One more flaw was the famous "shot trap" between the cannon frontal half cylindrical cover and the top flat plate of the tank. If a shot hit the lower frontal side of the half cylinder where the cannon is fixed it most probably ricochet and penetrate the top plate of the tank below with disastrous effect.
As the war turned against Germany, the need to get these tanks to the front necessitated cutting corners. Design flaws exist everywhere, once most were ironed out, that was a excellent machine.
The vehicle itself was great, but the KwK 42/70 was definitely the best gun of the war.
The final drive/transmission was probably it's biggest weakness. The overlapping road wheels where also a general maintenance issue.
You have to think the 75mm was almost as deadly as the 88mm at least at short to medium ranges and far more practical in that the shells were considerably smaller so more could be carried and they’re easier to move around in the confined interior.
Unfortunately not. From what I can find, the APCBC ammunition for the Panther’s KwK 42 L/70 cannon had a case length of 640 mm (25.2”), while the APCBC ammunition for the Tiger I’s KwK 36 L/56 cannon had a case length of 571 mm (22.5”). I haven’t been able to find an overall length for the Tiger’s Pzgr. 39 round, but a full-scale replica is approximately 87cm long. The Panther’s Pzgr. 39/42 round is 893.2mm (or 89.32cm.). If this information is accurate, the Panther’s was about one inch longer than the Tiger’s.
75 had better penetration than the Tiger I 88.
The Panther's full round was slightly longer , but also slightly slimmer than the Tiger 1's round. The Tiger could, if packed full, carry up to 130 rounds, the Panther 120.
The 75mm L/70 penetrated slightly more armor at short and medium ranges than the 88mm L/56. At 2,000 meters they were identical, after which the "88" were slightly superior. The APCBC-HE round for the KwK 42 was optimised for dealing with sloped armor - the downside of this wasa poorer ballistic shape and loss of velocity at longer ranges compared to the round for the KwK 36. The "overmatch factor" (diameter of round vs. thickness of armor) meant the the bigger and heavier 88mm shell probably was at least as effective at all ranges.
The 7.5cm round for Panther can travel faster than any german gun that's not a 8.8cm L71 or a 12.8cm... it has a lot flatter trajectory compared to the Tiger I gun
All german medium-heavy tanks store their ammo on the side of the hull, is understandable getting an ammo rack from it but is really not the case considering their Tank ACE survive lot more than the Ally tank ACE, or at least they can drop the tank and fight for another day unlike the soviets...
It was Hitler so adamant for the Battle of Kursk that he ordered the Panther and Tiger I to be rushed into service. The freaky issue was both tanks were still in the prototype phase with mechanical issues yet to be solved...
The Chief Flaw was not the engine, but the transmission same as Tiger 1 , they were built up and modified for both Panzers, the transmission would also be used in the Konigs Tiger and the Jagd Hunting Tiger, and in these latter Panzers the engine was over stressed.
The other issue was the interleved inter locking road wheels, was a time consuming affair if you had to change an inner road wheel.
This would be improved with later marks.
The Tiger had a more advanced transmission. The Panther's main Achilles heel was the final drives.
@@TTTT-oc4eb according to numerous texts I have read over the decades the transmission for the Konigs Tiger and Panther and Tiger 1 were modified for these different Panzers, and were not specifically designed for them they were built up to handle the increased weight , and over time the stress took its tole on these over worked transmissions.
Then you have the Jagd Tiger and when its tranny went you had an immovable object.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Agreed, the final drive gears were the weak-link in the Panther drivetrain (engine/transmission/differential-final drive). The gears always broke first, mostly due to the fact the Fuerher insisted on more frontal armor for the Panther.
People fixate too much on the technical aspects of different tanks. Postwar analysis showed that the circumstances of the engagement mattered way more than the technical characteristics. The Germans were operationally most successful with panzer IIs and lightweight Czech tanks because the had great training, doctrine, and combined arms tactics. Later they had technically better tanks but none of the other factors - and were on the wrong end if every operation thereafter.
Exactly. Gets a bit tiresome listening to tales of single-tank heroics like it was ever going have the slightest effect on the outcome of the war.
Great footage. Hands down the best looking tank of the war.
Yes, it had sweet, sleek profile, didn't it?
The Panther was a good as its crews. During the late war period the quality of trained crews dropped considerably as experienced crews were lost in combat.
It's curious in the beginning the crews will have only had training experience not battle savvy yet later on those experienced crews were being lost faster than they could be replaced
more like as good as the frontline around, supplies and fuel. These things may stand but alone in a city corner not for long
@@charlesburgoyne-probyn6044German practice was to issue Pz. IV to experienced crews and Panthers to new crews. The reasoning being that exp. crew could get the most out of the PZ IV and the Panther being better protected would keep the new crew alive long enough to become experienced. Do not think this actually worked out the way intended.
Overall the Best Tank of WW2 without any doubt whatsoever.
And the "Sexiest" Tank ever made.
The Epitome of the Beauty and the Beast.
No matter how good or bad it was, it is easily the best-looking tank of all of WW2.
Yes agreed
I have seen a Panzer IV and a Panther in the museum in Sinsheim, Germany. The Panzer IV was larger than I imagined and the Panther was just huge.
A single track link of the Panther next to a link from the Panzer IV showcased the difference in the museum. The Panther was simply not serviceable in the field and often had to be abandoned, the Panzer IV was more on a human scale. The Germans would have needed a tank somewhat larger than the Panzer IV but smaller than the Panther ... it was already way too large for the times. The ideal weight for the roads, bridges, rail, repair shops etc would have been around 30-33 tons and definitely not 44 tons. With some ingenuity, the larger gun cold have been mounted into a tank with low profile (not taller than a standing soldier), tracks about 50-60 cm wide, no complicated suspension and everything field serviceable easily and sloped armor just in the front ... actually there were plans to upgrade the panzer III/IV to such a tank but then they were shelved and the big cats were produced. (the Nashorn could carry a 88 mm gun so a slightly larger tank than the Pz IV could also carry a big enough gun for WW2, either 88 mm or 75 mm long, in fact the Pz IV was also capable of mounting a 75 mm (albeit shorter than the Panther) ).
Well , one thing's for darn sure , the quality of your tankers made one hell of a huge difference on the outcome of battles
Panther had potential, but due to wartime shortages, time constraints, and top-down meddling in its design, it ended up being close to a flop.
A later A variant or a G-model with an experienced crew and good support (logistics, AA, etc.) could be the wunderwaffe it was supposed to be, but that's asking a lot for late in the war.
I have no idea why people knock the Panther so much. It was a excellent design. It was just rushed and needed time to work out the flaws. Imo far better then the stop gap T34/85 or Sherman. Its frontal armor was very good and saw was its gun and systems.
hey nice video but what do you think about the jagdpanther
The interlapping wheels in German tanks were meant to protect the side of the tank from magnetic mines. Enemy soldiers would run up to the side of the tank where the tank crew has zero field of vision and stick in a magnetic mine under the track, between two wheels. The interlapping wheels made that impossible and would toss off the mine or cut off the soldier's hand.
I like the panther but I always was of the opinion that the tiger was the better of the two,better armor all around,the gun was abjectively better(little bit less pen but more destructive and better HE shells), much more reliable mechanically and more comfy to drive(leather seats,an actual steering wheel,better ergonomics). Panther does have the advantage in mobility particulalrly the suspensions ability to eat up obstacles. But overall I'd take a Tiger I over a panther
You could make 2 Panthers for the price of one Tiger...
@@elizabethmiller7918 still doesnt make it a -qualititatively speaking-better tank.
The tiger is more survivable on the battlefield
@@robinsonsstudios That extra side armor came in very handy in a world where more than 90% of your opponents used venerable 75mm (US, British)and 76mm (Soviet) guns.
Panther was considerably better than the Tiger in almost every way.
@@SkunkdMonk Except turret front armor, allround armor, armor quality, HE round, ammo load, barrel life of main gun, penetration at long range, more access to APCR rounds, transmission, better ability to pivot in place, final drives, ergonomics, reliability ... and probably some more I have forgotten.
The Panther G model with good crews deployed in numbers on the open Steppe would be a tuff nut to crack. Add in 88 's. No need for Tiger 1 or 2.
Mam model 1 : 25 z noktowizorami ❤️z LSSAH Ardeny 1944
Still, it is a beautiful tank, and was a beast against allied forces.
Some numbers concerning its kill ratio, causes of loss etc. would be helpful and informative. Purely qualitative description isn’t enough.
Awesome video
Glad you enjoyed it
5:03 Actually the gearbox wasn´t overengineered but underengineered. It was just not adapted to the rising weight of the tank in the design process. Germany was also low on materials like tungsten so the gears were made of lower quality steel.
The main reason for the myth of the unreliability of german tanks is that they were in battle for weeks nonstop. This causes huge stress on material and crew. Tank crews also used whatever fuel and oil they could get, often not the best stuff possible but just avaible. Even modern machines would fail under these conditions.
T34, number 1 tank of ALL TIME
From my understanding, Hitler essentially ruined the Panther, by demanding heavier armor, etc. on what was meant as a medium tank.
It is obvious that you are not well read on the subject.
If they hadn't put more armor on, the tank would not have been effective.
The problem that the Panther had the most trouble with at the end of 1944: final drive.
All German tanks had a problem because the Germans could not produce adequate strength material.There is a separate German military meeting report on this from January 1945.
Oh yea, Hitler ruined everything. You would believe from all the Hitler blaming that he even ruined the weather when ever he gave an opinion on it.
Like ALL the big cats , its MASSIVE Achilles' heels were it's temperamental engine , and its overworked transmission - many Panther turrets were turned into pillboxes , rather than have them "placed" onto chassis - when it ( the Panther tank ) did its job according to purpose , it was rightly feared , but there WERE countermeasures available
Like all internet commets, still sources needed above myths.
@@goldenhawk352 I knew about the engine problems. It was fixed by troops with all kinds of shed tuning, and by 1943 december, On the orders of the Bureau of Weapons, Maymach was ordered to correct the problem.
it was fixed by 1944 jan-february.
They knew that repairs take time to reach everywhere. So in April, Guderian asked for a report on the progress of the repairs so far, and they concluded that the Panther's reliability had become equivalent to that of the Panzer IV, and it could travel 1000-1500 km without major repairs.
"Guderian wrote on 5 March 1944:
"The frontline reports said service life of the tank's engine had increased up from 700 to 1,000km [435 to 621 miles]. In addition, the same Panther tank-equipped unit reported that final drive breakdowns had ended and that transmission and steering gear failures were now within an acceptable range, which is damning with faint praise" [128][129]
Guderian commented on the reliability: "From 6 March to 15 April 1944, the 1.Abteilung/Panzerregiment 2 (1st Battalion, 2nd Panzer Regiment) reported a distance of between 1500 km to 1800 km. Four of their seven Panthers was still combat ready without any transmission or engine failure."[130][49]
On 22 April 1944, the same battalion reported how a good driver and commander can improve reliability:
This kept in mind, the battalion reported PzKpfw V Chassis No. 154338, Engine No. 8322046 reading 1,878km with driver Obergrefeiter Gablewski, 4.Kp/PzRgt 2. The vehicle was still totally operational. All items were in great condition but the tracks. The consumption of the engine has been 10ltr per 100km. The vehicle was still operating with its first engine and transmission.[131][132][49]"
From wiki, with historical sources. Check it on wiki.
@@rolandhunter ....and what of the armour that was now protecting the big cats ? , as allied bombing took its toll , the quality of protection afforded the crews diminished , just as other problems were being solved
@@dovidell I do not really understand, what are you trying to say.
@@rolandhunter
They are talking about the fact that later German tanks armor was not as good as it had been due to lack of some needed elements and the factories that made it being bombed
The best ability is availability. Availability = reliability.
My Father was in the 825th Tank Destroyer Bat. in wwII.
They were heavily engaged with the Germans at Malmedy in the "Battle of the Bulge".
I asked Him what was the best German tank and He answered the Panther.
He had also been inside of a "Royal Tiger" so I guess He knew.
The Panther was plagued with issues even after the G variant. The G variant was uparmoured, making the tank even heavier than before. The shot trap was fixed, but many issues persisted as they were conceptual - like the transmission and final drive.
The French found this out through 1945 to 1947 as per the 1947 "Le Panther" report they wrote. They tested different variants of the Panther (G included) and found out many of the "early" issues were still present and were not fixed, as they would essentialy require a full on re-design of the vehicle
It was an okay tank, in certain circumstances even an excellent one. But in combat you rarely get favourable and good circumstances.
It was a logistical and mechanical nightmare. Germans heavily relied on rail, even as much as using it to transport the tanks for a trip of mere 25 kms as reported by the French. Transport by rail meant equipping the tank with "travel" tracks as the combat tracks were just too wide. This changing of tracks took a while. There was also an issue of lack of spare parts, as the tanks broke down quite a bit, especially the final drives. More than 50 % of all abandoned Panthers had final drives broken or heavily damaged. The prototype vehicle from which the Panther later came was designed to weight at around 20 tonnes, but the transmission essentialy remained the same - thats a recipe for distater.
The turret wasnt great, the gunner couldnt see anything, it took a while to bail out. The coordination (as the video mentioned) between the commander and gunner was... shite. Its reported that it took the crew of a Panther at least 30 seconds to fire after spotting an enemy.
Overall... it wasnt a bad vehicle, but certainly wasnt a great strategic vehicle
Lazerpig did a good video on the Panther....The Panther Paradox. He basically said that while the Panther excelled in hard factors like Fire Power, Mobility, and Armor, they failed in the soft factors like crew survivability and maintenance.
Personally, I think it depends on the situation. There were battles where Panthers made the difference, battles were they performed so poorly you'd never believe it, and there were battles where the Germans used them until they were just knocked out to last.
if boths side have even resources, T34 or even IS2s wont survive
Lazer pig is a freeaboo.
His sources about german tanks are pretty subjective...
the panther didn't represent a problem with crew survivability, there's a good example in a video of a 1945 battle where a panther destroys a sherman and pretty much all its crew end up either wounded or dead, then a pershing fires at the panther numerous times while the crew is bailing out, all germans survive except for the ones getting shot outside of the tank, so much for american engineering
@@mrhqyangtechnic_q_emx8180 even with equal resources, the panthers poor reliability will still cause 3/4 of fielded tanks to be out of commission. The operational panthers would still be out swarmed by more reliable allied tanks.
@@GliderBane Aha,...3/4 our of commission.
Source?
Tank for tank in my opinion the Germans had the clear advantage,what would you rather be in,a panther or T-34?
Neither...
@@coachhannah2403 well yeah but the video is about the tanks,so hypothetically speaking
@@Swellington_ - Well, in a T-34 I'd have a statistically higher survival rate, so...
@@coachhannah2403 maybe but with a panther you could fire from such a range you wouldn’t have to worry about it,but all that’s theoretical
@@Swellington_ - A machine out of context is just a heap of metal. Russians won the war. Very few Panther crews were alive at the end of the war. QED
They would've done better to have stopped at the panther and not wasted time and resources on the tiger. The panther was either superior or at least equal to almost everything it fought against so it was all they really needed. They could have taken the resources and material they wasted on tigers and would've been able to build a lot more panthers and panzer IV Fs. Even so, Hitler being overly ambitious is what cost them the war, particularly invading the USSR. Had he not done that he could have possibly fought the US and Britain to a stalemate and been able to negotiate an end to the war with terms favorable to him.
Moments after this video ends I find myself stomping my heel on the ground and I hear a voice telling me to sing louder.
Cool reference to the Panzer Leid in the movie Battle of the Bulge.
Hitler rushed the Panther into service to participate in "Operation Citadel", aka the Battle of Kursk, where it had many defects and breakdowns. It needed several more months to mature.
And Monstein wanted to delay an Easter front offesmnsive until 44. But the corporal was a military genius.
the Panther had a gun- 75 mm KWK-42 high velocity armament. that shell developed at about 3300 f/s compared to the M2 75mm gun on the shermans which was 2050 f/s . the Panther shell could go through the front of the early variants of Sherman and out the other side. and the Shermans couldnt get thru the Panthers front armor no matter how hard they tried.
You say the model G fixed all the problems but do not explain that just over 50 % of Panthers were model G. Why?
Many American tankers in WWII swore that it was the best tank in the war by far. It's maneuverability, armor, and gun were all excellent, but its mechanical reliability sucked ass. The reason the M-4 Sherman was the US Army's MBT was because of its reliability. The US could've fielded several better tanks than the Sherman, but they were deemed mechanically unreliable for field service in late 1942/1943.
The US didn't have any 'better tanks' in 1942 and 1943. The only tank the Army had in 1940 was the M2 Stuart. Ordnance and Chrysler began designing the M3, M4 and M6 in 1940. The M4 went into production in 1942 where Ordnance went to work designing its replacement by developing the T series. In 1943 they had two versions called T25. One used the Ford GAA V8 with a GM Hydromatic transmission and the other using an electric drive. The Army was extremely interested with the electric drive since it would allow the tank to travel at the same speeds in forward and reverse. The Army ordered the same number of both models to be produced for testing. At the same time in 1943, Congress was more concerned about being re-elected in 1944 so ordered the War Department to get a heavy tank in combat before the elections. Ordnance supersized the T25 to create the T26 that didn't see combat until March of 1945. Ordnance did have Fisher Body up armor some M4'S to create the heavy M4 Jumbo assault tank. As for the T25 models, they cancelled further development of the electric drive model since it required more maintenance than expected and problems with it's speed control couldn't be corrected by the manufacturer. The conventional model also needed further refining so was cancelled in the Fall of 1944 when it was obvious that Germany couldn't last much longer.
As I stated many times, the Tiger 1 in retrospect was much better than the panther, it didn't have reliability issues other than those issues being faults from its own crews not doing maintenance checks after the 240km mark, very impressive for such a tank as the Tiger to even reach, it had more or less the same armor protection if the Tiger was to angle 30 degrees making that 100mm lower and upper glacis plate 140mm or slightly higer including the 80mm side armor to 120mm thick, It whether people believe it or not had better penetration than the panther thanks to the larger diameter of the shell ( Yes because the shell is larger, General armor penetration laws go out the window, because the shell on impact rather than needing energy, as long as the shell is larger or 10% less than the armor thickness, penetration is done through total armor ablation = the armor fails and combusts instantaneously), the Tiger had basically the same sight as the panther with the turmzielffehrnröhr 9b optical sight having ranges out to 4000m on the H variant and 9c sights having 6000m on the E variant of Tigers and yes having viable zoom options 2.5 and 5.5x, the Tiger had better anti infantry capabilities with 3 maschineguns( one for the radio operator, one coaxial and on the E variant of Tigers one on the cupola, the Tiger had more or less the same speed and greater traction on soft terrain thanks to wider tracks and same engine out put of 2700rpm(3000 rpm was taxing on the engine) and yes going 38kmh on off road and 45kmh on road , the Tiger had a turn radius of 3.2m, meaning it couldn't not get easily circled, and carried about the same lethal poutacy of ammunition of 92 shells carried on board (sometimes even more against regulations), it proved to have a greater kill to loss ratio of 5:1( meaning generally was responsible for proving vital without losing so many that production costs to loss ratio was exceeded and ultimately gave impressions that it was impractical and lastly the Tiger 1 had better crew survivability options installed( it had a loaders hatch, driver hatch, commander hatch and a back turret hatch for the loader and gunner.
I will be happy to share the source from the one and only Thomas L. Jentz and Hillary Doyle's book Tiger tanks 😊
The Tiger's effective front turret armor (gun mantlet + heavy bars of 100mm turret armor up and down) was 140-225mm (center 140 -150mm, everything 125mm or thinner were backed up by the 100mm bars) - much more than the Panther.
The Tiger 1 also had special made high quality armor plates, while the Panther had to do with the standard ones. British tests of captured Tigers stated that the armor performed 15-20+ % more than expected from the thickness, especially when hit at an angle.
In addition, the Panther was not really combat ready until the early spring of 1944. Meanwhile, from 1942, the Tiger had a margin of superiority over opponents that have never been equalled, sooner or later. That's where its reputation stems from.
@@TTTT-oc4eb Thank you, people need to understand that this tank was far from inferior, including the problems it had, granted DUE TO IRREGULAR MAINTANANCE procedures after the 190km mark 240 was the breaking point limit to do maintance checks but most were ignored
@@TTTT-oc4eb Also you talk about the metal grilles placed on the lower glacis plate?
@@CHAlVlELEOlV No, I wasn't thinking about them.
Автор вказав дуже багато надуманих проблем Т5, взятих як кліше інших країн, які випробували трофейні пантери. Є інтерв'ю Дмитра Москальова, який відновив пантеру у Кубінці. І те, що ви в більшості озвучили про блеми Т5 є міфами і легендами! Трансиімія не була поганою чи слабкою в пантері і досить легко мінялася в польових умовах на нову кпп. Всі недоліки трансмісій були пов'язані з низкою якістю виготовлення внаслідок бомбардувань заводів союзною авіацією. Теж саме і опорні катки. Тобто ви вважаєте, що змінити торсіон чи пошкоджений опорний каток було важко?а на т-34 вам чомусь не здається змінити пошкоджений каток? Ровію міф! В пантері катки було легше замінити ніж в т-34, бо вага катка т-34 складала 250кг!а у Т5 вага опрного менше 80кг))і поки ви всім екіпажем на т-34 намагаєтеся змінити на новий пошкоджений каток в т-34, то в пантері 2 члени всього екипажу міняють вже 5ий чи 6ий каток. Це міф про про погану ремонтнопридатність підвіски пантери. Нагадати, скільки важить сдвоєний опорний візок у шермана? Понад 120кг і щось ніхто не каже, що у м4 погана підвіска! Бортова броня Т5 слабка?а в кого вона не слабка? Навіть післявоєнний центуріон мав не набагато товстішу броню в бортах і цей танк був досить захищений на свій час. Важка пантера? А ІС-2, Черчилль чи м26 не були важкими? Щось з їх переміщенням на мостах чи пантонах не було проблем))а в Т5 у 44 тони були проблеми. Ви самі заперечуєте логіці... можна багато про що говорити в німецькі танки, про їх недоліки, але не про пантеру. Ця машина випередила свій час і по суті була першим ОБТ у світі. І серія в 5700 штук це велика кількість для виробництва 3ого рейху. Якщо врахувати, що 1940-1945 рр. Було виготовлено 8000 Т4, а лише за два роки зроблено було 5700 пантер. Танк був простим і великосерійним. Проблеми булв тільки одна: бомбардування промисловості, комунікацій і добування нафти німців. Тому пантери лишилися запчастин, бензин, а якість їх виробництва впала дуже низько. Я думаю, що під бомбами м4 шерман теж сходили з конвеєрів не тої високої якості,яку ми бачили....
The panther was heavy tank period, it weighted more than 50 tons, in normal conditions would be considered a heavy tank, except for the Reich the heavy status was related with the gun claiber ratter than the weight of the platform...
the gun of the Panther was only a 75 mm gun, but funny enough, the Kwk 42 of the panther was cappable of a higher level of penetration than the Tiger 88mm Kwk L56 gun... despite having a lower caliber, it had not only a higher muzle velocity, as it was cappable of penetrating more armor on distance.
Essencially the Reich did a mistake by not creating a standard vehicle, they went for quality of quantity, because they lacked resources, they could built 4 panzers IVs with the resources of a tiger, and likely, the better option for them would be to give the Panzer IV an improvement like a more spacy turrent, in other to fit the Kwk 42 gun there... from the panther which was considerably better than the Panzer IV one.
also the Panzer IV weighted only 30 tons, almost half of the panther, and had room for improvements, such as, having a better engine, and better frontal armor...
Had the germans just give a better frontal armor to the panzer IV, like introducing a sloped version, and a new better protected turret with the kwk 42, and they would possibly have 4000 panzer IV's of a new variant ready for kursk in 1943, ratter than having only roughly 1000 tigers (which didn't even had)
So it was always a question of Nazis obsession with "huge" tanks and guns ratter than efficiency. which fortunately they never had and thats why they lost a war, even when their army was likely the strongest men to men in ww2, not only in overall individual efficiency, leadership or technology, they lost the war due to chewing more than they could eat.
It was less than 50 tons, even in Imperial short tons. In metric tons (1 t = 1000 kg = 2205 lbs) the Panther's weight was 44.8 tons (49.4 IST).
Great footage 😊
Exaggerated. The Panther's only selling points are its heavy sloped frontal armor and powerful gun. The thing is that that was an option for the Allies too, but they passed because of the drawbacks. The likes of the M26 Pershing, T-44, and Centurion came out in the last year of the war and were equal if not better.
The Panther was the Dreamcast of tanks, released too early.
The number of Panthers made was impressive, but that came at costs. For one there werent enough replacement parts. Repairing a Panther was difficult, requiring very heavy field vehicles to tow them back to workshops or to even lift them to replace parts. The double-wheel system in particular meant field repairs and maintenance difficult.
Transmission, engine, suspension, ergonomics, it was all flawed.
Your entire post is exergerated and a dreamcast and as far away from the truth like statements like "Nazi super weopons" and "sherman death traps".
You try to turn Memes into historical facts and became the one thing you believed to destroy.
And the best off-road mobility of any WW2 tank. So, among standard tanks, it was pretty much the top dog in all three categories of "the golden tank triangle".
@@TTTT-oc4eb I would imagine it would have terrible off-round potential due to its high weight and poor engineering. There are videos of the Panther catching fire in mud. Cleaning the double-wheel tracks on a Panther would be ridiculously time-consuming.
Most Panthers were moved by train because of their fragile engineered systems, poor longevity, and high maintenance requirements.
Ive heard of the Golden Triangle, and the Panther ultimately fails because it ignores any soft facts like engineering, weight, suspension, maintenance, and so on.
Maximum Speed doesnt matter if the safe speed is much lower.
Footage of the Panther with Sherman style headlamp guards and welded on steps on the upper glacis is from post war evaluation in Sweden.
That evaluation is definitely worth watching.
Nice coverage of the Panzer V (Panther), and special kudos for pronouncing the word "formidable" using the correct and primary pronunciation. FORM -id-a-ble. Not For-MID-a-ble. I'm pretty sure this latter and secondary pronunciation is only listed due to the rise of this silly alternate pronunciation and the dictionary people caving to this trend. For decades I have heard this word, and only in recent years have I heard anyone say this word this odd way.
Every nation knew about sloped armor before the T34 was introduced. It is a design decision to use it or not and has its own problem. (structural integrety)
0:55 if that model still exists, how much do you think it cost
The T34 and Sherman, while having their flaws, WERE the right tanks for the time and the job they had to do; AND ease of production meant they could be built in the thousands!!
The Panther was quite easy to produce, almost as easy and cheap as a PzIV. The production numbers of the Panther are not far behind the PzIV even though produced during a far shorter time period. Even heavily flawed, especially in the beginning, it was a better tank than both the Sherman and T-34. With production facilities and supplies the Soviets and Americans had in their tank production the Panther would have reached similar production numbers. Vice versa, if Germany would have had the Sherman or T-34 they still wouldn't have been able to produce sufficient numbers to counter the Allies. The Panther was the best compromise of a medium mass produced tank Germany could have fielded, it certainly wasn't a failure.
WW2 was the best thing that ever happened to America it dragged it's economy out of the depression and as they were in safe protected areas with unlimited resources and an overseas market with no choice but to purchase these products.the Sherman and t34 were both products of there time the t34 was a lot more important to the final result than the Sherman the panther was a way better tank than the other two it was just a victim of Germany's lack of industrial resources and raw materials
The M4 Sherman was designed so that it could be maintained in the field by the average farm boy. Forget production , if its not easy to maintain, its not much use.
@@peterrobbins2862no German tank was the product of an assembly line. They were all artisan products. They were never going to approach the production numbers of the T34 or Sherman nor could German Industrail logistics sustained such an effort.
Fritz Todt candudly warned Hitler of that reality in February 1942 before his mysterious demise
Der panther war ein Mittel schwerere panzer, welches aleierte Muster war den überlegen?
The question is would it have been more effective to keep manufacturing more Panzer IVs instead. Could they have manufactured 12,000 extra IVs instead of 6,000 Panthers, and what would the impact of that have been?
And the Stug was even cheaper, and had the most of kills.
they would have run out of fuel before. The Romanian fuel was lost after 1942, and that was another bad turning point. Together with poor LUFTWAFFE performances after 1943/1944, it was another nail in the coffin. Germany WOULD NEVER HAD TO DECLARE WAR TO USA (while already in battle against USSR), nor they were obliged to. It was Japan fault to attack USA instead of east USSR (they feared 1938 brutal loss), and doing that, it was a personal bad decision either, by AH himself.
No. They had no crews and no fuel for more tanks. Germany's philosophy of "quality over quantity" was the only one sustainable for them.
Originally the Panther was meant to operate at a maximum shooting range. When everything goes bad you start using the tank as a proverbial microscop used instead of a hammer to drive nails.
The early production of Panthers troubles , stemmed from sabotage during assembly , mysterious engine fires , gear box issues and final drive breakage .
Panther and T34 were my favorite tanks of the war.
I found that the Heavy Tanks (Tigers, Elephant, IS-2, etc.) were the ideal center tank (or tip of the spear), and if I didn't have them available, then the self-propelled guns (Jagdtiger, Jagdpanther, SU-100, etc.) would function (normally) just as well.
Then, on their flanks, the Medium Tanks (Pz III, Pz IV, T-34, Shermans, etc.) would get deployed.
So, for me, all tanks are invaluable for their capability to go on the offensive. Not having tanks meant that you had to rely upon infantry in trenches, supported with AT Guns and AT Mines, and hoping that your artillery could hit them (whether they were moving or not).
If they broke through your lines, your only option was to retreat. So yeah, any tank is better than no tank unless they were badly outclassed (which was effectively the same thing anyways).
Me too - I find it interesting that the American Christy inspired the T-34 and the T-34 inspired the Panther.
The Panthers flaws boiled down to quite a few issues when really looking at it beyond its design. Crew skill, which by the time it really could shine as a refined design, most experienced crews were killed in prior engagements in its predecessors. Production issues became a hinderance as factories were now under attacked and supply lines were disrupted along with the heavy reliance at this point in the war of slave labor. Sabotages, manufacturing defects and lower quality material began to take its impact. If the Panther Ausf. G was to have made its appearance sooner, it probably would have gave the experience tankers a slightly longer life span, but do to the building pressure and massive wave of enemy tanks, would still have succumbed. The Panther in my opinion was an excellent design once refined by the point they reached the Ausf. G variant, but wasn't fielded fairly due to many other variables.
Hand me my Anti-Tank rifle, I’m going Panther hunting!!!
It has always been my belief that during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans should have left the Tigers on the eastern front and gone in with Stug IIIs and Pzkw IVs due to their better mobility and lower fuel requirements along with being more than capable of handling any Allied armor they would encounter.
And today all of us are happy that they had these issues with Panther.
Nobody said it had supremacy. It was very good tank with increased reliability late in the war. So, don't complicate.
Awesome tank! .. thanks for this👍
An engineering marvel as originally conceived, but Hitler insisted on more frontal armor and that overtaxed the transmission and final drive gears-leading to many failures, usually at the worst possible time. This issue was improved over time, but was never entirely eliminated. The torsion bar suspension was difficult to service in the field with it's interlocking wheels. The German military philosophy that tanks should be optimized for opposing enemy armor really compromised their designs and made them less effective in the infantry support role-for which the Sherman Tank was designed for. The high velocity gun of the Panther was a great anti-tank weapon, far less effective when taking on infantry. Finally, all German tanks were difficult and time-consuming to build. Only 6000 Panthers were built and another 8500 Panzer IV's for a total medium tank production of less than 15,000 units. Compare that to 50,000 Sherman tanks of all models produced during the war-the Sherman was designed for mass production and easy serviceability in the field. The Sherman couldn't slug it out with German heavy tanks, but it could do everything else very well, was used all over the world and was produced in large numbers. Entirely different philosophies between the Wehrmacht and the US military.
Testing new kit in battle is never a good idea.
I wonder maybe somebody can tell me If the panther with? It's. KW7542 fired a modern duplicated uranium round. What would the destructive power? be with that old 75 high velocity?
It is important that your tank be as simple to build, and maintain, as is possible. Cost is the other factor. Panthers, when you look at things like raw materials, and TIME needed to assemble one, were arguably, more cost effective than building say, a Tiger or Tiger II. In resource constrained Germany, this should have been the over-riding critera. Instead, the ultra expensive and resource hungry heavy tanks, were also built alongside relatively modest tanks, like the reliable Panzer IV, or even the Panther. It was interesting how this piece notes that late production models had brittle steel. This is often under-appreciated. Early model tanks, had much better steel than late model ones. So the tanks design problems finally get sorted out, but, the quality of the steel gets progressively worse over time. At the end, I bet the material the panther was made from, could only loosely be called 'steel' it was that bad.
The Sherman was on the attack and had qualities relevant to that (range, reliability, maintainability, crew survival). Panthers were on the defence and had qualities relevant to that (frontal armour, gun power). Comparing them outside the situation is limited in relevance. A Sherman on defence and a Panther on offence would be very problematic.
The production of 6,000 pales in comparison of the M4 Sherman and T-34. Combined production was over 100,000.
Panthers were a huge problem late war - especially for the Americans who brushed off British and Russian warnings.
Panthers were undeniably great in many battlefield situations. For the defensive war Germany was fighting in the late war they were pretty effective.
However, panthers overloaded engine/final drive could have never withstood the huge offensives over hills/rivers/in towns like Sherman’s and t34/85s did. Even in battle of the bulge something like 1/3rd of panthers were out of action at any given time due to mechanical issues, compared to 1 out of 10 Shermans.
Panthers were great sitting in an ambush on a prepared battlefield with a long range of sight. But would fall apart in major offensives.
Im a tanker and an armor historian. It was ahead of its time and was the father of the main battle tanks of today. It is the actual father of the leo 1 and grandfather of leo 2
I was better than almost any tank in 1943 faster and more manueverable and lighter and slightly a little more reliable and almost same armour thickness as the tiger but it had some problems like almost all of its german big cat counterparts but I think facing this was a nightmare however if you are on the sides luckily just hope it dosent turn around you and your loader is faster then the turret rotation anyways panther-death
When the narrative refers to engine fires the video shows fires forward of the turret around 5:30... Looks like a 1980s era video...
Does not seem to draw upon the German initial field report in Kursk that points out that sides were so vulnerable to even AT rifle fire that it was recommended to only deploy Panthers in sizeable quantities with large infantry cover to keep sides covered. A fatal flaw, given that infantry was rapidly going extinct by that point, and often was so indoctrinated on the “Panzer myth” that they believed tanks can do everything and infantry was there just to mop up and hold (something Panzer crews of ‘43 and beyond often bitterly lamented about)
Close to 50,000 Sherman tanks produced during WW2. Over 50,000 T34’s produced during WW2. Six thousand Panthers, 1300+ Tiger I’s,
Maybe... Counting MK IV's (8k), Stug III's and IV's (14k), Jgdpzr IV (2k) and V (400), all made on tank chassis with lethal cannons, I think the situation is considerably redressed with about 25k more vehicles. 33k vs mostly the Soviets (who lacked tactical trucks for refuel, maintenance, etc.) was closer to a fair fight.
@@Truthaholokz The russians alone fielded 64.000 medium tanks and 13.500 heavy tanks in WW2.
The americans fielded a total of just over 60.000 relevant medium and heavy tanks combined.
The british fielded a total of about 22.000 relevant medium and heavy tanks combined.
The germans fielded a combined 34.000 relevant SPG's, medium and heavy tanks.
That makes 159.500 tanks vs 33.000. That's just for tanks. Not the greatest calculus.
@@skdKitsune You just showed raw numbers devoid of any context as if that's an accurate picture of the situation.... nope.
When Operation Barbarossa kicked off it was 3350 German vs 24000 Russian right? Is that your kind of calculus? Even though it ignores the excellent German operational readiness rate as opposed to the abysmal Soviet rate, and the fact that Soviet armored formations were incapable of mechanized ops?
If you can't provide relevant context, you're a hack.
@@Truthaholokz What? I showed raw numbers in tanks.
You really want to go down the route of "operational readiness" and logistics? Should we also compare access to resources such as rare metals, oil and manpower?
If you argue that somehow the allies were the underdogs in WW2, that's not gonna end well lol
@@skdKitsune Don't try to assume or make my argument for me (strawman BS).
The fact is, the equipment (tanks, etc) that matters is at the front able to operate in its/their intended role.
What I am saying is that the production disparity looks quite different when comparing relative combat power at any given time, any given front. CONTEXT
Also, don't assume anything about who you're conversing with... I've been researching, analyzing, debating these topics before there was an internet. Name the WWII forum, I'm probably on it.
The panther had legendary status but so did the tiger 1. They were probably just as valuable as the allied tanks. But respect to the Germans for producing outstanding armor way ahead of there time
The Germans started WWII.
Destroyed millions of lives.
They get no respect.
Sherman’s chased them back to Berlin.
a good doc
Main problem that was never fixed, transmission and gear box. France after the war tried the panther for several weeks or months then decided it was garbage.
ironic that an upgraded version of the Panther tank's 75 mm gun , was used on the French AMX 13 light tank , which was used by the Israeli Defence Forces during the six day war !!
Transmission problems were generally user error ,experienced crews didn’t have same problems.
Love the panther, my favorite tank to play in War Thunder!