It cool to see inside such a legendary machine, as during visits to the museum few have veiws of the inside , to give a view of what life inside a tank was like
Awsome vid on one of my favourite WW2 tanks and one can only imagine if they had a desiel engine and better torison bar set up and the final drives, fuel pumps and transmission fixed. The Panther tank would have been a lot more lethal tank. One thing to note also during its first combat at Kursk the D model notable without the bow machine gun had less bolts on the rims of the wheels and later more added to strengthen them. Also there are pictures I've seen with a mitch match of both types which are intersting to note the difference.
@@tasman006 yes, one can only imagine that. the conditions you have described for this tank being more lethal are, for the germans at the time, so ridiculously unachievable as to be inconcievable. you may as well have said "one can only imagine if it had a force field and a laser gun"
When I received the notification that a new Tank Museum video was available to view and that it was a Tank Chat Reloaded on the Panther, I have to say my afternoon was made. The fact that the video was presented by Chris Copson only improved matters further - first rate as always and an informative and entertaining 22 minute film. I very much look forward to the next instalment of this excellent ‘reloaded’ series
It's been a few years since I Volunteered at the museum but I remember many years ago we opened up the Panther to members of the public during a Bank Holiday, they entered by the hatch at the back of the turret and up through one of the front hatches. In the 3 days I was inside the turret supervising them we must have had over 200 people pass through.
The Germans didn't "borrow" sloped armor from the T-34. They knew perfectly well about sloped armor all the way back to WW1. The Panther was simply large enough that sloped armor wouldn't interfere too much with crew compartment ergonomics.
The "sloped amour" Fanboys should drive a T34for half an hour and work on the crew stations , and should repair a damaged fuel tank or a coilspring.then they would knew the reason for not using sloped armour.
Truly a moment when people don't realize sloping stuff has existed for ages. Also I hate the fact that T-34 stans make the fact they enjoy their favorite tank all about it being good. Its literally in my top ten just visually, your favorite doesn't have to be good it just has to be cool. If what you like most is superior or not literally doesn't matter unless you're stupid.
Stop being a pedant. We know the Germans were influenced by the design of the T34 when designing the Panther, we also know that sloped armour has been known about for at least 1000 years and probably a lot longer than that. The point being made here is that the design of the Panther was influenced by the T34... which it was... not that the Russians invented sloped armour...which they did not, nor that sloped armour first appeared on a tank in the T34 design, which it didn't.. I seem to recall the Renault FT had a sloped.drivers hatch...
In 1982 I was a gunner on the Leopard 1, of the Dutch armed forces in Germany, Bergen Hohne. (Prins Willem Alexander) The Leopard has some simmularities with the Panther. Logical, because for the development of the Leopard, expereinced crews ware asked for advise. (They were still alive then, as we experienced during a exercise. A man on a bicycle came by. Strawhat on, he watched our tank, and said, "Schones panzer, haben wir im Krieg auch gehabt!" Translated; "Fine tank, we had those also during the War! ) Anyway, simularities; for example the mantlet of the gun. And also the same turning system for the commanders coppola hatch as to be seen here. Also the radio for the crew. We all had throat microphones, and a small box on our chest. With two buttons. One for internal conversations, a second for external transmissions. Same as can be seen on old movies of the War. Sometimes, crew made a mistake while using those buttons. Telling a dirty joke, and using the transmitter button, ment that the whole of the tank unit; 15 tanks, including our commander, could hear all of it... I made the same mistake as well, using my porteble cassette radio... Now Bananarama could be heard all trough the entire unit.... till our commander yelled to stop this noncence!
My Dad was Royal Scots Greys, he signed up at 17 in early 1946, initially with the 17/21st Lancers, and on completion of his training he was posted to the RSG who were flipping onto the Centurion. Something he did mention from his years in post war Germany, they had a Panther with no turret for use as a recovery tank. He ended up as the regiments Signals Sgt and shared his tank with the CO when they went on operations. C Squadron "Creeper". He had every confidence in the Centurion, and often said it could fight and defeat anything the Russians had at the time.
@@AKUJIVALDO What was the alternative? To design new one it takes decade. Produce what you have and introduce upgrades untill newer design is mature. That was done by all. And train your crews with new info. Also, all made films for education of military personell that where bit on propaganda side.
@@AKUJIVALDO It takes two years to design and implement new gun. From idea to prototype, recoil system, sights, proofing, testing, minor corrections, tooling for production. In two years they could design and produce nice modern (for the time) diesel engine and bring Centurion more up to date. That would increase foreign sales and would make it more competitive on international market. Leyland multifuel on Chieftain was crappiest tank engine since Maybach.
When you mentioned the improvement of the Panther's armour, I have read that the quality of German armour declined as the war progressed and mineral additives, such as molybdenum, became near impossible to source. American and russian, accounts detail that in late war German tanks, the armour became more brittle and liable to "shatter" and crack when hit.
Entirely true. And not just a problem with the armour. The drive train (among many other parts) required good steel and the tools required to make it required even better steel. In the late war, the Allies were able to supply small amounts of tool-steel ammunition for taking on hard targets. The Axis could barely supply enough tool-steel to even build their tanks.
A lot of the Panter's famed mobility capabilities is hampered by how to drive train was much too small for the weight bloat the tank gained during development. It couldn't neutral steer in any rough terrain without risking shattering the final drive, and iirc was advised to avoid turning while in reverse entirely.
Thanks very much Chris and team. Thanks especially for the details of the main armament. In the 1980s, I worked on the UK research programme on electromagnetic railguns, which were seen as one way of defeating ever thicker tank armour. We were told to based our studies on a maximum barrel length of 5 m and a working muzzle velocity of 2000 m/s. That programme ultimately set up a test firing range at Kirkcudbright, so I wonder if any interesting artefacts survive there? Our first practical tests were done at RARDE Fort Halstead. From that part of the programme, a full scale wooden mockup of a 25mm bore railgun and breech was donated to the Royal Armouries and is now in their reserve collection at Fort Nelson.
Excellent video. One of the best videos I’ve ever seen on this tank. The one question that I have always wondered about was why the significant “Ausf” of the Panther ran beginning with D, then to A, and later to G, rather then starting with Ausf A? Anyone know why?
It was an attempt by the Germans to confuse the allies regarding the number of Panther variants produced, the idea being that the allies estimates of numbers produced would be inflated. Note that there was an Ausf. F variant that did not make it into production. Another variant that did not make it into production was the so-called "schmalturm," an attempt to mount the KwK43 L/71 88mm gun on the Panther. And there were probably others.
@@puff7145 I would assume so. I got the information about the Panther variants from "Germany's Panther Tank" by Thomas Jentz published by Schiffer Military.
Given that Germany was largely on the defensive when the Panther was introduced, it could be just about accepted since they were fighting not far away from railheads and repair depots. For the Allies, largely on the offensive and at the end of a long supply chain, it would have been completely unacceptable.
We saw during the battle of the bulge how poorly they performed during offensives. Especially King Tigers were a nightmare needing an insane amount of fuel and struggled with local infrastructure
Given that you could be shot for Wehrkraftzersetzung when saying out loudly you didn't believe in the Endsieg right until the very end of the war, I don't think your comment would have been of big consideration back then. Nonetheless, I guess you are pretty much right.
@suenin021-ll3us And yet the Panthers of 2nd Panzer Division got the furthest of any German armour type in the Ardennes offensive, and did it quicker than the Shermans did the reverse advance in the January counter attack so.....?
Really enjoyed all of your videos this year and look forward very much to next year! All the very best to you and the team from everyone here in London, cheers!
There is a Panther at the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, MA. If you are in the Boston area, I highly recommend that you check it out. Out of everything on display, I was most impressed with the Panther.
Thanks so much for that amazing look and your sights! Interestingly, intimate operations of the panther showed up in the Sven Hassel novels. As I recall, they had to put the best crewman in the driver slot as their model had serious transmission problems that could result in overheating or engine fire that could be worked around only by a skilled driver. Also I think they mentioned one commander getting a shattered arm from absentmindedly reaching across the recoil path of that L70 75mm breech when he dropped a map. I dont recall seeing detail like that in other period accounts much and it seems to ring true.
Fantastic video thank you. The more I read, the more I'm finding that the T34 wasn't the mythical simple, reliable machine we've been led to believe. This is not to minimize the issues with the Panther or Tiger.
Agreed. The T-34 had problems & up grades especially like the T-34/85. Am thinking the soviet was much easier to service major assemblies. The pattern transmission / final drive units took days to R&R requiring the front of the tank to be dismantled....
The sweet AMX-13 at the end was in the Swiss service, the photo was taken in Thun. After a few weeks of service in the barracks, the mountains in the background are very well known.
The explanation of the differences between face-hardened steel and homogeneous rolled steel (4:28) contradicts everything I have heard so far. At least it's an opportunity to look into it. I find it a rather strange statement that the KWK 42/L70 was not significantly better than the KWK 40/L48 of the Panzer IV (9:49). It remains a mystery to me how, for example, a penetration of up to 111 mm compared to 55 mm at 1000 m can be considered an insignificant advantage.
@@kmoecub Of course he is. The only difference between RHA and FHA is that RHA wasn't faced hardened. They simply choose not to face harden the plates, thus saving time and money while also increasing protection because face hardening actually makese the armor worse when it's heavily sloped.
@@kmoecubFace-hardened steel is basically hardened rolled steel. In fact, hardened steel is more difficult to produce and also more difficult to process, especially to weld. How the presenter comes to say that surface-hardened steel is easier to process and, above all, that the homogeneous steel has been further developed, is really a mystery to me.
Armor slope predated ww1. American civil war iron clads and timber clad gunboats had upper hulls sloped at 45 degrees to help bounce cannon shells. The pervasive myth that no one knew about Armor slope until ww2 just never seems to go away. There were very practical reasons to slope armor or not to slope armor depending on the design of the vehicle
No one is saying that and sloped armour predates the American Ironclads, the glacis of a dozen surving 12th C Castles, and the evidence from.Trajans Column indicates it was known about for a very long time indeed. In the context of the Eastern Front wr know that the Germans looked at re engineering a T34 and several features of that tank made it through to the Panther... that doesn't mean that the Russians 'invented sloped armour' rather the design influenced the panther.
Again, Chris Copson is not saying that no one knew anything about sloped armour until the T34, I don’t understand why people are jumping to a conclusion over a point that’s isn’t even made in the film ? The Panther was influenced by the T34.
@willcullen3743 wrote: "Armor slope predated ww1. American civil war iron clads and timber clad gunboats had upper hulls sloped at 45 degrees to help bounce cannon shells. The pervasive myth that no one knew about Armor slope until ww2 just never seems to go away. There were very practical reasons to slope armor or not to slope armor depending on the design of the vehicle" -- Ah, if only Nichlay Tsiganov could "Google" Leonardo da Vinci's tank... he would still have a dilemma of two fold: 1. How thick the armor plate have to be, nor its obvious that Effective Armor Thickness(or what Chris referring to as LOS(Line of Sight armor thickness)) doubles at 60 degrees, and so 2. At what angle it should be tilted/slopped, -- Since by just looking at 45mm frontal armor, Germans did not "jump" and copied T-34's main feature for a few month, until they figure out that their even smallest 37mm PaK36 should go through T-34 armor like a "hot knife through the butter", same goes for 50mm PaK40, but it does not, and it took careful field study near Moscow(with a front lines just a couple kilometers away) in October of 1941, including F. Porsche, E. Aders and A. Krupp, to figure out what "secret" hides in front of them in plain site. -- There is no practical or any other reason why Tiger I frontal armor was sloped to only 10 degrees, and not steeper angles like in next model Tiger II or Panther. If you or anyone think of at least one or more reasons please, do share! ;) P.S. I'm aware of The Chieftain and H. Doyle pedaling idea about loss of volumetric efficiency... just take Tiger I frontal armor, and from above vision block and MG deck drop single plate to encompass transmission well, and connect lower frontal plate, also tilted/slopped under steeper angle then 20 degrees angle - Panther/King Tiger style, and you've got lighter and better protected frontal armor, that is a lot easier to manufacture. It's "Captain Obvious", but only in "Hindsight"!
@@HarryFlashmanVC wrote: "In the context of the Eastern Front wr know that the Germans looked at re engineering a T34 and several features of that tank made it through to the Panther... that doesn't mean that the Russians 'invented sloped armour' rather the design influenced the panther." -- Its a very "kindergarten" argument on who "invented sloped armor", lets put it this way - Soviet tank designers made much more experiments on the angle and thickness of the armor plate(starting with BT-SV tank aka Tortious project), in order to save tank weight, so especially to light tanks, so their maneuverability and speed would remained as of light tank, yet tank protection of the heavy tank, and with a long high velocity 3 inch gun, that was considered as armament of only heavy tanks - it became best tank of WWII when it comes of balancing all three essential "tank trinity" - firepower, armor protection and speed with maneuverability. BTW initially members of Panzer Committee(like F. Porsche, E. Aders and A. Krupp) who went to front lines near Moscow in November of 1941 though T-34 was a 44 tons tank, when in fact it was only 26 tons. So what N. Tsiganov "invented" is the "Effective Armor Thickness" or what Chris Copson in this video calls "Line Of Sight"(LOS), so if you insist that "the evidence from.Trajans Column indicates it was known about for a very long time indeed" given that Tiger I(so is all WWII era tanks like Pz-I, II, III and IV) tank had frontal armor sloped at only 10 degrees, with effective armor thickness of 101mm out of 100mm actual armor thickness, the knowledge use was "very poor" on this subject. -- An carefully choosing of the words like "influenced", it would not work in a court of "copyright violation", since it was what you called "sloped armor" of secret of T-34 armor plate that ricochets 88mm round was measured, analyzed and plagiarism-aticly copied and implemented into every tank and armored vehicle Germans designed and then produced during and long after the WWII.
The very tight specifications {differences from 1 length vrs another length of a gun tube; a weight/horsepower of tank weight /speed vrs of various tanks/ fuel use per mph/distance of various vehicles vrs other tanks , etc - and so much more tell information that detail specification types like myself love sooo much. "The details are everything!"
British army engineers/soliders are told to build Panthers/Jagdpanthers (which they have no experience doing) in a bombed out factory with cobbled together parts using exhausted German workers who were probably working 12 hour days 7 days a week in extreme conditions and the tanks they produced failed British Septics trials. I wonder why?
Despite it's design and operational flaws, the Panther became my favourite tank as soon as I'd built the Airfix 1/72 model in the mid 60s - ! It just looked so cool compared with all the other tanks - ! 😅
Makes you wonder what might have come from it if the allies got the reliability issues sorted. But by then, they had centurion and Patton tanks if I'm not mistaken, so even a "perfected panther" would have been a step back
"Action near Kharkov in August 1944" I think this is wrong, since the front in December 1943 was already far away from Kharkov, I think he meant August 1943, when the Fourth Battle of Kharkov (Operation Rumyantsev) was taking place. Anyway, 500 T-34s knocked out by Panthers just in the second half of 1943, while losing just 100 of their own (and the majority are not even combat related), this is impressive. I don't see how some view the T-34 as this wonderful weapon aside from his reliability and just sheer numbers, they were prey for Tigers, Panthers and StuGs.
The KwK 42 L70 has almost double the effectiveness the KwK 40 L48 has, the projectile travel lot faster with flatter trajectory, it has enough penetration to destroy pretty much all WWII tanks in service
@@matovicmmilan indeed, the L70(70 times the length of the barrel size) is superior to the L48 except is quite large to move into urban zones or transport it, its performance is better than the British 17 pounder before Stabilized sabot exist
Every time these guys upload a video its a magnet for me. 25 mins feels like 5 with the best presentstion ive come across as far as regarding AFVs. Are you guys hiring? I'm sick of W. NYS and I like tanks. I could use a change from dealing with cows all day.
The little cartoonish handbook made me smile and recall that I had heard somewhere the the US Army PS magazine was inspired by something the Germans did. I think they were inspired by what the Allied did but it is good to see somethings are universal for humans.
@6:35 The Germans didn't use a diesel engine because most of their fuel was gasoline obtained by coal hydrogenation. Also,obviously a 690 HP gasoline engine with a low compression ratio consumes less fuel than a 500 HP diesel engine but they had no alternative.
@1:56 "the results were very disappointing...the two tanks failed to complete the course..." The biggest complaints about the Mk V and VI were that they were "over-engineered" so why am I not surprised that when the British - who were most assuredly NOT guilty of this "flaw" - appropriated the design for target practice, they created clunkers and lemons. As a former U.S. armor company commander I can tell you that the Mk IV and V, used together with proper Combined Arms doctrine (impossible once Germany lost air superiority) were, indeed, the best OVER-ALL armor of the war with the T-34-85 coming in after that. I can also tell you that Allied doctrine in general and U.S. doctrine in specific - saturate the battlefield with inferior tanks - should've won the entire Chain of Command the gallows. Instead they have all been lauded and enshrined. In fairness, it is a thorough presentation.
The Panther's gun penetrated about 40-50% more armor than the Panzer IVs gun. And about 10% more than the Tiger's gun at normal distances. At long range the heavier round of the "88" caught up.
@7:22 The Panther ,according to the Swedish trials, can overcome a slope of 40° or around 80%.That implies a tractive force of around 30000 kgf. I'm not sure that mud can stop that.
You're right, that gun mantlet ricoches rounds. I was testing some tank in War Thunder, shot at Panther with small gun, got lucky and destroyed it. That shot was one in a million though.
Whenever people talk about the relative armour thickness of sloped armour (against flat plate) I always have to remind them about ballistics; except for light projectiles at close range the amount of "drop" (the orientation of the projectile when it strikes the target) means the thickness decreases in relation to the horizontal plane. Yes, sloped armour is better than vertical plate - but armour at an angle of 30 degrees is only offering a 25 degree angle against a projectile that is coming in with 5 degrees of inclination. When the difference between a shot being deflected and one penetrating could be between 5 and 10 mm of armour, this is a serious consideration. One of the factors behind the prevalence of HEAT munitions is that the lower velocity compared to kinetic round is that it is more likely to strike armour nearer to 90 degrees to the angle of the plate - meaning it has less thickness to defeat. Many modern missiles with HEAT warheads are designed to drop onto a tank from height, making armour angles of less than 60 degrees irrelevant.
I've always found kinda funny how, in popular culture, things that are considered fatal flaws in the Sherman (ammo storage in the side sponson with little armor protection, height, etc...) are usually overlooked in the Panther or, at worst, considered features.
It's not that funny really. There's a natural tendency to make your opponent seem better than they actually were, as it makes your victory over or loss to them more significant by comparison. And the idea that the sherman is bad is a cold war tankie narrative made to reduce trust in the government.
when talking about the T34 its also worth noting the T34 85, because more of them were built, because it was capable of defeating the Panther with a single shot, it really became a who shoots first scenario, the T34 like the Sherman became a battle tank platform rather than endlessly building new tanks from the ground up, the Germans never really settled on anything that could be called that, the stug tank destroyers being as close as they came to something being cheap effective and somewhat reliable.
Great video! Fresh perspectives are always interesting. One serious shortcoming for the gunners was pointed out by Nick Moran in one of his videos; the lack of visibility. All the gunner had was his sighting telescope, so it was difficult for him to identify targets called out by the TC, unless he was laid right on the target bearing. Obviously crews worked around this, but it still a handicap in fast-paced, frantic combat.
It was not a pressing concern for the gunners because German commanders had superior cupolas and thus better all round vision compared to, say, the Sherman and it was the commander who looked for and selected targets, and he sat directly behind the gunner. If it was a pressing concern, the gunner would have easily received a turret roof periscope. Initial Panthers (and Tigers) didnt have a loader's roof periscope but on subsequent production runs they got one. It would have been a simple matter to add a gunners roof periscope but it was not deemed necessary. Panthers received improvements and made changes almost on a monthly basis (check out the Tom Jentz book on all the improvements made throughout the production runs) but a gunners periscope wasn't an important change to add.
In The Chieftain's 'Oh bugger the tank's on fire!' evaluation, he fond that commander's hatch problematic - too difficult to open and escape from, when the tank's burning up around you...
And yet clearly in the Cologne tank duel footage the Panther crew bail out no slower than the Sherman crew. And more of the Panther crew survived. Panthers usually kept the turret rear hatch ajar.
How you people can keep me seated and focused for 20 mins, about a topic I'm not an expert on, in this day and age of short attention spans is a testament to your quality. Well done indeed🤌
I wonder how good the construction of these tanks was and how high the quality control was. The British hired a former foreman who in turn gathered up his fellow workers to build these tanks. If my country was defeated, I would not build anything properly for the people who just beat us. British testing be damned...Actual combat records show the Panther was a great tank in combat and it's capabilities led directly to the introduction of heavier Allied tanks such as the Soviet IS-2 and the American M26 Pershing into the war. It had a very high kill ratio. All German tanks had good ergonomics for the crews. This was considered a "must have" when designing them and was intended to make the crews more efficient due to being more comfortable.
Post war tanks would be superior workmanship- the country was destroyed and workers would be desperate for a job to feed their families. Hell the senior engineers would be showing off hoping to get scooped up for their skills.
@@frostedbutts4340 ok...let's pretend your country just got wrecked on the losing end of a war. The opposing side wants you to build something so they can duplicate it or at least test a new example of it for themselves to find out why it was so good. Are you really going to put it together the best you can or are you going to throw a few wrenches into the works? I know what I would do. The line foreman isn't the engineering team. He's just the guy in charge of the assembly line. He can be replaced easily.
@@frostedbutts4340 They were built after the factory had been overrun in early 1945, using available parts, and didn't even have blueprints to work from.
This was my first view of a Tank Museum video after hearing about them on the news. Although the equipment, video excerpts and general logic of the narration is spot on, the sound is so muddy I could not hear or understand about 40% of what he was saying. I could understand a word like Panzer or gunner and then whole sections of sentences are unintelligible. Please up your game with audio recording so that the meaning and value of your presentations aren't lost. Beyond that one criticism I was very impressed.
Thank you for this. I am curious about the interlocking of the hull plates at the welds. One presumes they were assembled on jigs in the factory so alignment was not a problem to be solved by this. It may be that the welding was deficient in being at risk of progressive failure*. A shortage of alloy metals could be the cause. The interlocking might be a fix, minimising crack length? Have other nations built tanks in this way? *See, for instance, the separation of the stern on the wreck of the Bismark along a transverse bulkhead. Also the reported ejection of the entire back plate of her turret B.
No plans to put an engine in it, and get it running? I used to like your workshop series, but you stopped doing them? Now get my workshop fix from Mr Hewes and the Australian Armour museum.
@@ChrisZukowski88 The workaround is to not fix it with the proprietary tensioning and calibration tools supplied by Alkett and Krupp, then the autopilot will refuse to drive for you. It is a good way to repair because the warranty period must have expired in January 1945, and the service history is patchy, so you aren't losing any value either
The Panther was, IMO, the best tank on paper of the war (Discounting tanks like Centurion for being too late to the party). As mentioned in the video, the real problem with Panther was it's rushed development. Had the Germans had until 1945/1946 to work on the design, it would have showed up as the paper design suggests, but alas they were already tasting like "too little, too late" when they started pushing them out half-baked in 1943. On the eastern front I don't think that mattered quite as much, given how notoriously unreliable T34 was - sure the Germans were losing lots of Panthers to mechanical faults, but the Russians were losing T34s in droves to the same cause. On the western front though it was a big problem, the Sherman worked very reliably, and further more the allies never really ceded any reasonable ground, so whenever a Panther did break-down, there was a seriously sharp race against time to recover it before the frontlines moved too much and it had to be abandoned. Panther's design strikes me as being too good to be effective. At the end of the day, the up-gunned Panzer IVs were on fairly equal terms with the T34 and Sherman, and though at a disadvantage of armour, the Germans could build an awful lot more of them, an awful lot faster, than Panther. Panther's got a great gun, but does it really need to be that big and powerful? It's got great armour (frontally anyway) but does it really need that much protection? It's a design which, if they could have got it working properly, would have been truly fearsome - alas they didn't have nearly enough time for that, and they should have known they didn't. Tanks like the Sherman won the war not because they were exceptionally good cutting edge concepts, but because they were logistical perfection. Easily built, easily shipped, easily operated, easily repaired, easily replaced. They weren't a match for a Panther or a Tiger in a 1-on-1, but they never had to be. Nine times out of ten it was a Stug III or Panzer III/IV they were up against, and the 1 in 10 times it wasn't, they had plenty of friends to call on.
What capabilities one tank has another one may not have. So no two tanks are comparable in absolute terms, and that's what makes the ultimate difference between winning or losing.
Because I'm kinda destitute right now ( actually, last 4 years ) .I do appreciate yuzzall , keeping my brain alive. Life is for learning. If you don't use it ? Gonna lose it. Thanks, in. Advance for the info. Should I buy a Lottery ticket ?
Thank you, Chris for an interesting review. Couple of little points: 1. Tiger/Panther Maybach engine had four(x4) Solex carburetors, that was difficult to synthesize and adjusted at the front lines, so some cylinders ran too rich, some too lean, that effected engine power and engine longevity. 2. Besides spend brass ventilation, Panther tank was first that featured a gun bore gases evacuator as well, which was 3 tubes blowing compressed air immediately after bridge opened. 3. Not related to Panther, but in T-34, although it didn’t have a turret basket, it had seats attached to turret, so crew didn’t have to follow fast rotating turret on foot. 4. Panther turret was not balanced like for example on T-34, so if tank was sitting on a slight gradient of 15 degrees it was impossible to turn by hand, even though it featured two very large diameter cranks, oh and it was 1000 turns by cranks to turn turret 360 degrees. Thank you! Once again for a good solid content.
Hello tank-nuts! We hope you enjoyed this video. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Prefer M1 Abrams...
It cool to see inside such a legendary machine, as during visits to the museum few have veiws of the inside , to give a view of what life inside a tank was like
copsons presentation is brilliant. I thought he was a bit wooden in his first few videos, but he seems to have settled right in
Awsome vid on one of my favourite WW2 tanks and one can only imagine if they had a desiel engine and better torison bar set up and the final drives, fuel pumps and transmission fixed. The Panther tank would have been a lot more lethal tank. One thing to note also during its first combat at Kursk the D model notable without the bow machine gun had less bolts on the rims of the wheels and later more added to strengthen them. Also there are pictures I've seen with a mitch match of both types which are intersting to note the difference.
@@tasman006 yes, one can only imagine that. the conditions you have described for this tank being more lethal are, for the germans at the time, so ridiculously unachievable as to be inconcievable. you may as well have said "one can only imagine if it had a force field and a laser gun"
This Reloaded series is peerless. Far more attention-getting than any other tank series out there, and a good companion to The Chieftain’s. A+
When I received the notification that a new Tank Museum video was available to view and that it was a Tank Chat Reloaded on the Panther, I have to say my afternoon was made. The fact that the video was presented by Chris Copson only improved matters further - first rate as always and an informative and entertaining 22 minute film.
I very much look forward to the next instalment of this excellent ‘reloaded’ series
The Panther would win first prize at a Tank beauty contest!
Yeah that red paint makes it look great as well as its simple design
*Elegance / refined grace.*
Absolutely!
It's been a few years since I Volunteered at the museum but I remember many years ago we opened up the Panther to members of the public during a Bank Holiday, they entered by the hatch at the back of the turret and up through one of the front hatches. In the 3 days I was inside the turret supervising them we must have had over 200 people pass through.
What were you doing as a volunteer? I'm interested in having a go myself.
Keep those in-depth videos coming!
It is still funny to me that the French operated the Panther longer than the Germans did.
The Israelis operated the Sherman longer than the Americans did.
Howabout the Syrians stylin' in the Pz IVs?
Makes me wonder how long the Panther could have served had it been upgraded through the years like the Centurion.
modern shells would've made it very outdated @@yallacrazy
@@Half_Finiscould have increased protection
The Germans didn't "borrow" sloped armor from the T-34. They knew perfectly well about sloped armor all the way back to WW1. The Panther was simply large enough that sloped armor wouldn't interfere too much with crew compartment ergonomics.
i think otto skorzeny mentioned that hydraulic press to bend t-34 front was made by germans...
The "sloped amour" Fanboys should drive a T34for half an hour and work on the crew stations , and should repair a damaged fuel tank or a coilspring.then they would knew the reason for not using sloped armour.
Truly a moment when people don't realize sloping stuff has existed for ages.
Also I hate the fact that T-34 stans make the fact they enjoy their favorite tank all about it being good.
Its literally in my top ten just visually, your favorite doesn't have to be good it just has to be cool. If what you like most is superior or not literally doesn't matter unless you're stupid.
That's why no modern tanks employ sloped armour, Oh.@@michaelpielorz9283
Stop being a pedant.
We know the Germans were influenced by the design of the T34 when designing the Panther, we also know that sloped armour has been known about for at least 1000 years and probably a lot longer than that.
The point being made here is that the design of the Panther was influenced by the T34... which it was... not that the Russians invented sloped armour...which they did not, nor that sloped armour first appeared on a tank in the T34 design, which it didn't.. I seem to recall the Renault FT had a sloped.drivers hatch...
Your cinematography is getting bloody top notch!
In 1982 I was a gunner on the Leopard 1, of the Dutch armed forces in Germany, Bergen Hohne. (Prins Willem Alexander) The Leopard has some simmularities with the Panther. Logical, because for the development of the Leopard, expereinced crews ware asked for advise.
(They were still alive then, as we experienced during a exercise. A man on a bicycle came by. Strawhat on, he watched our tank, and said, "Schones panzer, haben wir im Krieg auch gehabt!" Translated; "Fine tank, we had those also during the War! )
Anyway, simularities; for example the mantlet of the gun. And also the same turning system for the commanders coppola hatch as to be seen here. Also the radio for the crew. We all had throat microphones, and a small box on our chest. With two buttons. One for internal conversations, a second for external transmissions. Same as can be seen on old movies of the War.
Sometimes, crew made a mistake while using those buttons. Telling a dirty joke, and using the transmitter button, ment that the whole of the tank unit; 15 tanks, including our commander, could hear all of it... I made the same mistake as well, using my porteble cassette radio... Now Bananarama could be heard all trough the entire unit.... till our commander yelled to stop this noncence!
hahaha 😁
Thank you for putting highlights on locations and objects. Its excellent!
Thanks!
My Dad was Royal Scots Greys, he signed up at 17 in early 1946, initially with the 17/21st Lancers, and on completion of his training he was posted to the RSG who were flipping onto the Centurion. Something he did mention from his years in post war Germany, they had a Panther with no turret for use as a recovery tank. He ended up as the regiments Signals Sgt and shared his tank with the CO when they went on operations. C Squadron "Creeper". He had every confidence in the Centurion, and often said it could fight and defeat anything the Russians had at the time.
Luckily he never met IS2 or T55 with determent crew.
T55 that drove in Budapest embassy made Centurions absolete in one day.
@@sinisatrlin840 No. T-54/T-55 made Centurions obsolete as they went into mass production..not when one of those were driven into embassy...
@@AKUJIVALDO What was the alternative? To design new one it takes decade. Produce what you have and introduce upgrades untill newer design is mature. That was done by all. And train your crews with new info.
Also, all made films for education of military personell that where bit on propaganda side.
@@sinisatrlin840 create new gun...just as Brits did.
@@AKUJIVALDO It takes two years to design and implement new gun. From idea to prototype, recoil system, sights, proofing, testing, minor corrections, tooling for production.
In two years they could design and produce nice modern (for the time) diesel engine and bring Centurion more up to date. That would increase foreign sales and would make it more competitive on international market.
Leyland multifuel on Chieftain was crappiest tank engine since Maybach.
Chris Copson is my favourite person on all of RUclips.
Great chat by Chris - really fascinating, erudite and insightful talk about this very interesting tank. More like this please! 👍
When you mentioned the improvement of the Panther's armour, I have read that the quality of German armour declined as the war progressed and mineral additives, such as molybdenum, became near impossible to source. American and russian, accounts detail that in late war German tanks, the armour became more brittle and liable to "shatter" and crack when hit.
Entirely true. And not just a problem with the armour. The drive train (among many other parts) required good steel and the tools required to make it required even better steel. In the late war, the Allies were able to supply small amounts of tool-steel ammunition for taking on hard targets. The Axis could barely supply enough tool-steel to even build their tanks.
A lot of the Panter's famed mobility capabilities is hampered by how to drive train was much too small for the weight bloat the tank gained during development. It couldn't neutral steer in any rough terrain without risking shattering the final drive, and iirc was advised to avoid turning while in reverse entirely.
May I have a free tank? Pretty please 🥺?
The Government don't want you to know this, but the tanks in the museum are free, you can just take them home.
Which one?
@@Smg1730studios Just one, of the tanks that is
@@All_Hail_ChaelI have tried this. Please do not misinform me again. Note I will have a tank soon to retaliate with
No free tanks in Australia! 😢
Thanks very much Chris and team. Thanks especially for the details of the main armament.
In the 1980s, I worked on the UK research programme on electromagnetic railguns, which were seen as one way of defeating ever thicker tank armour.
We were told to based our studies on a maximum barrel length of 5 m and a working muzzle velocity of 2000 m/s. That programme ultimately set up a test firing range at Kirkcudbright, so I wonder if any interesting artefacts survive there?
Our first practical tests were done at RARDE Fort Halstead. From that part of the programme, a full scale wooden mockup of a 25mm bore railgun and breech was donated to the Royal Armouries and is now in their reserve collection at Fort Nelson.
I got the Panther Manual last year. Its a great little book.
nice! where from?
@cellardoor9882 He shoes it at the end of the video.
@@cellardoor9882 It's also available online.
Happy New Year to everyone at the Tank Museum and all of the viewers!
Mark from Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺
Excellent video. One of the best videos I’ve ever seen on this tank.
The one question that I have always wondered about was why the significant “Ausf” of the Panther ran beginning with D, then to A, and later to G, rather then starting with Ausf A? Anyone know why?
I can’t quite remember but I think it was explained in the Tank Museum’s Panther Tank Chat
It was an attempt by the Germans to confuse the allies regarding the number of Panther variants produced, the idea being that the allies estimates of numbers produced would be inflated. Note that there was an Ausf. F variant that did not make it into production. Another variant that did not make it into production was the so-called "schmalturm," an attempt to mount the KwK43 L/71 88mm gun on the Panther. And there were probably others.
@@TS-mo6pn Is this the same reason for the Tiger Ausf. H, E, B?
@@puff7145 I would assume so. I got the information about the Panther variants from "Germany's Panther Tank" by Thomas Jentz published by Schiffer Military.
Given that Germany was largely on the defensive when the Panther was introduced, it could be just about accepted since they were fighting not far away from railheads and repair depots. For the Allies, largely on the offensive and at the end of a long supply chain, it would have been completely unacceptable.
We saw during the battle of the bulge how poorly they performed during offensives. Especially King Tigers were a nightmare needing an insane amount of fuel and struggled with local infrastructure
Given that you could be shot for Wehrkraftzersetzung when saying out loudly you didn't believe in the Endsieg right until the very end of the war, I don't think your comment would have been of big consideration back then. Nonetheless, I guess you are pretty much right.
Could have built a bigger Panzer 4.
@@julianshepherd2038 could have done many things, but didn't. Decisions are always easier looking back in time.
@suenin021-ll3us
And yet the Panthers of 2nd Panzer Division got the furthest of any German armour type in the Ardennes offensive, and did it quicker than the Shermans did the reverse advance in the January counter attack so.....?
Definitely a good looking tank. Thanks for the awesome video @ The Tank Museum.
Really enjoyed all of your videos this year and look forward very much to next year! All the very best to you and the team from everyone here in London, cheers!
This Tank Chats Releaded is a real Christmas treat!🎉
Thank you, always fun when The Tank Museum pops another video onto Patreon and YT
There is a Panther at the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, MA. If you are in the Boston area, I highly recommend that you check it out. Out of everything on display, I was most impressed with the Panther.
Thanks so much for that amazing look and your sights! Interestingly, intimate operations of the panther showed up in the Sven Hassel novels. As I recall, they had to put the best crewman in the driver slot as their model had serious transmission problems that could result in overheating or engine fire that could be worked around only by a skilled driver. Also I think they mentioned one commander getting a shattered arm from absentmindedly reaching across the recoil path of that L70 75mm breech when he dropped a map. I dont recall seeing detail like that in other period accounts much and it seems to ring true.
great video thanks to all the team
Interesting!
Fantastic video thank you. The more I read, the more I'm finding that the T34 wasn't the mythical simple, reliable machine we've been led to believe. This is not to minimize the issues with the Panther or Tiger.
Agreed. The T-34 had problems & up grades especially like the T-34/85. Am thinking the soviet was much easier to service major assemblies. The pattern transmission / final drive units took days to R&R requiring the front of the tank to be dismantled....
Very nice job and a great way to round out the year. Happy new year.😎
Love the internal vids for the panther and Tiger II. Loving the crew ergonomics of the vehicles for the gunner.
I greatly enjoy the inside videos. Thank you and happy new year!
Tank museum with the ambient tunes in the canon breakdown👌felt like I was in tron for a second.
The sweet AMX-13 at the end was in the Swiss service, the photo was taken in Thun.
After a few weeks of service in the barracks, the mountains in the background are very well known.
Fantastic video, beautiful images and precious information on this great machine! Thank you 👍
The explanation of the differences between face-hardened steel and homogeneous rolled steel (4:28) contradicts everything I have heard so far. At least it's an opportunity to look into it.
I find it a rather strange statement that the KWK 42/L70 was not significantly better than the KWK 40/L48 of the Panzer IV (9:49). It remains a mystery to me how, for example, a penetration of up to 111 mm compared to 55 mm at 1000 m can be considered an insignificant advantage.
The presenter isn't wrong about the differences between face-hardened and homogeneous steels.
British bias
I get what you're saying about the manufacturability of each armor type
@@kmoecub Of course he is. The only difference between RHA and FHA is that RHA wasn't faced hardened. They simply choose not to face harden the plates, thus saving time and money while also increasing protection because face hardening actually makese the armor worse when it's heavily sloped.
@@kmoecubFace-hardened steel is basically hardened rolled steel.
In fact, hardened steel is more difficult to produce and also more difficult to process, especially to weld.
How the presenter comes to say that surface-hardened steel is easier to process and, above all, that the homogeneous steel has been further developed, is really a mystery to me.
Armor slope predated ww1. American civil war iron clads and timber clad gunboats had upper hulls sloped at 45 degrees to help bounce cannon shells. The pervasive myth that no one knew about Armor slope until ww2 just never seems to go away. There were very practical reasons to slope armor or not to slope armor depending on the design of the vehicle
You nailed it 👍
No one is saying that and sloped armour predates the American Ironclads, the glacis of a dozen surving 12th C Castles, and the evidence from.Trajans Column indicates it was known about for a very long time indeed.
In the context of the Eastern Front wr know that the Germans looked at re engineering a T34 and several features of that tank made it through to the Panther... that doesn't mean that the Russians 'invented sloped armour' rather the design influenced the panther.
Again, Chris Copson is not saying that no one knew anything about sloped armour until the T34, I don’t understand why people are jumping to a conclusion over a point that’s isn’t even made in the film ? The Panther was influenced by the T34.
@willcullen3743 wrote: "Armor slope predated ww1. American civil war iron clads and timber clad gunboats had upper hulls sloped at 45 degrees to help bounce cannon shells. The pervasive myth that no one knew about Armor slope until ww2 just never seems to go away. There were very practical reasons to slope armor or not to slope armor depending on the design of the vehicle"
-- Ah, if only Nichlay Tsiganov could "Google" Leonardo da Vinci's tank... he would still have a dilemma of two fold:
1. How thick the armor plate have to be, nor its obvious that Effective Armor Thickness(or what Chris referring to as LOS(Line of Sight armor thickness)) doubles at 60 degrees, and so
2. At what angle it should be tilted/slopped,
-- Since by just looking at 45mm frontal armor, Germans did not "jump" and copied T-34's main feature for a few month, until they figure out that their even smallest 37mm PaK36 should go through T-34 armor like a "hot knife through the butter", same goes for 50mm PaK40, but it does not, and it took careful field study near Moscow(with a front lines just a couple kilometers away) in October of 1941, including F. Porsche, E. Aders and A. Krupp, to figure out what "secret" hides in front of them in plain site.
-- There is no practical or any other reason why Tiger I frontal armor was sloped to only 10 degrees, and not steeper angles like in next model Tiger II or Panther. If you or anyone think of at least one or more reasons please, do share! ;)
P.S. I'm aware of The Chieftain and H. Doyle pedaling idea about loss of volumetric efficiency... just take Tiger I frontal armor, and from above vision block and MG deck drop single plate to encompass transmission well, and connect lower frontal plate, also tilted/slopped under steeper angle then 20 degrees angle - Panther/King Tiger style, and you've got lighter and better protected frontal armor, that is a lot easier to manufacture.
It's "Captain Obvious", but only in "Hindsight"!
@@HarryFlashmanVC wrote: "In the context of the Eastern Front wr know that the Germans looked at re engineering a T34 and several features of that tank made it through to the Panther... that doesn't mean that the Russians 'invented sloped armour' rather the design influenced the panther."
-- Its a very "kindergarten" argument on who "invented sloped armor", lets put it this way - Soviet tank designers made much more experiments on the angle and thickness of the armor plate(starting with BT-SV tank aka Tortious project), in order to save tank weight, so especially to light tanks, so their maneuverability and speed would remained as of light tank, yet tank protection of the heavy tank, and with a long high velocity 3 inch gun, that was considered as armament of only heavy tanks - it became best tank of WWII when it comes of balancing all three essential "tank trinity" - firepower, armor protection and speed with maneuverability. BTW initially members of Panzer Committee(like F. Porsche, E. Aders and A. Krupp) who went to front lines near Moscow in November of 1941 though T-34 was a 44 tons tank, when in fact it was only 26 tons. So what N. Tsiganov "invented" is the "Effective Armor Thickness" or what Chris Copson in this video calls "Line Of Sight"(LOS), so if you insist that "the evidence from.Trajans Column indicates it was known about for a very long time indeed" given that Tiger I(so is all WWII era tanks like Pz-I, II, III and IV) tank had frontal armor sloped at only 10 degrees, with effective armor thickness of 101mm out of 100mm actual armor thickness, the knowledge use was "very poor" on this subject.
-- An carefully choosing of the words like "influenced", it would not work in a court of "copyright violation", since it was what you called "sloped armor" of secret of T-34 armor plate that ricochets 88mm round was measured, analyzed and plagiarism-aticly copied and implemented into every tank and armored vehicle Germans designed and then produced during and long after the WWII.
Always great to see the inside of a tank! Why is "do not traverse" painted at the front of the gunner's position? What's broken?
the traverse
Thanks for the tour really enjoying your channel👋🏽
The very tight specifications {differences from 1 length vrs another length of a gun tube; a weight/horsepower of tank weight /speed vrs of various tanks/ fuel use per mph/distance of various vehicles vrs other tanks , etc - and so much more tell information that detail specification types like myself love sooo much. "The details are everything!"
Supremely informative and enjoyable!
British army engineers/soliders are told to build Panthers/Jagdpanthers (which they have no experience doing) in a bombed out factory with cobbled together parts using exhausted German workers who were probably working 12 hour days 7 days a week in extreme conditions and the tanks they produced failed British Septics trials. I wonder why?
Despite it's design and operational flaws, the Panther became my favourite tank as soon as I'd built the Airfix 1/72 model in the mid 60s - !
It just looked so cool compared with all the other tanks - ! 😅
Makes you wonder what might have come from it if the allies got the reliability issues sorted. But by then, they had centurion and Patton tanks if I'm not mistaken, so even a "perfected panther" would have been a step back
Thank you for this show.❤
"Action near Kharkov in August 1944" I think this is wrong, since the front in December 1943 was already far away from Kharkov, I think he meant August 1943, when the Fourth Battle of Kharkov (Operation Rumyantsev) was taking place.
Anyway, 500 T-34s knocked out by Panthers just in the second half of 1943, while losing just 100 of their own (and the majority are not even combat related), this is impressive. I don't see how some view the T-34 as this wonderful weapon aside from his reliability and just sheer numbers, they were prey for Tigers, Panthers and StuGs.
The KwK 42 L70 has almost double the effectiveness the KwK 40 L48 has, the projectile travel lot faster with flatter trajectory, it has enough penetration to destroy pretty much all WWII tanks in service
If I remember correctly, the Panther's cannon was vastly superior to the Panzer IVs. I'm not sure why the host said "only slightly"??
@@matovicmmilan indeed, the L70(70 times the length of the barrel size) is superior to the L48 except is quite large to move into urban zones or transport it, its performance is better than the British 17 pounder before Stabilized sabot exist
Brilliant video on one of my favorite tanks.
lovely video, thanks
Well done 👍🏼.great videos very informative.
Every time these guys upload a video its a magnet for me. 25 mins feels like 5 with the best presentstion ive come across as far as regarding AFVs.
Are you guys hiring? I'm sick of W. NYS and I like tanks. I could use a change from dealing with cows all day.
Lfmao, let me know if they hire you mate !
The little cartoonish handbook made me smile and recall that I had heard somewhere the the US Army PS magazine was inspired by something the Germans did. I think they were inspired by what the Allied did but it is good to see somethings are universal for humans.
@6:35 The Germans didn't use a diesel engine because most of their fuel was gasoline obtained by coal hydrogenation. Also,obviously a 690 HP gasoline engine with a low compression ratio consumes less fuel than a 500 HP diesel engine but they had no alternative.
@1:56 "the results were very disappointing...the two tanks failed to complete the course..."
The biggest complaints about the Mk V and VI were that they were "over-engineered" so why am I not surprised that when the British - who were most assuredly NOT guilty of this "flaw" - appropriated the design for target practice, they created clunkers and lemons.
As a former U.S. armor company commander I can tell you that the Mk IV and V, used together with proper Combined Arms doctrine (impossible once Germany lost air superiority) were, indeed, the best OVER-ALL armor of the war with the T-34-85 coming in after that.
I can also tell you that Allied doctrine in general and U.S. doctrine in specific - saturate the battlefield with inferior tanks - should've won the entire Chain of Command the gallows. Instead they have all been lauded and enshrined.
In fairness, it is a thorough presentation.
Did you say that Panther gun is not that much better than Panzer 4(long barrel 75 mm) gun?Are u sure about that
😂 sure he's not - the l70 slightly outclassed the "mighty" 8.8 from The Tiger 1 - in terms of penetration...
@@MrZirler Yeah at least at normal ranges,right
No they mention the short barrel gun then in service on the panzer 4 before the panther was introduced.
@@gherkinisgreat That's even worst comparison
The Panther's gun penetrated about 40-50% more armor than the Panzer IVs gun. And about 10% more than the Tiger's gun at normal distances. At long range the heavier round of the "88" caught up.
@7:22 The Panther ,according to the Swedish trials, can overcome a slope of 40° or around 80%.That implies a tractive force of around 30000 kgf. I'm not sure that mud can stop that.
I'm 13 and i hope to be able to see the tank museum one day
Play GTA 5 online first kid. Get some practice 😜
@@mann_idonotreadrepliesDO NOT PLAY GTA ONLINE
The fighting compartment sounds like an interesting arrangement
Great video
Those German tank instruction manuals were a hoot!
You're right, that gun mantlet ricoches rounds. I was testing some tank in War Thunder, shot at Panther with small gun, got lucky and destroyed it. That shot was one in a million though.
I'd be interested in a video on the Schmalturm turret.
Excellent video, I shall visit soon, live locally luckily
Fantastic!
@5:05 Wrong,it's 40 mm at 40° from the vertical ,so 40/cos40° =52 mm.For the G it's 50 mm at 30° from vertical or 57 mm.
A most enjoyable episode indeed. And in my opinion still the best looking tank of WW2!
Whenever people talk about the relative armour thickness of sloped armour (against flat plate) I always have to remind them about ballistics; except for light projectiles at close range the amount of "drop" (the orientation of the projectile when it strikes the target) means the thickness decreases in relation to the horizontal plane. Yes, sloped armour is better than vertical plate - but armour at an angle of 30 degrees is only offering a 25 degree angle against a projectile that is coming in with 5 degrees of inclination. When the difference between a shot being deflected and one penetrating could be between 5 and 10 mm of armour, this is a serious consideration. One of the factors behind the prevalence of HEAT munitions is that the lower velocity compared to kinetic round is that it is more likely to strike armour nearer to 90 degrees to the angle of the plate - meaning it has less thickness to defeat. Many modern missiles with HEAT warheads are designed to drop onto a tank from height, making armour angles of less than 60 degrees irrelevant.
I love these vids. Thank you for sharing.
Was there metallurgy problems in the final drive due to shortage of materials?
Great Presentation. Thank you.
I've always found kinda funny how, in popular culture, things that are considered fatal flaws in the Sherman (ammo storage in the side sponson with little armor protection, height, etc...) are usually overlooked in the Panther or, at worst, considered features.
If you think that's bad, try going on any WW2 naval forum and suggesting that the Bismark was sunk by anything other than it's own crew.
It's not that funny really. There's a natural tendency to make your opponent seem better than they actually were, as it makes your victory over or loss to them more significant by comparison. And the idea that the sherman is bad is a cold war tankie narrative made to reduce trust in the government.
I see something similar happen with people praising the Churchill and shitting on the tiger for features they both share, vice versa.
when talking about the T34 its also worth noting the T34 85, because more of them were built, because it was capable of defeating the Panther with a single shot, it really became a who shoots first scenario, the T34 like the Sherman became a battle tank platform rather than endlessly building new tanks from the ground up, the Germans never really settled on anything that could be called that, the stug tank destroyers being as close as they came to something being cheap effective and somewhat reliable.
This was excellent.
The most aesthetically pleasing tank of World War II.
I'd say the King Tiger takes that award, Panther a close second.
@@SuperMozzmannah, the M10
Jagdpanther, yes. Best looking AFV ever produced. But I've always thought the Panther itself had an ugly turret.
The panther is the first WW2 tank, I was in the presence of, that felt modern.
Great video! Fresh perspectives are always interesting. One serious shortcoming for the gunners was pointed out by Nick Moran in one of his videos; the lack of visibility. All the gunner had was his sighting telescope, so it was difficult for him to identify targets called out by the TC, unless he was laid right on the target bearing. Obviously crews worked around this, but it still a handicap in fast-paced, frantic combat.
It was not a pressing concern for the gunners because German commanders had superior cupolas and thus better all round vision compared to, say, the Sherman and it was the commander who looked for and selected targets, and he sat directly behind the gunner.
If it was a pressing concern, the gunner would have easily received a turret roof periscope. Initial Panthers (and Tigers) didnt have a loader's roof periscope but on subsequent production runs they got one. It would have been a simple matter to add a gunners roof periscope but it was not deemed necessary.
Panthers received improvements and made changes almost on a monthly basis (check out the Tom Jentz book on all the improvements made throughout the production runs) but a gunners periscope wasn't an important change to add.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Good points; the Panther was indeed a truly good killing machine. Thankfully for Allied tankers, it had those small handicaps.
Thanks for this
I need to get the Panther FIbel book! Nice!
Rather be in this than a Sherman , that’s for sure.
In The Chieftain's 'Oh bugger the tank's on fire!' evaluation, he fond that commander's hatch problematic - too difficult to open and escape from, when the tank's burning up around you...
And yet clearly in the Cologne tank duel footage the Panther crew bail out no slower than the Sherman crew. And more of the Panther crew survived. Panthers usually kept the turret rear hatch ajar.
Incredible engineering for the time
Have a Great 2024 TM🦁
what is the music called around 16:00?
How you people can keep me seated and focused for 20 mins, about a topic I'm not an expert on, in this day and age of short attention spans is a testament to your quality. Well done indeed🤌
The STUG Is The BEST
Tank Killer & My FAVORITE...
I wonder how good the construction of these tanks was and how high the quality control was. The British hired a former foreman who in turn gathered up his fellow workers to build these tanks. If my country was defeated, I would not build anything properly for the people who just beat us.
British testing be damned...Actual combat records show the Panther was a great tank in combat and it's capabilities led directly to the introduction of heavier Allied tanks such as the Soviet IS-2 and the American M26 Pershing into the war. It had a very high kill ratio. All German tanks had good ergonomics for the crews. This was considered a "must have" when designing them and was intended to make the crews more efficient due to being more comfortable.
Post war tanks would be superior workmanship- the country was destroyed and workers would be desperate for a job to feed their families. Hell the senior engineers would be showing off hoping to get scooped up for their skills.
@@frostedbutts4340 ok...let's pretend your country just got wrecked on the losing end of a war. The opposing side wants you to build something so they can duplicate it or at least test a new example of it for themselves to find out why it was so good. Are you really going to put it together the best you can or are you going to throw a few wrenches into the works? I know what I would do.
The line foreman isn't the engineering team. He's just the guy in charge of the assembly line. He can be replaced easily.
@@frostedbutts4340 They were built after the factory had been overrun in early 1945, using available parts, and didn't even have blueprints to work from.
This was my first view of a Tank Museum video after hearing about them on the news. Although the equipment, video excerpts and general logic of the narration is spot on, the sound is so muddy I could not hear or understand about 40% of what he was saying. I could understand a word like Panzer or gunner and then whole sections of sentences are unintelligible. Please up your game with audio recording so that the meaning and value of your presentations aren't lost. Beyond that one criticism I was very impressed.
❤I love you Pz.Kpfw V❤
Thank you for this. I am curious about the interlocking of the hull plates at the welds. One presumes they were assembled on jigs in the factory so alignment was not a problem to be solved by this. It may be that the welding was deficient in being at risk of progressive failure*. A shortage of alloy metals could be the cause. The interlocking might be a fix, minimising crack length?
Have other nations built tanks in this way?
*See, for instance, the separation of the stern on the wreck of the Bismark along a transverse bulkhead. Also the reported ejection of the entire back plate of her turret B.
Stood on that tank...and my son...didn't know about the chin mount on the bottom of the mantlet....he also has a copy of Panther Fibel
Nice episode! Do you also plan to sell the Panther Fibel in German?
No plans to put an engine in it, and get it running? I used to like your workshop series, but you stopped doing them? Now get my workshop fix from Mr Hewes and the Australian Armour museum.
everytime a panther is repaired, the autopilot turns on and steers the vehicle towards Russia.
@@ChrisZukowski88 The workaround is to not fix it with the proprietary tensioning and calibration tools supplied by Alkett and Krupp, then the autopilot will refuse to drive for you. It is a good way to repair because the warranty period must have expired in January 1945, and the service history is patchy, so you aren't losing any value either
Panzer V. Panther looks like modern 21.ct tank made for ww.2 battle era. it is just perfect machine..
The Panther was, IMO, the best tank on paper of the war (Discounting tanks like Centurion for being too late to the party). As mentioned in the video, the real problem with Panther was it's rushed development. Had the Germans had until 1945/1946 to work on the design, it would have showed up as the paper design suggests, but alas they were already tasting like "too little, too late" when they started pushing them out half-baked in 1943. On the eastern front I don't think that mattered quite as much, given how notoriously unreliable T34 was - sure the Germans were losing lots of Panthers to mechanical faults, but the Russians were losing T34s in droves to the same cause. On the western front though it was a big problem, the Sherman worked very reliably, and further more the allies never really ceded any reasonable ground, so whenever a Panther did break-down, there was a seriously sharp race against time to recover it before the frontlines moved too much and it had to be abandoned.
Panther's design strikes me as being too good to be effective. At the end of the day, the up-gunned Panzer IVs were on fairly equal terms with the T34 and Sherman, and though at a disadvantage of armour, the Germans could build an awful lot more of them, an awful lot faster, than Panther. Panther's got a great gun, but does it really need to be that big and powerful? It's got great armour (frontally anyway) but does it really need that much protection? It's a design which, if they could have got it working properly, would have been truly fearsome - alas they didn't have nearly enough time for that, and they should have known they didn't. Tanks like the Sherman won the war not because they were exceptionally good cutting edge concepts, but because they were logistical perfection. Easily built, easily shipped, easily operated, easily repaired, easily replaced. They weren't a match for a Panther or a Tiger in a 1-on-1, but they never had to be. Nine times out of ten it was a Stug III or Panzer III/IV they were up against, and the 1 in 10 times it wasn't, they had plenty of friends to call on.
What capabilities one tank has another one may not have. So no two tanks are comparable in absolute terms, and that's what makes the ultimate difference between winning or losing.
Excellent❤
Because I'm kinda destitute right now ( actually, last 4 years ) .I do appreciate yuzzall , keeping my brain alive. Life is for learning. If you don't use it ? Gonna lose it. Thanks, in. Advance for the info. Should I buy a Lottery ticket ?
Thank you, Chris for an interesting review. Couple of little points:
1. Tiger/Panther Maybach engine had four(x4) Solex carburetors, that was difficult to synthesize and adjusted at the front lines, so some cylinders ran too rich, some too lean, that effected engine power and engine longevity.
2. Besides spend brass ventilation, Panther tank was first that featured a gun bore gases evacuator as well, which was 3 tubes blowing compressed air immediately after bridge opened.
3. Not related to Panther, but in T-34, although it didn’t have a turret basket, it had seats attached to turret, so crew didn’t have to follow fast rotating turret on foot.
4. Panther turret was not balanced like for example on T-34, so if tank was sitting on a slight gradient of 15 degrees it was impossible to turn by hand, even though it featured two very large diameter cranks, oh and it was 1000 turns by cranks to turn turret 360 degrees.
Thank you!
Once again for a good solid content.
Anyone know the background music used from 15:27 to 17:40 in the video at all? Asking for a friend ;^;