Panther tank
The Panther tank, officially Panzerkampfwagen V Panther with ordnance inventory designation: Sd.Kfz. 171, is a German medium tank of World War II. It was used in most European theatres of World War II from mid-1943 to the end of the war in May 1945.
The Panther was intended to counter the Soviet T-34 medium tank and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Nevertheless, it served alongside the Panzer IV and the heavier Tiger I until the end of the war. While having essentially the same Maybach V12 petrol engine as the Tiger I, the Panther had better gun penetration, was lighter and faster, and could traverse rough terrain better than the Tiger I. The trade-off was weaker side armour, which made it vulnerable to flanking fire, and a weaker high explosive shell. The Panther proved to be effective in open country and long-range engagements. The Panther had excellent firepower, protection and mobility, though early variants suffered from reliability issues. The Panther was far cheaper to produce than the Tiger I. Key elements of the Panther design, such as its armour, transmission, and final drive, were simplifications made to improve production rates and address raw material shortages.
The Panther was rushed into combat at the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 despite numerous unresolved technical problems, leading to high losses due to mechanical failures. Most design flaws were rectified by late 1943 and early 1944, though the Allied bombing of production plants in Germany, increasing shortages of high-quality alloys for critical components, shortage of fuel and training space, and the declining quality of crews all impacted the tank's effectiveness. Though officially classified as a medium tank, at 44.8 metric tons the Panther was closer in weight to contemporary foreign heavy tanks. The Panther's weight caused logistical problems, such as an inability to cross certain bridges; otherwise, the tank had a very high power-to-weight ratio which made it highly mobile.
The naming of Panther production variants did not follow alphabetical order, unlike most German tanks - the initial variant, Panther "D", was followed by "A" and "G" variants.
Development and production
Design
The Panther was born out of a project started in 1938 to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks. The initial requirements of the VK 20 series called for a fully tracked vehicle weighing 20 tonnes and design proposals by Krupp, Daimler-Benz and MAN ensued. These designs were abandoned and Krupp dropped out of the competition entirely as the requirements increased to a vehicle weighing 30 tonnes, a direct reaction to the encounters with the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks and against the advice of Wa Prüf 6. The T-34 outclassed the existing models of the Panzer III and IV in certain metrics, such as effective armour thickness and gun caliber. At the insistence of General Heinz Guderian, a special tank commission was created to assess the T-34. Among the features of the Soviet tank considered most significant was the sloped armour, which gave much improved effective armour thickness, the wide track, which improved mobility over soft terrain, and the gun, which had good armour penetration and fired an effective high-explosive round. Daimler-Benz, which designed the successful Panzer III and StuG III, and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG were given the task of designing a new 30- to 35-tonne tank, designated VK 30.02, by April 1942.The VK 30.02 design resembled the T-34 in its hull and turret and was also to be powered by a diesel engine. It was driven from the rear drive sprocket with the turret situated forward. The incorporation of a diesel engine promised increased operational range, reduced flammability and allowed for better use of petroleum reserves. Adolf Hitler considered a diesel engine imperative for the new tank. DB's proposal used an external leaf spring suspension, in contrast to the MAN's proposal of twin torsion bars. Wa Prüf 6's opinion was that the leaf spring suspension was a disadvantage and that using torsion bars would allow greater internal hull width. It also opposed the rear drive because of the potential for track fouling. Daimler-Benz still preferred the leaf springs over a torsion bar suspension as it resulted in a silhouette about shorter and rendered complex shock absorbers unnecessary. The employment of a rear drive provided additional crew space and also allowed for a better slope on the front hull, which was considered important in preventing penetration by armour-piercing shells.
The MAN design embodied a more conventional configuration, with the transmission and drive sprocket in the front and a centrally mounted turret. It had a petrol engine and eight torsion bar suspension axles per side. Because of the torsion bar suspension and the drive shaft running under the turret basket, the MAN Panther was higher and had a wider hull than the DB design. The Henschel company's design concepts for their Tiger I tank's suspension/drive components, using its characteristic Schachtellaufwerk format – large, overlapping, interleaved road wheels with a "slack-track" using no return rollers for the upper run of track, also features shared with almost all German military half-track designs since the late 1930s – were repeated with the MAN design for the Panther. These multiple large, rubber-rimmed steel wheels distributed ground pressure more evenly across the track. The MAN proposal also complemented Rheinmetall's already designed turret modified from that of the VK 45.01, and used a virtually identical Maybach V12 engine to the Tiger I heavy tank's Maybach HL230 powerplant model.
The two designs were reviewed from January to March 1942. Reichsminister Fritz Todt, and later his replacement Albert Speer, both recommended the DB design to Hitler because of its advantages over the initial MAN design. At the final submission, MAN refined its design, having learned from the DB proposal apparently through a leak by a former employee in the Wa Prüf 6, senior engineer Heinrich Ernst Kniepkamp and others. On 5 March 1942, Albert Speer reported that Hitler considered the Daimler-Benz design to be superior to MAN's design. A review by a special commission appointed by Hitler in May 1942 selected the MAN design. Hitler approved this decision after reviewing it overnight. One of the principal reasons given for this decision was that the MAN design used an existing turret designed by Rheinmetall-Borsig, while the DB design would have required a brand new turret and engine to be designed and produced, delaying the commencement of production. This time-saving measure compromised the subsequent development of the design.
Albert Speer recounted in his autobiography Inside the Third Reich:
On 27 February 1944, it was redesignated simply PzKpfw Panther, as Hitler ordered that the Roman numeral "V" be deleted from its designation. In contemporary English-language literature it is sometimes referred to as the "Mark V".
Production
A mild-steel prototype of the MAN design was produced by September 1942 and, after testing at Kummersdorf, was officially accepted. It was put into immediate production. The start of production was delayed, mainly because of a shortage of specialized machine tools needed for the machining of the hull. Finished tanks were produced in December and suffered from reliability problems as a result. The demand for this tank was so high that the manufacturing was soon expanded beyond MAN to include Daimler-Benz, Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen Hanover and the Tiger I's original designer, Henschel & Sohn in Kassel.The initial production target was 250 tanks per month at the MAN plant at Nuremberg. This was increased to 600 per month in January 1943. Despite determined efforts, this figure was never reached due to disruption by Allied bombing, and manufacturing and resource bottlenecks. Production in 1943 averaged 148 per month. In 1944, it averaged 315 a month, peaking with 380 in July and ending around the end of March 1945, with at least 6,000 built in total. Frontline combat strength peaked on 1 September 1944 at 2,304 tanks, but that same month a record number of 692 tanks were reported lost.
The process of streamlining the production of German armoured fighting vehicles first began after Speer became a Reichsminister in early 1942, and steadily accelerated through to 1944; the production of the Panther tank coincided with this period of increased manufacturing efficiency. At the beginning of the war, German armoured fighting vehicle manufacturers had employed labour-intensive and costly manufacturing methods unsuitable for the needs of mass production; even with streamlined production methods introduced later, Germany never approached the efficiency of Allied manufacturing during World War II.
The Allies directed their bombing at the common bottleneck for both Panther and Tiger production: the Maybach engine plant. This was bombed the night of 27/28 April 1944 and production halted for five months. A second factory had already been planned, the Auto Union Siegmar plant, and this came on line in May 1944. The targeting of Panther factories began with a bombing raid on the DB plant on 6 August 1944, and again on the night of 23/24 August. MAN was struck on 10 September, 3 October and 19 October 1944, and then again on 3 January and 20/21 February 1945. MNH was not attacked until 14 and 28 March 1945.
In addition to interfering with tank production goals, the bombing forced a steep drop in the production of spare parts. This compounded the problems with numbers of operational Panthers and their reliability, as the tanks in the field had to be cannibalised for parts.
Production figures
The Panther was the third most produced German armoured fighting vehicle, after the Sturmgeschütz III assault gun/tank destroyer at 9,408 units, and the Panzer IV tank at 8,298 units.| Model | Number | Date | Notes |
| Prototype | 2 | Sep 1942 | Designated V1 and V2 |
| Ausf. D | 842 | Jan 1943 to Sept 1943 | |
| Ausf. A | 2,200 | Aug 1943 to Aug 1944 | |
| Ausf. G | ~2,961 | Mar 1944 to Apr 1945 | |
| Befehlspanzer Panther | 329 | May 1943 to Apr 1945 | Converted on the production line |
| Beobachtungspanzer Panther | 1 | 1944 | |
| Bergepanther | 339 | 1943 to 1945 | 61 more converted from rebuilt hulls |
| Manufacturer | % of total |
| Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg | 35 |
| Daimler-Benz | 31 |
| 31 | |
| Other | 3 |