Was The German Panther Really The Best Tank Of WW2?
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- During World War II, the German Panther tank was certainly one of the most feared machines the Allies encountered on the European battlefields.
From 1943 through 1945, it was used to great and horrifying effect on both the Western and Eastern Fronts.
Both the men who built it and the men who fought against it regarded it as one of the best tanks ever built.
The Panther tank was not as highly armoured or equipped as other tanks (such as the Tiger), but it was deemed superior because it was perfectly balanced.
The Panther was one of the Germans' fastest tanks; it manoeuvred significantly better than other tanks, and its guns were extremely accurate and precise.
However, The Panther has developed a mythology that is out of all proportion to its actual effectiveness as a weapon of war.
Let's try to cut through the hype, to see how good this renowned German tank was in reality.
Music Credits: All This Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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#BestTankWW2 #PantherTank #GermanTankWW2
I remember an interview of a Sherman tanker after the war. He said they didn't fear the tigers because they never saw them. Most were on the Russian front. He said they feared the panthers. They ran into them frequently and they believed it was a great tank.
Frequent transmission break downs and it's propensity to catch on fire are not qualities that one associates with the term, "best".
@@HiTechOilCo The Panthers Sherman crews got to fear were to ones that did work and got to the front. A Panther in working order was a potent tank.
@@ricardosoto5770 and anyway, Ironically MOST Tiger tanks were facing the British/Canadian forces==especially in Normandy. US forces rarely dealt with a Tiger I. Most were probably seeing a Panzer IV and saw the slab sides and thought it was a Tiger (of course, standing around staring at a tank is probably a great way to get killed). But IRONICALLY, US forces did see rather a lot of the Tiger II 'King Tiger' from late 44 onwards.
@@HiTechOilCo All WW2 tanks had "frequent" breakdowns. 15-20 Shermans out of 50 could be expected to fall out due to major or minor mechanical issues during a 50 km road march. By mid 1944 both the Panther and Tiger were reliable by WW2 standards.
@@nickmitsialis That is correct. The Americans had practically never seen a Tiger 1, but thought that the Panzer 4 was one of them...
Another big issue, especially on the western front, was inexperienced crew. Imagine being a 19-year old who never even drove a car, and with a month or two of training on other types, being shoved into the driver seat of a 46-ton monster with a fussy final drive!
I'm sure they did their best to find someone that at least knew how to drive, and definitely had experience with a tracked vehicle. But yeah, when parts and FUEL are in short supply, driver training as well as gunnery range time, does tend to suffer.
Thats why panther has transmission issues lol
I know there is a lot of critical points about the Panther and Tiger, but its easy to pick apart something 80yrs later. From the interviews I've both read and viewed it seems to me that both tanks were both loved and feared on the battle field. All the proof I need is from those who fought alongside or against them. Great video by the way, well put together, most definitely hitting the subscribe button.
Exactly the men who fought in it seemed to loved this tank and I’m pretty sure this video failed to mention that the actually indeed update the gun sights on the later models
Good point, but in 1945, after WW2 ended, the French actually ended up adopting the Panther for some time. In 1947 they wrote up a report on the Panther and while the crews liked the sheer brutality of the gun and armour, the drivers and mechanics on the other hand absolutely hated these things, due to how easy it was to destroy the gearbox and transmission.
It was a good tank but whats the point of it if the final drive breaks after 150km. Veteran crews liked the Panther, newer and younger ones hated it due to reliability. In fact, half of the Panthers that where sent to Normandy where found by the Allies on the side of the road abandoned. Reason? Final Drive failure. And it does not help at all with the fact that in order to replace the transmission/final drive, you had to remove the turret and a majority of the internal components just to get the panther out.
@@sirnurtle657 I think they didn’t address this issue because number 1 they couldn’t on the count of them losing and number 2 when they came out Germany didn’t have to cover that much of a distance and moving them by train to the front didn’t take that much time either.
@@sirnurtle657 The French put to use what they could scrounge until they could produce tanks again.
My great uncle fought alongside both as a panzergrenadier in 2nd SS Panzer, and he said that the Panther was far superior to the Tiger I in both armor and mobility, especially in the Bocage fighting that happened after D-Day.
My Dad was a tank commander of a M4 Sherman through Italy right up to Trieste, he only saw a couple of knocked out Tigers and no Panthers; he said that the beasts they fought were Stugs, and Panzer Mk IV's. He was in the 20th Armored Regiment of the NZEF.
The best tank is the one thats there when you want it.
With the best trained crew.
Not when you want, when you need it.
If it was an Italian tank you probably wouldn't want something else there.
@@Enzo012 Those ridiculous Italian "tanks" were intended to be used against opponents that had NO armor, akin to the Japanese and their dinky Type 95 "Ha Go" vehicle.
@@selfdo 'During the Second Sino-Japanese War theater of WW2, Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks were found to be very effective. They accompanied Japanese infantry in battles against Chinese forces that typically fielded few armored cars and wielded few anti-tank weapons.'
So that's all the Japanese really needed. The Italians needed a bit more unless they were only fighting Ethiopians, and they even struggled with that.
The final drive mechanical design was overburdened. The tiger featured a bull gear reduction driving a planetary reduction. But the Panther only had a bull gear reduction, and although cheaper and simpler, it was not sufficient and stripping gears was common. It used the exact same engine as the Tiger, and Tiger crews never complained about reliability ( Otto Carius) and was not under powered. More so the problems were more a case of being rushed into service too soon and poor quality control. Panther restorers have on occasion found that certain components were simply not correctly assembled to torque specifications (loose bolts)
So basically the Panther was the best except for the flaws caused by bombing of the factories by the Americans and the British w/American support. 1944 there were 552 Panthers operational on the Eastern front out of a total of 728
184 Panthers were first deployed during the battle for Kursk they claimed 267 destroyed tanks
The French army used over 50 Panther tanks from 1945 until 1950 in their 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat.
Though the T-34-85’s gun, armour and other major components were significantly better than those in the T-34-76, minor details, like the design of the periscopes and vision ports, had remained largely unchanged. As a consequence, when the tank’s hatches were closed the crew was “deaf and blind”, as one commander put it in his memoirs. The commander could not see very much through the often distorted, cloudy glass of the vision ports on his cupola and was reliant on his binocular periscope. The other crewmen, who had only a single periscope or a narrow vision slit, could see even less.
The Panther, by contrast, had excellent optics including a pair of clear, high quality periscopes for the driver, hull gunner, and loader; a 5x magnification sight for the gunner; and a panoramic rangefinder sight for the commander. This, coupled with the 360º-view provided by the vision blocks in the commander’s cupola, gave Panther crews far better situational awareness than T-34-85 crews.
In most tank-on-tank engagements, the outcome was determined by who held the initiative, rather than by who had the thicker armour or bigger gun. The Panther’s crew, with their superior sights, usually spotted their opponent first, giving them time to move into a good position and set up a shot. -
During the same period 29,400 T-34-85s rolled off Russian assembly lines. This disparity was increased by the low proportion of Panthers that were operational at any one time due to their poor mechanical reliability.
Consequently, an engagement in which a Panther destroyed four or five T-34-85s before being disabled could still be considered, from a strategic point of view, a Soviet victory. Over the course of the war, the Soviets manufactured 57,000 T-34s (both 76mm and 85mm variants). Of these, around 45,000 were destroyed in battle - a loss rate of almost 80 percent.
-------- Tank Clash - The German Panther vs. the Soviet T-34-85
THAT'S RIGHT!
As Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all of its own"
Add slave labor prone to industrial sabotage and the loss of molydenum and tunsgten sources in the Ukranie for armor and final drives alloys. The Panther was a great design but for another time in the war. 1944 has very diferent for 1942.
@@ricardosoto5770 👍
what you say about cost-effectiveness was true. BUT US didn't win because of Shermans. It won because (A) It had air dominance and (B) most of German armor and experienced crews were destroyed on the Eastern Front. What US saw after Normandy were just scraps and bits of once might German army machine. Without these two factors, it's very unlikely that obsolete Shermans would've able to stand up to the Germans on an equal footing.
The first batch of Panthers at Kursk did Suffer mechanical issues, but that was rectified by the October 43. A awful lot of people keep saying the same thing about breakdowns but during the battle of the bulge Panthers were at the front of the Armoured columns as the Germans didnt want the narrow Ardennes tracks blocked by Tiger 2 s having mechanical issues! Which seems to point out they were reliable in Service.
Similar issues of the Panther in its use as an Infantry support weapon were why in the 1980s the U.S. Army kept M-60, M-60A1 and M-60A3 Main Battle Tanks in many Infantry Divisions. The Abrams or M-1 series are superb assault tanks, but on the defense they are horrible in the defense. The M-60 series Pattons were much better at defensive operations and Infantry support operation. I suppose in the decades since the First Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm) the M-1 series in its latest rendition is much better, but it still has the same problem the Panther had in urban and other built up areas. Its long gun tube hinders its ability to provide 360 degree coverage in confined spaces. Granted the M-60 and older M-48 tanks had similar issues due to the long tubed 105mm gun. The Panther had other issues that we who crewed M-60 series didn't have as our motive power pack was all in the rear with the engine and the final drive behind the turret well. From 1 January 1986 to 12 January 1992 I was a 19E which in the US Army is the Armor Vehicle Crewman for the M-48A5 Pattons, M-60, M-60A1 and M-60A3 MBTs and M-552 Sheridan ARVs. Of the German tanks of WW-2 the Panther would likely be the one that could if its design had been kept and improved for the Heer des Bundeswehr until replaced by the Leopard 1 would have been a decent early Cold War tank.
Some myths never die.
The Panther's HE had as much HE filler as the Sherman's 75 mm and was, like almost all German high velocity guns fired at a lower velocity than the AP shell. It was an highly effective infantry support weapon because it could easily deal with "everything" from infantry to heavy IS-2 tanks (defending your infantry against enemy tanks is a pretty important task).
The Panther was defeated at Arracourt because it was manned by poorly trained kids - pitted against seasoned US tankers.
Only the early Panther Ds had face hardened armor.
"The engine and transmission were built for a 30-35 ton tank"; there was no way the very large MAN Panther (it was as large as a Tiger) would weigh less than 40 tons. Adding 20mm armor on the glacis doesn't add 10 tons. The same engine gave the 56 ton Tiger 1 an equal or better power to weight ratio than most M4 variants. Only the T-34 and the British Comet and Cromwell tanks had better power to weight ratio than the Panther.
No WW2 tank had "spectacular" reliability. They all had plenty of mechanical issues and were high maintenance - the Sherman, too. This is 1944 - even your vanilla family car could be expected to break down at any time - and cars have always been much more reliable than tanks. The Sherman may well have been the best of the lot - but the main reason for the high availability rate of the Sherman was the huge pool of replacement tanks.
The Panther was the best standard tank of the war, but the allies were not far behind; already in february 1945 the first M26 Pershings arrived in Europe, and as the war ended the Centurion became operational and the T-54/55 was not far behind.
Excelently put.
wrote: ""The engine and transmission were built for a 30-35 ton tank"; there was no way the very large MAN Panther (it was as large as a Tiger) would weigh less than 40 tons. Adding 20mm armor on the glacis doesn't add 10 tons. The same engine gave the 56 ton Tiger 1 an equal or better power to weight ratio than most M4 variants."
-- Boo-ha-ha, some myths are never die, indeed... But you got it backwards... First of all, Panther did NOT have to be as large as Tiger, can you think of other tanks of that era similar(if not better) armor protection, better gun, and better maneuverability, all weighting 30-32 tons?
-- Second, It supposed to be just 30-35 tons range, which M.A.N. promised, but did not meat that requirement, hence the problem with final drive for the duration of the tank life, so actually it was designed for less powerful engine too(not just weight), so final Panther could not fully use raw power of its engine, the way T-34 could.
@@RussianThunderrr 30-35 tons were totally unrealistic for a tank carrying the big 75mm L/70 with enough ammo, good armor protection and good power/weight ratio. Both the Americans and British came to a similar conclusion with their M26 Pershing and Centurion - which were as large as the Panther. The roadwheels alone added at least 5 more tons to the Panther than any other WW2 tank, with the exception of the Tiger.
No 30-32 ton tank had similar firepower, protection or maneuverability to the Panther - among standard tanks it was the top dog in all three categories - the only thing the T-34-85 had was better HE and even that was less than expected considering the calibre.
The final drives affected the much lighter PzIV and its variants even more than the Panther - even the small "Hetzer" had major problems with the final drives. It wasn't so much the weight as it was flawed design and lack of important alloys. The Jagdpanther had reinforced final drives and was less affected.
@@TTTT-oc4eb wrote: "30-35 tons were totally unrealistic for a tank carrying the big 75mm L/70 with enough ammo, good armor protection and good power/weight ratio. Both the Americans and British came to a similar conclusion with their M26 Pershing and Centurion - which were as large as the Panther. The roadwheels alone added at least 5 more tons to the Panther than any other WW2 tank, with the exception of the Tiger."
-- Well, VK 30.02(DB) had the same gun, and meet all the specs of Panzer Committee of November, 1941. Also T-44, that saw action in September of 1944, also had 90mm frontal armor, later increased to 120mm, and be for more dynamic maneuverability then Panther tank.
@@TTTT-oc4eb wrote: "The final drives affected the much lighter PzIV and its variants even more than the Panther - even the small "Hetzer" had major problems with the final drives."
-- Well, it would be less affected, if more and more frontal armor was added, but no improvements to drive train existed.
The ausf G was the perfected version of the panther tank, as it fixed all the flaws.
No, According to Whatever documents remained on the G variant, it had somewhat cured the problems every Panther had before
The Final drives had 2x the distance capable, though, it still shit
The Engine Carburetor, though didn’t light up as often, still did in slightly less regularity
The Transmission, they couldn’t even somewhat fix it, so too was the engine when it was over revved, really the G variant only solved the shot trap by adding in a gun shield at the bottom of the mantlet, the Panther still had an absolute 2nd rate HE round and the AP round had very little HE filler, about half that of a 76mm M62 APCBC
You can't fix a tank that is fundamentally poor in all but a few aspects.
@@Cobra-King3 I fin it sad that you claim that the Panther had a second rate HE shell when it has the same amount of filler as what the Sherman's 75mm M3 had at 690 grams of filler and more than the Panzer IV or StuG III had.
And then to think you want to compare the HE filler on their AP rounds.
Do you actually understand what you're saying here?
@@Dreachon Your a bit slow in the uptake here, the higher the velocity the shell is lobbed at, the more sturdy the shell has to be to survive getting out of the barrel, on paper, the Panther and Panzer IV have the same HE round, but due to the fact that the Panzer IV's 75mm gun lobs rounds at 750-790m/s compared to the Panther's 1km/s, the Panther's HE round had to be modified to carry more Steel, sacrificing HE filler, thereby making a less effective HE round
By the time they lost 1000s of them, they learnt the lesson. And also by that time allied also had lot better tanks.
if you had to go to war, in which tank would you rather go?
- panther
- sherman
- t34
- churchill
Depends on where I was going to war and what my job was. Could Panthers hit the beach at Iwo?
None of them. IS-2
Panther or tiger 2
@@Insert-Retarded-Reply-HereIS-2 I believe was a different class of vehicle? More on par with the Tiger models.
If you take everything into account, ease of manufacture, reliability, and overall quality, I don't see how you rate it as high as either a Sherman with the 76 high velocity gun or with a T-34-85. German tanks in general tended towards being over engineered a problem that persist to this day in the cars they make.
For a German tank, the Panther was pretty cheap and easy to produce - on par with the Panzer IV once production got into high gear, but the poor reliability on road marches and (just as important) difficult maintenance and repairs meant that there were always too few of them ready for battle, which was just never an issue with the highly reliable Sherman and the decently reliable and easy to repair T-34 both of which were also available in numbers that dwarfed the number of Panthers.
An interesting point would be the equivalent build cost of the Panther compared to the Sherman with the 76 mm gun and the T34-85
@@stevenbreach2561 those things are hard to quantify between nations with very different economies and production systems. Generally speaking, any German tank would be significantly more expensive than either a mass produces American or Soviet tank - even factoring in, that the American tank had to be shipped half a world away - simply due to Germany's less developed sysytems of mass production and the differing standards of manufacture.
The Panther is a moch more complex vehicle than either the Sherman or the T-34 and also significantly larger and heavier than both. By any metric it would be a lot more expensive.
The Panther is a fairly "cheap" tank only by German standards.
@@stevenbreach2561 wrote: "An interesting point would be the equivalent build cost of the Panther compared to the Sherman with the 76 mm gun and the T34-85"
-- Panther would be by far more expansive, not only money wise, but time and resources wise to produce, not to mentioned because it was a heavy tank, it had to be serviced as a heavy tank, but it didn't performed as a good heavy tank.
@@Finkeren wrote: "The Panther is a fairly "cheap" tank only by German standards."
--Exactly.
Early model Panthers is a definite No, but later models are a definite consideration for best tank…
They where good if they worked and in a 1v1 but in the reality it was way cheaper and easier to make and to keep it running. Because of this there where way more shermans and t34-85 on the battlefield( and the industry of the allies was way better)
That's true because when the panther tanks were built they were basically rushed to the front and because they hadn't been properly tested they lost more to failure and malfunction than they did destroyed and once they fixed the problems it was a formidable tank
@@funkymarco4411 well nearly all t34 went out of factories in already horrible shape you would never meet a t34 like those from museums since those were probably made after the war, so sovoet could boast how good they were, but in reality because stalin didn't knew works such as "construction time" they were really rushed in factories and german factries were non stop bombed so 1000 or even more panthers could have been produced
@@szynszylku1447 bro the panter was to expensive, unreliable and hard to maintain. The shermans, comet's, t34 and the other tanks used where just better at the those poinst
@@funkymarco4411 t34? reliable? Those from factories? Besides sherlock because panther was a bad tank doesn't make t34 a good one are you drunk or what?
The T-34 was a pile of shit. Panzer 3's and 4's were more than a match for the crappy T-34
I'd say it was the best tank of WW2 if you'd ignore the mechanical failures.An 80mm sloped armor,good mobility and a very high velocity and long 75mm gun that is more effective than Tiger I’s 88mm at armor piercing.
If I was living in that time and had to pick between the Tiger I and Panther, I'd pick the Panther hands down. The Tiger is a notorious gas guzzler and its gun and turret are insanely heavy. All that armor means nothing if your stinking transmission keeps breaking from the stress...
It was the best overall DESIGN, but operationally, proved disappointing. A lesson in how "haste makes waste."
It should be pointed out that the USA and the USSR also developed, mid-war, improved tank designs that addressed the flaws of the Sherman and the T-34, respectively, but elected to, in both cases, simply fit the turret of the improved design, and for the same reason: it was figured better to live with the shortcomings of the existing chassis and content themselves with the improvements the new turret brought. In the case of the Sherman, there were 76-mm gun versions on the old turret, but they proved somewhat cramped; the T23 turret had better protection and was a bit roomier. As for the T-34/85, the turret came from the T-43 model, but was originally intended to continue with the 76 mm gun, which would have three men in it. It was a change in the purpose of the KV and JS tanks, both up-armored and "lighter but faster" versions of the KV were tested, with unsatisfactory results. The Soviets figured that increased firepower was needed more than either, and the new turret for the T-34 could take the D-5T 85mm gun, solving the firepower and mobility issues (somewhat). Also, the KV tanks, now changed to the JS series, were reverted to the original purpose of the Soviet heavy tanks, i.e., the "break-through" role, to take on enemy fortifications, hence why the 85 mm gun was given to the T-34, and they got the 122 mm gun, much better suited as a "bunker buster".
Both the Sherman and the T-34, especially the T-34/85, proved that the concept of "being the fustest with the mostest" won out over technical features of the various "toys".
All the Germans "up gunned" variants were produced too late and in too small of numbers to make a difference. They were needed in 1941 while the cream of their army was still alive !!!
Hitler did not plan for a long war, he was a gambler, upping his bet after winning the last one, until he could not win anymore.
@@ricardosoto5770 after conquering almost all western Europe , he should stop , but man is greedy ,always greedy ,wants more and ...more...that's going to his downfall
@@dand7763 Once he conquered al Western Europe, Hitler shall had tried to negociate a formal end of the Versailles accord, and a new European arrangement favorable to Germany. Before foccusing in creating a Polish protective Ost Wall line vs the URSS containig the URSS instead of invading. But he was a gambler, and gamblers often get trapped into their games. Hitler never realy has an endgame to the war. And he kept burning bridges.
Should have taken care of Britain before going East
@@destroyerarmor2846 it was impossible for him to
Assessing whether a tank is "best" is subjective. I'd say the "best" tank is the one that best accomplishes objectives in its intended role. Merely evaluating armor and firepower, IMO, may be fine for comparative technical merit, but other factors, such as reliability, maintainability, AVAILABILITY, and how well crews can utilize their mounts, have to be considered. Though indeed the Panther was an excellent DESIGN, in manufacture, it revealed several serious defects which hampered its reliability, enough that Hitler himself derided the vehicle as the 'Clanking He 177' (in reference to a very troubled aircraft, the English transliteration of its nickname, "Grief" (Falcon), is apropos). Part of this was rushing the tank through development and sending them to the front before all the "teething" problems had been resolved, part of it was that the long-standing blockade by the Royal Navy and Allied bombing hampered production overall and development of a more suitable final drive. But, given its overall balance of armor, firepower, and mobility, it can be said to be the first "true" main battle tank, before the concept had been devised. This happened more due to design and feature "creep" as the tank was developed, more than a careful process. Certainly the Panther had huge influence on Western AFV design, especially in the immediate postwar era.
But my pick for "best" tank of WWII would be the humble M4 Sherman, due to how adaptable it proved to be, its reliability, and that a well-trained Sherman crew could hold their own against even the German "Big Cats", or later, as was shown in August and September of 1950, during the battles along the Naktong river in Korea, in defense of the Pusan perimeter, where M4A3E8 "Easy Eight" Shermans absolutely pasted the DPRK T-34/85s. Perhaps more due to air cover, logistics, leadership, training, and doctrine than comparative technical merit, but indeed it was shown armored engagements could be handily won with the Sherman. A further engagement in 1967, against Soviet supplied JS-3 heavy tanks at Rafah fielding by the Egyptian Army, where a battalion of them was annihilated by IDF armor, using "IShermans" (Israeli Shermans), who in turned suffered no losses. Here's the utter irony, the Jewish state's military upgraded their mounts with a French 75mm tank gun (used also on their AMX-13), which itself was based on the GERMAN KwK 42 L70 tank gun, used mainly on the (drumroll...) PANTHER.
The Sherman did it’s job well but not great. The IS-2 deserves that title because it exceeded even soviet expectations, and scared the Germans to the point where Wehrmacht command ordered their panzers to not engage them unless they possessed a tactical advantage. It was expected that it would simply be a bunker buster, but actually it was very effective in an anti tank role, and due to this they used them with devastating effect to spearhead their medium tanks.
@@Insert-Retarded-Reply-Here Herr "SchwarzTodt", you might be a fanboy of the IS-2, but I've linked to just ONE example of where the IS-2 was clearly outfought Since most of the Panzerwaffe, by the time the Stalin tanks appeared in 1944, was equipped with the 75mm L48 weapon (Mark IV, StuG III, and Hezter being examples), and this weapon could not penetrate the frontal armor of the IS-2 at less than 500 meters, save with the very rare tungsten-cored AP rounds (i.e, they didn't usually have it on hand), the "tactical advantage" was much the same, as, for example UK and US Sherman crews adapted to take on the "Big Cats", that is, use their MOBILITY advantage to get a side or rear shot instead of engaging frontally. The IS-2, though it was no slouch in the anti-armor role, suffered from a very slow rate of fire and relatively FEW rounds. Furthermore, they were issued few AP rounds, and until the last few months, no HEAT rounds, but that didn't mean they were helpless, as even the standard HE rounds could do damage, and DID. However, accuracy of the AS-19 and/or D-25T guns was lacking, which hampered these "tanks", more properly termed turreted assault guns, from being effective in the anti-tank role. To be fair, it wasn't intended, as by then, the T-34/85 was intended to engage the Panzers, and, in 1945, the SU-100 proved devastating to even the King Tiger. So, I have to disagree profoundly with the IS-2 being considered anything other than a lumbering assault gun that was tough to knock out, but not the best vehicle for a tank duel.
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@@selfdo I think you forgot what a tank is. A tank is not meant to fight other tanks, it’s meant to provide the boots on the ground with armor and high explosive firepower. The D-25T gun was actually very accurate, the sights were not the best but it wasn’t as inaccurate as you portray it. The rate of fire wouldn’t matter if 1 hit was enough to destroy a Tiger I or Panther, any hit to any of those tanks’ fronts would at the very least disable it, all it had to do was aim center mass, and vice versa was not true. The low AP issued to these tanks is vastly vastly exaggerated, there was no case where an IS-2 had to expend all of its AP shells. The reason why the early IS-2s performed poorly was because the crew were not properly trained on the new experimental tank and it still had some flaws in the armor, specifically hull design. These were quickly fixed toward late 1944 though and the only tank gun that was found to be able to take it out somewhat reliably was the long 88 the tiger II sported. However the Tiger II had its own severe issues to contend with as well.
The narrator mentions a diesel engine. I don't know if this was planned but never installed. As far as I know the tanks were equipped with a 12 cylinder air cooled Maybach gasoline engine.
Correct. It was a error on behalf of the narrator
12 cylinder yes. Air cooled no.
it was vulnerable to side hit on the turret-usually caused an ammunition fire-gearbox was overtaxed-until they had the modified mantel on the turret -the soviets discovered that an AP round placed at the base of the turret would blow it clean off
Great video. Its refreshing to see an analytical look at the Panther free of the “fan boy” perspective. I’m sure I’ll take return fire for that, and don’t care. In the end the Panther was too heavy, too complex to manufacture and maintain, unreliable, and too few in number(numbers made fewer by the lousy operational ready rate)
The panther copied the t34 as in wide tracks sloping armour. But with good optics and a good gun.once the problems were ironed out it was formidable. But fuel was always a problem late inn the war
Yeah it was good in the hard factors Speed, Firepower, and Armor but it was horrible in the soft factors Reliability, Cost, Logistics etc etc.
If it had been mechanically reliable it would probably be the best mass-produced tank of the war just going on battlefield performance. Lethal gun, very good front armor, very good mobility. But considering all the factors from production cost and time, mechanical reliability, ease of maintaining it in the field, etc no, not the best. T-34/85 or the 76mm Sherman would be the best taking all factors into account.
The panther had a kill/loss ratio of 1.2 to 1
While being almost exclusively on defense (generally considered a 3:1 advantage for the defenders) so I'm not sure about the combat record reflecting it being such a good tank.
The one large scale battle against the Sherman was arrancourt. Kursk wasn't exactly a stellar performance either.
I don't see the combat record as showing it being all that effective.
I agree on both of you, yes it has good sloped armor, good main armament and etc. let’s compare it to the tiger 1
Differences: the tiger is heavier than the panther in result it’s a bit slower than the panther is lighter so at least a bit faster than the tiger. Both have the same armor, 100mm but the panther has sloped armor, let’s take the T-34 as an example, it’s armor is 45mm but since it’s sloped it had a 100mm armor effect so the Panther is similar. The tiger have a 88mm but the panther is 75mm. Similarities: both tanks, Tiger 1 and Panther have a powerful main gun, both can do damage/destroy a M4 (sherman). Armor is the same 100mm (but the tiger is 25-120). Unluckily both’s tank engine’s can catch fire more especially when in combat.
@@ssb2lostplayer926 the t34 had 45mm armor at 60 degrees, equivalent to 90-95 depending on source(assuming it's made correctly, which is another issue/debate)
Basing gun power on bore diameter is not a good idea(and not always is the bore the same as it is named).
Then please take a look at the actual manuals as to how that country trained and expected to used their tanks.
For all the noise about tank vs tank, it was rare, and not exactly what the tanks were supposed to be doing, please read the GERMAN manuals.
And the point of a tank in getting steel on target. That's turret traverse, optics, communication between the crew, reload speed, and accuracy.
The kwk43 is a great big gun(needing a huge tank, the panther was taller than the Sherman). It's performance came at a cost, there is no such thing as a free lunch, EVERYTHING is a compromise. A Ferrari is a great fast car that has no space for groceries and gets shitty gas mileage.
It's just about impossible to simulate ergonomics in a video game, the sights are all the same view with maybe a different reticle. So not the case sitting in the gunner's seat in different tanks, or for that matter different models of the same tank.
You have to take into account sabotage and material quality when talking about German equipment, problems the Allies nor the Soviets had to contend with. By the time the panthers were rushed into service slave labour was being carried out and therefore sabotage. When you look at panzer 4s pre 1942 reliability was never an issue, however by 1945 sources show that the reliability of the panzer 4 and the panther the be comparable with most accounts favouring the panther.
@@alexgeorgescu1843 why?
That was the plan from the outset as to how the panther was going to be produced. Period. They designed it specifically so slave labor could produce it.
If that is your argument, then you cannot judge the Sherman for lack of armor because the had to transport it. (64mm at 47 degrees works out to 94mm so not exactly weak armor but whatever).
The whole point of Barbarossa and the Sudetenland and the rest was resources. The started the war and conquered territory specifically for resources.
These superb vehicles were so good that at any one time, only around 30 percent were available for combat!
Lack of fuel, the G version was great but limited numbers were built.
Well, the Chieftain had quite a few niggles about the Panther. And I think this tank did indeed have room for improvement. But hey, they all have that, don't they? Aesthetically I have always liked it, it was one of my first models that I glued together. Nice vid, thanks!
Greets from the Netherlands 🌷, T.
Got the Bandai kit as a kid, the Tamiya A model was the first I built as a adult. Got the Dragon early A in my dsiplay shelf and the Late A and all the Gs in my stash. Its a tank I love but as many late german war stuff is overtly hyped.
Great design. Let the paper-hanger hang 10 tons of extra armor on it. Whoops, transmission explodes. Who would'a thunk it?
Panther was kind of, by default, the best medium tank of the late war period, simply because the Soviets and the Americans felt no need to completely overhaul T-34 and Sherman tank designs, since they were winning anyways and it was more cost effective to just upgrade them to T-34-85 and various Sherman versions with bigger guns and more armor. Soviets, for example, had a T-44 completely done and ready for production and even manufactured in large quantities but never used it because it wasn't really needed (it became later with changed the famous T-54/55 tank).
wrote: "the best medium tank of the late war period"
What makes you think, Panther was a medium tank? It surely was not.
@@RussianThunderrr tanks are designated by their roles. It’s like retards trying to say that the Chinese type99 destroyer is a cruiser because it’s 13k tons while they have a 15k ton shit that they call a destroyer aka the zumwalt
@@Phantom-bh5ru wrote: "tanks are designated by their roles. It’s like retards trying to say that the Chinese type99 destroyer is a cruiser because it’s 13k tons while they have a 15k ton shit that they call a destroyer aka the zumwalt"
-- Tanks are designed by engineers, and not "by their roles", and in accords to the specs of who ever order the tanks. Tanks classified by military establishment which ever fits their military doctrine, which is always a subject to change. And idiots like you write incoherently, and would probably have a hard time explaining this:
" It’s like retards trying to say that the Chinese type99 destroyer is a cruiser because it’s 13k tons while they have a 15k ton shit that they call a destroyer aka the zumwalt" !!!
@@RussianThunderrr "tanks are designed by engineers, and not by their roles" read what I write. designated does not = designed. don't say anything if you did not even read what tf I said. imagine trying to say I write incoherently when you cant even tell the difference between 2 words. fucking pathetic.
@@Phantom-bh5ru - Tanks are classified, not designated.
Panther was rushed. What could go wrong?
In November of ‘41 Guderian hosted a conference to determine what to do with the T-34. The replacement medium tank for the Pzr III/IV had been shelved just before the war started. This replacement then became the Pzr V(ultimately Panther) project and was lightning fast in its design and production. Two competing prototypes were completed by March of ‘42 and Hitler chose one(with the insistence of an additional 2cm frontal armor). Full production started in September of ‘42 with the aim of having enough on hand for Kursk.
Panther never could replace the Pzr IV. It ended up being assigned to a roughly 1:1 ratio with the older tank. Its anti armor performance was quite good. Infantry support much less so.
Some of Panther’s weaknesses could be rectified at the factory. Others (final drive in particular) couldn’t be fixed and drivers were expected to pamper the drive train to prevent breakdown. Experienced crews did okay with this. Inexperienced crews were far less successful.
A well-researched and nuanced video.
Once the initial gremlins had been removed it was without doubt one of the best tanks of WW2. All tanks have advantages and disadvantages, but it was feared by all and could have done much more had it not been for lack of numbers - only 6600 or so. Cant build a tank if some nasty bomber has flattened the factory and you cant use a built one if there's no fuel or its kaput again.
germany industry was acually pretty good in 1944 allies loved to bomb civilians insteed of the acual factorys
But statistically it was one of the worst tanks Germany ever built.
@@darkknight6432 How so? The combat record of Panther-equipped units speaks for itself in terms of "giveaway/takeaway" ratio.
As relatively few tanks as the Germans actually produced, they lacked fuel, spare parts, and TRAINED, EXPERIENCED crew for what they did have. Not to mention ARVs, which the war showed were crucial to keep up combat strength of armored units.
What got the Germans by was their ability to build improvised self-propelled guns and/or tank destroyers out of otherwise obsolete chassis, retaining the advantages of experience with them and the tooling and facilities needed to produce them. And the vehicle and/or gun(s) didn't even have to be German in origin! This was shown by the Marder III, built on the Czech 38(t) tank chassis (which simply couldn't be upgraded to take even the 5 cm gun of the Panzer III), equipped with a SOVIET 76.2 mm gun (many had been captured in 1941 and 1942), rechambered to take the longer German PzGr rounds. That vehicle shows the forced resourcefulness of German weapons design. The 38(t) itself was modified into quite a few AFVs, culminating in the famous Hetzer tank destroyer, which served, post-war, in the Swiss Army into the 1970s!
It was quite good, except for breakdowns, and the projectile trap created by the gun mantlet. Any shell striking below the horizontal midline of the mantlet would be deflected downward into the top of the chassis roof. The armor there was only an inch and a half thick. The driver and others were usually killed.
Sidney Radley Walters got several in that way.
It didn't happen often and in fact the Germans didn't even bother to address it until over a year after its introduction. Other issues were more pressing.
The Panther G has a chin to prevent that shell trap and is also the most produced variant of the panther
@@_kommandant_3055 False, most G panthers produced did not have the Chin mantlet. Only the ones built by MAN after november 1944. Im quoting Jentz and Doyle books on the Panther. MNH ones did never got the Chin or DB ones.
For a "quite good" tank that was designed to counter superior numbers, it had a very slow traverse (the pzr4 had independent traverse let alone the opposition), narrow FOV optics (multiple sights were standard on the Sherman complete with an unmagnified one), and no commander override (so the TC can help the gunner find the next target/threat instead of 10 degrees left of the sycamore, the other left).
Add in the mechanical woes, the neutral steer was against orders due to breakage, and the frontal armor and specialized gun that is poor in HE (for hitting towed guns, a more common threat than a tank) starts to look a bit less impressive.
IMO The best tank was the M4's cause they were used effectively in every terrain one can imagine. They were used in the western front, in the deserts of north Africa, in small numbers in USSR, and in the Pacific islands. Apart from being cheap and easy maintenance.
I used to dislike the Sherman, but there were lots of variants. And numbers do not lie a about the Sherman. They disprove the memes. Biut Shermans are so modular and can be so different that the only thing in common is the name M4 Sherman, hulls, engines, suspensions, tracks, turrets, guns, change. Only the machineguns, transmisions, pioneer tools and headlights were the same! The Shermans was the only tank to have fought in all fronts of WW2, MTO, ETO, PTO, CBI, the Ostfront. I agree that the better variants of the Sherman can compete for best tank of WW2.
@@ricardosoto5770 Yes! Me too. I used to deslike Sherman because of those old documentaries talking about tanks and the German gun and armor superiority, that created a myth of the Tiger for example. But if you take a more macro approach to it you'll see that a tank to be really good doesn't have necessarily to have better gun and better armor... Really nice
@@ricardosoto5770 I used to dislike Sherman, but then I learned about the fact that it was extremely easy to get out of, was easy to maintain, reliable, and had a gun stabilizer.
Logistics wins every time.
@@martkbanjoboy8853 Childhood is thinking fancy weapons win wars, adulthood is realizing logistics win wars. " An army march on his stomach". Napoleon.
The Panther was great on the battlefield, but had horrible problems with maintenance and durability which limited its usefulness.
Yeah the first two models were terrible. 85% of Panzergrenadier Grossdeutschland’s Division were immobilized before the Germans launched Operation Citadel.
Respectfully though the Panther G Model is by far the Greatest Tank of World War 2.
You act as if Germany wasn’t the most technological advanced military during this time. Did you think they were’t going to fix the issues that were found?
Come on now guy
IF the Germans had stopped production of the Tiger and focused on the Panther, they could have produced a real Sherman killer both in power/armor and sheer numbers.
Na ja wenn die Amerikaner unter Dauer bombardierung gelegen hätten, wäre das wohl auch nichts mit Massen Produktion geworden
PS. In der g Serie waren die Mängel zum großen Teil beseitigt und die 7,5 cm high velocoty Kanone war wahrscheinlich die beste ihres kalibers im 2 Weltkrieg
@@largol33t1 Everything is a Sherman killer...
I've read a lot that supports your conclusion. All those burning engines and breakdowns at Kursk must have been Hellish for the crews.
FactBytes, I have heard about Canadian Sherman tanks firing armour piercing shells right at the neck ( the part where the turret meets the hull ) of some Panthers and disabling their long 75mm guns. Is that true?
Any (decent)shot at the hull glascis could cause the round to ricochet and penetrate the thin top (hull)
armour of the Panther......Also a ground hit(just below the frontal sloped armour)could also ricochet and penetrate....Again, these shots at the Panther were rare,but could and did occur.....Overly engineered machine.......
Yes it is. My dad was US 6th Armored combat veteran. We told me about it. Shell trap
Yes, very much so.
@@bazzakeegan2243 Not the hull glasis but the barrel mantlet, that is why late model Gs built by man had a redesigned chin mantlet, and the F models would have a whole new turret with a different frontal hull roof.
Tiger 131 star of the movie "fury" was hit there and it's turret jammed you can still see the damage
What most people forget the German crews started in Spanish civil war. The Germans called the M4 Sherman cigarette lighters one hit they expload. Yes the Tiger panther tanks had there problems as with any weapon systems, that went from the factory to the front line. However the German crews were better train the one crew that comes to mind is the tiger ace Michael witmen who was Lost in the Fighting in Normandy the Black baron.
I doubt you could get two people to even agree on the criteria and weightings to be used to calculate a "best" tank, let alone apply it some vehicle to achieve an objective result.
For a "balanced" design- armor, firepower, mobility, command, control, communication- Panther, Comet, t34/85, M4E6 are pointing very strongly in the direction of what we call a Main Battle Tank-> the Centurion arguably being the first true MBT.
wrote: "the Centurion arguably being the first true MBT"
-- Lol, except it was not! What makes you think that way? T-34 was first MBT(or rather Universal tank). Happy Thanksgiving, Turkey!
@@RussianThunderrr Not sure any tank that was in service the same time as the "heavys" could be considered an MBT.
@@Andy-co6pn - Heavy Tank is a very specialized tank mainly for break through, so it’s not the tank that doing a majority or armored force fighting, hence it’s not a MBT by definition.
@@RussianThunderrr no one uses a heavy tank any more because a true MBT does all the jobs on the battlefield
@@Andy-co6pn - Lol, define heavy thank then…
Second lieutenant Fritz Langanke of the 2 SS panzer Div. Stated that it was one of the best functional tanks they had. But what does he know right? He only commanded one
One of the best functional tanks they had… really? They lost much more Panthers to mechanical failure and engine fires than to battle. Maybe if they had ran on pervitin, like most of their crews….
@@lolkevandewitte1713 yeah especially the early models but when the later models came out I guess they were pretty decent besides the gunner having to rely om the commander sighting everything. And that could also be said about a lot German vehicle of the war a lot lost due to mechanical failures. Whether or not he could be boasting about it being as good as he said I’m gonna take his word for it cuz he was there rather than people 80 years later doing research about it.
Spotting everything*
@@lolkevandewitte1713 late war Panthers still had final drive issues though however they corrected this to an extent by improved crew training improved parts and the fact that Germany didn’t have to travel as far as they once had to. They rolled out of Germany to a defensive position in Germany. As for Fritz Langanke he commended his panther tank at the battle of the bulge which means bringing in a panther from Germany by railway wasn’t that far which didn’t expend the life of the final drive
@@Venom21211 you’re clearly well informed, thanks for sharing
Nice One plus my favourite! Cheers
ppl that interested in the Panther quite in-depth view from modern perspective, the tank museun curator and ofc paired with real statistics and record from the germans in ww2 should watch Military History Visualized channel video of it. and im definitely not advertising the channel
The Garfield tank! (MHV inside joke).
The panther was not perfectly balanced. It was actually a specialized tank destroyer with a turret. The turret was too small and moved too slowly, the armor on the sides were too thin, the engine used too much gasoline, it offered poorer vision than other German tanks and overall, it was unergonomic.
Interestingly enough, the Panzerwaffe considered upgrading the Panther with the "Schmallturm", which was NARROWER, but could take the KwK 43 88mm weapon used on the Jagpanther and King Tiger.
I'd disagree with your assessment of the Panther as a "tank destroyer", though indeed Panthers "destroyed" MANY Allied and Soviet tanks. By then, German doctrine was to design their battle tanks mainly to combat other tanks, with performance against "soft" targets a secondary consideration. Any Panzer regiment had an organic tracked SP gun battalion, and a SP howitzer battalion under divisional control. This is contrary to how, for example, the US Army equipped its Shermans, which, with the majority having the M3 75mm gun, were intended to get into the enemy rear and "raise merry hell", not to engage enemy armor unless they had to. The appearance of better armed and armored German tanks soon caused the US to equip some of their Shermans with 76.2 mm guns which had better anti-tank performance, the Limeys with the 17-pounder ("FIrefly"), which were intended to slug it out with enemy armor. They were still considered "tanks", tank destroyers were typically open-topped, lightly armored vehicles, too vulnerable to roam about in the enemy rear, but useful to stop German tank attacks. Trouble was, the German's didn't always "O-Blige them", and often Allied tank destroyers were used for infantry support, which they were not designed for.
Considering that many modern MBTs are issued only smoke and/or APFSDS rounds (APDS in the case of the UK Challenger 2), by your standards, EVERY tank is not, but should be called a "tank destroyer".
Germany would have been better off increasing the Panzer 4 production with regular updates.
I’ve always considered the T34 as the best Tank of WWII… It was simple to manufacture, easy to maintain in the field, good sloping armor and the later version was given a eighty-five mm cannon.
I agree - the T34-85 was the mutts nuts. Even when stationary it looked like it was going somewhere with purpose!.
T34s armor was obsolete by 1942. Adding a bigger gun (and a bigger turret) didnt really do much for the survivability of its crews. It was all about mass production. "It dont matter if our tanks are trash! Produce 80k more of them!" -Stalin, probably
T34 made a huge impression on the germans back at the start of operation barbarossa (when all theyve had were 37mils and short 75s), but this effect was quickly diminished, when germans replaced the stubby 75 of the panzer IV with its "longnose" (same for stugs). That gun, while not the best mounted on the panzer IV, was capable of destroying anything the allies had, bar maybe the IS2 or the pershing.
When it comes to reliability, the best vehicles in the war were the sherman, t34, and panzer IV. In terms of firepower, the panzer IV had all of them beat, until the 85 was mounted on the t34. In terms of crew survivability... t34 was the absolute worst, followed shortly by the sherman. The panzer iv wasnt all that good, in terms of armor, but the gun allowed it to perform better than competing tanks (hitting them from further away, due to excellent ballistics of the round used and the optics).
I forgot to mention the brit workhorse, the cromwell... theres nothing to say about it. It may have been reliable, but its essentially a poor mans sherman. Worse armor, more or less the same gun, inadequate for the (ground based) enemies it faced.
it was the best tank 0f 1941-42 but in 1943 onwards it was outclassed by both the panther and tiger tanks; even with the upgunned 85mm gun it was still outclassed by newer german tanks, the german tanks had better sights, a crew of 5 and all were equipped with radios, communication is the key to succes in any battle., flying a MESSER depite their short comings, their kill ratio speaks for itself, remember that despite the shermans reliability it was called the Tommy cookers or ronson lighters, the T34 and Sherman was more reliable but their kill ratio is lower than the panther. Remember that Erich Hartman shot dowh 352 aircraft includihg 8 P51 mustangs, flying a Messerschmid Bf109.
@@LiezAllLiez wrote: "T34s armor was obsolete by 1942. Adding a bigger gun (and a bigger turret) didnt really do much for the survivability of its crews. It was all about mass production. "It dont matter if our tanks are trash! Produce 80k more of them!" -Stalin, probably"
-- Why only 80K, and not 180K? Stalin is dead, he won't be able to counter lies about T-34 tanks, right?
@@LiezAllLiez wrote: "In terms of crew survivability... t34 was the absolute worst, followed shortly by the sherman. The panzer iv wasnt all that good, in terms of armor, but the gun allowed it to perform better than competing tanks (hitting them from further away, due to excellent ballistics of the round used and the optics)."
-- What make you say that? 200 litter gasoline fuel tank that replaced Pz-IV turret traverse mechanism, because it had a poor range in 1944. T-34-85 gun would have no problem knocking out Pz-IV at any distance Pz-IV could T-34. Survivability M4 with Wet stowage was probably best of all three tanks.
How EVERY long story about the Panther tank starts: "The T-34....
wrote: "How EVERY long story about the Panther tank starts: "The T-34...."
--Yep, and that is how it should starts... Lol, you nailed it!
Me personally feel like the Soviet T-34 85 was the best tank mainly because of a few very important factors. 1st, it could be produced in huge numbers. 2nd, it had a diesel engine that work in very cold winter conditions which proved to be war changing for the Russians. 3rd, the 85 variant had a comparable main gun which made it more effective and of course the sloping armor (which the Russians had before the Germans) which was proving itself quite nicely against panzer III and IV's.
The construction quality was so horrible that daylight would often shine through welds in the hull and the T-34 was expected to break down about every 50 kilometers. Not the best by a long shot.
The Panther was so good that in 1945 after the end of WW2, the French army grabbed as many Panthers as they could and used them. You could see Panthers in French scrapyards up until the early 1970's when folk realised they were worth money and salvaged them. A Panther in good nick, complete and original today is worth over 10 Million quid.
Hitler preferred the DB design, which more closely resembled the T-34. In this one rare case, I have to say he was probably right in this regard. The MANN design was overly complicated, was taller and wider, and used a gasoline engine rather than the safer diesel engine.
Shhhh do not tell the werhaboos with the Ronson meme that german tanks used gasoline engines too!
The DB was far more complicated, and it was unsuited for mass production.
@@Dreachon Oh wow ok. According to the documentary the MANN design was more complicated, but if you say the DB was worse, then maybe it's a good thing for them they didn't pursue it.
@@LA_Commander Complicated is a big word and sadly a lot of people have this misconception that the DB design was the answer to all of the German tank problems.
In reality the DB design came with its own set of issues, a lot of these being that it used components that weren't in production, had a very very limited production or still had to be designed.
The DB design would not have been ready for production to start in January 1943 which was a major requirement that the Germans had.
@@ricardosoto5770 This is not only a meme , the own Sherman crew's called the M4 Ronsons and the Germans Tommy cocker . The ammo got lighted up with almost every hit and not the gasoline engine . Wet ammo stowage later solved this problem .
Hitler's meddling was a mixed result for the Germans. The Ardennes Offensive in 1940 was brilliant, but adding 15 tons of weight to the Panther seems to have been a serious impediment to battlefield success. Rushing the Panther D into service too early, just to use it for Zitadelle, was not wise either. Better to just have cancelled the 1943 Summer Offensive and go with Guderian's mobile defense proposal.
They couldn't make enough of them fast enough to make a difference. It broke down a lot. The Sherman may not have had as much firepower, but the where relatively cheap, mass produceable, fast, and reliable.
in hindsight yes. but in the germans view they're the most produced tank in 1943-1945 when it's also the peak of allied bombing campaing in europe especially in 1944. it doesn't gave the breakdown record of tiger and king tiger and far too many ppl exaggerated that it will breakdown every 150km, you can watch MHV channel video of the panther for the reference
The Sherman lack of firepower was due to US army bad planning, the Sherman was designed with a ovesize turret rig, and it was modular in nature, so the tank coul grow, but they did not push for a bigger gun until 1944. Shermas had being fitted with 76mm guns, with 90mm guns, with a french copy of the 75mm gun of the Panther (IDF M50), with a 105 Howitzer, with a 105 AT gun designed for post war MBTs (IDF M 51), and with the brits 17 pounder. Doing that in a Pz IV chassis or a T 34 and keeping the rotating turret was impossible.
About the armor, there is nothing they could do, Yes you have the A3E2 Jumbos, but they were a special task tank, they US has to move tank by ship far a way, they by railroad and road marches not only to Europe, but to the Pacific islands, and to India, a very heavy tank would have complicated the logistics a lot.
iven that the Panther's service rate is pretty much on par with the Panzer IV it did not break down as much as certain people try to paint it as.
@@Dreachon depends of the marks and time of production. Early D models did break down a lot, A and early G models were reliable by german tank standards (pz4), as the director of the Bundesmuseum said, they were acceptably reliable considering what the bring on the table in mobility, armor and firepower, late G models had the produccion pitfalls of late war german crumbling industrial base and logistics.
@@ricardosoto5770 Correct, it is pretty standard that the first version of any tank is going to be the worst one mechanically, this can be seen with others such as the T-34, Cromwell, Pershing, Churchill, KV and if I am to believe what some at TE have found the Sherman as well.
獵豹或黑豹坦克雖然有高速炮但行動不便?令蘇聯T34及美國雪爾曼坦克成為第二次世界大戰最多人用中型坦克?現在仍有T34及雪爾曼坦克行蹤?Panther although had high velocity gun but malfunction suspension system ? Leads Soviet Union T34 and United States Sherman became World War Two mostly people used medium tank ? Today we still found working T34 and Sherman tanks ?
The Panther and Tiger were not really the tanks the German army(Gudarian) wanted. Hitler interfered, and made them a lot heavier. He didn't unders the value of speed. Very good video. A lot of things I didn't know.
Panthers were significantly faster than Shermans, something often ignored or forgotten.
@@TacoSallust Doesn't matter how fast or powerful Germany's tanks were after they failed to conquer Moscow, they could have hovered for all that mattered and it still wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war.
My Favorite panther IS not A or G , its the original, before the must have of hitler
@@ginch8300 I think hovering tanks COULD have changed the outcome of the war, as long as the main gun could decline to hit ground targets.
@@GrislyAtoms12 Hovering, not flying. Flying tanks undoubtedly would have changed the outcome of the war, hovering tanks levitating five meters off the ground on the other hand wouldn't have changed anything after Germany failed to conquer Russia.
Every wheraboo gangsta until transmission leaves the server
I wouldn’t consider it the best. But definitely in the top two. It was a balanced tank that did almost everything.
Including set itself on fire! :^D I had a much higher opinion of it until I learned it required final drive maintenance before running through a tank of fuel. That's sad.
The EZ8 version of the Sherman was probably the best all round tank of the war . Relatively cheap, easy to mass produce, reliable, hard hitting, good x country ,less liable to burst into flame because of wet ammo storage . Detroit finally got it right.
@@michellebrown4903 nope. The E8 had good anti tank capability but it had a terrible HE shell. That title would go to the IS-2, which was reliable, well armored, one of the best guns in the war, and good terrain crossing capability
@@Insert-Retarded-Reply-Here the is2 had a 122 mm gun of courses it had a good he shell that like comparing a lightweight fighters punch to a heavy
@@j_mack__1370 and? I already said it had one of the best tank guns in the war. The IS-2 is still the best
It's terrifying 😳 to think about what a perfect Panther force would have done.
If the Germans had just built Stug's and concentrated on upgrading the MkIV and not wasting their time on all these "super tanks" they would have had more of each and given the allies a harder time.
but you need for more tanks more tank commanders
@@ramonschlittler8403 and they would need more oil that they didn’t have
The difference in the amount of fuel a Tiger II used and a Panzer IV used was huge.And you have the cost of changing production lines that were already geared up to making a Panzer IV chassis.The cost of extra materials to make Panthers and Tigers.The cost of transporting heavier tanks to the battlefields and the logistics of moving heavier tanks around on light roads and bridges.
@@stephenmudiecastles.2938 that’s a fair point, but then Germany would have to train about 4x more crew with the manpower shortages they had.
The Tiger 2 and the others were a waste of money, but the Panther was not as expensive compared with the mark 4 and brung more to the table. It reability issues could have been fixed, if the german industrial base had not been crumbling, and they use of slave labor, a issue that also hit the late Mark 4s too,
Bad transmissions, extremely hard to repair in the field. Good gun and front armor. Cramped interior, shortage of spare parts. Lack of fuel for all German war machines. Cheaper to build than Tiger, still could not build or man enough of them to make any real difference to the war's ultimate inevitable outcome.
Great tank, but it suffered from chronic reliability problems, some of which were still being worked on when the war ended. The gearbox needed great care by drivers to avoid stripping the teeth off the gears
You know, a lot of this is post war hysteria?
It wasn't so much the transmission but rather the final drive that was designed for a 35 ton tank not 45 ton's. I saw a comparison to the M-4's final drive the Panthers had straight cut gears the M-4 had diagonal cut gears (30% stronger) and there were two rows of them not one like the Panther.
@@markbrandon7359 This is true. In a tank that was still over engineered as only a WW2 design German tank could be, a deliberate decision was taken 2 use a cheaper, more simple 2 produce final drive in order 2 speed up production. This is kind of ironic really, considering the reliability problems this would cause in the field with units using the Panther.
@@markymark3572 Those problems are more overstated by historians than panzer crews at the time.
@@seppshlllearningcenter419 the french, while not in combat nor maintaining in the field only got 800km from the final drives.
The panthers were rail loaded for trips as short as 25km(yup it in the documentation) and there were standing orders not to neutral steer or go up hills because the things would break.
Then add in that roughly half of all captured panthers were abandoned not knocked out.
You might get the impression that maybe, just maybe, the historians might be understating the unreliability.
Excellent narration & footage. Thank you.
Glad you liked it
Not the best, not even the Germans best (the Tiger 1 is the one), but it was a good design that was rushed into production, Still the prettiest tank of WW2 in my book and the tank that got me into scale modelling. The late war T 34/85, the Sherman second gen, especially the E8 variants, the Pershing, and of course the Tiger 1, can compete for the title.
Jagdpanther, panther ausf G and Tiger 2 were the bedt.
Hmmmmm. Tigers were the Big Bad Boys on the playing field. However, more Tigers were lost due to breakdowns rather than any other reason. Throw in 85mm. gun on T-34, is my pick fer best of WWII.
I just love these arm chair robots, doesn't everyone. This automaton should ask all of the troops who fought this machine, lots of them would have been unable to answer then. Like all machines it had it's faults, but the United States Army said in a 1944 report that five M-4s (Sherman's) were needed to knock out one Panther, three of which would be knocked out themselves (that's fifteen men dead or wounded compaired to five). This machine lost because it was out numbered, fifty thousand M-4s to six thousand Panther's (5,679 actually) in western combat. In actuality, the Soviets won the war, and lost the most soldiers, and they produced some thirty thousand T 34s. Most land battles took place in russia, poland, and other east european countries with the majority of german losses there (the war there started in 1939 in poland, 1941 in russia, the us did not get land forces to europe until 1944, and yes I know that there were us troops in africa and italy before 1944, I said europe). But don't think that anyone today is going to tell the truth of the matter, certainly not the internet, you will have to go to the original reports to find any truth, and good luck with that.
Panthers (and tigers) captured in Normandy were tested by British and US experts. They concluded the armour cracked and dismantled when hit by even small anti-tank weapons and in fact was little better than rolled steel plate.
It certainly wasn't "feared" by its opponents just revered by the wehraboos.
Damn this is a pain too read, and far to exaggerated, and with little context to the real truth.
Something a Freeaboo or a Teaboo would say
@@jerryudonneedtoknow3903 gotteem
Nice freeabo comment :D or tea?
@@jerryudonneedtoknow3903 - Jerry, where did your comments go? I have time to reply to them, but they are deleted. I have not forget about, them, just did not have time. You bring a lots of interesting point, that I would like to address.
@@RussianThunderrr Yeah so the guy who posted the original comment deleted the comment, and thus our replies were deleted. Would you like for me to just create a random comment so we can have our discussion?
Krupp did not have the alloys until after the war. the Leopard with upgraded armour and electronics is very much a tank on the order of a panther
Performance wise it was the best tank of ww2. Not the Tiger E or Tiger B. It wasn't reliable as a T34 or the Sherman but it was much better performing when working. The PZ IVs had the reliability of the T34 and Sherman but they could have never built enough to compensate the loses. Americans and Russians could do that with Shermans and T34s. So they had to try not proven better performing stuff like the Panther and its versions + Tiger B etc. It's easy to bash on something but the fact that Panther shot so many more tanks than the Germans actually lost tells a lot. So in some ways it is the best tank of ww2. Overall it might be on stage with the T34. Everything after ww2 was based on the advantages of the T34 and the Panther. Just saying.
If the 'best tank' was the tank I would personally rather be in, it would be the Tiger I. The Tiger II being a close second as I'd hate to be a crew member having to maintain the Tiger II. Mind you if it could be categorized as a WW2 tank, I'd go for the Centurion.
In the video it says that the Panther wasn't as heavily armoured as the Tiger, this is wrong. The Panther did have thinner armour, but it was slopped. It's effective thickness was 140mm, compared to 100mm of the Tiger. It was also mentioned that the HE round was less effective than other 75mm rounds. This again isn't true. The Panther's HE round had about the same explosive filler as the round used for the Panzer 4 and Stug 3.
The side and rear armor of the Panther was much thinner than the Tiger one. In fact Soviet 45mm guns could take a Panther with a side shot and they did. Soviets thought the Panther was a tank destroyer and not a main tank due to the differences in frontal vs side armor but the Glacis of the Panther was better armored than a Tiger 1.
The 75mm HE round intitally was less filler than the older one of the PzIV, eventually they developed a low velocity round, that carry less metal and more filler, the same happened to the Brits with the 17 pounder, but it was after Nornandy, when the brits started to put 2 and not 1 Firefly per troop and field the Comet 77mm.
The Tigers frontal armour was considerably more effective than its 100mm paper thickness, due to its unique nickel steel quality and 265 Brinell Hardness. Also the slight angling (24 degrees on the nose plate). This gave the nose plate a circa 130mm effective thickness.
The nickel steel and Brinell Hardness also gave the 80mm side and rear plates an effective thickness of 90mm plus which was nearly double that of the Panther D and A.
Source: Tom Jentz, Germanys Tiger Tank.
Panthers frontal armor was very good, but its side armor was absolutely halfassed. It couldnt even reliably protect against a 14.5mm AT rifles for freaks sake!
@@lyndoncmp5751 The Nose plate was the only angled side of the Tiger armor but is almost never exposed in a tank. Also the sides of a Tiger 1 Turret were curved. That gave it extra protection. Sadly the Glacis, Sides and Mantlet were flat as a table.
@@pavelslama5543 That is why the russians intially thought it was a Tank Hunter. Very well protected fron the front but not from the sides.
Personally I think the tiger is a bit better since it s more balanced and more reliable by late 43. The tiger had the performance of a medium tank with better protection overall than the panther. It was also very comfy to drive
By later 44 Tiger was already partly past prime since other nations catched up. Panther was way to go
If it only could travel more than 150km without needing a new gearbox, it would have been a good tank.
again the 150km exaggeration, when the data about it is just one paper from 1947 by the french tested on remaining panther in western europe after the war. while some if not most of the germans tank crew records about the tank didn't have any breakdown less than 1500-2000km, some even more up to 4000
@@hermanwillem7057 Not ony the french paper, the brtis have the same experience, and the Soviets. road marches were hard on the Panther, perhaps not 150km but still les than allied tanks. The Brits even got MNH to build some Panthers after the war for testing and found they to be delicate. The problem was that late war, Germany was short of strategic minerals, to do the proper alloys for the final drives. but the mid production Panthers, the late model A and early G models were far more reliable, Germany still have stocks on molydenum and factories did not rely so much on slave labor as in the end of the war, Many late war german tanks shows clear signs of industrial sabotage.
@@ricardosoto5770 No, the Soviet make no comments on the only 150km. The Brits only make some remark from a handful of Panthers that they assembled themselves from parts scavenged from a bombed factory and had been assembled without any blueprints, all of which completed the test track in Germany before the British just drove them to destruction in the UK. They didn't have MNH make them for them.
The so-called French report is also as useless as it can be since it seems that nobody in almost 30 years has seen the actual report, and in all that time no less than 5 separate historians, one of whom is on the payroll of a major gaming company, have only ever been able to copy what Spielberger first published.
The 150km figure doesn't appear in Germans records and something that seems to get ignored all the time is that every Panther that fought in Normandy had to drive between 140 and 300km to get to the combat area.
We know that Chuckoo the captured Panther lasted for some 5 months with the British and another Panther captured and used by the French was in use with them for some 4 months.
BTW they french eventually rebuilt their Panthers and 800km marches where possible, it was not a problem of workmanship, it was a problem of industrial sabotage by slave labor, a common problem in late war german weapons.
The gearbox didn't need to be replaced after 150km.
The specs and the platform were "the best" of WWII, but there is many a slip twist the drawing board and production. The Panther G was my favourite tank to operate in Close Combat "The Russian Front", a PC war game simulator following historical battle fronts and opponents. Thank you for the great content FactBytes 🤟🍻🇨🇦
Can you do a video on the MAN version of the Panther with the Diesel engine that was very close to the T34?
That was the Daimler Benz one. The MAN one was the one actually produced.
You can find both prototypes in WoT if you'd like to see what they look like. They are the VK3001 and VK3002 designated vehicles
In another video from this channel it says the HE effectiveness of the Panther is actually similar to the Sherman 75mm's, which is very good by the way. 🤔
You're kidding about the Panther being the best tank. The T-34-85 and the Sherman are the best tanks.
Imagine in the Panther tank actually look like a t-34 imagine the battles.
t34 was shit tho only in nubers it was good
Tank for tank, the Panther probably was the best, once it got sorted out. In its debut, when the Germans foolishly depended upon it at the crucial Kursk battle(Citadel), the Panther was a mechanical/operational failure. Once sorted out, it was more mobile, easier to manage and navigate(bridges, etc.) and heavier hitting than the Tiger I. They even got its price to be only 10-15% higher than the Panzer Mark IV.
Bit of a myth that. The Panther proved very effective at Kursk and mechanical failures were not as high as the modern assumption. In fact the after action report by Von Lauchert shows that far more Panthers were in the repair shops due to battle damage than to mechanical failure, specifically mine damage.
Von Lauchert states the transmission modifications at Grafhenwohr pre battle were successful and that engine issues decreased the more the engines were run in.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Yeah, another problem was that Germans used to remove anti personel mines by taking the heaviest tanks around and driving straight over them. Not the best way to keep the suspension in working order.
Frequent transmission break downs and it's propensity to catch on fire are not qualities that one associates with the term, "best".
Some replies said the Kursk performance wasn't that bad, while another that it was overrated. The Panzer IV oddly had better protection against some rounds than the Panther. The pictures and commentary are what they are; at the end, the last gasp in the south(Kursk) had intrepid Mark IV's with a smattering of the vaunted Mark VI Tigers, the Panthers far behind. On the other hand, as stated, the sorted out Panther was much more mobile, bridge ready, and hard hitting than even the handful of Tiger I's in action.
Can you perhaps clarify two things?
1: As far as i know only very early models used FHA armor. But relatively early eliminated this requirement and used RHA armor on Panthers and Tigers as well i think.
2: Was its HE really this much weaker than those of the kwK 40 L/48? Because most sources told me there was little to no different and both had pretty much the same ammoung of HE filling. I am extremely curious to get an answer on this one and perhaps sources that claim it. I heared that the high velocity made the HE shells sometimes bounce off the ground due to its flat trajectory. But idk if thats true.
Thx in advance to anyone who can give me an solid answer to that.
No, he's is going off a piece of misinformation/myth, it is commonly claimed that the KwK 42 had a terrible HE round because it is a high velocity, however the actual information says the opposite.
The Panther was too complicated for Germany's already thinned-out resources. It had the makings of being the best tank but the Sherman was better. The Sherman could be kept in combat and it had an excellent crew survival rate. The Sherman did not catch fire as much as any other tank in the field, and apparently, not as much as the Panther. The Panther basically was not a "war-winner."
Sherman had two generations, first generation did really catch fire a lot due to the ammo storage in the spontoons, where is were the Ronson meme came from. Second gen Shermans moved the ammo storage to the bottom of the tank, with fire protection and Shermans became the more difficult tank to set of fire late in the war. Panthers store ammo in the same places first gen shermans did, they were just more difficult to penetrate on frontal shots. but penetrate a Panther form the side and it will burn. Also the Panther was not that expensive. The German shall hand focused in improving the Panther defects and build more Pz IVH and StuG 3s. The KT was indeed a waste of money. and the Maus, and the Jagdtiger, and the crazy paper panzers.
@@ricardosoto5770 yup all the time traveling tankers definitely called it the Ronson.
Have you checked the ammo storage on a pzr 3 or 4? Or basically any tank in WW2? All stored in basically the same place. Statistically the Sherman was average in burn rates. AFTER wet stowage it was the best.
The Sherman’s were called Ronsons by the British for a reason.
@@craigclemens986 umm
They weren't.
Ronson wasn't a known thing til 48.
Before the war Ronson sold less than 10,000 lighters annually in all of Europe.
Statistically the Sherman was average for fires, before wet stowage.
Probably because virtually every tank, on BOTH sides stowed ammo in the same place(funny how loaders need to have the ammo close at hand, regardless of country).
And as the American ammo wasn't quite as touchy as the Germans or especially the Russians, it let the crew open the nice, simple, LARGE spring loaded hatches.
Even the small hatch Sherman had bigger hatches than most.(oh bugger the tank is on fire)
AND the armor was so super thin too. 64mm at 47 degrees, equivalent to 94mm at vertical. So totally thinner than a t34 or a tiger.
@Kevin Sissons. Objectively false statements .Sherman did burn more than tigers and panthers also the armor was easyer penetrated.And the wet stowege ones burned when hit by panzerfaust every time.The stats that show wet stowage was a big improvement are just for one division 9 as i remember .Also the german tanks were in more tactically precarious position , even If they used abrams tanks ,considering lack of artilery infantery support and crew innexperience woudn't have resulted in a win.
Was too heavy for powertrain so broke down too much. Due to lack of fuel new drivers broke transmission too often. Lucky for M4 crews they were not in service a lot. A few aces could not determine battles
Easy. There is NO such thing as the best tank of WW2.Many of them had different roles using during the battlefield. For example, if you give the US army a whole bunch of panthers in the Pacific, its going to suck, its too heavy, too unreliable and very costly for the USA. But if you give the panther to the German army, it'll do great in the battlefields of Europe because the German army by this point needed more defensive weapons.
czcams.com/video/4cNGfHEhtng/video.html
True, but the panther didn’t even preform that well in Europe
@@jacobhamblin4255 Agreed, but then, it was the best of what the Germans got.
@@minehffd2651 yeah, then again it’s not like the Germans were in the best position
Panther's cannon used ineffective HE shells which was a severe drawback.
The HE rounds of the KwK 42 were just as good as those of the Panzer IV and StuG III
You can have the best tank in the world, but if your crew doesn't know how to use it, or respond to enemy threats on the flanks, then it can quickly turn into "the worst tank of the war".
You might want to research the explosive weight of the Panther's HE round and that of the M3 75mm and the Joules of the explosion.
Quite close....
It definitely had many problems, but all in all, it's suprising this wasn't as feared as the tiger
Frequent transmission break downs and it's propensity to catch on fire are not qualities that one associates with the term, "best".
@@HiTechOilCo ok?
@@HiTechOilCo actually most tanks of that era had this problem, it wasnt exclusive to German tanks
They should build more panthers than tigers 2 or 1
It is perhaps the best looking profiled tank of the war, but looks are not every thing. The reliability and ease of repair make the ugly duckling M 4 the winner in those categories and as the Chieftan says its survivability stats are very high. The Panzer V is much more esthetically pleasing and the main weapon was devastatingly good, but if it can't drive 16 miles and breaks down at a whim it isn't the best.
The Panther is the sexiest tanks of the war for me.
@@ricardosoto5770 wrote: "The Panther is the sexiest tanks of the war for me."
-- Lol, have you seen T-34-85 in action? That is something else...
czcams.com/video/ytMsQLRD9HU/video.html
FF to 1:26
The only issue I have with the panther tank ans one that isn't being said in the comments is the factor that a T-34 can penetrate it if it is at a 17° angle from the front at 2000 meters and with visibility really not being at the forefront of tank design in Germany it would be completely possible for a T-34 to move to the penetrateable angle and win the fight
Petrol engine, brittle armour and thin on the sides, unreliable engine and running gear, ludicrous maintenance requirements, far too heavy for a medium and produced in relatively small numbers. The only good thing about it is it’s pretty. Not enough to make it a contender as a good tank.
@Manfred K I thought I explained the deficiencies quite clearly. I can’t help your lack of comprehension skills - you should have tried harder at school.
You forgot a few things. It Can penetrate any tank in combat. Can travel over terrain tanks like the Sherman can’t due to better ground pressure. Can operate with missing wheels. Faster off road than Shermans and on road. Very well armoured for the time. Well liked by its crews. Considered superior to American armour by American troops themselves. (I have a book which quotes the opinions of American troops themselves if u don’t believe me and of a German ace after the war who operated the panther. Funny how people who were actually there on both sides consider it a good tank and then there’s people like you 80 years later lol.
@@JohnDoe-zj8xz I can only refer to allied tests on the tank following capture. Obviously I’d prefer to take the word of a wehraboo like yourself.
@@annoyingbstard9407 Oh no he pulled out the wehraboo card it's all over now. So are American troops who were there "Wehraboos" too? Grow up kid.
@@JohnDoe-zj8xz If you mean in Normandy..75% of the US troops there (probably including your imaginary ones) had no combat experience whatsoever. More experienced troops who’d been in the war for five years weren’t scared quite so easily,
Excellent video. First class
The M26 Pershing was probably a better WW2 tank but there were only a few used and a tank is only as good as it’s crews skill.
It was roughly comparable with the Panther, both a 45 ton tank. But less that 20 say combat,
@@ricardosoto5770 it could move and fire accurately, an attribute which the German tank crews would ask about when POW’s.
@@alexbowman7582 American tanks where the first ones with gun stabilizers. They Sherman had them but few crews were trained in their use.
@@ricardosoto5770 you can argue which tank was best but a good tank with a well trained crew would usually defeat a better tank.
@@alexbowman7582 Yes, also the tactical situation matters. Defenders oftens have less casualties than attackers. In 1944 the germans were mostly defending. A fact most german fans seem to forget.
The throwaway statement about Shermans burning up is just wrong. Post war analysis shows that Shermans burned at about the same rate of other tanks and because Shermans had large hatches their crews had very high survival rates.
The Russian anti tank rife could pierce the side of the early panthers.
Of all Panthers if the shurtzen are not there.
And the side sponsons were packed full of live ammo. Not exactly what you want an AT round to hit.
@@stanleyharrell6009 and unlike the Americans, the Germans never tried to solve that in their tanks.
@@ricardosoto5770 Yes. The USA solved that problem in the Sherman with the “wet” storage for the main gun ammunition.
Say whatever you want abaut the Panther,but one thing is for sure the Panther was/is the Sexiest Tank ever made.
And overall was the Best Tank of WW2.
The main gun was the best 75 of the war, the tank itself was over engineered and could be taken out by a 60 pdr like the Tiger, with a well trained gunnery crew. Guderian wanted the gun put on the panzer 4, but not possible engineering wise.
6 pounder?
@@stevenbreach2561 Yep. The puny little 6 pdr took out heavy German panzers.
@@stevenbreach2561 The 6 pounder become latter the US 57mm AT, still can get a big german cat with APDS ammo under 800 meters.
@@ricardosoto5770 the Bovington Tiger was taken out by a 6pdr from a Churchill.
68 pounder maybe? Those were taken out of service in 1919 or something like that.
Define Best ….most kills per tank ?…most damage taken per kill ?…fastest tank reloads ?…most accurate gun ?…least breakdowns?…
Sherman and t34 were best tanks
Thanks!
For goodness sake whatever you do please don’t breed, you’ll only pollute the human gene pool.
For me,far too much engineering in the Panther.....Excellent tank,but if you cannot produce enough of them,you are at a serious disadvantage....Russian T-34 in all its formats, was the best all rounder of World War 2.....
Between 1943 - 1945 there were around 6000 Panthers build of all kinds. No other German tank was produced in that large numbers in similar period of time.
@@Cherryking400 plus that was whe USAF was already bombing their factories. If u ask me if luftwaffe kept air superiority. Panthers would have rekt havock more then any other tank. At the end of the day they were used against even IS-2s to a great effect. Superior tactics, mobility and optics were enough to bring it victory against the strongest allied tank of the war. And when you look at mbts today they have similar design characteristics. Sooo idk i think it deserves the title.
@@ivanplavljanic1057 yeah they also one of the easiest to drive (not including transmission) among the other tank with the same mass. and too many 'historian' and masses exaggerated their 150km breakdown range when it's not true in general at all, yes they still have complexity problems in the machine but that doesn't mean it broke down as easy as the tiger and king tiger
@@hermanwillem7057Not surprises here, the Panther was a 45 ton tank using a drivetrain designed for a 30 ton tank, the Thger 1 was a 56 ton tank,a the KT was a 69 ton tank, using the same Maybach engine! So more breakdowns.
@@ivanplavljanic1057 Actually MBT are more based in british oversized Cruisers like the Comet than anything else, and the Soviet ones are based on the T 44. The US Pershing is more based on the PzIII and the late Sherman than on the Panther. And the Pershing is the basis of US postwar tanks. The Panther was a dead end. Even the modern german Leopard 2 ownes more to the PzIII and the late war british cruisers that to the nazi big cats. In fact the road wheels of many modern MBT like the Merkava and the Challenger, are based on those of the Cromwell. in a way they still the same. The Pz 3 was the most infuential german tank of the war, and the StuG III had the best kill rates of any German AFV.
There were a lot of "pop history urban legends" in this vid. But certainly nice footage.
Well the not the best tank.....
But the most beautiful design
Nick Moran loves to go on and on about how the Sherman could be produced, shipped around the world, repaired, wouldn’t break down, and hardly ever met any of the big cats, which is all of course true. But he forgets what it was like for the British & Canadian Shermans who ran into Tigers and panthers in operation goodwood, and saw their shells bounce off them again and again, while the enemy’s shells went thru them like a knife thru hot butter, killing of maiming their crew.
That's just it. In all of WW2 that's the only example of Tigers and Panthers making any difference against the Western allies. It slowed them down in that sector by about a month or so if I recall. Meanwhile, south of there, the Americans were running all over the Germans. Why, because Tigers and Panthers were not war-winning tanks. They were heavy, hard to move around, gas guzzlers, and the Germans couldn't manufacture enough of them to have them make any difference, other than for propaganda.
@@stevecarey2030 true. Nothing you said was untrue. And nothing Nick says isn’t true.
But if you’re in the extremely rare and unlucky situation of facing a big cat Panzer with a 75mm Sherman, you’re in big, big trouble. That’s all I’m saying. There’s videos of headless corpses being hauled out of a free French Sherman hit by a Tiger. I’m sure those dead, headless men totally care that the Sherman was easy to make and able to be shipped around the world. That mattered to them.
@@davidprice7162 Yeah. That's true.
British tankers were notoriously easy to manipulate into charging into well laid ambushes. This goes back to North Africa and was a feature through The war. The failure of Goodwood cost them nearly 500 tanks.
Firefly was the real deal and could effectively deal with any German tank.
Sherman’s feared all other tanks , luckily, they had 5:1 in numbers. Only the firefly and a tank destroyer could kill it easily
I dont would say easily it was a 50/50 chance then.
The Germans fortunately had the very best of most military hardware.. but unfortunately for them.. never in quantities enough to make any significant difference to winning them the war 🙄
Not the best