"Tank Clash – The German Panther vs. the Soviet T-34-85" Topic

"WHEN THE PANTHER TANK first appeared on the battlefields of the Eastern Front, the Soviets did not have an effective weapon to counter it.

They had a new medium tank in development (the T-43) but, having been commissioned in 1942 to counter the Panzer IV ausf. F, it did not have enough firepower or armour protection to go up against the Panther. Furthermore, many within the Stavka (Soviet High Command) believed the war effort would be better served by simply making more T-34s; they argued against even minor modifications in case they slowed production.

With the arrival of the Panther, however, it was clear that something had to be done to improve the effectiveness of the Soviet tank corps. A compromise was reached between the advocates of mass production and those who pushed for new, more powerful tanks. The T-34 would be modified to accept the T-43's enlarged turret and an 85mm gun that was based on the 52-K anti-aircraft weapon. This tank, known by the designation ‘T-34-85', became the Panther's primary opponent for the rest of the war…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Good find

What an excellent article.

John T

Agreed – a good read!

Thanks,
Doug

"WHEN THE PANTHER TANK first appeared on the battlefields of the Eastern Front, the Soviets did not have an effective weapon to counter it

Strictly speaking when the Panther tank FIRST appeared on the battlefield the Soviets didn't need a weapon to counter it. A combination of driving through minefields, engine failures, transmission failures and fuel pump failures resulting in internal fires pretty much saw the Panther defeat itself. Only 40 left running at the end of their first day in contact. Just 10 by the end of the first week.

Yes, later on the Panther proved to be a worthy foe, it's just that I hate these lazy, sweeping, opening statements which, if you actually read them, are just cobblers.

Happy you enjoyed it boys! (smile)

Agree with you my friend deephorse!

Amicalement
Armand

Good analysis, but the article made it sound as if the Russians react to German developments and not the other way around. The conventional wisdom is that the Panther came about because the Germans had nothing to counter the T-34/76 during Operation Barbarossa and Guderian begged Hitler to give the panzerwaffe something better.

Like the legendary Tiger, the Panther was an over engineered beast the complexity and maintenance requirements of which negated any technical advantages it had over the T-34 because there were no hopes of manufacturing enough of them to make a difference.

Like the legendary Tiger, the Panther was an over engineered beast the complexity and maintenance requirements of which negated any technical advantages it had over the T-34 because there were no hopes of manufacturing enough of them to make a difference.

While I will agree with the general conclusion that the Germans didn't manufacture enough Panthers, I do not quite agree with the suggestion that this was because the Panther was over engineered and too complex.

It was too heavy. But over-engineered? If anything it was better engineered than the Pz III and Pz IV it replaced … with more mass-production-friendly features in the engineering (like interlocking armor plates to facilitate welding). Looking at the manufacturing costs of the Panther vs. the Pz IV it is clear which one was better engineered for efficient manufacturing.

In terms of the complexity of maintenance, the Panther's problem there was that it was under-engineered. The weight of the tank had grown significantly during development (from an initial target of about 32 tons to the final weight of above 43 tons). The final drive had not been engineered with this weight in mind, nor had the front torsion bars, and these proved to be the greatest reliability problems that were not resolved during the Panther's production life. The initial teething troubles experienced during the Kursk offensive, described above, were mostly resolved by the second production variant. If it hadn't been for the weak final drive and front suspension unit, the later Panthers would have been reasonably reliable tanks by the standards of the day.

However, none of this addresses the real weakness, which was that the Nazi hierarchy just didn't understand how war worked in the 20th century. They understood (or allowed their generals the freedom to understand and practice) how tactics worked. But at the top, where the political/economic decisions were made, there was very little grasp of the essential nature of war among industrial economies.

While the Germans were engineering better tanks, the Russians and Americans were engineering better tank factories. Neither the US nor the USSR had anything that directly compared with the Panther. But Germany didn't have anything that directly compared with Grand Banks Arsenal or Uralmash.

Guess which of these issues was the decisive issue?

Germany had the talent, population base, and industrial base in 1942 and 1943 to bury the Russians in terms of tank production. What they didn't have was anyone in charge who had a clue. The reason that the Russians so badly out-produced the Germans in tanks was not because the Germans developed the Panther, but because they didn't try to out-produce the Russians until it was far too late. In 1941 there was no one in Germany looking at the question of what it would take to build 3,000 tanks per month. So no one answered that question.

No uber tank could resolve that issue.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Good points, Mark.

In 1941 there was no one in Germany looking at the question of what it would take to build 3,000 tanks per month. So no one answered that question.

That's because the decision makers expected Russia to fall with simply a "kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come crumbling down" by the end of 1941 and had no reason to consider that they would have to match, much less outpace, Russian tank production in a prolonged war of attrition. It simply never even occurred to them.

That's because the decision makers expected Russia to fall with simply a "kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come crumbling down" by the end of 1941 …

This is one of the very clear statements, of many that might be made, of how simple-minded* the German political leaders were.

*(And when I say simple-minded, I mean like in simpletons. ie: Those who do not have full mental capacities.)

Compare the U.S. and German approaches:
U.S. In 1939 the U.S. was neutral. There was no war yet, but the U.S. administration could see that war in Europe was likely. The U.S. administration did not want there to be a war, and if there was a war did not want to be in the war. But seeing the likelyhood of war the U.S. Government began assessing the nation's war capacity.

A full census of all factories that could produce war materials was conducted. A program was put in place to accelerate the development of modern weapons. Countries considered to be likely allies (Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, and even Finland) were invited to send commissions to review U.S. made weapons, make suggestions for improvements, and purchase them (pending U.S. Government approval). This was seen as a means both of modernizing the weapons available to U.S. forces in case of war, and of supporting friendly nations so that the country would be less likely to have to fight if there was a war.

In the summer of 1940, after war had started and both Poland and France had fallen, the U.S. remained neutral. The president formed a joint commission of Army and Navy top brass (remember, at this time there was no Joint Chiefs of Staff or Pentagon). They were charged to create a joint list of industrial requirements -- how many single and multi-engined planes, now many carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, merchant ships, how many light, medium and heavy tanks, artillery pieces, anti-aircraft pieces would be needed to equip the flotillas, squadrons, fleets, battalions, divisions, corps and armies that would be required if the U.S. became involved in the war in Europe, and if the U.S. became involved in the war in the eastern Pacific.

All this by a nation that was not IN the war, and was still looking for ways to stay OUT of the war.

But in Germany no one was looking at any of those issues. Rather than putting together commissions to draw up industrial requirements, Hitler was telling his generals which 50mm gun could be mounted in the Pz III.

When the Panzertruppen wanted tanks, they put out a spec to two or three companies. Those companies submitted models for consideration, and if their model was chosen they went off to figure out how to build the tank on their own. And if they could sell a tank to the panzertruppen that had similar capabilities to a different vehicle purchases as an assault gun by the artillerie, good for them! But if they couldn't get the engines they needed, well so be it!

No one was charged with seeing if tanks and assault guns were redundant, or if two companies were building different vehicles with a limited supply of the same engines, or if enough steel was being milled for BOTH the Army AND the Navy's projected projects. No one was charged with finding out what companies needed (in terms of incentives or capital) to create bigger factories, or to convert existing factories from consumer production to military production.

No one was charged with seeing how many tanks could be built in the existing facilities, vs. how many it would take to fully equip the divisions being formed and planned, taking into account projected or real loss rates among those already equipped. They simply issued contracts when they needed more. And they always needed more! And if MAN could not deliver to their contract on time, because Daimler was shipping engines to Porche or Krupp instead of to them, well too bad!

And no one was charged with seeing what allies could or could not produce, or with providing government incentives to companies to expand their capacity to fill both domestic and foreign (German allies) requirements.

Eventually, as we know, Albert Speer was brought in to head industrial planning. The fact that he was able to expand production through most of 1944, even as the economic support from the industrial economies of 3 axis partners and 2 occupied industrial countries evaporated, and despite allied blockades and bombing, are a testimony to just how critical his role was. But they only started the process in 1942! They started the war, deliberately, in 1939! They expanded it, deliberately, in 1941. Yet they were surprised, in 1942, to find that they were in a war?

In 1940 the U.S. was NOT planning to go to war, but WAS planning it's army, and which existing facilities would be converted to tank production and where new facilities would be built (and by which companies). Germany WAS planning it's continued war against Britain, and WAS planning to initiate war with the Soviet Union, but was not planning it's industrial requirements, nor offering finished tanks, tank production licenses, nor components to critical allies who would add more than a million (under-equipped) men to the German order-of-battle for 3 years (Italy, Hungary, Romania)!

It's just amazing to me that the Germans, who were initiating the war at almost every step, never actually planned for the war they got.

Oh, but their tanks looked cool. Big and shiny.

Simpletons. 3rd graders playing in a college game.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

"Strictly speaking when the Panther tank FIRST appeared on the battlefield the Soviets didn't need a weapon to counter it. A combination of driving through minefields, engine failures, transmission failures and fuel pump failures resulting in internal fires pretty much saw the Panther defeat itself. Only 40 left running at the end of their first day in contact. Just 10 by the end of the first week.

Yes, later on the Panther proved to be a worthy foe, it's just that I hate these lazy, sweeping, opening statements which, if you actually read them, are just cobblers"

No, the above is the patent nonsense here, The Soviets immediately recognised the threat of the panther, which is why they took steps to counter it-if it was so poor initially they wouldn't have bothered.
Despite their numerous problems at Kursk, they still accounted for nearly 50% of the tanks knocked out by 48th corps- given that so many were un-operational at any one time due to mechanical problems makes this figure even more remarkable. Zetterling estimates that they represented about 20% of the tank strength for the corps at any one time, so their immediate effectiveness at Kursk as the most efficient German tank (in terms of kill ratios) is without question

but as Mark says above, the design of the tank was not the problem.

Patent nonsense eh? That's a bit harsh of you Chris. But on reflection it appears that your desire to have a go at me has exceeded your powers of comprehension.

I'm addressing the opening statement of the article. The one designed to draw you in. Nothng you say invalidates what I wrote. The Panther had a pretty poor debut. Even if it accounted for 100% of the Soviet tanks that were knocked out I seem to recall that the Soviets didn't need the T-34/85 or the IS-2 to defeat the Germans at Kursk.

Certainly the deployment of Tigers and Panthers in large numbers caused the Soviets to quickly look for a counter to them. I never said it didn't. But don't let that stop you taking a cheap shot.

Easy Tiger!

"WHEN THE PANTHER TANK first appeared on the battlefields of the Eastern Front, the Soviets did not have an effective weapon to counter it."

Is true.

The Soviets didn't have a weapon to effectively counter it.

Your statement that the Panther defeated itself at Kursk is not remotely true, it's trotting out the same old nonsense, The tank was incredibly effective at the battle of Kursk(Have a look at Zetterling and Anderson's book, its the best place to start), and it was incredibly effective DESPITE the problems it encountered.

The fact that the Germans got nowhere at Kursk has nothing to do with whether they had panthers or super-sonic ray-guns- its completely irrelevant- the Germans lost the battle for hundreds of reasons, the performance of panthers was a long, long way down the list of contributing factors.

The German hierarchy were a bunch of emotional misfits and simpletons, had they been organised, been prepared and in any way looking at the situation from a rationally sane perspective, dread to think of the consequences.

PS alway's loved the Panther…..very shiny ;-)

Mark 1: excellent thesis.

As to WHY the Germans were so short-sighted, I'd say it was mostly due to underestimating the opposition. When Hitler attacked Poland he did not think he was starting another World War; he thought the Allies would again cave in and appease him. That was his first big mistake. Even as late as spring of '40 he still seems to have thought that the Allies would give in and recognize the status quo (conceding his gains to date).

Then the quick, and relatively easy, conquest of Denmark, Norway, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Belgium and France seemed to confirm that it would be a short victorious war. When Britain refused to make peace, Hitler figured they were hoping for Soviet intervention, so he would remove that hope by removing the Soviet threat. He thought it would be another short victorious campaign. That was his second big mistake. If he hadn't seen the necessity for long-range planning before the start of 1942, when it became obvious that the war in the East would be prolonged, he should certainly have seen it then. But he didn't. That was his third big mistake.

Then, when Japan attacked the U.S., Hitler was dumb enough to honor his alliance and declare war on the U.S. Admittedly, he was irritated with the way the U.S. was aiding his enemies, especially Britain, and his U-boats did have a brief field day with U.S. shipping, but declaring war on the U.S. did not stop it from helping his enemies, it just made it possible for the U.S. to step up that aid and add its own growing might to the balance. The was big mistake number 4. And STILL Germany was not gearing up for all-out war.

Very interesting threads boys!

Amicalement
Armand

When the Germans started to appraise the T34 they figured two things. The obvious was that it was a very clever design, somewhat crude, but very capable and on paper superior to anything the Germans had in the field. The other conclusion was that there was plenty of room for improvement and even if the Germans improved their existing tanks, the T34 would retain that edge by mounting a heavier gun.

This combined with their experience facing heavy tanks such as the Char B, Matilda II and KV-1, the Germans decided that their next generation of tanks would not be a straight upgrade, but anticipated the next generation of tanks that they expected to have 75mm+ of armour, a long 50-75mm gun etc.

Hitler also helped to push things forward, insisting on more armour and bigger guns.

The resulting weapons were formidable designs, Tiger and Panther, but handicapped by bloat and ambitious plans that never quite lived up to reality.

Whereas Tiger was a case of "Let's make the bestest, biggest possible tank and to hell with reality." Panther seemed like the perfect medium tank, the pinnacle of Teutonic efficiency, a devastating weapon unmatched by either Sherman or T34 …

But the Panther "medium tank" is a lie. If you look at weight, Panther is in the same class as the Churchill, Centurion, Pershing and IS-2. Tanks that are usually matched to Tiger and Tiger II.

When compared to an IS-II Panther feels rather underwhelming for its weight. Aside from Panther being faster, the IS-2 has a much bigger gun and better all round armour. Yes they do differ in their design philosophy, but Panther is hardly impressive next to a Pershing or a Centurion either. And if the Black Prince variant of the Churchill had been implemented …

Every tank, even the most modern ones are a compromise to a certain degree. Limits in technology dictate what your tank will be capable of.

Panther was a choice. Superior capability over numbers, Germany preferred to have good tanks in smaller numbers than average ones in large numbers. They tried to fill the gap with an assorted host of assault guns and upgrades to older chassis. Nazi Germany's haphazard way of handling things did the rest.

One can discuss the merits and flaws, but we forget one critical aspect, the best weapon in the hands of a poorly trained green recruit is rarely a match for a battle-hardened veteran. Arracourt saw a major German offensive made up almost entirely of Panthers commanded by mostly green troops were defeated with limited casualties by battle-hardened US troops using TD's and Shermans equipped with 75mm guns. That 80mm sloped front armour is like the Maginot Line, a cordial invitation to attack it in the flank.

The Soviets didn't have a weapon to effectively counter it

Yes they did. Several weapons in fact. It's pathetic side 40mm side armor could be penetrated even by the humble PTRD rifle. Russian antitank troops weren't stupid enough to take on the frontal aspect of a panzer by choice, their positions were heavily camouflaged and sown with mines to channel an armored thrust into a kill zone where flank shots were possible. I guess they didn't fight over a 6x4 wargame table.

In the real world you can't see the defence positions laid out on the table. When one of them shoots the players both know where it is in the game and often everything can immediately react. Often not the case in reality.

I agree with the whole dunderheads thing.

Maintenance hasn't been mentioned.
Very time consuming fixing a panther – difficult to get at the engine and the interleaved suspension meant you had to take multiple wheels off to work on one. Etc,
Production and delivery of spares was hit and miss as well.
Players find wall to wall t34/76 a bit boring compared to the variety of german vehicles.
The jerries who had to fix all those different vehicles had a nightmare scrounging spares.
and of course this was compounded once in the retreat when crews would be blowing up their own tanks because they didn't have the time/parts/fuel to fix em.

Very time consuming fixing a panther – difficult to get at the engine and the interleaved suspension meant you had to take multiple wheels off to work on one.

Quite correct about the interleaved suspension. If an inner wheel on anything other than the front or back axle needed to be removed (to fix the wheel or the torsion bars), it was necessary to remove as many as 5 wheels to get at it.

But as to the engine, not quite so. The engine was fairly accessible. The engine deck was as easily opened as on most any tank of that era, and while the opening was not particularly generous it was adequate for maintenance and many repairs. When the engine needed to be replaced, however, that was a big job, requiring 8 hours of labor from 8 or 9 men with a crane/A-frame. Still, that's not too much worse than many other tanks of the era.

Of bigger issue was the final drive. This was located in the front hull, and the only means of access was to remove the turret. THAT is a big job! And the Panther's final drive had a very short life in action, only a few hundred Km of driving So it needed to be repaired or rebuilt often.

The tracks of the Panther had a fatigue life of 2,000 to 2,500 km. The engine was supposed to give 1,500 km of service, but seldom made it past 1,000 km. But the final drive had a fatigue life of only about 150 km! Even less if the driver was foolish enough to actually use the neutral steer capability that so impressed allied commentators. THAT was the key mechanical weakness of the Panther tank, that was never resolved throughout it's production life.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The Panther not so great a tank really.
link

Apart from that to cover the same distance as a PIV it needed three times the fuel. Which means three times the supply trucks to carry it, three times the fuel for them,d three times the drivers and their rations and the trucks to carry that and so on.

Choosing it was a monumentally bad decision.

What was it that made German tanks unsuitable for mass production? Was it something in the designs? Or something lacking in German factories? Or what? (Sorry, tried to start this as a new topic, but it didn't work -- just kept grinding and grinding but never finished.)

What was it that made German tanks unsuitable for mass production? Was it something in the designs? Or something lacking in German factories?

One big problem seems to have been that the Germans tended to have a fascination with endlessly cranking out new versions of their tanks (especially Panzer III and IV), upgrading them with ever bigger guns and heavier armour.

If your design specifications change all the time, it gets difficult to optimise them for mass production. Never mind needing to alter production lines to accommodate for the latest version.

Then again, considering that in the early war years Germans continously ran into better armoured and/or armed tanks, it is not surprising that they wanted to invest into improving their own designs.

"The Panther not so great a tank really"

By the same criteria as the French study The M1 abrams is not a great tank either…which is patently not the case.

Nothing wrong with the Panther, plenty wrong with the constraints under which it had to operate, the infrastructure that had to support it, and the lack of understanding of the above by the designers and the brief given to them by the Nazi government.

What was it that made German tanks unsuitable for mass production? Was it something in the designs? Or something lacking in German factories?

Early German designs (the original Pz II, III, and IV) were more or less "craft" production products. In this they were not significantly different from American, British or French contemporary designs. They were built in small lots of dozens of units over a period of months.

The Pz III and IV were notable for lots of small parts and complex assembly. Many plates, in many sizes, were put together in a variety of ways. Just look at a Pz IV D turret some time, and count the number of metal plates involved in forming that shape. Little triangle corners left and right of the chin, little two-door hatches on each side, multiple turns of flat plate to form the back. It was all expensive in man-hours. And the front of the hull had two lower plates, an upper slope to the almost vertical glacis, and corner plates.

The Panther was notably better engineered in this regard. Few, large plates -- two plates comprised the whole front, with tongue-in-groove style leaves to fit the edges together for efficient welding. Tiger was expensive because it used not only the earlier style multiple-plate assembly but also the most expensive alloyed metals. Tiger II was notably better engineered for production, even more so than Panther, but relied on substantially thicker (heavier) and more elegantly sloped plates for protection, as the quality of armor used was no where near the quality of plate used in the original Tiger.

As to what lacked in the factories … what lacked was any effort at nationwide scale-of-production. In Germany the various tank manufacturers each pursued their own pet technologies. MAN went one way, Porche and Henschel went different directions, and Alket (part of Rhinemetal-Borsig, which was a quasi-government organization) took different direction altogether. So for example the Pz II, III and IV all had entirely different suspension systems (single-bogey leaf springs, torsion bars, and dual-bogey leave springs). There was no governmental effort to develop common components for all to use, no central planning for expanding capacity, no target tank production numbers … different companies bid on Army projects (along with their other businesses) and managed their own resources.

Let us look at Pz IV production, for example.

In 1940 Germany produced about 270 Pz IVs. It was the tank that most impressed the British and the Americans (even though it was not, yet, the most important tank in the German arsenal). In 1941 … TWO YEARS AFTER Germany started the war, a total of about 460 Pz IVs (of all models) left the factory. See that increase? From 270 to 460. That's a design that was already mature (more than 210 had been built in 1937/38 timeframe), in the country that planned and initiated the war and knew more about tank combat than any other.

Let's compare that with the U.S. In 1940 there were NO M3 Medium tanks produced. Not even a prototype. In 1941 the U.S. produced more than 1,300 M3 medium tanks. This was a nation that wasn't even in the war yet (except for the last 3 weeks of the year). But the planning for tank production capacity had started two years before, when Germany was already in production on the Pz IV, but not planning for any target production capability.

When you have a factory which has produced 250 tanks in a year, and you give it an order for 450 tanks, you will be VERY lucky if you get that quantity in the timeframe you want it. Why? Because a factory constructed to build 250 tanks a year can't build 450 tanks in a year. So the first 5 or 6 months will be spent expanding the factory, then everyone will hustle to get the tanks out. Then your next order comes in and guess what, the factory is too small again!

The German national leadership never bothered to ask how many tanks would be needed to win a European war. They just issued production orders when they wanted more, and SURPRISE there were no city-sized mega-factories waiting to receive and fulfill their orders. The US leadership decided that the country would need to be able to produce more than 2,000 medium tanks per month before they had built even their 100th medium tank (and a pathetic tank it was, too, the M2 Medium). They focused on getting the factories in place before they even had the design of the tank or the army to receive the tanks.

You don't always get what you ask for, but you do a lot better than if you never bother to ask.

The Panther not so great a tank really.
link

It is hard to get a clear picture of the reality of the Panther. There are so many fan-boys on the side of "German stuff was cool!", and so many anti-fan-boys on the side of "They all broke down and burned up".

For a relatively balanced look, using German, U.S. and French sources, you might look at the introductory article in this discussion:
link

Note: it's a bit long, but reasonably thorough and at least makes an effort at being un-biased.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

That is a very interesting article.

At it simplest, some of the issues with the Panther were that it was a heavy tank pretending to be a medium. It weighed almost double all its of its medium contemporaries.

Clearly a heavy tank, for lets us call it by what it was, should be considerably better than medium tanks – more armour, bigger gun etc, but of course it consumes a lot more resources to make and stretched the automotive technology of the 1940s to the limit.

Agree.
Quite interesting article.
Thanks for share my friend.

Amicalement
Armand