With new information and a holistic approach to the appraisal of tanks rather than straight up comparing front armour and gun penetration, we find that tanks that had previously been considered the perfect combat vehicle may not turn out to be effective in all the roles tanks were used for.
1) Tanks are a mobility asset first and foremost.
Mobility is a huge factor in combat. The ability to get to a point before the enemy can make the difference between victory and defeat.
In this regard the very slow, infantry-pace tanks were all phased out in favour of more mobile designs.
2) Tanks engage all targets in the field, not exclusively tanks.
One example is an overview of US tank targets 1942-1945 :
Fortifications : 21.2%
Buildings : 17.3%
Troops 15.5%
Tanks 14.2%
Artillery : 12.8%
Other : 10.5%
Soft skinned vehicles : 6.2%
So if you design a tank that can lick every enemy tank in theater at the expense of everything else, you account for only 15% of shots fired in anger. Some level of specialisation is not a bad thing, Panther is a good example of a tank that was good at destroying its enemy counterparts, but was still capable of performing the other duties, while the M4 Sherman was intended to go toe to toe with enemy tanks, but by 1944 was more of a "plucky generalist" than a dominant fighting vehicle.
So the Panther may have tipped the scales in some parts it was in general a reasonably good design.
3) Tanks don't duel.
Even recent films like Fury or White Tiger try to highlight the idea that it's about individual tanks duking it out against each other, one trying to out-ballet the other "Girls and Panzers" style.
Usually the tank who got the first shot off had the advantage. Even a miss meant you had a chance to correct and get it right second time, while the other tank was still recovering from a significant emotional event.
Tiger aces have been described as "Bushwhackers" ambushing and sniping at the enemy rather than engage them on a level field, exchanging shots and heroically shrugging off hits.
4) It's all about the crew stupid.
A good crew in a mediocre tank has a good chance of beating a clueless crew in a better tank. Arracourt was such an example. US tankers knew their tanks were not capable of penetrating the thick front armour, but rather than despair and allow themselves to be picked of by seven foot tall Aryan demigods of superhuman perfection, they were mean bastards who ambushed and flanked Panthers and Panzer IV's crewed mostly by 18-year olds with a bare minimum of training and little practical experience. It's survivors against crews who never got a chance to become good.
5) Ergonomics is not a dirty word.
For each advantage the Panther may have had, there was some kind of disadvantage. The gun was powerful, but the turret traverse was slow. Not an issue if you are sniping at enemy tanks one or two miles away in open terrain, but in dense terrain like the Bocage German commanders openly admitted that the enemy tanks were much quicker to lay their guns and often got the first shot in a given encounter.
In the US Army, the AGF put great emphasis on features like room for the crew and the way they would perform their task. Most other nations would and did consider such features secondary. Soviet tanks had to do without a turret basket, running the risk of tripping or injuring the crew on things like ammo boxes or exposed transmission axles. The British felt that permanent scoliosis of the gunner's spine was worth the extra firpower of the 17-Pounder. They would gladly have fought in an M4 armed with a 3-inch gun, something AGF found unacceptable because it was too cramped. The Australians upon hearing that let go of a very muffled cry from inside the sardine-tin sized interior of their Sentinels.
And one might argue that while the better gun always trumps the weaker gun no matter the crew comfort, tankers that are exhausted from merely handling their tanks, let alone fight lose their effectivness. Something no amount of adrenaline, Pervitin or Schoka-Kola could make up for.
Things like vision, ease of operation greatly increase fighting capability.
6) The Theory of Relativity.
An M4 Sherman might be an easy prey for a decent Panther crew waiting in ambush.
The same Sherman slowly crawling up a beach would seem like a mobile fortress for a Japanese gunner in his dug-in Te-Ke tank.
The tanks that went to war in 1939 had almost nothing in common with those coming into service in the closing days of the war. A 76mm M4 Sherman would have dominated the battlefield in 1940, it was an excellent tank in 1942 if used properly and it was extremely vulnerable to many German guns by 1944.
Motorized warfare was not a give in 1939. The Germans got it right, but lacking oil and steel they knew the game would be up by 1942 if they had not secured oil. Thanks to a supreme effort they managed to last three more years in a steady decline. Panther was a shock to the Allies in 1944, when the Germans still had a pool of good trained crews and some stockpiles of gas and spare parts.
By 1945 without spare parts, trained crews and lack of gas, the Panther had clay feet. The hoped for miracle of the Ardennes did not happen. The allies had too much nouse to get caught with their pants down, especially when your army was pretty much the last reserves.
So a tank can quickly become obsolete and conditions change, had the fight gone on into 1945 the Germans would have faced more Soviet 100mm, 122mm and 152mm guns while the Allies in the ETO would bring 90mm, 17-pounders and other 77mm guns. Panther's otherwise good 75mm feels a little light in comparison.
7) There can be more than one.
The idea of selecting "the best" is rife with fallacies. M4 Shermans were tested to operate in a much wider ranges of climates than say a Panther. They fought in desert and tropical conditions without many special adaptations, they were tested in the winters of Alaska and in Florida swamps.
To say one tank is better does not rob all the others of even so much as a shred of intrinsic combat value.
The Panther was built to be a pretty good tank, but it came with a few caveats and flaws, some purely design and mechanical related, others tied to the German war effort and the actual situation in the field. Decisions made in Berlin had more consequences than the Soviets introducing a new type of gun.
What we can distill from our better understanding is that the Panther was not the perfect war machine it may have been portrayed as for a number of years, but still a formidable foe in many, but not all conditions, while Allied tanks were not as hopeless and badly designed as some would like to think.
It wasn't the single-sided effortless massacre that those of the Germanophile persuasion love to bring up, nor was it a complete failure. Even if Germany had lost the opportunity to win the war in 1943, they still had millions of capable fighting men, they could still produce weapons and they could still win battles, even into 1945. Panther may not have been a winning war, it probably helped the Germans hold on a little longer.
Good, reliable tanks, available in numbers proved to be the long term solution. Germany didn't have the resources to build many tanks, and even less fuel to operate them, so upping the value of each tank was not a bad idea. Of course this means that every tank lost is a harder blow.
There is little doubt that around 1944 Panther had a pretty good claim for best tank. By 1945 conditions had greatly handicapped it and it would soon be eclipsed by the M26, the Centurion and the IS series.
In the end Panther was a pretty good design, a few things got out of hand due to meddling from higher authorities who wanted better armour and guns which let the weight get out of hand, but in practice it was a problem they could live with because it gave good results. But it was not invincible and the Allies learned to identify and exploit its weaknesses.
