The German Tanks: The Panther

The German Tanks: The Panther

In seeking the origins of the Panther, regarded as one of the finest medium tanks of the Second World War, we must turn back to examine the consequences for the German army, and in particular, the tank arm, Bob Hitler’s momentous decision ordered the Wehrmacht eastward against the Soviet Union. At 0300 hours on June 22, 1941, the eastern horizon from the Baltic coast to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains was lit up by the fire. From a barrage of 6,000 heavy guns, providing the overture to operation Barbarossa, the German assault on the Soviet Union and the greatest land invasion in history. Three million men with 3,350 tanks and supported by some 2,000 aircraft of the Luftwaffe, hauled across the frontier, bent on employing the now well-tested Blitzkrieg formula to defeat the USSR in a rapid campaign which Adolf Hitler expected to last no more than a few months. The dictator of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union with derision. Claiming its image as a powerful modern state, was a sham. He said, we have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down. Such delusion, while grounded, in the first instance, on his anti-Semitic, anti-marxist and overtly racist philosophy, which reduced the Slavs, and thus the Russians, to the level of mere subhumans. In the Nazi worldview, was also heavily coloured by a German intelligence analysis of Soviet military and economic power that was profoundly flawed. This analysis, which underlay German planning for Barbarossa, was remarkable. More for what it did not know about this new enemy than what it did. Thus, numbers of aircraft and tanks in Soviet service were not known, figures proffered being mere guesses. Little was known of the Soviet Order of battle, or of the detailed organization of Soviet military formations. Nor had the Germans any inkling of the profound changes. Brought on Soviet industry by the five year Plans, and thus of the potential of the USSR to fight a prolonged war. In short, the German armed forces had plunged into war with the Soviet Union, sustained only by the unsubstantiated conviction that the Red Army was not fit to engage in a modern conflict and would be unable to defend itself against the most modern and and effective war machine in existence. And yet, all that happened in the opening months of the campaign seemed to substantiate German beliefs about the state of the Red Army and the nature of the Soviet state. Unbeknown to the Germans, however, they had chosen to attack at the worst possible moment for the Soviet Union. The Red Army was not only attempting to recover from the impact of the devastating effect of the purges that had decimated the Soviet officer corps, but also from the shame of of its performance in the winter war against Finland. In June 1941, it was also in the throes of massive internal change, including a huge re-equipment program. Although the German Panzer columns tore through the Soviet defences, driving deep into the hinterland, and encircling hundreds of thousands of Russian troops in massive pockets. Within weeks of the opening of the campaign, there were more than a few indications. That led many Germans to realise that this new war in the East would be quite unlike that fought the summer before. One officer in the 18th Panzer division wrote, There was no feeling, as there had been in France, of entry into a defeated nation. Instead, there was resistance, always resistant, however hopeless. Indeed,
even Hitler sensed as much, telling Mussolini that Soviet soldiers fought with truly stupid fanaticism, with the primitive brutality of an animal that sees itself trapped. While the Fuhrer, no doubt, saw such as confirming evidence of the subhuman nature of the Russians, even he could not have missed that. These same subhumans had already killed over 100,000 German troops in the opening weeks of Barbarossa, more than in all the previous campaigns combined. Nor were the Germans oblivious to the seemingly endless numbers of Soviet divisions that made their appearance on the battlefield, only to be fed into the German mincing machine, then replaced by more. By the end of July, the Germans had already identified more Soviet divisions than the estimated the Red Army possessed. The Soviets were profligate with their manpower, But in the face of the rapidity of the German advance, and their unpreparedness to cope with blitzkrieg, they had to trade lives and space for time. Thousands and thousands, then hundreds of thousands of prisoners were taken. One German soldier later recalled, The earth-brown crocodile slowly shuffled down the road towards us. Prisoners of war. Russians. Six deep. We couldn’t see the end of the column. As they drew near, the terrible stench which met us made us feel quite sick. We made haste out of the way of the foul cloud which surrounded them. Then what we saw transfixed us where we stood. And we forgot our nausea. Were these really human beings, those grey brown figures, those shadows lurching towards us, stumbling and staggering moving shapes at their last gasp? Creatures, which only some flicker of the will to live enabled them to obey the order to march. On July 16th, less than a month after the beginning of Barbarossa, the city of Smolensk, just 200 miles from Moscow, fell to the panzers of Generals Hoth and Guderian. In their drive eastward, German armor had brushed aside or destroyed large numbers of Soviet tanks. Guderian had estimated before the start of the campaign that the Red Army possessed a tank park of about 10,000 machines, and this was the benchmark accepted by the Army. However, it was becoming all too clear that this figure was much too small, and that the real figure was in excess of some 20,000 tanks. Hitler later stated to Guderian that had he known Russian tank strength to have been as large, he would have seriously reconsidered his decision to invade Russia. Numbers, though,
did not equal quality. By far and away, the bulk of Soviet armour was obsolete. Most of the designs dated back to the early 30s, drawing heavily on foreign designs. What the newsreels show the most of are wrecked and burning T-26s, T-28s, T-37s and light tanks of the BT series. None mounted a gun larger than 45mm and all had thin armour. The short barrelled 50mm gun of the Panzer III and the short 75mm gun of the Panzer IV had no difficulty destroying these tanks, and the footage herein shows large numbers of these tanks destroyed and on fire. Even the 20mm cannon of the Panzer II light tank and the 37mm gun on the Panzer 38T had no difficulty taking out these light Soviet designs. Even the large and impressive T-35, the multi-targeted tank seen here, was highly vulnerable to German fire. But amid this welter of obsolescence, there were a number of new designs that sent shockwaves through the Panzerwaffe. In the KV-1 and KV-2, the Soviets had two machines technologically superior to any German tank, with armour as thick as that encountered on the British Matilda, and heavy armament as well. In the case of the KV-1, a 76mm gun, and on the KV-2, a 152mm howitzer, these were truly formidable machines. Shells from German tanks bounced off the armor of these monsters. But it was the T-34 that made the greatest impression. Fast, weighing some 26 tons, with well-sloped heavy armor, and carrying a 76 millimeter gun, it came as a revelation to the German tankers. Luckily, it was only available in small numbers and poorly employed. The T-34 being examined here is the earliest model coming off the production line in 1940. As in France, when dealing with the heavily armoured British and French tanks, the 88mm flak gun was found to be able to deal with the new Soviet tank designs. German infantry found other methods for destroying T-34s and KVs. Satellite charges were placed on the Soviet machines. Although, this required great nerve as a soldier had to run up to the tank in order to deposit the charge on the engine deck or wedge it below the turret overhang. Such methods were quite often the only fallback. In the absence of an effective anti-tank gun, the 37mm gun proving totally useless as it was unable to penetrate the Soviet tank’s armour. It was only with the launch of Operation Typhoon, the German offensive to capture Moscow, in late September 1941, that the T-34 became a real threat to the panzers. With the onset of the Rasputitsa, the period of rains before the start of winter and which turned Russian roads into quagmires, The German Panzers sank up to their axes because of their narrow tracks, whereas the T-34 coped with the conditions because theirs were much broader. At Midzensk on the 4th of October, T-34s operated in large numbers for the first time, inflicting heavy casualties on the Panzer IIIS of the 4th Panzer Division. Guderian was later to comment that it was at the battle of Midzensk that, for the first time, the vast superiority of the T-34 became plainly apparent to the Germans. And when typhoon finally ground to an exhausted halt at the beginning of December, Large numbers of T-34s belonging to the Fresh Divisions entrained from Siberia led the Soviet counter-offensive in front of Moscow on December 5th, 1941. By then, it had become apparent to the German army that it had to take steps to address the clear technological superiority and tank design possessed by the Soviets and represented in the T-34. In October, a Panzer commission met with General Heinz Guderian at Orel in Russia to consider ways of responding to the T-34. In addition to continuing development of the heavy Tiger tank, the decision was taken to proceed with production of a new medium panzer. Under the designation VK 30-02, contracts for which were issued within days of the return to Germany. The initially favoured design from Daimler-Benz clearly reflected the influence of the T-34. With heavily sloping armor and turret mounted far forward on the hull. On May the 15th, 1942, Hitler receded to the recommendations of a report that favored production of the alternative design submission from the Man Company. The prototype Man Panther incorporated the many changes hoisted on the design team in the course of the new panzer’s development. Weight had grown to 45 tons, and the tank now mounted the longer, more formidable 75mm L70 gun. Contracts were issued in September 1942 for a thousand Panthers, with the first leaving the man works in January 1943. Parallel production lines were set up with Daimler-Benz, MNH and as seen in this Still at Henshaw-le-Castle. It was at the latter concern that. A very brief glimpse of one of the new Panther medium tanks, seen just beyond the target in the foreground, was captured on Newsreel in May 1943. The new panther had a very short gestation period, from drawing board to production line in just over a year. There was much optimism that this new tank would provide the Panzerwaffe with the technical edge on the eastern front it had hitherto lacked. The first model of the Panther was the Type D. Identifiable by its drum type, commander’s cupola with lid, hatch and machine gun flap on the left side of the glacis. In other respects, such as armour thickness, it was to remain the same on all preceding models. 80mm for the frontal plate, 120mm for the gun mantlet and 40mm on the sides. The early model A mounted a new turret with a cast cupola with seven periscopes. The later a saw the introduction of the machine gun ball mount in the Glacis. Introduced in March 1944 was the G, which was to remain in production until war’s end. The combat debut of the Panther during Operation Zitadel in July 1943 was decidedly inauspicious. This last German offensive in the East was meant to be a limited affair. Fought over a very restricted geographical area and rapidly concluded. But in terms of the actual number of tanks and forces allocated, it was a major commitment of scarce resources. At a time when the scope of the war was widening dramatically. In part, it was to address this quandary that Citadel was launched. The task of the offensive was to destroy the great Soviet salient at Kursk and eliminate the vast Soviet forces therein, thus shortening the front line and freeing up panzer divisions for transfer to the West to deal with the expected allied landings on the mainland of Europe Originally planned for the spring, Zitterdale was repeatedly delayed to allow for adequate numbers of Ferdinand assault guns and Tiger and Panther tanks to be assembled, for Hitler believed that only with their presence in sizeable numbers could a favorable outcome for the battle be assured. No footage exists of the approximately 200 Panthers committed to the offensive. Organized into tank battalions 51 and 52, and under the command of Major von Lauchert, the Panther Regiment was subordinated to the Grossdeutschland Division during Citadel. On paper, the Panther Regiment represented the most powerful armored unit at Kursk, but its effectiveness was to be severely inhibited by its premature commitment to battle. Although raised at the beginning of 1943, the two battalions suffered so many problems with their panthers that most of them were returned to the factories for overhaul or rebuilding. Guderian, now Inspector general of Armoured Troops, called the panther our problem child, For it was a maintenance nightmare, the inevitable fruits of a very hasty development and production schedule. Even the crews did not receive the time to fully train on their new charges. Five days into the offensive, there were only ten Panthers operational. Although just 25 had been destroyed, 100 had broken down. While the frontal armour had proven effective, the 40mm side armour was shown to be vulnerable to Soviet anti-tank fire, many panthers being lost in this fashion. Nevertheless, the 75mm gun was shown to be highly effective, destroying T-34s at 3000m. As the production tempo increased, more panther battalions were being raised and hastily deployed to combat the growing power of the Red Army, which, having rested the military initiative at Kursk, was in the months after the battle, pushing the Germans back all along the southern part of the front. By October, there were five Army and SS Panther battalions in action in Russia, with others coming on stream in November. The furious pace of operations and continuing technical problems led to high losses, And of the total of 841 panthers deployed to the Eastern Front in 1943, only 80 out of the available 217 were actually operational on December 31st, some 624 machines having been lost in combat since July. Nevertheless, it was only in March of 1944 that Guderian declared the Panther fully combat capable. Throughout the winter of 1943-44, the Red Army launched a series of hammer blows against Army Group South, whereby the German lines were frequently breached. The Panzer divisions found themselves in the role of fire brigades, rushed from one point to another to contest each new Soviet breakthrough. Extemporised battle groups, comprised of elements from different units, with integral all-arms support, were often raised to deal with such contingencies. One such was Heavy Panzer Regiment Becker. Which had 47 panthers and 34 Tigers, and was employed at the point of an armament relief column assembled in early February 1944 to punch a corridor through to 60,000 German troops encircled around Cherkassy. Mid-March 1944, four Soviet rifle divisions, supported by a number of tank units, encircled the German battle group under the command of SS Gruppenführer Herbert Giller. In the town of Covel, a major rail centre for European Russia and of great strategic importance to both sides. A relief force was assembled by the Germans, which included elements from the Fourth Panther Division and was led by a company from the Panther Regiment of the 5th SS Panzer Division. Viking, under the command of Obersturmfuhrer Nicolaus Leck. The German attack was hampered by the boggy ground that surrounded the town and which made for excellent defensive cover for the Soviets. The only firm ground available to the Panthers lay on the upraised railway embankment, which led into Covell. At 0400 hours on the 30th of March, Nicolussi Lech advanced along the embankment with nine panthers. That then almost immediately lost two to mines. The mines were cleared by following infantry, but it was not until the evening that the Panthers finally broke into the town to strengthen the defenders. For his leadership, Nicolusi Lech was awarded the Knight’s Cross. A number of panthers have been abandoned along the embankment, victims of mines and Soviet anti-tank fire, including this Befehl’s Panther, or command Panther, identifiable by the second aerial, mounted on the rear of the hull. After the battle, the Germans used captured Soviet prisoners to help recover the knocked-out Panthers, most of which were repaired and returned to service. Also recovered were the bodies of the dead crewmen, who had been so rapidly interred in the sandy soil between the railway lines. Alongside their abandoned charges. Favell was finally relieved on April 5th, by a further attack involving Panzer IVs and assault guns from the 3rd Panzer Division, along with other Panzers from Viking. These broke through the strong Soviet defences, covering the northern approach to the town along the Koval-Brest-Litovsk road. Anti-tank positions were destroyed and overrun, and Soviet tanks, including American Shermans supplied under Lend-Lease, were knocked out on the drive into the town. At the end of August 1944, the Soviet Summer Offensive had all but destroyed Army Group Center and carried the Red Army to the borders of Poland. It was here that a propaganda company film team recorded footage of heavy fighting as the Germans desperately attempted to halt the Soviet drive westward. By this stage of the war, Waffen-SS units were given particular prominence when filming, and on this occasion, the PK team have focused on a localised counter-attack by the 5th SS Panzer Division Viking. Under the command of Sturmbannfuhrer Maydres, elements of the Panther Battalion, supported by Panzer IVs, deployed to attack an advanced Soviet armoured unit of T-34-85s and JS-2 tanks that have occupied a number of nearby villages. Fire is opened on the Soviet positions by Vespa and Hummel self-propelled guns. The Panzers begin to move towards the target, using their speed to move rapidly from one fire position to the next. Grenadiers then follow up in their armoured half-tracks, ready to mop up Soviet infantry in advanced positions. Panzers engage Soviet armour, while the grenadiers move forward to flush out other Soviet infantry that have gone to ground in the cornfields. As the infantry advances through the first burning settlement, SS-Groupman Fuhrer Giller, commander of the 4th SS Panzer Corps that carries his name, holds a rapid orders group to determine the next objectives of the unfolding attack. A reconnaissance detachment of Volkswagens, Schwimmwagens and one-ton half-tracks move out to scout ahead of the infantry, who now fan out across the wide and unbroken wheat and maize fields. Half-tracks follow up advancing panthers, who roam across the field completely devoid of any cover. It is the measure of the secondary role played by air power on the eastern front. That German armour could still operate in this fashion underneath a sky empty of Soviet aircraft. While far away, in Normandy, such an operation would have caught the immediate attention of Allied fighter bombers. Viking’s Hummel detachments have moved up and brings other Soviet positions under fire with their 150mm guns. Panther Command has now scanned the next village to determine the target to be attacked. Fire is then opened, and shortly thereafter, Viking grenadiers enter the village to find a large number of destroyed and fiercely burning T-34-85s and JS-2s. The latter was a heavy tank, introduced in the spring of 1944. Its 122mm gun was one of the few weapons that could easily penetrate the frontal armour of the Panther. But the very high muzzle velocity of the 75mm L-71 gun still allowed the Panther to effect a first round hit and penetrate the turret armour of the Soviet heavy tank at 800 metres. As this distance was clearly a long way within the range of the Russian tank’s heavy gun, other factors, such as training, the quality of German optics and command and control procedures went into play in order to bring about the sort of results seen in this footage. Even though German armoured units continued to inflict heavy casualties on the Soviet tank arm, they were never enough to dent the immense numbers being turned out of Soviet factories to replace them. Further to the north, the 3rd Panzer Army, having been pushed back into Latvia and Lithuania by the 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts, was engaged in fierce defensive fighting. Panther battalions fought alongside Tiger companies, and the footage even gives a glimpse of a couple of surviving Panzer IIIs and early MK IVs. The limited counterattacks being undertaken by these German units, though successful in eliminating local breakthroughs, had no impact on the wider picture. Soviet pressure continued to build, and within a matter of weeks, 3rd Panzer Army was fighting in East Prussia, with 60th Army holed up in Courland. Nevertheless, in the tank battles fought by Panther crews, there must have been many occasions when others did what this crew is doing, acknowledging their good fortune and offering up thanks to Krups for the effectiveness of their armour plate. On 6 June 1944, the long-awaited Allied invasion of Europe took place, with virtually unopposed landings on the coast of Normandy. Under a massive air umbrella, the allies managed to land 150,000 men and 500 tanks by day’s end. Rommel’s insistence that the invasion could only be defeated on the beaches vanished in the absence of a strong panzer force in proximity to the Normandy coast. This, in turn, the consequence of a squabble within the High Command in the West as to where the panzers should be stationed, as well as reflecting the long-held view that the allied landings would take place in the Pas-de-Calais. Even after June 6th, allied misinformation would continue to reinforce the German belief that another landing was expected in that region. Even before D-Day, and certainly thereafter, allied air power was employed to paralyse the movement of German traffic on the ground. With the Luftwaffe long swept from the skies in France. Once ashore, the allied task was to reinforce the lodgement area, bringing over forces from England as soon as possible, so as to build up allied strength to combat the inevitable German reinforcement in Normandy. German attacks on the 6th had been cursory. 21st Panzer Division had moved against the British-Canadian landing beaches and received a bloody nose. On the following day, the 12th SS Panzer Division was in action against the Canadians, effectively blocking the drive to seize Cannes, originally targeted for capture. On D-Day itself. Ultimately, the battle for Cannes would become the linchpin for the wider battle of Normandy. As allied forces moved inland off the beaches, they rapidly came up against one of the intractables of the campaign. And to which little or no thought had been given in the planning stage of the invasion. If the Normandy beaches were chosen for their suitability for mass landings, the countryside inland from the beaches was ideal for defence. The hundreds of small fields, divided by centuries-old high-banked and almost impenetrable hedges, punctuated by copses and small forests. Known to the locals as the Bocage, made forward movements in the face of a spirited enemy extremely difficult. The Allied Air campaign to halt the daylight movements of German reinforcements to Normandy, especially by the Panzer divisions, is no better illustrated than by reference to the travail of the Panzer Lehr Panzer Division. As one of the most powerful armoured units in France, it was ordered to make for Caen on 6 June and travelled in daylight. Due to the constant bombing and strafing from allied aircraft, the forward unit did not arrive until the 8th. And the division was not fully in place until some days later. This experience was to become a common one, with divisions forced to travel at night and lay up in forests or under the trees in the daytime. The massive use of allied air power for this purpose led to the extensive destruction of many towns and villages on the approaches to the Normandy battlefield. Along with the Tiger, the Panther was the most powerful tank in Normandy, with a total of 484 sent into action in June and July. In theory, the 1st battalion of every Panzer regiment should have been equipped with Panthers, but this was not the case, with just 7 out of the 10 Panzer regiments in Normandy being so equipped, and with the majority of these belonging to the Waffen-SS. The bulk of Panthers in Normandy were the A-model, with a smaller number of GS and a few Panther Ds. The allies rapidly came to fear the Panther, although it fired a lighter shell than the 88mm gun of the Tiger. Its extremely high muzzle velocity allowed it to take out any allied tank at long range. Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills were all easy targets at 1,000 yards. The vulnerability of allied tanks for the Panther and Tiger nearly became a political scandal in the United Kingdom, with field Marshal Montgomery having to intervene to insist that the threat posed by the German tanks was overblown and that allied tanks were well up to the tasks expected of them. Such a view may have been acceptable for official consumption. Allied Tank crews remained extremely skeptical. Many allied tanks now began to carry extra armor in the form of welded-on track shoes. It was, however, discovered that a panther could be killed by getting close enough to get in a shot on the lower part of the gun mantlet. The tank shell would then ricochet downward to break through the thinner hull top armor, above the driver and machine gun operator. American tankers also discovered that a shell ricocheting off the ground in front of the panther might penetrate the lower hull armour. But both these methods required the Allied tank to get well within the Panther’s gun range, and it took a brave crew to attempt such a tactic. Only the Sherman Firefly, a conversion undertaken by the British, whereby they replaced the low-velocity, short-barrelled 75mm gun of the Sherman, with a modified version of their own. 17 pounder anti-tank gun gave the allies a tank that could penetrate the 18 millimeters frontal armour of the Panther at combat ranges. Fireflies were issued on the basis of one per troop of four Shermans. Naturally, Panther commanders attempted to target the fireflies first in any British tank attack, the long, 17 pounder barrel being a unique recognition feature. Tank crews often tried to disguise this so as to render the tank less obvious. Fireflies were successfully destroying Panthers, as is seen in the still of a knocked out Model A in the Odon Valley. Until the arrival of the American M26, with its 90mm gun. Just before the end of the war, the firefly remained unique in its ability to take on and kill the big German cats. Even panthers could not withstand the mighty explosive power or blast effects of the M26. Of the heavy shells lobbed in land onto German position with unnerving accuracy by the heavy guns of naval vessels lying off the Normandy coast. With calibres ranging up to 16 inches, the effect of one of these shells falling alongside a panther was enough to flip the 45-tonne panzer onto its back. Movement of German armour was very often targeted by such means, with similar results. Fighting among the hedgerows were very much the opposite of the conditions for which the panther was designed. The difficulty in moving in daylight meant that tanks, in effect, functioned as mobile pillboxes. In such circumstances, the smokeless powder and very low muzzle flash of the panther made it difficult to spot to oncoming allied armour. Throughout the fighting in Normandy, most footage shows panthers very heavily camouflaged, with matters of foliage covering the machine. Indeed, the skillful provision of such became quite literally a matter of life and death for all panzers in Normandy. Even
as the allies were grinding down the German forces in Normandy, the propaganda ministry saw fit to show the comparative testing. Of a panther against an Allied tank, even though that chosen was an M3 Lee, which was no longer serving in armoured divisions in Europe. Naturally enough, the footage clearly revealed the superiority of the Panther. One can only assume that the ministry had determined that, having seen this film, German civilians would go home to their beds. Confident that the fate of the Reich must be assured, the army possessed such superior weapons. German veterans of the Normandy campaign always recalled to their horror the overwhelming impact on ground operations of allied fighter bombers. In particular, the RAF Typhoon, which carried eight 60-pound rockets, had an explosive power that could defeat even a Panther. Although only a single battalion of the Jagdpanther served in Normandy, it made a very singular impression. Designed as a heavy tank destroyer employing the Panther chassis, the Jagdpanther mounted a version of the 88mm Pak 43 heavy anti-tank gun, that also equipped the Tiger II heavy panzer, which saw service in Normandy. The 88mm PaK 43 had been employed by the army as an anti-tank weapon since 1943. Although large, heavy and cumbersome, its very high muzzle velocity was able to defeat any known Soviet and Allied tank at ranges of up to 3000 metres. The fighting compartment of the Jagdpanther had been designed by extending upward the side plates and upper hull of a standard Panther tank. Just 392 were produced in total, supply never being able to meet demand. Footage of these vehicles is very scarce. This Jagdpanther being filmed on the Oder in 1945. This Jagdpanther, found abandoned, minus its tracks, along with two others, had ambushed a squadron of Churchill tanks belonging to the 6th Guards Tank Brigade on 30 July in Normandy. Within the space of a few minutes, ten churchills had been knocked out. In the melee, British tanks knocked out two of the German tank destroyers. Although German opposition remained fierce right through July and into August, The breakout of the American forces from the Katentim peninsula and the drive by Patton’s third army across the rear of the German position in Normandy opened up the prospect of the allies effecting an encirclement of the Army of the West. As the British battled south, towards Falaise, in the face of desperate German resistance, the Americans took Argenton. The Allied pincers did not close around Falaise until 18 August, and in that time, substantial German forces had slid away, But most of the heavy equipment had been abandoned. Those German forces trapped in the pocket were subjected to heavy artillery and tank fire from British, Canadian and Polish forces on the northern edge of the encirclement. To the south, American forces delivered their own heavy bombardment. The Germans, however, continued to offer heavy resistance. Destruction within the pocket was mounting. As British and American fighter bombers also rocketed and strafed, the panzers, lorries and four-straw wagons parked end-to-end on the roads leading into valets. Very few of the Panzers survived the destruction, and their fate as abandoned, smouldering and blackened. Hulks was recorded by Allied cameramen after the surrender of the German forces in the pocket. Those forces that did escape from Falaise now set off at speed to reach the Seine bridges. Surviving heavy equipment was nerfed through the narrow roads whilst under constant attack from allied fighter bombers. A few panthers and these Jagdpanzers of Battalion 654 escaped the pocket. But having reached the river, discovered that allied aircraft had already destroyed the bridges. Able to carry the weight of their heavy armoured vehicles, they were thus unable to cross. Only light vehicles could be taken across on the rafts or used to hastily construct pontoon bridges. In such circumstances, the tank crews had little choice but to blow up their machines. It is only towards the end of the war that footage of the Panther in action becomes more common on newsreels. This is both a reflection of the greater number of these panzers in service by this time, and a marked decline in the numbers of Tiger I’s and the very small number of King Tigers serving in heavy tank battalions. These units had formerly been of particular interest to the Propaganda department, as there had been a deliberate policy of depicting them to the German public as elite units. These Panther A’s are some of the 60 on strength. With the Hermann-Goring Panzer Corps when filmed in combat sometime between 15 October and 4 November 1944, when the Red Army launched its invasion of East Prussia by a thrust between the towns of Gumbinen and Goldap. The German response was to launch a limited concentric counterattack to seal off the Soviet drive into the East Prussian hinterland, with the Hermann-Goring Corps and the 39th Panzer Corps thrusting into the flanks of the 11th Guards Army. In conditions of local air superiority, Luftwaffe Stukas proceeded to bomb the advancing Soviet armour, with the Panthers following with their own attack. While it is clear the Panzers inflicted heavy losses on the Russians, it must always be borne in mind that it was a feature of the propaganda function of newsreels. That the PK camera teams never showed any destroyed German armour or dead German soldiers. Following the Soviet invasion of Romania by the forces of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Front in August 1944, The limited armoured forces available to the Germans fought desperately in the face of the overwhelming strength of the Red Army. The destruction of the German 6th Army opened up the whole of Romania and the Hungarian Plain to the rapidly advancing mobile forces of the Russians. The blunting of localized Soviet thrust by Panther units could not, in the end, have any major impact on the wider picture, whatever the particular technical skills displayed by the crews in bringing them about. Throughout the late autumn of 1944, Panther units belonging to the 4th Panzer Army in southern Poland were in almost continual action against the ever-advancing Soviet forces. Almost all footage from this period reflects the continual cycle of retreat, regroup, and limited counter-attack to seal off local breakthroughs. If the Panther had a swan song on the eastern Front, then it lay with those that participated in the series of aborted German attacks around Lake Balaton in Hungary between February and March of 1945. On the 18th and 19th of September 1944, units of the 5th Panzer Army, which was but a pale shadow of the strength implied by its designation, was directed to attack and seize the town of Lunéville, and the Moselle River in eastern France in order to stop the advance of Patton’s 3rd U.S. army towards the German border. The two panthers available for the attack, mainly Model Gs, came from the 112th Panzer Brigade. Although Lunaville was taken, a subsequent attack on the U.S. 4th Armored Division was stopped with the loss of 50 tanks. This unique footage from Newsreel has captured an early recovery version of the Panther, towing an even rarer Jagdpanther. This abandoned Panther G clearly shows the one-piece armoured side plate characteristic of this model. What cannot be seen is the new rear deck design, revised forward hull and deleted driver’s hull flap, replaced by a periscope. The new Chin gun mantlet is most prominent. About 3,740 model GS were built by War’s end. Although Hitler had expressed his desire to launch the major offensive in the West, even while his troops were still in retreat from France. It was only in October that full planning began. The intention was to drive two Panzer armies through the weakly defended Ardennes, cross the River Meuse, and thereafter drive for Antwerp, Splitting the U.S. forces in France from the Anglo-Canadian forces in the low Countries. This,
Hitler believed, or force an arid evacuation from the continent. Priority in the supply of all New Panthers was given to those units allocated to take part in the offensive. On December 15th, the day before the offensive began, Panther strength stood at about 400 machines, out of a total of 1200 tanks to be employed in the attack. Shortly after the opening of the offensive, Given the somewhat prosaic title, Autumn Mist, but better known to posterity as The Battle of the Bulge, 6th SS Panzer Army and 5th Panzer Army both reported early gains, as it was clear that the allies had been taken by surprise, But progress rapidly slowed in the face of very poor conditions, narrow, icy roads, fog and heavy snow, as well as stiffening resistance from American troops. By 24 December, 5th Panzer Army was making fair progress in the south, But further advance, Westward was hamstrung by a tenacious American defence at the town of Bastogne, which refused to surrender. On 26th, a relief column from the U.S. 3rd Corps relieved Bastogne, while Rundstedt had already wanted to call the offensive off, but Hitler refused, and by 28th, the German momentum was spent. Tanks were running out of fuel and being abandoned. The wooded countryside of the Ardennes, with its opportunity for using cover, making it easy to store. tanks, which is what many American tanks and tank destroyers did, was not the best environment for the Panther, which could not use its long-range gun to best effect. As the bulge contracted eastward, under U.S. and British pressure, the surviving Panthers carried out a fighting retreat. Although the Panther was undoubtedly the best medium tank in the battle, it was never available in significant numbers to count without the more numerous allied armour. Even so, allied losses amounted to a few thousand tanks and other vehicles, roughly 10% of the effective allied strength in Europe at this time. In early January, with improving weather, the Allied fighter bombers were out in force, and panzer losses increased. By the time the offensive was closed down, nearly 200 Panzers had been written off to all causes. Total German losses in the battle of the bulge amounted to about 600 tanks. This late model Panther G, identifiable by its chin-gun mantlet and raised engine fans on the rear deck, was knocked out by U.S. forces at Houghton in Belgium on 26 December 1944. Unlike the previous Panther, which wore the ornate ambush camouflage scheme, the crew of this late Panther. G made at least some attempt to whitewash their vehicle for the snowy conditions of the Ardennes. The blackened turret suggests that this panther suffered a severe internal fire. This late Panther G was knocked out from the rear by a U.S. army tank destroyer, the subsequent internal fire being sufficiently fierce to weaken the torsion bars, with the result that the suspension has collapsed. The fire has left the rest of the panther a blackened hulk. The Allied advance into Germany from March 1945 was rarely opposed by any significant German forces. With the encirclement of the 5th Panzer Army, 5th Army and the remaining 19 divisions of Field Marshal Model’s Army Group B in the Royal Pocket, very few panzers were now available to offer concerted resistance. However, small, ad hoc battle groups were encountered by the Allies. Equipped with one or two panzers, a surviving Tiger, or a self-propelled gun and crewed by die-hard soldiers, these would offer fierce, local resistance. Until their fuel and ammunition ran out or they were destroyed. Other abandoned equipment littered the routes of advance, such as this Panther G, being examined by a group of U.S. soldiers. The crew had clearly made an attempt to deck out their tank with camouflage to give it some protection from the allied fighter bombers. That rove ahead of the advancing allied columns, flying at low level and shooting up anything deemed to be a threat. Here, a late model Jagdpanther, based on the Panther G chassis, had been knocked out by a U.S. Army M36 tank destroyer. The M36, mounting a 90mm gun, was one of the few allied vehicles that could penetrate both the front armour of the Panther and Jagdpanther. One of the very rare Panther variants encountered by the advancing allies was a late model Panther G, using the steel road wheels derived from the Tiger II. The fire in this panther has evidently collapsed the torsion bars, leading to the pronounced droop at the rear of the tank. It was shortly before Goebbels closed down the cinemas in Germany and brought to an end the filming for the weekly newsreels. In March 1945 that this footage of Panzer’s annexion around Breslau was taken. All are late model GS and are painted in an unusual camouflage scheme. Supported by grenadiers and half-tracks mounting triple 30mm cannon, the Panthers advance to engage oncoming Soviet armor. One Soviet tank, probably a T-34-85, has been engaged and destroyed at fairly close range. The final Soviet offensive capture Berlin. Opened before dawn on April 16, 1945, with a massive artillery barrage of 8,000 guns and rocket launchers. These were directed at the German positions on the Zelo Heights by the forces under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Further to the south, his great rival, Marshal Ivan Konev, launched his own offensive by 1st Ukrainian front some 75 minutes later. For three days, the Germans skilfully held off Zhukov’s forces. The 88mm guns and panzer units of Panthers and King Tigers destroyed large numbers of Soviet tanks, the western banks of the Oder becoming a mass graveyard of shattered Russian armour. Zhukov, stung by comments from Stalin about the delay in his offensive timetable, lambasted his senior commanders and demanded a breakthrough at any cost. By the afternoon of the, the heights have been stormed and the German forces overrun. The advance on Berlin now began in earnest. Overhead, the Red Air Force pounced on the retreating German columns, streaming back towards Berlin. By the 25th of April, the city was completely encircled. A small number of panthers and other panzers lay within the city to contest the Soviet advance, as the Russians moved in. Medium and heavy armor in the shape of T-34s, JS2s and supporting ISU-122 and 152 heavy assault guns. By the 30th, the Soviet 150th Division had fought its way to the Reichstag, which was defended to the last by fanatical troops from the SS, Assisted by Volkssturm and Hitler Youth. At 2250 hours, a small party of Soviet troops scaled the stairs to the roof of the Reichstag building and unfurled the flag in symbolic triumph for the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany. Hitler was dead, and on the 2nd of May, the Germans in the city surrendered. Berlin had fallen.

The Panther tank’s development was spurred by Operation Barbarossa in 1941, where Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union revealed the T-34’s superiority. The Panther, designed with sloped armor and a 75mm gun, debuted in 1943 to counter Soviet tanks.