Panther Vs T-34 - superior hunter ?

You're no fun any more.

 

For ridiculing you earlier, i apologize!
Just your assumtions of me and metafors with plains hit the nerv. Plus to this i'm sick wich is very irritating on it's own. Anyway, i did't realy mean to offend you.

Here is i a completly disagree with you. Both AR's (their "main mechanisms") are gas operated systems. Main difference is in the bolt. Wich is more simple in AK-47. Generally AK-47 is much more reliable coz of it's simplicity . Much cheaper to produce as well. But main concept and principals are the same!

That could be argued since any tank could be haracterized by 3 main aspects. It's Armor, Armanent and it's Heart (Engeen, suspencion, transmission etc ). If we look at all German tanks prior to Panther they all had this similar vertical armor. But after testing and reserching captured T-34's - we got Panther. No one should underestimate the role of armor for the tank. Whole concept of the tank is " Being able delivering the punch while staing protected" Without armor tank is just selfpropelled artillery.

 

Pound for pound, I might pick the Panther.

However the crew of the sole Panther would usually be coming up against 7 T-34's......... It aint Rocket science

 

Trog, s'cool mate.

And then the Panther breaks down, or (only very early on) skips that stage and bursts into flames of it's own accord.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

A direct comparison of the Panther and T34 is rather a poor match up. The T34 is by WW 2 standards a medium tank comparable to the Pz IV, Sherman, or Cromwell. The Panther is a heavy tank, albeit a poorly armed one, in terms of weight and armor.
A Panther weighs in at 45 to 48 tons. It is as about as heavy as a Is II, M26 Pershing, or Tiger I; all classed as "heavy" tanks.

Tactically, the problem in choosing the Panther and its low production numbers both in the East and West was not so much in head to head match ups with Allied tanks where numbers were more often than not close to parity. The problem was that the Allies had tanks in many other places where the Germans had none. So, in the one tank-on-tank battle in a particular section of the front the Germans might win. But, the rest of their front collapses under the tank assaults that went uncountered so their armor-on-armor win was worthless.
By limiting the number of available tanks to a relative handful of very capable ones the Germans gave up any hope of matching the mass of Allied tanks they faced. In doing so they gave up the battlefield in favor of winning a few tactical "boxing matches."

 

That's exactly the point i was trying to make earlier!

 

I'm sorry if i wasn't to clear on the comparison aspect of the Panther Vs T-34. Let's put into this approach, you are a infantry soldier (Russian or German its regardless who it is) who hasn't been confronted by enemy tank (in this case either Panther or T-34) and you have only heard of the fearsome capabilities of the tank and know of it's devastating effect in the hands of an experienced crew. This can have the effect of losing or gaining ground in such a situation, obviously when your faced with one of the greatest ingenuities of the enemy a sense of impending doom can be formed momentarily (Panther or T-34 defiantly qualifies) especially on the great expanses of the eastern front where large formations of tanks did battle often in the clash of ideologies. The aura such a piece of equipment can produce I believe can win a battle within the first 10 seconds of combat and cannot be underestimated on it's affect on morale. For instance the 88mm was hell for all allied tank crews thats undeniable.

Such weapons like the V1 and V2 was the greatest achievements in terms of concocting fear and detrimental influences on a countries morale, both civilian and soldier alike. Yes as George.S Patton remarked the honor in war is gone with the onset of these vengeance weapons. The Germans experienced numerous blows to its civilian morale by the Allied bombing raids over german cities vice versa with Luftwaffe and London.

The issue of psychological impact a weapon has upon the enemy is a long running topic but probably nevermore so in WWII due to the vast empires involved in the struggle and the relative importance of mass communication through out the 1900s. Also possessing an Uber weapon certainly has its benefits for it's own morale and state of mind.

 

Doc, I think you grossly over rate the impact that any weapon had on its enemy. Certainly being faced by enemy armor could have had a moral impact but it wasn't anywhere as great as you make it out to be. Instead, soldiers quickly learn the strengths and weaknesses of their enemy's equipment.
For instance, you cite the "88." Units that had any time in combat quickly learned what weapons they faced by sound alone in most cases. A veteran unit could tell and 88 from a howitzer or a mortar. Likewise, tankers quickly learned to recognize their opponet's vehicles and were generally well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of those vehicles.
For example, US tankers knew that Panthers had weak side and rear armor and would maneuver to get flanking shots whenever possible. M 18 crews knew their vehicle was the fastest AFV on the battlefield several times over and used that speed to their advantage. Tiger crews knew their tank was invulnerable to Russian 76mm and US / British 6pdr and 75mm rounds and acted with near impunity in the face of these weapons.
Knowing this, again using the US as an example, opposing crews acted rationally in devising a counter. In the US case one common method was to fire a White Phosporous round or two into the Tiger first thing. US crews also knew their tanks could get on target faster with faster turret rotation, stabilization, and a quicker laying gun system. They got the first round in most of the time. With WP they could blind and stun a Tiger's crew. The acrid smoke got sucked into the tank and choked the crew. The smoke blinded them. Thus, the US crew could now either avoid the Tiger or proceed to pump several more AP or HE rounds into it before it could respond. Overwhelming fire could win the day simply through immediate shock or a lucky hit. Simply a rational response to the situation.
The V1 and 2 really never accomplished much of anything other than to divert some small amount of Allied resources into countering them. The Allied bombing campaign in terms of morale never did break that of the German citizenry. Instead, its impact on civilians was far more rational. Civilians abandoned cities for the safety of the countryside where possible. Some forewent working jobs at plants that held a high degree of the possibility of being bombed. Their morale did not fail; they simply acted in a prudent and rational manner to a threat. The same is true of soldiers on the battlefield. It actually takes quite a bit of ill treatment and shock to break someone's morale. A single weapon is very unlikely to contribute much to that.

 

Good post again Gardner! I agree with all of it.

 

This is a simple question; the Panther is a superior tank. Even with predominately T34/43 tanks against a German combination of various panzers including Panthers as the pick of the bunch the best performance the Soviet forces could manage was to lose armour at the rate of 4:1 (1943/44) despite German difficulties during these two years.

And utimately the Panther is not a copy of the T34; it is a tank designed specifically to beat the T34 thus it is quick to match the T34 but has a better combination of armour and weapon.

The use of very sloped armour on the Panther may well have been 'inspired' by the T34 just as sloped armour miraculously appeared elsewhere following it's debut on the T34 (and likely as not also inspired by it) but these two tanks are otherwise completely different from each other. They don't even have the same number of crew!

And even after the T34/85 & JS tanks along with the excellent SU series were available in numbers Mr Panther and friends were still knocking them out at the rate of 4:1.

 

to weigh in on this ancient post, here are some strengths and weaknesses of each.
1. Production of t34 and t34/85: 80,000. Production of Panther: between 4,000 - 5,000.
2. all Panthers are equipped with a radio. Most t-34's are NOT equipped with a radio. Some Russian tank units relied on signal flags to know where and when to go.
3. T-34 is diesel powered and less likely to burn as a Panther, which was gasoline powered.
4. Early models of Panther were very trouble prone much of it due to its overly complex design. By the time these troubles were resolved it was too late to matter much. (Oddly the Luftwaffe's 4 engined HE-177 bomber had many technical problems as well, so many that Goerring called it "the flying Panther".)
5. When Panther was introduced its high velocity 75 mm gun easily outgunned and outranged the T-34's, due to superior ammo design and tank gunners who were simply better. When the T-34/85 was introduced this narrowed the gap quite a bit but did not close it, the Panther was generally recognized as a superior tank until war's end.

 

Like the ones at Arracourt?

In all terms the T-34/85 was comparable to the PzIV/L48, trying to compare it with the Panther is same as comparing the same PzIV with the M-26. Make some sense please!

 

LOL You got that right .

 

Is this thread still going, I would have thought it would have been given up. Didn't we have the same discussion, 2 months ago, then 3 months before that, and again a year ago. lol

 

There you go being sarcastic again.

 

Hey if sarcasm is around, it's meant to be used


Now, I always like hearing point number three... I think that in one of my first posts I actually posted an article about there being no difference between a gas and a diesel engine. The Panther burned (in the beginning) because a faulty fuel
pump wich accumulated fuel near the engine and when the tank was climbing, that fuel would light up making the entire tank burn to the ground. that's what happened with the first 2 tank causalities in Kursk.

 

That is not true. A tank's predilection to burn was mostly the result of the distribution of its stored ammo. If tank gun shells were stored in places that were likely to be hit, a problem with both the early Sherman and Panther tanks, the tank would be easy to burn. T-34 though was still a deathtrap like all medium tanks. A US Army analysis found that in Korea, the crew of a knocked out T-34 sustained on average 3-4 casaulties.

I am also somewhat surprised that the Panther was characterized as "comfortable." It might be less austere than the T-34, but a British motion study of the Panther tank concluded that the tank's designers seemed to have appointed the interior in order to make the gunner's life as miserable as possible. The position of the turret crew and the gun controls were very awkward and as a result the Panther suffered form a lower rate of fire compared to the Sherman tank.

In a tank-to-tank fight the Panzer V would claim almost complete dominatation in frontal engagements at most battle ranges inspite of those design flaws. The Russian T-34-85 could knock out a Panther at 500 meters, but only if the shot went straight to the mantlet and if the Russian crew had APCR rounds left in the rack. In contrast, the 7.5cm L/70 gun that armed the Panther could kill allied mediums at the range of 1,200 meters.

Panzer V's most serious drawbacks as others have already pointed out are the short service life of the vehicle, its poor fuel economy and limited operational mobility. It gives the foot soldier little comfort to know that his army has a killer tank 100 km away when he is the one ordered to try a go at the allied tanks with a Panzerfaust.