In the
first three years of the Second World War the
Panzer
IV tank
was the backbone of Blitzkreig
strategy
employed by the German Army.
However,
the the successful resistance of the Red Army
in the Soviet Union in 1942 showed that the
Panzer
IV was
no longer invincible. A new tank was commissioned and the Panther
appeared in November 1942. It had a 75mm gun which was capable of
penetrating the armour of any Soviet tank. Other design features included
sloped armour to deflect shot, torsion-bar suspension, interleaved
road wheels. The armour was 80mm thick and its 650hp engine could
travel at 28mph. Between 1942 and 1945 Germany
produced 4,814 Panther tanks.
(1)
Hasso Manteuffel, commander
of the 7th Panzer Division,
was interviewed by Basil
Liddell Hart after the war for his
book The Other Side of the Hill (1948)
T anks must be fast.
That, I would say, is the most important lesson of the war in regard
to tank design. The Panther was on the right lines, as a prototype.
We used to call the Tiger a 'furniture van' - though it was a good
machine in the initial breakthrough. Its slowness was a worse handicap
in Russia than in France, because the distances were greater.
The Stalin tank is the
heaviest in the world; it has robust tracks and good armour. A further
advantage is its low build - it is 51 cm lower than our Panzer V,
the Panther. As a 'breakthrough' tank it is undoubtedly good, but
too slow.
It was at Targul Frumos
that I first met the Stalin tanks. It was a shock to find that, although
my Tigers began to hit them at a range of 3,000 metres, our shells
bounced off, and did not penetrate them until we had closed to half
that distance. But I was able to counter the Russians' superiority
by manoeuvre and mobility, in making the best use of ground cover.
Fire-power, armour protection,
speed and cross-country performance are the essentials, and the best
type of tank is that which combines these conflicting requirements
with most success. In my opinion the German Panzer V, the 'Panther',
was the most satisfactory of all, and would have been dose to the
ideal had it been possible to design with a lower silhouette. A main
lesson I learned from all my experience was that much more importance
should be placed on the speed of the tank on the battlefield than
was generally believed before the war, and even during, the war. It
is a matter of life or death for the tank to avoid the deadly effect
of enemy fire by being able to move quickly from one fire-position
to another. Manoeuvrability develops into a 'weapon' and often ranks
equal to firepower and armour- protection.
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